The Brooklyn Rail

This month’s original story from Bijan Stephen puts us on the front line of a war between decency and decadence. Like Goya’s bats, the nightlife of Lisbon calls to the newly-sensible protagonist, luring him from a life of stability and reason into a sepia blur of irrationality. A pervading sense of tenderness and care adds depth to this very real struggle to reckon how life should be.

*

They were running late. Paul, because he’d forgotten to make a note of something, rifled through the apartment in the hopes that he’d eventually remember what it was he’d forgotten. Claire, because she was absorbed in mapping the precise relations between two people she hadn’t seen in a decade, sat thumbing her phone. She was waiting on him, like always. Outside, the barometric pressure was falling and the humidity was rising. The animals, understanding this, were beginning to retreat into their burrows. By the time Paul and Claire managed to venture out of doors the world was quiet, save for the quiet plashing of the raindrops that were just beginning to fall. 

Paul was soaked by the time the train pulled out of the station. He hadn’t done that much running in years, not since a knee injury in his twenties put him off of it entirely. Paul looked out at the landscape that surrounded their train car, semi-tamed woods scattered between the neat parcels of land that denoted working farms. The train went underground, and Paul was confronted by his face in the window’s dark reflection—a little older than he remembered. His skin like the rusty bottom of an unloved iron skillet, and his beard, which had once been entirely black, silvering. 

He looked over at Claire, who was nose-deep in a book, and had the startling thought: have we gotten old together? No, no, no. He allowed himself to remember how he’d looked before he’d met her. No beard. Fewer of the familiar lines around the eyes. Long, thick black hair. Beyond that, nothing more than a vague sense of vigor and a fleeting impression of toned muscle.

He watched Claire turn a page, content. No, he thought again. We’ve decided to get old together. It was unsettling, looking back. Outside the farms were flashing by. He imagined the people working them, their pure and beautiful lives unencumbered; days full of meaningful labor, the best fruits of which, he figured, they kept for themselves. These were simple lives with only a few moral, modern amenities. No more food delivery. No next-day packages. They lived in the primal way, cooking what they grew, and making what they needed. Paul drifted to sleep, comforted. 

+

The trip had been Paul’s idea. He’d never traveled much outside the country, save for one summer in college that he spent in European hostels. They were on their way to Lisbon because it was a little cheaper than the other old capitals; it retained, as Paul told Claire, “some of the dignity of the old world.” Claire’s face twisted at that. She’d said, “What dignity? Everything smells like shit!” And though Paul was serious, it became a joke between them, in the months leading up to their departure. 

Outside, in the peninsula’s moonlight, Paul realized he didn’t feel any different, and, simultaneously, realized he was expecting to feel changed, somehow. As though the air and soil of another country could have a transformative effect. Claire took him by the hand, already aware of what he was feeling. 

Their hotel was old and beautiful, adjacent to one of the city’s poshest neighborhoods. People who looked like them drifted through the lobby on the way to their rooms. On the stairs, Paul was struck by a memory, seeing all these people; of Sarah, his first real love, and the first time they’d gone anywhere together—a shitty cabin about an hour north of the city. The recollection jolted him as it intersected with the present, overlaid as it was on the lobby pulsing with languages he’d never know.

They’d bought an entire cake to celebrate the fact that they’d had the time and money to make it out of the city in the first place. Even just for a weekend. First there was the fumbling newness he was used to—and then he was beyond it, somehow. It only took them a day to learn how to be soft with each other, to build the beginnings of a shared language; to pass the knives and forks, to appreciate Sarah’s allergy to peaches. There was nothing to do, so they took walks and ate cake and had sex, and, Paul remembered, it was the first time he’d ever been struck by the thought that he could be with someone, be someone to someone else for a while. That he was worth being with in the first place. 

That relationship had only lasted six months, but the revelation had stuck with him, even after she’d left his old apartment for the last time. It had eventually led him to Claire. But Sarah he hadn’t kept up with. Their break was final, which was rare for him. Paul had even resisted the urge to look her up online. In his memory, she was exactly as he’d left her, still untouched by time or misfortune. 

He pushed the thought away. Claire was brushing her teeth, as part of a very sensible plan to acclimate to the local time. Paul realized he wasn’t tired, not at all. 

He kissed her on the cheek and told her he was going out for a nightcap. “Text me where you’re going,” she said. “Maybe turn on your location? Just so I don’t worry. And try not to get robbed. They can tell you’re a tourist.” Paul nodded, heart in his stomach, worried she could see the hungry expression on his face. 

“Don’t be out too late,” she said finally, as he let their door shut quietly behind him.

+

Paul wandered out into the night. It wasn’t that late, was it? He remembered what it was like when he was on this continent in college, where he found out just how long a night could be. How things tasted different in the witching hour. How dawn sounds when it breaks on an old city’s ancient walls. Anyway, he decided, it wasn’t late enough to go back. 

He passed a few bars before settling on one where the light looked inviting. Inside, it was all red and gold, lush velvet and dark wood, hazy with cigarette smoke. The kind of place that might have been out of his price range back in the city. But here, where the air was different and the currency was weaker, he felt at home. 

Paul took a seat at the bar, and, without too much difficulty, got himself a whiskey—some imported American stuff. Had he really traveled all this way to drink the same shit that he could get at home? He raised his glass to dignity, to the old world.

The place was almost empty. It felt familiar, somehow, though he was certain he’d never been there before. Paul let himself relax into that feeling. Three drinks in, it was easy. He swiveled around on his stool to toast to the bar and its welcoming demeanor, and that was when he saw Sarah. Well, the back of her head. But still, he’d know that head anywhere, with its dark, perpetual halo of flyaway hairs. 

When he was sure it was her, he swiveled back around. He ordered another drink to steady his nerves, and then thought better of it—what he wanted was to be more sober, not less, because she never liked him when he was drunk. But the drink had already arrived. 

“You lose your coherence!” she used to say. “You don’t make sense anymore.” And he’d try to deny it, but he knew she was right and he knew he was fucked. The first time she said that to him, he knew that was how it was going to end; he knew this was their fight. Though of course he never said this to anyone, or really admitted it to himself. With Claire it was different—he didn’t yet know what would split them, and that scared him.

Paul got up from his stool, jet-lagged and already unsteady, drink number four in his hand. Doubles, all. He could feel the ice melting in the glass as the cold spread through his fingers. He had the sense that he’d stepped out of his regular life into a place where everything was meaningful, like he’d become the kind of man who could change the world. On the way to Sarah’s table he noticed that she was sitting with someone—a man?—and that they were deep in conversation, heads close to touching. Paul’s knee ached, deep in one of the major tendons. 

The two of them noticed him then. The person with her asked: Can I help you? And Paul nearly stumbled backwards, because here she was, restored to him. And here he was, himself again, not changed at all. 

“S-sarah?” he asked, voice as unsteady as his legs. 

“Who is this guy?” her companion asked. 

“I don’t know,” she said. 

“Look man, you’re freaking her out. Can you give us some space?” 

But, Paul wanted to say, but I loved her, and she loved me. Once upon a time. We ate cake together, didn’t we? Paul backed away. “Sarah,” he tried again, “don’t you remember me?”

“No,” she said, and that was the end of it. 

+

Paul left the bar when it closed, ejected unceremoniously into the moonlight. Sarah and her friend had left hours before, after one drink, probably because of him — he’d kept watching them from his stool, sipping his drink mechanically, trying to come up with something else to say. 

Paul checked his phone—it was late, but not that late. There was another place down the road with its lights on, beckoning to him alone. There he met new friends. 

They took him in and listened to his story about Sarah, about the cake, about what he couldn’t bring himself to say to her. They agreed with him that she was a cold bitch and probably gay, like they all were now. He bought his new friends a round out of gratitude. They understood him, and he could be himself, his real self, with them. In return they offered him some powder out of a vial. Paul heard himself say: I haven’t done this in a while. And that was when his night dissolved. 

The pink road beneath him, rumbling with the weight of a thousand—no, ten thousand—bodies. Cigarettes. A car, his head out the window, tongue lolling—a beach. Sand in his face. New lips on his ear. Another drink, another drink, another drink. An instant blackness. Wakefulness in a silver spoon, spooned out by? Names lost and never recovered. The music reduced to its base element, the saw wave moving back and forth across his newly opened skull; a pop felt but not heard below. The stars whipped into a froth by tears. 

Another bar. Techno? Smaller speaker, he could tell, dancing, cotton in his mouth. Then there they were in the living room and he was seeing them from elsewhere in this house he didn’t know. A new powder a new vial a new song a new old friend. Stars disappearing above, a star blooming here in his chest, just for him and him alone. Years left him. The star was in the bedroom with them and so was his old friend, and now it could shine for both of them. The dawn was breaking. And when it broke he was young again. 

+

Paul woke up. The presence beside him felt familiar, until he rolled over and saw it wasn’t Claire. Out of the window, he could see the sun just beginning to set. Paul checked his phone, and saw it was dead. He realized he had no idea where he was. 

His knee was throbbing again, this time with a deep, low pain that signaled something might have gone grievously wrong. He knew he was still drunk, and he knew everything would get worse when he sobered up. 

So he started to move, limping downstairs first, and then to the nearest main road. By the time he’d found someone to give him directions to his hotel, he was nearly dragging his leg behind him. Every step hurt. At the hotel, the bellman helped him to his room. He knocked on the door because he’d lost his key.

Claire was waiting for him inside, her face drawn with worry. He could tell she’d been biting her nails, which she only did when she was exceedingly anxious. “Jesus, are you okay?” she said. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day—what happened last night? I was scared.” 

The exhaustion was coming back, and so were the years. Claire began to seem unfamiliar, and so did the rest of his life: how had he ended up here? The color was draining from the world. He realized, with complete clarity, that the next moment was when they’d start the fight that would end their relationship. Paul could see the future, and he saw himself alone. 

+

Paul drove into the driveway of the house he’d rented upstate, just north of the city. It was dusk; everything was quiet except for the tick of cooling metal and the buzzing of the insects in the distance. The person who owned the house had left the porch light on, and as Paul trudged up the driveway, bags of groceries in hand, he felt soothed by its promise—he was home, and, at least for now, he could rest. 

The knee had to be replaced, in the end. His latest challenge was relearning how to depend on it. The bills had been exorbitant, though they’d tallied up to less than he’d thought. The initial surgery in Portugal had been cheap, which meant his American doctors had less to fix and therefore less to bill. Though the trip was ruined; he spent his time in Europe in a hospital bed. Between visits, Claire did all the touristing he’d been looking forward to. She fell in with a group of American expats. Who? He heard himself ask. 

“Luc,” she said. “He’s a peach. Around our age. He moved here five years ago? To get away from politics, he said. He lives a beautiful life,” she said. “He has this gorgeous loft above the city—his family’s. I don’t really care! It’s just nice to have someone to see things with,” Claire finished. 

He heard about all this from her on their return flight, when he was finally lucid enough to appreciate what she was saying. She wheeled him through the city’s airport, and, in the cab to their place, told him that she was thinking about leaving their city. Their home. Luc had promised to help her get settled. She’d been here long enough, she said. It was time for a change. Did he want to join her? 

Though she didn’t leave until later, much later, she did leave. That was when he rented the house. 

He emptied the bags he’d brought on the kitchen island. Some cheap cheese and charcuterie; a couple bottles of wine; some instant coffee; a bit of out of season fruit; and an undecorated cake. Paul caught a glimpse of his reflection in its plastic covering. He could only see the eyes, distorted and huge and black. Glinting in the yellow reflected light, buglike, a self-portrait he couldn’t stop staring at. He knew! He knew, he knew, oh, finally, he knew.