They Dragged Them through the Streets: A Novel

A

102 A F calls me every few weeks. I think he’s always stoned when he does this. I’ve been having dreams, he says. This isn’t enough to reply to, so I wait. I dream about finding Z’s body, he says. On the other end of the phone I picture a rock rolled back from the mouth of a tomb. Nonsense. It’s his hand, F says, it’s Z’s hand, how in the photo it was reaching out. It wasn’t reaching, I say to him—I think I say it kindly. He was dead so it wasn’t reaching. Clutching, F says, the fingers curved just like that. I can’t see him but I think he’s gesturing to show me. • 103 I dream that this city is under siege, he says. I don’t know what this means. It isn’t like a bombing, he says, it’s a feeling. A tightening. A circling in. The light goes, then the power, then the air. That’s the sort of dream you have before you wake up to find your face is in the pillow, I say, you’ve turned over and it’s hard to breathe. No, I feel it around my neck, suffocating me. Then—I pause—maybe whoever’s next to you has thrown an arm…? No, he says. • The night before he died Z walked with us down to the stream. He said: Even at night, the sky here doesn’t darken. The trees are black against the light even in what should be darkness . What’s called darkness. The sky is the purple of a day-old bruise, Sara said. V nodded. • For most of the siege there was a blackout. It was hard to know for how long because after a while the blackout, having become routine, was no longer mentioned. There were only car headlights. Oil fires, blackening further out. Bombs. • When I think of Z’s hands, I think of him at his laptop, thumb loud on the space bar, shoulders hunched and face thrust 104 toward the screen. Your back, I say, you’ll hurt yourself—the sort of thing Sara would say. V sweeps a hand sleepily through Z’s hair. Are you having another, I say to F at the fridge and he doesn’t reply. It might be close to dawn. There might be Xs of duct tape across all the windows. I run a finger along each line of an X, leaving fingerprints to blur the glass. Good night, Sara says as she goes. ...