Free At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón Page A

splayed out on the stage, breathing hard.
    â€œOkay,” he said, “that’s enough.”
    Henry had gone pale. He apologized and helped Patalarga to his feet, almost falling down himself in the process. “I didn’t mean to, I . . .”
    â€œIt’s all right,” Patalarga said.
    But Nelson couldn’t help thinking: if he’s kicking Alejo the whole time, why isn’t he apologizing to me?
    For a moment the three of them stood, observing their reflections in the mirror, not quite sure what had just happened. Henry looked as if he might be sick; Patalarga, like a man who’d been kicked in the chest five times; Nelson, like a heartbroken child.
    â€œAre you all right?” Henry said toward the mirror.
    It was unclear whom he was asking.

5
    IN THE FINAL WEEKS before they left the city, Henry began to jot down a few ideas. Notes. Dictums. Data points. Pages of them, from a man who had all but abandoned writing since his unexpected release from Collectors fourteen years before. Later, when we spoke, he shared these folios with me, apologetic, even embarrassed, as if they proved something about the ill-fated tour, or his state of mind in the days prior. I was unconvinced, but I scanned the pages anyway, trying to make sense of them.
    A sampling:
    Bus was twelve minutes late today,
read a line scrawled on a page dated March 16, 2001.
Reasons unknown and unknowable. Mystery. Could have driven.
    Two days later:
Woke to a serviceable erection at 7:00 a.m. Sat up in bed, turned on the light, to observe it. Watched it wilt, like time-lapse photography. My very own nature special. I should have been on television when I was young, before I was ugly. Slept awhile longer. Three eggs for breakfast. No coffee. Pants feeling tight in the thighs. A woman got in the cab today, black hair, asked if I would—
    The following week:
For seven months, I hardly talked about life outside.
Except with Rogelio. Because he asked.
    March 27:
A play for Rogelio. Finally. A love story. A man learning to read in a rented jail cell. Being taught to read, in exchange for sex. A plainly capitalist transaction, between two men pretending to be in love. Perhaps they are. Awkward moments. Butter as lubricant, stolen from the commissary and warmed between their palms. Between their thumbs and two fingers. Strange that such a simple gesture could be so arousing. A woman got in my cab today, black hair, ruby lips. Asked if I would climb in the back and make love to her—
    Then pages of lists:
Dead things I’ve seen—telephones, lightbulbs, street corners, nightclubs. Also: pigs, painters, passengers, plays, presidents, prisoners . . .
    On and on like this.
    Was Henry losing it?
    I don’t think so.
    Or—perhaps.
    Far worse things have been published as poetry and won awards; which is what I told him, in so many words, as I tried to hand the journal back. He wanted me to keep it. Correction: he
insisted
I keep it—as if the pages contained something toxic he wanted desperately to be rid of—and I obliged. The important thing for us to understand is this: Henry thought he was losing it, and it worried him. He entered the prison every night in his dreams, walked its dark hallways, inhaled its fetid air. He’d forgotten so many details about his time inside that it terrified him: the color of Rogelio’s eyes, for example. The number of the cell they shared on Block Seven. The meal they shared on the last night before his release.
    But every afternoon, at every rehearsal, something struck him, some bit of the past emerging with surprising clarity. Henry began to remember, began to piece things together. This particular play, of the dozen or so he’d written, had special characteristics: it was the last one he’d finished, the one that had brought his career (such as it was) to a premature close. It had last been performed by men who’d died only a few months