Objects in the Mirror

by Nicolò Govoni

  Nil takes his hand out of the pocket. Shows her the ring.

  “What is that?” She seems surprised.

  “It’s checkmate.”

  She squints.

  “This is how it ends.” Nil is shaking, yet his voice echoes strong. “This is how we chop off the Cartel’s head without us bleeding out. This is how we save Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel,” she says.

  “Ameen got his hands in the drug jar and in the construction jar and in the prostitution business as well, he goes under different names, like Spandan or Rupesh—the point being, I have proof.”

  Her eyebrows, her forehead, her splendid lips, her whole face screws into a grimace, morphing into a mask of horror, and rage. She concelas it, but Neels misses nothing. Not anymore.

  “I traced them all, put the pieces together, Mel, finally. And he’s careful, but sure enough, I found it. At the end, I found a trace, I have proof of him working as a pimp for the Pit’s Madame. So easy, so very stupid, Mel.” Nil smiles. This time, he knows, it’s a beautiful smile. “We got him. We can frame him for this, take him out of the picture—”

  “He’ll be out in a heartbeat, Nil.”

  “Power made him lax. More things will come up once they are forced to investigate, I know that. And we’ll be safe, our parents will be safe, and the city, too, at last.”

  “It won’t work.”

  The smile leaves his lips, and he looks at her. Right at her.

  “You don’t understand,” she goes, “I—” but she’s at a loss of words. There is something the matter with the way she looks around.

  “I got him,” Nil says, piercing her with his eyes.

  Their eyes lock. Nil fishes out his phone and dials for the police.

  “I got him,” he lies. There is something the matter with Mel’s eyes. Nil takes a little step away from her.

  Mel leaps forward.

  Nil shifts his iPhone from one hand to the other, keeping it away from her, on the screen, a pending call. Someone picks up. Nil is still staring at her. Suddenly, she looks smaller, scared. A beat, then Nil puts the phone to his ear, and—

  “Don’t,” Mel cries, rage and fear dancing on her face, and she jumps at him, grabbing Nil by the lapel, pushing him against the sink countertop, baring her teeth, snarling. “Don’t,” she says.

  “Hello?” says the man at the phone, but except for that, everything is off, all is silent, even the water gushing out in the sinks.

  “It’s you,” Nil says. “It was you all along.” His mouth is dry, but his hands are steady.

  Fear creeps back on her face.

  Nil smiles. “I lied,” he says. “I have no proof, only phone numbers and rings.” His voice cracks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She says nothing, her lips trembling.

  “I still know how to take Ameen down.”

  She squints.

  “I have no proof that links Ameen to the Water Mafia,” he says, “but I have the proof of him covering up a rape case three years ago to protect Worlds United.” Nil points a finger to his chest. “The proof is me.” Mel is so close to him that he can smell her breath. “Gabriel doesn’t need to be the sacrifice.” Her breath smells like burning flowers. “I will.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is the right thing.”

  Mel shakes her head. “Why?”

  Silence. He looks at her and she looks back at him and he doesn’t look away. “To prevent you from doing what you think you have to do.”

  Mel smiles a sorry smile. “I grew up fast, Nil.”

  Nil closes his eyes. Bites the inside of his cheek. Lowers his phone. The Whole is roaring all around. “Why?” He is the one asking now. “Why do you destroy yourself?”

  “It’s because of what he did to me,” she says. “My father.”

  Nil shakes his head in the darkness of his eyelids.

  “He loved me,” she says. “He abandoned me.” He opens his eyes again. Her eyes. “Don’t do the same, Nil.” Her eyes. Her eyes. “I need to do this. Please.”

  And so he sees her, he really sees her, for the first time, and she’s beautiful, and terrifying. Beauty and horror, he realizes, share the same equation in this world.

  She lets him go.

  Without a word, they sit down, she on the toilet cup, he on a white beach chair, facing each other.

  They say nothing for a long time.

  “One day,” Mel says, “when I am old, will you still remember me?”

  “Forever,” he says.

  “No, I mean it... will you remember me, now?”

  “Always.”

  “Don’t say it so lightly.” A certain vehemence in Mel’s voice. “I’m asking you to stay here, in this very moment, forever, even when this time won’t be but a cold, empty room. While everything and everyone are gone, you will still be here, with a picture of me.”

  Silence falls again in the bathroom. Then Mel dials on the cordless phone and hands it to Nil.

  “Hello?” says a woman’s voice after a moment.

  Nil’s heart turns into an epileptic drummer.

  “Jiya,” he says.

  “Nil!”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m—I’m well, and you?”

  “I’m well...” He feels drunk. He feels pukish. “You?” he repeats.

  Mel leans toward him.

  “You okay?” says Jiya. “I heard your Mom—”

  “Yes. Yes, everything’s alright. It’s been awhile that I wanted to call you. But you know, college...”

  “Sure, I know something about that. My internship here is no picnic either.” Jiya’s voice glows with joy. She adds, “You could at least reply to messages, though.”

  “I know, I’m sorry, I—”

  Mel leans further in, a lock of her blond hair swinging between them, almost touching his shoulder.

  “I wanted to, but...”

  Mel puts her hand on his.

  “But...”

  A beat.

  “I miss you,” whispers Mel, her gaze both steady like that of a robot and full of passion like that of a nymph, at the same time.

  “I miss you,” repeats Nil in the receiver, without taking his eyes off her.

  The silence on the other end changes in nature, and the senseless joy, Nil can hear it, is replaced by expectation, desire, and a bit of hope.

  “I wanted to answer, but messages and calls were not enough,” Mel goes, and Nil repeats word by word. “I wanted to say I’m sorry and I love you, I love you both with my mind and body.”

  Jiya is silent. Mel, through Nil, speaks again.

  “I wanted you to know that at night I often dream of when we were kids and we used to play doctor and I dream of having the courage to touch your nipples, and during the day, now, I dream of being able to do more.”

  Jiya listens, her breath heavy.

  “I love you,” says Mel, but Nil fails to repeat it.

  Mel stops to think, then resumes.

  “One day we will live together in Kensington.”

  Nil lets out a sigh before repeating the promise.

  “We’ll have a dog, and we’ll call him Eggnog. We’ll only drive bicycles, and eat only French food.” Mel’s eyes shine with an almost supernatural light. “We’ll have two children, Caleb and Juliet, and at first we’ll send them to this lovely kindergarten where they paint and sing and nothing else, but then we’ll have them study at home, because we miss them too much, and because the school system would ruin their creativity.”

  Nil takes Mel’s hands in his.

  “And we’ll spend our days lounging in the living room, laying on a Persian rug, reading novels and taking Polaroid photographs of each other, and we’ll take long walks, every evening, until the streets grow old and we wise.” Mel grips his hands. “I love you,” she says.

  “I love you,” Nil echoes.

  Silence.

  Nil takes the initiative.

  “I want you, Jiya, now
.”

  “I am—after I finish this internship I will...”

  “I’ll come. I’ll come as soon as I finish this thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “The right thing.”

  “Tell me more,” she says, fervent.

  “I found it, Jiya. I found the man who’s destroying Ayodhya.”

  “Who?”

  “And I need your help.”

  “My—”

  “I need you, Jiya.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I need the records of your father’s trades over the past three years.”

  “What?” Her voice cracks.

  “I need the list of the company’s customers and all the investors, and the routes of the all the trucks, and what they carry.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I need the details of the deals with other companies, and with the government.”

  “What are you trying to—I don’t have access to this information.”

  “I’m trying to help. To help people.”

  ““But Dad—Dad—Dad...” Her words extinguish in an indistinct murmur.

  “He does what he does for the people, they all do, because the people don’t know what they really want.”

  “And we have to protect them, right?” says Jiya.

  “Of course, Jiya, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You have to trust me.”

  “Protect them from whom?”

  Nil looks at Mel. He changes approach. “The police are in hot pursuit,” he says. “They’re coming for us.”

  “Worlds United?”

  “When the story will be made public, your father will want to be on the right side of it. We must precede them, before it’s too late.”

  “You’re asking me to betray my father.”

  “I’m asking you to save him.”

  “And to betray yours.”

  “And save ourselves, and our children, and the children of many others.” Nil clenches his jaw. “I’m asking you to save our future. It’s the only way for us to have a life together.”

  “Maybe—”

  “I need the data regarding the activities in Uttarakhand, especially when it comes to the water transport system. I need to know the roads they take, the officials they bribe. It’s the water, or rather the absence of it, the key. Ayodhya has none, and your father moves it from the major dams in the country. I need that data.”

  “And Dad, he will stay out of it, right?”

  “I promise, Jiya.” Nil’s eyes dive in Mel’s, and in there they find gratitude, and need, the sweetest drug he ever took. “We will survive this storm.”

  “Together,” they say in unison.

  Silence.

  A broken sigh fills the receiver, an almost sexual sound.

  “I’ll send everything by tonight,” she says.

  Nil closes his eyes, exultant.

  “I love you,” says Jiya.

  Nil doesn’t respond, but Mel shakes his hand firmly. “Thank you,” he says.

  “I love you,” Mel syllables.

  “I love you,” Nil echoes, again and again and again and again.

  Nil doesn’t exactly know when, but at some point Jiya cuts the call, and he keeps on looking at his own reflection in Mel’s eyes, shining like rough diamonds, while they holds hands and the water gurgles in the sinks and in the shower, and he’d like for this moment to last forever, just like she said.

  Mel gets up without leaving his hand and makes him stand as well, looking at him from head to toe, and Nil feels his lips dry up and his muscles tense and so he prepares, but she grips his hand and leads him out, opening the bathroom door and paving the way in the darkness. Nil’s heart beats inside his throat when he sees that she is leading him to her bedroom, and his brain is stormed by endorphins, making him feel dizzy and happy and full of the sweetest fear.

  Mel’s white hand rests on the wood of the door, and the wood is rich in colour, and so with a graceful push she opens the door, and inside the darkness thickens incomparable to any blackness he’s ever seen, but it doesn’t scare him, and when he turns to Mel, he finds her already looking at him—golden sparks dancing in her irises, and for the first time Nil feels like a man, he feels ready and knows that he wants to indulge the demons that lurk in those eyes.

  Mel leaves his hand, and enters the room. Between them—her in the room, and him just outside—there seems to be a wall of glass, and although she appears physically next to him, Nil feels light years away from that dark space and its queen.

  “You should go,” she says in a feeble voice.

  Nil groans—he can’t help it—and considers convincing her rationally by trying to explain why she should finally invite him in, why it would be the perfect ending to the arc of their story and that he exists only in relation to her; then he considers the possibility to appeal to her emotional side, talking of the joys of a shared future; and then he considers begging her, dropping on his knees, crying, clinging to her clothes, but the Whole inside of him overwhelms him, and Nil knows that if he doesn’t flee now, it will overflow, it will come out of his mouth and nose and the pores of his skin, and from his eyes, and she will see it, all of it, but she will remain, after all, indifferent.

  Nil nods and backs away and soon Mel is gone, swallowed up by the absence of light in the room, and Nil spurts through the sleeping quarters, his eyes fixed straight ahead when he passes the kitchen and he dives into the elevator where “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saëns plunders his mind.

  The doors close and Nil rests his head against the metallic wall and closes his eyes and sobs and the anger contracts his limbs and he kicks and punches the elevator and when he manages to dent it he has to grab his hands to stop their shaking, but it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work anymore, and leaning back against the wall, he thinks he should go back up and ask Mel for some dope, but before he can press the button, he realizes that getting into that dark room with her would mean death—death and oblivion.

  He smokes and drinks throughout the journey back home and finds himself licking the inside of the plastic bag hoping to scoop up what’s left of the blow while the driver throws furtive glances in the mirror, and Nil would like to ask him for help, except that they are already in the parking lot, at home, and Nil drags himself out and he’s in the elevator and there is no music, for which Nil thanks every god there is, but at the same time he hates how silence lets his thoughts run wild, and then he’s at his own doorstep, punching in the entrance code, and he feels it, again, on his back, Kamat’s eyes, through the peephole across the hall.

  Nil throws a quick glance behind him, and the walls are too white and the geometry of the tiles too fucking precise, and he must shade his eyes from the too intense light. He longs for the enclosed space of the elevator now, he longs for the safety of it. For the lack of freedom it grants.

  Nil crosses the hall and clings to the neighbor’s intercom and presses the button and the wait tortures him, but when no opens the door he must admit to himself that probably there’s no one home, there never was, and so he turns around, ready to face again that hall too perfect and bright, ready to face a night without any drugs, but then Kamat opens the door, his arms clasped around a minute body, his hand running heavy through the boy’s short blond hair.

  Kamat keeps his eyes shut. The boy, who Nil recognizes as one of the students of the private school near the University, leans toward him, on tiptoe. They lean into each other. Nil stares at them filled with unspeakable terror, and despite the voice in his head ordering him to get the hell out, he stands still and waits.

  Kamat holds the boy close, smiling at Nil. The boy gives him an expressionless look. Then Kamat opens his eyes, clicks his tongue and the kid turns to him and lifts his chin as if waiting, but Kamat slaps his buttocks and the sound reverberates in the hall, and when it fades, the memory of it lingers between them, and Kamat shoots Nil anothe
r smile, a smile even wider than the last. The kid starts walking toward the elevator. Kamat reaches out and pinches his butt, but the boy doesn’t flinch, he keeps on walking, and then he calls the elevator, and Kamat goes on smiling at Nil, the whole time.

  Even when the blond boy is gone, eaten by the sliding doors, Kamat stays still, staring at Nil with that scarecrow grin.

  “Well?” he asks.

  Nil puts himself together, his bowels knotted. “Coke,” he says, “I need the stuff.”

  Kamat clicks his tongue again and fishes from his pocket a white packet and lifts it up to eye level and throws it at Nil.

  “How much?” goes Nil, but Kamat shakes his head and smiles and retreats into the shadows behind him. Immaculate, his teeth and sparkling eyes shine in the dark, suspended in nothingness as the door closes on him. Those eyes there, they haunt Nil long after they disappear.

  Nil darts into his house and falls to the ground in front of the big TV, and right where he lays he does one line after the other on the floor, overjoyed after long hours of abstinence. And it’s fucking bliss. And it’s better than sex, and so he does it everywhere, on the kitchen floor, on the dining table, on the toilet, in bed, watching TV, while editing the article—and it turns out great, ‘cause Kamat’s blow is powerful, it’s Ameen’s, our good old Ameen, and Nil snorts it all, and the Whole dozes off again, finally back under his control.

  See you later? texts Ferang on WhatsApp. Nil can read the message even before opening his eyes, he feels.

  Later? Nil gets halfway up, his body aching all over.

  Yes, later. Candle Cove at 5. He sends an emoji. It’s sticking its tongue out. It feels like reconciliation.

  Nil jerks to his feet, his head spinning, and the apartment is bathed in noonday light, and so he drops on all fours, glances at the dead screen of his MacBook seeing his own face in it, his whitewashed nostrils, sign of a night of true inspiration, his shirt covered in his own vomit, and then he glances around only to find the coke bag, totally, hopelessly empty, abandoned beside him.

  It strikes him now, like a door flung open, and he knows what he will find when he opens the Express app. He just knows. And there it is, the fateful first page full. It happened. Finally, Gabriel is dead.