I was most certainly not into letting Shai stay at my place, but on that bizarre morning I agreed to it.
She said she was researching the lower crevices as a geologist. She explained her reasons but by then I had completely lost her, so I did not understand what type of geologist she was, what she was looking for in the lower crevice, and how she had gotten herself in so much trouble.
I was exhausted.
I agreed to let her stay and fell back asleep. During later retrospections, my surrender seemed suspicious to me, as no form of exhaustion should have overtaken the shock of what had happened on that insidious morning.
I awoke several hours later, during the evening, much too long for a nap. Shai was not in the room. For a moment I wished it had all been a dream. That I would never see her again. Maybe it was a dream? Part of me hoped it wasn’t, the part that had been excited when she had gotten out of the shower…
I went over to the (regular) window that faced the crimson South Lake and saw Shai wandering around the shoreline, doing her geology or whatever. She crouched, felt the earth between her fingers, smelled it. She walked around with her hands, dirty red from the soil, behind her back, overlooking the lake. It did not look like studying. More like brooding, or contemplation.
I suddenly remembered the head in the window and shuddered. My heart jack started to two hundred beats per second. I wanted to continue staring out at the lake indefinitely, but I had to turn. A severed head rotting inside my pressure window was something that could not be ignored.
I turned hesitantly, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t.
It wasn’t there.
🌋 🌋 🌋
Over the next few days we did not mention the incident and I never inquired about the head.
“Leh, where do you go during the day?” Shai asked me one evening. Surprised at the question, though not unpleasantly, I said, “I go to work.”
“Haha!” She lit up. “I assumed that much!” Her smile was sincere, her skin was pink and vibrant. She made me feel at ease, and stupid for being so blunt.
“It’s demanding.” I said, “It makes me think a lot… actually… no, I mean, I think about it a lot, the work doesn’t require much thought, that’s not what I meant.”
“Do you think about it outside of work hours? In the evenings? It looks Iike you do. It’s not a good sign, you know. You need more freedom.”
I clenched my thumb and fingers together. Here was this crazy intruding bitch telling me I need more freedom! She was trapped here! A trapped criminal telling me I don’t have freedom! Of course, I didn’t have the courage to tell her this.
“Yes, but, I mean…” I stammered, “Isn’t that normal? I think about it at night sometimes…”
“What’s sometimes? Every evening? Late at night? When you sleep? Do you think about work when you eat? When you dream?”
“No-“ I mumbled.
“That’s horrible!” Shai sputtered, and I immediately abjured my lifelong convictions out the window and believed her with all my soul.
“So what do you think about?” She asked with an innocent smile.
“Well,” I said, trying to find mental balance, “You said you were a student, right?” I felt very awkward and stupid. I took a deep breath, hoping it would last forever. The serpents of anxiety swept insidiously throughout the nerves of my body. I said nothing. The air circled around at the top of my lungs, not letting any in, not letting any out. I wanted to talk. I wanted to tell her everything. Unrestricted. En masse. I wanted to tell her about my day, about how exhausted I had been for a long time. Having someone waiting for me at home to complain to was something new.
I wanted to tell her how I could see where my boss’s anger comes from when he yells at me and others.
I wanted to tell her how I knew it was coming from his superiors, and their superiors, and ultimately from the investors and their hefty cash, and that I am often all but suspended in disbelief at how money translates down this chain into obscene yelling and an obese fifty-year-old man’s spittle on my face.
I wanted to tell her that nobody knows what they are doing at work.
I wanted to tell her how difficult it is to finish the day’s toil and come back home to my desk to study.
I wanted to tell her that studying the ocean is my passion, studying its movements, its textures, and the wild and almighty powers that command the waters.
I wanted to tell her my belief that the secret to life itself lies in those waters. Ghastly as they may be.
I wanted to tell her that I want to be a swell engineer so that I could provide for my future family.
I wanted to tell her that I wanted a family (I was so embarrassed by the thought), and that they could live above, not under the Zero Line.
But I was afraid to utter any of this in front of her.
Instead I said, “I saw a snake today,” invoking a memory from years ago. “It wriggled in the street. I saw it on the way to my client’s building. I was in a Riksha, and I had only a second or two before I ran it over. It crawled dissorientedly, it was not familiar with the terrain… maybe it had been through more troubles? I wasn’t sure… but it felt wrong to run it over. It was a split-second decision. I curved around it.”
Even I could tell that Shai knew I was fooling her, that I wasn’t saying what was really on my mind. She smiled nonetheless. I felt a little better.
“That’s funny!” She said, “You should not have killed it. If one can avoid killing but kills anyways there is something wrong with them.” She looked away, as if the thought took her elsewhere, then looked back at me and her eyes lit up again.
She mesmerized me.
Later, when I had time to ponder - back then those moments were unavailable to me due to the peculiar sense of dysphoria she maintained in me - I realized that I had been compulsively fascinated with Shai. Being with her was exciting. When I was away, I could not stop thinking about her. She had a different energy, a different beat, something I had never seen before. It attracted me so strongly I hadn’t slightly noticed that I had grown fiercely protective of her. Nor was I aware at the slightest of the dangers this would lead me to.
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