Page 31 of Nights Without Night
Eventually, I leave, placing the dishes in the sink. I look at his empty pot.
It doesn’t feel like a victory.
**********
I don’t tell anyone about what’s going on. I try, but it feels like I’m betraying Isadoro’s trust. Like the darkness in his room is his own secret, and it’s not my right to shed light on it.
One day I come back home and he’s in the living room. I stop short, my heart immediately racing. When I come closer, I see he’s showered, shaved, and changed. Cartoons flicker on the TV.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he replies. I’m too scared to say anything else, worried he’ll retreat to his room.
I make pasta for dinner. I take my plate to the couch and pass him his nonchalantly. He takes it. I feel shaky with relief.
We eat while watchingCow and Chicken.
I’m worried he’ll leave as soon as he’s eaten, but he stays. I press against him, resting my head on his shoulder. He wraps his arm around me like always.
The last thing I think about before drifting to sleep is him.
*****
Stupidly, I think that’s going to be it. That he’ll go out of his room once, then again and again until he leaves the apartment, and everything gets better.
A week passes. Isadoro is back in his bed. The hair grows on his face. Spring arrives. I don’t know how time manages to advance through the thick molasses of our apartment.
The lack of sleep, the amount of university work, the fear. It all coalesces. I feel like fissures are cracking my skull open. My eyelids, the roof of my mouth, the inside of my skin; it’s all rubbed raw.
I’ll knock on his door, leave him food, talk to him through the wall. I’ll sit in his room with him. I’ll lay on my own bed, thinking.
Nothing. There’s nothing.
One day, after hours of classes I barely concentrated in and paintings that came out dull and with faulty perspective, I heat up a pizza for dinner. Something easy I think Isadoro won’t be able to turn down. It’s a daily struggle to get him to accept food.
I walk into his room after barely knocking.
“Pizza,” I say like I’m the delivery boy. Isadoro doesn’t move. I clench my teeth.
“Isadoro, come on. Let’s just eat,” I say. I’m so tired I can barely think.
He doesn’t move. I set the tray on the bedside table and the next thing I know, my hand has picked up one of the glasses of water and dumped it over him.
He’s out of the bed instantly, sheet flung to the side. I stumble back, glass still in my hand. I can hear my heart in my ears.
“What thefuck!” Isadoro shouts. I open my mouth, but my throat is closed. Isadoro’s eyes are bottomless. There’s nothing there.
“There’s—I brought you pizza,” I say stupidly. He just stares at me for a moment before his hands are around my biceps and he’s hauling me off my feet. I cry out, but he just walks me the few steps to the door and dumps me outside. The door slams shut. I stare at it for a moment, dizzy, before taking a step back.
“Shit,” I say, and stagger to the living room. I crumple on the couch. My breath is coming out in gasps, my hands shaking.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” I repeat, pressing my face into my hands. I try to calm down, but I can’t seem to catch my breath, air heavy through my mouth as my eyes clench tight.
“Shit.”
*****
Guilt makes me wait three days before I approach his door again. I vow not to let the frustration get to me—at least not in Isadoro’s room.
