Brain Epitaph

Clocks go back this Sunday, and the dark will arrive before five. Early nights, already a national habit, start even earlier this week. So does the lying about them.

Session timed to the minute. Volume: two of sixteen. No further action required.

He told his wife he was having one, early, and she believed him completely. She went up pleased, without a backward glance. She did not need one.

He kept the sound low enough to stay below the stairs. He picked a true-crime series already mid-season. By midnight he had eaten most of a block of cheese, standing at the fridge. He worked it with his hands, not a knife. He wiped his hands on his own shirt. It already had worse on it.

He undid his trousers completely and let his stomach spread over the waistband. This is how a man sits only when he is certain nobody is watching. He scratched himself without hurrying, then let one go, low and unhurried. He was sure. He was wrong.

Nobody in the house saw this. The television did.

He fell asleep somewhere past midnight, mouth open, drooling onto a cushion he would never admit to drooling on. He meant to watch one more episode after that. He never left the sofa.

The streaming service keeps its own record of the night. It is called a Viewing Summary. It has never once used the word "early."

The report lists a single session, timed to the minute, the sound logged as barely audible. Underneath, in the same flat type: "No further action required."

His wife came down first, as she always does. The screen was still glowing, paused on "Continue Watching." She did not ask about the show. She asked only about the time.

The Viewing Summary goes to the account's main email, which is hers, and always has been. She had already read it over coffee, long before she came downstairs.

This newspaper shares one streaming account between its entire staff. Its own Viewing Summary lists a great many "early nights." Not one of them has ended before midnight.