"I mean, we were never... It wasn't what you thought," she said quickly. "But I ended the friendship, the whole thing. I blocked him on everything. I told him I couldn't have him in my life anymore because he'd cost me my marriage."
I didn't know what she expected me to do with that. I'd spent a year watching a pattern that had a clear shape and a clear trajectory.
Watching it end 6 days before my flight didn't change the shape it had taken.
Petra, I said, I believe you. And I also believe that you didn't understand how serious this was until I did something you couldn't redirect.
What does that mean?
It means that every time I tried to tell you this was hurting our marriage, you told me I was the problem. The only language that actually communicated the stakes was me leaving.
She was quiet. That's not a foundation, I said. That's not how two people are supposed to work.
People can learn, she said.
They can, I said. I hope you do. I mean that.
She cried again. I sat with her this time, not saying anything useful, just being present, which was the only honest thing left I could give her.
The night before my flight, I was at Todd's place in Queen Anne.
We had a few beers on his roof deck and watched the lights across Elliott Bay going quiet as midnight approached.
The Space Needle was lit up to the south, the way it always is. That weird Seattle landmark that somehow never stops being what Seattle looks like when you picture Seattle.
You feel ready? Todd asked.
I've never been to Singapore, I said. I don't know what ready looks like.
I mean, for all of it.
I thought about the townhouse in East Lake that would be sold by the time I came back. About the mountain view from the upstairs window that I'd probably never see again.
About 6 years of building something with someone and the particular grief of watching it not be what you needed it to be.
Yeah, I said. I'm ready.
We stayed on the roof until almost 1:00 in the morning. He drove me to a hotel near the airport. Sea-Tac is down in Federal Way, about 30 minutes south of the city on I-5, and said he'd come visit once I was settled.
I told him I'd hold him to that.
I was alone in the hotel room by 1:30 in the morning. Flight was at 10:15.
I lay on my back looking at the ceiling in that specific way you do when you're not tired enough to sleep but too tired to do anything useful.
And I thought about the 11 years since I'd taken the job at Meridian and how much of a person's life could accumulate in that time without you noticing the accumulation happening.
I wasn't sad the way I'd expected to be sad. I was something closer to ready.
The text from Petra came at 9:47 the next morning. Hey, what does your weekend look like?
I was already through security, already past the gate, already sitting in the boarding area for the Singapore Airlines flight that would take me to Tokyo Narita and then to Changi, that famously efficient airport that every frequent traveler had an opinion about.
I opened the camera, took a selfie, clean, clear, the gate sign visible in the background. Changi Airport, Singapore.
I sent it without a caption.
She called immediately. I sent it to voicemail.
She texted, "Are you really on a plane right now?"
I texted back, "Boarding in 20 minutes."
A long pause, then: Eli, please.
I put the phone in my bag. They called group two for boarding, and I got in line with everyone else.
A businessman in front of me was on his phone in Mandarin. A family behind me was organizing children and carry-ons with the particular controlled chaos of parents who'd done this before.
The line moved forward. I moved with it.
Singapore is 17 hours ahead of Seattle. When I landed at Changi on a flight that somehow managed to be both long and surprisingly manageable, it was the next morning local time.
And my first impression of the place was light. The specific quality of light in Southeast Asia that isn't like Pacific Northwest light at all. Warmer and more direct, like the sun had made a decision.
The Meridian Singapore office was in Marina Bay, that gleaming concentrated cluster of towers that was doing its level best to be one of the most impressive financial districts on Earth.
My contact there was a woman named Suki Tan, a Singaporean analyst who'd been with the Asia-Pacific operation for 4 years and knew how things worked.
You need 48 hours to adjust to the time zone, she told me matter-of-factly when we met. Do not try to fight it. Eat, sleep when you can, get some sun during daylight hours. By day three, you'll feel human.
She was right. By day three, I felt something closer to human.
By the end of the first week, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time: present completely in the room I was in without the background hum of a marriage that was slowly coming apart filling the back of my mind.
The work was demanding in the way demanding work could be a relief. New markets, new patterns, new problems to solve.
I had a small apartment in Tanjong Pagar, a neighborhood south of the city center that had the specific energy of a place reinventing itself.
Old shophouses alongside new glass towers, hawker centers below apartment buildings, the whole compressed layering of a city that had decided to be ambitious about everything.
I walked a lot, figured out the MRT system, found a coffee place near the office run by a guy named Henry who made the kind of espresso that made you understand coffee differently.
I was building something new. It was small at first, the size of a hotel room, the size of a commute, the size of learning which MRT line went where.
But it was mine in a way that nothing had felt mine in a while.