In the hostel ...

We are lying, fully dressed, on top of the covers of her bed. Like teenagers. From all around the room I can hear the quiet breathing and the occasional snore of the other girls as they sleep. I’m on my left side, with my right hand on her side, my back to the room. She has her right hand under my face against my cheek; with one finger of her left hand she is stroking my right arm. We lie like this for some time, our noses about four inches apart. We’re still soaking wet from the rain.

“I can’t think of anything to say now,” she whispers, looking apologetic.

“Really? You’ve run out of things to say? I don’t believe it. Talk to me about something. Anything,” I whisper back to her.

“Like what?”

“Anything at all. About your family. Or a story. Or just a lie, I don’t mind, I just like to hear you talk.”

She lies there looking into my eyes. I can see a sparkle beginning to form way back there, she is obviously enjoying this. “Ok. Do you want to hear about my friend Sari?” She asks, so quietly that it’s almost just her breath that forms the words.

“Yes. Is Sari a girl or a guy?”

“A guy.”

“A boyfriend?”

“No, just a friend. He liked me a lot… for a while, but he was just a friend.”

“Ok.”

“So, my friend Sari… you can only see him if you have one eye closed.”

“Which one?”

“It doesn’t matter. Although I’ve noticed that for me it works better when I have my left eye closed. I don’t see too well with that one.”

“That’s pretty odd, Sumito.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It causes us loads of problems and I get a few odd looks when I introduce him to people.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I get strange looks. People usually think I am joking with them, until they try for themselves of course and see Sari waving at them. Once we are all introduced everything is fine, people get used to it. I even used to carry eye-patches in my bag, you know, big Band-Aids shaped like an eye, so that we could relax with other people and nobody would forget to keep an eye closed.”

“He must have a pretty hard life.”

“Yeah, he used to get really sad about it,” she whispers.

“Does he not have a girlfriend? Or did he like you too much?”

“He has a girlfriend now. She’s called Meki and she only has one eye. They hadn’t really known each other before they got together; before she had an accident at the factory she worked in, and lost her eye. She was working on a production line, fitting tiny parts into electronic equipment. She has such small hands, she worked so fast. One day, a circuit board or something snapped and a small piece of plastic embedded itself into her left eyeball. She had to have surgery straight away and the doctors had to remove her eye.”

“That’s awful,” I say, still whispering.

“Shhh, wait… listen. When Sari heard about Meki’s accident, he went straight to the hospital to visit her. They fell in love that afternoon, in the light of her reading lamp. That’s true. They are the happiest couple I know, almost perfect for each other. Don’t you think it’s strange, two people being thrown together like that?”

“Yep. Very.”

“Me too.” She looks over my shoulder to her bedside clock. “You have to go now Jonas.”

“You sure?”

She nods.

I touch her face with the back of my fingers and smile at her. She smiles back. I lean forward and kiss her lips, then roll over and slide off the bed, creep out of the room, out of the hostel and into the street.

It’s not raining any more.