Alanna’s text message was tinged more with mystery than desperation, but it still caused me to raise an eyebrow.
Any chance you could come by here after work some night this week?
This request seemed so incredibly strange in the age we now lived in. True, it would have been absurd, back when Alanna and Mitch had lived in Hope Mountain, to pop over on a work night, but it felt equally ridiculous now. Their condo was only eight, maybe ten subway stops away, and yet our friends felt farther away than ever. I chalked this up to a major shift in the mentality of our city, and indeed the wider world. Travelling between two points, even of a short distance, had become so taxing and time-consuming – what with the traffic, the crowds, the transportation infrastructure stretched to the breaking
