Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2008-01-01 03:13 pm
sophinisba) wrote2008-01-01 03:13 pm
Entry tags:
Yuletide fic: Children of Men: Into That Good Night
[Backdated to January 1st, actually posting on February 19, 2008]
Title: Into That Good Night (part 2)
Author: Sophinisba
Fandom: Children of Men (the movie)
Starring: Julian and Theo
Rating: PG-13
Words: 16,137
Summary: Julian and Theo in that beautiful time when people refused to admit the future was just around the corner.
Warnings: Canon character death, no happy ending
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
krabapple for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide 2007. Thanks to claudia603 for the beta. The title and a line of dialogue come from the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". The song Theo sings is Bob Dylan's "When the Ship Comes In".
Part 1 (2004-2006)
Part 2
2007
Friday, December 21st
There were two younger babies on the plane, and one little girl who looked to be about two, a little older than Dylan, who had no interest in anything but the movie on her parents' laptop.
Julian and Theo had brought theirs along as well, though it would only last two hours or so on battery power. Theo's cousin Nigel had a son, Alex, who was the same as the little girl – cried constantly if left with nothing to do, but was docile as anything if you put a video in front of her. They'd brought along a whole bag full of toys and games and music and videos, diapers and stuffed animals and even medicines, wanting to be prepared for anything, but mostly Dylan just wanted to walk, so they were taking turns walking him up and down the aisle and around the economy section, holding his hands over his head. Dylan smiled at the strangers in their seats as they passed, and most of them smiled back.
"Well aren't you an adorable baby?" and American woman asked. It was weird hearing so many American accents. Julian was used to being the only one. Her own son spoke what words he knew with a British accent and, though that made perfect sense, it still sometimes made her feel a little lonely.
"Hello," Dylan said to the woman, and let go of Julian's hand to wave to her. She smiled and waved back.
"Are you ready to sit down for a while now?" Julian asked when they got back to their assigned seats, and Dylan shook his head.
"Want to show me what you've discovered on your last tour?" said Theo, and Dylan might not have understood every word, but he nodded.
It wasn't Theo's first time on a plane like it was for Dylan, but it was his first time traveling this far, his first time going to the States, and his first time seeing Julian's parents in their natural habitat. Julian was glad he was so occupied with keeping his son happy that he didn't have time to get nervous himself.
Julian settled back in her seat and, just to have something to do, started paging through Dylan's copy of The Lorax, wishing they'd made room in their bags for a few more grown-up books. She was the most experienced flyer of the group, but she hadn't been home in three years. She remembered how excited she'd been, that last time, wanting to tell her parents all about her new relationship with Theo, and finding out how little they wanted to hear about him. They'd had to get used to the idea eventually. They'd come to England to visit them the last two summers. Her mom had even offered to stay on longer, to help them pay for a bigger apartment, to help take care of Dylan and make it easier for Julian to go back to school. It hadn't been easy to decide, since either way kept her dependent on someone else, but she'd chosen to depend on Theo. Her mom loved her, she knew her mom would always love her no matter what else came between them, but there was no one she trusted more than Theo.
The eight-month old boy started screaming about two hours into the flight. Other passengers exchanged looks, as if to say, It's gonna be a long flight. And Julian tended to agree, knowing one loud, angry baby could easily set the others off.
The other passengers in their row looked nervously at Dylan, but he was still calm. Julian smiled at them.
It was three hours in – the half-way point – that the baby's parents called the flight attendant, and a few minutes later there was an announcement, asking for a doctor on board.
The captain asked everyone to return to their seats and, to Julian's mild surprise, everyone did.
"Up," said Dylan. "Wanna get up."
"In a little while, sweetie." She got his Bear out of their bag and made it dance on her lap, but Dylan wasn't amused. He grabbed it from her to keep it still.
If they'd been anywhere but in the middle of the ocean they'd have tried to land. Even as it was there were whispers of an emergency landing in Iceland, but it was decided the fastest thing would be to take them the rest of the way to New York. They asked everyone to stay seated except for emergencies.
For a little while Dylan, the little girl with the videos, and the two younger babies were all crying, and that was bad enough, but then they all stopped, and the quiet was eerie. It was cold and everyone was tense, and Julian found she was as restless as Dylan, she hated not being able to stretch her legs, or for that matter to go back to where they'd waved to the baby on their earlier trips, to show Dylan that he was all right, to show herself.
Theo's hand on her knee made her realize she was jiggling it and shivering, and she made herself stop, spread out the blanket over her legs instead. Meanwhile Theo was gently bouncing Dylan on his own knees and singing softly,
Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they'll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.
Unlike Julian, he could remember all eight verses in order, and he ignored the way the other passengers stared at him, repeating the song until finally Dylan fell asleep.
In New York the paramedics came on board before anyone could get off. They left with the baby and his parents. Then the captain announced that they needed to wait for permission to deplane.
"Papa, get up now?"
"Yeah," said Theo, "we will. We're almost ready now."
"We just have wait a little longer so they can take care of the other boy who was sick," Julian explained.
They waited on the runway for just over two hours. When they were allowed off the plane, they were taken directly to a quarantine station for medical inspections. As a US citizen, Julian had to wait in a separate line from Theo and Dylan, but they could still see each other – she waved to Dylan and tried to smile, too tired to argue, even as she felt the strangers' gloved fingers on her throat, as she opened her mouth to let them look and poke around. But she was awake enough to be angry when they did the same thing to Dylan and he started crying. He calmed down once the three of them were allowed together again, but they were only allowed to sit and wait.
It was five more hours before they were released, and then it was just to get in more separate lines for passport control and customs, where the officials – but not the travelers – wore gas masks. They were given instructions to remain indoors and with small groups of people as much as possible during their stay. Health officials would be calling to check up on them in a few days.
By the time Dylan's grandmother held him in her arms it was 4 AM – 9 AM Greenwich Mean. Dylan was sleeping and Julian simultaneously pitied and envied him. Her limbs were like dead weights and she wished someone could just pick her up and carry her to bed. There were deep circles under Theo's bloodshot eyes, and even her mom's face was strained in her smile.
"They were talking about a child on the plane with the bird flu. We were so scared it was – It's so good to know you're all okay!"
Julian kissed her on the cheek and spoke quickly lest Theo start swearing. "Thanks for the tickets, Mom. It's good to see you again. Really good."
Her mom nodded her head. "Your father took the bus back when we realized how long it was going to be, but I have the car here."
"Good, you're okay driving?"
"Oh, I wouldn't expect you to after everything you've been through."
Julian sighed in relief. "Good. I think right now we all need some sleep more than anything."
Julian rode up front with her mother. She knew that made it her job to make conversation, but she just couldn't. She leaned her head back and slept, and they made the trip in silence.
Saturday, December 22nd
It wasn't the lead story in the next day's news, but it was mentioned. The little boy was dead; his parents were still in quarantine – they didn't say where. Theo grumbled over his breakfast – which was her dad's lunch – and was just reaching to switch off the radio when they moved on to a story about how much retailers were making at the end of the holiday shopping season, and then he did shut it off.
"Well, it's not like I enjoyed spending all night at JFK either," said Julian's mother, "but I can understand. The way germs spread on planes, I'm not surprised. I'm glad they're being careful."
Theo was shaking his head. "It's just a lot of scaremongering. That baby was sick, but he just needed to see a doctor, and the rest of us just needed to get off the plane. Only if people are scared of foreigners bringing in disease they're willing to let civilians be held indefinitely at airport security. And if they think there's a virus then Rumsfeld and Cheney can make more money off their investments with the drug companies, giving everyone vaccines they don't need."
"You two always want to see a conspiracy in everything," her father said, looking up from the newspaper with the calm of someone who never doubts his own opinions. "But it's scientists making these decisions, not politicians."
"The CDC's run by Bush appointees, just like every other government agency," said Julian.
"Well, some of the administrators, maybe…" her mother began.
"I think Theo's right," said Julian. "They want to scare us into behaving. They want to close the borders and they'll use the plague as a way to stop anyone from complaining. Just like how they blame the torture on the victims."
"Do you really need to talk about this while we're trying to eat, Julian?"
"I wasn't the one who brought it up. You're the one who had the radio on."
Theo laid his hand on hers on the table and she realized she'd snapped at her father. She didn't want to start shouting but she couldn't play along or apologize either, so she stood up and said, "Thanks for the breakfast, mom. I'm gonna go check on Dylan."
"He'll still be sleeping," said her mom.
"Okay, well, maybe I need some more sleep too, and I'll be in a better mood after a nap."
"Sounds good to me," Theo said, standing up as well and taking her hand again. His touch was steadying. "Thank you, Sylvia, the eggs were delicious."
"I don't understand why we can't have a conversation about this," said her mom. "I told you already, I'm sorry for what happened to the three of you, but is there something wrong with being worried about contagious diseases? Is that politically incorrect now too?"
"Next she'll tell you it's racist to call it the Asian flu," said her father.
"Well, avian does make a bit more sense, doesn't it?" Theo said quietly. "Seeing as how it doesn't spread among humans?"
"What if this is how it goes bad though?" her mother insisted, ignoring the men and keeping her eyes on Julian. "When I was your age it was nuclear war that was going to destroy the human race. These days, you and your friends are always going on about global warming, but what if it's a plague that takes us out?"
"Or what if it's none of that at all?" said her father. "Stop complaining for half a second, do your job and let the market and the government do theirs. It's not like they want us all dead either."
Theo squeezed her hand, and rather than choose between all the angry things she had to say, Julian just turned around and left, and he came after her.
Dylan was indeed still sleeping. Julian kissed his forehead and then – she couldn't help herself – felt with her hand to check for a fever.
"He's fine," she said to Theo.
"Of course he is."
"Yeah." She moved away from the crib and sat down on the floor, her back to the wall. Theo sat down next to her. "Mom means well," she said.
"Of course she does."
"I'm not so sure about Dad though. Remind me again why I thought coming here for the holidays would be a good idea?"
Theo held up fingers as he listed the reasons: "We want to help Dylan understand where you come from, your parents paid for the tickets, and we didn't realize we'd be quarantined to their house once we got here."
Julian groaned. "If I have to stay in this house until the second I swear I'll kill somebody."
"I think it's all part of George Bush's secret plan to drive you mad," said Theo.
"I knew there was a conspiracy."
"We'll just have to confine ourselves to this room and yours. It'll be safer for the rest of 'em that way anyhow."
"My cousins'll be here on Tuesday."
"Nope, sorry, they're not allowed to visit you. You're being held in isolation." He spoke in an unconvincing American accent and emphasized the word they'd used at the airport, where the officials had carefully avoided saying quarantine out loud.
"Must keep the real Americans safe," Julian agreed, laughing.
"We won't be able to hand over the presents we brought, just have to keep them for ourselves."
Then Julian looked back at Dylan in his crib. "Is it wrong of me to be worried? Is it wrong to be scared?"
"No, of course it's not, it's natural." He paused. "We just have to remember not to take it out on him."
"That's how we avoid turning into our parents."
"Yeah. When he's ten or when he's seventeen I doubt it'll matter to him whether we mean well or not. For now I think we should just let him sleep."
"Okay," said Julian. "Let's go to bed."
"All right. I should tell you I'm not actually tired."
"Neither am I." She stood and then helped pull him up. "I think I feel like sharing some germs." She kissed him as she pulled him across the hall to her old bedroom and smiled as she shut the door.
2008
Tuesday, December 23rd
"Thank God you two are all right," Theo said as she opened the door.
"Just a little bad weather," she answered, "took us a little longer to get home than we'd expected." But she was soaked and still panting, and she knew she wouldn't fool him into thinking she hadn't been afraid.
Theo wasn't really listening anyway, had knelt in front of Dylan and was already starting to pull off his wet clothes. "That's right, you're all right," Theo murmured, wrapping him in a blanket he'd pulled off the sofa.
"And I'll be fine too," Julian said brightly.
"Of course you will," he said softly. "Hold that up for me, will you, Dylan?" Dylan grabbed a corner of the blanket and kept it wrapped around him while Theo went to the bath for a towel. "Where have you been?" he asked on his way back. "You said it would be over by four."
"It was. I told you, it was just getting home. How was I supposed to know winter was finally going to arrive today? It wasn't supposed to be this bad."
"Nothing's supposed to be this bad…" Theo knelt again and scrubbed the towel of Dylan's hair to dry it. Dylan laughed and Theo grinned at him, but the darkness didn't leave his eyes.
"All the more reason to get out there and say something," said Julian. "We can't just sit at home pretending everything's all right."
"Better sitting at home than going out in the rain pretending it's safe for a woman and a child in this city. Or pretending that two more people showing up to heckle some politicians will actually make them start paying attention."
"I don't heckle," Julian said, and went into Dylan's room to get out some clean dry clothes for him rather than stay to argue with the rest. Theo talked to Dylan and got him dressed while Julian went to the bedroom to change her own clothes, relieved to have a few minutes to herself.
It had started raining just before they went out. There'd been something on the news about light showers, and Theo had handed her an umbrella on her way out the door. "I'd rather have you come with us," she'd said.
"An umbrella's more useful, I think. And it doesn't have papers to mark."
That was his own way of avoiding confrontation, avoiding saying, again, that he disapproved of Dylan being used as a prop. Two local MPs were appearing at a shopping center that afternoon. It was supposed to be a simple, cheerful photo op – they weren't even making any speeches. Julian had been the one to suggest that they make it a confrontation. As many families as possible should show up to say that they cared less about shopping than having the government do something to help women's and children's health.
A nice idea, and she thought it could have been effective, but there weren't enough people there for a real event. It wasn't just the weather – you barely ever saw a real crowd these days, with more and more people deciding it was safer just to stay home. Rather than a confrontation between cheerful shoppers and angry protesters, there was quiet and mourning.
Julian didn't feel like it was her place to speak, and not just because of her foreign accent. She hadn't suffered nearly as much personally as most of her friends – no miscarriage, no family members taken by the flu in the spring or hurt in the rioting in September. In some ways it had been a very good year for her; they'd been able to afford childcare and Julian had made it back to school and finally, this month, gotten her degree. She'd probably be able to work fulltime soon, if she could stand to leave Dylan alone for that long. She'd even sent in the form to apply for British citizenship.
And it wasn't like she could tell the MPs that their indifference to the community was wrecking her marriage, even if that was how it felt some days. As for the friends who had more horrifying things to say, they either weren't there or, it seemed, didn't feel strong enough to say them out loud today.
When she and Dylan got outside it was still mid-afternoon but the sky had gone dark and the temperature had dropped, and the rain was coming down in sheets. By the time she got off the bus two blocks from the apartment it was sleeting. She'd given up on the umbrella so she could pick Dylan up and carry him, wrapped in her coat, trying to shield him from the weather, but they'd both been soaked by the time they got in.
Now that she was relatively dry and calm she came out and stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Theo was sitting on the sofa with Dylan on his lap, and they were talking quietly.
"It was slippy," Dylan said. "Mama almost fell."
"But you kept her safe, didn't you?"
"I said I can walk but she picked me up."
"See, that's a good thing. It might not make you go faster, but that way you can help each other stay warm."
Dylan looked up and saw Julian standing apart from them. "Thank you, Mama," he said.
She sat down and Theo put an arm around her, and Dylan took her hand. "You're welcome," she said. "Thank you, Dylan. Thank you for helping me get home." She gently kissed Theo on the cheek, noticing how much warmer his skin still was than hers, and said, "Thank you for keeping me warm."
Dylan asked for a story and since none of them felt like moving to find a picture book Theo told a version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas from memory, intentionally getting parts of it wrong so that Dylan and Julian could laugh and correct him.
They talked and laughed and ate spaghetti and ignored the wind getting louder and louder outside.
"I hope it clears up by morning anyway," Julian said finally, as they were getting ready for bed. "What time are we leaving again?"
"Jasper's picking us up around noon. I've got everything packed though. We can sleep as late as we want, within reason."
But Julian had no desire to stay up late and was annoyed that she couldn't fall asleep quickly.
Theo snored, as always, and as she'd often done in the last few months Julian got up in the middle of the night, went to lie down on the futon in Dylan's room, and did her best to empty her mind.
Wednesday, December 24th
She woke up with her son in her arms – he must have crawled in while she was sleeping – and the early morning sun in her eyes. Dylan's window faced southeast and it was always bright in the morning, even in winter. It seemed even brighter now, Julian thought, because the window was covered with frost. No, she realized as her eyes adjusted more to the light, not just frost but ice.
"There," she whispered to Dylan, who was still sleeping, "we'll have a white Christmas after all."
Strange that she didn't feel cold – it must be because of the small, solid body here with her. When she sat up she could tell that the air in the room was far colder than it should be. Maybe the heat was malfunctioning again, or somehow they just weren't prepared after the mild weather they'd had all this year. If she were responsible and understood how radiators worked she'd get up and try to fix it, but that seemed too complicated and she was still too tired, so instead she picked up Dylan and the blanket and carried them to the bedroom. It wasn't fair for the two of them to keep all the heat to themselves.
"Cold," she muttered to Theo, and without coming fully awake he reached out and pulled her close to him, with Dylan in between, protected but not squeezed too tight.
"Thank you," he said, and Julian nestled into the warmth of her family until she fell back asleep.
The phone woke them up an hour later, and Theo's voice was still thick with sleep when he answered.
"Yeah?"
Julian kept her eyes closed.
"All the roads, really?"
She felt the mattress shift as he stood up. She guessed he was going to the window but wouldn't see anything through it.
"No, of course, I understand. No, Jasper, it's fine. Stay there, and we'll stay here and keep each other company. Yeah, that too. If the weather's better tomorrow… Yeah. All right. Happy Christmas then. Oh, and tell Janice congratulations. I will. Bye."
After he hung up he went to the living room and switched on the TV. Dylan ran after him and Julian, rather than be left alone in an empty bed, reluctantly followed them. Theo kissed her and then Dylan on the forehead and he frowned a little, but then smoothed out his face. "That's from Jasper," he said, fiddling with the remote control.
"He's not coming?"
Theo shook his head. He'd found the news.
"…All the way from Reading," the announcer was saying. "Once again, we advise you to stay off the roads if at all possible. We do seem to be in a moment of calm at the moment, but we do not expect it to last. Furthermore, the authorities have asked that the roads be reserved for emergency vehicles."
"I need to go outside," Julian said suddenly. She got out her winter coat – she hadn't used it all year – and put it on over her pajamas.
"Stay here," said Theo, "you don't want to go out there." And when he saw that she wasn't staying he insisted, "Put some shoes on at least."
She took them from him and then hurried down the stairs alone.
It took a lot of pounding to get the door of the building to open, and then she ended up just standing there, staring at the silent street where every surface of brick or concrete, every car, every tree was covered in a thick glaze of ice. On top of the ice there was only a light dusting of snow, but more was coming down.
Across the street another woman stood in her own doorway, but neither one of them dared step out. They looked at each other and the woman gave a little shrug that ended in a shiver. They didn't try to speak to each other.
There was a loud, groaning, metallic noise that Julian didn't recognize, and she shivered herself, and her neighbor turned around and went back inside, shutting the door.
A tank, said Julian's mind as it came into sight. A tank on my street. On our little street. It rumbled slowly closer to where she was standing. She couldn't see the people inside, but she was sure they could see her. She shivered again and knew she should turn around and go back inside as the other woman had done. She should go to her family. She should get out of the cold. She should, for God's sake, get out of sight, but she found she couldn't move except to tremble. She was as frozen as the cars in their ice casings
As it crawled past her no one came out, no one shouted or shot at her. It just kept going and then turned around the corner and left her alone, and every other door on the block stayed closed.
"Julian?" she heard after a very long time. "Julian, come inside." He wasn't shouting, wasn't angry or frightened, just firm, and his arms were strong on hers, and warm, his arms were so warm, they melted the ice, and she found she could move then, turn in his arms, and his arms shut the door for her. And his arms and the hallway and the stairs were too warm, but she'd go where he took her because she wanted to go back home.
"Can we go outside?" Dylan asked when they came back in.
"It's cold outside!" Theo answered. "And too quiet. I like it better in here, don't you?"
"Okay," said Dylan. "But I'm not cold." He paused, thinking, then asked, "Can we go to Jasper and Janice house?"
Theo shook his head. "Remember how the sidewalk was slippery yesterday when you and Mama were walking home?" Dylan nodded. "That's what the streets are like today. It's too slippery even for the cars and buses."
But not for the tanks, Julian thought.
"So Jasper and Janice are going to stay at their house, and we'll stay here, at least for today," Theo finished, and Dylan frowned but nodded again, resigned.
Then had hot chocolate and cereal and then sat on the floor to play Sorry, with Theo wrapped up in one blanket and Julian and Dylan on the other side of the board in another blanket. They kept the TV on with the sound turned off, so only Theo could read the headlines. Every once in a while Theo would frown at it, but then he'd smile again and talk about anything but the news. Julian had no desire to turn around and see what he was reading.
"I'm bored," Dylan said after half an hour. When Julian saw him yawn she had to join in. "Can I go to bed?"
Theo shot a worried look at Julian but she didn't know how to respond. She looked at the board and wondered what would happen next.
"Are you feeling all right?" Theo asked. Dylan nodded and yawned again. Theo waited. "Julian?"
"What?"
"I said are you feeling all right?"
"Me? Yeah. I just…wrong side of bed or something. I think Dylan's got the right idea. Lie down for a while and try getting up again. Get a do-over." Was it too much to hope that the world would have gone back to normal then? Probably, but it was worth a shot.
Theo came over to pick Dylan up and startled when he touched him. He laid a hand on his forehead.
"He's got a fever," Theo said quietly. Julian stood up. This could be bad, very bad, and she couldn't just go back to bed and hope for it to go away.
"We need to get to a doctor," she said.
Theo shook his head, picked Dylan up and started carrying him to his room. Julian walked after them.
"No use trying to get anywhere this morning," he said, "more trouble than it's worth."
"No," said Julian, "they said to stay off the road except for emergencies. This is an emergency!"
"Not it's not, Julian. This is something that happens to kids, especially in winter." He didn't say, especially when they've been out in the freezing rain, but she heard it anyway, and she felt like hitting him, but she still didn't have the energy. Dylan's eyes had already closed when Theo laid him down in his bed and brought the blanket up around him.
She kept quiet until they'd shut the door to his room and gone back to their own. "It's the first symptom," said Julian. "He's sick."
"Shhh," said Theo. He reached for her and stroked her hair, and she wondered if he was just being affectionate or if he wanted to check her for a fever too. "It doesn't have to be that. People get sick. Kids get sick and they get better quickly. Dylan's been sick before, he'll be all right."
"Yeah," Julian agreed. She knew this. "He can't be sick – really sick, I mean. He's had the shots. We've all had the shots."
"Exactly." He hugged her and his cheek felt cool on hers. So he must know she was sick too, but he wasn't saying so. "We all had the shots back when people were getting the flu," he said instead. "We were worried when we were in New York, and after, but that's all passed now. He's just got some bug and he needs to rest, and so do you."
But he knew as well as she did the plague wasn't over. The worst of it had been last spring, but there were still new cases every week, and not all of them followed quite the same pattern. You were never safe.
"Here," said Theo, and he lifted up the covers for her.
"You're not afraid to touch me?" she said as he lay down with her.
"Shhh, keep talking nonsense like that and you will wreck my calm," he said with a smile and kissed her.
"Am I burning up?"
"No, you're pleasantly warm."
She smiled back at him because she knew he wanted her to. She decided not to ask him if there had really been an army tank on their street. He wouldn't have seen it anyway and it was no good adding to his worries with marshal law or delirium, whichever one it was. "Sometimes your calm drives me crazy," she said. "Sometimes you make me so mad. But you're good, you know that? I know you're good for me."
She drifted in and out of sleep with the rising and falling of the wind outside. The light left, and she woke up alone, but later Theo came in with tomato soup and soda water and she was glad he wasn't sleeping the day away too. He sat with her.
"Has Dylan eaten?" she asked. The soup tasted revolting but she ate it, not wanting to cause trouble.
Theo hesitated. "A little," he said. "He drank the whole glass though."
Julian sat up straighter. "You can tell me what's going on," she said. "I'm not…I'm not really sick. If he is I want to help, I don't want you to keep it from me."
Theo sighed. "It's not too bad. He just said he didn't want soup, and that's nothing unusual for him. I made him some popcorn."
Julian nodded. "Don't worry, I won't get hysterical." She had to force herself to get through half the bowl of soup herself and then, impressed with her own determination, lied, "I feel a lot better. I want to get up now. I want to help."
"Not much to help with. I just come in and check on you sleepy-heads, then go back to watching the news."
"Okay, so I don't want you to watch TV by yourself, so let me come with you."
The two of them looked in on Dylan and Julian was relieved to see that he really was sleeping peacefully, not tossing or turning or talking. And the fever wasn't too severe. It wasn't like the violent sickness they'd heard about.
Theo and Julian sat on the sofa with their blankets and munched on the popcorn that Dylan had requested and then not wanted to eat.
"Yesterday all the news was about Janice's report," said Julian. "The infertility. And now it's like they've found the next big thing. They'll talk about the weather and keep us all in our houses instead of trying to find out what's really going on."
"They don't control the weather. And the infertility story isn't going away."
"My mom was wrong,"
"What?"
"When she said it would be the plague that destroyed the human race, not global warming. It'll be both at the same time. Two plagues, and maybe there's more coming. A nuclear war too, why not?"
At first it looked like they were just showing snow, but soon enough Julian realized they had plenty of other things to keep them from talking about the infertility. She closed her eyes some of the time because they hurt or because she didn't like what they were seeing – cars piled on top of each other in ditches, people stranded far from their homes. Worse storms destroying people's houses in other parts of the world. Tanks and soldiers on little streets in the neighborhoods of London.
They were interviewing an angry-looking military officer when Julian threw up the soup and the popcorn. She'd been feeling vaguely nauseous since she'd gotten up but the vomiting came on suddenly, like a violent tug in her insides that doubled her over. Theo grabbed the popcorn bowl too late, so by the time he could catch anything there was nothing left to come up, but the pain went on and Julian couldn't sit up, couldn't be still, couldn't think. He rubbed her back and talked to her and she didn't know what he was saying, but it was good that he was there.
When she came back to herself she noticed she was crying, and when she tried to make herself stop, for his sake, it just got worse, so she was sobbing out loud, without words, just as a minute before she'd been retching without bringing anything up. "Sorry," she tried to say, but she wasn't sure if it came out right. "Sorry, so sorry," and he kept holding her and touching her, as if she weren't ugly and filthy and contagious.
When she'd stopped crying he got a full glass of water and a wet washcloth. She couldn't drink much, but she was glad to get some of the bitterness out of her mouth. After he'd cleaned her face he started cleaning the mess off the table and the floor. He left again when Dylan started calling for them. Julian wanted to go to him too but all she could do was huddle on the couch, shuddering, trying not to hurt so much. "Is he okay?" she asked, but her voice was soft, and Theo wasn't there to hear or answer.
She thought she heard him talking and couldn't understand who he was talking to because he sounded angry, he was starting to shout, and he wouldn't be talking to Dylan that way when he was sick, and it wasn't his fault he was sick.
"How can you say that!?" he demanded, and since she hadn't heard anyone saying anything she guessed for the first time he must be talking on the phone in the bedroom. "This is a fucking emergency! How else am I supposed to get them to the hospital? I told you we haven't got a car. They're throwing up blood, and I'm supposed to just sit here?" After that his voice went low and angry the way it sometimes did, and Julian couldn't make out any more words.
Strange, Julian had seen red but figured it was just tomato.
She lay down on the couch tried rubbing her own stomach to relieve some of the pain that wouldn't go away, and she waited for him to come back. She thought she heard Theo talking again but it must have been with someone else because he no longer sounded angry, just scared. Meanwhile the TV announcer kept talking, and Julian found she preferred listening to that – his voice was firm and reassuring as long as she could ignore the content of what he was saying.
Then Theo was back, kneeling in front of the couch and stroking her hair, trying to get her to sit up and swallow some pills, when the announcer's voice suddenly stopped. Julian opened her eyes and saw the screen had gone blank. Theo tried switching it on and off again.
"That'll be the electricity," he said. He flicked a light switch to confirm it. "Hope they bring it back soon, for the space heater if nothing else."
"Theo, you've been crying," she accused. She hadn't noticed at first because it had gotten dark. "You're supposed to stay calm."
"I'm sorry, love, I've been trying," he said, wiping another tear from his face with the heel of his hand.
"Is Dylan all right?"
He shook his head but just said, "Take these," and held up the pills and the water again. She took them, even though swallowing hurt and the water going down made her feel like throwing up again.
"Thank you," he said. "That's good, you'll be fine, we'll be all right. Just a little bug that'll pass by morning, and when we wake up we'll feel better and we'll have our Christmas presents, right? We'll all be fine."
"I'm not the two-year-old, Theo. You don't have to baby me."
"Well, maybe I want to."
"I want to be with Dylan."
Theo nodded. "We should get you back to bed anyway. Do you think you can get up?"
It seemed doubtful, but she wanted to try. She let him help her stand. Leaning on him she was able to take a few steps but no more – she fell back on the couch. Their little apartment had never seemed so huge. "Sorry," she said again.
"It's all right," he said, and he picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.
"You're so strong," she said. "You're okay, aren't you? You're not sick at all?"
"No." He helped her stretch out on the bed. "I'm fine. You see? It could be worse."
"Sure."
He got up and brought Dylan to her. She reached for him weakly, and Theo laid him down between them – it was the same arrangement they'd been in that morning, but not as close together. They all needed more room to breathe than they had before, Julian thought. Dylan's breathing was loud, uneven. He was no longer warm but his face was wet with sweat.
"They won't send an ambulance, will they?" she asked softly.
"Don't worry," said Theo, "They haven't heard the last of me. I'll keep calling back until they send an ambulance and a team of specialists just to shut me up."
But when he picked up the phone again he couldn't get a dial tone.
"So that's it," said Julian. "We just stay here until we stop breathing."
"No," said Theo, coming back to lie with them. "We stay here until we feel better. Hey, remember what Jasper told us?"
"A whole hell of a lot of things. I don't want to go to sleep, Theo. I'm tired but I – What if we go to sleep and in the morning we –"
"Shhh, you don't have to sleep if you don't want to. Just stay here with us. This is it, Christmas Eve – the good night. See? This is when our prayers get answered."
Julian shook her head. "No god. Only us."
"All right then, only us. We'll take care of each other."
Then he put his arms around them again and they stopped talking, but this time it was too warm and too cold at once, and Julian's body hurt as much as her heart. There was no comfort to be found.
2009
Friday, December 25th
On Christmas morning of 2009 Theo came back to the apartment for the first time in over three months. He rang the buzzer even though he still had a key, and Julian came downstairs in her robe and slippers and chided him, and then kissed him on the mouth.
He brought her a framed photograph of the three of them and he held her when she looked at it and cried. He also brought vegetables, which they cooked up for lunch; and wine, which they drank sitting on the floor eating take-out curry, and kept drinking afterwards until the bottle was gone, and so was the bottle that had been sitting in the kitchen cupboard since he moved out in June.
That was just after he lost his job for showing up drunk at the school. Julian had never liked to drink alone, so once he was gone she stopped. She also stopped visiting Jasper and Janice since Theo moved into their old flat. She stopped eating meat, stopped making international phone calls. She started volunteering at the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and a few months later they started paying her to work there. She stopped being ashamed of having a foreign accent. She started speaking up at meetings and people started listening to what she had to say. She started going to sleep with pills and a teddy bear – Dylan's Bear – because she needed something to hold on to.
She knew she wasn't perfect, knew she wasn't whole, and all the same when she watched Theo prying open the second bottle she couldn't help thinking he looked pathetic.
"Do you go to work like this?" she asked.
"I could do that job in my sleep. Half the people there are stoned anyway." He shrugged. "It's the kind of place that does that to you."
He'd gotten it with help from his mom, who was finally getting ready to retire after thirty years in the same soulcrushing office. Maybe Theo would still be there, answering customer complaints with variations on form letters, for the next thirty years. He didn't seem to be looking forward to anything else, other than the next weekend.
Julian picked up the picture he'd given her. She'd always kept the photo that Janice had taken on their anniversary, the one with the strangers in the background carrying anti-Bush signs. This one had a different look to it – it was more intimate, and full of warm color where the other one had been in black and white. Julian could see the lines under her own eyes in it; she was never that tired anymore, since she'd started taking her pills, since she'd stopped staying up at night taking care of other people. She looked at Theo's face now and saw the opposite effect, how the creases had deepened, his eyes had darkened. She'd seen the way his face crumpled when he cried this afternoon, and the lines on his face made her think he must be crying every day. It hurt to look at him, and not just because he and had Dylan's eyes.
"Thank you for this," she said.
Theo shrugged again. "Janice took the picture," he said, "and Jasper got it framed. I just –"
"Brought it to me," she finished for him. "Thank you. I'll call them and thank them too, but thank you for coming here today. Thank you for not letting me spend it alone."
He nodded, not looking at her. "I didn't exactly want to be alone either."
She looked at the picture again. "I remember the day she took this. It was summer, right? You two are sunburned."
We were out at their place," said Theo. "I'd been teaching Dylan to swim at the pool, but that was the first time he tried going out on their lake."
"With those orange plastic things on his arms."
"Yeah," said Theo, smiling. "That was the day."
"No wonder he looks so happy."
"We all were. We knew by then that the world was fucked up, but you could still get away from it for a day or two. That was a good day."
"We should've taken more pictures," said Julian. "I hate that there's so much I can't remember."
"Like what? Maybe I can help."
"Like…well, it bothers me that I can't remember the end."
Julian had no memory of Christmas Day, 2008. She didn't remember the ambulance or the emergency room. She had only vague memories of the funeral two days later, which she'd attended in a wheelchair since she still didn't have the strength to stand.
"Honestly," said Theo, his voice low, "you want that time back?"
"I didn't mean –"
"You want the memory of your son dying in your arms? I wish I could give it to you, Julian. I wish I didn't have to remember it every fucking day of the week."
"Fine," said Julian, "forget I said anything." She could have said, as she'd said a hundred times before, that she wished she'd been alert enough to help him through it, rather than be one more source of worry, but there was no use. "This is why I stopped trying to talk to you about it."
"I'm sorry." He was breathing heavily, trying not to break down again, she guessed.
"So am I," Julian said, taking his hand. And she was. More sorry and sad than angry, though it was hard to separate them sometimes. "I mean it, I shouldn't have brought it up. I know it's hard for you too. It's hard for me for different reasons. I…" She shook her head, not knowing how to go on. "We should probably sleep soon."
It was well past midnight and they were both fading, and they still hadn't talked about where Theo would sleep. He'd flinched the one time in the afternoon when she'd mentioned the guest room, but she wasn't sure whether that was because he wanted to sleep with her or because he was angry at her for not calling it Dylan's room. She guessed he also hated that she'd moved the futon to the center and put up drab brown wallpaper in a room that should only, always, have bright colors and a child's bed. But she didn't confront her about it so she didn't have to decide whether to stand up for her choices or to apologize.
In the end she didn't ask where he wanted to sleep. She just stood up, put her glass on the kitchen counter, and walked off to her bed, letting him follow.
"I didn't want to be alone," she said again when he lay down next to her.
"I know."
It had been far too long since they'd shared a bed, and once they were there they didn't waste time. They kissed hungrily despite all the food and drink they'd consumed that evening, and his mouth tasted like wine and spices. His body was heavy like his eyes and his voice, and it was so good to feel that weight on her again that it hurt. That was how the rest of it was too – familiar and longed for and so slow and gentle that she ached for release and at the same time she hated knowing it would be over so soon. And Julian hadn't felt so alive in two long years of facing death at every turn.
They fell asleep spooned together and Julian didn't miss her pills or her Bear one bit. When he started snoring she realized she'd missed even that since he'd been gone. She missed everything.
Saturday, December 26th
Still, she didn't try to argue with him the next morning, when he got up without kissing her and muttered, "Right, I guess I'll just pack up the rest of my things then."
She already had them packed for him. She'd had them ready for him for months. She was thinking about leaving this apartment behind anyway. Putting up new wallpaper was one thing, and maybe Theo thought it was cold of her, but she didn't think she could really stop grieving as long as she lived here.
For citizenship questions they wouldn't be getting a divorce, but there was no use trying anymore to make this marriage work. Love was supposed to be enough, but it wasn't for them, not anymore, not when it just made them remember the love they'd lost. The fighting was painful enough, but when they tried to comfort each other it was even worse. She couldn't take that day in and day out.
"You'll ring me if you need anything?" Theo said in the doorway. "If the heat stops working or if you can't remember something about the old days, or you need some papers or you wanna get laid…"
"Yeah," said Julian, smiling, "I get the idea."
"I'd hug you if I weren't carrying all this junk." The bags swung on his shoulders as he shrugged.
"You can kiss me then."
"I don't know if that's a good idea."
But he leaned forward and she took his face in her hand, and while she kissed him she closed her eyes and pretended she was just saying goodbye as he left for a day at work. She opened her eyes and drew back to look at him and wondered whether she'd ever see him again. Sure, she could call, but she didn't think she would.
"Goodbye, Theo."
"Yeah," he said. And she stood watching while he turned and walked down the stairs alone.
Title: Into That Good Night (part 2)
Author: Sophinisba
Fandom: Children of Men (the movie)
Starring: Julian and Theo
Rating: PG-13
Words: 16,137
Summary: Julian and Theo in that beautiful time when people refused to admit the future was just around the corner.
Warnings: Canon character death, no happy ending
Notes: Written for
krabapple for yuletide 2007. Thanks to claudia603 for the beta. The title and a line of dialogue come from the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". The song Theo sings is Bob Dylan's "When the Ship Comes In".Part 1 (2004-2006)
Part 2
2007
Friday, December 21st
There were two younger babies on the plane, and one little girl who looked to be about two, a little older than Dylan, who had no interest in anything but the movie on her parents' laptop.
Julian and Theo had brought theirs along as well, though it would only last two hours or so on battery power. Theo's cousin Nigel had a son, Alex, who was the same as the little girl – cried constantly if left with nothing to do, but was docile as anything if you put a video in front of her. They'd brought along a whole bag full of toys and games and music and videos, diapers and stuffed animals and even medicines, wanting to be prepared for anything, but mostly Dylan just wanted to walk, so they were taking turns walking him up and down the aisle and around the economy section, holding his hands over his head. Dylan smiled at the strangers in their seats as they passed, and most of them smiled back.
"Well aren't you an adorable baby?" and American woman asked. It was weird hearing so many American accents. Julian was used to being the only one. Her own son spoke what words he knew with a British accent and, though that made perfect sense, it still sometimes made her feel a little lonely.
"Hello," Dylan said to the woman, and let go of Julian's hand to wave to her. She smiled and waved back.
"Are you ready to sit down for a while now?" Julian asked when they got back to their assigned seats, and Dylan shook his head.
"Want to show me what you've discovered on your last tour?" said Theo, and Dylan might not have understood every word, but he nodded.
It wasn't Theo's first time on a plane like it was for Dylan, but it was his first time traveling this far, his first time going to the States, and his first time seeing Julian's parents in their natural habitat. Julian was glad he was so occupied with keeping his son happy that he didn't have time to get nervous himself.
Julian settled back in her seat and, just to have something to do, started paging through Dylan's copy of The Lorax, wishing they'd made room in their bags for a few more grown-up books. She was the most experienced flyer of the group, but she hadn't been home in three years. She remembered how excited she'd been, that last time, wanting to tell her parents all about her new relationship with Theo, and finding out how little they wanted to hear about him. They'd had to get used to the idea eventually. They'd come to England to visit them the last two summers. Her mom had even offered to stay on longer, to help them pay for a bigger apartment, to help take care of Dylan and make it easier for Julian to go back to school. It hadn't been easy to decide, since either way kept her dependent on someone else, but she'd chosen to depend on Theo. Her mom loved her, she knew her mom would always love her no matter what else came between them, but there was no one she trusted more than Theo.
The eight-month old boy started screaming about two hours into the flight. Other passengers exchanged looks, as if to say, It's gonna be a long flight. And Julian tended to agree, knowing one loud, angry baby could easily set the others off.
The other passengers in their row looked nervously at Dylan, but he was still calm. Julian smiled at them.
It was three hours in – the half-way point – that the baby's parents called the flight attendant, and a few minutes later there was an announcement, asking for a doctor on board.
The captain asked everyone to return to their seats and, to Julian's mild surprise, everyone did.
"Up," said Dylan. "Wanna get up."
"In a little while, sweetie." She got his Bear out of their bag and made it dance on her lap, but Dylan wasn't amused. He grabbed it from her to keep it still.
If they'd been anywhere but in the middle of the ocean they'd have tried to land. Even as it was there were whispers of an emergency landing in Iceland, but it was decided the fastest thing would be to take them the rest of the way to New York. They asked everyone to stay seated except for emergencies.
For a little while Dylan, the little girl with the videos, and the two younger babies were all crying, and that was bad enough, but then they all stopped, and the quiet was eerie. It was cold and everyone was tense, and Julian found she was as restless as Dylan, she hated not being able to stretch her legs, or for that matter to go back to where they'd waved to the baby on their earlier trips, to show Dylan that he was all right, to show herself.
Theo's hand on her knee made her realize she was jiggling it and shivering, and she made herself stop, spread out the blanket over her legs instead. Meanwhile Theo was gently bouncing Dylan on his own knees and singing softly,
Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they'll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.
Unlike Julian, he could remember all eight verses in order, and he ignored the way the other passengers stared at him, repeating the song until finally Dylan fell asleep.
In New York the paramedics came on board before anyone could get off. They left with the baby and his parents. Then the captain announced that they needed to wait for permission to deplane.
"Papa, get up now?"
"Yeah," said Theo, "we will. We're almost ready now."
"We just have wait a little longer so they can take care of the other boy who was sick," Julian explained.
They waited on the runway for just over two hours. When they were allowed off the plane, they were taken directly to a quarantine station for medical inspections. As a US citizen, Julian had to wait in a separate line from Theo and Dylan, but they could still see each other – she waved to Dylan and tried to smile, too tired to argue, even as she felt the strangers' gloved fingers on her throat, as she opened her mouth to let them look and poke around. But she was awake enough to be angry when they did the same thing to Dylan and he started crying. He calmed down once the three of them were allowed together again, but they were only allowed to sit and wait.
It was five more hours before they were released, and then it was just to get in more separate lines for passport control and customs, where the officials – but not the travelers – wore gas masks. They were given instructions to remain indoors and with small groups of people as much as possible during their stay. Health officials would be calling to check up on them in a few days.
By the time Dylan's grandmother held him in her arms it was 4 AM – 9 AM Greenwich Mean. Dylan was sleeping and Julian simultaneously pitied and envied him. Her limbs were like dead weights and she wished someone could just pick her up and carry her to bed. There were deep circles under Theo's bloodshot eyes, and even her mom's face was strained in her smile.
"They were talking about a child on the plane with the bird flu. We were so scared it was – It's so good to know you're all okay!"
Julian kissed her on the cheek and spoke quickly lest Theo start swearing. "Thanks for the tickets, Mom. It's good to see you again. Really good."
Her mom nodded her head. "Your father took the bus back when we realized how long it was going to be, but I have the car here."
"Good, you're okay driving?"
"Oh, I wouldn't expect you to after everything you've been through."
Julian sighed in relief. "Good. I think right now we all need some sleep more than anything."
Julian rode up front with her mother. She knew that made it her job to make conversation, but she just couldn't. She leaned her head back and slept, and they made the trip in silence.
Saturday, December 22nd
It wasn't the lead story in the next day's news, but it was mentioned. The little boy was dead; his parents were still in quarantine – they didn't say where. Theo grumbled over his breakfast – which was her dad's lunch – and was just reaching to switch off the radio when they moved on to a story about how much retailers were making at the end of the holiday shopping season, and then he did shut it off.
"Well, it's not like I enjoyed spending all night at JFK either," said Julian's mother, "but I can understand. The way germs spread on planes, I'm not surprised. I'm glad they're being careful."
Theo was shaking his head. "It's just a lot of scaremongering. That baby was sick, but he just needed to see a doctor, and the rest of us just needed to get off the plane. Only if people are scared of foreigners bringing in disease they're willing to let civilians be held indefinitely at airport security. And if they think there's a virus then Rumsfeld and Cheney can make more money off their investments with the drug companies, giving everyone vaccines they don't need."
"You two always want to see a conspiracy in everything," her father said, looking up from the newspaper with the calm of someone who never doubts his own opinions. "But it's scientists making these decisions, not politicians."
"The CDC's run by Bush appointees, just like every other government agency," said Julian.
"Well, some of the administrators, maybe…" her mother began.
"I think Theo's right," said Julian. "They want to scare us into behaving. They want to close the borders and they'll use the plague as a way to stop anyone from complaining. Just like how they blame the torture on the victims."
"Do you really need to talk about this while we're trying to eat, Julian?"
"I wasn't the one who brought it up. You're the one who had the radio on."
Theo laid his hand on hers on the table and she realized she'd snapped at her father. She didn't want to start shouting but she couldn't play along or apologize either, so she stood up and said, "Thanks for the breakfast, mom. I'm gonna go check on Dylan."
"He'll still be sleeping," said her mom.
"Okay, well, maybe I need some more sleep too, and I'll be in a better mood after a nap."
"Sounds good to me," Theo said, standing up as well and taking her hand again. His touch was steadying. "Thank you, Sylvia, the eggs were delicious."
"I don't understand why we can't have a conversation about this," said her mom. "I told you already, I'm sorry for what happened to the three of you, but is there something wrong with being worried about contagious diseases? Is that politically incorrect now too?"
"Next she'll tell you it's racist to call it the Asian flu," said her father.
"Well, avian does make a bit more sense, doesn't it?" Theo said quietly. "Seeing as how it doesn't spread among humans?"
"What if this is how it goes bad though?" her mother insisted, ignoring the men and keeping her eyes on Julian. "When I was your age it was nuclear war that was going to destroy the human race. These days, you and your friends are always going on about global warming, but what if it's a plague that takes us out?"
"Or what if it's none of that at all?" said her father. "Stop complaining for half a second, do your job and let the market and the government do theirs. It's not like they want us all dead either."
Theo squeezed her hand, and rather than choose between all the angry things she had to say, Julian just turned around and left, and he came after her.
Dylan was indeed still sleeping. Julian kissed his forehead and then – she couldn't help herself – felt with her hand to check for a fever.
"He's fine," she said to Theo.
"Of course he is."
"Yeah." She moved away from the crib and sat down on the floor, her back to the wall. Theo sat down next to her. "Mom means well," she said.
"Of course she does."
"I'm not so sure about Dad though. Remind me again why I thought coming here for the holidays would be a good idea?"
Theo held up fingers as he listed the reasons: "We want to help Dylan understand where you come from, your parents paid for the tickets, and we didn't realize we'd be quarantined to their house once we got here."
Julian groaned. "If I have to stay in this house until the second I swear I'll kill somebody."
"I think it's all part of George Bush's secret plan to drive you mad," said Theo.
"I knew there was a conspiracy."
"We'll just have to confine ourselves to this room and yours. It'll be safer for the rest of 'em that way anyhow."
"My cousins'll be here on Tuesday."
"Nope, sorry, they're not allowed to visit you. You're being held in isolation." He spoke in an unconvincing American accent and emphasized the word they'd used at the airport, where the officials had carefully avoided saying quarantine out loud.
"Must keep the real Americans safe," Julian agreed, laughing.
"We won't be able to hand over the presents we brought, just have to keep them for ourselves."
Then Julian looked back at Dylan in his crib. "Is it wrong of me to be worried? Is it wrong to be scared?"
"No, of course it's not, it's natural." He paused. "We just have to remember not to take it out on him."
"That's how we avoid turning into our parents."
"Yeah. When he's ten or when he's seventeen I doubt it'll matter to him whether we mean well or not. For now I think we should just let him sleep."
"Okay," said Julian. "Let's go to bed."
"All right. I should tell you I'm not actually tired."
"Neither am I." She stood and then helped pull him up. "I think I feel like sharing some germs." She kissed him as she pulled him across the hall to her old bedroom and smiled as she shut the door.
2008
Tuesday, December 23rd
"Thank God you two are all right," Theo said as she opened the door.
"Just a little bad weather," she answered, "took us a little longer to get home than we'd expected." But she was soaked and still panting, and she knew she wouldn't fool him into thinking she hadn't been afraid.
Theo wasn't really listening anyway, had knelt in front of Dylan and was already starting to pull off his wet clothes. "That's right, you're all right," Theo murmured, wrapping him in a blanket he'd pulled off the sofa.
"And I'll be fine too," Julian said brightly.
"Of course you will," he said softly. "Hold that up for me, will you, Dylan?" Dylan grabbed a corner of the blanket and kept it wrapped around him while Theo went to the bath for a towel. "Where have you been?" he asked on his way back. "You said it would be over by four."
"It was. I told you, it was just getting home. How was I supposed to know winter was finally going to arrive today? It wasn't supposed to be this bad."
"Nothing's supposed to be this bad…" Theo knelt again and scrubbed the towel of Dylan's hair to dry it. Dylan laughed and Theo grinned at him, but the darkness didn't leave his eyes.
"All the more reason to get out there and say something," said Julian. "We can't just sit at home pretending everything's all right."
"Better sitting at home than going out in the rain pretending it's safe for a woman and a child in this city. Or pretending that two more people showing up to heckle some politicians will actually make them start paying attention."
"I don't heckle," Julian said, and went into Dylan's room to get out some clean dry clothes for him rather than stay to argue with the rest. Theo talked to Dylan and got him dressed while Julian went to the bedroom to change her own clothes, relieved to have a few minutes to herself.
It had started raining just before they went out. There'd been something on the news about light showers, and Theo had handed her an umbrella on her way out the door. "I'd rather have you come with us," she'd said.
"An umbrella's more useful, I think. And it doesn't have papers to mark."
That was his own way of avoiding confrontation, avoiding saying, again, that he disapproved of Dylan being used as a prop. Two local MPs were appearing at a shopping center that afternoon. It was supposed to be a simple, cheerful photo op – they weren't even making any speeches. Julian had been the one to suggest that they make it a confrontation. As many families as possible should show up to say that they cared less about shopping than having the government do something to help women's and children's health.
A nice idea, and she thought it could have been effective, but there weren't enough people there for a real event. It wasn't just the weather – you barely ever saw a real crowd these days, with more and more people deciding it was safer just to stay home. Rather than a confrontation between cheerful shoppers and angry protesters, there was quiet and mourning.
Julian didn't feel like it was her place to speak, and not just because of her foreign accent. She hadn't suffered nearly as much personally as most of her friends – no miscarriage, no family members taken by the flu in the spring or hurt in the rioting in September. In some ways it had been a very good year for her; they'd been able to afford childcare and Julian had made it back to school and finally, this month, gotten her degree. She'd probably be able to work fulltime soon, if she could stand to leave Dylan alone for that long. She'd even sent in the form to apply for British citizenship.
And it wasn't like she could tell the MPs that their indifference to the community was wrecking her marriage, even if that was how it felt some days. As for the friends who had more horrifying things to say, they either weren't there or, it seemed, didn't feel strong enough to say them out loud today.
When she and Dylan got outside it was still mid-afternoon but the sky had gone dark and the temperature had dropped, and the rain was coming down in sheets. By the time she got off the bus two blocks from the apartment it was sleeting. She'd given up on the umbrella so she could pick Dylan up and carry him, wrapped in her coat, trying to shield him from the weather, but they'd both been soaked by the time they got in.
Now that she was relatively dry and calm she came out and stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Theo was sitting on the sofa with Dylan on his lap, and they were talking quietly.
"It was slippy," Dylan said. "Mama almost fell."
"But you kept her safe, didn't you?"
"I said I can walk but she picked me up."
"See, that's a good thing. It might not make you go faster, but that way you can help each other stay warm."
Dylan looked up and saw Julian standing apart from them. "Thank you, Mama," he said.
She sat down and Theo put an arm around her, and Dylan took her hand. "You're welcome," she said. "Thank you, Dylan. Thank you for helping me get home." She gently kissed Theo on the cheek, noticing how much warmer his skin still was than hers, and said, "Thank you for keeping me warm."
Dylan asked for a story and since none of them felt like moving to find a picture book Theo told a version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas from memory, intentionally getting parts of it wrong so that Dylan and Julian could laugh and correct him.
They talked and laughed and ate spaghetti and ignored the wind getting louder and louder outside.
"I hope it clears up by morning anyway," Julian said finally, as they were getting ready for bed. "What time are we leaving again?"
"Jasper's picking us up around noon. I've got everything packed though. We can sleep as late as we want, within reason."
But Julian had no desire to stay up late and was annoyed that she couldn't fall asleep quickly.
Theo snored, as always, and as she'd often done in the last few months Julian got up in the middle of the night, went to lie down on the futon in Dylan's room, and did her best to empty her mind.
Wednesday, December 24th
She woke up with her son in her arms – he must have crawled in while she was sleeping – and the early morning sun in her eyes. Dylan's window faced southeast and it was always bright in the morning, even in winter. It seemed even brighter now, Julian thought, because the window was covered with frost. No, she realized as her eyes adjusted more to the light, not just frost but ice.
"There," she whispered to Dylan, who was still sleeping, "we'll have a white Christmas after all."
Strange that she didn't feel cold – it must be because of the small, solid body here with her. When she sat up she could tell that the air in the room was far colder than it should be. Maybe the heat was malfunctioning again, or somehow they just weren't prepared after the mild weather they'd had all this year. If she were responsible and understood how radiators worked she'd get up and try to fix it, but that seemed too complicated and she was still too tired, so instead she picked up Dylan and the blanket and carried them to the bedroom. It wasn't fair for the two of them to keep all the heat to themselves.
"Cold," she muttered to Theo, and without coming fully awake he reached out and pulled her close to him, with Dylan in between, protected but not squeezed too tight.
"Thank you," he said, and Julian nestled into the warmth of her family until she fell back asleep.
The phone woke them up an hour later, and Theo's voice was still thick with sleep when he answered.
"Yeah?"
Julian kept her eyes closed.
"All the roads, really?"
She felt the mattress shift as he stood up. She guessed he was going to the window but wouldn't see anything through it.
"No, of course, I understand. No, Jasper, it's fine. Stay there, and we'll stay here and keep each other company. Yeah, that too. If the weather's better tomorrow… Yeah. All right. Happy Christmas then. Oh, and tell Janice congratulations. I will. Bye."
After he hung up he went to the living room and switched on the TV. Dylan ran after him and Julian, rather than be left alone in an empty bed, reluctantly followed them. Theo kissed her and then Dylan on the forehead and he frowned a little, but then smoothed out his face. "That's from Jasper," he said, fiddling with the remote control.
"He's not coming?"
Theo shook his head. He'd found the news.
"…All the way from Reading," the announcer was saying. "Once again, we advise you to stay off the roads if at all possible. We do seem to be in a moment of calm at the moment, but we do not expect it to last. Furthermore, the authorities have asked that the roads be reserved for emergency vehicles."
"I need to go outside," Julian said suddenly. She got out her winter coat – she hadn't used it all year – and put it on over her pajamas.
"Stay here," said Theo, "you don't want to go out there." And when he saw that she wasn't staying he insisted, "Put some shoes on at least."
She took them from him and then hurried down the stairs alone.
It took a lot of pounding to get the door of the building to open, and then she ended up just standing there, staring at the silent street where every surface of brick or concrete, every car, every tree was covered in a thick glaze of ice. On top of the ice there was only a light dusting of snow, but more was coming down.
Across the street another woman stood in her own doorway, but neither one of them dared step out. They looked at each other and the woman gave a little shrug that ended in a shiver. They didn't try to speak to each other.
There was a loud, groaning, metallic noise that Julian didn't recognize, and she shivered herself, and her neighbor turned around and went back inside, shutting the door.
A tank, said Julian's mind as it came into sight. A tank on my street. On our little street. It rumbled slowly closer to where she was standing. She couldn't see the people inside, but she was sure they could see her. She shivered again and knew she should turn around and go back inside as the other woman had done. She should go to her family. She should get out of the cold. She should, for God's sake, get out of sight, but she found she couldn't move except to tremble. She was as frozen as the cars in their ice casings
As it crawled past her no one came out, no one shouted or shot at her. It just kept going and then turned around the corner and left her alone, and every other door on the block stayed closed.
"Julian?" she heard after a very long time. "Julian, come inside." He wasn't shouting, wasn't angry or frightened, just firm, and his arms were strong on hers, and warm, his arms were so warm, they melted the ice, and she found she could move then, turn in his arms, and his arms shut the door for her. And his arms and the hallway and the stairs were too warm, but she'd go where he took her because she wanted to go back home.
"Can we go outside?" Dylan asked when they came back in.
"It's cold outside!" Theo answered. "And too quiet. I like it better in here, don't you?"
"Okay," said Dylan. "But I'm not cold." He paused, thinking, then asked, "Can we go to Jasper and Janice house?"
Theo shook his head. "Remember how the sidewalk was slippery yesterday when you and Mama were walking home?" Dylan nodded. "That's what the streets are like today. It's too slippery even for the cars and buses."
But not for the tanks, Julian thought.
"So Jasper and Janice are going to stay at their house, and we'll stay here, at least for today," Theo finished, and Dylan frowned but nodded again, resigned.
Then had hot chocolate and cereal and then sat on the floor to play Sorry, with Theo wrapped up in one blanket and Julian and Dylan on the other side of the board in another blanket. They kept the TV on with the sound turned off, so only Theo could read the headlines. Every once in a while Theo would frown at it, but then he'd smile again and talk about anything but the news. Julian had no desire to turn around and see what he was reading.
"I'm bored," Dylan said after half an hour. When Julian saw him yawn she had to join in. "Can I go to bed?"
Theo shot a worried look at Julian but she didn't know how to respond. She looked at the board and wondered what would happen next.
"Are you feeling all right?" Theo asked. Dylan nodded and yawned again. Theo waited. "Julian?"
"What?"
"I said are you feeling all right?"
"Me? Yeah. I just…wrong side of bed or something. I think Dylan's got the right idea. Lie down for a while and try getting up again. Get a do-over." Was it too much to hope that the world would have gone back to normal then? Probably, but it was worth a shot.
Theo came over to pick Dylan up and startled when he touched him. He laid a hand on his forehead.
"He's got a fever," Theo said quietly. Julian stood up. This could be bad, very bad, and she couldn't just go back to bed and hope for it to go away.
"We need to get to a doctor," she said.
Theo shook his head, picked Dylan up and started carrying him to his room. Julian walked after them.
"No use trying to get anywhere this morning," he said, "more trouble than it's worth."
"No," said Julian, "they said to stay off the road except for emergencies. This is an emergency!"
"Not it's not, Julian. This is something that happens to kids, especially in winter." He didn't say, especially when they've been out in the freezing rain, but she heard it anyway, and she felt like hitting him, but she still didn't have the energy. Dylan's eyes had already closed when Theo laid him down in his bed and brought the blanket up around him.
She kept quiet until they'd shut the door to his room and gone back to their own. "It's the first symptom," said Julian. "He's sick."
"Shhh," said Theo. He reached for her and stroked her hair, and she wondered if he was just being affectionate or if he wanted to check her for a fever too. "It doesn't have to be that. People get sick. Kids get sick and they get better quickly. Dylan's been sick before, he'll be all right."
"Yeah," Julian agreed. She knew this. "He can't be sick – really sick, I mean. He's had the shots. We've all had the shots."
"Exactly." He hugged her and his cheek felt cool on hers. So he must know she was sick too, but he wasn't saying so. "We all had the shots back when people were getting the flu," he said instead. "We were worried when we were in New York, and after, but that's all passed now. He's just got some bug and he needs to rest, and so do you."
But he knew as well as she did the plague wasn't over. The worst of it had been last spring, but there were still new cases every week, and not all of them followed quite the same pattern. You were never safe.
"Here," said Theo, and he lifted up the covers for her.
"You're not afraid to touch me?" she said as he lay down with her.
"Shhh, keep talking nonsense like that and you will wreck my calm," he said with a smile and kissed her.
"Am I burning up?"
"No, you're pleasantly warm."
She smiled back at him because she knew he wanted her to. She decided not to ask him if there had really been an army tank on their street. He wouldn't have seen it anyway and it was no good adding to his worries with marshal law or delirium, whichever one it was. "Sometimes your calm drives me crazy," she said. "Sometimes you make me so mad. But you're good, you know that? I know you're good for me."
She drifted in and out of sleep with the rising and falling of the wind outside. The light left, and she woke up alone, but later Theo came in with tomato soup and soda water and she was glad he wasn't sleeping the day away too. He sat with her.
"Has Dylan eaten?" she asked. The soup tasted revolting but she ate it, not wanting to cause trouble.
Theo hesitated. "A little," he said. "He drank the whole glass though."
Julian sat up straighter. "You can tell me what's going on," she said. "I'm not…I'm not really sick. If he is I want to help, I don't want you to keep it from me."
Theo sighed. "It's not too bad. He just said he didn't want soup, and that's nothing unusual for him. I made him some popcorn."
Julian nodded. "Don't worry, I won't get hysterical." She had to force herself to get through half the bowl of soup herself and then, impressed with her own determination, lied, "I feel a lot better. I want to get up now. I want to help."
"Not much to help with. I just come in and check on you sleepy-heads, then go back to watching the news."
"Okay, so I don't want you to watch TV by yourself, so let me come with you."
The two of them looked in on Dylan and Julian was relieved to see that he really was sleeping peacefully, not tossing or turning or talking. And the fever wasn't too severe. It wasn't like the violent sickness they'd heard about.
Theo and Julian sat on the sofa with their blankets and munched on the popcorn that Dylan had requested and then not wanted to eat.
"Yesterday all the news was about Janice's report," said Julian. "The infertility. And now it's like they've found the next big thing. They'll talk about the weather and keep us all in our houses instead of trying to find out what's really going on."
"They don't control the weather. And the infertility story isn't going away."
"My mom was wrong,"
"What?"
"When she said it would be the plague that destroyed the human race, not global warming. It'll be both at the same time. Two plagues, and maybe there's more coming. A nuclear war too, why not?"
At first it looked like they were just showing snow, but soon enough Julian realized they had plenty of other things to keep them from talking about the infertility. She closed her eyes some of the time because they hurt or because she didn't like what they were seeing – cars piled on top of each other in ditches, people stranded far from their homes. Worse storms destroying people's houses in other parts of the world. Tanks and soldiers on little streets in the neighborhoods of London.
They were interviewing an angry-looking military officer when Julian threw up the soup and the popcorn. She'd been feeling vaguely nauseous since she'd gotten up but the vomiting came on suddenly, like a violent tug in her insides that doubled her over. Theo grabbed the popcorn bowl too late, so by the time he could catch anything there was nothing left to come up, but the pain went on and Julian couldn't sit up, couldn't be still, couldn't think. He rubbed her back and talked to her and she didn't know what he was saying, but it was good that he was there.
When she came back to herself she noticed she was crying, and when she tried to make herself stop, for his sake, it just got worse, so she was sobbing out loud, without words, just as a minute before she'd been retching without bringing anything up. "Sorry," she tried to say, but she wasn't sure if it came out right. "Sorry, so sorry," and he kept holding her and touching her, as if she weren't ugly and filthy and contagious.
When she'd stopped crying he got a full glass of water and a wet washcloth. She couldn't drink much, but she was glad to get some of the bitterness out of her mouth. After he'd cleaned her face he started cleaning the mess off the table and the floor. He left again when Dylan started calling for them. Julian wanted to go to him too but all she could do was huddle on the couch, shuddering, trying not to hurt so much. "Is he okay?" she asked, but her voice was soft, and Theo wasn't there to hear or answer.
She thought she heard him talking and couldn't understand who he was talking to because he sounded angry, he was starting to shout, and he wouldn't be talking to Dylan that way when he was sick, and it wasn't his fault he was sick.
"How can you say that!?" he demanded, and since she hadn't heard anyone saying anything she guessed for the first time he must be talking on the phone in the bedroom. "This is a fucking emergency! How else am I supposed to get them to the hospital? I told you we haven't got a car. They're throwing up blood, and I'm supposed to just sit here?" After that his voice went low and angry the way it sometimes did, and Julian couldn't make out any more words.
Strange, Julian had seen red but figured it was just tomato.
She lay down on the couch tried rubbing her own stomach to relieve some of the pain that wouldn't go away, and she waited for him to come back. She thought she heard Theo talking again but it must have been with someone else because he no longer sounded angry, just scared. Meanwhile the TV announcer kept talking, and Julian found she preferred listening to that – his voice was firm and reassuring as long as she could ignore the content of what he was saying.
Then Theo was back, kneeling in front of the couch and stroking her hair, trying to get her to sit up and swallow some pills, when the announcer's voice suddenly stopped. Julian opened her eyes and saw the screen had gone blank. Theo tried switching it on and off again.
"That'll be the electricity," he said. He flicked a light switch to confirm it. "Hope they bring it back soon, for the space heater if nothing else."
"Theo, you've been crying," she accused. She hadn't noticed at first because it had gotten dark. "You're supposed to stay calm."
"I'm sorry, love, I've been trying," he said, wiping another tear from his face with the heel of his hand.
"Is Dylan all right?"
He shook his head but just said, "Take these," and held up the pills and the water again. She took them, even though swallowing hurt and the water going down made her feel like throwing up again.
"Thank you," he said. "That's good, you'll be fine, we'll be all right. Just a little bug that'll pass by morning, and when we wake up we'll feel better and we'll have our Christmas presents, right? We'll all be fine."
"I'm not the two-year-old, Theo. You don't have to baby me."
"Well, maybe I want to."
"I want to be with Dylan."
Theo nodded. "We should get you back to bed anyway. Do you think you can get up?"
It seemed doubtful, but she wanted to try. She let him help her stand. Leaning on him she was able to take a few steps but no more – she fell back on the couch. Their little apartment had never seemed so huge. "Sorry," she said again.
"It's all right," he said, and he picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.
"You're so strong," she said. "You're okay, aren't you? You're not sick at all?"
"No." He helped her stretch out on the bed. "I'm fine. You see? It could be worse."
"Sure."
He got up and brought Dylan to her. She reached for him weakly, and Theo laid him down between them – it was the same arrangement they'd been in that morning, but not as close together. They all needed more room to breathe than they had before, Julian thought. Dylan's breathing was loud, uneven. He was no longer warm but his face was wet with sweat.
"They won't send an ambulance, will they?" she asked softly.
"Don't worry," said Theo, "They haven't heard the last of me. I'll keep calling back until they send an ambulance and a team of specialists just to shut me up."
But when he picked up the phone again he couldn't get a dial tone.
"So that's it," said Julian. "We just stay here until we stop breathing."
"No," said Theo, coming back to lie with them. "We stay here until we feel better. Hey, remember what Jasper told us?"
"A whole hell of a lot of things. I don't want to go to sleep, Theo. I'm tired but I – What if we go to sleep and in the morning we –"
"Shhh, you don't have to sleep if you don't want to. Just stay here with us. This is it, Christmas Eve – the good night. See? This is when our prayers get answered."
Julian shook her head. "No god. Only us."
"All right then, only us. We'll take care of each other."
Then he put his arms around them again and they stopped talking, but this time it was too warm and too cold at once, and Julian's body hurt as much as her heart. There was no comfort to be found.
2009
Friday, December 25th
On Christmas morning of 2009 Theo came back to the apartment for the first time in over three months. He rang the buzzer even though he still had a key, and Julian came downstairs in her robe and slippers and chided him, and then kissed him on the mouth.
He brought her a framed photograph of the three of them and he held her when she looked at it and cried. He also brought vegetables, which they cooked up for lunch; and wine, which they drank sitting on the floor eating take-out curry, and kept drinking afterwards until the bottle was gone, and so was the bottle that had been sitting in the kitchen cupboard since he moved out in June.
That was just after he lost his job for showing up drunk at the school. Julian had never liked to drink alone, so once he was gone she stopped. She also stopped visiting Jasper and Janice since Theo moved into their old flat. She stopped eating meat, stopped making international phone calls. She started volunteering at the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and a few months later they started paying her to work there. She stopped being ashamed of having a foreign accent. She started speaking up at meetings and people started listening to what she had to say. She started going to sleep with pills and a teddy bear – Dylan's Bear – because she needed something to hold on to.
She knew she wasn't perfect, knew she wasn't whole, and all the same when she watched Theo prying open the second bottle she couldn't help thinking he looked pathetic.
"Do you go to work like this?" she asked.
"I could do that job in my sleep. Half the people there are stoned anyway." He shrugged. "It's the kind of place that does that to you."
He'd gotten it with help from his mom, who was finally getting ready to retire after thirty years in the same soulcrushing office. Maybe Theo would still be there, answering customer complaints with variations on form letters, for the next thirty years. He didn't seem to be looking forward to anything else, other than the next weekend.
Julian picked up the picture he'd given her. She'd always kept the photo that Janice had taken on their anniversary, the one with the strangers in the background carrying anti-Bush signs. This one had a different look to it – it was more intimate, and full of warm color where the other one had been in black and white. Julian could see the lines under her own eyes in it; she was never that tired anymore, since she'd started taking her pills, since she'd stopped staying up at night taking care of other people. She looked at Theo's face now and saw the opposite effect, how the creases had deepened, his eyes had darkened. She'd seen the way his face crumpled when he cried this afternoon, and the lines on his face made her think he must be crying every day. It hurt to look at him, and not just because he and had Dylan's eyes.
"Thank you for this," she said.
Theo shrugged again. "Janice took the picture," he said, "and Jasper got it framed. I just –"
"Brought it to me," she finished for him. "Thank you. I'll call them and thank them too, but thank you for coming here today. Thank you for not letting me spend it alone."
He nodded, not looking at her. "I didn't exactly want to be alone either."
She looked at the picture again. "I remember the day she took this. It was summer, right? You two are sunburned."
We were out at their place," said Theo. "I'd been teaching Dylan to swim at the pool, but that was the first time he tried going out on their lake."
"With those orange plastic things on his arms."
"Yeah," said Theo, smiling. "That was the day."
"No wonder he looks so happy."
"We all were. We knew by then that the world was fucked up, but you could still get away from it for a day or two. That was a good day."
"We should've taken more pictures," said Julian. "I hate that there's so much I can't remember."
"Like what? Maybe I can help."
"Like…well, it bothers me that I can't remember the end."
Julian had no memory of Christmas Day, 2008. She didn't remember the ambulance or the emergency room. She had only vague memories of the funeral two days later, which she'd attended in a wheelchair since she still didn't have the strength to stand.
"Honestly," said Theo, his voice low, "you want that time back?"
"I didn't mean –"
"You want the memory of your son dying in your arms? I wish I could give it to you, Julian. I wish I didn't have to remember it every fucking day of the week."
"Fine," said Julian, "forget I said anything." She could have said, as she'd said a hundred times before, that she wished she'd been alert enough to help him through it, rather than be one more source of worry, but there was no use. "This is why I stopped trying to talk to you about it."
"I'm sorry." He was breathing heavily, trying not to break down again, she guessed.
"So am I," Julian said, taking his hand. And she was. More sorry and sad than angry, though it was hard to separate them sometimes. "I mean it, I shouldn't have brought it up. I know it's hard for you too. It's hard for me for different reasons. I…" She shook her head, not knowing how to go on. "We should probably sleep soon."
It was well past midnight and they were both fading, and they still hadn't talked about where Theo would sleep. He'd flinched the one time in the afternoon when she'd mentioned the guest room, but she wasn't sure whether that was because he wanted to sleep with her or because he was angry at her for not calling it Dylan's room. She guessed he also hated that she'd moved the futon to the center and put up drab brown wallpaper in a room that should only, always, have bright colors and a child's bed. But she didn't confront her about it so she didn't have to decide whether to stand up for her choices or to apologize.
In the end she didn't ask where he wanted to sleep. She just stood up, put her glass on the kitchen counter, and walked off to her bed, letting him follow.
"I didn't want to be alone," she said again when he lay down next to her.
"I know."
It had been far too long since they'd shared a bed, and once they were there they didn't waste time. They kissed hungrily despite all the food and drink they'd consumed that evening, and his mouth tasted like wine and spices. His body was heavy like his eyes and his voice, and it was so good to feel that weight on her again that it hurt. That was how the rest of it was too – familiar and longed for and so slow and gentle that she ached for release and at the same time she hated knowing it would be over so soon. And Julian hadn't felt so alive in two long years of facing death at every turn.
They fell asleep spooned together and Julian didn't miss her pills or her Bear one bit. When he started snoring she realized she'd missed even that since he'd been gone. She missed everything.
Saturday, December 26th
Still, she didn't try to argue with him the next morning, when he got up without kissing her and muttered, "Right, I guess I'll just pack up the rest of my things then."
She already had them packed for him. She'd had them ready for him for months. She was thinking about leaving this apartment behind anyway. Putting up new wallpaper was one thing, and maybe Theo thought it was cold of her, but she didn't think she could really stop grieving as long as she lived here.
For citizenship questions they wouldn't be getting a divorce, but there was no use trying anymore to make this marriage work. Love was supposed to be enough, but it wasn't for them, not anymore, not when it just made them remember the love they'd lost. The fighting was painful enough, but when they tried to comfort each other it was even worse. She couldn't take that day in and day out.
"You'll ring me if you need anything?" Theo said in the doorway. "If the heat stops working or if you can't remember something about the old days, or you need some papers or you wanna get laid…"
"Yeah," said Julian, smiling, "I get the idea."
"I'd hug you if I weren't carrying all this junk." The bags swung on his shoulders as he shrugged.
"You can kiss me then."
"I don't know if that's a good idea."
But he leaned forward and she took his face in her hand, and while she kissed him she closed her eyes and pretended she was just saying goodbye as he left for a day at work. She opened her eyes and drew back to look at him and wondered whether she'd ever see him again. Sure, she could call, but she didn't think she would.
"Goodbye, Theo."
"Yeah," he said. And she stood watching while he turned and walked down the stairs alone.