It wasn’t his city. His city was bright, sleepless, ugly, and yellow. This was purgatory, a waiting room.

There was an open kiosk at a corner. He paid for a pack of Bahmans and returned to the apartment and checked his phone again. He lit a cigarette and stood by the window. He lit another, and another.

The phone, carefully placed beside him, remained silent, and his glances did nothing but make time more impatient.

At last, it rang.

“Were you sleeping?”

“No,” he said, dazed and gawking at the sun-drenched pantry to stay awake.

“How was your day?”

“It was good,” he lied. “Yours?”

“We went to dinner.”

“You always go to dinner.”

“What else is there to do?”

He let out an unseen smile.

“He does love me you kn–.”

“I know.”

“But you –”

“I do.”

“How could you?” she asked.

He said nothing.

“Do you still want to talk to me?”

“I always do.”

“At some point, you’ll get tired. Dragging you around like this, against my own will. Don’t think for just one second that I don’t know wh–”

“I don’t think that.”

“Then why do you let me do it?”

“You know why,” he said.

“I can’t leave.”

“You don’t want to.”

“He’s my life, Mehran.”

“He has to be,” he echoed the words unsaid.

“But what are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

“And yet you do.”

“I do.”

The silence between them lingered as day broke. He put the phone on speaker and carried her to the kitchen, heating some water on the stove. She was humming something familiar, and he joined her soundlessly.

“It reminds me of you,” she said, laying on his counter. “Will you sing it to me?”

His heart sank, and yet, he sang.

“You are a splendid butterfly,” he began, shame fastening his tortured eyes.

“I love you,” the voice murmured back from behind the plastic, continuously, over and over again.

“And I can make you rue the day…”

“I love you, I love you” that voice repeated, again and again, before abruptly hanging up.

He sighed and sat at his chair by the window, quivering as he sipped his tea and looked outside. It looks to be a good day, he thought.

He deleted the message and carried his phone to bed. It was quiet, and there was no one.

He woke at eight. his body could move again, and he couldn’t remember his dream. He sat up, and reached for the phone, and clicked and clicked to no avail.

The screen was blank, and the battery had died.

Desperate, he paced around the room looking for his charger. That imperceptible place above his stomach throbbed and knotted relentlessly as he scavenged through closets, drawers, cabinets, and breathed heavily in anguish and with impatience, hoping to be heard by some kind stranger but knowing also that he was lying; that there was no stranger he wished for; that there was nobody else. In his frenzy, he pulled the mattress down to the ground, and, not finding anything, he continued on to the kitchen.

It was under neither clothes nor cutlery, as he uncombed his home for the piece of wire.

At last, he found it plugged into the wall beside his bed, calm and uncomplaining, perched where it had always been.

Now plugged in, the phone’s sudden burst of light soothed him. Able to briefly free himself from it, he then sauntered to the bathroom. His teeth were yellowing. He tried and struggled and failed to brush the smut from between his teeth and gums. He was bored by his face and unkempt eyes.

After walking back to the room, he tried to evade his feeling of anticipation by picking up his prostrate friend wearily rather than excitedly, to treat it, just for once, with indifference. After all, she was bound to be inside. Enough time had passed for her to have returned again.

Phone in hand, he closed his eyes and took a breath, only to exhale, heavily, when faced with the bareness of the home screen.

Desperate for a distraction, he picked the only book he had in the apartment, a worn-out and bad translation of an American love story gifted by a friend he had long forgotten. He knew that he wouldn’t read it but decided to take it to the bath with him anyway.

As the water filled the tub, he tried to kill time by undressing as slowly as he could. Then, dowsing himself in the grimy, half-full tub, he let the warmth soak his skin. It was there that he felt calm, protected in the one place free of thoughts and memories, the white-washed tiles of the room protecting him, the water gladly trapping him. The book was laid unopened by his side, a surrogate to his torment.

Finally, she rang at four, and he soaked his bedroom’s carpet floor by scurrying toward her at the first ring.

“What did you do today?” was the usual question.

“I read,” he lied.

“And did you go out?”

“I did,” he lied again. “Had a nice talk with Payam, and then we went to Max.”

“I don’t know Max.”

“No, the place. Don’t you remember?”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I’m sorry; you know I’m sorry.”

He kept silent.

“I remember all the other things. You know I remember all the other things, don’t you?” He begged.

“What did you do today?” he asked, scouring for a less painful conversation.

“You wouldn’t like it,” she said.

“Why did you answer me that way then?”

“How?”

“Telling me I won’t like it to make me feel bad.”

“I didn’t.”

In a moment’s fit, he flung her to the floor, breaking her to pieces on the kitchen’s parquetry. It was nothing he couldn’t fix. She was just battery and plastic, after all.

“I lost my temper. I’m sorry.”

“You had no right.”

“I didn’t.”

“If I were there, right now, what would you have done?”

He thought about the question.

“Would you have hurt me?”

“No.”

“Would you have hit me?”

“No.”

“Would you have twisted my arm?”

“No.”

“Then why did you do that right now?”

“I did it to the phone.”

She hung up only to call again in an hour. All that time, he had been sitting by the window, smoking the last of his Bahmans.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry too.”

“Do you hate me?”

He heard wind from behind the line, and traffic, and life. They were no longer his: neither the wind nor the sounds of honks and passing cars and nor the phantom smell of fumes and burnt tires nor the life that he could no longer reach for. Long ago, they had been. And yet, that place and those sounds that he used to call his own – before this room, before purgatory itself – all seemed so far away just then, audible and within reach only through a piece of plastic.

“Where are you?”

“On the bus.”

“It’s five in the morning.”

“I’m going to school, dummy.”

His silence seemed to trouble her.

“Have you gone to class?”

“No,” he remembered.

“Do you have class today?”

“I think so.”

“Promise me you’ll go.”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“I have to go now.”

“Will you call me?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He boiled some water and opened the window, breathing his first breath of fresh air in a long time. The day seemed nice and warm, and from his window, he saw an unusual amount of people in the open air. For reasons he didn’t quite want to understand, he felt lighter than before, and his mind was clear. He had his tea, left the phone plugged in, and walked outside.

“It’s been a while, Mehran jaan” said the grey-bearded grocer when he walked into the store.

“It has,” he answered, cool, elated and engaged, his lips beaming with his head up high. “How is everything, agha Rasool?”

“I must say that after you vanished a few days ago, I realized that you’re my only customer.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true,” he said.

“You’ve been missed,” the grocer smiled.

He took his time in the old man’s store, and returned to him with a handful of biscuits, a pack of eggs, and a bottle of Coke. “I’ll get a Marlboro too,” he added, to treat himself.

He strode to the kitchen and boiled some eggs.

The meal was had, and the dishes were washed, and what followed was the Marlboro he had craved all afternoon. He sat at his chair and looked outside. The street was winding down again, and it was getting dark. He could discern the green-striped van from the distance as it made its usual rounds. He smiled and took an exulted drag.

By ten-o-clock, he had already smoked half his pack. An infrequent tremor behind his eyes and a head-rush that had distorted into nausea drove him to his room.

There, the phone lay on the bed, but cool-headed, he walked past it, indifferent to its insides.

He went into the bathroom instead and washed his hands and face and took another swipe at cleaning his teeth, finally managing to remove some of the residue beneath his gums. He then undressed and tumbled casually on his bed.

Only then, like an afterthought, did he grab the phone he had seamlessly managed to neglect all day.

The screen was bare.

And yet, this time, he felt no panic at all. Instead, he casually leapt under the sheets and dialed the number, twisting his neck, closing his eyes, and letting the most natural smile materialize onto his face.

No response.

Still unruffled, he dialed again and remained on the line until the very last ring. It was ten-thirty, he noticed, and called again.

No response.

The familiar throb deep inside his chest was slowly resurfacing.

His breathing grew heavier and the air more stifling.

But he persisted.

Four, ten, fifteen times and all he could hear was ringing in his ears before he had to try over again.

Soon, the room filled with the moans and whimpers of a tiny figure hiding inside his bed, mouthing prayers and pleading to an object to unlatch and let him in.

The pain proved too wretched, pressing him to keel over to the ground, and, dragging back mattress he had adjusted down to the floor with him.

Finally, he fell asleep on a bedroom floor moist with snot and tears.

“Hi,” he said, spent.

“Hi.”

“I called you a few times,” he said.

“You did.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you.”

He enveloped her in his arms and held her close.

“Thirty-two,” she murmured.

“Thirty-two times?”

“Yes.”

“I was panicked.”

“I know you were.”

“I didn’t scare you, did I?”

“A little, but it’s okay. I know you can’t help it.”

“Why didn’t you pick up?” he asked.

“I couldn’t,” she replied simply, which turned out to swell his torment. “But I’m here now. I called you, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“Oh, Mehran, my silly boy, you know how much I –”

“I do too.”

“Say it again.”

“I do too.”

“Even if I don’t pick up sometimes?”

“Even if you don’t pick up sometimes.”

“Even if there’s someone else?”

“Even if there’s two.”

“There isn’t.”

“There’s me.”

“There is.”

“I remember Max, Mehran!” she said after a moment’s pause. “We had such a good time that day!”

“We did, didn’t we?”

“It was wonderful,” she told him, sweetness in her voice. “Will you take me there again?”

“Any time you want.”

“Will you take me tomorrow?”

“I’ll take you today.”

“I can’t today,” she hesitated.

“Do you have to?”

“Don’t talk about her, please.”

“All right.”

She was humming a familiar song.

“Do you know it?”

“I do,” he answered.

“Will you sing it?”

He switched on the speaker, cupped her in his hands, and took her to the window.

“Will you sing it?” she asked again.

“I’m gonna’ take a stab at this. Surely we’ll be alright…”

“I love you,” she said, serenading him with that same guarded and familiar mantra, as he serenaded her with their song.

With eyes kept shut and watering, he sang to that one object that echoed the words he pined to hear and asked for the songs he longed to sing.

“Hope I’m ready, able to make my own, good home,” he sang, plunging himself, boundlessly, contentedly, in her everlasting I love yous.

“Bring me close,” she interrupted.

“You are close.”

“Bring me to your ear.”

He took her by her only limb and raised her to his ear.

“Carry on.”

He thought he heard a smile somewhere in her words.

“They go we go,” he pressed on, singing to her urgently, hoping for another I love you.

“I want you to know, what I did I did.”

Soon, She joined him too.

“They go we go, I want you to know, what,” they sang together, “I did I did.”

“Once more,” she whispered as they drifted, together again, through their song and dance: They go we go, I want you to know, what I did I did.

Then, like some restless wind, she was gone again, out the window, back home, far from him.

And yet faith had been restored.

Long after she had left his side, he kept to his mantra, singing and sighing and whispering and imagining her inside his palm. Everything was fine again, and nothing hurt.

The air was clean, and the sky was blue, and the streets were still too bare. And from far away, he heard the van approach to make its rounds again, and he reached down and up and lit another and wondered what to sing her next.