The glasses are glass and wire and a prescription for mild astigmatism. The glasses are objects. I made them a wall. I made the apartment a fortress. I made the routine a prison. I made the control a life.
My mother's voice: the discipline was a tool. You made it a life.
Mars's voice: the model is running on old data.
Mik's voice: rebuilding is not the same as living.
Eli's voice: the mechanics are the same. Not with malice. With fear. But the mechanics are the same.
The last one is the one that stays. The mechanics are the same. Nikolai's management of information and Alexei's management of information are mechanically identical. Both involve controlling what the other person knows. Both involve deciding that the deciding is protection. Alexei called it self-preservation. Nikolai calls it protecting Eli. The words are different. The mechanics are the same.
The recognition is the thing I cannot survive and cannot avoid. The recognition says: you have become the thing you were running from. Not the cruelty. Alexei was cruel. I am not. But the control. The managing. The deciding-for-someone-else what they are allowed to know about their own life.
Eli deserved to know. Eli deserved to know because Alexei is part of our story now and our story is shared and shared means the information belongs to both of us and the belonging is the trust and the trust is the thing I violated by not telling.
The apartment is quiet. The quiet is the old quiet. The quiet I built. The quiet that sounded like safety and sounds, tonight, like the thing it always was: empty.
I put the reading glasses on the counter. Not on my face. Not in my pocket. On the counter, where they sit like a decision, like a choice, like a man deciding that the barrier is not the answer.
The counter has the glasses and the mug and the teaspoon and the sofrito and the silence.
The silence is not enough. The silence has never been enough. The silence was the model's output and the model's output is loneliness and the loneliness is the cost and the cost is too high.
I pick up my phone. I do not call Eli. It is 1 AM. Eli is in his apartment and the apartment is cold and calling at 1 AM would be the urgency and the urgency is not what this requires. This requires the morning. This requires the daylight. This requires Nikolai Sokolov standing in front of Eli Mercer without the reading glasses and without the model and without the wall and saying the thing the wall was built to prevent.
The thing is: I was wrong. The not-telling was wrong. The managing was wrong. The wall is wrong.
The thing is: I am afraid.
The thing is: the fear does not get to win.
I go to bed. The bed is empty on Eli's side. The empty side is cold. The cold side is the evidence.
I do not sleep. The not-sleeping is different from the not-sleeping in this bed three months ago, when the not-sleeping was the control processing a new variable (a rookie in the guest room). Tonight the not-sleeping is the not-sleeping of a man who knows what he needs to do and who is waiting for the morning to be strong enough to do it.
The morning comes. The morning is always strong enough. That is the thing about mornings.
ELI
Icall Ava at 7 AM because Ava is the person who tells me the truth and the truth is the thing I need and the morning is the time I can hear it.
"He didn't tell me about Alexei," I say.
"Start from the beginning."
I tell her. The trade notification. The three days of not-telling. The cooking and the film and the sex while the information sat behind Nikolai's wall. The fight in the kitchen. The "you should go." The cold apartment that I have not slept in for two months and that feels like a hotel room in a city I don't live in.
Ava listens. Ava listens the way Ava does everything: completely, without interruption, storing every detail for the cross-examination that will follow.
"Are you done?" she says when I finish.
"Yeah."
"Okay. I'm going to say something and you're not going to like it."
"That's never stopped you."
"You're both doing the same thing."
