There are so much you can do with space, Trager would learn. For one, in the middle of the night, you can run over to an old building where you used to live, and, while packing up on some old things you used to cherish, you can spend more time being idle—a luxury you never get on weekdays, but only on very few chosen moments such as this.

She has always been nocturnal. It was something she realized when back in her early elementary days, she would wake up in the middle of the night, straining herself to see whatever her father was watching on the telly just because she couldn’t sleep. Of course, her father would not understand that his only daughter is developing early signs of insomnia, but as a dutiful parent, it was his job to keep watch by opening the telly and sticking to it. Random sounds of rustling coming from her bedroom would be ignored, while she keeps herself amused while awake.

Twenty or so years later when she would find herself moving and alone in the metro, she would still nurture those old habits albeit without sleuth. This time, no father would be there to tell her off, and so what she would do is to go around, marvel at the lights alone, and love the metro in her own way. Tonight, the metro found her on the floor of a unit she used to adore. It was there that she made love to the world, gazed at cars wheezing past the highway, met new friends, brought new people, had her heart broken, learned to cope. She has customized it to her own want, and yet, after a few months, she would find her self needing to leave the place. It would teach her the ultimate truth about the universe: nothing, and nothing, is constant. And permanent. She learned to be a waif.

She slept in the afternoon and woke up at night automatically. She decided to leave her new place and run to this old unit, the only place she felt most at home. She had a very simple motivation in mind to go here, really: to get an old spare necklace chain from her stash that she left here. She found it, removed a specific pendant from her dog tag that she always wears with her, then gave it a new home. There were still some old clothes she hasn’t packed up, so she plucked an old racerback from the pile, went downstairs, bought beers. After closing the door, she striped down to a near bare, opened a can. She sat on the floor for a while; her laptop playing random songs from the playlist. And that was it: underwear, random songs, beer, and the pendant in its new neck chain home. Those were her essentials. She took a swig from her can of beer, lay on the floor, lit a cigarette and lay down, with the pendant cold on her chest. And it was, as she predicted, comfortable. She was the whore of the night, but no eyes could see, except for the wind, the lights, the unit, the beers, the lit cigarette on her lips.

Temporary. Temporarily, these are her lovers. Tomorrow, would be another day, she thought. Tomorrow, she’d be the office whore, with her work as her lovers. Tomorrow she would have random people with busy lives passing by her and they all commune in busy silence. Tomorrow would be different, she knew.

Today, she’s just Temporary’s bitch. And they’ll make love till she’s exhausted. And she’ll pull herself up, dust herself off, and assume another mask that would not be recognizable except only by those she would allow. And that’s her. But tonight, she’s just another vulnerable lover.