Page 8 of Nights Without Night
“We don’t have to. We won’t. Let’s just go, yeah?” I press. For a moment, Isadoro is a statue of himself, before he simply turns around, walking out of the bar. After a moment of surprise, I follow.
The walk home is silent. Even when he was away, I’ve never felt this distance between us. Anxiety crawls through my gut, its sharp nails piercing organs as it goes. His stride is wide and fast, and I struggle to keep up, but I’m too scared to tell him to slow down.
I’ve never feared telling Isadoro something before. Not like this.
The silence condenses as we get home. In the moment before we turn the lights on, the darkness of the apartment is stifling.
“Isa…” I attempt as he rips off his coat.
“Don’t,” he says quietly, with force. My teeth click as my mouth shuts.
A moment later, he’s disappeared into his room, the door shut firmly behind him. I stand in the living room for a long time, feeling empty.
Helpless.
**********
Isadoro is even quieter after that day. He rarely leaves his room, even in the evenings when I do my homework in the living room. I debate whether to intrude upon his privacy, but finally cave and call the dog shelter. They tell me they haven’t seen Isadoro in two weeks.
Almost three weeks after the incident, I come home to find him on the couch. At first, I’m relieved, until I see him staring blankly at the screen, where the news is playing. Syria, Afghanistan, T***p. It’s not good.
“Hey,” I say softly.
“Hey,” he replies, but his eyes don’t shift from the screen. I move toward the couch, but his voice interrupts me.
“I need a drink,” he says. The blank tone unsettles me as much as the words. I know all about the rate of addiction in veterans.
“Isa…”
“Don’t. You don’t have to…Fuck. Just…just this once, alright?” he says, running a hand against his cropped hair. I dither for a moment before thinking,fuck it.
I get the cheap vodka from the cupboard. There’s nothing in the fridge to mix it with, and it’s nasty as hell, but we’re not exactly making cocktails here. By the time I return to the living room, the TV is dark and silent.
“Let’s play a drinking game,” I suggest, trying to pretend we’re not planning to get drunk at six in the evening to the tune of the hopeless depression the news can inspire these days. Isadoro snorts.
“Sure.”
We move the coffee table and sit on the floor next to it, pillows on the ground. We start withSpeedfacts, having to say facts about each other and drinking if we stumble, but we know each other so well we barely take a sip.
I am dizzily relieved at that. Not just because it slows the drunk train down, but because it assuages one of my deepest fears: that we don’t really know each other anymore. Eight years is such a long time, especially when both of us, Isadoro especially, have gone through experiences which feel like they have changed us radically. But our foundations have remained the same. We have kept in touch throughout the whole of his deployment, been glued at the hip at every leave.
It hadn’t felt like enough. For so long, I’ve felt like Isadoro was slipping away. I struggled against it, but it seemed like a battle I wasn’t trained to win, not when life itself was my opponent. But now, here, laughing and heckling each other, it feels like I have him in my hands. Like he’spresent.
We play a few rounds ofSnapor, as the kids at college call it,Snapshot, before moving on toTwo Truths One Lie.
“You start,” I say to him, half-shots already poured for whoever loses.
“Okay, let’s see…One, I stole money from Grandad-”
“Lie,” I say immediately.
“I haven’t even finished!”
“Liiieee!”
“Everybody steals a little money from their-”
“Not you. Lie! Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie,” I shout, banging my hands on the table at each reiteration. Isadoro rolls his eyes but takes the shot. I grin at him.
