The Call

Clouds like spores riding the gusts of wind, still raining, no beach today. We’re lying on the couch together, heads on opposite ends, my smooth legs sliding over his brittle, hairy shins. He wants to feed me yogurt, but I can’t reach. I stick my tongue out, then open my mouth wide. It must be 2 pm, but we stayed up late, slowly sucking down the long wide noodles with perfect tomatoes, neon bright basil, drinking from three different bottles of wine, just like that restaurant, that one time, remember, our friends who were with us, before the invasion, linen napkins for patting our lips over the white tablecloth, one stout candle in the center, our laughter killed the flame. They were the friends we never talked about anymore unless we got drunk. It took us three bottles of wine to bring them back to life. I should’ve cried, he could’ve covered his eyes that were never not wide. Instead, we drank more and made up songs about our lost friends. We wondered if any shop was open past midnight in this tiny Mediterranean village where we could buy more wine. He played air guitar, I played air flute, and we were both quite good. I wished I had photos to prove it.

After he gave up feeding me yogurt and finished it himself because I refused to sit up, the call came. He answered his phone with a lazy hello, and I cleared my throat, closed my eyes for some reason. When he remained silent, I opened one eye, tilted my head so I could locate his expression. There were many things that could have been wrong, burning buildings, exploding schools, destroyed bridges, dead friends. Very common things. But this remote island village we had discovered with a very thorough online map search had since day one been giving a sense of having slid into a new world where new things could happen, new things that created new actions and reactions. With both eyes open, I watched the waxy skin of his forehead, the lack of throbbing pulse at his neck.

Then it was over. He pocketed the phone, tight-smiled, eyes on the door.

Want some more pasta?

Who was it?

Cold call. Selling something.

What?

Not sure.

Oh.

I’m starving.

You just had my yogurt.

Let’s get pizza.

I can’t move.

I’ll get it.

The biggest one.

A lover, it was his lover. What else do people hide most? I would have done the same, but he was a better liar than me. He took his phone with him when he left, so I couldn’t check the number. I crawled across the couch to put my head where his had been, the cushion still felt warm. I lay my head over the ghost of his, wondering what I would do if he never came back. He just went out for cigarettes and never returned, I’d heard that kind of story before, who hadn’t. I tried to listen for the caller’s words in the air where his ear had been, words that had drifted to the floor. If there were something left, I would feel it. It was why we were here, to summon something out of nothing, like when people clawed their way out of pits, escaped a cult, survived a prison camp, outlasted a war.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, tried to be as quiet as I would be if I were dead. I heard footsteps in the hallway, a door shutting carefully far away. The rain hadn’t let up, he was going to be wet, the pizza too.

There was that faint ringing in my ears again, or maybe it was just in one ear. Like after a loud concert, after fireworks that aren’t fireworks. The ringing had started back home, after that first night, but just to me, not him. Who are you? I asked the room. The ringing went away.

The flight back was tomorrow, but I was waiting to tell him that I, we could not go back, should not. I went to the bedroom and threw a couple of things into the small suitcase we shared to make it look like I was getting ready to return to the place that used to be home. I pulled on loose jeans over my bikini and brushed my hair slowly, watching the space of the mirror as if there was nothing in it. There were three knocks at the door, not our usual secret knock.

Who are you? I called out, throwing the wooden brush onto the bed. My stomach growled.

The voice replying was muffled, unfamiliar. I pictured him in disguise. He hated Halloween.

Maybe it was his lover; she had tracked him down. I undid the bolt and swung open the door to deal with my future. His body stood before me in a black shirt, camouflage pants, a black ski mask over his head. It could be anyone’s head, but his eyes are still his eyes, and I wonder who is really inside.

-We have to go back, said the voice and eyes, and I stepped closer toward him to feel for lies.

-But tomorrow? 

-We are going. No more of this.

Four laughters braided together, lips patted over candlelight. A last supper before our roads diverged; we escaped from home; they remained, never heard from again.

I do not hear him follow me back inside, to the bedroom. Something falls softly on the bed beside me. His breath comes quickly, on my neck. On the unmade bed is a folded uniform, same as his. He upturns my hand then goes to the living room, a chair scrapes across the floor, he is waiting. Now, there is only me and a cold gun in my palm that I place on the bed beside the brush. I take everything off, my back to the mirror, and I wait before changing because it’s the last time I can.