Free Out of Order by Charles Benoit Page A

at the mortgage office where he was able to replenish his supplies. A stroll down a side street led to an open-air market where a man with a foot-powered sewing machine repaired his torn pack for a handful of lightweight coins. The Hello Kitty replacement strap he threw in for free.
    “Doesn’t he have anything in black?” Jason had asked, examining the neon-pink padded strap.
    “He says this is the only one that will fit your bag, that model being quite rare,” Attar explained, eyeing the new strap, doing his best not to laugh. “He cautions that the clips have been damaged and you should not put too much strain on them or you will lose this strap as well.”
    “Impossible,” Jason said, hefting the pack to his back. “I couldn’t be that lucky.”
    Back at the apartment Rachel and Pravi were curled up on the sofa, watching a slideshow of baby pictures on a laptop computer, the boys squirming in to get a better view.
    “Jason wants to name our first son Peter after his father, but I like Jason, junior,” he had heard Rachel say through the door before he turned on the shower, the drizzle of water splashing on the stone bathroom floor and running down the porcelain squat-style toilet behind him. By the time he was done drying his hair the thin towel was soaked and he felt his skin stick as he pulled on a clean Yankees tee shirt and gym shorts. He was climbing into bed when Rachel had entered the room.
    “I hope you didn’t use up all the warm water,” she had said as she dug through her bag.
    “Nope. That was used up before I started.” The bed was comfortable and with his eyes shut he knew he’d be asleep in minutes.
    “You know I usually sleep in the nude,” Rachel said, Jason’s eyes popping back open.
    “Well, don’t change your routine on my account.” He leaned up on an elbow, just in case.
    “But I knew we’d be sleeping on a lot of trains so I bought this.” She held up a Nike warm-up suit, the long-sleeved top matching the full-length bottoms. “Cute, huh?”
    “Adorable,” he said and settled back down, his head sinking deep in the feather pillow.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Rachel said as she gathered up the things she would need in the shower.
    “It’s a little thing I like to do every night called sleep.” He had thought of adding something about being willing to change his plans if she had other ideas but it sounded wrong in his head.
    “Not in that bed you’re not.”
    “Now that you’ve made us man and wife I think it’d look kinda strange if I slept out on the couch. And there’s not enough room to sleep on the floor.” Jason waved a hand to take in the clutter of dark computer monitors and cannibalized mainframes that covered the room.
    Rachel looked around, pushing a pile of broken keyboards under the bed with her foot before giving up. “All right. You can sleep on the bed but you can’t sleep in it.”
    With a dramatic flourish, Jason threw back the covers and climbed out. He tucked the sheet and light blanket back in place on his side of the bed and lay back down under the thin top blanket. “Better?”
    “Much,” she said and ducked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. By the time she had stepped under the shower’s trickle, he was asleep.
    It was dark when he woke, his body shaking in the arctic-cold air conditioning. Jason tried to slide under the covers only to find that, as a defensive measure or a reaction to the dropping temperature, Rachel had managed to wrap the free ends of the blanket tight around herself. He felt for his backpack, pulled the sari from the bottom and tossed it in the air, unfurling a few yards of fabric it as it flew. In the dark he did his best to cover himself with the last gift his dead friend bought for his mother, his chattering teeth louder than his conscience.
    An hour later he shook himself awake, the sari now part of Rachel’s growing cocoon of blankets. He freed a section large enough to crawl