Wavelengths
by Jena Reger
The light had no way of knowing where the boy went. It only knew about the girl. When it first saw him, it might have described him as a man—well, a young man, but a man nonetheless. As for her, it could tell that she thought she was still a girl. So small and slim, the light could detect her heartbreaking fragility. But the light had seen many men and women come through this room, and it could see that the girl was unaware of how powerful she was. It was only after three days had come and gone that the light realized that the man was only a boy. That was their story: he was a boy who thought he was a man, and she was a woman who thought she was still a girl.
The ceiling light fashioned itself with triangles and trapezoids of colored glass. It chose panels stained in shades of red, gold, and blue, soldered together with heavy copper foil. The light fixture resembled a pendulant colored lantern, hanging from a wrought iron chain in the middle of the ceiling. Its thick glass protected its bulb, and little frozen bubbles rose, forever suspended in leaden casts of claret and citrine glass. It felt grand in its radiant finery.
The light wished that it were lit with gas rather than electric current. After all the years of watching minor and grand dramas unfold on the bed below it, it thought that it deserved that sort of dignity and respect. It should be the sort of fixture that imbued light in the upper reaches of an Andalusian castle some three hundred years ago—not a mass-produced art project by some hippy from Madrid in the sixties.
The light wasn’t sure where they went on the first morning upon their arrival. Their suitcases still bore the airline stickers with the initials MAD. Madrid. It wondered where they had come from originally. The light had always lived here, in the city below the Alhambra. It longed to see more of the world, but it would have to be content with seeing the world’s travelers instead.
Despite its lack of mobility, the light was never lonely. As luck would have it, in the light’s infancy—when it was stained red, gold, and blue—it had befriended other lights that would eventually be used around the city. While they did not have the opportunity to see each other anymore, they could still connect to each other, illuminating what each other saw. Some of the light’s friends had rather prurient tastes, and they owed the hotel light a few favors. While the light didn’t know all of the streetlights, overhead lights, and chandeliers in town, at least it could connect with a fair number of them and escape the corners of its small room.
The girl draped her jacket across the back of the chair by the window and peaked around the corner to make sure that he was in the bathroom with the door closed. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and opened the calendar. With a furrowed brow, she peered at the date: October 6. She sighed and put the phone away. She then pulled out an oil-blotting cloth from her purse and pressed it against her forehead, nose, and chin. Instead of tossing the oil-soaked square into the trash, she shoved it into her purse and reapplied her lipstick. When she heard the toilet flush, she quickly dropped her purse next to her suitcase and sat on the side of the bed, studying whether her right leg looked better crossed over her left, or vice versa.
The light felt such tenderness for her. It could see her as she was, and it could see how she hid herself from him.
The boy unfolded a map of the city. He made plans, marching orders for the remainder of the day. The girl smiled and nodded.
The light would have to wait until they returned to see what happened or find out where they went, although it had its guesses about their ultimate destination.
Hours passed and the room filled with sunlight. The light relaxed in the wavelengths of Roy G. Biv. When it could, it liked to take the days off because it had to be on call in less than 300,000,000 meters per second all night long. While the light enjoyed its work, it was exhausted today and hated to miss a well-deserved siesta.
When the couple entered the room, the light instantly woke up. The girl proceeded into the bathroom, taking her purse with her. The light smelled traces of stone and dust that had baked on their feet in the afternoon sun.
It suspected that they’d had an argument because the girl’s neck was flushed with splotchy, red hives, and the boy’s lips were hardened into a thin line. His jaw was set. The light wished that the boy would leave.
When the girl opened the bathroom door, the boy broke the silence.
“I’m going out to the internet café. I’ll be back in an hour or two in time to get ready for dinner.”
“Oh, okay,” she said softly. The light could tell that she was trying not to cry.
She rummaged in her suitcase until she found a violet shawl. She ran the fabric between her fingers and then wrapped it around her shoulders. The light sighed. Early October in the south of Spain boasted the best weather of the year—warm, sunny days and cool, breezy nights. It watched as she shivered beneath the thin fabric and pulled her knees to her chest as she sat on the bed.
She pulled out a journal from her suitcase and began to write—tentatively at first and then so feverishly that it was hard for the light to read fast enough. This is what the light surmised from reading her journal:
The boy and the girl had been at the Alcaicería, the old Moorish silk market in the middle of town, when the boy decided to buy a beautiful crimson scarf that the girl had been admiring. He asked her if she really liked it, and when she replied that it was her favorite of the bunch, he replied that he would buy it. Tickled by what she perceived as a very romantic gesture, she threw her arms around him, kissed his cheek, and thanked him for being so thoughtful. At this point, things took a bad turn.
The boy replied that the scarf wasn’t for her; it was for Nadia. When the girl didn’t say anything, the boy told her that Nadia had asked him to bring her something back from their trip to Spain.
The girl went on to curse this Nadia woman. The light almost cried when the girl started cursing herself.
“I’ll never be as pretty as Nadia. Damn her skinny jeans and ‘eclectic’ taste in music. Why am I never enough?” she asked herself.
At the end of her journal entry, the light watched as the girl wrote the boy’s parting line in quotations: “Just because I’m for her, doesn’t mean that I’m against you.”
The girl underlined the words several times as she said them out loud. “What does that even mean?” she wondered.
The light studied the girl as she retrieved a small medicine bottle from her purse, took out an oblong yellow pill, broke it in half, and swallowed the half. Before another moment passed, she shrugged her shoulders and popped the other half in her mouth. The light watched as the red splotches on her face and neck faded, and the girl dozed off on the bed.
The afternoon turned into evening, and the boy returned. The girl was freshly showered and smelled like orange blossoms. The light admired her radiance. When the boy didn’t say anything about her slinky black dress or golden curls, her eyes brimmed with tears, and she turned her back to him, busying herself with opening the window.
The light was relieved when the girl opened the window. The humidity from the shower clouded its vision, and it liked to see. That was its job after all; it was in the business of seeing.
After the boy showered, he seemed in better spirits and they left for dinner. The light worried about her leaving—and with good cause. It tried its best to enhance the sheen on her hair and saturate the shawl with deep shades of amethyst and berries. It wished that it could do more.
The light would only discover days later that they had eaten dinner at a restaurant across the valley from the Alhambra Palace. A wall of windows opened up a view of the ancient fortress and the city below. The fruity sangria washed down the perfectly salted gambas and chorizo, and the girl felt the knot in her chest unwind. She should have stopped with two glasses of sangria, but the boy ordered another carafe. So she drank to forget about Nadia. And she drank some more to forget about the crimson scarf.
The light could not decipher the girl’s spotty handwriting at this point, so it skipped ahead to where the couple was running in the moonlight through the stone-paved streets of Granada. She almost tripped in her heels and spaghetti strap dress, so she tossed her shoes into a bush next to a bridal boutique. She paused to look at the dresses. The alcohol had lowered her inhibitions, and she wasn’t afraid to peer through the window while the boy watched her.
“I love the dress on the right with all of the lace. It’s so romantic,” she said.
“Let’s get married and make babies, darling. What do you say?” he asked with an impish grin.
“I say that I love you.”
When she was drunk, it was easier to be honest with herself and with him. She could appreciate her resentment for the way he treated her. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to sign up for a life of that. But all the same, those were the very words she had longed for him to say when they were sober, so it still felt good enough.
When they returned to the room, she pulled her dress over her head and cocked her hands on her hips.
“I bet you can’t stop looking at me now,” she dared.
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They had noisy sex in the bed with the light turned on. The power dynamic had shifted, and suddenly she was in control. She was on top of him. When he tried to maneuver behind her, she pushed his shoulders down into the bed and curled her lips in a small smile around the word, “no.”
After it was over, they both fell asleep, forgetting to turn the light off. The light wasn’t troubled though. This was the way it was with so many travelers and hotel sex.
Less than an hour passed, and the girl roused from the bed and dashed to the bathroom. Even though she closed the door behind her, the light could hear her vomit and flush the toilet behind the thin walls. When she didn’t come out, the light began to worry. A slurry of bodily noises emerged from the bathroom, and the light heard the girl moan. It didn’t understand why the boy didn’t wake up. She began to call to him, but he never stirred.
When the toilet stopped running and the light couldn’t hear the girl anymore, it tried to flicker in alarm and wake the boy. The attempt was futile. He didn’t wake until dawn.
As the sun streamed through the curtains, the boy rolled over in bed and realized that the girl wasn’t there. He called out her name. When she didn’t answer, he climbed out of bed. He knocked on the bathroom door, calling her name again. No response. He opened the door, and the light could see the outline of the girl lying motionless on the yellow tile floor. The boy shook her, but she didn’t wake. The light strained to see farther into the bathroom. The toilet bowl was full of blood.
The boy dashed out of the room, calling “urgencia” at the top of his voice. It was one of the ten Spanish words that he knew. The light wasn’t sure what happened downstairs, but the boy returned after a few minutes. He cried as he lifted her out of the bathroom and onto the bed.
“You’re not allowed to die on me. Do you hear me? You’re not allowed to die.”
Almost at the same time, the light and the boy realized that the girl was still naked. The boy fished around in her suitcase and tried to dress her limp body.
After what seemed like a very long time, two men hauled a stretcher up the stairs into the room. The light needed to keep the girl safe, so it sent out a notice through the electric line. In less than a second, it connected to several acquaintances at the hospital and tried to prepare itself for the girl’s arrival. While the light lost track of her during the ambulance ride to the hospital, it reconnected through its friends once she was admitted to the emergency room.
It watched as they stuck her with needles, and a bag of fluids dripped into her veins. Her body began to convulse, and the nurses strapped her down to the gurney.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You are my world,” the boy said as he brushed the hair off her forehead.
“It’s already happened,” she rasped through blue lips.
While the girl writhed on the gurney, the doctor asked the boy what medications the girl was taking. The boy didn’t understand, so he pantomimed drinking too much sangria. The doctor understood but shook his head no.
“This is much more than that,” the doctor responded in Spanish, pointing to the girl’s abdomen.
The boy nodded his head, but he didn’t understand.
Day turned into night and the girl bled through her hospital gown. The boy slept in a chair with his head rolled back, breathing through his mouth as the doctors wheeled her into the operating room.
The light wanted to warm her. It could see her shivering under the thin hospital blanket.
In the morning, some color returned to the girl’s cheeks as she slept in a small room that she shared with an old Roma woman. The doctor discharged the girl in the afternoon with a prescription for pain medication, bed rest, and plenty of fluids. The couple did not speak enough Spanish to understand everything, but they took the prescription.
The boy supported the girl around her waist as they walked back into the hotel room. She winced with every movement as she tried to ease down onto the bed. The light wished it had hands to wet a cloth and wipe her face. It had noticed how often she showered and powdered her nose, so it knew that she wouldn’t feel well in this condition.
The boy went out and got the prescription, a bunch of bananas, and a few liters of water. He placed them on the nightstand next to her and picked up his digital camera.
Her face flooded with panic. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I need a break. I’m going to take photos of the Alhambra and see a little of Granada. I’ll be back after awhile.”
The light blinked. “How could the boy make such grand proclamations of love at the hospital but now be so cruelly neglectful?”
The girl’s eyes brimmed with tears, but she didn’t say anything. The boy left, and the girl slept. The light stayed on even though the boy tried to turn it off.
When she woke, the woman ate a banana and sipped some water. She studied the label on the prescription bottle and looked up the words in her Spanish-English dictionary. Satisfied, she swallowed two pills and waited a few moments for the pain to subside.
Straining against the tug of gravity, she braced herself up in bed on her elbows, and swung her legs off the side of the bed. She hunched as she walked to the bathroom and gingerly stepped into the shower. The light was relieved that she was able to move around, but it was nervous that she might fall.
After she showered, she combed her wet hair, dressed, and powdered her cheeks with a little rouge. With a low grunt, she zipped up her suitcase and slipped on her shoes.
The light watched as she riffled through their travel portfolio—London, Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome. She pocketed their money and passports. The light held its breath as she tore a sheet of paper out of her journal and scribbled something down. The light had just enough time to read it before she turned it off and walked out the door. “Just because I’m for me, doesn’t mean that I’m against you. Love, S.”
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About the Author
Jena Reger is a lawyer by education and a writer by inclination. She graduated from Duke University School of Law in 2006 and has worked in the private and public legal sectors.
“Wavelengths” © 2013 Jena Reger
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