The fan above me was still spinning.
I realized then, before the ceiling, before the light, before I knew that noticing things is something I can do.
The wheeling blades spun their slow mechanical go-rounds, and were indifferent to the hour, like they were to me. I watched them for too long, until the rotation began to sound like punctuation.
As if it was counting down like it was supposed to be and I didn't know what was next when it got to zero.
I opened my eyes just so, as if I'd noticed the world is new and thought to knock before I would step into it, and not hurry the time of my enlightenment. One corner of the ceiling was cracked and was off white — cracks over time not on accident. Old regret,—peeling paint.
I waited for the recognition to come into my life for a time that was longer than any sane person can wait on seeing a ceiling, since the recognition was mine.
It didn't.
Perhaps it was late.
I shared that with him.
When I finally began to take my eyes off the room, it was tidy, as only someone who hosts it regularly with determination can create.
Not the sharpness of mind you heard in a man who was waiting for somebody to come to him, but the dullness that comes with a man who has prepared for this for many years and has forgotten.
A stack of books arranged with their spine stacks.
A door in the wardrobe that is slightly open – it's the norm, not an accident. Food and clothes that were folded on the chair. Half full glass of water on table, as if it was meant to be finished and forgotten about for something else.
A life which went on regardless of others.
My hand moved before I told it to.
I lifted it in front of my face, fingers spreading, trembling slightly..
It wasn't so much about an actual color as something that was mine; I knew it was mine, like you do when you're talking about something that you can't explain, However, the hand seemed like a borrowed one.
A thin scar ran across the knuckle of the index finger, white and weathered, the kind that tells a story.
I stared at it.
I made an effort to recall the story of how I got it.
A fall, maybe. A blade. A door that is pushed in at the wrong time.
Nothing.
My heart began to kick in. Not panicking — not yet. Just paying attention.
"Okay," I whispered.
This was my own voice that startled me.
It sounded right. It was exactly what I would imagine it would sound like if I was a person who always had that voice!
But the word did come out with that awkward-looking self-awareness of an actor who has studied a role so thoroughly that the only thing that's left to learn is to be an actor.
I spread my legs and stood up.
My body obeyed without hesitation—the ease with which the repeat of this sequence of actions had occurred thousands of times before, and today not being any different.
My feet touched the floor, cool tile against skin.
The room shifted out of plumb for a split second.
Not dizziness.
More like a seam.
If two snapshots of the same moment were perfectly overlapping in the frame but slightly slanted. A feeling of having once stood here before.
But it slipped away before I could catch it.
I stood.
I became caught up in the wardrobe mirror. How it was reflecting back an image of me.
I wish it hadn't.
The face staring back was mine.
Perfectly.
It was all my own, dark eyes, all hair, all that small dent in my left eyebrow, which I had since I was a child.
The type of information that won't be incorrect.
But the expression was wrong.
The man in the mirror looked like someone who had been residing in this room for a very long time, anyway. One who has an early morning routine and likes one side of the bed, and positions on where to place the water glass.
I looked like a visitor wearing his face.
I stepped closer.
I lifted my hand to my cheek, to press my hands flat against my face.
Warm.
Solid.
Real Skin. Real Bone. Real temperature.
"Who—" I started.
The question was without a response.
I let it dissolve.
Forward, then the memories came.
They didn't return, nor did they come back , but rather they opened, like files clicking into place on a computer screen.
Name: Elvio.
Age: 19.
College: Second year.
Favorite café: The one near the bus stop with green chairs.
One mother who is always putting salt on everything and never had anyone tell her. A friend named Justin who laughs about four seconds before the joke is delivered.
Lines to the locations, passwords, faces and timetable are pinned on top of the desk.
I knew everything.
I remembered nothing.
It was disturbingly, and exactly like reading a biography of an individual who has the same name as you. I returned to my bed and continued to sit down.
"Well, sure," I repeated, somewhat more softly.
It was a civilized panic if it was panic.
No racing thoughts,
No screaming.
Just a long slow fall into the realm of confusion — the peculiar feeling that leaps into water and doesn't see (or feel) the bottom until it's too late.
However I did my best to look for what went before.
Before waking up. Before this room. Before this name.
In front of the fan and the ceiling behind it that had a crack and before the clothes that have been folded. There was something.
Not an image.
A sense — the kind of tiredness that was brought upon by years, not just one. Under that, in darkness but clearly seen:
Pain. Sharp, then not. Grief, maybe.
The kind that no longer has a memory with it because the time has passed for them to become a part of the architecture.
Clutching a corner of the mattress, I slowly exhaled.
I said out loud, "I'm Elvio".
The sentences are like the expression, "borrowed a coat. The fit was right. The heat wasn't my heat."
Knock knock.Two knocks at the door.
"Wake up! You will be late again!
A woman's voice: soft, a bit impatient, softened by all this exchange over the course of the years. My inner voice, the one I hear on a regular basis, gave me a third as it came to me right away: Mom.
I had no reaction from my chest. No tugging, no heat, no irritations.
Just seeing a picture without being emotionally stirred, such as reading a caption below a photo of someone else's family.
"Yeah". I replied.
Automatic.
That was the scariest part.
My body knew how to answer.
Footsteps could be heard fading away in the hall. The house was again transformed from its nightly reveries. I stood for a moment more, and walked to the door, putting my hand on the knob.
But if I took my opening, I'd get my day started.
The life that I would need to join would need to have been had, to have had context, a form of me who was adhered to by everyone here.
I would be required to do continuity.
I opened the door.
The hallway was scented with the aromas of perfumes and fried spices. Light drifted in from a window open to the stairs, full of drifting dust, the kind of light that makes the plainest mornings look like the start of something.
A woman was standing at the entrance of the kitchen, back to me, stirring a pan with the same meticulous simplicity of someone who had done it a thousand mornings before.
Hearing me turn, she looked back.
She was smiling easily.
"Finally," she said. Didn't stay up late, did you?
The smile formed on my lips.
The correct smile.
"No."
A lie, a falsehood — not the kind she would imagine.
Not from being over-sleeping, I was awfully confused whether I had slept at all, or what had been going on in this body even before I came to sojourn in it.
She appeared to be pleased and returned to the pan.
In the hallway, I waited for something to happen, for her. Affection. Familiarity. Some emotional pull. The quiet warmth shared by people who have loved each other long enough for love to become ordinary.
The hollow in my chest only enlarged.
It's like watching a movie that just starts when you come in late and staying up until the end, but realizing the movie is actually missing the big deal.
A phone was placed on the dinner table.
My phone — I knew it the way I knew all other things, but no recall of knowledge.
I picked it up.
Right at the sight of my face the screen flicked on and unlocked without any drama.
Notices, messages, everyday garbage of a life in motion.
Then, something else, close the bottom of the screen.
An unknown number. No names, no profile pictures, no history. One message sent at 3:17AM.
> "You came back."
One of my hands went totally numb.
I opened the chat.
There was no context or some sort of history preceding it, no trail, nothing. These three words, waiting to be discovered in the white space.
3:17 AM. I was asleep then. Probably.
My chest hollowed itself out to a more thinned grieving for a few seconds.
"Elvio! "Hurry up; it's too late to eat slowly", mother said.
Late.
Yes.
Being succinct about that. I sat down.
It rang again in my hand.
Same number.
I didn't want to open it.
I did.
> "Do you still remember why you left her?"
The pain came suddenly — it was real, painful, a snarled or trapped thing behind the breastbone.
I drew a little breath.
I didn't know who 'her' was.
But my heart reacted like it did.
And that terrified me more than anything else.