"Do you want to go home?"
"No, let's drive for a bit."
Half an hour later we're parked in front of his house, the radio playing some odd trance on the jazz station, and we're back-and-forthing confessions.
"I miss human contact."
"I'd take her back if she came back."
"I haven't told my brothers what my father did to our mother."
"I don't know how much longer I can do this."
"Me either."
Then, two hours are gone, and it's the small hours of the morning like it used to be when we talked. After a while it's sentences filled out by the music we're listening to, and the fruitlessness of my heater against the cold, and the lights outside that are too dim for me and too bright for him.
"We need something weird to happen," he says. "I've shared something weird with all my other friends."
"I get anxious when I can't explain something. When I can't think of a reason for something to be happening, I get very upset."
"Really?"
"You know me," I say, "science is my religion."
If I had a tape recorder, everyone would finally understand why we are the way we are. I don't, though, so I have to patch together the night like a quilt and hope for the best; hope someone understands.