THURSDAY
07 NOVEMBER, 1996
DORIAN

               I shield my eyes against the overcast (the kind of pure white that reflects the sun so that it's impossible to look in any direction without it piercing one's skull) as I scurry back to our room. There's a communal computer in the reception that guests are allowed to use though I regret it now. My knees are still weak, palms ridden with pins and needles. I keep glancing across the road as if there are paparazzi hidden in the gorse shrubs.

All my mother did was send me one email and my nervous system prepares to be abducted. The child in my head has shoved all the furniture in front of the door, clutches the bedside lamp to his chest because it's the best weapon available, and can't stop glancing between the curtains.

It's been twenty-four hours. How does she already know I'm here? The idea of rebellion was thrilling but now that it's too late, I change my mind. I take it back. (Let me take it back. I don't want them to know I'm here. I don't want them to know I'm here with Isaiah. They will take him from me again.)

I glance at the car park for black vans only to halt at Isaiah's muddy Ford Capri. A restlessness that develops from rapid changes to how I foresaw my day going brews in my chest (I always have a plan for my day even when I don't consciously make it — in fact, I often only become aware of it when it's disrupted, the slightest hitch as violent as a capsize) and I thumb the "5A" engraved into my plastic keychain. Growing tightness in my chest, I drag myself to the door.

Isaiah doesn't look up when I enter. Seated at the table, he hunches over his notebook. Though he has shed the jacket, he's still dressed in the black trousers of his hired suit and white shirt, the cuffs unbuttoned. A torn black ribbon is pinned to the left side of his chest for kriah.

'You're back...' It's not a question so I can't blame him when he doesn't answer. Shutting the door so gently it makes no sound, I approach him. 'What are you doing?'

'Finishing my dissertation.'

The swarm in my chest is wrung to my stomach. I glance at the print-out of his latest digital draft with a few of his handwritten annotations in the margins, slightly crumpled beside his notebook where he attempts to write a polished version.

'Isaiah, you don't need to do that right now. Your tutor gave you an extension–'

He shakes my hand off before it lands on his arm. Instead, I grab the back of the second chair and sit.

Isaiah goes on as if I'm not here. If he clenches his jaw any tighter, he'll flare up his joint disorder which in turn is an express lane to a migraine. The last thing he needs is to be physically bedridden too. The fog over his eyes is unmistakable. I don't know whether it's caused by anaemia, grief, or general lack of sleep, but I do know he hasn't comprehended a single word since he started.

'You've just buried your mother.'

'Only thing I'm grieving is my bank account.' His pen-free hand raises to claw into his scalp. 'Did you know a grave plot costs two thousand quid? Two thousand quid. For a hole in the ground. Like I weren't already in debt. Bet she's fucking thrilled. All she ever did was complain how much it cost to raise me. Now she can get her revenge.' Bitterness bleeds like an open wound.

With muscles stretched thin over bone, the rigidity of his frame makes him look moments away from turning to stone. His normally flawless writing suffers from his unsteady hand. The other finally leaves his hair alone to grab the mug beside him.

'You're drinking more coffee?' I hate the accusatory tone that comes out but search for his eyes regardless.

Isaiah doesn't meet mine. 'Thought I'd replace the nicotine addiction with caffeine. Just... really fucking need a cigarette right now.'

His attempt at humour crumbles from a single crack and pain swarms out like warrior bees from a disturbed hive. 'Who the fuck decided cigarettes aren't that bad? Cause it feels really fucking bad. I feel like the world is ending. My skin is so itchy I want to peel it off. My lungs are shrinking. As soon as someone breathes around me, I want to claw their eyes out. It's like I haven't eaten in centuries and all I need is one smoke. One smoke and it'll all go away. It feels God fucking awful.'

A single measure of Liszt's third liebestraume strums up my heartstrings. 'You're trying to quit?'

'You know I hate it. I don't remember why I ever started in the first place. Just thought I'd try it. Then I tried it again, and again, and again. I always reckoned I'd just stop when I wanted to.' A sob of sheer frustration hacks from him and his voice breaks. 'I didn't think it'd be this hard.'

Massaging the joints of his fingers (let me, let me, won't you let me do it for you?), he looks up. A smile buds on his face only to fall instantly

'What's wrong?' he asks.

I shake my head but, as it always does when I ask it to lie, my body shuts down on me and I can't murmur any verbal protest. The best I can do is shift my focus to make his feel less like an x-ray.

'Dorian.' The way he says my name is enough to coax my gaze back. 'I know you.'

What a thing to say to someone with red pain-dulled eyes and hands on the brink of a seizure after six years of silence. Is that cruelty or mercy? (It's both).

'It's nothing.' When he goes to argue, I rephrase. 'It's not important. Your mother's dead. That takes precedence over my issues.'

'It ain't a competition.'

'I don't want to talk about it now.'

I'm a coward: I've been begging for him to look at me for days and when he does, I'm the one who flees. (Why don't I want you to know? Why am I relieved when you fail to read me with the ease you used to?)

Isaiah's lips twist slowly into a smile and he answers the question for me: 'You ain't trust either.'

'That's not true. I only–'

I cut myself off. He's right, as he often tends to be. I don't trust him not to be burdened by me anymore. I don't trust him not to sigh and roll his eyes and tell me to cry a river. I'm not ready to tell him about Rav Eliraz Yeshiva because that means I'll have to tell myself and I've fashioned 1,826 chain locks around that shipping container to keep it shut.

'It's not the same anymore...'

'I know. That's what I been saying.'

He sinks in his chair, spine curling into the kind of posture Ima would punish him for. It's a miserable silence that oozes between us.

I press my fingers to the corner of his notebook to show my intention of tugging it away without actually doing so. 'You can't do this right now.'

Because I keep my head low, I don't realise Isaiah is crying until a sob strangles through the tension straps fixed around his throat. My eyes fly up to find tears falling down his cheeks, unaddressed.

'I have to go to her house.'

When my hand falls to his forearm, he doesn't pull away. 'You don't have to go.'

'I'll regret it if I don't. Dorian, I–' He hugs himself so that my hand slips away.

With nothing but cool laminate under my palm, my voice needs much more effort to remain steady, to not reveal that I'm once again caught in the eye of a hurricane with no anchor (that's what I am without you).

'Do you want me to come with you? I can drive.'

What a stupid thing to say. (He doesn't want me with him. He wants me to leave him alone, he's probably clenching his teeth to stop himself from yelling it at me.) I've already declared myself a socially inept idiot when Isaiah looks up.

'You wouldn't mind?'

'I came here to help you.' I shift to the edge of my chair to show I mean it. 'When do you want to go?'

'Now.' He grimaces when it comes out a command and offers me an apologetic glance. 'Get it over it.'

I nod.

Isaiah stands too quickly and winces, steadies himself on the edge of the table, and rubs the undersides of his eyes with shaking hands. Before he moves further, he pushes the printed copy of his dissertation toward me. Just half an inch but it sets my heart into a frenzy.

'If you've the time, could you read this?'

I stare and he stares back and I know we're thinking the same thing: is there anything more intimate than reading someone's thoughts?

Regret (maybe even fear) flickers in his irises but he wrestles it back. 'I could use some feedback. It's about the use and perception of patois and creoles in literature.'

My throat has run dry and I have to swallow before I can compel any sound from it. 'Okay.'

'Thank you.'

Other than directions, Isaiah says nothing on the drive through town. We arrive at a dead-end street of terraced houses divided from neighbours with six-foot fences. Since the homes don't have garages or yards large enough, cars line the curbs on either side and the street is made so narrow I travel down it at a creep slower than walking to avoid scraping anyone's wing mirrors.

Red brick is revealed in several places where white stucco has crumbled and taken fastenings with it to result in loose telephone wires draped across home faces. External plumbing and television antennas hang by their last screws, several saved by a variety of home fixes like duct tape and zip ties or, in one case, a child's skipping rope.

They were built identical but now each reflects the personality of their owners. Different Caribbean flags hang from the burglary bars over windows. Most have clotheslines zigzagging from fence to window to drainpipe but few have laundry drying outside with the dampness of November. Some front gardens are tidy with flourishing chrysanthemums whilst others have upturned dirt and children's rain boots scattered across the footpath.

A bangle of kids plays football against the wall that cuts the street off from the one beyond it. They've drawn a rectangle into the stone with chalk to act as a goal. Sketches of rainbows and different animals surround it.

'It's this one.' Isaiah indicates a house on the left.

Somehow, it's the antithesis and simultaneously the facsimile of what I expected. No Jamaican flag nor Star of David decorates the front. The white stucco has deteriorated at the corner of the door and the chips have been left on the ground where they fell.

The garden is neither well-kempt nor lived in. The grass is patchy, overgrown in spots and yellowing in others. A white chair and table set teeter under what must be the kitchen window. One of the chairs has fallen over, though based on the cobwebs and cracking paint that bleeds rust along the frame, it happened years ago and was never picked up. An ashtray and the shrivelled skeleton of a potted plant are all that rest on top of the lopsided table.

Isaiah stares at it through the window, pinching the skin over each of his phalanges in turn.

'You don't have to.' I'm not sure why I'm whispering but it feels appropriate. 'We can come back tomorrow.'

He shakes his head and, before I can say anything encouraging, climbs out of the car.

Notes

Kriah: The practice of tearing garments to signal mourning. In Judaism, it is common to tear a cut onto the outer garments that are worn for the seven-day mourning period. These days, it's common to instead pin a torn piece of black fabric to your clothes instead.