Tangent — Long-Sleeve Tee

The message is eleven minutes long. You know this before you press play, which gives you time to make tea and settle into the unusually generous interpretation of just quickly that your friend has chosen today.

They begin with the answer to a question you asked yesterday. This occupies perhaps twenty seconds. After that, a door can be heard, somebody says hello in the distance, and the subject takes a turn you could not reasonably have anticipated. There is a bicycle involved. For a while there may be two bicycles, although your friend promises to come back to that.

You fold the last of the washing while they explain. You put on the patterned long sleeve, find the shoes you meant to find earlier, and listen to their footsteps change as they move from one kind of pavement to another. The little pauses are as familiar as the words. You can tell when they are smiling at something they haven't decided whether to tell you.

At minute nine, the original question returns wearing quite a lot of additional context. At minute ten, your friend says they have forgotten why they started recording. You remember. It hardly seems to matter now.

You send a reply when you get outside. Only a short one, you think. Then a very peculiar bicycle goes past, and you decide they should probably hear about it.

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