NOAH
I found the gap because I've spent my entire life looking for them.
Every formal venue has one, a pocket of invisibility created by a structural oversight or a landscaping choice.
This one was around the side of the Metropolitan Club, a wedge of darkness between a heavy stone column and a manicured hedge.
It was invisible from the main entrance where the valets were whistling for cars, and invisible from the street where the world was moving on as if the last two hours hadn't happened.
I sat on the cold pavement, knees drawn up to my chest, arms wrapped around them in a tight, desperate knot. I pressed my face into my thighs, making myself as small as the architecture would allow.
What the hell just happened? I asked my knees. What did I just go through?
The questions were quiet. It wasn't a scream; it was a weary, genuine inquiry directed at a universe that had a long-standing policy of never answering me.
