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Every night in her sleep, at 3:30 a.m., my wife makes this small humming sound when the train passes our apartment. The tracks are blocks down the road -- you can't hear the engine, nor the clatter of the rails, nor the bell as the traffic beam descends -- nothing but a long, sober whistle.
 A soft, "Hmmmmm" from my wife. Then nothing. The silence of a city that's nearly empty.
The glow from the one streetlight on our block slips into our room through a part in the curtains. It cuts a narrow path across the floorboards. Away from our bed and out into the living room before disappearing.
Then it's morning. Then we're in the kitchen and she's twirling all over the place, cabinet to cabinet, looking for coffee.
"That's funny," she says when I ask her about the sound she makes.
She doesn't remember any of it.
"Hmm," I say.
"Hmm," she says.
Then it's night again.
Then the train calls out across the blackness.
Hmmmm.
Then it's silent again.
"What do you dream about?" I ask. She digs through a drawer then her purse, searching for a sugar packet and a spoon.
"I don't know," she says.
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I don't mean anything," she says, "I just don't remember."
Our marriage counselor tells us that there are parts of another person that you can never know. That we need to stop assuming things about each other. No matter how close two people are, they can't be inside each others' heads. You're not mind readers, we're told. The problem, we're told, is that couples expect to know each other fully. They eventually believe, we're told, that they can anticipate the others' actions and thoughts, but they can't.
Then it's night again.
Have you ever seen those programs on cable about certain types of porpoises or dolphins that -- beneath the ocean surface, beneath the waves and mist and ships passing in the night -- will sing to each other across miles of darkness?
Like tines on a tuning fork. The two vibrate in unison and, in the space between, a single note of longing.
It's night again, then it's night again, then it's night again. When I roll over to look at her, I can barely make out a silhouette. Outside, something endless barrels forward.
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