The short walk from my apartment to the tram stop feels endless. I have to hypnotize each foot into taking one more step. This is exactly how I didn’t want today to unfold, but I have to go there and do it.

The tram ride revives me a little, and luckily it’s downhill from Perunova to El Camino. Everything inside me feels heavy. Yet the moment I see him, I lift off the pavement for a second. He’s waiting outside the restaurant, one foot propped against the railing around a tree, as if there were nothing different about today at all.

The fish and seafood are the best we’ve ever eaten together. Mostly, we talk about how Viktorka Žižkov could be redesigned. He takes me around the world. We begin at the Roman Colosseum and end at Munich’s Allianz Arena.

In return, I tell him about the elevator that won’t fit into the shaft and how the whole thing has to be redesigned. He smiles at the fact that problems like this no longer send me spiraling. He feels he taught me that. I feel that, thanks to me, he can now admit certain problems exist. At least tentatively.

Every cell in my body wishes it weren’t today. Some other time, most of them plead. And still, in the end, I say it. As steadily as I can. He doesn’t protest.

My calmness carries him away into a stream of honey. My tears carve elongated hollows into it. They move slowly, stopping only once they reach the Colosseum.

The best arena is one from which your feet can get outside within three minutes, no matter where you are standing.

And yet ours took a year and a half.