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The stars hang very bright over the dark city, the airless blackout torn by the throb of generators. Up on the roof, a slight breeze lifts Eames’ damp hair off his forehead. It’s too hot downstairs, sleep would not come.
He flops onto the lounger left by a previous tenant and is powerfully reminded of Arthur.
The Southern Cross burns especially luminous above him.
----
So much time has passed since he pointed it out to Arthur. Since Arthur leaned against him and tipped his head against Eames’ shoulder, close enough that the scent of his hair pomade filled Eames’ nostrils. Eames had looked at Arthur as Arthur had gazed at the stars, his dark eyes reflecting their faint light, the beach sand still faintly warm beneath them.
“You can’t see it at home,” Arthur had said.
“No.”
Eames hadn’t known what more to say. The job was over and they were leaving the next day, Arthur off to LA with the Cobbs, Eames headed to Rio, for no particular reason other than sunshine and strong cocktails. The months of getting to know Arthur had ended too soon, just as he began to tremble on the brink of something more, his head tipped back against Eames’ shoulder, his face open and relaxed, his shirt undone at the collar. Eames had been tempted to stroke his fingers across the hollow of Arthur’s revealed throat to feel his voice buzzing as he spoke quietly, but he had resisted. He had not known that softer Arthur well enough.
Too soon, Arthur had lifted his head, and stood up, dusting the fine sand from his trousers. “I’m off to bed,” he’d said. “Early start tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Eames had been obliged to reply. “Me too.” But he had stayed sitting on the sand, listening to the small waves and the noise of the bar further up the beach, watching Arthur walk away, his back straight, his footsteps only slightly wavering.
----
“You can’t see it,” Eames says to the night air on his Mombasa rooftop. “Can you, Arthur?”
They haven’t kept in touch. He knows Arthur is still with Cobb, after Mal. Loyal Arthur. He’d heard about that, of course, how could he not, theirs is a small world. He hadn’t heard it from Arthur, though.
Eames himself has been rather idle since that Pacific job, that island scheme, that beachside idyll. He’s drifted from South America to East Africa, for no particular reason other than it’s easier here, with English as the lingua franca. He has refused most job offers from other teams, reluctant to work with those he now thinks of as lesser, not at the top of the game. Eventually, he’ll have to take another job. Gambling in these small-stakes casinos can pay his rent, but god forbid he’d be trapped here, among the tedious recent expats and the snooty “old Africa hands”.
He tells himself he’s not waiting for Arthur’s invitation — or his summons.
They haven’t kept in touch. Their friendship, if you could call it that, hadn’t quite reached that point by the night they had sat on the warm sand together and looked at the stars. No point wishing for something he can’t have. Except for that last night, when he’d tipped his head against Eames’ shoulder, Arthur had kept a cool distance, only showing a brief tug at his mouth in response to Eames’ flirtations, and yet Eames had been certain things were about to shift. Perhaps he should have raised his hand to cup Arthur’s jaw, turned his face towards himself, brought their mouths together, shown Arthur definitively what he wanted?
So it’s very surprising when he gets a letter, an honest to god letter, in the mail. Inside the envelope, which bears no return address but was posted in Stockholm four weeks prior, there is no letter after all, just a photograph.
A photograph of a night sky, one star hanging huge in it. On the back in neat handwriting are the words: “Can you see mine? A”
It’s the North Star. He remembers it from his childhood, from myth and legend. He can’t see it here. It’s not clear what Arthur is trying to say, but the fact that he’s reached out at all gives Eames pause. He slips the picture into the frame of his shaving mirror. It makes him smile, sometimes.
He doesn’t wonder how Arthur knew where to send his letter. He does wonder how many others Arthur keeps track of, and tries not to allow the spark of envy to flare in his chest at the thought that he may be only one among many.
At the city’s faded colonial gentlemen’s club one day, waiting in the library for a poker game to begin, his eye falls on an ancient book about the stars. He plucks it off the shelf and turns to the entry for the North Star. “The North Star has guided travellers in Northern Latitudes for millennia. Early voyagers to Southern Seas were dismayed to see it drop below the Horizon after they crossed the Equator. Bereft of their compass, they discovered a replacement in the Southern Cross.”
Later, after losing rather badly, he recalls the florid entry, and writes it on a piece of paper he slips into the mirror frame next to Arthur’s photo. His own handwriting is a loose scrawl.
And then, months later, another letter. He recognises the handwriting this time, and this time there is a return address, albeit cryptic: “A. Mann, Poste Restante, Bombay, India.” The alias makes Eames smile. “I know you are, Arthur,” he says to himself as he opens it. Inside, another photograph. Written on the back: “I can see it here.” The picture is of the Southern Cross, of course. He slips it into the mirror frame next to the first.
Arthur would not have added the address if a reply was unwelcome. He tears a page from his notebook — plain and cheap, not like the expensive one he saw Arthur use — and copies the star guide entry. He wonders if he should use a neater script, but decides against it and lets his signature sprawl across the whole width of the page. To pretend to be someone he is not would be disingenuous — and disrespectful.
He mails it at the colonial relic Central Post Office, and pictures Arthur at a similar edifice in Bombay. It feels as if he has finally been allowed to make his first move in their achingly slow game.
----
But Eames gets tired of waiting, tired of Mombasa’s fading charms. He takes the next job he’s offered, doesn’t even haggle over the fee, just gets on a plane and then another and another, until he’s in Trondheim, Norway.
The point meets him in the airport. She’s thoughtfully brought a coat and gloves.
“Thanks,” he says, pulling them on. “Nowhere to get outfitted where I was.”
“Yes, I thought so,” She assesses him with a purely professional eye before turning to lead him outside.
The cold hits like a wall: “Fuck!” He turns the coat collar up.
The point, Johanna, laughs. “Sorry, I forgot to get you a hat.” Her own has a ridiculous pompom that bobs as she walks.
But he’d said yes to the job precisely because of its frigid northern location. He takes a deep, punishing breath and follows her to the car.
The early winter night has fallen and despite the city lights, the stars are visible overhead. Especially the brightest of them all.
They’re based in a cabin on the edge of town, nothing but snowy forest on three sides. Besides him, it’s only Johanna — researcher and architect — and the extractor, Miriam. She’s at the stove when they arrive and looks over her shoulder at Eames. “Alright?” she says.
“He’s freezing his arse off,” Johanna says, laughing.
“More suited to tropical climes.” Eames shrugs. The interior is warm, though.
Over dinner, Miriam takes him through the job. “Think you can do your thing?” she asks.
“Sure,” says Eames, studying the photograph. “Why the son?”
Johanna hands him a file of research. She’s not Arthur, but she’s good. After several hours and an unwise number of cups of coffee, he’s got the details of the job clear and agrees it’s got to be the son.
Johanna and Miriam are pleasant enough company, but they withdraw to their own room early in the evenings and Eames is restless. He pulls on his outdoor clothes — now including a hat — and steps out into the cold dark. This far from the city, the darkness is profound, the sky sparkling with a million points of light. Eames turns slowly, looking up until he sees it, high in the sky, bigger than all the rest. “I can see it now,” he says to the night. He wishes he could show Arthur.
His notebook fills as he trails the mark’s son, and soon he is ready to try becoming him. Johanna’s dreamscape is efficient: the mark’s comfortable suburban home. Miriam nods her approval when Eames walks around a corner wearing the forge.
There’s nothing left for Eames to do as they wait for the day of the job. He turns to the back of his notebook and whiles away some hours sketching the scene from his window. And again at night, stars burning in an inky sky.
Job done, Johanna drives him to the airport. “How did you know where to find me?” he asks, as if he’s just making small talk.
“Arthur recommended you,” says Johanna, glancing sideways at him.
“Arthur. Where’s he these days?” Eames keeps his voice flat, displaying only mild interest.
“You don’t stay in touch?”
“We’ve only done one job together.”
“Really?” she says. “He spoke as if you were old friends. He’s in Paris with Dominic Cobb between jobs, I think.”
“Ah.”
“I’ve got his number if you want.”
He takes it, folds it into his wallet and flies back to Mombasa to wait for Arthur’s next move.
----
Eames is drinking in the Paris hotel bar when Arthur takes a seat next to him. It’s the first time they’ve been alone together since Eames arrived.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Arthur orders a drink — Caipirinha, which seems a little out of character.
“How was that Trondheim job?” he asks after his first sip.
“Freezing.” He half turns to face Arthur. “Bloody freezing, that far north.”
A slow smile moves across Arthur’s face. “But the sky is amazing up there, don’t you think?”
“Brilliant,” says Eames.
Arthur has set his room key on the bar; Eames files the number away. Early the next morning, he stops outside the door on his way out and slips a sheet torn from his notebook under it. When Arthur arrives in their warehouse workspace he gives Eames a private look, eyebrow raised, and a tiny nod.
“I didn’t know you could draw,” he murmurs.
“I have many talents,” says Eames.
“I have no doubt.”
Eames knows it’s coincidence that the job takes them to Australia, land of the Southern Cross, but he is amused, nonetheless. Arthur grins when he hands him his ticket, the stress melting from his face. Eames lets his fingers brush Arthur’s as he takes it.
----
And afterwards, after all that mayhem, when the others have left the airport, when Arthur has seen Eames waiting and followed him to the cab stand, when they are in a car headed downtown without even discussing it, Arthur tips his head back against the seat, so close that Eames can smell his hair pomade, faintly, under the stink of travel and adrenaline, and looks out the window at the undark LA sky.
“You can’t see the stars here,” he says.
“No,” Eames agrees. “We’ll have to go somewhere else then.”
“Mmm, a beach.”
“Plenty of stars there.”
Arthur shifts closer still and lays his head on Eames’ shoulder. Eames brings his hand up to cup Arthur's jaw, strokes his thumb across it. Arthur sits up, turns to him and kisses him.