13. Home

Behind a mane of damp, unwashed hair drooping over his desolate face and beneath the faint ridges of a day-old stubble growing over fresh red clots of blood, Orion’s eyes blink with bleak resignation, yellow from all the rubbing and tears. His left leg is folded under the right, and rusty shackles tie both his hands to a circular ring brutally jutted into the wall behind him. The skin under the cuffs has been rubbed pink. A beam of early-morning sunlight streams in from the solitary rectangular hole in the wall behind him, slit into strong yellow lines by the wild, swaying bush of roses that grows outside the window. The floor is neat and marbled, designed and polished intentionally to feel cold against his bare feet.

On the other side of the iron bar sits June, her legs raised and tucked under her chin. Her back is towards the staircase leading into the underground detainment facility behind her. “Your jaws are clenched too tight,” Orion remarks weakly. “If you are about to apologize once more, save yourself the effort. I know it’s not your fault.”

June stays quiet, the muscles around her temple clenched.

“But let me ask you this – are you here on the Department’s orders or of your own will?” Orion asks.

“No one told me that I had to check up on you,” June says quietly.

Orion smiles. “I’m fine, I guess. Go home. You don’t need to worry.”

“Then why are you holding your ribs like they’re broken?”

Orion grunts in response.

“What did you see?” June asks, ready to push him this time, shriveling as she remembers how Orion had been after the Re-instatement, how helpless she had felt at not being able to do anything for him. Orion clicks his tongue, chuckling softly, pausing between long wheezes.

“For as long as I remember, I have felt this deep shade of black in my chest. Like something has been missing, but now, with these Re-instatements, I wonder how much of the way I feel is even real. Have I always felt this way, or was there a time when I was happy?” Orion grunts. “In my memory, I learned that I am asexual.”

June thinks for a second. “What does that look like for you?” she asks, curious.

“That’s your question?” his face contorts from a frown into one redolent of deep amusement, and when he sees June scuffle uncomfortably, afraid she’s somehow piqued Orion, he offers comfort. “No, it’s a good question. Don’t worry.” He scratches the wrist beneath his shackle, trying to get a fingernail under the rust. “The right question, maybe.” Studying the flakes of rust caught under his nail, he whispers. “I have no idea. No idea at all. The Department took it all away, and though the memories are now coming back, and everything seems as clear as ever, I don’t feel like myself. I remember thinking and feeling. I can tell you the shirts I was wearing during those conversations. That’s all I can do. I have no idea what it means, except that it happened. Do you understand?”

June sighs. “I grew up on the outskirts of Mumbai. For seventeen years, I lived in a bedroom overlooking a tiny road so narrow and so dense with cars and people that calling it a ‘road’ might be an exaggeration. You had to believe that, underneath it all, was a road. The roads don’t have names like they do here in the States, but I remember this road next to my bedroom coming from behind this mosque and a small collection of blue-roofed tents, right up a bunch of tall skyscrapers, then right outside my window. It went all the way to my school, a garden, and the rest of the city beyond.

“As a child, I loved that this small road outside my window connected to the rest of the city with twenty million other people. There’s constant honking on it, and I know everyone says that about Mumbai, so it sounds stupid to say it, but the honking was constant: I’m here; I’m passing you; that’s what it meant. People are also constantly screaming at each other, and there’s a certain stench that only gravel and wet puddles make that is very hard to describe. None of this bothered me as a kid. If it did, I have forgotten. The world could be ending outside my window, and I’d sleep through it.

“Then, I went to college. Six months into my first semester, I was using earplugs in Berkeley to sleep because every small sound began bothering me. I still need earplugs to sleep at night. I didn’t know I was sensitive to sound at all, but when I came back to Mumbai for the winter break, I remember lying in my bed and wondering how I had ever slept there. There were dogs up on those tents outside the mosque, barking all the way into the morning. Trucks made a loud thud on one of the road bumps. The guards in our building would play poker outside my window. I was furious. I wanted to tell the entire city to shut the fuck up.

“At college, I missed things I had spent years ignoring about the city I grew up in. I missed arguments outside my room, food appearing outside my door every morning, and I know it sounds stupid, but I missed the way Mumbai smelled. Then, when I was in Mumbai, I missed my tiny college room, dining halls, the silence. Mumbai did not smell like home. I knew nothing about the city. I didn’t know where the grocery stores were, where the buses stopped, or how rain sticks to windows. When I was at college, Mumbai was home. When I was in Mumbai, home was college.

“I’ve spent every night over the last couple of years dreaming versions of a home that never is. There’s always a bedroom. Sometimes it’s in Mumbai with the views of the Bay outside my windows. Sometimes, it’s my college dorm, but my parents are in the suite outside. Is that how you are feeling now? Your memories have come home to realize that you are no longer home?”

“You are really good at telling stories,” Orion says, pretending to clap. “It’s a compliment.”

“I do write as a hobby.” June winces. It’s been a really long time since she’s told anyone that she writes, and she fears that if Orion inquires about what she writes and who she writes about, she’ll be pushed into revealing that recently, he’s been overflowing from the margins onto the lines of her pages, walking through stories and speaking through characters that have existed far before him.

“Why do you write?” Orion asks.

“I’m not good at talking. Not fluent. Writing brings structure to the ideas and thoughts in my head. No one’s waiting for me to finish saying anything. There’s less pressure.” June shrugs.

Orion’s eyebrows contract. “You are telling me what writing does for you. If all you wanted was to organize your thoughts, why not have a journal or do something else that’s easier? You tell stories, June. You tend to observe people, build characters, worlds, and places that are more than just writing.”

“You asked me why I write and not why I tell stories.”

“I thought they meant the same thing when I asked, but now, I think you only answered the easier one. So, I’ll ask again. Why do you tell stories?”

“Sometimes you notice things that I'd rather not think about at all,” she says after a long pause, and Orion twitches, unsure whether she is joking. “When I write a story, I can take one small moment and make it worth remembering. With real life, things happen for no reason. If a stranger gets up and leaves a room in real life, it’s not really important to anyone except the stranger themself. In a story, I get to decide how long I want to stay in that moment where the stranger disappears. I can make their silence mean something, because I noticed why they went quiet.” She slows down, joins her palms, and points at him. “I tell stories to notice other people.”

Orion gives June a wide smile. “You were right about how I feel. Home but not home. My memories tell me that my asexuality is something I have struggled with for years. I remember the first person I came out to, and all the undermining I did in denial. I used to call being asexual ‘being straight with a twist,’ and no one corrected me on it. I know things now that I should have always known, but they’re all just facts. True facts, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel it all. I have found the missing piece of myself, and I feel nothing. I should be angrier at the Department, but I feel numb. I feel numb, June,” Orion cries.

“What did May say?” June asks.

“I wish I’d loved someone before I loved May, so that rather than spend time learning how to love, I could have simply loved. I expected her to understand me. Maybe my memories still have gaps where she does eventually understand, but in this particular memory-” Orion trails off without finishing. A thought strikes him and he continues, “I know I’m sex-favorable. There are different types of asexuals, and it’s mostly an umbrella term. I would sometimes think that I am demisexual, where I experience attraction only when I’m very romantically interested in someone. Other times, I questioned whether I was greysexual where I experience sexual attraction very rarely and weakly. By the time I ended up with May, I knew I just did not experience any sexual attraction at all under any circumstances. I do enjoy it, though. Just very indifferent to it.”

“Like hiking?” June offers an example.

“Like hiking,” Orion chortles.

“I hike with everyone, too,” June says shyly.

Orion furrows his eyebrows, nodding with a smile. “A bunch of hikers stuck in an underground cell for the last fifteen hours,” he giggles for a while, until his ribs hurt; then he straightens his back against the wall. His body aches from being on the ground all night. “Is the Department a breeding program?” he asks, changing the topic.

“What?” June asks.

“Why else was my asexuality or the memories of it erased? Why is a government body responsible for how I feel about my sexuality? Every social relationship I’ve ever had with people changes now, doesn’t it? Because there are people that I’ve seemingly forgiven who were unkind to me when I came out, and there are new friends I’ve neglected who I don’t remember offering support to me after I came out. How can I be certain about anything now? Is our reality not dictated by our memories? Who was I and who will I be?”

“I don’t have answers,” June apologizes.

“Who does?” Orion screams, exasperated. “Should I not be the one to have these answers?”

“You should,” June admits. Before she can continue, heavy footsteps begin ringing through the hollow detainment facility, and June turns her head toward the stairs behind her. She springs to her feet and wipes dirt off her jeans. A man in a pink shirt and a striped black suit walks down the staircase. A bandage is affixed askew to the bridge of his nose, and a tie hangs loose around his neck, red from the tight chokehold of his shirt collar buttons.

“Sorry, I am late, Mr. Fields. There was an accident on the way,” he says, pulling out a tiny comb from the back pocket of his pants, sliming the comb blades with his saliva, and then neatly combing the sparse strands of brown hair away from his pale forehead. “I am Mr. Thorn, the company attorney, and oh, Mrs.-” he feigns surprise at seeing June, scrambling through his blue folder to look up her last name. “-Mrs. Pal, I did not expect to see you here, but oh, well, I guess this should work out fine. I insist you stay.”

Before June can respond that she isn’t going anywhere, the attorney cuts her off, lost in his own world, and says, “No, Mrs. Pal, I must insist that you stay.” He plods towards June and Orion with heavy steps, beaming a corporate-approved smile. “Quite the antics last night, I understand.” He begins reading a note at the top of his folder.

“Should you not have read those before?” Orion chimes.

“Ah, well, that would be why I got into the accident, Mr. Fields, but that is beside the point.” Mr. Thorn wags his finger at the iron bar. “It says here that you charged and assaulted three Department employees, including Mrs. Pal over here-”

“-Orion did not assault me,” June interrupts.

“Then, how else did he end up with a key to the fourth floor?” Mr. Thorn inquires, pulling his glasses from the black bag lurching onto his right shoulder. He adjusts his glasses and smirks. “Mrs. Pal, off the record, I get it that you want to stick it to those underpaying bastards sitting up there on their mighty chairs, but on the record, I really don’t think you side with this domestic nuisance here behind the bars.” He clicks his pen. “Unless you do persist, obviously. Free will, and all that, well, of course.”

“I agree to the charges,” Orion grumbles.

“You don’t even have an attorney yet!” June shouts. “This is ridiculous!”

“Ah, well, Mr. Fields, certainly go ahead and get your attorney here as soon as you want. I fear, though, that it will be a losing cause with all the security protocols and mandates required to simply enter the Department. We did catch your assault on camera. And besides, well, we can all be adults and sort this out peacefully, can’t we?”

Orion nods. “He’s right, June. There’s no winning against them.”

“Good answer, Mr. Fields. Off the record, may I enquire into the nature of the outburst?”

“I realized that the Department erased my memories and life. They erased my asexuality,” Orion fumes.

“A sexuality? Ah well, are we not all sexual beings?” the lawyer guffaws like unpleasant chain mills scratching against each other. “On the record, and back up onto the topic already, the Department is very well-natured, Mr. Fields. I have been told that they will drop all charges if you cease to report the necessary altercation done with your memories.”

“Why were they necessary?” June interjects.

“Mrs. Pal, off the record, the absence of what Mr. Fields thinks that he may does not merit its own orientation, I believe. An orientation, strictly speaking, is the direction of an attraction. What Mr. Fields thinks he is can be explained by many factors like low libido, imbalances, trauma – as indicated in his inquiry file – or certain medical conditions that science has not found yet. I believe Mr. Fields referred to it as ‘being straight with a twist’, did he not?” Mr. Thorn grins, his smile an amalgam of gold, black and grey caps. “There are cameras and microphones everywhere, dear Mrs. Pal and Mr. Fields.” Mr. Thorn reaches for a small golem statue at the end of the staircase and plucks out its eye. A mess of wires scrambles out from the socket. “This is all, well, off the record, of course.”

“Are you sure this is off the record?” June grinds her teeth, checking the sharpness of her rings.

“Yes, ma’am.” Mr. Thorn bites his lip.

“Then, I suppose this will also be off the record,” June scoffs, balling her fists and slamming them into Mr. Thorn’s indubitable jowls, sending him tumbling back until he loses his footing and plummets to the floor with a heavy thud. June shrugs when Mr. Thorn eyes her in bewilderment, his bandage whisking away in the air from the knock and his bloodied nose leaking like a loose pipe of water, over the wispy mustache, down his dry lips and onto his pink shirt.

“Well, I will say that I walked right into it.” Mr. Thorn grits his teeth, refusing to let his pride take over. “One walks into such stuff all the time in my profession. And what would be the point of suing you when you, Mrs. Pal, are company-” he stops himself, but June knows the word he was about to use was ‘property’. “-asset,” He says instead. “You, Mrs. Pal, are a company asset. I represent you. Let’s be adults, and chalk this under the rug.” 

“What is the Department’s position on erasing Orion’s asexuality on the record?” June asks.

“Please stop, June,” Orion pleads instead. “I can handle this.” He looks at Mr. Thorn. “I can agree to settling things with the Department.”

“Sane decision, Mr. Fields,” Mr. Thorn says, getting back to his feet, eager to leave the detainment facility. “A non-disclosure agreement and the matter is in the dirt. I believe, on the record-” Mr. Thorn raises his hands defensively at the sight of June inching closer. “On the record, well, both parties will settle matters by refusing to bring charges against each other. Breaking the agreement will result in heavy fines. The client, the Department, was insistent that I stress how heavy these repercussions would be.” He slips a paper and a pen to Orion. When he collects the agreement back from Orion, he heads up the stairs with unmatched dexterity, scrambling away as if afraid Orion or June might steal the pen and stab him. “I am sure Mr. Fields has read it in the contract he just signed, but I suppose you may as well know now, Mrs. Pal, that there will be a pause on Mr. Fields’s Re-instateents, of course, for the time being. Indefinitely.” He’s at the top of the stairs now, his image a dark shadow. “And I have been instructed to inform you that you are due for a visit to your superior’s office.”