AJSHARA

BY ADI ALSAID

For the duration of his flight, Tzvi had respite from his ghosts. He was terrified of how many would be there waiting for him when they landed. A country always in the midst of war, or at least surrounded by the prospect of it.

But on his flight, there was the calmness of the jet engines humming everyone to sleep. There were dozens of movies at his disposal, a book to read, the flight attendant who had smiled at him a few times, the magic of her eye contact. There were also his friends scattered around the plane. They were loud and disruptive, and Tzvi was thankful for their volume, for the excitement about the trip that they had bubbling within them.

Back in Mexico City, Tzvi had bid farewell first to his family—Mom had cried while firing off a list of demands about how often to keep in touch—and then to friends who would have normal summers and then go off to college—a surprising amount of tears involved in these goodbyes, both from his longtime crush and, with different people, from Tzvi himself. Finally he said goodbye to the ghosts in his neighborhood. They’d become accustomed to having someone who could talk to them, and in turn he’d grown used to this odd facet of his life. The trauma of his gift had faded partially with time, mostly because he’d become familiar with the ghosts and their stories. Linda, the girl who’d died from leukemia at sixteen. Sergio, who’d been struck by a car. Two men named Josue, who’d each died when their buildings had collapsed in separate earthquakes thirty-two years apart. He rarely saw other ghosts, since, like the living, they didn’t often stray from their neighborhoods and comfort zones. They haunted familiar places. Even these that he knew, he ignored most of the time. Sure, they talked to him, but it was rare that he ever spoke back. He knew where they liked to spend time and avoided those spots, even steered his thoughts away from them whenever he could. Still, he felt he owed them an explanation as to his upcoming absence. They had so little else.

“An ajshara,” he said.

The older Josue raised an eyebrow and looked at the younger Josue, who was just as confused. They were over fifty years apart in age at their deaths, and had grown up during vastly different decades, but how they died had brought them close together, or maybe that was death itself. Every time Tzvi saw them, they were roaming the streets, or sitting at Plaza Cibeles, their backs to the fountain, watching the living go about their days.

“It’s a tradition,” Tzvi explained. “We take a year to travel before going to school. Usually Israel and Europe.”

The Josues had follow-up questions, but Tzvi didn’t have the heart to continue the conversation past that notice. Every detail he added would have been rubbing salt in their wounds. It was hard to step away from the guilt that he was the only person they could talk to, aside from each other. But it was harder to stay and talk.

The pilot announced the final approach. Tzvi’s friends, who’d settled into sleep over the last few hours of the flight, now resumed their too-loud chatter. Tzvi glanced out his window as if afraid that the ghosts would be visible from there, but he saw only the dark blue expanse of the Mediterranean. The flight attendant came by, collecting trash, and when she smiled at him again, Tzvi thought that he could be happy staying on the plane forever.

Wheels touched down in Tel Aviv, and Tzvi allowed himself to be swept up in the energy of the others. They were eighteen and free of their parents for the first time (though still tied to their bank accounts, thank God), a year of travel ahead of them. It promised to be a year of adventure and food, Israeli girls and European girls and South American boys; boys with guitars at hostels and girls dancing carefree at bars and boys with their bodies at beaches. A fantasy in more ways than one, since Tzvi and his friends were all shy and awkward, and their independence wouldn’t magically change them. The boys assumed the girls would have it easier, but the girls were shyer and treated these fantasies as more far-removed than the boys did, so their opportunities advanced more slowly. Regardless, Tzvi was happy to think of them as sudden Casanovas, since it was more fun to think of girls than ghosts. That’s all he wanted from the year, he realized: time without his ghosts.

The five adrenaline-fueled boys and two equally excited girls took two taxis to the city, checking in to a hostel a ten-minute walk from the beach. They ate shawarma from a small stand, fighting off jet lag by telling each other of all the glee they’d experience in the coming months. They commented on the abundance of beautiful Israeli girls, gorgeous Israeli men. Tzvi ate with his eye on the wrap, not wanting to look around and see the dead.

He’d noticed them already. Not what he’d apparently been expecting, victims of bombs and violence, all carnage. Here, too, people died of old age. They died of overdoses, died peacefully in their sleep, died happy. The ghosts looked like the living people, just a slight glow to their skin, wearing their deaths on their faces. Not in any obvious way that Tzvi could point at, but obvious enough that he always knew how they had died, even from afar. No matter how hard he tried, he could not hide from that knowledge. At least here he could hide in anonymity. He could pretend to be just like his friends.

Down the street from the shawarma stand, on the corner of the intersection, Tzvi spotted a dead man in a tank top, his hands in his pockets, a slight smile on his lips, taking in the sun. The man looked Tzvi’s way, and before he could be recognized, Tzvi reached for the bottle of tahini and added another squirt to his shawarma, taking a bite and trying to tune in to what his friends were saying.

Boys, the beach, girls, the joys ahead.

Gabriel wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, which he crumpled up and tossed into a nearby bin. “We’re finally here,” he said to Tzvi. The rest of the group was chatting excitedly, giddy with exhaustion and the change of scenery.

“Yeah,” Tzvi said, and looked around to take stock of their surroundings, avoiding looking in the direction of the man in the tank top. The sun was glaring, and everyone nearby looked beautiful in their sunglasses, basking in the heat. Could he do this for the whole year? Look to the light?

“It’s going to be a great year.”

“You think so?”

Gabriel laughed boisterously and then smacked Tzvi’s knee, as if the mere possibility of a different outcome was preposterous.

They ended up going to their hostel and lying down, jet lag taking away all their plans and knocking them out until two a.m. At six they finally crawled out of bed and watched the sunrise, ready to explore the city, ready to start the adventure for real. They ate sabich and then shawarma again, dipped into a mall when the heat had them sweating everywhere. They saw girls in military gear and, in their boisterous Spanish, discussed how to start a conversation, but the girls walked by before any of them could act. At night they talked about going to nightclubs but ended up at a dive bar next to the hostel. It was full of travelers like them, and though Tzvi and his friends had all been able to drink as eighteen-year-olds in Mexico, there was something freeing about drinking without their parents anywhere near, something less intimidating about doing it in this friendly, dark place compared to a nightclub with twenty-five-year-olds. Tzvi saw a dead soldier at the end of the bar, playing with a pack of cigarettes. The soldier was in his forties, dead from heart failure, not bullets. He made eye contact with Tzvi and smiled, a look so desperate crossing his face that Tzvi couldn’t bear to maintain eye contact with him. Tzvi ordered another beer and escaped to the patio with Ariela and Daniela, who were talking to two Belgian girls while the others hung around too closely and giggled too obviously.

Then they all overdid it and puked on the sidewalk on the short traipse back to the hostel, passing out in their clothes and sandals. In the morning they emerged hungover into the blazing humidity, seeking something that would soak up last night’s mistakes. But it was Saturday and everything was closed, so they ended up lying out on the beach on their too-small travel towels, moaning in discomfort and pain.

All of their mothers called at some point that day, each of the kids taking turns trying to fake pep and cheer while omitting the binge drinking and all the hope for sex and companionship. “Yeah, I’m having fun,” Tzvi said to his mother in Hebrew. A dead girl walked by as he said this, and she glanced down, her jaw dropping slightly when she realized he could see her and he could speak her language. In response, Tzvi rushed off the phone call and then sprinted past her into the water, not ready to return to his ghosts. He was tired of collecting their names in his mind, collecting all the ways in which life could be cut short.

The girl followed. She had long, dark hair and dark eyes that bore into Tzvi’s even from the shore. Her long skirt soaking didn’t stop her approach, and though Tzvi wanted to swim away, he was pretty sure he would tire from escaping before she would tire from chasing.

“You can see me,” she said. The waves lapped at her chest, sharp angle of her clavicle poking out from her off-the-shoulder blouse.

Tzvi nodded, unable to make eye contact.

“Why did you run from me?”

“My Hebrew’s not great,” he said, though he didn’t strain to find the words, and his accent, which had been perfected by his mom’s modeling, gave him away. “I’m on vacation,” he added.

“Good for you.” A large wave made them both rise up, their feet leaving the safety of the sand. Tzvi loved that feeling, which was closer to flying than anyone ever recognized. “Have you always been able to talk to us?”

“I think so.”

“But you don’t like it.”

Tzvi didn’t say anything. He looked past the girl, who was maybe a little older than him, toward the beach. His friends were buying Popsicles from a guy on the beach yelling out “Artik!” loud enough that his voice carried over the crashing waves. Two black women played paddleball on the beach, the thwack loud and satisfying.

Tzvi sank his head beneath the waves, letting the water wash over him. When he resurfaced, the girl was still there, looking out at the horizon. “You can go if you want,” she said tersely, but not unkind. So he did.

Two full weeks in Tel Aviv, shawarma for most meals so they could spend more money on evening drinks and a little bit of hash bought from the Canadian who hung out all the time at the dive bar. They kept meaning to go to nightclubs, but the bar was comforting, and there were enough girls around there, or at least the potential of girls. Plus, here they could speak to each other in Spanish and hear each other’s laughter.

It was Tzvi and Gabriel again, on the patio now. Inside, Victor and Ariela were playing pool against Eitan and Roni. There was a thin haze of smoke, though it was hard to tell if the smoke from outside was making its way into the bar or vice versa. Gabriel lit a cigarette, a habit that only a few of them had had before arriving in Israel. But so many more people  smoked that it was hard not to get wrapped in it. Tzvi himself almost craved one now, the beer coursing through him making him forget how much he hated the feeling of inhaling smoke.

“I can’t believe I haven’t even made out with anyone yet,” Gabriel said, resting his arm over the patio’s banister. “We should be going to nightclubs.”

“What’s stopping you?”

Gabriel exhaled, a billow of smoke joining the haze from the bar. “I hate nightclubs.” He laughed. “But I think I hate not making out with people less.” Neither one made a move to get up, their eyes on all the people around them. Aside from the soldier the first time in the bar, Tzvi hadn’t seen a single dead person enter, and it made the place feel like exactly the kind of refuge he had wanted from the trip. He wasn’t worried about making out; life would be long enough for sex. “You don’t?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t what?”

“Hate not making out.”

Just then, two American girls walked up the steps to the bar, passing by their table. Gabriel said hello, but not loudly enough to be noticed, apparently. Tzvi laughed, feeling good. Then the quirky owner came by with a couple of whiskey shots for them, saying that your first time in the bar you got a free drink. He’d forgotten how many times he’d given them free drinks already. Tzvi and Gabriel groaned, then laughed together, their conversation fading. Tzvi felt a confession building on his tongue.

He had never told anyone about his ability to interact with the dead, had never particularly wanted to. Even if he were believed, what good could possibly come of it? But now, here on this warm night in Tel Aviv, in the company of one of his best friends, the alcohol coursing through his veins made him feel like it would be freeing to share, to open up. What else were nights like these—trips like these—for if not late-night confessions?

Just as he was about to speak, the American girls came back out onto the patio holding beers, looking for empty seats. The only two available were at the boys’ table, and they came over and asked if it was okay to sit down, causing Gabriel’s face to light up like the sun and the moment for the confession to pass by.

Nothing came of the encounter, and though Tzvi felt more disappointment about keeping his secret, he told himself that he needed nothing more from his trip than nights like those, Gabriel’s face lighting up.

They went to Jerusalem to please their parents. They sent all the appropriate photos from the Western Wall. Jerusalem was full of the saddest ghosts. The ones he’d feared seeing on the plane. Little Arab boys from decades ago, dirt still on their cheeks, the kind of innocent dirt of boyhood that was not dealt out by life’s shitty hand but rather earned by the bravery to still live with joy in terrible circumstances. These boys were at least not alone, cared for by women in wigs and ankle-length skirts. Death took away all distinctions between Muslim and Jewish, between people; the ghosts banded together. This was cold comfort, and Tzvi was happy to leave Jerusalem behind.

They canceled their remaining days at the hostel there and took a bus to Eilat, where they were sure sex would finally enter the story of their trip. But then they signed up for scuba diving certifications, which meant no drinking for a few days, a development they all half-heartedly complained about, though each one of them was ready for a break from that particular vice. Tzvi made a habit of waking up early and going to get iced coffee, people-watching on the boardwalk. The dead would always spot him, and though he still didn’t encourage conversation, he could no longer bring himself to flee. Anyway, there was nowhere to flee. They were everywhere. The joys of the trip made him comfortable with this lack of escape, and he settled into the knowledge that he’d be moving on soon, and though the ghosts would follow, it wouldn’t be these same ones.

When the scuba course was over, Ariela and Victor hooked up in the bunk bed below Tzvi, thinking he was asleep. The soft noises of sex and the bed straining against their weight felt at once too intimate and somehow wonderful. He didn’t want to ruin the moment for them, though, so he remained perfectly still, not wanting to impose, not wanting to be present, and yet curious about what every single noise might have meant, trying to picture each little alien act. He was mortified and thrilled for his friends, the two contrasting emotions nestling comfortably within each other.

Two weeks later, on the last night in the kibbutz in Degania, two Argentinian girls traveling together took an interest in him and Gabriel and insisted on spending time with them after their shifts cleaning the chicken coops. The girls poured the boys more cheap wine, and they played a game that was basically just a string of confessions. They started off with innocuous, silly facts (broken bones in childhood, a hidden talent for hula-hooping), and then, because they were teens let loose on the world, hungry for others, the confessions became more intimate and more sexual (a clichéd fantasy to have sex on a beach, an admission to masturbating quietly in airplane bathrooms). Tzvi again felt a building desire to admit how he saw the world. He thought for a moment that in this setting, he would not be laughed at or thought of as crazy. That they would take the confession as simply as they would if he admitted to being a virgin.

Then Sofia grabbed Gabriel by the hand and led him away to privacy, leaving Tzvi alone with Mona. Before he left, Gabriel turned back to look at Tzvi again, such a cheesy smile plastered on his face that Tzvi was sure of life’s goodness. Ghosts existed but so did that kind of joy, so what was so scary about the dead?

Mona looked a little like the ghost girl who’d followed him into the ocean in Tel Aviv, her eyes intense and intimidating. A pang of regret hit Tzvi, wishing he had asked the girl a few questions or let her talk longer. Then he refocused on Mona sitting next to him. They small-talked for a little while on the back patio, surrounded by night and silence, just enough laughter to make them feel close to each other. Mona bit her lip and pulled herself onto Tzvi’s lap, straddling him. They held eye contact for three seconds before bursting into giggles, and the next thing he knew they were kissing.

On the flight to Budapest the other boys wanted all the details. Gabriel went into the progression of the evening, whispering so that the girls couldn’t hear, though they were just as eager to know. Tzvi was happy to be across the aisle and not have to provide his own account. The sex had been clumsy and uncomfortable and wonderful, a blur of sensations and awareness about the sensations. There had been no ghosts around, and Tzvi would hang on to the details of the memory for the rest of the trip, and for years after. Mona’s nose ring, a simple golden stud, glinting in the moonlight. Her body against his, sticky with sweat, giving off these little jerks as she drifted off into sleep and he lay awake in the weak breeze. The way her Argentinian accent reshaped words he thought he was familiar with. He didn’t know if he had objectified her, or if she had objectified him, or if sex was the object both had wanted, and they had simply used each other to get it.

Europe was a different kind of beast. Tzvi was surprised to find that he hadn’t been sad to leave Israel. Parental connection and Mona notwithstanding, he had looked forward more to the cities of Europe from the start, its hostels and coffee shops, the fortunate fact that he wouldn’t speak most of the languages.

The group had been traveling for nearly two months together and had started to get sick of each other. They spent a week in Budapest and then, unable to agree on what to do next, they split into smaller groups, promising to meet back up in Ibiza later. Eitan, Roni, and Daniela headed off to Amsterdam for that particular kind of debauchery. Ariela and Victor decided to go on a couple’s trip to a lake in Switzerland. The group’s interests were scattered, some of them happy to check off the tourist sites the books recommended, others focusing all their efforts on girls or boys.

So it was Tzvi and Gabriel for a few weeks on their own. They took trains to Prague and Berlin, hopped over to Stockholm, then back to Berlin. Gabriel had gotten the taste of sex and couldn’t think about anything else. He brought Tzvi to nightclubs at midnight and stayed until seven in the morning, then slept until three p.m., at which point he’d open dating apps on his phone or go downstairs to the hostel lobby and wait to find girls to talk to.

“You’re addicted,” Tzvi joked.

They were at a beer garden at a park in Prague, overlooking the entire city. There were a ton of people gathered around, enjoying the cooling late-summer weather and cheap beer. A lot of ghosts here, but they had plenty of company too, and if their eyes met Tzvi’s and recognized him for what he was, they didn’t come rushing to him.

“What better thing to be addicted to than human connection?” Gabriel said. There was almost always a cigarette in his hands now.

“Is that what you’re after, then?”

“Of course. The fact that it’s fleeting or mostly physical doesn’t make it less of a connection.”

“I think by definition it does, but I’m not gonna judge.”

“No?” Gabriel craned his neck to follow the trajectory of a group of Czech teens passing a joint between them. “How come?”

Tzvi tried to articulate his thoughts but settled on a shrug.

There were times when Gabriel went home with a girl or nights when Tzvi wasn’t up for the whole cycle again, and as a result he found himself alone more than he had ever been. He thought a lot about Mona and the girl from the ocean. He joined hostel pub crawls and practiced how to say “excuse me” in whatever language they spoke where he was, in theory to break into conversations, but it never seemed to be that easy. The living were less receptive.

The sneakers he brought with him started falling apart from the walking, and for the first time in his life he sat for hours on end with no agenda and no itch to move on. The dead sought him out, his static solitude easier to approach now.

Maybe it was loneliness that made him not flee, maybe it was the fact that the trip wasn’t exactly what he’d thought it would be. Not worse, by any means. But not the version that had existed in his head in the months leading up to it, or even in the first few idealistic weeks at the start. Maybe it was sex that had changed things, or maybe nothing had changed, and he’d simply grown tired of fleeing from the ghosts all the time.

At a photography museum in Berlin, Tzvi struck up a conversation with a ghost who looked to be in her forties, silver strands standing out in her black hair. She smiled at Tzvi and pointed at the woman in the picture, then said something in German.

“Is that you?” he asked, in English.

The woman smiled, taking his ability to see her and talk to her in stride, as if there were nothing special about it. “I was in university here,” she said. “A lot of life ahead of me there, but not as much as I thought there would be.”

“Does it make you sad to look at this?”

The woman clicked her tongue. “Why be sad that I lived? I love this picture.” She took a step closer, crossing her arms over her chest. “I come to look at it every day. I wish I’d been in more pictures in my life.”

Tzvi stood with her for over an hour, listening to her make statements like these, getting a sense of her life through the details she unloaded, the stories she told about growing up in East Germany. “I died right before the wall came down,” she said. “It was easy to cross that way.”

Later that week, Gabriel found a girl he liked and decided to stay a little longer in Berlin rather than continue on to the Balkans, so Tzvi went on his own for the first time in his life. And suddenly the ghosts were all he had. He came to realize that all they needed were the same kinds of things the living needed, the same things he craved: to be seen, to be heard. He didn’t learn much more about death, but he saw how much the dead needed these interactions and how easily he could provide them. For two weeks, Tzvi did the exact opposite of what he’d done all his life: he sought out the ghosts.

He stayed with the ghosts on park benches and corner cafés and the cemented shores surrounding the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. They would communicate in their broken English, the cracks in each tongue following different fault lines. An old woman in Kosovo wept to him for an hour, then wiped her ghostly cheek and hugged him, thanking him in her Slavic tongue. Tzvi sat and watched her go, feeling like he’d found the purpose of his trip.

In Ibiza, all seven of them reunited to party. They checked into a loud and overpriced hostel, now well versed enough in euros to know they were getting ripped off. They were all starting to catch flak from their parents about spending, and though for Tzvi, Asia and its affordability was next on the agenda, it felt like the grown-up thing to do was to care about money. Not that they’d actually stop spending it. Victor and Ariela had broken up in Switzerland, and Victor had decided he’d had enough of traveling and was going back to Mexico to apply to schools and work for his dad, so this was to be his last hurrah.

The beach clubs were chaotic flurries of party flyers littering the air and shirtless men, some younger than Tzvi and the boys, some significantly older, all of them seemingly grabbing at women, either with their hands or with their words. The air was thick with music and people shouting. The floor was thick with discarded plastic cups and spilled mojitos, the sand swelling under the weight of the partyers.

They all bought drinks and were quickly separated, the party pulling them in different directions. Tzvi squeezed himself past bodies until he found room to breathe, near the shore. It was amazing to look out at these scores of people and see how many dead were among them, without anyone other than himself noticing. Even at a glance he could spot dozens of them in the crowd. Some dancing, some leaning back and watching, some just standing in the middle of it all as if they were waiting for someone to run into them, for someone to start a conversation with them, flirt with them.

Ghosts hung on to life. Tzvi had learned that long ago, but it hadn’t quite sunk in like it had over the past four months.

The water lapped at his ankles. He was holding his flip-flops in one hand, his drink in the other. The sun beat down on his neck and shoulders, which had burned early on in the trip, then darkened to the point that he was sure he’d never lose the tan. Not far from him on the beach, he saw a ghost standing much like he was at the edge of the water.

He was young, dressed like so many of the people at the beach club, a tank top and swim trunks, cheap plastic sunglasses resting on top of his head. He didn’t notice Tzvi’s approach, his eyes glued on the thumping mass in front of him. He appeared to be deep in thought, so Tzvi stopped nearby, not wanting to disrupt. He watched girls throw their arms into the air, watched boys keep their elbows at an angle as they tried to keep up. Puffs of weed smoke rose up from the crowd and curled skyward. The DJ danced in her little booth, fiddling with the equipment in a purposeful way that did not seem to affect the music at all.

Tzvi was about to break his silence when he saw Gabriel approach. They’d caught up briefly at the hostel but hadn’t had one-on-one time. He was glad to see his friend but cast a furtive glance toward the ghost, as if an apology was necessary.

“I’m surprised you’re not chasing girls,” Tzvi said with a smile, raising his glass to cheers with Gabriel’s beer.

“Right now, just chasing after you. I thought I’d gotten sick of you, but turns out traveling without you isn’t quite as fun. All those moments between hookups really drag on.”

Tzvi laughed. “Why do I get the feeling that that’s all life is for you now: the moments between hookups.” He noticed the ghost look their way, eavesdropping.

“I want to argue with that, because it makes me sound gross.” Gabriel fiddled with the cigarette tucked over his ear. “But, at least for the duration of this trip, it’s kind of true.”

They looked on at the party for a while, feeling the thumping beats deep in their chests. “So what’ve the last few weeks been like for you? Any girls?”

“To tell you the truth, I haven’t really been seeking it out all that much,” Tzvi said. He stole another glance at the ghost, not wanting to give himself away but curious to see if he had picked up on the fact that he could be seen.

The ghost was chewing on his thumb, a far-off look in his eyes.

“What have you been seeking out, then?” Gabriel asked.

Tzvi paused for effect, then smirked. “Human connection.”

A wave crashed behind them, coming up above their knees, splashing at the bottom of Tzvi’s shirt. Gabriel rolled his eyes, then tucked his cigarette back over his ear and nudged Tzvi toward the party. Behind them, the ghost still chewed on his thumb.

“What are you looking at?” Gabriel asked.

“Just a ghost.”

They disappeared into the folds of the party for the rest of their time in Ibiza, and Tzvi allowed himself to forget about ghosts for this last shared portion of his trip. Gabriel and Roni were returning to Israel, Ariela and Daniela off to Australia, Eitan getting a coat and sticking to Europe. Tzvi wanted to be present for his friends, and for the first time since he had discovered how he was different from others, Tzvi was truly able to put ghosts out of his mind. He drank like the rest of them, chased sex like the rest of them, lost himself in beats and sand and all the sensations his body could feel.

Three days later Tzvi was in Cambodia, at a bar called the Angkor What?

It was loud and brash and a gross exploitation of the place that surrounded it, but there Tzvi met Elena. Their meaningless midnight kissing turned into the most fun of Tzvi’s trip, hushed laughter in the balcony of Elena’s home, fingers interlocked. When the tuk-tuk driver she and her friends had arranged to take them to the ruins at sunrise arrived, Tzvi squeezed himself in, already changing the plans in his mind so he could follow her as long as she would let him.

In Koh Rong they dipped their toes into the Gulf of Thailand, the Milky Way overhead. They had nervous, fumbling sex on the beach, and even Elena would have laughed at the cheesy thought he had that holding her after was his favorite part. Their sex got better; their travels extended longer than either of them could have expected. He got to know her habits on planes, how she always waited to be the very last one to board, the little crinkle in her forehead that would form when she slept, her neck drooping an inch at a time until it finally plopped onto his shoulder. He’d watch her take notes about her travels so she could remember the details, and he’d feel a swell of love that he’d be too afraid to give a name to, except for when he spoke to his ghosts.

Some didn’t want to hear about it; some wanted every single detail. He came to yearn for that combination—rare, he now understood—of a ghost that he could communicate with, one that would be just as happy to bear Tzvi’s secrets as they were to unload their own. He took long walks wherever he and Elena went, wanting to give her time to breathe away from him, but also now finding comfort in this gift he had. In Tokyo, word somehow got out among the ghosts, and glowing crowds followed him around, waiting for him to sit and talk with them awhile. In Taipei, one woman talked to him every day at six a.m. about her favorite foods and nothing else.

There were times when Tzvi felt that same urge to confess. Late at night, nestled into the same narrow hostel bed, whispering things to each other. At coffee shops and restaurants and bars and, once, on a boat cruise around Ha Long Bay, he’d wanted to share himself fully with Elena. It had been colder than either of them had expected, but they’d stubbornly stayed out on the deck, huddled close against the wind’s bite. Elena was tucked into the crook of his arm, her hair whipping the side of his face, her warmth seeping into him. “I like this,” she said. “I like you.” And he pulled her close and felt the truth come again. But in the end, he didn’t fully understand why, he swallowed down the confession and kissed the spot below her ear instead.

Perhaps, he thought, it was a gift to be shared only with the dead.

Finally, a year had passed. Tzvi booked a ticket back to Mexico City while Elena’s feet were in his lap. “Of course I’ll come visit,” she said, though neither one really believed that what they had could extend beyond the confines of their travels. “We’ll figure it out, you’ll see. Give it a year, we’ll be living together.” They spent their last few days together wrapped up in each other, alternating sex and laughter and deep bouts of sadness that they didn’t believe they would recover from. They couldn’t stand not to touch, and then their touching became too much to bear.

Before boarding the train that would take him to the airport in Hong Kong, Tzvi kissed Elena on the forehead, brushed her tears away, whispered a few sweet nothings about how the things that lived in this world never really went away. Then he told her he loved her and returned to his life in Mexico City, where his regular ghosts were waiting eagerly to see him again, and he was happy to return to them.