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Miguel Alvarez — that's the name of his new neighbor. Alain finds out about it during the evening count.
After their first brief exchange of remarks, they no longer speak to each other. In fact, his neighbor sleeps most of the time: he turns off even before the lights are out, wakes up just before lights out, washes up, looks around the Emerald City for a while, and falls asleep again.
Alain can't fall asleep. He's damn tired, but he lies there staring at the ceiling.
Turns out, at night the second floor is even brighter than the first. The upper lights are turned off, but prison nights — aren't true darkness. When lights-out comes, the night lamps switch on, and a dim liquid light floods the glass space. The subdued illumination, the shuffling steps of the guards, and the flashlights they use to peer into their aquariums during rounds — it's all maddening. Alain exhales, curls up into a ball, and pulls the blanket over his head.
His neighbor remains deeply asleep.
Alain listens to the stranger's breathing, steady and deep, and gradually begins to calm down. He's unlikely to fall asleep because, despite the voice of reason saying that the drowsy, clearly medicated Alvarez won't attack him, Alain still doesn't trust the presence of a stranger. But he tries. Alain unwraps himself from his protective cocoon, stretches out his arms and legs, inhales slowly and deeply, feeling his chest expand, his ribs stretching the muscles and skin. Then he exhales, long and full, his stomach deflating, ribs contracting, and even his throat tightens from lack of air. Alain inhales again. Okay. Good. It's a start. (Still no sounds come from below).
The thing is, Alain could fall asleep if he tried, he knows how to do it: relax his body and his mind. But he doesn't want to. If he relaxes, what will happen? He knows there's no point in it, he knows. If he doesn't rest properly, he won't be alert during the day and won't be able to react if something... if anything goes wrong. One random encounter with a Nazi or a biker, and it could all end damn badly. He has to get some sleep.
The breathing below is interrupted by panicked, unintelligible noises, the bed jerks once, then again and again.
Alain gets up, looks down — Miguel Alvarez sits huddled, scratching his scalp, and it's not entirely clear if he's awake or not. Alain doesn't know what to do about it. He doubts if this guy needs his help. How will Alvarez react if he goes down and offers — what ? What can he help with? Maybe it's just customary to ignore such things here.
At this moment Alvarez raises his head and looks at Alain, his black eyes gleaming in the light of the night lamps, and for a moment Alain feels a sense of threat, making him almost recoil. Fuck, he would have been better off not getting up at all and just pretending that nothing was happening.
"I woke you up?" — his neighbor asks hoarsely.
"I wasn't asleep."
"Yeah? Why?" Alvarez asks, and Alain is at a loss, not understanding how to respond. It's obvious, isn't it? Falling asleep in a tiny cell with another person, a new, unfamiliar person — it's scary. Didn't they feel scared when they first got here? Is he the only one scared shitless here?
"Honestly, you look like shit, you know? Wouldn't hurt you to get some sleep," his neighbor casually adds, and Alain — he's just losing it. He exhales shortly and sharply, and it's almost a laugh, but it's also desperation because, obviously, people like Alvarez had no fear of falling asleep here on their first night or any subsequent nights.
"You look like shit too," Alain says, just to reciprocate, but it's not entirely a lie. Alvarez has just woken up from a nightmare, he's all sweaty, and even in the dim light, long dark lines — nail marks — are visible on his arms and neck.
Alvarez laughs, hoarsely and cheerfully. When he gets up from his bunk, Alain flinches (he can't help it, it's an instinctive fear). But the guy doesn't come near him; he washes up, then sticks his head under the faucet, snorts, shakes himself, turns around, and leans against the wall. Alain dangles his legs off the bed, picks at the stitches of the thin mattress with his nails, pulls at the threads, sticks his fingers inside, and feels soft lumps of cotton.
"So, you have trouble sleeping?" Alvarez asks.
"So, do you?" Alain throws back instead of answering, and he doesn't know why he's provoking his neighbor. Maybe to find out for sure what this guy is capable of and where the boundaries lie that shouldn't be crossed.
However, Alvarez laughs as if Alain said something amusing, and then asks with curiosity:
"Were you asleep when that guy attacked you?"
"No."
"Are you afraid of me?"
Alvarez speaks from the dimness, his voice like dry earth, and his eyes gleam like an animal's, and Alain still sees those black lines of scratches on his arms and torso. The question about fear seems unnecessary.
"Of course, I'm afraid," he answers honestly, knowing that lying would be obvious and pointless, but Alvarez makes a strange sound, as if surprised by such an answer.
"Do you often have nightmares?" Alain asks in turn.
"More than often, man. I think I fried my brain with that synthetic shit, wh... Never mind, you weren't here anyway. So, now our fucking doctors is giving me some shitty meds 'cause our fucking governor is cutting corners with inmates," Alvarez casually delivers this, and Alain... well, he actually dealt with these things quite often. It's familiar territory, so he nods, doesn't delve deeper into someone else's pain and annoyance, and asks calmly:
"Can you still fall asleep tonight?"
"Fuck knows. Probably," Alvarez shrugs. "Turns out, it's not so bad — talking to someone when you wake up in the middle of the night. You know... distracts from all the fucking shit in my head."
He crosses their cramped aquarium, and Alain sees that Alvarez is still tense, as if the dark energy of the nightmare still roils within him. He approaches the glass, leans against it, and looks outside, rocking back and forth. Alain watches his moves, and his gaze involuntarily falls upon the black lines, rhymes on the lower back. He squints, but can barely make out the words in the darkness. Something about fear, "my bones," and — light falls just right, and Alain reads "I thirst to know what manner of man I was..." then turns away because the lines slip down too low, and it's a bad idea — so openly scrutinize someone else's body. (Even out of prison, it would be a bad idea, but especially in prison).
"You can chill about me," says Alvarez. "I don't need prag; I'm not into that shit. I just want to peacefully live the next — however many years I've got left — and then die."
A beam of light from a flashlight races up the stairs, and they catch sight of the shadow of the guard on his nightly rounds. Alvarez quickly slides back into bed, while Alain lies down, turns away, and covers his head with the blanket. Maybe Alvarez is lying. Perhaps he just wants to lull Alain's vigilance, but either way, he needs to get some sleep. Besides, Alain understands that he actually wants to believe this guy. He wants to believe that he'll spend the next few years not shoulder to shoulder with a rapist, but with someone... It's unknown who, really. (What did Alvarez do? Why is he covered in scars? Why does no one dare to enter his cell even though he sleeps almost all the time?) Whoever Miguel Alvarez is, whatever he's done, right now he looks like an ordinary guy, worn out to the bone. But at the same time, calm and — almost friendly?
Alain feels a foolish hope rising within him. He wants to find normal people in this place, someone with whom he can — what? Talk? Maintain ordinary human relationships, just like outside of the prison? Alain sighs and rolls over onto his other side. God, what is he thinking? It will be a stroke of luck if he simply isn't killed or maimed in these four years.