BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 09

TUESDAY
05 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               He's going to make my car smell like camomile and cypress. He's going to make my bed smell like camomile and cypress. I'm going to regret this.

I pluck a cigarette from the slit below the radio intended for storing cassettes and punch the lighter into its socket. Though it'll take a minute to warm, I roll down my window and the November night swarms in. It manages only to highlight Dorian's presence in the passenger seat. I went to the party to forget Dorian, not to bring him over.

How is it that after six years you still have the same scent? Dorian never used any cologne or perfume but I would've hoped after five years in America, he'd come back with the fragrance of caramelised nuts or exhaust fumes.

Camomile I understand; your favourite tea remains your favourite tea precisely because it always has been. But the cypress is so violently Halsett, so wreathed in dewy mornings ambled across the grounds of Coeus Academy for Boys I keep slipping into a mirage of driving through Suffolk and slapped out by the grand architecture that closes us in.

You can take the boy out of the country, but...

I never thought I'd say that about you. Couldn't you have done me the courtesy of aftershave for one night? He's going to make my bed smell like camomile and cypress. I'm going to regret this.

The lighter pops out. We both flinch.

I let go of the steering wheel long enough to light my cigarette and Dorian curls his lip. His stare burns the round scar on the flat of my left forearm until it stings despite being nine years old. Still, I refuse to look at him just as I refuse to say anything as if acknowledging his protest would be equal to admitting it legitimate.

You would never smoke.

It's not personal, Doron. I don't recognise myself either.

The first inhale of nicotine soothes the itch under my skin. My shoulders ease a fraction and I finally settle into my seat, resting my arm on the ledge of the open window. Still, critters scuttle in my stomach. They rise in my throat like bile, stitch into admissions and prayers that claw my tongue with the need to escape.

I want to tell him everything.

When a person sits in a car with another, they are always overcome with the urge to bare their soul. Catholics have confession and the rest of us have taxi rides shared with strangers to split the fare. But where handing intimate pieces of yourself to people who you never exchanged names with might be liberating, doing so with the person you once trusted with all of you is a tourist trap. It'll cost everything and give nothing, not even the thrill of novelty.

I exterminate the insects with a deep drag of my cigarette and jab the radio on. It's All Coming Back to Me Now comes on I instantly turn it off again. God is mocking us, or Céline Dion is at the very least. I consider one of my CDs but none of them feels fitting. What kind of music do you listen to when you're in the car with your once-lover-and-best-friend about to have sex?

My cigarette ends when we reach the motorway and I have to roll the window up. Within minutes, silence has gnawed my bones hollow.

I cave. 'So, was New York everyting they say?'

Dorian twitches at the threat of small talk but manages a passable imitation of curiosity. 'What do they say?'

That isn't the response I expected and I take a moment to compile every movie and song about the city into a few words: 'Loud. Inspiring. Greedy.'