I put my face up against the window, keep the light out with my hands, and try to see what we are moving through, what kind of place—a suburb, a slum, a farm, a forest, a river. It’s too dark out there, black-dark, but this is not all I’ve come down to— looking and looking and the whole time not seeing a thing. My eyes are open. I drink this stuff in. Something tells me the world is full of magic and I will learn how to love everything in it, except for Novo, because that is the only way to love him, in the end.
My name is Jude, I tell myself, and I let him go, that magic boy, and we are both free.
The lack of him feels as real and as solid as his body beside me once did.
Hello Now, I tell him, wherever you are.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I used to think everything in life was a choice, but love was never a choice for me. Novo arrived, dark and unfathomable in that beginning, like looking over the pier at night and not knowing how far down the water is. And still, somehow I knew him. I knew who he was without even trying, and even though that’s impossible, even though I shouldn’t believe it, that right there is my truth. I could have told you straightaway that Novo wasn’t born like the rest of us, but forged in some mythical foundry out of horses and squid ink and velvet and sail rope and butter and gold. And here he was, contained in that body like a genie in a bottle, looking the lesser flesh-and-blood mortal that was me straight in the eye. A shot glass, a cold blast, a breath of fresh whatever. Novo, Novo, Novo, the perfect name for the one who still wakes up time after time, brand spanking new.
In the end, I could have watched him all day. I could have spent my whole life doing it, gladly, you know? Watching him do the ordinary things that he gilded just by doing them. Novo making a cup of Lapsang tea with honey so that it was the only color, the only level of sweetness and smoke that a cup of tea should ever be, and I could never imagine drinking anything else. His fierce frown, and the way his mouth opened ever so slightly when he thought of something to say, while that something was his still, and he hadn’t given it up yet. He was so definite about everything, so purposeful, so sure. God. His way of holding a glass. Or a knife. Or a pen. I am mad jealous of the things Novo touches now. I envy the air his hands move through when he’s telling a story. Wherever he may be.
Here are three words that don’t even begin to cover it: I miss him. But then I missed him from the moment we met, because even before it started I knew it would have to end. I was certain of that, without having to ask. Just like life, how we all know we’re going to die at some point, but we go ahead and feel the thing anyway, and do our best to make something of it before it runs out, so it’s not for nothing.
Until we find ourselves at another beginning. Another Now.
That first day on the beach, when it had only just begun and was still already on its way to being over. That’s what started it. A roller coaster right at the start—no time for second thoughts, locked in, holding on, paid up for the ride—and quick when you look back. So quick you want to do it all again.
I remember.
“Hello Now.”
And I said, “What?” because all life was so loud in my ears suddenly, I didn’t think I’d heard him right.
“Oh, and look,” he said, smiling, not just at me, but at all of it. “Here’s another Now. Hello to that one too.”
He took that stupid, half-dead, not-even-functioning phone out of my hands and said that instead of pinning it down for later, maybe I should just try being in it for once. He said there was a Forever in every Now, if I was only willing to see it. “You’re missing it, Jude. You’re missing it the whole time.”
And that’s how he nudged me out of the real world and over into that moment, that particular Now, with the tide going out and the birds breaking the surface of the water, and the unrepeatable light and the warmth of us on that cold sand, not touching, not yet, but near enough, and like I said never-ending, already done.
“Hello Now,” Novo said as I moved atom by atom toward him, irreversible, and I said it back, and he said it again and we were like the flat, constant waves then. Hello Now, Hello Now, Hello Now.
Novo
I am in a great room lined with doors. I have no idea how I got here, no memory of the door through which I entered. The room is so long that I can’t see where it ends. I can’t be sure that it does. Each door is identical to the next, and there are so many it will take a lifetime just to count them.
All I can think of is escape.
The first door I try stands over a canyon so deep that I can feel the pull of the fall, the hum of it in the doorframe, the high air pushing against me as I force it closed.
The second door shows me an empty cell just large enough to crawl into, too low for me to sit up, too narrow to turn around, too dark to see.
Through the third I see a room alive with the glint and whistle of flying knives, so many and so effortlessly sharp that anyone passing through it would be cut into fine slices.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth doors open onto solid walls.
The seventh to an explosion.
At the next, a pack of starved dogs lunge at me, their teeth and claws savaging the door’s skin as I slam it, a finger’s width from my face.
Behind other doors flames that burn hot on my skin, a stampede of frightened horses, a floor slick and writhing with a million dying fish.
One door leads to another endless room lined with doors, and I shrink from the sight of it with exhaustion and horror.
Whole days and nights will pass as I open these doors and close them again. Time changes. Even without windows or a view of the world I know that the sun somewhere is rising and setting, and that the moon shows more and then less of its face.
I will grow weak and tired. My clothes will fall from the bones and angles of my body like I just hung them out to dry.
And as my strength fails, I know finally that there is no end to it, no escape, and that all I can do is choose or keep searching.
And the next door moves just before I can touch it, opened from the other side by a gust of air. By something I can’t see.
This is my door. I know it without question.
I go through.
And when it happens, I don’t feel it. I never feel it. I just sleep. And they wash away, the things I’ve held on to, all of them. I let them go, leave them unchanged, and they are clean and new and nothing and then I am back. Never the same place—sometimes the cut and pulse of human traffic, sometimes a vast empty space. Anywhere and Always. The hot bite of dust, a blanket of snow. Soft opening of a morning or deep, sharp night. Sometimes before Now, and during, and also after, just the land holding bodies and the birds rising up over the sea. Square one, in all its different disguises. Always moving. Always alone.
I never forget what I am looking for, over and over, somewhere in that black-hole sleep. The one that keeps me. The one I can keep. My hook. A face at a window, the air in a bubble, a bird in a cage. Consequence. Purpose. Belonging. Your feet in the grass, Jude. Your face at a window. Your hands, your mouth, your smile.