Nights Without Night

by Marina Vivancos

  “You trained two years with the Ops. Think of this period as training. Of collecting information. Of adjustment to a new environment. Look at it as the planning stages of a mission, instead of the mission itself.”

  “How? How do I even get that information? I don’t even know where to look!”

  “That’s the point! That’s life! You don’t know. None of us fucking knows. We’re all fucking faking it. Adulthood is bullshit. Everyone is a mess. Just think of one thing. One class. One activity. One like. One skill you want to develop. One person you admire. Just one thing, and explore. Not with a mission already in mind, but without expectation. Just for the sake of exploring. If you like it? Great. If you don’t? Fantastic. Knowing where not to go is as useful as knowing where to head so, just…explore,” I say. Isadoro looks at me.

  “I’m just so…tired,” he admits. I can see the shame on his face and lift my hand to stroke it away.

  “I know. It’s a lot. It’s so much. Being tired is okay. Staying in bed is okay. But not forever. It’s not easy, but you need to take one step. Just one. Forget about the others. Just one step.”

  Isadoro closes his eyes, but I don’t feel like he’s shutting me out.

  “Go away with me,” I say. Isadoro’s eyes open again. “A friend of mine has a little boat. We know how to sail, so…go away with me. I’ve got a few weeks between my last project and the start of work as the pieces get graded. We’ll go along the coast. It’ll be like fucking me; a transition to normalcy.”

  Isadoro looks at me. He cups my hand still on his face.

  “Just think about it,” I say. He nods and pulls me close again.

  We rest.

  **********

  Iva barrels into the studio and fake-ballets towards me.

  “Guess who got into the summer showing?” she sing-songs. I look at her. “You! And me. But also, you!” she says. I jump up from my stool.

  “Really?”

  “Yeeees!” she cheers. My heart races. The summer showing is every art student’s dream.

  “Oh my God!” I shout, stumbling over a bag of stuff and almost tipping Iva over with an enthusiastic hug. She doesn’t seem to mind.

  “We’re the best!” she laughs, hugging me back.

  I tell Isadoro as soon as I get home. He’s out of bed, not doing much but in the living room. He takes a moment to process the words and then grins, his expression so wide and clear it cracks something inside me. He jumps over the back of the couch and picks me up, twirling me around as I giggle and hit him playfully.

  “Told you,” he teases. I stick my tongue out at him. He looks at me. “Let’s go on that trip,” he says. I feel my expression drop into surprise and then lift again.

  “Yeah?” I say. He nods, looking determined.

  “Yeah.”

  The end of the school year passes in a mess of stress. Time compresses and expands on a will of its own and I am simply dragged along. The future fades from the picture. All I can think about is the now.

  I text Jack half-coherent updates. She replies in emoticons to make me laugh.

  Isadoro, to my astonishment, signs up to take a sailing class. I don’t make a fuss about it, but it fills me with hope and energy. Some evenings he’ll sit on the couch as I do my homework, practising knots. I try not to get distracted by his hands winding the rope into intricate shapes, their grace and purpose.

  I feel the flicker of hope expand.

  Despite my focus on it, the end of exams and deadlines comes as a surprise. Suddenly, I’m done. There are no more chapters to study, assignments to do, vectors to obsess over, layers to tweak, tonal differences to lose my head over. It’s done.

  I’m done.

  I sleep for fourteen hours in Isadoro’s bed. When I wake up, he makes me breakfast. The anticlimactic hollowness that follows end-of-year exams is present, but it’s obscured by relief and the tentative excitement of the trip ahead of me.

  The next few days are busy with preparations. Isadoro has taken care of almost all of it. It’s like the mission has brought him back to life. I know the stilts this provides are temporary, but that’s life.

  One step first.

  Iva invites me out for a celebratory get-together before we leave. Isadoro stays home, but I’m eager to go out and drink the previous few weeks away.

  Everybody is buoyant and worried. Although Iva is younger than Joaquin and Ezra, we’re all finishing college this year together due to the different lengths of our majors, the future looming in front of us.

  “It’s an online thing,” Ezra explains, referring to the job he’s landed. “It’s a crappy position but it has a good ladder, you know? I’m more than fine with slumming it for a while if there’s something to move towards, you know?”

  “The position isn’t that crappy, not for a graduate,” Joaquin interjects. “And the online magazine is amazing.”

  “Well…” Ezra says, colouring slightly. As confident and flirtatious as he can often seem, he’s distinctly uncomfortable with praise. He lights up under Joaquin’s, though. “The article book you and Iva put together definitely helped.”

  “The writing in the article—that you did—definitely helped, yes,” Joaquin counters. Ezra rolls his eyes, but their fingers lace together. I see Joaquin squeeze back.

  Joaquin hasn’t been quite so lucky in the job department, but he got an unpaid internship he says he’ll probably accept, having avoided the full depth of the student-loan trap by his football scholarship.

  “Well, we can’t all be Moore,” Ezra says, smiling as he refers to their friend’s talks with the NFL. A teammate of Joaquin’s, but considerably more dedicated to football, he’s already off to some training program despite the fact that exams just finished.

  “The boy just doesn’t stop,” Iva says, grinning proudly. It’s sort of surreal to know someone, even tangentially, so poised for fame.

  “Okay, what is with this music?” Iva says suddenly. “I swear they’ve played She Wolf like ten times since we got here.”

  “Isn’t Dex DJing?” Ezra asks. Iva goes off to investigate.

  By the time I get home, I’m in the stumbling level of drunk, and happily so. I stagger to Isadoro’s room and throw myself onto his bed. It’s late and he shifts beside me.

  “Wow. You smell like a brewery.”

  “Mmmm, brewerery,” I slur. Isadoro snorts beside me. I open my eyes to look at him. “So pretty,” I say, pawing at his face. “Sooo pretty.”

  Isadoro catches my wrist as he laughs.

  “Wow,” he says.

  “No wow. Yes yes. Let’s make out.” I open my mouth as wide as it’ll go.

  “Never thought I’d say no to that but it’s gonna be a hard pass this time, buddy,” he laughs. I close my mouth and pout.

  “You are mean. Mean. You’re a meany beanie baby.” I fall forward and kiss his face, leaving a sloppy trail as I mash my lips to his cheeks.

  “Oh my God,” he says, catching my face in his hands and pulling it away. I look at him imploringly. He sighs through a grin, shaking his head, and presses his lips against mine. I make a happy sound and he does it again and again, soft, sweet presses. I stick my tongue out and poke it against one of his nostrils. Isadoro rears back so violently he knocks against the bedside table.

  “What the hell was that!” he shouts, scrubbing at his nose madly. I cover my face with my hands, rolling around in the bed.

  “It wasn’t me!” I wail. Isadoro starts laughing.

  “You are out of control,” he says, catching me on one of my rolls.

  “Let me go! You’ve rejected me and I’m moving to France to be a croquete.”

  “How do you even come up with this stuff?”

  “It’s the Goose. The Vodka Goose. It talks to me in my head.”

  “Well that’s terrifying,” he says.

  “Mmm. You are so soft. Hard, but soft. Like an enchilada. Let’s make out.”

  “Nope. Let’s sleep. Come on,” he says and
proceeds to undress my very uncooperating body and then get it under the sheets with him. “Jesus, that was hard work,” he says when he’s finished. I cuddle up against him and he immediately pulls me closer.

  “You are a very nice Daddy.”

  “Holy God. Please go to sleep.”

  “Okay,” I say, and sleep.

  **********

  We pack our things and take a bus to the coast. It smells like gasoline and the unwashed fabric of the seats, like buses should smell in the summer when you’re trying to escape. Everybody keeps the windows open even on the highway, and the noise and the rush of the air makes it seem like we’re flying.

  Isadoro moves with purpose. He grabs my hand as we get off the bus so as not to lose each other in the crowd. I press close to him. The people around us smell like sweat and skin. So do we.

  We have to walk to the next bus stop. We wait under its rectangle of shade, licking at melting Ice Pops. The sun scorches the flat land all around us, miles of yellow until you look up and it’s blue, blue, blue.

  The next bus arrives. This one is a long, thin bug. It scuttles to a stop in front of us and we hide our bags in its belly. Isadoro lets me have the window seat again. I look outside as we join the other flying bugs, watching the sun bounce off their hard backs, their wings fluttering in the light.

  When the sun sets, it transforms everything. Orange and pink and the most diaphanous of blues as far as the eye can see. As night falls, the bugs all around us turn to fireflies.

  So do we.

  **********

  The boat is resting peacefully on the dock water as we finally arrive. Isadoro and I grin at each other at the sight. The smell of sea air, the faint tinge of gasoline, the call of seagulls overhead. It’s not a bad welcome.

  We drop our stuff on the wooden walkway and get to work.

  Isadoro pulls the line attaching the boat to the docks until it’s close enough. He steps onto the deck, one foot before the other. He gets over the low metal rail and then crouches down and keeps the rope taut as I do the same.

  We unhook the thick plastic sheet covering the cockpit. I fold it on the bow of the boat to avoid the boom as Isadoro unlocks the wooden panel hiding the inner part of the boat. He slides the wooden panel up until it leaves the rivets on either side, setting the plank aside. He goes down two miniscule steps to the boat’s belly and I follow, curious.

  Inside there is a small, round table in the middle, screwed to the floor and lipped upwards so things don’t fall off it. At either side of the make-shift door extends a thin line of counter-space, sunken to keep things in. On the right, on the bulkhead, is a radio. Stretching from the counters, lining the sides, are low benches covered in flat, foam pillows, travelling the length of the bulkhead until they pass under the table. The rest of the small space, under the bow part of the deck, is an extension of the benches, a triangle bed covered in larger versions of the foam pillows. In the shadow of the peak hide a few real pillows. There are a pair of long nets hanging on either side of the bed to place things, and smaller nets hanging at the opposite corners of the room, by the door. There’s a section of the top that slides back to let more sun in, but we keep it shut for now.

  The cockpit is even smaller. It’s made out of a white plastic, rough on the floor and seating to create grip. The seating is just two built-in, bench-like structures. Their tops come off, hiding more storage space. The boom hangs from the mast, cutting the air above the cockpit in half when it’s rigged still, although it swings once it’s loosened. At the stern of the boat is the tiller—the wooden stick that controls the rudder under the boat.

  The small boat is equipped with a motor and sails, the latter of which are lowered and tucked against the boom, wrapped in a blue, impermeable cloth. Already stored on the boat are some provisions, including sheets, towels, buckets, fishing line, knives, a lighter, a compass, a tiller extension, goggles, fins, and a navigator, which attaches to the tiller to keep it still at a certain angle.

  If you want to cook, or pee, or take a shit, you’ve got to use your imagination.

  I pass Isadoro the folded cover-sheet so he can store it inside. He follows me to the deck and pulls the painter—the rope used to tie the boat to the dock—taut as I step out. I pass him our stuff and we store it before sliding the wooden panel back in place and washing the boat with the hose in the water station between our boat and the next.

  We’re already sweating by the time we’re done, but we leave the boat to dry as we go and get provisions. Canned foods, dried food, bread, lots of water, chapstick, sunblock. We buy snacks, a boogie board, and two of those floating sticks you inevitably smack your friend against the ass with whenever one is near.

  It’s late by the time we’ve done everything. The docks are near a bustling part of the fishing town, and we walk down the lit, open streets. We follow the smell of frying fish and have a dinner of breaded cod and fries. The batter is perfectly seasoned, the potatoes crisp at the edges. We sit outside and watch people walk by. In the low light and the sea air, Isadoro looks so beautiful it hurts.

  We keep walking after dinner, but we’re both tired and turn back soon. Everything is muffled at the docks, the sound of people disappearing into the waves. We wash up at the harbour facilities and return to the boat. We climb inside, sliding the top back to let air in, and climb into the bed for the first time. We’ve shed almost all our clothes in the warmth but lay close. I watch Isadoro in the starlight until my eyes drift shut.

  The air is a tinkle of boat masts and lapping waves.

  We fall asleep.

  **********

  We wake with the sun, but the docks are already stirring with life. We get everything ready and set off, making sure we have enough gas before turning on the motor and veering out of the harbour.

  Open sea meets us.

  When we’re far enough from the docks, we turn off the motor. I keep the bow windward, squinting at the little weathervane at the top of the mast as Isadoro unfurls the sails. He pulls the main line until the mainsail hits the top of the mast, luffing wildly in the wind. I pull the tiller so the boat falls to the side, facing the direction we want to go in. Isadoro tightens the line until the sail is taut, billowing into a beam reach position as the wind hits us from the side. The boat tilts as Isadoro trims the sails to the perfect position and we gain pace.

  Being lighter, I move to the bench at the falling side, while Isadoro moves to the rising side, ducking under the boom. He holds the ropes loosely in his hand, having latched them to the teethed clip in the middle of the cockpit deck while I do most of the work keeping the boat en rumbo.

  It’s always been this way. Me, straining my softer muscles on the tiller while he remains watchful to any change that might necessitate action.

  There is no need to talk. The rush of the wind and the water does it for us, hitting the front of the boat and adding to the impression of speed, of freedom. The dome of the sky is endless. Everything is endless around us.

  I look at Isadoro, and the smile on his face steals my breath. It’s an expression from childhood, of climbing trees and winning races.

  I get the urge to cry without crying, overwhelmed by the emotion. He catches my eyes and I feel the warmth of his smile. I smile back.

  **********

  We sail all day. At lunchtime, we eat the tuna sandwiches we prepared before we left. We throw bits of bread at the passing waves and a group of seagulls start following us, not letting up for miles. I sunburn. Isadoro tans. The saltwater air disinfects our worries.

  We reach the next port just as the sun is suggesting its goodbye. We’ve booked places in each of the ones we’ll be staying at, and I steer us carefully until we find the empty spot.

  We clean up and wash the boat before heading to the harbour showers. The water tastes almost sweet against my lips after a day of salt. I run it cold and it’s the simplest of pleasures against my heated skin.

  We take a walk around the port town, but the sun of th
e day has bleached us into a deep, luring exhaustion. We eat dinner and head back to our swaying home.

  We lay under just a thin layer of sheets, close again. Isadoro runs his finger ever-so-slightly across my burnt nose. My eyelashes flutter for a moment.

  “Most of my team—my ex-team—are on leave. Some of them live near one of our stops. I’ve told them I’m stopping by…” Isadoro says.

  It takes me a moment to process the words. My eyes widen when they hit me, and I struggle not to react. I hadn’t even known he kept in touch with them. This feels like such a huge step, somehow. A thread acknowledged between past and present.

  “We could have dinner together?” I say evenly. Isadoro nods.

  “Yeah. That sounds good.”

  “I can stay on the boat if you want, or-”

  “That’s not necessary. It’d be cool for you to meet them finally,” he says. I’ve seen or briefly talked to each member of the team at one point or another through the phone or skype, so the idea makes me smile.

  “Yeah, I’d love that actually.”

  “They want to meet you too.”

  “Who lives the closest?” I ask.

  “Muhafiz. He lives right by the coast. Being the Commo Guy— The Communications Sergeant—he carries all the tech, so he has the heaviest bag, you know? So, you’ve seen him, he’s huge—Muhafiz isn’t his actual name, that’s what one of the tanks are called—and I swear to God. I saw him swim once and we all thought he’d sink like a rock, and then the motherfucker starts cutting through the water like a fish. My jaw hit the floor, he was like a speedboat. We’d all forgotten he came from a seaside town,” he laughs. I grin.

  “Who else is gonna be there?”

  “David, Ricky, and Doc. They’re travelling down.”