Perfection

The immediate effects of that freedom were less clear-cut. Somehow, between airport transfers and unforeseen events, their initial budget always proved optimistic. Their time management also left something to be desired. Getting ready to leave always seemed to take up the entire day before they were due to travel; work left over from the week meant

Those memories were sweet but they seemed to belong to another life entirely. For a long time, it was precisely those little details that made them feel at home—the different types of paving on the streets, the citrus motifs on the cornices covered in graffiti, the tropical plants behind the bay windows. Now that feeling had gone, even if the detai

All their friends shared this interest. Mysteriously enough, they had discovered homemade fermentation kits, fire-roasted cauliflower, and umami at exactly the same time as Anna and Tom. As they had grown older, the nights out—drug-hazed nights spent sandwiched between tourists—had been gradually replaced by lazy lunches on summer afternoons or can

draining—more exciting, maybe, but ultimately harder. From the outside, it was easy enough to identify the cause of their alienation, but to them, paradoxically, no explanation revealed itself. Anna and Tom lived in a bubble, one even more insular and limited than those just starting to appear on social media. In a way, they had become radicalized.

interest in the affairs of people they would never meet. It was like walking through the world’s most hectic street market on cocaine. It was like channel-hopping an entire wall of TV sets. It was like telepathically tuning into the thoughts of a stadium packed with people. But really it wasn’t like anything else, because it was new.

Their love grew deeper every day. They were lovers, partners, best friends. The connection they first felt at university had only strengthened over the course of their foreign adventure. Minor betrayals had been forgiven or left unsaid. Through the strains of everyday life, they had learned to rely on each other. Tom called Anna’s parents without f

By early afternoon the first stirrings of anxiety would make themselves felt, then slowly build like a gathering storm. They would remember the supermarkets, closed on Sundays, their client calls scheduled for Monday, the work due by Friday. They would part ways without making plans and get on the U-Bahn to their one- or two-bedroom apartments with

The results of that love were all around them. Delicious hot meals, their bills paid, a job and home they liked—the details that comprised their life. It was a life they had created for themselves, building difference upon difference until it encapsulated the real them, with a freedom they would never have had back at home. They were proud of it. O