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Sasha doesn’t have enough money for a house, or an apartment. A friend of a friend puts them up in a spare room for a week or two, then helps them find a trailer on the outskirts of town.
“It’s not forever,” Sasha shrugs. Adam loves it. He carefully lays his book down on the bedside table. Sasha insists he take the master bed, there’s a Murphy bed that turns into a sofa during the day that she wants for herself. She’s always wanted one, she says.
Adam helps her unpack her boxes from the boot of the car. Two of them have books in, one has the kitchen stuff, and a few bags of clothes and paperwork.
The last thing she unpacks is — at first Adam thinks it’s a painting in an antique frame, but as she holds it up to the light he sees it’s made of thread. Hundreds of tiny stitches. Some of it refuses to resolve into shapes Adam is able to understand, but there are what look like stars in a night sky, and two people looking up at them. One of them is taller, with a few threads of silver kind of… wrapped around him, like a snake. The people don’t have faces.
Sasha sees that he’s looking and she grins, sidelong. “This artist I used to know, she was always running out of money and could never pay me on time for helping set up shows or cleaning her studio… once she gave me this instead.”
“It’s beautiful,” Adam says, after a long pause. He thinks it’s the right thing to say. He’s not sure how it makes him feel, but the colours are striking, and he wants to rub his fingers over the stitches. Would they feel soft, or taut? He doesn’t. He doesn’t reach out. Sasha’s smile softens, and she props the embroidery up on top of the fridge. It’s not very big, so it fits in perfectly.
Adam stares at the picture for a long time, even while Sasha sits at the front door for a smoke. After a while, she calls back in to ask what he wants to eat later. “I’ve heard about a place, we can go get tamales. Or I can teach you to make omelettes on this stove if I can get it lit. Choose your own adventure, kid.”
—
Adam’s dreams are murky. He thought he’d be happier, out of that house. And he is happier. He’s sure this is what happiness feels like, it has to be. But sometimes he wakes, gasping, like he’s been holding his breath underwater.
He thinks Sasha’s having trouble, too. Sometimes he’ll come into the trailer and just find her staring at the wall, like she’s forgotten why she’s there. “Do you think we made a mistake?” he asks her while doing the washing up. They don’t have any gloves so there are suds all over his hands and wrists.
“Never,” she says. “I think this is perfect. We’re safe here.” And they are. Adam is sure this is what safety looks like. That this is what it should feel like. Every morning when he wakes up he knows what’s going to happen. And it happens. And then he goes to sleep. And that’s where things go wrong.
—
They paint the walls yellow. Sasha’s practiced at this. “I’m not an artist, but I can paint,” she says. They finish before sundown on Friday and sit together at the little table, which is still covered in a plastic sheet, and they eat PB&J sandwiches while the paint dries. The windows are open and Adam finds it hard to swallow with the strong odor of paint overwhelming his senses, but it’s raining outside, and he doesn’t want to eat in the rain.
“Doesn’t the smell bother you?” he asks Sasha, as she eats a second sandwich.
“The smell?” She asks. There’s the blank look on her face again. “Right. No, I’m used to paint. I like it.”
“Sure,” Adam says. His hands are in his lap. He looks up at the ceiling and wonders if it’s normal to paint that too. He doesn’t know. It’s plain white, with a bit of dust gathering in the corners. Not even a spider up there.
“I love it when you ask me those questions,” she says. It feels for a moment like he’s much younger. Sometimes when he wakes up he’s surprised to see her, it’s like they haven’t seen each other for a long time. But they’re here together every day.
—
In his dreams, there’s a man. The man is tall. He’s always leaning on things, like he can’t be bothered to stand up straight. He’s smoking, or holding a cigarette in his hands, or gesturing with a bottle of beer. Or maybe he’s cooking rice or sauteeing onions or… frying a fish called kippers for breakfast, which is “Normal, Adam. This is what normal people eat for breakfast sometimes, alright? The insistence that only sweet foods are suitable for breakfast is such an irritating American thing.”
No. Adam doesn’t know where that voice comes from. Or who the man is. But he knows… this is what the man should be doing.
He isn’t. He is just standing there. Leaning. Looking into the distance. The cigarette turns to ash, and falls away into the darkness. Doesn’t it burn his fingers? Isn’t he in pain? Why isn’t he moving?
—
Adam wakes up, and keeps his eyes screwed closed for a while. He can smell stale cigarette smoke and a powdered chai mix that doesn’t have the right spices in it, love, it tastes like absolute arse, but it was actually a surprisingly thoughtful gesture, sometimes you really scare me. And he knows that if he gets up then all of that will be gone.
He experimentally tries to smell the trailer. He feels stupid doing it, but he tries. Where did the smell of the paint go? What about the garlic they burned last night? Why can’t he smell any of it?
When he opens his eyes, Sasha is sitting at the table, not doing anything. Just looking into the distance. It’s raining outside again. There’s nothing to see. Just a fogged-up window.
—
The next time he dreams, Adam finds that he has a body. He can move it if he thinks hard enough about it. He’s good at thinking hard about things. The man is leaning on a wall again. It’s annoying, shouldn’t he be doing something. Shouldn’t be be doing something more than this?
“Jesus,” he says, when Adam appears. He’s looking down into Adam’s eyes, and it feels like — maybe it’s too much. But Adam has to know something.
“Why do I keep coming here,” Adam says. He means to say, and why are you always here. The man tilts his head to one side and pulls a face as if he’s tasted something horrible.
“Fuck’s sake. How am I supposed to know.”
There’s a long pause.
“I really don’t want to do a run on this whole situation,” he says. Adam has no idea what this means. He looks at him blankly, which seems to make it worse.
“Fucking… fine,” the man says. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Adam says. He’s not even really sure where they are. When he arrived it was blank, but as he looks around it’s like some rudimentary scenery is drawing itself into existence. It’s maybe a motel room? A hotel room? Adam only really knows what those look like from television shows he would watch with his mother if he was ever home sick from school. It’s a bit like a bedroom, but emptied of anything personal.
“There are a lot of variables and you’re not making it any easier,” the man says. “I’m not really supposed to be anywhere. I thought I was fucking gone. But I left you somewhere safe.”
“You left me?” Adam says. He means it as a basic question. He doesn’t know who this man is, still can’t think of his name. But he knows that he doesn’t want to lose him again.
“God, Adam,” he says. “Don’t say it like that. It was the only way to make sure you survived.”
Adam looks around the room. He walks into the bathroom adjoining the hotel room, and looks in the mirror. He’s older — maybe twenty years older than he was when he went to sleep. His hair is shorter. He isn’t much taller than he remembers. He looks like he hasn’t slept for a while.
The other man follows and appears in the mirror. Adam turns around to look at him. “Rao,” he says. He knows, now, that that’s the right name. “Why do I keep waking up fourteen years old in a trailer with my aunt. Who I don’t think is actually there with me.”
“No,” Rao says. “It’s supposed to be perfect. I’m the best at that, remember? You’re not supposed to be here. You shouldn’t want out.”
Adam looks around the bathroom, which is full of the detritus of living in one small place for too long. Toothbrushes and empty tubes of toothpaste, a bottle of mouthwash knocked over. “Who’s making this room,” he says. “Is this you, too?”
Rao frowns. “I’ve been here a long time,” he says. “Usually it’s just empty. I tried making a few things just for fun — nothing came. I think I used it all up… Somewhere. Up there. I’ve been thinking about fried fish, that’s weird, isn’t it? I don’t fucking care about fried fish.”
Adam walks back into the bedroom. There are a few books stacked up on his side of the bed. It’s sunny outside, but there are big fat drifts of snow on the ground.
He sits on the bed and looks up at Rao, who is standing in the doorway. “You made the wrong decision, Rao,” he says. “I never wanted to go back. That person isn’t me. I don’t think I could be him anymore. I don’t think I want to.”
Rao’s face is still so expressive. Adam is constantly amazed that nothing has taught him to hide his feelings better. That nothing has taught him better than this. Everything passes over his eyes, his mouth, his eyebrows, his fucking forehead. The beard doesn’t hide anything.
“It’s too late, Adam,” he says. There’s real regret in his voice. “This isn’t even me, love, not all of me, just a tiny part that tried to hold on. I put you somewhere safe, where nothing bad could happen to you. You shouldn’t even be able to remember anything.”
“How could I forget,” Adam says. He wants to hold out a hand. He wants to hold out a hand, so he does, because this might be his last chance.
Rao just looks at it.
“Please,” Adam says. It’s as close as he comes to begging. Rao takes a step forward, his legs are long and the room is small and he’s crowded into Adam’s space. Adam reaches up and grabs his hands.
Rao’s skin is warm, dry. Adam is sure that he in turn is sweaty, with a small tremor. But Rao doesn’t say anything. “I think there’s something in us that wants to make a different choice,” he says.
He thinks about Sasha. He wishes he could bring her along. But he also knows that she was already gone, long ago. The Sasha he has been living with these last few weeks deserves to go back to her own world, where she knows what to do. Not with someone who keeps saying the wrong things, asking the wrong questions.
It’s a wound he thought had healed. But this? This right here? He won’t let it go. Not again.
“But I’m not fucking magic, Adam,” Rao says. “I can’t do anything about that now, can I?”
Adam looks up at him. “Fuck,” Rao says. “Your eyes when you’re determined. Has anyone ever mentioned you can be really unnerving sometimes.”
“Yes,” Adam says. They have.
There’s a long pause where nothing happens.
“I‘m not saying you have to stay with me,” Adam says, finally. “I just think there’s something here that wants to give us another chance at life.” He can feel an itch under his skin. “Why else do we keep dreaming like this.”
“I’m not sure that’s a disclaimer I needed, love, but thank you. I thought it had all gone,” Rao says, running his thoughts together in a way that makes Adam feel oddly grounded. “Prophet. I thought it had fucked off and left this little bit of me stranded.”
“Stranded?” Adam asks. “Do you think we are?”
Rao shakes his head. “I know we’re not.”
Adam lets out a big puff of breath.
“I can feel some of it,” Rao says. “I thought it had all gone. But there’s a bit left. Just under your skin.”
He pulls his hand away, just a fraction of an inch, just so there is a tiny bit of air separating them. Like beads of mercury, inevitably, it comes up, up, out of Adam’s hand. Adam feels sick. This stuff never agreed with him. But it had been in there, waiting.
“I think it wants me to try again,” Rao says. “Close your eyes, love. Or don’t.”
“I don’t think so, Rao,” Adam says. He reaches out for Rao’s hand again, and wraps his fingers around his wrist. He stays there, and looks around him, as Rao changes the whole world again.
A while later, Adam wakes up.
He keeps his eyes closed at first. He can smell fried tomatoes and eggs and instant coffee. The bed linens are scratchy beneath his fingers and bare thighs.
There is a radio on, and it’s not tuned properly. It’s playing a cover of House of the Rising Sun, but it keeps collapsing into static, then starting up again. Someone is humming along with it, tunelessly.
Adam opens his eyes. “Can you either tune that thing properly or turn it off,” he says. “Jesus, Rao.”
He was half-expecting to be back in the trailer. Or the hotel room. But instead it’s a half-furnished nightmare of a room that he knows in his bones is being paid for by work, somewhere deep in Nevada.
“Morning, love,” Rao says. Adam thinks about this.
Rao looks exactly the same. But more substantial this time. No more wasting away. No more staring into space with burnt fingers.
I did this, Adam thinks. He remembers, with a pang, a little trailer that he never really knew. A life he never really lived. An aunt he lost too soon.
“You’re starting to fucking scare me again,” Rao says. Jolly. Putting eggs on a plate and starting to sprinkle them with sumac and chilli flakes.
“I think you’re out of real coffee, by the way. I will die if I have to drink more of this powdered stuff. It’s the actual fucking devil.”
Adam lets himself stretch out. He rolls his eyes, as exaggeratedly as he can, and then gets out of the bed. Rao hands him the plate, and he takes it, then immediately puts it down on the counter, and he grabs Rao by the waist before he can stop himself, and Rao wraps his arms around Adam’s neck. “We’re really here,” Rao says. “And I know that because only real corporeal instant coffee could taste that foul.”
“Rao,” Adam says. He draws the name out. He can’t believe he forgot it, even for a moment back there. Rao rubs a finger up along the base of Adam’s skull. “Shut up about the fucking instant coffee. Please.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” Rao says. He looks at Adam like he’s scared he’s about to disappear. But he’s not. Neither of them is. It’s Rao who leans in for the kiss. Adam digs his fingers into Rao’s waist, runs them up his back. He turns his face up, and kisses Rao back. It ends up with Adam biting Rao’s lower lip, and Rao growls and pushes Adam back onto the bed, and by the time Adam eats breakfast it’s cold and rubbery, but it’s fine, it’s perfect, it’s the best food he’s ever had.