Those Same Stars.

They laid on top of the sanatorium that night. The stars spiralled above them, lighting up their faces with the hope of an infinite future. The hope of a fate that stood in their favour, untarnished by the wickedness of human nature.

“The stars are out tonight.” She said. “The stars haven’t come out in a while now.”

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“What with the smoke from the forest fires and everything. Not to mention what all these big companies are doing to the air around here.” She sighed. “It’s a damn shame to be living in a place that used to be known for its clean air, and to be breathing in tar now. I reckon my lungs are about as bad as my mother’s by now - and she used to be a smoker.”

“What does clean air have to do with the stars being out?” He asked.

“Bad air affects the visibility of the stars.”

“But they are still out.” He said.

“Yes, but we can’t see them.” She responded.

“Why do you need to? The stars are still there whether you look at them or not. Their shine doesn’t depend on our attention.” She felt his irritation radiating around her - tainting that air too. “Things don’t need to be noticed by you in order for them to exist. I would still be a person if I hadn’t known you - same goes for you.”

“I know, I know I wasn’t saying that. It’s just…” She paused for a moment. “They’re just nice to look at, is all.”

“You get lost looking at the stars, Eve.” He said. “You know that. Life is lived down on the ground.”

“Your life is down on the ground.” She said. “Mine is in here, in this God-damned building we’re laying on. You can do whatever you please - I have people telling me what to do - I have a curfew, I have meals to eat, pills to take. You don’t have any of that.”

“I’m trapped too!” He said. “God knows I am.”

“Oh yeah? Doing what?” She asked.

“Well, working, first off. I’ve been working day and night, trying to build something for us, for when you’re able to come back. And let me remind you, that that was supposed to be three years ago. Our daughter misses her mom.”

“You’re saying that as if it’s my fault.” Eve rolled over to look him in the eyes. She herself had nearly blue eyebags, and big lips - chapped as they were. Her black hair hung from her head and brushed against his neck. He was still laying on his back, looking at the stars; but his thoughts ran deep into his mind, deep into some certain wild and primal parts which he had not accessed before, for he was normally a man of logic. He laid silent for a few minutes.

“Sometimes I think you like it here, Eve.” He said.

“You know I would much rather be at home with you and Tay. You know this, Raymond.”

“Then why did you want to spend the night here?” He asked. “We could have done anything, gone anywhere. They gave you twenty-four hours to do whatever you wanted, and you chose to spend them here.”

“With you though!” She said.

“So what if it was with me, Eve? Hell, we could have been in Oregon by now. You, me, Tay, all three of us. You didn’t need to stay here.”

“But they trusted me to!” She said. “And they said that they can keep trusting me, then by next year’s anniversary, they’ll give me two days!”

“Don’t you understand? If we’d gone, we never would have had to worry about that again. The three of us could have just found our way around wherever. The world, it doesn’t matter. We’re a family, we’re supposed to stick together, Eve.”

“Are you forgetting why I’m here, Raymond?” She asked. “I could not bear putting you and Tay through that again. Your happiness should not depend on mine.”

“It sounds easy when you say it out loud.” He chuckled. “But putting it into practice is not. My happiness has depended on yours ever since we met.”

“That was your first mistake, love.” She said. She laid on her back again, and looked up. The stars had not moved.

“Any other mistakes you think I’ve made?” He asked.

“Hmm…” She said. “Do you remember the vineyard?”

“Of course I do.” He turned to face her now. Raymond had a plain face. A plain haircut, with plain brown eyes, and a nose that was crooked from a fight he’d had in highschool. “It was the night you taught me how to drive stick, and I hydroplaned. We just ended up in that random guy’s field.”

“And there were acres upon acres of grapevines.” She said, closing her eyes. “What did we do afterwards?”

“Well -” He put his palm on her chest. “The engine came to a stop, but the music and headlights were still on. You remember the song that was playing on the radio, right?”

“Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd.” She said with a smile.

“And you were not the least bit shocked that I’d lost control. You said “It happened to me the first couple of times too. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.” And you just kept on talking until I shushed you with my finger. We sat there for a second, listening to the rain pound on the windshield, and to that song. I could see your eyes because of the headlights. Your lips…” He stroked Eve’s chapped lips with his thumb. “They called to me louder than the sound of the thunder that night.”

“What an idea we had, hey?” She said. “Learning how to drive in a thunderstorm. Ha!”

“I like to think it all worked out to make me a better driver.” He said.

“Good. I wouldn’t want my daughter driving around with a guy that can’t tell the difference between the third and the fifth gear.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “What happened next?”

“We turned that song all the way up and went outside.” He said. “In that insane storm - I mean if you tried breathing in, you got more water in your mouth than air. But it was okay. I didn’t need to breathe. I had your head on my shoulder, and we were just swaying to the music. The world had disappeared.”

They looked up at the stars again. Somewhere in the distance, they could hear the sounds of the highway. But right there, there was nothing but the faint sound of crickets, and of their breathing. She imagined that the stars too, made a sound. A sound so faint that the human ear was unable to comprehend it - or rather that she was not yet ready to hear them. But if she could, she imagined that they were singing for her.

“I’m sorry, Raymond.” She said.

“So am I, Eve. I’d forgotten what the reason was - why I was pushing through all of this pain, for so long. You know, when I woke up, I contemplated whether or not I should come. It just seemed pointless, and forced. But I remembered - I remembered what the reason I am fighting for is.” He smiled.

“What’s the reason?” She asked.

“Do you remember when we were still in highschool -” He said. “and we would sneak out and walk to the Centurion Park? We would stay up until four or five, and we would just talk, and listen to music, and look at the stars. You remember, right?”

“Of course I do.” She said. “God, I would sleep in until three the next day.”

“I always had work the next day, did you know that?” He said.

“You never told me this.” She responded.

“I never really needed to. I mean I was out working at seven, and by the time I got back home, you were still asleep.”

“Wow. Geez, I’m sorry.”

“No, no, don’t be. You know, even back then, even hearing you talking about all your boyfriends, and all your problems, and everything else - I was just so happy that I could be there, just there, with you. I’d be a dead man walking the next day at work, but I would sometimes just stop in the middle of mowing some lawn, and smile, thinking about what we had done the night before. About how I had just spent an entire night talking to Eve - fucking - Klay. That’s why I’m doing all of this.”

“Because of how we used to sneak out?” She asked.

“Yeah - that raw, pure, intense passion that began growing back then. That grew into what we have today. You know, it was kind of like an acorn that we planted together back then without even knowing it, and suddenly it was this sturdy, unshakeable tree.”

They looked up at the stars. The stars had moved a bit.

“It’s kind of strange to think that these are the same stars we used to look at back then.” She said.

“Yeah.” Raymond responded. “Most things in the sky are. Only the clouds change.”

“They’re like…” Eve squinted at the sky. “Emotions. Emotions change, but character stays. You know, some clouds are little and white-coloured, and you can see shapes in them. Others are enormous and gray and filled with water.”

“Those aren’t so bad either.” He responded. “Those are the kind of clouds that covered the sky the night of the vineyard.”

“I suppose.” She said. “But do you remember our paradise? There were no clouds that day.”

“Our paradise? You mean our third kiss?”

“Was it our third kiss that day?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Raymond said. “I had just gotten back from Europe, right?”

“That’s right. We had been apart for a few months. And we were not together back then.” Eve said.

“No, but it felt like we were. We skipped a class that day I think, right? To go to my house?”

“I didn’t skip one, I had a spare block that day. Did you skip a class?”

“I did! I skipped a history class in order to spend it with you. We just went to my place. How the hell did we even end up on the roof?” He asked.

“Don’t ask me, it was your idea to begin with. God, it was so sunny. You’d lent me some of your clothes to wear, some baggy shorts and a baggy shirt. I don’t even think you had a shirt on.”

“Yeah, I was feeling sexy.”

“Oh, shush.” She said, pushing his face away. “And we were just up there in the burning heat, on the black roof tiles, and something had gotten into you to take that blue silk robe and use it to cover our heads with it.”

“I didn’t want you getting heatstroke.” He said. “And I wanted to see how your eyes looked when the sun hit them through blue silk.”

“And?” Eve said.

“I was lost. I leaned in and kissed you, even though the first time it happened, you had said that it was a mistake. I was mistake-prone back then. I wanted you, so I went and got you.”

“Yeah, thank God.”

“How about our first?” Raymond said.

“Ah, we were on a boat.” She responded.

“Hardly a boat.”

“Well, we skipped over logs and climbed on… whatever the hell - platform? It was a rusty old platform in the river.”

“And we saw a beaver!” He said.

“And at sunset, we skipped across the logs again, and before we walked away from the bridge that stretched across the river, you grabbed me.” Eve looked down at her arm and rubbed it slowly. “By the forearm. And you asked if you could kiss me.”

“And you said yes. And I did kiss you.”

“How gorgeous.” She said.

They looked at one another for a moment. Each memory brought back a different one, so that if they were to lay on top of that asylum forever, they could never run out of things to talk about. Raymond didn’t know what to pick next - the night they went to Hyde Canyon and Eve lost her key, or the picnics they would only have on Wednesdays during the time of the Great Arrest, or their movie nights when she would fall asleep and snore on his arm, or the times they cried together about a future veiled in uncertainty, or the night they drove out to the lake in the middle of the summer and jumped in a layer of mud, or the night of her birthday at the hot springs, or the night they spent talking about their faiths by the waterfall, or the essays and exams they took together, or Prom night, or the moving out, or the art gallery, or the UFO. How could he have spent the entire day upset with her, when it was her that his entire life revolved around? When she was the same person that he fell in love with?

“Hey, do you remember when you sliced your head open and I took you to the hospital?”

“Not really, no. I just know I’ve got the scar.” Raymond rubbed the back of his head, and his fingertips brushed against a long, hairless slash that sometimes still stung with the gust of wind.

“You really didn’t want to go. You thought you were so manly with your attitude and your blood.” She ruffled his hair. “And then the doctor said that you would have died if it got even a little bit infected. I mean, how the hell can a cut on the back of your head be a whole half an inch deep without touching your brain? That never made any sense to me.”

“I sure as hell saw some stars after that blow to the back of the head. I’m lucky I had no brain damage.” He said. “Hey, what about when you had just begun working at that restaurant again, and you had those pretty new shoes, but you hadn’t broken them in yet?”

“You mean when my feet blistered so bad that I physically could not walk anymore?”

“Yeah, yeah, and I carried you inside, and I took your shoes and socks off, and tucked you in before leaving.”

“I remember you coming back the next day with some antibiotic lotion, and food, and coffee, and OH - those cool bandages that wrapped my feet so well I didn’t feel anything anymore.”

“It was such a weird time in our lives. So young, and so clueless to what we wanted to do in the future. You barely smiled back then, do you remember?” She closed her eyes and nodded. “Gosh, you were a wreck back then, Eve.” He said.

“Nothing’s changed.” She said. “I’m still a wreck, and we’re still under those same stars.” Eve laid on her back as her eyes filled with tears. The tears poured down the side of her face, soaking into her hair. Her voice broke. “I-I’m sorry, Ray. I don’t know where it all went wrong. I don’t know why, I don’t know why I would do that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Hey, hey, hey, stop it.” He said, grabbing her forearm. She flinched slightly, and covered it with her hand. “I’m sorry, I forgot it was this arm.”

Eve shook her head and continued crying, a distant echo of memories surrounding the two of them. Memories that had both shaped and broken them.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, love. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with you. I’m here. I’m here. It’s okay. Hey, listen. Listen.”

Raymond began to sing Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd.

“Hello…

Is there anybody in there?

Just nod if you can hear me…

Is there anyone home?

Do you remember, Eve?”

“Fuck, he’s on the roof again. Laura! Raymond’s on the roof again, call somebody up to get him!” A nurse said.

“ There is no pain, you are receding.” He continued singing.

“And for God’s sake, get the custodian to lock the roof! How does he keep getting up here? Goddammit.”

Two men came and picked up Raymond, who was on the ground in fetal position, gripping a framed picture of Eve with all his strength. He kept on singing, the salt of his tears staining the photograph as he got carried away. He kept on singing.

“You’ll be okay, buddy.” One of them said.

“Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

Raymond looked up at the sky. Those same stars that him and Eve used to watch at the Centurion Park before Eve left the world, marvelling at the vast infinity of that bottomless abyss. Those same stars that sang their endless symphonies for her. The stars that were still constant, still there, even if nobody was looking.

“I have become comfortably numb.”