David McElroy

You can get to know a stranger pretty well in six hours — but can you come away knowing yourself better? Maybe. This long night makes me think so.

It was a chance encounter. We were both strangers looking for something — maybe neither of us knew what — when we found each other Saturday night. I was restless and needed to get away from my house. She was frustrated with the people at her house and was escaping them.

It was around 10 p.m. when I got to Whataburger in Trussville. I picked it because it was open all night and because I seem to keep being drawn back there lately, since it’s a place where I used to go all the time. She walked in with a self-assurance that suggested she would own any room she walked into. The place was mostly empty and it wasn’t long before we were chatting, first across a couple of tables and then across my old booth as she joined me there.

Her name is Delaney. She’s a tall blonde woman with blue eyes and she looks as though she would have been at home as a hippie in the ’60s. Some of that was the way she dressed but part of it was the way she carried herself — as though she sees right through everybody and says things others are too polite to say.

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I have intense feelings and I don’t have any choice but to share them. That’s just the way I’m wired. I love powerfully. I hurt deeply. I experience joy with open exuberance.

I don’t hide my feelings well. If you’re paying any attention at all, you know where you stand with me, because I wear my heart on my sleeve.

But there are times — very rare times — when everything feels numb. When that happens, it means that some part of me — maybe a little part or maybe a big part — has finally died after an extended period of intense pain. It happens without warning, although it’s always predictable in retrospect.

I went numb today. It feels like walking in a driving rainstorm without an umbrella — and not caring what anybody else thinks.

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My name ought to be mounted somewhere on this table, except for the fact that nobody but me would care, of course.

I’m sitting in a booth where I must have sat a thousand times before. It’s in a Whataburger restaurant in the Birmingham suburb of Trussville. Until I moved to a different suburb three years ago, this was my home away from home for many years.

When this place opened, it was the only restaurant near my house that was open 24 hours a day and had WiFi. Since I worked from home at the time and often welcomed the chance to get out, this became my second office. I was here at all hours of the day and night. All the employees knew me by name.

I have no reason to be over here today. I almost never come to this part of town anymore. But today is the second time recently that I’ve felt drawn to drive over here for no apparent reason. But I think I know why I’m here.

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