I round the bend that leads to the street that leads to the street by which my apartment complex sprawls. The car’s engine is making a noise that I can’t usually hear over my music -- I can’t decide if it’s a peaceable purr or the beginning of a growl I ought to have looked at, but won‘t. My fingers are tapping against the side of the steering wheel, beating a slightly manic tattoo into the hard rubber and into my brain. It’s been a long day, and now it’s past midnight and I’m going home to my wife, my two cats, and a parrot that would, if given the chance, happily murder me.

The moon appears suddenly, sliding out from behind a cloud like a child from behind a bush on Halloween, ready to yell “Boo!” and scamper off, trailing giggles. It’s a slim crescent, lying almost horizontal across the sky,  and its uncanny resemblance to the Cheshire Cat’s grin startles me, then makes me smile in return.

I round another corner, and the deserted bus stop I’ve known since I was a child comes into view, sitting humbly across the street from the mass of asynchronous buildings my apartment belongs to. The bus stop has always been a source of vague curiosity to me; it looks like three untidy huts of glass and metal huddled beside each other, unremarkable in daylight and even less remarkable at night, but there is a hint of strangeness and incongruity to them, a deeper current of the out-of-place my mind has never been in a fit state to explore.

One more turn, and I’m in my parking lot. The usual solid line of lifeless automobiles greets me -- as every night, every space even remotely near my apartment has been taken. I drive further, and find a spot near the honeycombed cluster of community mailboxes.

This nightly inconvenience used to irritate me, but now I find myself welcoming the brief excursions into the fresh air. I jog down the sidewalk, watching the shadows of each doorway out of a vague desire to finally catch a glimpse of one of my fellow tenants. The desire goes unfulfilled, as it usually does.

I take the stairs that lead to my door two at a time, a habit I formed during my childhood in the sizeable stairwell of my parents’ house, and to which I now attribute (probably irrationally) my skinny build. The noise the stairs make under the shoes I wore to my wedding alert at least one of the cats to my presence; I can see shadows shifting restlessly beneath the door, a reminder that I ought to do something about the non-existent weather-stripping. I can hear quiet music coming from inside, and though I don’t particularly care for it in itself, it is my wife’s, so I feel a certain patient affection for it.

I slide my key into the lock, turn it, and push the door open. Warm light from the naked bulb in the entranceway spills across me, and I duck down quickly to catch the kitten as she tries to dart between my legs. I lift her into my arms, and she opens her mouth to complain bitterly to me, mourning another thwarted foray into the outside world. I close the door behind me, and let her go -- she zooms off, a white and gray streak, to find a corner from which to hate me for the next half-hour.

My wife is sitting on our battered, second-hand sofa with her back to me -- all I can see is a mass of black curls and frizzles ,which shifts aside like a curtain when she turns to give me a smile. Her skin is pale and freckled, her face round and bright, and her smile contains that inexhaustible vibrance she’s shown me since the day we met and I thought I hated her.

A little swell of pride makes my chin lift as I smile back wearily; the sense of accomplishment that came as an added bonus along with this apartment hasn’t entirely faded in the months we’ve lived here. We both work hard during the daylight hours with a competence that I, for my own part, have been surprised and gratified to discover in myself, for the happy reward of long nights spent together.

I break the moment by moving, crossing the room to give her a peck on the forehead and snuffle into her hair, and she laughs at me while she turns back to the screen of the computer she has perched on the arm of the sofa.

Tonight, we’ll stay up until the sun is ready to rise. We’ll splash stories across walls in bright paint, we’ll laugh at friends we’ve never met -- I’ll ramble about politics and philosophy and she’ll listen patiently until I’m through. On a good night, she might even join in. We might make love, and we may not, an imbalance I have come to accept with some bemusement as the price of this eternal slumber party, and either way we will sleep content when the time comes for sleep.

And I find myself wishing that it won’t ever change.

And I find myself wondering if it can possibly stay as good as this.

And I find myself cherishing these nights more than I have cherished any other time in my life.