Night Windows (Edward Hopper)
November 788 U.C., Heinessen
Yang walked out of the military headquarters in a daze. He was leaving early, before he was officially supposed to clock out for the day, but nobody was going to stop him. The sunlight sparkled on the spire of the building behind him, and he trooped across the endless plain of the parking lot, out towards the bus stop on the street.
He had been right to not bother buying a car, he thought, and not entirely without bitterness. He was about to be reassigned off Heinessen for who knows how long. Cazerne said six months; Yang bet a year; some people got trapped in frontier assignments forever.
Third in charge at a prison camp. It wasn’t a dangerous assignment by any means— it was precisely the kind of thing that Yang would have picked for a celebrity who needed to be kept safe but out of the way. It should cool any popular sentiment significantly— particular magazine authors would find it difficult to write about a POW guard with any interesting positive sentiments. It shouldn’t have surprised him at all that this had been picked out for him. Someone among the upper echelons of the fleet must have taken the “electability” comments that people had been making about Yang a little too close to heart, and wanted to get rid of him before he became a problem.
He wondered if Patricia McCall over at Pretty Woman had been given a heads up that her pet column would have to go on hiatus for a while. It was already an irregular thing, so it didn’t matter. He hoped that whenever he got back, she wouldn’t be in the mood to start it up again, despite the fact that it seemed to be performing a little too well at the moment. The fleet had gotten more than they bargained for, by trying to make Yang into someone the people wanted to see more of.
He should take the transfer as a blessing, he tried to tell himself. He sat down on the bench at the bus stop and looked up at the sky— hazy with air pollution from the nearby industrial district. His collar was sticking to his neck in the heat, and he pulled off his uniform scarf and mopped his forehead with it.
He wanted to be out of the spotlight. He couldn’t really complain. But he didn’t want to leave Heinessen, and he couldn’t say why. Or he could, and didn’t want to.
The wind blew, providing relief from the heat and distraction from Yang’s thoughts. There was a sickly sweet scent on the breeze— like flowers, but too artificial— and trying to identify it cleared Yang’s head.
It would be good to leave. He had until the end of the month to put his affairs on Heinessen in order, before he was shipped out. That was more than enough time for him to get used to the idea, he supposed. And he should put his affairs in order. The only important ones, anyway.
Since it was before the proper end of the day for most of the staff in the fleet headquarters, the bus stop was completely deserted. He pulled out his phone and texted Jessica, asking if he could call her. She replied immediately in the affirmative, probably thinking that disaster had befallen him— he rarely asked to call, and waited for her to dial him up in the evenings every once in a while. He hit the call button, and speakerphone, and listened to the harsh connecting rings.
She picked up immediately.
“Hello, Jessica,” Yang said. The rather laconic tone in his voice was to soothe any worries that Jessica might have. “Thanks for letting me call you— I know it’s kinda a weird time.”
He could hear the smile in her voice when she responded, “Of course! It’s past the end of my work day, so it’s fine. I was just surprised. What’s up?”
“I learned I’m being reassigned,” Yang said.
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. “To where?” she finally asked.
“A POW camp,” Yang said. “It’s called Econia— I don’t know much about it.”
“Not dangerous?”
“No. It’s an easy job, far away from the front.”
“That’s a relief.”
“They can’t send me to the front until people won’t be as upset if I die,” Yang said.
“Please don’t say that, Yang,” Jessica said.
“Okay, sorry.”
“When are you leaving?”
“By the end of the month. I have a couple weeks to settle everything I need to.”
“Oh— that’s good. I always feel like these things happen so quickly.”
“Cazerne knew earlier than he was supposed to, I think. I heard the news from him, not the usual letter.”
“He’s not going to get in trouble for that, is he?”
“I’m not going to report him.”
Another moment of silence. “Are you planning to do anything with the time?”
“I officially have to work in the office until I get the real letter next week,” Yang said. “After that— nothing much. I don’t think I’ll need to do much packing.”
“Come down and see me that week, then,” Jessica said.
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You wouldn’t be imposing, Yang. You’ll be gone for how long?”
“Probably no less than six months? I don’t know. They don’t tell you an end date for things like these.”
“If you’re about to be gone for two years, I want to see you,” Jessica said. “You should come down here.”
It was, of course, the invitation that Yang had called her to get. But still, he felt an odd reluctance to accept, now that he had it. “Okay,” Yang said. “I’ll be there for the weekend, and then fly out from the Thernussen airport.”
“That’s a fine idea.” She paused. “And, you know, Jean is on leave starting that week, so he’ll be here too.”
“I didn’t know.” She had waited until he had already accepted the offer to tell him that. It was so deliberate. He couldn’t back out now.
“He told me his schedule in his letter from the other day,” she said. “You’ll hear from him soon.”
“Right,” Yang said.
“But aside from shipping out— how are you doing?”
Thernussen, where Jessica lived, was either a plane ride of a couple hours away, or a train trip of a day. Yang opted for the train, an impulse that he justified by saying that he didn’t like the thought of losing all his baggage on airplanes right before shipping out. His huge suitcase, on which he rested his legs through the whole train ride, contained everything he was planning to bring with him to Econia. It wasn’t much, but Yang had been an itinerant most of his life, and having an official house had not changed his ways— he could pack up his life and move it at the drop of a hat, if he had to.
He wanted the time on his journey to think, and he was using up as much time as possible before he arrived in the city. He had a book on his lap, but he mostly leaned his head on the window and watched the scenery whizz by, all the trees at the peak of their greenery and the wheat fields yellowing with the early summer sun. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky for the whole trip, and the ocean-blue of the horizon was only interrupted when the train dove through mountain tunnels, coming out the other side into the light with a burst of speed like a gasp of breath.
Yang slept, or didn’t sleep, and dreamed, or didn’t dream. It was hard to tell where the line was between his hazy waking imagination and the confusing images that floated from his subconsciousness. He wanted to relax on the trip, thinking that at the very least he was getting away from the media attention of Heinessenpolis, but the things waiting for him at his destination were no less stressful.
When the train made it to Thernussen, it was well into night— past ten— but this far from the equator, the sun was only now dipping below the horizon and coloring the sky red. The evening stars were drowned out by the lights of the city, glittering on the edge of Yang’s vision when he stepped off the train, hauling his suitcase behind him. He steeled himself before walking down the steps into the station itself.
Jessica was waiting for him in the train station, sitting by herself on the huge round wooden bench that filled the center of the cavernous lobby. The lights were warm and dim; the linoleum on the floor was yellowing; the walls had huge murals of Ale Heinessen anachronistically directing workers building the city. The stream of departing passengers rushing out of the station towards the street blended into these murals in Yang’s vision, leaving only Jessica still and clearly visible to him. She hadn’t spotted him yet, though she was looking around for him.
Yang, standing at the doors, let the traffic stream around him. He half-raised his arm in a nervous, still wave, to get her attention. He could have— should have— gone over to her. But he was frozen— he didn’t want to move until she saw him.
He watched her scan the faces of every departing passenger with a searching look that stirred a particular kind of regret in his heart. And then she spotted him as she turned towards the door at last. Her eyes lit up, and she stood and waved frantically, as if Yang could have possibly missed her there in her smart green dress, with the yellow purse dangling at her side.
Hauling his suitcase behind him, he smiled as he came over.
He was taller than she was, and she looked up at him when he stood in front of her. He felt more like a schoolboy in that moment than he had in a long time.
“You got the last train in,” she said.
“It was the first one out this morning,” Yang said. “It’s a long trip.”
They hadn’t seen each other in person since Yang had graduated from the officers’ school, more than a year ago. The strangeness of it all made them both hesitate, but then Jessica pulled him in for a hug. He let go of his suitcase and it toppled over on the floor behind him, but he didn’t care. Jessica pressed her face to the collar of his tee shirt, and he ended up with his hand on the bare of her upper back, where her sundress fell away from her shoulders and spine. The warmth of her body, the slickness of sweat— it was a stifling day for early summer, even in the cool of the evening.
“I’m so glad you came,” Jessica said as she finally released him.
It was worth coming, Yang decided. “Is Lapp around?”
“He’s at home,” she said cheerfully. “He’s got dinner waiting— we didn’t want to eat without you. You didn’t eat, did you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You must be starving. Do you want me to carry any of that?” she asked, pointing at his suitcase.
“No, it’s fine,” Yang said.
“I’m parked right outside.”
The minute they walked out of the train station, the swampy air overwhelmed them both. The sun had finally sunk down beneath the buildings, bringing true twilight with it. Jessica directed Yang to her car, and helped him wedge his suitcase in the trunk.
The ride to Jessica’s place was quiet. She had music playing— classical that Yang should have recognized but didn’t— and he looked out the window at the familiar city. He had spent several years here— more of a home than any other place in his life. But a year of being away had left its marks on the ever-shifting city. A pizza place where he and Lapp had often gone for late-night dinners had been replaced with a restaurant bearing a different name. New apartment buildings had sprouted like mushrooms all over.
They didn’t drive past the gates of the officers’ school, but instead closer to the City University of Thernussen, where Jessica both taught and studied. This place, at least, Yang was only vaguely familiar with, so it didn’t stir in him the nostalgia that his own campus would have.
She glanced over at him as they drove, and made a few comments, but seemed to accept that he was tired. They had always been good at companionable silences before.
Jessica’s apartment was in a more historic part of the city— if by historic one meant run down. It was within walking distance of her campus, and she street parked her car in front of the three-story townhouse. The front was crumbling red brick, but the decorative railings on the steps and the whorled moldings above the doors spoke to a certain care that had been taken during the building’s construction.
“I’m on the third floor, unfortunately,” she said, and unlocked the front door as Yang craned his neck to look up at the building.
The grand entry stairway was dark, and Jessica didn’t bother to to turn on the light, which left Yang to fumble his way up the stairs behind her until they reached the top floor. There was the smell of something delicious cooking— herby and savory— which must be Lapp’s doing.
They entered the apartment into a large and warm living room, and now Yang could identify the smell of roasting chicken and fresh bread. On the right side of the living room, there was a sliding partition door that opened into the room that overlooked the street, with wide windows draped with fairy lights. That was Jessica’s bedroom— her neatly made bed was tucked right underneath. There were a couple closed doors to the left that Yang assumed were closets or spare bedrooms or an office. Every window in the apartment was open, to encourage a crossbreeze in the heat, but it wasn’t doing much to cool the place, even if Yang could feel the air moving past him.
Lapp was in the kitchen, separated from the living room by a bead curtain, and he stopped whatever he was doing when he heard the door open.
“Jessica?” he called.
“No, a robber,” she replied. “And I brought a stray in from the street.”
It was funny to see Lapp emerge through the beads of the curtain, parting them with one hand and stepping through underneath, like he was dancing. He was shirtless— the kitchen was warmer than the rest of the house. He was grinning, a wide and genuine smile that Yang found himself instinctually matching. Lapp seemed much more relaxed with Jessica around than he had at Yang’s house— or maybe Yang had been the one responsible for dragging the atmosphere down then. He resolved right there to not let that happen. He could be happy for Jessica and Lapp.
Seeing Yang’s smile, Lapp grabbed his shoulder in a friendly half-hug. “I’m so glad that my leave started before you had to ship out,” Lapp said.
“Yeah, it’s lucky,” Yang said, and he rubbed the back of his head. “I mean, I’d prefer not to be leaving, but—”
“You don’t think you’d get bored with your little research gig eventually?” Lapp asked. “I know I would, if Cazerne was having me comb through ancient battle records.”
“They’re not that ancient,” Yang said, but trailed off as Lapp’s attention shifted to Jessica.
“Is dinner ready?” Jessica asked.
“Born ready,” Lapp said, leaning over to give her a kiss. She planted her hand on his bare chest as he did. Yang averted his eyes, and wandered over to look at the piano in the corner of the living room. There was a picture of Jessica’s parents sitting on top of it.
“Table’s all ready in the kitchen,” Lapp said. “If you’re hungry, Yang?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Yang said.
Jessica rattled her way through the bead curtain, but when Yang passed by, Lapp held it open for him, and Yang had to step beneath his arm.
The kitchen was much warmer, though Lapp had the back stair door propped open in a vain attempt to induce a crossbreeze with the windows. As Lapp got the food out of the oven, releasing a blast of hot air, Yang was startled by both the wave of heat and by what he saw when he took a closer look around the kitchen: on the fridge, Jessica had clipped out and pinned with magnets all the photos from Pretty Woman . The pictures, and their presence in the room, had a gravitational pull for Yang, and he was transfixed until Jessica walked in between him and the fridge to get out the salad. It broke the momentary spell that Yang was held under, and he sat down, though he took the seat facing the fridge. Neither Lapp nor Jessica seemed to notice his reaction. They were saying something to each other over their shoulders as they fussed around the kitchen, but their words didn’t mean anything to Yang at that moment.
Lapp and Jessica sat down, and Jessica poured everyone a glass of wine.
“To old friends,” Lapp said, raising his glass.
“And to safe travels,” Jessica added.
“Cheers,” Yang said, for lack of anything better to say, and he knocked glasses with both of them. “Thank you for having me over. And thanks for cooking dinner.”
“Of course!” Jessica said.
“When’s the last time you had a good home-cooked meal?” Lapp asked.
“Er, when I went to visit Cazerne,” Yang said. “I mostly eat takeout.”
“That can’t be good for you,” Lapp said.
“Well, on Econia I’ll have nothing but prison cafeteria food, unless I decide to learn to cook.”
“Oh my God,” Jessica said. “Do they really not feed the officers anything different?”
“No,” Lapp and Yang said simultaneously, which made Jessica laugh, and did, for a moment, briefly, make Yang feel like it was the old days again.
“It’s a political thing,” Yang said. “Pretending to learn the lessons of the Earth-Sirius war, not treating officers like a special class of human above the enlisted men.”
“It’s bullshit,” Lapp said. “In concept and execution. But it does mean that Yang will be eating whatever slop they’re serving, at least until his boss warms up to him and lets him in on whatever secrets there are.”
Jessica sighed. “I certainly understand it. I wish— the way you make it sound— they should be serving the prisoners and the enlisted men better food, and not the officers worse.”
“Well, you can take it up with the— uhh, is it an act of the council that made this policy, or is it fleet higher ups?” Lapp asked, looking over at Yang for confirmation.
“I think it’s a law,” Yang said.
“Take it up with the Alliance Council, then,” Lapp said.
“Maybe I will!”
“I think the thing is,” Jean said, gesturing at the table, “you could agitate for an update to the nutritional standards— like, that’s numbers. You can argue about that. But at the end of the day, it’s not about nutrition exactly. You can have the most nutritious, to the letter, meals being cooked and still have them taste bad. That can’t be legislated.”
“There already are nutrition standards in place,” Yang said.
“I wish I could send you there with care packages,” Jessica said with a sigh. “I don’t want to think of you starving. Maybe I will write a letter.”
“He’ll get the same— what is it, 3500 calories? — as everybody else.”
“I’m not picky,” Yang said. “I only have an appreciation for tea, and at least that I can bring with me.”
“I suppose having poor taste does have its benefits,” Lapp said with a laugh.
Yang ate his dinner. “This is good, though. You’re preemptively reminding me of what I’ll be missing.”
“Good food and friends, it’s true,” Lapp said. “Unfortunately the best things in life are the ones that soldiers tend to get deprived of.”
“Maybe when you’re done with your tenure on Econia, you and Jean will end up in the same place.”
“I doubt it,” Yang said. “The fleet is too big for that, unless you’re a politician’s son who’s never going to leave Heinessen.”
“Too bad neither of us have that fortune of birth,” Lapp said with a crooked smile.
“I wouldn’t want to be a politician’s son,” Yang said. His gaze was held again by the pictures on the fridge. This time, Lapp and Jessica noticed his gaze.
“You don’t like Jessica’s little shrine, hunh?” Lapp asked.
Jessica flushed. “It’s not a shrine. I just think they’re nice photos. And I don’t have any other recent ones of you.”
“I didn’t know you read Pretty Woman ,” Yang said, and then stuffed his mouth full of his bread roll so that he wouldn’t have to say anything else.
“Do you think I should be jealous of your pictures being on the fridge?” Lapp playfully shoved Yang’s shoulder.
“I don’t—” Yang mumbled with his mouth full.
“Oh leave him alone, Jean.”
“All by himself in the capital, Yang here has been suffering from a dire lack of friendly banter. You know Cazerne isn’t going to fill that ecological niche.”
“You know, I’ve been enjoying not being made fun of,” Yang said.
“Jessica, are you writing this down? You can send it in to Pretty Woman yourself: the thing that gets the Hero of El Facil hot under the collar is being teased. Gently, of course.”
Jessica laughed at that, though she stifled it by taking a sip of her wine before she said anything else. “I wouldn’t want to contribute to whatever that magazine considers journalism.”
“I don’t know why,” Yang said.
“Does it actually bother you?” Jessica asked, glancing behind herself at the photos on the fridge. “I can take it down if it does.”
Yang couldn’t answer the question for a moment. Once again, looking at the photos, he was struck by the sensation that he was looking at a stranger— a man perfectly manufactured by the propaganda wing of the fleet and the editors over at Pretty Woman , and not a real person at all. Why Jessica would want that man on her fridge, Yang didn’t know. But he didn’t think that Jessica saw the photos the same way. She only saw Yang, as invasive or polished as the images were. How Yang felt about Jessica wanting photos of the real Yang in her kitchen, he didn’t know.
“No, it’s fine,” he finally said. “I’m flattered, I guess.” He wasn’t a very good liar.
“And if I told you that I was the one who was saving clippings from your news highlights and sticking them up on the fridge?” Lapp asked.
“I wouldn’t believe you.” This, at least, Yang could say flatly, though it didn’t change the discomfort he was feeling in the whole conversation. No matter how light Lapp was attempting to keep the tone, everything was almost unbearably strange. He needed to change the topic, and so he did. “How’s teaching been this semester, Jessica?”
“Oh, it’s been fine.” She smiled at him, recognizing the attempt to change the topic for what it was. “My advisor has been in a weird mood lately, though.”
“Really?” Yang asked.
“Weird is underselling it, in my opinion,” Lapp said. “You might as well tell the whole story— you don’t know any of it, do you?”
Yang agreed that he did not, and Jessica regaled them with a tale of her advisor’s increasingly strange behavior for the rest of the meal. Yang was more than happy to listen, and to prop his head on his hands when he had finished eating, and to have a second and third glass of wine when it was offered.
After dinner, Lapp volunteered to clean up the dishes, and Yang and Jessica went out to the living room to sit on the couch. They could hear Lapp humming to himself as he splashed the dishes around in the sink.
At first, it seemed normal to tell Jessica all about the research project that Cazerne had been making him work on to fill time, but as Yang’s story went on, he became aware that Jessica was leaning further and further onto him— at first it was only their sides touching due to the smallness of the loveseat, then she leaned on him directly, and then she rested her head on his shoulder. She must have felt him growing tense beneath her, but she didn’t make any outward sign. When she took his hand from his lap and pressed it between her own palms, Yang’s story about the 730 Mafia faded away into mumbles and then into nothing.
“I’m glad you came, Wenli,” Jessica said after a moment of silence. “I’ve missed you a lot.”
Yang gave a helpless glance towards the bead curtain separating the kitchen from the living room, where Lapp was still humming a bombastic Tchaikovsky piece and intermittently running the sink. “You’ve had Jean,” Yang said.
“He’s been at the front, for one thing. And that doesn’t make any difference to how much I miss you,” Jessica said. “I hope you don’t think it does.”
“Jessica—”
“I worry about you in the capital, you know.” She shook her head against his shoulder. “I know— it must be difficult for you to be by yourself there.”
“It’s fine.”
“Is it?”
“Even if it isn’t— I’m going to Econia anyway.” He let out his breath and looked down at his hand in hers. He held it limply, like if he didn’t move his fingers at all he wasn’t complicit in whatever this was. “It will be good for me to get some distance.”
“No paparazzi there,” Jessica said. “That is good, at least.”
That hadn’t been what Yang was referring to, but he nodded. “Yeah. True.”
“You’ll have to send me your photos yourself, then, if I can’t get them out of the news.”
“Jessica…”
He could feel her smiling against his shoulder. “I do think they’re very handsome photos. I’m sorry you don’t like them.”
In the kitchen, Lapp shut off the sink with a rattle and looped in his humming back around to an earlier section of the song, finishing with what was clearly his favorite part. His footsteps sounded out along the old linoleum of the kitchen floor, and when he stuck his hand through the bead curtain, Yang hastily pulled himself away from Jessica and stood.
“I need to—” Yang said, and gestured vaguely at the bathroom, which was through the kitchen.
Lapp helpfully held the bead curtain open for him again as Yang went through.
In the bathroom, Yang locked the door and sat on the closed toilet lid, taking deep breaths and trying to calm the flutter of his heart. It wasn’t working. Maybe he had one too many glasses of wine. Maybe he had forgotten the way that the friendly company of Lapp and Jessica had been back when they were in school. Maybe he was overthinking. Maybe he wasn’t.
What Yang knew, more than he knew anything in the world, was that he couldn’t stay in this house overnight and retain any semblance of sanity.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and texted the one person in Thernussen who might be able to rescue him. His friend Dusty Attenborough was still a student at the Officers’ Academy. Yang had planned to meet up with him for lunch the next day, but it seemed like those plans would need to be pushed up a little bit, if Attenborough could help him.
Yang: attenborough can i crash in your dorm room tonight
Yang: i’m having a weird time
Yang: also can you get me a taxi
Yang: or come get me
Attenborough: third wheeling rlly going that bad?
Attenborough: but yeah sure i’ll be there in like 10 mins
Attenborough: always glad to tag team a retreat with you yang <3
Yang slumped back against the toilet and closed his eyes. He could wait in here for a few minutes, and then he would have to go make his excuses to Lapp and Jessica. Jessica would be disappointed, but it would be for the best. And he could say something like Attenborough was having an emergency that Yang’s celebrity status might help him get out of— the lie wouldn’t need to be convincing. It would have to be enough to allow Yang to slip out the door.
A few minutes passed, enough that he plausibly couldn’t still be in the bathroom. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands, then made his way out into the kitchen. He couldn’t hear anything from Jessica or Lapp. He fumbled in the kitchen cabinets and got himself a glass of water, and stood by the sink drinking it, procrastinating as much as he could.
When he decided he could wait no longer, he peered through the bead curtain to steel himself for going in to face them and make his goodbyes. Through the shimmering blue curtain, he could see that Jessica and Lapp had moved to Jessica’s bedroom, on the bed. Jessica was sitting up, but Lapp was laying down with his head on her lap, and she was raking her fingers through his hair. They were talking, but so quietly that Yang could only hear the tones and not the words. Soft, intimate things.
On second thought, he didn’t need to go in and talk to them. He could exit through the kitchen stairwell, out the back door. And he did.
