Adam turned his head from the mirror and lay on the floor on his back like a corpse. He did not sleep, but waited with his eyes open and his arms straight beside him. He entered the old accountancy. He thought of the blood in him, the muscle. He concentrated on his awareness of his body, as he had learned. Every ache, each intimation of a heartbeat, especially the breath.
It was different. He could not quite catch hold of it. There was too much interference, the systems scrambled, music lost. He had breathed in too much dust.
Yun would let him breathe. A person could not stop breathing, could they?
He got up finally and went to the kitchen. There was the glass jar, grimy and malodorous on the counter. The flowers in the garbage bin, reeking through the plastic. He picked up the jar and examined the label: white scraps where the text had washed away. It felt like days since he had eaten, but he was not hungry now; his body had found a way to crawl through hunger and arrive on the other side with another energy. This thought elated him. He dropped the jar in on top of the rotten flowers, pulled the plastic bag out, carried his burden to the door, had to rest it on the floor to get his shoes on. His muscles sang. When he lifted it again there were traces of pollen and juice on the tile, and a print in the dust where the bag had rested. So much dust on the floor that the apartment could have been abandoned. He might have died weeks ago.
He listened at his door for life in the building but heard only machinery. He walked around the small flat, closing all the windows, checking the seals. He looked at the vents for the air conditioning. He looked at the mark he had left on the floor by the mirror, the shape of which was nothing human. The air was sour in here, but there was plenty of room. Space for both of them.
He remembered to take his coat.
When he stepped outside, he carried the plastic bag with him. The elevator was waiting at his floor. He rode it down, looking into his blurred reflection, glad to find them looking back. When they reached the ground he walked out to the garbage station. He paused, staring into the bin and then at the small patch of grass that grew from the mud beside it. Nearby, on the other side of a small hedge, an old man was crouched, moving. Adam peered over to see what he was doing. He was digging in the garden, planting or burying something. The man did not seem to notice he was being watched. Maybe he was used to it, or maybe Adam was not quite visible; the light was strange.
He glanced up at the window of his apartment, half-expecting to see himself, but there was no figure in the frame. The cold made his nose smart, his eyes sting; the sky was heavy with clouds that were dark with evening or something worse. It was no longer possible to forget what floated above them, to believe that the sky enclosed. That blue stretch up there, where they could become anyone. So much had been stolen already. He reached into the bin and took the jar out, held it in one hand. He wanted to break the glass in his fist, but he wasn’t strong enough. He dropped it carefully into the recycling instead.
These acts were slow and difficult. His limbs were numb. He put his hands in his pocket to warm them. He had welcomed them now. What more did they want?
‘It was time to get rid of the flowers,’ he said aloud. The air roared in his ears. His voice was torn to rags in the cold.
The old man looked up, startled. One hand reached into the earth between his knees. He was looking for something buried, Adam decided, an animal or insect: something alive that must be brought out and set loose.
‘You remember,’ he said, his breath a whisper.