FRIDAY
15 NOVEMBER, 1996
DORIAN

               Ima hasn't sent me a follow-up email. I'm not sure whether to be relieved or stressed and the indecisiveness doubles my anxiety. When I was at Coeus, Ima wouldn't wait more than twelve hours to phone me if I left any of her messages unanswered, and now she won't bother with a second email when I ignored the first?

Perhaps she doesn't expect me to come after all. There is a possibility it was only a casual invitation and the weapons I found when I tore it at the seams were coincidences (even I'm not that naïve). I scuffle from the lobby to our room only for any thought of my parents to shatter.

Isaiah is sat at the foot of the bed, brows knitted, lips pursed, eyes shut. His bag is packed at his feet.

I can't ask (don't leave don't leave don't leave) so I slump beside him without words. 

His hands are trembling. I forced myself to stay awake until he finally drifted off but sleep seized me soon after him. When I woke at eight, he'd already got through a quarter kettle's worth of coffee. He probably didn't sleep more than a few hours. Not that I feel as though I did either.

'You should go back to Oxford.'

My chest is hollowed and the stones that drop into my stomach send harsh reverberations through it. Like hitting a metal pole with a hammer, they scuttle up my ribs, discordant at first until they morph into Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux.

'You should go back to Oxford,' he repeats when I don't respond and finally opens his eyes. 'You've tutorials and deadlines ­— loads too, I assume, considering you're to graduate in six months. I really appreciate your help, but you need to get back and I've still got stuff to figure out here. You ain't fucking up your degree for me — this is your dream.'

I shake my head at his back. I want to say it doesn't matter but whilst my tutor granted me absence, he gave me no extensions and I can't lie to Isaiah when it's trust I'm trying to nurture.

Still, despite everything, our time here revealed exactly what my life is supposed to be and I won't go back to university, pretend none of it happened, and settle for whatever my existence is without him. I have written more music in the past week than in the past year.

'I shouldn't've never let you come here,' he mutters. 'I won't survive a second time.'

Survive what? If only I could ask questions like that. I have to plead guilty.

'I won't leave again.'

'Course, you will.'

He stacks his spine with a sharp inhale.

'Nuttin's changed. Actually, I'm poorer than I were, I'm worse where halakah is concerned, my health is deteriorating, I'm still a mamzer. So if I weren't good enough for you six years ago, I definitely ain't now.' He reiterates: 'Of course, you'll leave. Nuttin's changed.'

'I've changed.' I hate how my voice scrapes out of my throat, quivering and barely audible.

I hate how I sit, pathetic, with my palms symmetrically on my thighs; nothing like the romantic and agonised way players plead in old stories, clutch their hearts and beg with every inch of their bodies. At least once, I'd like to hear bad news and collapse.

All I'm capable of is numbness.

I turn to stare at him but Isaiah the laminate on library copy of The Black Tulip that segregates my half of the bed from his. I'm forced to appeal to his tapered hairline, overgrown to a fuzzy curl. 'Please, Isaiah, don't push me away now. I understand you don't trust me, and I know I can't fix that overnight, but can't you give me a chance? Nothing you said to me last night has made me love you any less.'

'You told me it's forbidden,' he says, voice so hollow a forgotten laughter echoes in it.

'I know.' Screwing my eyes shut, I inhale until my chest aches. Give me strength. Please, let me not fold so easily. 'My mum made–'

Isaiah bolts to his feet. 'She ain't make you do shit!'

In the way I've seen him plant an apple core in the ground by sweeping dirt over a hole with the flats of his hands, he scoops anger on top of his hurt and vulnerability is buried.

'You ain't no jellyfish! You do have a spine.'

A barrier at the back of my head snaps and rage swarms into me. An exothermic reaction, my blood boils. 'So do you. If it mattered to you so much, you could've tried harder, but you always make yourself a martyr–'

'Wow...' He grabs the back of his head, eyes floating to the ceiling. 'You gonna say it were my fault?'

'Of course, it's not. But you loved it.'

All emotion slips off Isaiah's face. He stares at me, no sign of hurt nor anger nor anything else to be found on his body.

My chest cinches and an apology forms on my lips only to be flattened under a landslide of seventeen years' worth of frustration. 'Your wounds don't heal because you don't let them. You keep picking and God do you bleed them for all they're worth.

'The only thing standing in the way of you being happy is yourself and you know it too, but you think it makes you some Dostoevsky protagonist, like being your own damnation is a cool thing to imitate in real life.

'Have you considered that maybe there's a point where the excessive cynicism you perform becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? That maybe if you want to not be miserable, you have to believe that's possible?'

In my anger, I too stand from the bed and step closer to him. When the words stop bouldering out of me, I can see the flicker in his eyes before they slant.

He sucks his teeth. 'Massi mi Gad, that is rich coming from you.'

I'm sweating, a horrid blaze under my skin that wipes the fight to a different plane of reality. My body wrings into vile knots. All I can focus on is the dampness in my armpits and the patch of my t-shirt starting to adhere to my back.

Until Isaiah yanks me back into the motel room. (I've never been more grateful to be yelled at.)

'Have you ever considered maybe you could try a bit? You live your life as a wallflower and you tell yourself it's enough — you like observing, it inspires you.' He rolls his eyes. 'You know what else would inspire you? Participating.'

There's a forced pause as he catches his breath. He pushes himself on as though he's second in a race with the finish line in sight and adjusts his glare back into place even if it can only be done with screws he bolts into himself.

'Yeah, maybe you could participate in your own fucking life instead of waiting for anyone else to move you round like a fucking chess piece and then calling it God's plan. It ain't God's plan, is your muma plan. HaShem gave you autonomy and you is doing nuttin with it, cuz.'

It's my turn to stare.

He dunks a bucket of water over my head and ice has never been more welcome. The electrical grid that encases my bones cools, stops burning orange, and coherent thought resumes its flow, albeit with a jerk and grouse of gears.

When I talk, my voice is steady, almost impassive in the way it tends to be when I speak about the things most important to me (the way everyone else tells me is rude but you once said makes your knees weak — "it's so honest, ain't tone just another front?'" that's what you said).

'I do want more: I want you.'

'Tough.'

The cruelty Isaiah aims to inject into the word flounders when he staggers. I catch him just as he loses balance. His skin is freezing yet clammy and when I sit him on the bed, he collapses onto me. Judging by how he feels around for the edge of the mattress and blinks rapidly, I don't think he can see anything.

Planting my hand on his chest, I ease him back against my other arm which I hold against his spine as a support beam. His inhales deepen and soon he stops blinking.

He recovers enough to shove at my arm. 'Stop taking care of me.'

'Why?'

'Why don't you just fuck off to America again?'

My chin drops to my chest but a smile tugs at my mouth. 'You're so stubborn to insist your life is destined to be awful but it's not.' His posture starts to slip and my attention snaps back to him. I readjust my hold, help him keep his lungs open. 'God willing, life has so much to offer if you're brave enough to ask for it. Sometimes, you have to have a little faith.'

This time he waits until his breathing has calmed down enough for his syllables not to be severed by gasps for air. Nonetheless, a weakness persists that blends each word with the next, all whispered in one breath.

'In you, I suppose.'

'I'd like it to be with me, yes.'

Isaiah huffs, something between a genuine laugh and a sigh, gentle enough for hope to tickle my fingers, but then he stands. 'No.' He strides from the bed and turns around, once again breathless. 'Nah, you ain't gonna lecture me bout being a coward.'

My hands struggle to rest on my lap (as soon as I'm not touching you, my hands do nothing but get in the way, I never know what to do with them when you're not in reach) and I watch him.

He's right, I am a coward, always have been. Not anymore.

Notes

Massi mi Gad: Lord have mercy.