"Professor Dean?"
Tawny opened her eyes from the dazed half-sleep she had fallen into. She was still standing in front of the wall, her hand placed on it, her head turned slightly upward, her back turned toward the door. The watch on her wrist was placed right in front of her to read. 6:59. But it was the familiar voice calling that already told her everything she needed to know.
She turned around, just in time for the guard to unlock the door of her prison cell, with Officer Modesto standing behind him. Without being prompted, she walked toward them and out of the cell.
"Did you have a... good night?" Modesto asked with exaggerated emphasis as he beckoned her toward the hallway.
"Why yes, thank you," she replied calmly and started walking, followed by the officer and the guard.
"Please take a seat," Modesto gestured toward the chair in front of his desk as he took his own seat. Tawny sat down with her back upright, her hands discreetly holding each other on her lap. The guard went out, leaving the two of them alone in the office.
"Coffee?" Modesto offered, taking the coffeepot from his desk with one hand.
"No, thank you," Tawny answered matter-of-factly.
Modesto was already pouring himself a cup. He took his time filling it up with the just right amount he wanted and then took a sip.
"Now," he said, settling into his chair again. "What do you have to say?"
Tawny looked at him for a moment, the same blank expression on her face. "My answer is the same as it was last night, officer," she just said.
Modesto nodded slightly. He looked at her for a little longer, as if giving her a token chance to say more, even though he knew by now what to expect.
"You know, you're just like how I always imagined," he said, with a tinge of irony. "You're one of a kind. It's just too bad you keep digging a bigger and bigger hole for yourself. You keep proving every time that you'll stop at nothing, even as the stakes get higher. And if you're not willing to stop on your own, my job is to stop your brain from functioning for the next 20 years. It's that simple."
He took another routine sip of coffee, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary in what he was telling her. "One of the things I said last night is that you're both the last and the first," he went on. You're the last of your kind, but you're also the first case we've deemed important enough to put to the test, so to speak. The first and the only one, because there's nobody else like you. There's never going to be another Tawny Dean."
The cynical smirk returned to his face. "You should be honored, really," he continued. "We could have just waited for you to end up dead in a ditch, like some of the others. But who needs to kill their opponents if you can control them. And that's what we're after, consent. We want people to keep on living, by all means, but on our terms. And you're going to serve as our living example for that."
Tawny said nothing. Modesto looked at her in silence, as if to let everything sink in. Don't tell me I didn't warn you, he seemed to be telling her. He then rose from his chair, conspicuously refraining from pressing the button under his desk this time.
"After you," he said suggestively, beckoning toward the doorway. Tawny rose from her seat and headed out, followed right behind by Modesto.
Tawny kept walking, with Modesto directing her from behind every now and then to turn left or right. They finally arrived at a long corridor, with two metal doors at the far end of it. The faint inscriptions on them only came gradually into view as they approached. "100" and "101," they read.
"You can stop," Modesto called from behind as they stood five feet away from the two doors. He circled around to her side, looking into her eyes.
"Does this ring any bells, Professor Dean?" he asked in an ominous tone. "Two identical, innocent-looking doors, the only clue being the inscriptions on them. A difference of just one digit separating them. If I let you choose which door to open, which one would you choose?"
Tawny remained silent and motionless, just waiting calmly for him to get on with his little act.
"Humanity is so predictable," the officer sighed, patronizingly. "You know as well as I do. Everyone knows it. All of mankind's nightmares have long been immortalized in the great works of literature. And yet we're all shocked when they come back to us, like a return of the repressed." He made his way toward the door on the right, facing her the whole time.
"Don't you understand, professor?" he said, placing his hand on the handle. "What's inside Room 101 is the worst thing in the world." He then thrust the door open with an abruptly vigorous jerk.
"After you," he said casually, beckoning inside. Tawny walked in without hesitation.
Tawny walked into a spacious, brightly lit room with no windows and a long mirror stretching across one of the four walls. A solitary metal chair stood in the middle of the room, facing the mirror and away from a table right behind it with various cords and gadgets lying on top. She walked up to the chair and then stopped.
"Please take a seat," Modesto directed from behind her.
Tawny sat down with her back upright and placed her arms on the armrests, facing her own image in the mirror. It was the first time she was seeing herself since last night, when she caught a glimpse in the side mirror of their car as they were arriving home. It struck her that her eyes were partly bloodshot and had slightly darkened swellings under them, but the look emanating from them was the same. She remained still, trying to loosen the muscles in her body as much as possible.
Modesto brought a series of thick straps from the table and proceeded to fasten her arms, wrists and heels onto the chair. He went through the motions methodically and dispassionately, observing the look on her face the whole time. Tawny just looked straight ahead, feeling oddly at ease in spite of the restraints being applied to her.
Modesto then produced a series of electric wires and proceeded to connect them to both of her hands. It didn't take much imagination to guess what they were for. As he finished, Tawny glanced down at her hands to find two nodes resembling circular band-aids attached right below the knuckles.
"Welcome to Room 101," the officer announced, now standing in front of her. "What you're about to see on the screen in front of you is your worst nightmare, played out right in front of your eyes."
He looked attentively at her, as if looking for the slightest hint in her facial expressions. But they still remained as blank as the void she was staring into, calmly waiting for the next step and the next order.
He paced behind her again, maintaining eye contact the whole time via the mirror. "It's funny, isn't it," he continued. "So much has changed since the days of Big Brother, but so much has stayed the same. I've said it to you before. We don't need total control over everybody. We don't need to get inside the head of every little individual to find out what their worst personal nightmares are. We don't need to, because the idea of having your eyes eaten up by rats happens to be good enough for us."
Modesto reached behind the electric equipment on the table to reveal a cage, with a sheet of cloth draped over it. He placed the object on the near side of the table close to her and removed the cloth to reveal two rats inside, separated by a partition. They were just like in fiction, a pair of bulky, voracious-looking rodents with menacingly sharp muzzles and brownish fur, fighting among themselves to get at the barrier separating them from the outside.
"I don't need to tell you what it means, do I," he went on, his voice an unchanging monotone. "You're the scholar here. You know about the constant fear of losing one's eyes and how it's linked to the castration complex. From Oedipus to Orwell, one of those permanent tropes haunting our collective unconscious."
Tawny just sat there listening and staring ahead, ready for whatever was going to come. A part of her wanted it to just be over quickly, if this was going to be it. But another part of her held out wondering about all the questions she didn't know the answers to, wondering about Louis.
Modesto stood still and looked at her reflection in the mirror again. He then walked slowly up to the mirror, not taking his eyes off hers the whole time. He turned to face her and took out a switch from his pocket. He turned the switch to reveal a two-way mirror, the image of the two of them in the room suddenly giving way to a view into the room next door. A prisoner was seated on the other side in almost symmetrical fashion, strapped to a metal chair in the middle of the room with a table behind it. He was dressed in an all-white protective suit and his face covered by a metal cage attached to it, but she immediately knew there was only one person it could possibly be.
"It's simple," the officer went on, in his same methodical tone. "For you, the worst thing in the world is if it happens to your husband. Your greatest love, your most precious thing in the world. It would destroy you more than any kind of physical pain. Seeing it happen right before your eyes, powerless to do anything about it, and then living the rest of your life with the consequences. That's the worst thing that could ever happen to you, isn't it. And it's about to happen right now, with the click of a button. So sit back and relax, professor. You're at the movies, sitting in front of the big screen, and there's nothing else for you to do." He raised his hand toward the switch, the same intent look in his eyes, not even losing a moment to flash a contemptuous smirk.
A flurry of thoughts whizzed through Tawny's head, the distress signals blaring full blast. There was no time to think about what it all meant, just a matter of split seconds to do something, anything, and it couldn't be more obvious what. She knew there was only one thing she could do, only one body she could thrust between herself and the ultimate horror.
"Do it to me," she blurted out. "Do it to me. Do it to me, and just let him go."
She had said it three times, as if just for good measure, and every time, it had come out more calmly, more evenly. She just sat there, looking her captor straight in the eye. For the first time since getting here, she could feel her heart racing, as if a switch inside had gone off. She had done it, finally taken that step, but now everything depended on what the opposing move was going to be.
Modesto stood still with his eyes locked on hers, his other hand still raised up to the switch. "I'd be careful what you wish for," he said, somewhat quizzically, and then walked out of the room.
Tawny sat there, her eyes locked to the other side of the mirror. The figure in the white suit sat there motionless, the calm, upright pose mirroring hers, the cage still attached to the head. She knew it was Louis in there, even though she had no way of making out his physical appearance. She knew it because her instinct told her so, because she knew him better than anyone else and could practically recognize him in her sleep. It had been a few minutes now since Modesto had gone out, but nothing had happened yet, at least not for her to see.
She then saw Modesto appear in the adjacent room and walk up to Louis. The officer took hold of the cage and removed it, revealing more of the white protective suit that completely covered over Louis's face beyond view. As if on cue, the view on the mirror switched again, showing just the reflection of herself and the room she was sitting in. She quietly let out a deep breath, seeing the danger averted for now, at least to the extent that she could see for herself.
She sat there looking at her reflection in the mirror, waiting. Of all the reflections of herself she had ever seen, this one was somehow different. It was still the same face, the same gaze, the same look in her eyes, but boiling inside with a surplus meaning that the mirror, with all its trickery, couldn't contain. She had said those words without hesitation, with no doubt in her mind about what she was setting out to do. This was the outcome she had been willing to accept all along, and yet it left her with an odd feeling of emptiness that she herself couldn't explain.
The cage of rats was lying on the table right behind her the whole time, right where Modesto had left it. The rats kept moving about restlessly inside their cage, growing more and more impatient. Tawny let out an inner sigh. Behind that look of cold stoicism in the mirror, she could almost see the inner conflict brewing, a part of her trying to come to terms with her own selfishness by feeling sorry. Sorry to Louis, her parents, everyone she knew she was going to hurt by doing what she was about to do. It had been her choice to let it get this far, by refusing to budge until the stakes had gotten too high. It had been her selfish choice in the end, but those who loved her for who she was knew she wasn't going to act any differently, and all she could hope for was that this knowledge would mitigate as much as possible the pain she was about to cause them.
The door finally opened and Modesto walked back in. He strolled up to the table, almost casually, and put on a pair of gloves. "So this is what it's come to," he mused. He looked up at the mirror and into her eyes. "The kind of things you would do for love. You'd do anything for him, wouldn't you? Even though you can't even know for sure that he's the one sitting there."
He rested his fists on the table and leaned in slightly, speaking from right behind her, their eyes still locked in the mirror. "Every great intellectual has an irrational weakness," he sighed. "That's what it is, irrational. You'd give up everything even if there was just a 0.1% chance that it's actually him in there. You'd give up your own life, even though you know how much that would destroy him."
A patronizing smirk appeared on his face. "He must have told you so many times how you mean the world to him," he went on. "How he'd be nothing without you. It's not hard to guess, really. We've gone all the way back to your junior high records. He was the little troublemaker who even got you in detention from time to time, and you were the beautiful soul, the artist and the poet who changed everything for him. It's like something straight out of a fairy tale, isn't it. I didn't even think Disney wrote storylines like that nowadays."
Tawny just kept staring blankly back at him in the mirror. For all the melodrama, he was playing to her weaknesses with ruthless efficiency, even if it was going to take more than just that.
"It's too bad we're not on Disney Channel anymore," Modesto said. "Let's not be kidding ourselves. You're never going to see him again with your own eyes. And you're never going to stop hearing him blame himself for it, for the rest of your days. So much for love, eh?"
He finally took hold of the object in front of him. The rats jumped up in anticipation as the cage holding them was lifted from the table. He brought the cage up to her face and turned it around to reveal the mask-like opening designed to fit around her eyes. Such a simple construction it was, just like in fiction.
He stopped again for a moment, with the mask a matter of inches away from her face. "I've never seen two eyes quite like yours," he mused, taking another good look. "So full of mysterious energy, the piercing look in those eyes. You won't even be half the person without them."
Tawny said nothing. She could feel herself suppressing the slightest smile, a smile she herself couldn't explain. It was the touch of finality in his voice, signaling that this really was it. It was the knowing smile of the condemned at the executioner, the knowledge that there was nothing he could do now to disturb her inner peace.
Modesto attached the cage to her face, the mask fitting just right onto her eyes, and fastened the band holding the device together around her head. All that remained now was for the lever to be raised. All she could see in front of her now was the partition separating her eyes from the rodents waiting restlessly on the other side.
Louis, she spoke in absolute silence. Louis, everything's going to be okay. I promise. She just sat there and waited, her eyes closed shut.
Tawny was lying on her back next to Louis on an endless green field, gazing up at the starry night sky stretched out in all directions above them. The stars had never felt so close as they did now, almost as if they could fall from the sky and crash into the earth any minute, the beauty of their faraway light morphing into the most wanton destruction. And the more they seemed to inch closer, the more she felt drawn to the light, even if it might be the last thing she would ever see. She could feel the strangest urge to just close her eyes and surrender herself to the unstoppable force headed toward them, trusting that somehow, somewhere, the two of them were going to end up in one piece, together, in a world only they could ever know, reserved for them in a special corner of the universe.
She looked over to Louis, making him look back at her in turn. He just smiled, making her smile back at him, until it suddenly dawned on her. She looked intently into his eyes, the blank expression on her face trying to tell him a thousand things at once. She was imploring him to go, to leave her there alone, promising to come find him afterwards. And he understood, as he always did, as she knew he would. She smiled again and closed her eyes, reaching out and taking hold of his hand just in time for it to dissolve into hers and melt away, little by little. She could feel him as close to her as ever just as he was pulling away, away from this little patch of earth below the stars where she needed to be all by herself for just long enough until it was all over.
She kept her eyes shut as it all came closing in. But she wasn't alone, a hostile presence making itself felt next to her, refusing to turn away. She was still waiting, strapped to the chair in front of the table and facing the mirror, the officer standing next to her with his hand poised on the lever.
"Don't you ever get afraid of... anything?" Modesto was asking her, in a suggestive tone.
"Just get on with it," Tawny answered, a touch of impatience in her voice. Her body was absolutely still, almost floating in a state of suspension, but her mind lingered behind as it recognized the distinct familiarity of those words, recalling, just for a split second, the conversation in the car the other day. She could feel herself scrambling to take control of the memory of that day as it flashed by in the moment of danger, refusing to let it hold her back just when she had taken the leap.
There was a screeching noise and everything blacked out into darkness.
Tawny lost track of time as she remained seated on that chair, her body remaining motionless the whole time. It might have been minutes, hours, or just a split second. But it didn't matter. She knew that something wasn't right, that somewhere, something in the cosmic order of things hadn't gone her way. She tried to recover her bodily senses and put herself back together, bit by bit, as she had done so many times before. But as her arms, legs, mouth, and everything else fell back into place, one by one, she found herself desperately trying to keep her eyes locked in that state of suspension, as if not wanting to face the reality until it would be forced upon her like a yoke around her neck.
Just then, she could feel the cage being lifted from her face, the darkness giving way to a hostile light. She opened her eyes to find Modesto staring intently at her, a smile on his lips that told her everything. He was smiling at the sight of her eyes squinting before the light, those eyes that otherwise seemed so full of energy and assurance. It was the sight of those eyes being forced open into a reality they didn't want to be in, with no way out in sight.
He took the cage in his hands and then circled behind her, putting it down with a slight thud on the table, the rats still jumping around inside it in frustrated anticipation. She looked up into the mirror, her eyes still struggling to adjust to the light. It couldn't be, she thought to herself. But it was, and there was no closing her eyes to the reality of what had just happened.
"You really are something else entirely," the officer announced in a low tone, looking intently at her in the mirror. "You should have seen your face the whole time. Let's just say I don't think there's ever been a happier prisoner in the history of Room 101."
He then took the switch out of his pocket and turned it, the mirror again giving way to a view into the adjacent room. It was Louis again, strapped to the chair in the middle, dressed in the white protective suit, but this time without the cover over his head. It was Louis with his face in plain view, the look on it ever so calm, as if trying to mirror hers even though she knew he couldn't see her. The look sent an instant flash of despair all the way down to her innards as she realized what it all meant. A guard on the other side walked up and attached the cage onto his head, blocking it from view once again.
"You're not afraid of anything, are you," Modesto went on. "At least not for yourself. The only thing you're afraid of is what might happen to your husband. It's that simple." The knowing, cynical smirk returned to his face. "You'd rather have your eyes eaten alive than use them to see it happen to him. You'd rather have all the pain in the world inflicted on yourself instead of seeing it done to him. It's touching, really. But we happen to have just the right kind of punishment even for you."
Tawny blinked her eyes in quick succession, her heartbeat starting to race. This can't be happening, she thought to herself. She would have given anything, at least from her own flesh and blood, for it to not happen. But it was too late now, because she had already given herself away in the absurdest, most reckless way possible.
The smirk on Modesto's face only kept getting deeper as he read the look of desperation showing itself, if only ever so slightly, on her face. It was game over, and there was only one thing left for him to do.
He took one more look at her as he shifted his fingers onto the switch. "You should have compromised when you had the chance," he said in a low tone. "You don't have anyone to blame except yourself."
Modesto pressed the button. A click sounded on the other side, the silence so intense that the slightest click could be heard like a thud across the two-way mirror. Tawny just wanted to scream and try to wrestle herself away from the chair, even though she knew it was no use. But her eyes, her mouth, the rest of her body froze into place as she beheld the man she loved just sitting still as the blood streamed ever so slowly down his face. Nothing came from the other side, just absolute silence. No Louis scream, none of the child-like instinctive reaction to pain that any human being would have been making in that situation.
Tawny bit her lip, her jaw beginning to tremble. The tears forced themselves down ever so tortuously down her cheek, as if trying to mirror the thick riverlets of blood flowing down his. It was the most intense kind of pain ever, as if pieces of her heart were being ripped out one by one, only for them to grow back and go through the same torture all over again. It was the sight of Louis putting himself through it all with such unspeakable stoicism, as if resigned to his fate even though it was all her doing instead of his.
Her eyes filled with water, the view in front of her starting to blur into a foggy storm. But she couldn't bear to close her eyes, struggling instead to keep them open. A desperate survival instinct kicked in, the bonds and wires attached to her suddenly reminding her of her own vulnerability and the futility of trying to wrestle with them. Her duty to Louis now was to stay alive and in one piece as much as possible, to live to tell the truth of what happened here and not, for even a second, take her eyes off it.
She blinked her eyes in quick succession, fighting off the burning sensation of those tears. Louis just kept sitting motionlessly on that chair, as if was the same scene playing itself over and over, in tortuous succession. The blood dripped slowly off his face and onto the floor, the mask hiding everything else from view. Why, she thought to herself. Why did he have to be the one suffering for all the things she had done. But there was no answer and there couldn't be. That was not least what this whole torture was about, and confronting the reality of it was the first step that needed to be taken.
As if on cue, the guard on the other side finally made his way toward the chair. He removed the cage from Louis's face to reveal the mutilated, blood-soaked remains of his eyes, just long enough to etch themselves like a sharp needle into her memory, before Modesto turned the switch again with one click.
Modesto, who had been observing her the whole time, now paced in front of her as the mirror switched gears, forcing himself into her field of vision. He was looking intently into her eyes, deep in observation, without even a hint of triumphalism.
"He's going to be treated with antibiotics," he finally said, as matter-of-factly as ever. "After that it's up to you to take him home and live with the consequences, for the rest of your lives." He paused, as if to let all that sink in.
"It's time for your lunch," he announced. "You're a vegetarian, yes?"
Tawny didn't respond, but the officer wasn't waiting for her to. He walked out of the room, leaving her alone to stare at the reflection of her tear-splattered face in the mirror.
Tawny sat there in the waiting room, her forehead buried in both hands. How could she have been so foolish, she thought to herself. How preventable it had all been, at every step along the way. How she wished she had done something, anything, with the cage attached to her face, when she still had the chance. She could have at least pretended to be scared, or whatever else it took in that situation. All those years of theater in school, and she couldn't even put up a good act when it mattered. All those minutes, maybe even hours, of sitting there calmly with a poker face on, and she had still let him get inside her head and identify her weakest spot. The problem was that she was an open book, at least for those who knew how to read her, and her poker face had been her real one the whole time, laid as bare as ever to view.
For perhaps the first time in her life, she felt like an abject failure. She had failed at things countless times, of course, but she could always try again and again. But now, Louis's life was ruined and his eyesight gone, forever. There was no way to redeem it now. She had failed him, just when it mattered most. Worst of all, it was her entire life that had been building up to this failure, one single catastrophe where she had only seen an indeterminate chain of events. It was the way she had always lived her life, the things she believed in, the things the two of them had been promising each other over the years. Room 101 was exactly the kind of scenario where they knew they could place their unconditional trust in one another. And it wasn't supposed to end like it did in fiction, for the simple reason that they weren't Winston and Julia, but Louis and Tawny. They had a history, a memory, that went well beyond the darkness of the present and enabled both of them to know the other inside out, better than anyone else, better than any authoritarian state machinery ever could. They had a past they could always believe in, a past that, in each of its moments, they believed would be redeemed by the future.
Worst of all, she knew that she had been tempting fate the whole time. She had been tempting fate by believing too much in herself and pushing herself to the edge, up to the point where she knew she would have to jump off. She had been believing too much in her own ability to step in when it mattered, when push came to shove. She had been putting his life at risk while believing she could compensate for it with her own, and it was something she knew she would never be able to forgive herself for.
She looked up as the door opened and Modesto began walking toward her. He stopped as he stood just several inches in front of her, glancing down at the untouched plate of spaghetti and glass of water resting on the metal tray.
"Looks like it's time to say goodbye," he announced, in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's been an honor, Professor Dean."
Tawny rose slowly to her feet, looking him in the eye, her hands at her sides. He offered his hand for a handshake, but she ignored it. His lips turned into an unabashed smirk.
"Not that it matters now," the officer continued. "But my name isn't actually Modesto. But it is where your mother comes from, I believe. You used to go there with your parents every summer, isn't that right?"
She just stared at him, unfazed. There was little point in assuming they knew anything short of everything about her. That much had already been clear from the beginning.
Modesto, or whatever his actual name was, let out a slight chuckle. "I wonder what you were like as a little child," he mused. "You must have been so different from the rest of us. But I guess it'll have to remain a mystery. We still don't know anything about your childhood before the age of six. There's just nothing on it. Nada."
He turned his head, leaving those words tantalizingly hanging as the door opened and another officer stood waiting at the doorway. Modesto turned back to face Tawny, as if for one last time.
"Just remember," he said in a low tone. "We know what you're up to. We can come for you again anytime, both you and your husband."
He kept his eyes locked onto hers as he began stepping away, before finally turning and giving the other officer a nod. It took just two seconds for another figure to appear in the doorway, a pair of thick sunglasses placed where his eyes would have been.
Tawny quickly walked up to him, even though he, too, was walking slowly toward her. She held back just as she stood in front of him and put her arms ever so delicately around him, her cheek pressing against his. Her words failed her as she fought back the tears, knowing that he immediately knew all the same that it was her.
"Louis, it's me," she finally whispered into his ear.
"Tawny," Louis whispered back, with an unfathomable depth to his voice. "Are you alright?"
Tawny winced slightly as she struggled to process that simple question, not knowing what to say. It was as if her entire faculty of speech was paralyzed, unable to cope with a situation that was too much for words.
"Louis," she managed to utter the one name, the one word she never had difficulty pronouncing. "Let's go home, okay?"
She slowly drew back from the embrace, looking at his face from close up. He nodded ever so slightly. She slid her right hand down his left arm and took hold of his hand, ever so gradually and delicately, letting him feel the simple motion in its entirety. She then turned just as Modesto gestured toward the exit for them, standing and observing from a distance.
"You take good care of him," the officer called out, without a tinge of irony.
Tawny walked out with her hand firmly grasping Louis's, her face burning with too many emotions all at once. She tried not to think about anything else but how to get home. They walked through a brightly lit hallway and then stopped at the entranceway as their personal belongings were handed back to them. Both their cellphones were, predictably enough, out of battery. Tawny put her watch back on her wrist, the one that had been taken away earlier that morning. It was two o'clock now in the middle of afternoon, unless the watch had been tampered with or was playing tricks on her.
They walked out a series of doors, the last one finally leading to the outside. As the two of them stepped out, they were greeted by sunlight, the same sunlight that now felt like an eternity ago. Tawny looked around, trying to find her bearings. This clearly wasn't the entrance they had been led through last night, but none of that mattered now. They were on the outskirts of town, good enough to have a chance at catching a cab nearby if they got lucky.
Tawny started walking, her hand still firmly grasping Louis's, even though she had no idea where. Just follow the main road until a bus stop or a taxi stand comes up, she thought to herself. She felt the urge to just keep moving and get out of the area, however much she felt like an idiot for it. She still didn't say a word, quietly hoping that her steady pace answered his question as much as it could, telling him that she was fine physically and doing what she could to get them on their way home.
Tawny spotted a taxi cab coming in the direction of traffic and went over to the edge of the road to flag it down. She let out a sigh of relief as the vehicle pulled over. "We're going to take the taxi home, okay?" she whispered to him as they walked up. It pained her to say those words, just the mere fact of having to say them. She always liked to say certain things to him just for the pleasure of being able to say them, even when he didn't need her to because he already knew.
The driver kept glancing at them in the rear-view mirror as they drove off. Tawny kept her hand discreetly holding onto Louis's, looking toward him every now and then. She could imagine the driver's perplexity at the absurd sight of a blind man accompanied by a woman with bloodshot eyes and a haggard but expressionless face as if nothing had happened. If only he could know, she thought to herself, gazing out the window. If only they could all know and believe all the things that had happened in the last fifteen or so hours. It was the stuff of fantasy, an outlandish story that only the most perverse of minds could have drawn up. The officer with the fake name, the psycho-tricks, the setup in Room 101 – it was all about getting at her, and yet in the end, it was Louis who had to make the ultimate sacrifice and go through the kind of primitive torture that defied even the wildest imaginations of contemporary American prisons. All they were left with now was the truth of what actually happened, but it wasn't going to be easy finding anyone who would believe it.
Tawny took note of the streets they passed by, trying to reconstruct the path back to where they had come from, as much as it probably wasn't even going to matter. There was nothing about it that needed to be hidden, except for the one or two rooms safely tucked away in the corner of that police complex and the hardly believable story that unfolded there. Nothing else about it was an especially compromising revelation on a regime that preached national unity and always seemed to get away with claiming to do whatever it took to safeguard it. At the end of the day, there wasn't anything that the people going about their daily business outside didn't already know.
She squeezed Louis's hand more tightly as they finally approached their home. He looked toward her, an uncannily knowing, penetrating look through those thick shades. It was always the same look, with or without the shades, the same something in it that was now tormenting her just as it could normally fill her so easily with joy.
"Thank you," she said to the driver as she paid up. She placed her hand on Louis's hand and then got out, before helping him out of the car. She then took his hand in hers and started walking. Her head started buzzing with all the things she needed to tell him before going inside, like the fact that their apartment, car, everything else was probably bugged. But she somehow couldn't bring herself to speak and just kept on walking, as if trying to at least keep up appearances if nothing else.
They walked up the stairs, Tawny just looking straight ahead and avoiding eye contact with Louis. The tears started flowing again down her cheek, silently, though she sensed he knew it all the same. She tried to keep her pace as even as possible but could now feel it speeding up ever so slightly, enough for both of them to notice, having internalized the same motions so many times.
She finally opened the door and let Louis inside ahead of her, holding onto his arms on both sides. As she stood there behind him, seeing everything just as they had left it, she suddenly realized she had no idea what to do, where to begin. She dropped to the floor, running her hand down his arm along the way, and started untying his shoelaces for him. The tears streamed down her face as her fingers moved vigorously through the laces, trying to finish doing at least this one little thing for him before she broke down completely. But her tears moved too fast, falling in droplets onto his feet just as she finished removing the shoes off them.
"Louis," she whispered as she grasped at his legs and finally wrapped her arms around them in a desperate embrace. "Louis..." Her voice drowned away in her tears as she gasped for breath. He lowered himself gingerly to his knees on the floor, breaking away from her embrace just enough before putting his arms around her, knowing exactly where she was in front of him.
"Louis," she started again in between her tears, grasping at him tightly and desperately, her words failing her again. She felt utterly incapacitated, like a little baby realizing for the first time that she had to express herself in words but not knowing how.
"Tawny," Louis whispered in her ear. "It's okay." There was an unfathomable depth to his voice, an infinitude that somehow wasn't from this world. He felt her delicately, his hands moving across her back and onto her shoulders and neck, as if trying to feel her ever so familiar presence in its wholeness. She could feel a smile forming on his cheek right next to hers, etching itself onto the skin on her face.
"Tawny," he whispered again. "Will you dance with me?" Before she could answer, he had raised himself to his feet, and her along with him, sliding his hands down her arms and into her hands. She looked at him for a moment in disbelief, the pitch black of his shades telling him nothing and everything at once.
"Okay," she just whispered back, almost without even realizing. She suddenly wanted nothing but to surrender herself to the graceful touch of his hands and voice, guiding her ever so gently along and freeing her from her paralysis, one step at a time. It was always the same voice, the same warmth, the same unmistakable touch that was always there, no matter what else was or wasn't also there.
"Just a moment." Tawny gently extricated one of her hands from his and walked both of them over to the counter of their living room, taking hold of the remote control for the stereo. She turned on track number one and put it on repeat. It was the rumba song they both knew so well, the first song they had ever danced to together many years ago.
Tawny positioned herself behind Louis and placed her hands on his shoulders as the song began. He swung around and took both of her hands in his, the two of them now facing each other, as the music transitioned. They both knew every step by heart, without even having to look at each other. After all these years, it was still the same one, the same tune they had danced to at Zach Estrada's house party back in seventh grade. Their arms and legs moved in perfect unison, not missing a single beat as the music flowed ineluctably, oblivious of everything else around them.
Tawny closed her eyes as the song started over from the beginning. The sweet melody and the graceful interplay of their motions merged into the darkness in front of her, and the darkness eventually into light, as it always did. It was like they were dancing on air, the only thing holding them up the unsinkable force of their interlocking hands.
She kept her eyes shut, the tears flowing again down her cheek. This time, they were tears of the pain being slowly overcome, being dowsed in a feeling that was beyond words. How many times they had danced to this tune ever since that day, how many times they had managed to find delight in it, every single time, over and over.
"Tawny," Louis whispered gently in front of her. This time, it was a different depth that emanated from it, signaling a transition. Their hands and feet kept moving in lockstep, the words starting to flow seamlessly through the gaps between them.
"They told me you betrayed me," he whispered into her ear, the words hitting her like an electric shock in between the music. "They told me they placed the same cage on your head, and you begged them to do it to me instead. But I knew it wasn't true, Tawny. I know you inside out, better than anybody else. You begged them to do it to you instead, didn't you. But they didn't let it happen."
"Louis..." Her voice came out as a whisper and then dissipated in her tears. Her hands and feet stopped in their tracks and she placed her arms around him, clutching him tightly as the two of them stood still in the middle of the dance floor. She almost wanted to not tell him the truth, just to make him realize that there was nothing great about what she had done.
"You were too strong for them. They knew they couldn't lay a finger on you. You offered to give yourself up, but they knew the only way they could hurt you was by hurting me instead."
"Louis, I tried." And I failed. She knew she wanted to say those words, but they somehow wouldn't come out.
"You're an angel, Tawny."
"What?" she whispered in disbelief.
"You're an angel." Hearing those words twice just multiplied her pain, even though she had been the one asking for it. Louis went on, his voice full of assurance. "This is how I've always known you. Always willing to sacrifice yourself, out of pure love. This is how you've always been. But God couldn't let it happen to you this time, because He needs you for so many other things."
"Louis... Stop." The tears gushed out of Tawny's eyes. She closed her eyes and put her arms more tightly around him, almost as if to stem the words coming out of his mouth. Louis, listen to me, she wanted to say. But her words failed her, drowning in her tears before she could even begin to say them. If only she could make him see, just look into the mirror, and realize that he was the one who had made the ultimate sacrifice, not her.
"Tawny." Louis's whisper sounded ever so confidently, almost as if taunting her own inability to speak. "I could see everything." His voice had the ominously contemplative tone of an old man on his deathbed, ever so calm and knowing. "Just as they took my eyes out, I could see everything laid out in front of me. One long chain of events. The first time our eyes met, when I was lying flat on my back on the school lawn that day, and looked up to find an angel standing right there. You were the first person in my life I looked up to. You were everything I could have ever asked for, all in one person."
Tawny kept her eyes shut and just listened, the tears no longer flowing, her arms no longer trying to resist.
"And it's incredible to think how you could love me so much, of all people. It's incredible to think anybody like you could ever exist. It's like my life has just been one long fairy tale, and what happened today only proved it. All the sacrifices you were always ready to make, just so that we could be together. Like that one time, back in eighth grade, when you chose not to go to SACCY..."
Louis's voice finally cracked slightly and came to a stop. But she could feel his lips forging themselves into a smile, full of conviction.
"I made a promise to myself that day, Tawny. I promised myself I would never make you make a sacrifice like that again. I promised myself I wouldn't be the one holding you down, but following you up, wherever you went. And so we made it to college together, and I got a job while you went to grad school. It's my proudest accomplishment, being at your side with every step instead of getting in your way. And as I sat there with that metal cage on, I was at absolute peace with myself, knowing that you weren't the one having to make the sacrifice. I was only doing what I could to be worthy of you."
Tawny winced in pain, the tears coming back out, this time in thick droplets. It was the strangest kind of pain ever, producing an intensely burning sensation that gnawed away at her heart.
"How can you say that, Louis?" she finally said, letting out a weak whisper.
"Because it's true, isn't it?"
Tawny let out a sigh. The numbing pain inside kept getting bigger and bigger, and with it the sheer scale of everything she had done and was now responsible for.
She swallowed and managed to put her words together. "An angel would have never asked you to make a sacrifice like that," she whispered into his ear. "Or put you in all that danger in the first place."
"It was my decision to follow you all the way there, Tawny." His voice came out ever so calmly, ever so confidently. "And you were still willing to give yourself up to save me from my own actions. You went to almost divine lengths to keep me out of harm's way."
"Louis..." Her words were failing her again, unable to produce anything but the helpless gesture of imploring him to just stop.
"Tawny, it's okay." Louis ran his hand gently across her neck and onto her shoulder. He felt her shoulder ever so delicately, feeling the pattern of her bones that he knew down to the last detail.
"The beauty of it all is that I've never expected too much from you," he said. "I know you're not an angel with actual wings. I know you're made of flesh and bone, just like everybody else. There's no science fiction about it. No superhero capes. There's no secret to your strength except the endless love and wisdom human beings are capable of. If angels existed among us, this is how I'd want them to be like."
Tawny remained still, trying to fathom what he was saying but finding herself unable to. The depth in his voice kept drawing her in, into a world and an abyss she wasn't ready to confront.
"I know it's just fantasy," he continued, full of assurance. "But we can never truly escape fantasy, right? You're the one who taught me that. I know the fantasy is just covering up the void, helping me make sense of a world that I wouldn't understand otherwise. And now, after all that's happened, it makes every sense in the world."
"Louis," she finally said. "I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to, Tawny," he replied, his voice full of assurance. "You don't have to know. All you have to do is just be what you are. And I'll always be the luckiest guy on the face of the earth."
She closed her eyes, not knowing what to say. It was all too much. It was somehow all too much, but something had to be done. Everything hinged now on somehow channeling all this excess energy into believing that something could be done, for him and the two of them, before it might be too late.
She kept her eyes shut and took a deep breath.
Tawny glanced at her watch. It was already seven o'clock. They were sitting on the floor of their living room, their backs against the counter, contemplating and staring into space. At some point, the music had stopped, leaving them with an empty silence and the knowledge of each other's presence, in spite of everything else.
She placed her hand over Louis's and gently ran it up toward his forearm, as if to let him know that she was still there, even though he already knew. She then reached across the counter for the remote and turned on another track from their audio player. She took her phone from where it had been charging on the counter and took a deep breath. She had no desire to look through all the e-mails she had missed since last night, but she knew that she had to, sooner or later.
She opened her inbox and went through the unread messages. There were so many of them, but her eyes guided her instinctively to the one that mattered most. She skimmed through the e-mail and then read it more carefully one more time. Somehow, there was nothing about it that surprised her, except maybe her own failure to be surprised by it.
"Louis," she finally said. "I've been suspended from the university."
"What?" he whispered in disbelief, barely audible between the music.
"They say I missed an important faculty meeting today, and then didn't show up for class without any kind of notice. I mean, it's true," she added, almost nonchalantly.
"Fucking bastards," he snapped under his breath, his eyebrows curling in anger. She looked at him for a moment, slightly surprised at the intensity of his reaction to this piece of news, of all the things that had happened to them since last night.
"Look, it's okay," she said, placing her hand again over his. "I'm going to stay right here and take care of you."
"Tawny, listen to me," he replied, putting his hand on top of hers. "I want you to find a way to get back at all the bastards who did this to you, and to me. I want you to tell the world about everything that happened since last night. I know you can. You, of all people, can do it better than anybody." He bit his lip. "And don't worry about the consequences. There's nothing more they can do to me after all that's happened. I'm telling you right now that what matters to me most is you getting the truth out as soon as possible."
Tawny locked her eyes onto his, letting those words sink in. It was obvious what she had to do in this situation, and all it took was for him to say it. He was giving her a blank check to fill out, with all the implications it had.
"I promise you, Louis," she finally said. "I promise you I'll find a way."
Louis nodded, the intensity giving way to assurance. How easy he could make things sometimes, even with the hard part still to be done. All she had to do now was get going, with no time to lose.
"I'm going to go make dinner, okay?" she said, running her hand up to his forearm.
He nodded again and smiled slightly. "Thanks, Tawny."
Tawny led Louis to their bedroom, holding onto his arms from behind with both hands. She looked down at their feet as they walked slowly in unison, trying to feel the magic of every step along the way. Her long white nightgown stretched down to her bare feet as they marched along silently. She stopped as they reached the bed and helped him onto his back, just enough for him feel his way through the rest.
She knelt down on the floor next to the bed and took his hand with both of hers. She placed her forehead gently against his, trying to let him know she was there as much as possible, and closed her eyes shut. How she wished she could just give him her eyes, turn the vision in her eyes into his. How she wished she could have done something, anything, so that he didn't have to go through what he did. But it was no use wishing now, with all the work still left to be done.
"Good night, my love," she whispered ever so softly. Louis inhaled deeply but didn't say anything. She remained in that position for a moment, her eyes still shut. There was only one thing she had set her mind on doing that night, as much as she wished she could just stay there with him and not think of being anywhere else. She opened her eyes, slowly extricated her hands from Louis's and rose to her feet.
She made her way out of the room and toward the study, as quietly as she had come in. She sat down in front of her computer and took a deep breath. How many times she had been here late at night, working on something that had to get done before dawn broke. All she had to do now was do it one more time, coax one more night's work out of herself after having barely slept the night before. Maybe this was the only possible way to do it, almost as if parts of it might get lost if she allowed herself to sleep. The last 24 hours had been one long trek through darkness, and all she had to do now was put everything into words and send it on its way to the outside world, using the one contact she had in the international press just when she needed it most.
She buried her eyes in her hands, trying to think. It was an impossible task, setting out not only to describe the indescribable, but redeem the unredeemable. This was about trying to find some kind of meaning in the most mind-numbing horror there was, to salvage the hope that all the things that had happened somehow weren't in vain. This was about making the story not just be about two people and their problems, but a wider political struggle that was only beginning, even though there was ultimately no deeper meaning to Louis's suffering and couldn't possibly be. Her job now was somehow to construct that something out of nothing, the stuff of fantasy that this whole story had already been to begin with. That was all it was going to take. No more, no less.
She opened her eyes again to find the blank Word doc in front of her, the cursor flickering invitingly with the same incessant blink.
She started typing, the words finally starting to flow.