Burning in Your Atmosphere

by Angela

September 8, 2006

It was the sound of his shoes hitting the floor that usually woke me. The soft thunk of sneakers falling onto plush carpet was like an alarm, urging me to open my eyes, look at the clock, and check for obvious wounds as Ash crawled into the bed next to mine. He never turned on the light, so I squinted through darkness, searching for the tell-tale dark splotches on his T-shirt. It was four fifty-three. Ash looked exhausted, but otherwise unharmed.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

We'd been there only five days; I could count them on one hand, figure the hours – even the minutes – in my head. But somehow it felt like a lifetime since we'd traded that grubby little hotel room for this, this twelfth-floor palace in a building that was almost its own kingdom. Autumn had transformed New York. The park outside our windows was aflame with brilliant color, and more than once already Ash had come home with hands and feet numb from nighttime chill. It was summer – a California summer at that – the last time I had seen Ibé-san, and the shift of season and locale made him seem almost like a character from a previous life.

In this life there was only Ash. Ash and an endless parade of half-broken street toughs, most of them still too young to shave. They came to this apartment with urgent business for their "Boss" and almost none could be bothered to notice me at all after their initial rudely-curious stares. Kong and Bones were my keepers – a strange cross between bodyguards and prison wardens – but beyond them only Alex granted me the favor of a nod or half smile. On my more self-conscious days I wondered what Ash had told him about me to warrant his attention.

The reasons why we moved were obvious, even beyond the simple equation of square-footage divided by the number of semi-unwashed bodies. We hadn't been there ten minutes before Ash told me, his voice smug and self-satisfied, about the fantastic view he had of Dino Golzine's business offices. He claimed it was safer, that this was the last place anyone – Dino, Arthur, even the NYPD – would come to search for us, but I didn't feel safe there, every day taking pictures of men with more than adequate reason to want to put a bullet into Ash's pretty blond head.

These kinds of things didn't trouble him. If anything, the close proximity of his enemy made him cocky and a little bit cruel. By some impossibility, he seemed more at home in this over-abundance than he had been anywhere else thus far, thought I wouldn't have believed it had someone tried to tell me this while we were so cozily ensconced in the simple lifestyle of Bear's "flop house." It was this that unsettled me the most. It was one thing to appreciate hot water and clean sheets, but Ash adopted the Park Avenue lifestyle as though he were born to it. Hardly a day went by that he didn't slip out the door in suede loafers and cashmere and come back with a doggy bag from a meal that cost more than I earned in a week at my part-time job in Tokyo. At the heart of it was my biggest concern – not why we were there, but how.

The cold chill of worry, the gnaw of trepidation over what Ash was involved in brought me back to myself. I was lying on my down-filled pillow and staring through the dark room as Ash as he fell asleep. It was my fifth night of deliberately not wondering where and how he got the money to afford that place, the fifth night that I ended up instead wondering how many people he'd killed and how many more would have to die before he satisfied whatever need was driving him.

He didn't really even talk to me anymore. I served him breakfast at one o'clock every afternoon and never asked questions, not because I feared a repeat of our argument, but because if Ash wanted me to know anything at all, he would just say so. I didn't think he'd lie to me if I asked a direct question, but I wasn't sure enough to test the theory. So I was silent and he was distant, sometimes unwilling to look me in the eye.

I watched the rise and fall of his shoulders as his breathing eased into the regular pattern of sleep. My chest was painful with something like longing. I barely remembered its origin, though by now it was a familiar visitor. Even though he was almost a stranger to me those days, I was thankful to see him come come every morning. Some nights I found myself frozen with the terror that the previous morning had been our last, that tomorrow's sun would rise on an empty bed because his luck would have finally run out.

Without being sensible of exactly what I was doing, I slipped out from beneath my covers. My skin prickled, bereft of its warm cocoon. It had been over thirty-five hours since he had spoken to me in more than one syllable, days since the last time we'd touched – hard to imagine after our summer of easy affection. I felt a thousand miles away from him, desperate to close the gap, if only for a moment. I stepped soundlessly across the thick carpet to the far side of Ash's wide bed. The blanket there was untouched; Ash always slept curled into the smallest spot possible, far humbler in his sleep than while awake.

I lifted the sheets and slid beneath them. At first I occupied only the coldest, furthest reaches of the bed, wary of waking him with my chilly intrusion, but inch by inch, I moved closer. I paused when I could feel his warmth. I closed my eyes. I'd been desperate and out of my mind with fear when I told Ash I'd go crazy without him that night we escaped from Papa Dino's, but as I lay there beside him, listening to the soft whisper of his breath, I felt the truth of my rash declaration.

Ash Lynx, as distant and cold as he'd become, was still the only thing that kept me from giving up on everything.

The trip to New York was supposed to have been my salvation. Ibé-san promised me four weeks of distraction, four weeks away from the pain and pressure of my life. It was supposed to be enough to mend that crack that seemed to have swallowed up all of my confidence and optimism. I hadn't been able to get up in the morning, before. I wouldn't have made it to the airport if Ibé-san hadn't come to my parents' home to fetch me.

And, for a while, the distraction had helped. But America was wearing thin. I didn't want to go home, but despite the visit to Cape Cod and the classic American Route 66 road trip, it hadn't been a relaxing trip. I was exhausted since Shorter's death, and lately almost as nervous and upset as I'd been that day at that last track meet, when it occurred to me that I was terrified of that jump. Ibé-san wanted me to go back to Japan; he didn't know how low I'd gotten since the last time he saw me, but if he did, I'm sure he'd be more insistent. Max Lobo would agree with him – I suspected that Ash would too. That was why I couldn't let on.

I reached out to touch Ash's hair, amazed that it could shine gold even before the sun came up. I noticed the tremor in my hand and stopped short. He would wake up. My heart was pounding and I didn't want to explain what I was doing. Why I was there. I didn't know how to tell him that it was the only place I could exist, that only when I was by his side did I feel fully like me again. I barely knew how to acknowledge that to myself. That kind of admission took me somewhere too close, where I wasn't sure I wanted to be.

Somewhere Ash would definitely not want me.

He turned in his sleep, mumbling something incoherent. I froze, waiting for him to open his eyes, waiting for him to jump to all the wrong conclusions for all the right reasons. His breath blew hot across my cheeks and nose. His lips parted. For an instant his eyelashes twitched; I flinched. But then he grasped his pillow with one hand and nestled into it, still and silent once more.

I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, coaxing my heartbeat to calm while trying to remember how to exhale silently. If Ash knew the terrible things I thought of, if he had any idea of the barrage of feelings that overwhelmed me, I was sure he would hate me for them. I hated me for them. But he had such an unnerving pull on me – like gravity or magnetism or centrifugal force. It was as though I were an asteroid locked in his orbit; I couldn't create enough velocity to break free.

I suspected that if I got too close I would burn up like a meteor.

A clunking roar outside reminded me that life continued – even the mundane life of garbage collection – unconcerned with my little dramas and close calls. The earliest part of dawn was already happening; our drape-less windows showed a sky that was a touch bluer than black. In a few hours Golzine's offices would be open for visitors, and I had to have my camera ready. It was a mundane task, busywork, I suspected, but it had to be done. Just in case today was the day someone important came by.

I inhaled Ash's scent and held it in my lungs, reluctant to end this clandestine closeness I'd contrived. By the time he woke up the memory of his warmth will have faded. He would hold me at arms' length. He would censor his conversation. He would probably be short-tempered and irritable. I had to memorize him like this, looking like the boy I'd gotten so close to over the summer. He was beautiful.

I forced myself away, rolling out of his bed with as little jostling movement as I could manage. While fishing clean clothes from the dresser, I slid my hand beneath the thin stack of t-shirts, searching for and finding the thin plastic bag I had hidden there. In the bathroom I splashed warm water on my face and unbuttoned my pajamas. It seemed silly to bother with the formality of getting dressed, given that I wouldn't be going anyplace again today.

But it was part of the healing process. I remembered my psychiatrist in Tokyo telling me that a daily routine – getting dressed, running, cooking breakfast – was the first step to pulling myself out of depression. Ibé-san had a different point of view; he thought a change in scenery was what was needed. In a way they were probably both right, but neither quite right enough. I pulled the bag out of the bundle of my clothes.

It was filled with white capsules. I didn't know what they were called; I didn't even know the dosage, but they helped. My supply of the little red pills I'd brought from Japan had been left at the hotel where Ibé-san and I were staying before Ash broke parole and we all ran away to his hometown. I didn't even miss them until Shorter died. While I was still seeing his desperate expression and feeling the hot dampness of his blood every time I closed my eyes, Kong figured out that something wasn't balanced right and brought me this sack of pills. He said they would help me get rid of the bad stuff.

I didn't expect a miracle and I didn't get one, but somehow they helped. Kong kept me supplied and he kept his lips sealed. I didn't want Ash to know about this. I had a feeling the pills weren't legal, at least not without a prescription, and even though he obviously structured his life around illegal activity, I was ashamed that I needed them.

I swallowed two and changed clothes. I glanced back into the bedroom at Ash's sleeping form. I always fell short of stable early in the morning, but that morning was somehow worse. Looking at him hurt. I closed my eyes, searching myself for even a shred of perspective.

I didn't want to be anywhere in the world other than right next to Ash, but being with him was unbearable. It wasn't just the things he did, the horrifying things I read about in the Times. It was the way he made me feel. The things he made me want.

"Eiji?" His voice was hoarse and groggy.

"I'm here."

Ash sat up and blinked at me. I flicked off the light in the bathroom, stepping away from the doorway and back into the still-dim bedroom. "Did you have a bad dream?" I asked.

He shook his head; his tousled hair fell over his forehead. "I just woke up," he said faintly, "and I wanted to make sure you were here."

My heart strained in my chest. "There's nowhere for me to go," I whispered. He needed me? Somewhere along the way I'd forgotten that he might.

Ash looked away, shoving his hair out of his eyes. "Yeah, well don't leave the apartment," he reminded me gruffly. "Cops have been kinda uptight and persistent lately."

I felt a smile ease over my face; it felt like a long time since I'd used those muscles. "Go back to sleep," I told him gently. "Everything will be fine until you get up."

He lay down and pulled the blanket over his shoulders. "If you wanna make any of that crap you call food in Japan, I s'pose I could eat it today," he said in a low voice. Sleep was already seeping back into his speech – he sounded like a little boy. I imagined his eyes were already closed, his mind already drifting. "Don' go away, 'kay?"

"I won't. Promise." I crept into the hallway and closed the door to our bedroom, feeling a little better. Maybe it was just the medicine kicking in, but I suspected not.