By Dean Nabih
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smoking, talk of a previous robbery
Headlights spill onto the ceiling. They streak the room in warm colors, dance a moment, before thinning out.
Marat watches this in the quiet hotel room. Sleep has long escaped him. In its wake is a dull, uneasy feeling lodged deep inside his guts. He feels as though the feeling might climb and catch his throat, as though everything might spill out of his body and onto the linen; but nothing happens. The feeling remains. The room stays still, and so does he. Partly because he’s convinced that it might help him sleep, but mostly so as to not wake Rowan up.
Rowan, who had been snoring for the past hour, shelters in the shadows. He has his back to Marat. His face and the outline of his torso are obscured in black. Though, faintly, Marat can make out the slow rise and decline of Rowan’s chest. Each movement accompanies a quiet exhale. It had only been an hour ago that they had been spooning. Or maybe it had been two hours. Maybe longer.
Marat mulls it over, grasping the passage of time and the space he had taken in between the sex and the restless stare. He clutches a small section of his stomach. Something whirs underneath; not necessarily rumbling but shifting, purring. He keeps himself motionless, and when sleep refuses to come, he brings himself to a sitting position. The bedsheet is damp under his feet. It’s splotched in cum, and sweat, and the spilled lubricants they had bought from the convenience store.
He expects Rowan to wake up, to ask if something is wrong. Not that he would know what to say, or that he wants Rowan to pull him closer to a hug. Rowan’s snore resumes. It used to help Marat sleep, his snoring. There were times when he would lie restless, just like tonight, and the droning would lull him to exhaustion. It had been months ago. Another life ago.
When Rowan doesn’t show any sign of waking up, Marat drags his feet out of the comforter and trods around the room. He gathers his clothes in the dark, dresses quietly. He picks the receipt for their lubricant, and a pen the hotel generously lends them on the drawer. He considers what to write, or maybe what not to write. Maybe he should just text him in the morning. But texting opens another door, another window of connection. Even if he blocks him, the nature of a text invites a reply. A note is absolute. It doesn’t ask for a resolve. It just communicates.
‘I’m sorry it didn’t work between us,’ Marat writes. ‘Aku sayang kamu. -M’
Just as he’s about to slip the note under a glass, the room glows with golden sheen. Marat balls the paper and puts it into his pocket.
On the other side of the bed, Rowan sits groggily. His arms stretch to the side, gripping. His back is to Marat still.
“Mau ke mana?” Rowan asks.
Marat sighs. He might have been too careless when he readied himself. “Just outside.”
“Where to?” Rowan insists.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Marat explains, crossing his arms to his chest. “Thought maybe I could have a smoke or two.” He feels a sense of pride for not lying. Even though it’s not the complete truth either.
Rowan shifts. His face turns slightly to Marat. There are strands of hair hovering before his eyes. His expression doesn’t change, doesn’t show a hint of surprise. He looks absent instead. “I have some in my bag. Let’s just smoke here, okay? Get my bag. I’ll open the window. Yeah, it’s right there.”
A gush of cold air rushes into the room. Rowan doesn’t seem to care that he’s nearly naked, that people might see from the neighboring buildings. But then again, they had been fucking with the curtains parted, and Marat too wasn’t very concerned about it. Rowan sits on the windowsill, and Marat pulls the cuck chair next to it.
The tartness of the Marlboro Black burns Marat’s throat. Yet after an exhale, he can feel his body relaxing. His head is lighter, his shoulders loose. It feels as if for the first time tonight, he’s in a much better state to sleep. He knows that the feeling is merely a trap, and that the nicotine will jolt him awake soon. A knot slowly tightens in his stomach.
Rowan lights up his cigarette. The fire shines on his face like honey. Rowan, Marat thinks, is conventionally attractive. His jawlines are sharp. His nose tips to a point, enhancing the sharpness to his face. His eyes are shaped like almonds.
Sometimes, when they walk together in the open, Marat feels as though out of place. He’s convinced that someone like him, with all his imperfections, does not belong by Rowan’s side. His face is rounded and long. He’s slightly out of shape. His hair never looks proper or as he wants it to. He feels like a clown next to Rowan.
Once, a twink passed them from the opposite direction. They had been strolling aimlessly around PIM. The twink glanced at Rowan, then to Marat, scanning from top to toe. The twink grimaced.
Rowan exhales a plume of smoke. It pools to one concentrated spot before floating out the window. Outside, facing the hotel, Kemang Raya stretches in two lanes. Wide enough to allow for bigger vehicles, but too narrow for a seamless traffic at peak hours. Across the hotel, a group of men trace the sidewalk. They have their shirts unbuttoned at the top. There is a rooftop bar not far from here, so that must be where they were. “It’s too late to go out alone,” Rowan says. He rubs the sleep off his eyes.
“I’ll be fine. I mean I would have. It’s Kemang,” Marat says with utmost confidence. It is, in his apprehension, true after all. Kemang is the side of Jakarta that’s reserved for white people. Not the kind that immigrates here to work as a CTO, or a COO, for a crumbling tech startup. No. They are the kind who marry locals, build a family, and adopt golden retrievers. As such, Kemang breathes to its own accord. Authentic pizza places and dog parks, to name a few, are something one associates with Kemang.
Rowan shakes his head, flicking his cigarette. “I had this one friend. Alda. One time, she was walking not far from here. Near the McDonald’s. She was trying to find a cab, and it wasn't in the middle of nowhere. It was, like, what? Two, three AM? She was walking, still tipsy, when a group of men stole her purse.”
“Oh.” Marat jumps. He takes another puff of his cigarette.
“Yeah, she called me in hysterics ‘cause the men took her phone too. I don’t remember how she called me. I think the McDonald’s staff helped her, or maybe it was someone else. Anyway, she called and I drove to her, I think, five minutes later. We weren’t even close or anything. It was a situationship, kind of, and mine was the only number she memorized.”
Marat arches an eyebrow. “Five minutes?”
“Crazy, right? I think I lived around Pejaten back then, so it wasn’t much of a trip. But I was, like, so startled. I didn’t wash my face or anything. I put on some shorts, this loose shirt I hadn’t washed. My breath stank. I just wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“Was she?” Marat asks. He lets his shoulders loose.
“Physically, at least. She was bawling when I arrived. We sat for an hour. I bought her ice cream. The one with cookies on top. They were nice. But mostly we just talked about her night. She told me she had been drinking with some friends, but then her friends started to drift. One was kissing a guy all night, and he drove the friend to his place. Another was popping pills, and this friend knew a guy who knew a guy, and so she went early. Alda didn’t feel like staying and called it a night. She was thinking of getting some toast before she went home. There was this 24 hour kopitiam near where she was, and then it happened.” The next cloud Rowan blows comes as a ring. They rotate in the air, slowly dissipating.
“That sounds rough,” Marat says.
Rowan cocks his head to the side. “It was. The next day, I drove her to the police station, helped her file a complaint. We kept talking for the next few weeks. When her report went nowhere, I drove her to a mall, and we picked out a new phone for her.”
“She never got her purse back?” Marat prompts, to which Rowan shakes his head. Marat is unsure if he should finish his cigarette, but keeps smoking anyway.
“You should always be careful is all I’m saying,” Rowan shrugs.
“I’m sure I can take care of myself for ten minutes, Ro.”
Rowan purses his lips. He slides his tongue under his lips like he was just sucking on something sour. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
A Harley rushes past, roaring, followed by a school of other Harleys. They blast Lana Del Rey on the stereo. It’s odd, Marat thinks, to find a convoy in the dead of night. Such a thing is usually more common under the sun, with an audience. What use is a finesse if there is no audience to awe? Though he does admit there is something poetic, and dare he say Lynchian, about it. Marat stares at his cigarette, the upper end burns in an orange hue. “You were a good friend,” he says.
“For helping her.”
“I wasn’t. I just liked her. I don’t think I would do that to any friend,” Rowan argues. “It wasn’t working out anyway. We kind of drifted apart. She started replying once every three hours. Then one day, she just stopped replying. I was cool with it, really, but sometimes I had this urge to just… ask her. Did I do something wrong? I thought it was real.” He slicks his hair to the back, and it was a small habit that, Marat believes, only hot people pick up. Rowan then looks Mara directly in the eyes, unflinching. “It doesn’t matter, though. That was before I met you.”
“I’m sorry” is all Marat can muster.
“Why?” Rowan presses the butt of his cigarette on a metal railing. “You’re not her.”
Marat tries to remember the last time he felt his date was going somewhere, not counting Rowan. It must have been years. He hasn’t been much of a people person, or more so that most people fail to meet him where he is: to think and feel the way he does, and sit with it without a condescending ‘well, you should have.’ He inhales another puff before squishing the cigarette too. “She was just not the right person.”
“Yeah but there’s no such thing as ‘the right person,’ is there? You just try to make it work.” Rowan stretches his legs.
“Making it work does not equal pretending something is there.”
“Something. What something?”
“Love,” Marat says. “I don’t know. Warmth, softness maybe. That pinch of tenderness.”
Rowan hums in thought, and Marat is not convinced if he agrees with this notion. Rowan stares into the distance, transfixed on a spot Marat can’t pin. Maybe the sky, or the shapes of the city on the horizon. Either way, neither tries to break the silence.
A rooster crows from a few blocks over. It’s distant but loud enough for them to hear. Marat pulls his cell phone from his pocket. Two thirty AM. Soon, it’ll be three. If he fails to sleep even then, chances are he’ll be awake until four, which isn’t much time until five and six. It’d be futile to try then.
Rowan scoots over, then reaches for Marat’s hand. He brushes the small section under the knuckle. Each stroke is gentler than the last. He keeps his gaze on Marat, eyes glossy under the golden light. “Please,” he whispers. “Let’s go back to bed.”
Marat adjusts his seat. His face warms. He tightens his grip to Rowan’s hand. “Okay.”
They move silently but accordingly. Rowan closes the window, cleaning that side of the room. Marat puffs the pillows and spreads the comforter. Before long, they climb back to bed, the lights are off. This time, Rowan turns to make sure that he faces Marat. He places a hand on Marat’s shoulder.
“Mar?” Rowan calls. “Will I see you in the morning?”
Marat realizes that he hasn’t taken off his clothes. He lies on the bed, his jeans intact. It’s uncomfortable when he moves. The denim stays stiff as if refusing to move with him. He doesn’t mind. He’s too weak to do anything about it. His breathing slows before long. Lastly, before he closes his eyes, his hand reaches for something in his pocket. “Sure,” he says, his voice barely audible.
Dean Nabih is a queer writer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is currently working on his first novel set in the same city.
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