vi. those awake at four

I awake to Tiffany smoking with the windows and balcony door closed. She never smokes and she finds the habit disgusting. But I couldn’t see why, because she looks like a goddess I once prayed to. She switches hands and alternates between shuffling a deck of poker cards and sipping her coffee from a can. The heels of her feet rest against the hotel desk.

My pack of cigarettes is left open on the desk.

I groan and sit up, coughing slightly. I peel open my eyes bigger, and she turns her head away from me, demanding that I go to sleep. Her posture begs me not to judge the hypocrite. But Tiffany has always been the hypocrite.

I say nothing about her smoking, but I get up to open the windows for ventilation. “Are you tryna kill me? At least open the windows.”

“Hmm.”

The light outside plays a little inside the room. It bounces off Tiffany’s exposed shiny cheek.

Absentmindedly and sleepy, I ask, “Why is your cheek shiny?”

“Because I saw the Twilight saga on cable and thought that I should be a vampire too,” she says, stubbornly keeping her voice intact, even when she is very visibly shaking.

I nod. “Put that out and come to bed.”

“I’ll stay.”

“Nu uh,” I scratch my face, feeling a little sorry, feeling a little helpless, feeling like I should be a friend. “Come to bed. I’ll hug you.”

Tiffany snaps her head to look, no, glare, at me. And I can see clearly now that she is crying. She looks miserably sad, and beautifully ugly. Deceivingly honest. I stare at her and think: what a beautiful bundle of contradictions you are.

“What makes you think that I want that? From you?”

I say, whatever. Tiffany’s violent lash kept me silent as I climb back onto the bed and attempt to sleep the beautifully corrupt sight of Tiffany smoking off. A few minutes later, on the brink of sleep, I hear grainy sound of the smoke being put out, the soft thud of the deck of cards being put on the desk, shuffling of feet and rustling of bedsheets. They all come accompanied with a warm hand grabbing mine and settling it over her bent arm, and a body, sweaty from Vietnam heat, fitting into my front.

Tiffany begins to talk, convinced that I won’t listen because my ears are throbbing from almost slipping into sleep.

“I heard that…you knew DongHae from way back, even before Vietnam. I heard you joined him in a few heists too. I think that sometimes – I just desperately want to love someone, something, because –” she chokes with gripping emotions, I hold her tighter, “because you know, isn’t it every girl’s dream to love someone. I mean, it doesn’t have to be DongHae, it could be SiWon, Nickhun…it’s just a dream, I mean.

All the songs; the stories; the poems and books; I just want it so bad sometimes I feel so bad for myself. So pitiful and pathetic. So I do it myself. Sometimes in the shower when I’m alone. Sometimes on the bed when you’re not around. But after that…I just feel even more pathetic and embarrassed. I think that – I have a theory for that; I’ve spent nearly all my life loving myself that now…I don’t think I can love myself; I’ve done so many horrible things…and now I need to love somebody because I can’t love myself anymore.”

Tiffany’s rambling makes no sense, and I have no idea who SiWon and Nickhun are. But she begins to shake and I’m lost as to where to put her honest confessions in, nor what to make of them. I kiss her nape, tiredly. If I could, I’d very like to breathe her in me.

“I thought about it; what my family is doing without their youngest daughter; which part of the world my siblings are; are they married; do pa and ma still fight over who has to get out of bed to turn off the lights; if my family dog is now toilet trained when he used to leave a trail of droppings that I had to clean up; if life goes on as per normal for them…I always wanted a family of my own too. And if I ever have a daughter; YuRi, I’d call her that. Long ago I thought Jessica was a good name. Until I met you.”

I make a protesting whine, and she trembles with light laughter this time.

“Jessica,” she suddenly whispers.

“Hmm?”

“Can you give me a baby?”

I’ve never been ashamed of my uality or my gender until that moment. I try to hold her tighter to compensate what I couldn’t give her, but it doesn’t work that way.

“Don’t be silly. I’m not going through a -change…” I mumble.

She giggles and says a lot more or maybe just a few sentences, I don’t remember; I must have fallen asleep to the fading of her brown hair frayed at the ends. That Tiffany dies and comes back constantly.

—ジュリエット