Other people’s evenings are inconceivably alien and distant. I drove through suburbs three months ago feeling homesick. Wanting the kitchen, the wandering around loneliness, the TV in the bedroom and the quiet. The impersonal hollowness and the sadness of my kid years, when I wanted to live in the suburbs.

The underlit garage awnings and the blue glows in the windows. When smoking, do so under those underlit awnings and stare emptily into the black middle distance until you can make out the pebbles in the road, those ones someone down the street guards against with the plastic on the front bumper. Small libraries, the irritable and bored women.

Get a coke at a drive-thru using three words. Rent a movie.