The House with One Light On

In the old yellow building on Lake Road, the apartments faced one another across a square courtyard. In daylight, the courtyard held washing lines, bicycles, three argumentative crows, and a guava tree that belonged to everyone and therefore to no one. At night, the building folded inward. Curtains closed. Fans turned. One window after another went dark.

Except for the window on the third floor.

Every night, at exactly twelve, a small lamp came on behind the blue curtain in apartment 3B. It stayed on until two in the morning. Sometimes later.

Aarav noticed because he was always awake then.

He worked for a company in another time zone, answering messages from people whose mornings began while his city slept. His desk faced the courtyard, and when the last kitchen light disappeared, the lamp in 3B remained. It was not bright. It did not illuminate anything useful. But it was enough to make the courtyard feel less empty.

Aarav began measuring his nights by it. When the blue curtain glowed, there was still time to finish one more task. When it went dark, he closed his laptop.

He did not know who lived there.

Then, during the first rain of June, the electricity failed.

The fans stopped. The building exhaled into darkness. Aarav's screen went black, and across the courtyard the third-floor window vanished.

A few minutes later, a candle appeared behind the blue curtain.

Aarav laughed out loud. Whoever lived in 3B was apparently determined to keep the appointment.

He found a candle in his kitchen drawer, lit it, and placed it on his own windowsill.

The flame across the courtyard moved. A hand had lifted it.

Aarav lifted his candle too.

For a moment, two small lights floated in two dark windows. Then the hand in 3B waved.

He waved back.

The next night, at twelve, the lamp came on as usual. Beside it was a piece of paper pressed against the glass.

POWER CUT FRIEND?

Aarav searched his desk, found a delivery receipt, and wrote on the back.

THIRD-SHIFT FRIEND.

The person behind the curtain laughed. He could not hear it, but he could see the shoulders move.

Her name was Leela. He learned it one sheet of paper at a time.

She restored old books for the library at the university. The work required paste, thread, a very fine brush, and the patience to repair a torn page without making the repair more visible than the tear. She worked late because the building was quiet then and because, she wrote, OLD BOOKS ARE SHY.

Aarav told her he answered software complaints from three continents. She held up a page that said, NEW COMPUTERS ARE NOT SHY.

Their conversations crossed the courtyard in large black letters.

TEA?

ALWAYS.

BAD DAY?

ONLY UNTIL NOW.

Some nights, they said nothing. Leela bent over a book. Aarav typed. The lamps stayed on.

That was the part he liked best: not being entertained, not being rescued, simply being accompanied. The distance between their windows was twenty-two steps down one staircase, forty across the courtyard, and twenty-two up the other side. But at one in the morning it felt smaller than a table.

In August, Aarav's company changed his shift.

It was good news. Everyone said so. Normal hours. Morning sunlight. Dinner at dinner time. Sleep when the rest of the city slept.

He wrote it on a clean sheet of paper and held it to the glass.

LAST NIGHT SHIFT. STARTING MONDAY.

Leela read it. She smiled first. Then she looked at her lamp.

GOOD NEWS, she wrote.

YES.

Neither of them added anything.

At two, her lamp went dark. Aarav closed his laptop, but he did not sleep. The courtyard seemed larger than it had before.

Monday came. He woke at seven, worked through the day, and was exhausted by ten. He brushed his teeth, turned off the bedroom light, and lay down.

At twelve, he opened his eyes.

The courtyard was dark except for the lamp behind the blue curtain.

He watched it for a minute. Then he got out of bed.

There was no reason to turn on his desk lamp. He had no work. There were no messages waiting. Still, he switched it on.

Across the courtyard, Leela looked up.

Aarav held up a note.

NORMAL HOURS. ABNORMAL HABITS.

She covered her mouth with one hand. Then she wrote back.

GO TO SLEEP.

YOU FIRST.

I HAVE WORK.

I HAVE TEA.

Leela pointed toward the courtyard door.

They met under the guava tree at twelve fifteen.

Aarav brought two cups of tea. Leela brought the book she had been repairing. It was an old collection of poems with a cracked green cover and pages softened by many hands.

"I thought you'd be taller," she said.

"I thought you'd be a seventy-year-old librarian named Mr Sen."

"That is extremely specific."

"Old books are shy. It sounded like something Mr Sen would say."

She showed him the repaired page. A tear had once run through the middle of a poem. Leela had joined the halves with such care that only a pale line remained.

"Do you try to make the damage disappear?" Aarav asked.

"No," she said. "You make sure the page can be read again. Pretending it was never torn would be dishonest."

They sat beneath the tree until the tea was cold.

After that, they still used the signs. Not because they needed to, but because some habits become a private language. On difficult afternoons, Aarav would look across the courtyard and find a message in Leela's window.

TEA AT EIGHT?

On mornings when she had fallen asleep over a book, she would wake to his note.

OLD BOOKS NEED BEDTIME TOO.

Months passed. The monsoon ended. The guavas ripened and were stolen by the crows. Aarav learned to stitch loose pages. Leela learned enough about software complaints to agree that new computers were, in fact, shameless.

One winter evening, Aarav had to travel for work. It was only four days, but it was the first time since the power cut that one of their windows would be empty.

Before his taxi arrived, he crossed the courtyard and gave Leela a small plug-in timer.

"For the lamp," he said. "It can switch on at midnight even if you're asleep."

"Why would I need the lamp if you're not there to see it?"

"Maybe I will see it."

His hotel was six hundred kilometres away. At midnight, he called her. She answered without speaking and turned the phone camera toward her window.

The blue curtain glowed. Across the courtyard, his own apartment was dark.

"Only one light tonight," she said.

"One is enough," Aarav said. "It tells you where home is."

Years later, when they moved into the same apartment, the neighbours expected the midnight lamps to stop.

They did not.

A small lamp still comes on behind the blue curtain every night at twelve. Sometimes Leela is repairing a book beside it. Sometimes Aarav is finishing work. Sometimes both of them are asleep and the timer switches it on anyway.

The light is no longer a signal across an empty courtyard. It does not need to be. It is a promise they kept after the distance was gone.

If one of them wakes in the night, the room is never completely dark.

And if you happen to pass the old yellow building very late, after the washing lines have stopped moving and the crows have finally gone quiet, you may see that one warm square above the guava tree.

It means someone is still awake.

It means someone will wait.

It means you can close your eyes now. The light is on.

More bedtime stories to tell your girlfriend

If she is still awake, continue with three shorter stories written for reading aloud:

• The Last Bus Home — one small kindness, about three minutes
• The Wrong Names of Stars — a whimsical rooftop romance
• Who Fell First — a fifty-year love story with a soft ending