The woman that A and B were referring to was named Clara, someone familiar to every facet of Calvin. It’s hard to forget one’s first love. Love of any kind at a younger age is often discounted, and Calvin had borrowed from that thinking before on lonely nights when his mind turned to happier times. Yet there was something about forming one’s mind along with another person that makes that type of love unique. Calvin did his best to avoid thoughts like this.

A and B both cared deeply for Clara, but the way in which they thought about their time together differed greatly. The facts were that Calvin had been happy with her, from the time they started dating at sixteen, until it all fell apart when they turned twenty-two. Even in the time before they started dating, there had been something special in the way he felt about her that he struggled to put into words.

Despite those good times, A was careful never to put too much stock into their time together. What had happened, had happened. They were no longer together, and in the five years that they had been apart, he had convinced himself that most of the longing he felt came from feelings greatly enhanced by nostalgia.

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For B, there was a level of mysticism around Clara. He hadn’t formed into the concrete version of himself when Calvin first met Clara, or during the first years of their relationship. But when he came into being, there was no doubt in his mind that he owed much of his existence to her. She had laid down the soil without A realizing it, and from that soil he was able to grow.

As Calvin sat in the cab, the ghostly rain continuing to fall, his mind swirling, agitated by stale booze and thoughts of his past. B would refer to it as the perfect storm. He stared out the window at his hometown. There were hardly any lights on, or anyone on the road. The solace of the streets made him feel like an invader, touring the empty streets of a ghost town.

The cab raced onward to the bar, and both A and B hoped to run into her. As fate or divine intervention would have it, Clara was having a drink at O’Sullivan’s that night.