How the Night Glows

The trip would be over in less than a week. And then. Home?

“I’m taking the bathroom!” Natalie exclaimed as she opened the hotel room door. Adam followed, carrying the combined weight of shopping bags and backpacks equipped for travel. Both removed their shoes, and their freed feet sank into the carpeted floor. A mercy. Adam murmured a recap of the day, mostly to himself, as Natalie ducked into the bathroom.

“Man, we actually managed to spend the entire day out, huh? Good thing we decided to not come back and take a nap. Wish I could just shut off the need to sleep altogether…”

She did not answer. While waiting for her to emerge, he sauntered over to the large, windowed wall of their room, then pressed his forehead against its smooth cold and surveyed the rainy nighttime view of Shinjuku. His eyes jumped from rooftop to rooftop, between squares of orange and white light in the surfaces of buildings which lit themselves out of the dark. The decision to pay for a room high-up was a good one.

The door of the bathroom slid open, and Adam exchanged places with Natalie. In the small room he was met with the novel sight of the overly engineered toilet—buttons and functions aplenty. The sound of tinkling liquid in the night was followed by a washing over of relief. Once out, all he could see was Natalie’s pink phone disturbing the taut surface of the bedspread.

“Did you go into the shower?” he called as he tried the sliding door. He found it unlocked, and, feeling momentarily flattered, decided to think it an invitation. That is, if she didn’t simply forget to lock it. He walked into the luxurious, combined bath and shower space. There he could discern behind rapidly fogging up glass Natalie’s golden hair, already flat and wet against her pale, beloved form. She hummed in the watery acoustics of the shower, unaware of him, her voice reverberating. He cracked open the glass door and was greeted with a gust of hot steam, gentle spray of water. He spoke into the swirl of vapours.

“I’ll go chill until you’re done.”

“What?” She turned his way, blinded with water, and stood, thereby unwittingly beckoning Adam to embrace her, to touch, no matter whether he was still clothed. Still, he held back and answered louder, “I said I’m gonna go wait on the bed.”

“Ok! I’ll be quick!”

He closed the door and walked back to the bed, feeling that he couldn’t yet enjoy the luxury of it—certainly not in his outside clothes. He settled for sitting on the decorative outer sheet. Once seated, he tilted sideways until his lids initiated the sweet theft of seconds, then minutes. The muffled sound of footsteps jerked him awake.

“You fell asleep? Didn’t you want to take a shower?”

He jolted upright, strangely for being caught asleep, as he ever was.

“Yeah, yeah. Just got knocked out. I’ll take a quick one and be back.”

Natalie walked briskly to her side of the bed, head wrapped in a towel, body in a sumptuous robe. He took his phone as he stumbled in the direction of the shower, still disoriented. He queued up a short playlist on his phone, placed it on the sink, and stepped into the still-steaming shower space. He could still feel the effect of the night’s cocktails as water overwhelmed his body in a blur. The music struggled between the muffle of the glass and the amplification of water vapours. Adam swayed underwater, wishing Natalie would join. He waited to see if a surprise was possible but quickly abandoned hope and deemed the prospect unrealistic. After a few moments, when a new track boomed out of his phone, Adam opened his eyes, concluded the shower, and turned off the music. Natalie must find it distasteful—she only tolerated it out of love for me. Perhaps—perhaps it’s the music that kept her away.

Adam’s feet dried with each step on the carpeted floor as the robe clung to his body. Natalie had already hidden herself under the thickness of the duvet. Her eyes did not leave the phone’s screen. She only looked at Adam when she felt weight settle near her feet, depressing the mattress. He laid his arm across her blanketed thigh.

“You’re back?” She looked comfortable and rosy in bed. Her hair had been slicked back behind her small ears.

“Yeah, it was nice. Woke me up bit. You’re all tucked in?”

“Mhm. God, I love this bed.”

Adam focused on the softness of the blanket under hand. Something confused and unnerved him. Everything’s fine, and yet. Wasn’t he simply feeling the regular need for intimacy? Or was it some outpouring of souls he was after? He pinched the blanket. Natalie seemed fine with a muted exchange. Adam was more than accustomed to her nonverbal signals—her being so hidden, not offering to pull him into bed beside her, was something he noted, and accepted. It happens. He tapped her thigh twice in platonic friendliness, hoping to alleviate whatever worries she might have harboured. She’d worry about him, sometimes. She worried him in turn; so opaque and guarded.

“Adam? My body hurts all over. I really hope I won’t feel it tomorrow. Where are we going tomorrow?”

“Oh, are you sure you wanna go somewhere? Technically, we said we’ll go to the museum in—”

“Roppongi,”

“Right, you said it’s a modern art museum? Although… We can also just take it easy if your feet hurt.”

“No, no—I’ll sleep it off. I just checked and it opens at 10:00 A.M., so I guess let’s try to leave by 08:00? 08:30? I’ll have to wake up an hour before we leave. And if my feet really hurt, I’ll just pop a pill.”

“Well, if you’re sure. Then 08:00 sounds good to me. I’ll only need half an hour to get ready—you’ll wake me up?”

“Yeah.”

He got up and crossed to his side of the bed, pulling a pair of underwear from the bedside drawer, thinking his nudity beneath the robe sent Natalie the wrong message. She remained quietly captivated by her phone when he turned off the light.

With the soft click of the switch, the room was softly lit by the large window, the glow of Natalie’s phone. She placed it to charge on the bedside cabinet and turned to sleep. Adam lingered by the light switch.

“Coming to bed?” She reached out, somnolent, muffled, almost lost in the warm folds of the duvet about her. She did not raise her head to see him in the darkness of the room.

“Yeah, one sec.”

“Don’t forget to close the curtains. The light in the morning…” She trailed off. Adam’s lean, night-shrouded figure stood at the far end of the room. The air on his skin was chilly, and in the dark, he felt no need to hide his body. He held still, nursing an indeterminate, dull ache.

A moment later, he once again found himself drawn—as if by default, as if having no other choice—to the broad window. Ache moved him. He could suddenly name it—yes, toska. It demanded to be radiated outward, to be allowed a breath of air, or perhaps escape. He sat by the window and watched drops innumerable cling to it from the outside, hurled against it via misty rain from the upper reaches of Tokyo sky. He then looked at the streets and intersections below. Finding nothing in the lower reaches, Adam cast his eyes toward the metropolitan horizon and its endless unknowns.

Is it possible to bottle up a moment, carve it out of space, out of flesh and soul? Adam, אדם, Адам. Something else hid within; his toska a mere symptom—something partitioned off. He tried to circle the known, the tired, mundane facts: an uncertain future, no homeland to yearn for, to be the eternal, unknowable son of unwanted immigrants. But Natalie, her comfort, her love… Her fear.

It must’ve been fear that kept her away.

Adam leaned against the window, his shoulder soaking up cold from the glass. It began to freeze, though the attention the horizon commanded overrode any instinct to detach and go to the warmth of the bed. I’m here. There’s nothing else.

Then, unable to elaborate on whatever hid within, Adam tore his shoulder from the window, and, channelling his weight entire into a single point, slammed back against the window. Echo and thud in both directions. Energy dispersed across the glass and reverberated against the assaulting soft body. Adam pulled back once more, and with the pain still sharp, crashed forth a second time. Strong enough then. The window’s glass became a spider’s web emanating from the point of impact, at the epicentre of which yawned the initial lack of glass. Some shards sliced through the night and found themselves in cold puddles below. Others bit and slashed into Adam’s clean flesh, assailant that he was, as if in retaliation. He stood there feeling knives and bloodfire razing his shoulder and could scarcely notice Night’s wind, which found a new path by which to flow into a previously inaccessible room. Then, with the third impact against the breached window, Adam’s breath turned into an unbroken gasp and all-enveloping cold and a boundless black sky and the wet street flying up to halt a rapid descent, an array of bricks and the long-frozen viscous flow of asphalt, a blessed defeat of petulant flesh much too soft and freshly scrubbed, and the youthful bones stored within, all laid bare and displaced. The leaving of him by life through rivulet flows. How lonely the night glows.

“Adam? You’re still up?”

The noise must’ve woken her up. He tried to be quiet, to stifle. On most nights she sleeps through it. But honesty said otherwise—she lays there awake most nights. She listens and knows. Perhaps it’s fear that keeps her away. Look at me, coward. I’m yours, am I not?

He remained immobile, forehead against a window wet on both sides, and without turning his head, he answered.