One part history, one part home.

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She used to work with this guy--the unnervingly tall type that would make folks unsettled because he was about a foot too tall to be that "average" sort of tall, but a half-foot from being at the point where you knew it was a genetic disease.

Never really fancying him--or even really showing any intrest whatsoever--she nonetheless put up with his constant hangdog flirting. He never flirted outright, he just asked her in quiet tones if she'd like to go to plays, to movies, to dinner. One day she gave in (what harm could it do?) and went to see a college drama department doing one of those modernized Shakespeare plays that everyone touts as great, but leaves a hollow feeling, anyway.

They had to sit in the back. He was too tall. Which was all as well--he talked the entire time. He had that soft polite way of speech that made on realize that he'd been scolded by his parents and teachers until he spoke the Queen's English all the time.

It was always "may I" this, "may I" that.

He didn't use contractions, either, which served the purpose of making him sound like he was somehow looking down on you, or perhaps that he'd just learned English.

The play was unenjoyable. And she was sure that it wouldn't have been any good, even if she could hear it. There's only so far she could suspend her disbelief, and turning Julius Caesar into something with CEOs wasn't within those limits.

By the time the play got out, the sun was so low in the sky it appeared as a fire on the hills. The words "And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" seemed appropriate somehow. She wasn't sure. But she wasn't sure of much. That's why she was nearing her fifth year working for an office supply store as a clerk, still looking on at all the printers and TI-86s, remembering a time when she could have possibly taken a route that required these, when she could have filled her head with more than knowing exactly what sell on Pilots was going on.

He looked at the sky, too. It was only one night in his life. It was only his last with her, unless it was checking out some sullen-faced teenager, gaunt and pale from too many nights programming.

The fire of the hills was going out, the horizon swiftly becoming merely a lighted canvas of clouds.

Gehenna. Jahannam. Inferno.

The sun was gone. And so was she.