Night was falling. The shadows that had stretched long under the late afternoon sun were marrying, bleeding into each other and blanketing the narrow road with their darkness. The last salmon streak of sunset had vanished, that splendor lower than the treeline and gone from view. Eames drove one-handed, flushed and tired with an elbow on the window's frame and his free hand in his hair.
Neither of his passengers were awake. Arthur was riding shotgun, slumped neatly with his cheek cradled by his safety belt. He was silent, composed even in repose. Behind them both, Arthur's younger brother was snoring, sprawled across the back bench seat open-mouthed with a hand in his pants. Henry embodied "twenty" with a wholehearted abandon.
On the dash, the GPS told Eames they were close, drawing near to hot food and soft beds, two things they hadn't seen in forty-eight solid hours of switching posts at the wheel. They were driving into nowhere and nothing; two hours of wilderness lay between their vehicle and the provincial charm of the most recent small town. The road was losing breadth from both sides, forest dense and cold. Their isolation would be absolute but for the company of one another until the eventual arrival of their client. In spite of himself, Eames could not keep from wondering around what the time apart from the remainder of the world could reveal of himself and Arthur. He was trying like hell to hold that particular thought process to a short lead.
The cabin was built of logs, and not the trendy kit-type outfit so many wealthy weekenders were having fashioned for hunting getaways. They were proper logs, heavy and notched at the ends, fitted together and caulked tight against the cold, the dwelling squat and compact in a clearing only slightly larger than the building itself. Snow hugged the rooftop and made the eaves and hedges sag. It looked like something from another century, but in perfect condition.
Eames turned off the rutty private road to park in the clearing alongside the cabin, out of view of passing traffic, and beside him Arthur's body shifted, his head lolling forward on a neck rendered boneless by deep sleep. Once the halogen brilliance of the headlights had been extinguished and the backdrop of violen music had been killed, the silence was a defining entity of its own, the early evening a muted navy preamble to the stars. For one mad moment, Eames considered reclining his seat and just shutting his eyes, considered foregoing the tedium of unlocking, unpacking, cooking, small talking, undressing, bathing, bed-making and make-believe. It all seemed insurmountable tonight.
Around Dom, in the openness of a warehouse workshop, or in a team of four or five on a job, and sometimes even in isolated chance moments caught alone, it was easy to fill the spaces between the lines with bickering and cheap shots, with biting one-upmanship and halfhearted insults. This week's quarters would be close, no distraction to speak of until the arrival of the job but for one another and clumsy, affable Henry. It made one other such night feel dangerously close at hand.
It made Eames' weary mind peel the perfection of Arthur's clothes away unchecked to leave him bare and eighteen and trembling and half-drunk again, hiding from overbearing parents at a cocktail party and burning in his own skin again, pleading and pulling at Eames with a virgin's hands, tidily and easily seduced and shaking with need to be shown the world in five minutes or less.
Henry jolted and snorted, coming awake with a gasp. He was enormous, taller than Eames and Arthur both, and not yet accustomed to the length of his late-bloomed limbs. His face was strikingly like Arthur's, but he was more muscular than wiry, and he wore things a surfer might, things Arthur would have died before donning.
"This is us, huh," he said, and reached forward to squeeze Eames at the shoulder, tirelessly happy to be anywhere with anyone. When he smiled, he lost his eyes in merry dark-lashed crescents, not unlike his older brother.
Eames sighed and gave a resigned nod. "This is us."
Arthur woke wordlessly in the wake of their speaking and unbuckled himself, straightening his waistcoat and zipping his leather jacket over it before climbing from the Audi and into the snow. Henry piled out after him, energetic as someone's puppy after just a brief sleep. He was overly helpful with the bags, particularly those belonging to Eames, scooping them out of the boot and lugging them toward the cabin's porch, tramping up onto its sunbleached floorboards in his snowy boots.
"Will we have time tonight?"
"Not tonight," Eames responded, knowing without asking for specification what Henry was inquiring about. He was miserable at university and wanted to be a forger, wanted to learn the trade. He was on holiday for the entire month of January, and Eames had agreed to help him. Due to geographical logistics alone, Henry had been collected from school en route to this location, prior to this job, and they were stuck with him for the duration of their week-long stay. Eames had made a promise to show him the ropes, but it wouldn't be happening this evening.
Inside, Arthur struck a match and lit a kerosene lamp, hunched over the round rustic table where it was sitting. His eyes were glassy in the ambient glow, olive skin alive with its warmth, and Eames looked his fill from a safe pocket of shadow near the low-bellied wood stove. The white of a starched collar buttoned neatly at the base of a slender throat was all it took tonight to tip him into his own private vulgarity, and despite his weariness, he was glad for the unyielding disruption of Henry.
"There's a loft? Dibs on the loft." Henry unhooked a rope ladder overhead, not bothering to guide its progress to the ground, so its rungs fell into his face and beat him about the shoulders before clattering into order so he could climb them. Eames shook his head, watching the young man scale it with a silent prayer.
"We're hours from any hospital, you know that."
"Eames. Make a fire." Arthur spoke the request over his shoulder, dragging his feet on his way toward what seemed to be the cabin's facilities; a shining steel basin for bathing on the floor, a porcelain one for hand-washing, a mirror, a rudimentary toilet, and heavy plastic jugs of water. A sign was taped to the wall therein: 'When water is gone, go to well.' Arthur drew the curtain shut behind himself, and only when he was out of view did Eames take action on his instruction. He would busy his hands to still his mind.