On being caught between time zones

"Hey I'm in line for lunch," he shot off to me quickly this morning.

The hour-old rays of the day had just begun settling so hard on my face through the window above my nest that I'd awakened, slowly, minute by minute more aware of the living room around me, the couch beneath me, the memory of feeling too mentally busy to fall asleep until midnight, and my aching eyes trying to emerge from rest.

I checked my email as soon as I could hold my eyelids open. "Hey I'm in line for lunch," he'd written at 6:30 AM. There was another email, though, sent at 6:50. "We have a briefing now. Sorry." In his typically succinct way, he'd encapsulated our dilemma. When he's free, I'm asleep on my couch. When I'm free, he's being briefed. When he's free, I'm serving lunch to my regulars. When I'm free, he sleeps in a Moroccan house where they ask no questions and mostly argue in Berber and French.

I'm not heartbroken. There is no weeping into my coffee this morning as I stare at my computer screen, looking for Skype to light up. It's just an odd life, always hinging the time you have on someone so close living in a foreign world 6 hours in the future.