At the Bottom of Everything(52)

When I woke up again, hours had passed; I was under all the sheets now, sweating copiously, and the light from the alarm clock on the table between our beds had turned the whole room the pale green of night-vision goggles. Thomas was asleep, still in the hotel robe, holding his fists at his chest. I looked at his face, really looked at it, for the first time since I’d seen him. His beard was so long that it hung off the bottom of the pillow. His lips were gathered into the same thoughtful pucker that he’d worn to sleep when he was twelve years old. His legs, crossed at the ankles, were as thin as wrists. It was 4:09 in the morning, and my brain still shrieked for sleep but the rest of me was insistently awake, as if I’d missed a test or a flight. And then I knew: I needed to email Richard and Sally; this would probably be my last chance to sneak away from Thomas.

Unfolding the bedsheets as carefully as layers of phyllo dough, then pulling on my shorts, my eyes fixed the whole time on Thomas, I slipped out into the hall. Hotel lobbies in the middle of the night are like wax museums: so much uninhabited brightness and cheer. The business center, down the same hallway as the bathrooms, was somehow five degrees colder than the lobby; I sat at the computer all folded over on myself, my leg hairs trembling. The Internet’s another wax museum. Looks Like You’re Signing In from a New Computer! Would You Mind Answering a Few Quick Security Questions?

I typed the email with cold blue fingers, my brain lowering a curtain every time I blinked.

From: <Adam Sanecki>

To: <Richard Pell>; <Sally Pell>

Subject: I’m with Thomas

Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 4:16 AM

Richard and Sally—





I’m writing this from a fancy hotel in a suburb outside Delhi, and I just wanted to tell you that I’ve got Thomas. He’s safe and asleep upstairs. My plan is to put us on a bus back to Delhi tomorrow and then to put us on the soonest possible flight back to D.C. I’ll explain everything about finding him when I have more time (I haven’t slept in a couple of days), but the short version is that some friends pointed me toward him and that he’d managed to wander a good ways out of the city. For now I just want to say that he seems healthy, he’s coherent, he knows where he is. He seems still weird on the subject of you guys, potentially, so I think the safest thing is for me not to tell him I’ve been in touch with you. In any event, hopefully we’re going to be back home as fast as Continental can carry us.





With lots of love,





Adam

Back upstairs I dipped the key card in the door as quietly as I could; of course I knew Thomas would be there, but still, when I saw his back, saw that he hadn’t moved, I gave a silent nod of thanks. How long had it been since he’d slept on an actual bed, let alone a bed with a Serta-certified pillow-top mattress and a down comforter?

And now I could give in to sleep too. Now I could relish climbing into bed, nestling into the stack of pillows, sealing the comforter around my neck, like a gourmand tucking into a five-course meal. It was 4:24. The next bed I lie down on will be in America. The land of tap water and well-paved streets and as much Internet/TV/alcohol as I decide to prescribe myself. Sometimes in bed, at moments of especially conscious tiredness, it feels like you can steer yourself into a particular dream region, like guiding a spaceship into a wormhole. No highways, please. Let’s dream about a forest, I told myself. It’s warmly raining and there are soft-furred animals nuzzling you and all the rocks are really trampolines. I dreamed and dreamed, slept and slept; I gorged on sleep, rolled around in it, drank it until I was full. Every now and then, to mark my progress, I checked the clock: 5:39, 6:50, 7:28. I checked Thomas too; he was as still as if he’d been unplugged. Maybe this was a sleeping technique that Guruji had taught him. Maybe I’d have to carry him to the airport like a dad with a baby strapped to his chest.

When I opened my eyes at 8:45, my first thought was that I’d forgotten about all the states of being that don’t include a headache. For a minute I just lay there in bed not hurting, studying the light fixture in the ceiling, letting the sunlight from between the curtains fall across my chest. You can somehow tell, just from the pitch of the silence, when it’s snowed while you were asleep; I think the same organ can tell you whether there are other people in a room with you; I think that may have been why I gave myself a few extra seconds before I rolled onto my side, a few last breaths in which it wouldn’t be confirmed:

Thomas’s bed was empty.

I didn’t panic. I called out, “Thomas?” and walked over to the bathroom. I knocked; maybe he was taking another shower. Nothing—empty. Maybe I’d just overlooked him in all those pillows and sheets. I pushed aside the hard, fabric-covered pillows on his bed, as if he might be hiding between them. I scoured the bedside table, and then the floor on either side of the bedside table, for a note he might have left: Just gone for a walk, back in a few. Nothing, nothing. I’d just thrown back the curtains, as if it weren’t a person I was looking for but an earring, when I realized I was being ridiculous. Of course I knew where he was: breakfast. His body, with its scooped-out cheeks and countable ribs, must have craved food the way mine had craved sleep. I’d find him downstairs, planted behind a pair of buffet plates heaped with eggs and fruit and waffles.