A silent spring

"It's late enough" Chloe says and pours more than a few drops of Jim Beam Black in her Starbucks cappuccino. She's about to ask me if I want some too when she remembers and excuses herself*. I tell her it's fine and we drink our coffees in silence while looking at pastel colored teenaged clones coming out of the Banana Republic store across the street, identical bags hanging from every thin little bracelet arm.  

Everything is a copy. I sometimes imagine that same straight line running between the men in my life, between Carl and my father, but if it's true then it must be my fault. I'm the one who insisted on listening to those songs in the car while driving away from the darkness into the dark, wishing it would feel the same way. I told him to wear certain colors and clothes and to talk in a certain way about certain things, so that the memories wouldn't fade too fast. Maybe he did it because he loved me, and maybe he just wanted to make me happy. Maybe it doesn't matter as long as it helped.

If you could relive any moment in history, what would it be and why?

*It's what my father had been drinking when they found him, one of those little details that have occupied my memory ever since.