Alone with You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

Deities themselves had changed over time, but the act of devotion had not. That was the torment of it, of art, and the perpetual idolatry of its creation. For every sensation Regan could conjure, there was an artist who had beautifully suffered the same.

Had she met Aldo there because fate had willfully intervened, or because they already possessed such similar forms of rumination? Was it contrived, god descending from machine, or was it because she had been vacant where he was vacant, and therefore both would inevitably seek to be filled?

Did it matter where it started, and would it matter where it would end? Either yes, it mattered very much, because everything was a consequence of something and

therefore what became of them was somehow predetermined, or no, it did not matter at all, because beginnings and endings were not as important as the moments that could have...

Regan’s consistent unreachability was once a carefully honed practice that had gradually become a habit. When Regan was younger, she had coveted the prospect of a call or a text; it meant, primarily, attention. It meant that she had filled the vacancy of someone else’s thoughts. Then, after a while, she began to understand that there was power in devaluing her worth to others. She started to place limits on herself; she wouldn’t check her phone for ten minutes. Then for twenty. Eventually she’d space hours between, making a point to direct her thoughts elsewhere. If others were forced to wait for her time, she thought, then she would

not have to owe so much of herself to them. Now, Regan is so very talented at being completely unreliable that people have started to call it a weakness. She takes some pride in their misconceptions; it means people can always be fooled.

The world loved to take a beautiful woman and exclaim at the charm of her single imperfection; Marilyn Monroe’s mole, or Audrey Hepburn’s malnutrition. It was the same reason Marc took no issue with Regan’s past. He didn’t mind that she had once required reinvention; she doubted he’d take an interest in her if he couldn’t elevate himself with her flaws.

When you learn a new word, you suddenly see it everywhere. The mind comforts itself by believing this to be coincidence but it isn’t—it’s ignorance falling away. Your future self will always see what your present self is blind to. This is the problem with mortality, which is in fact a problem of time.

It isn’t constancy that keeps us alive, it’s the progression we use to move us. Because everything is always the same until, very suddenly, it isn’t.

She was gratified he didn’t say you’ll like it. That was one of her least favorite phrases; it was always unwisely assured. She hated all scenarios preceding the assumption that someone could predict her taste. Either they thought it universal enough that she could be lumped in with masses or they thought (usually incorrectly) that they understood her specific needs, and she wasn’t sure which crime was worse.

“I like it,” he said. “What?” He loosened the wine from his lips. “Your brain.” Three conversations, Regan marveled, and she already understood that was the highest compliment in Rinaldo Damiani’s arsenal.

“What did you learn?” he asked neutrally. That I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed.

If it wasn’t a conversation then it was something else entirely, which Regan didn’t want to think about yet.

Don’t hold hands with anyone ever again.

“It’s short for Rinaldo,” Regan leapt to explain. “Oh, interesting,” Marc said, and briefly, Aldo thought about bees. Specifically, drone bees.

LOL

Aldo didn’t venture far from shapes, though he’d recently drawn a pair of lips. A regal, haughty chin. A set of eyes refracting a pattern of hexagonal beams.

There was nothing worse than being predictable. Nothing smaller than feeling ordinary. Nothing more disappointing than being reminded she was both.

“So most people are fairly straightforward functions of x and y, behaving within constraints of expectation.” “Social constructs?” Madeline guessed. “Presumably,” Aldo confirmed. “So within those parameters, some people are exponential functions, but still largely predictable. Regan”—Charlotte, he reminded himself too late, but dismissed it as a foregone error—“isn’t just difficult, she’s convoluted. She’s contradictory—honest even when she lies,” he offered as an example, “and rarely the same version twice. She’s confounding, really intricate. Infinite.” That was the word, he thought, clinging to it once he found it. “She’d have to be measured infinitely in order to be calculated, which no one could ever do.”

“Bees are for you.”

There was wonder here, even if Regan no longer saw it. Even if she no longer felt it, he would feel it for both of them. He would translate it for her later. He would learn to draw it for her, he thought, or to write it, or graph it. She seemed to appreciate things she could see. He thought of her gaze traveling over the scars on his shoulders, taking him in. Yes, he would draw it for her, and then she would see it. She would watch it take shape and he would know he’d said it in a way she could understand, and then she would know

that even this, with its ordinary features, was wonder and glory, too. He didn’t blame her for not seeing it. He blamed everyone else for letting her forget.

Will it be worth it, just for his hands on your skin? Will it be worth him slipping through your fingers, bleeding through the cracks in your constitution, just to be reminded you’re the kind of person people leave? Maybe it will, because look at his mouth, look at the shape it makes when his eyes are on you. You wouldn’t make love with him, you’d make art. Maybe that would be worth it, but still, art is tragedy. Art is loss. It’s the fleeting breath of a foregone moment, the intimacy of things undone, the summer season that passes.

Wake up, Regan. Regan, look at me. Wake up. Tell the voice in your head to be quiet, would you? I know you’re not here right now, I know you’re lost somewhere that I can’t go or touch or see, but look me in my green eyes and tell me what else matters. Bees, Regan, think of the bees, think about the implausibility of time and space, think of impossible things. Think about the stars in Babylon and tell me, Regan, all this time we’ve been talking and you’ve been syncopating your breath to mine and your pulse to mine and your thoughts to my thoughts, you’ve been learning how to love me, haven’t you? If I am a lover of impossible problems then you will have loved me for my impossibilities, so tell me, Regan, what else matters but this, me, us? Nothing.

Welcome back, Regan. I missed you while you were away.

Where did you go just now?

“Am I imagining this?” He shook his head, No, you aren’t, or if you are then I am, too.

You asked too much of me, she thought to say. You wanted more from me than I am even worth.

:(

Rinaldo, I am more addicted to the thought of your name on my tongue than I am to any other form of vice. The thought of having you is more dangerous than any cocktail of drugs, the idea of belonging to you endlessly destructive.

It’s obvious, don’t you see it, can’t you hear it? His name is written on my skin, he scarred me, I’ve changed my entire shape for having fit within the enormity of his thoughts, and now the only words I know are lines and color.

Art, a voice buzzed in her ear, was creation. It was dissecting a piece of herself and leaving it out for consumption, for speculation. For the possibility of misinterpretation and the inevitability of judgment. For the abandonment of fear the reward would have to be the possibility of ruin, and that was the inherent sacrifice.

She couldn’t look away from his face, which did not say: What’s wrong with you? but instead, said: Hi. Hello. Nice to meet you.

“You can’t fix me,” she whispered to him, her mouth tracing his neck. Do you understand, do you know what you hold in your hands, do you know how readily it breaks? “I don’t see anything to fix,” he said.

Where are we in the cosmos, because I have lived this so many times in fantasy that it has become six different forms of reality and now, tell me, which reality are we?

He is especially worshipful this Sunday. This particular Sunday, he willingly falls to his knees.

She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. He contemplates formulas and degrees of rationality and they all turn into her. He thinks about time, which has only recently begun, or at least now feels different. He thinks: The Babylonians were wrong; time is made of her.

Jesus, he thinks, something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. Empires have fallen like this, he thinks, but it only makes him want her more, makes him look at his hands and think, My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her. What a waste, and then he says aloud, JesusfuckingChrist what have you done to me? And she says, Kiss me. He kisses her, thinks, Go on, ruin me. Wreck me, please. She kisses him back and she does.

The first time they fight, she knows she loves him because she has never been worth the fight before.

Before Aldo, love was concession. Love was a withering Yes, dear, and the sensation of Don’t fight, Be careful of the eggshells, You are not at home here and can easily be sent away.

But then they fight and she thinks: Maybe this is different. It’s not a very big fight, but the important thing is that they have it, that it happens.

She knows better than to confuse apologies with affection. People are always sorry, so when he crawls toward her on the mattress she knows to wait for it, to sigh and say, It’s fine, only instead he surprises her, says: I love your brain. She doesn’t know what to deal with first, the use of “love” or the fact that it isn’t what she was expecting, or the idea that anyone can possibly think fondly of her brain when she has put almost no effort into molding it.

Then he says it, I love your brain, and she is so stunned she wants to fight with him all over again.

Oh, you love my brain? Well, do you love it when it does this thing, or this thing? Do you love it when it means I’m lifeless on the floor, curling my tongue around a pill or a stranger’s dick? Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it’s violent? Can you love it when it doesn’t love me?

Of course he signed up for it, it’s what he wants. Why should someone else get her highs and lows? He wants them all, selfishly, possessively.

The point is he doesn’t need her to be anything, he doesn’t need her to be on pills. He’d like her to be honest if she wants to be but if she’s going to lie then he’d like to be in on it. That doesn’t make any sense. Yes it does, he doesn’t want to be the person she hides from, he wants to be the person she hides with. These are distinct, doesn’t she realize? Does she have any idea how difficult he finds it to exist with other people? And then here she is, this mystery, this puzzle, does she even know how much he loves her unpredictability, her twists and turns? She thinks her brain is some sort of problem? Fine, good, he loves problems.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m just waiting for something that will never happen,” he said. “Like I’m just existing from day to day but will never really matter. I get up in the morning because I have to, because I have to do something or I’m just wasting space, or because if I don’t answer the phone my dad will be alone. But it’s an effort, it takes work. I have to tell myself, every day, get up. Get up, do this, move like this, talk to people, be normal, try to be social, be nice, be patient. On the inside I just feel like, I don’t know, nothing. Like I’m just an algorithm that someone put in place.”

“Except,” Aldo admitted, “when I have these … addictions. Obsessions, my father calls them.” She cleared her throat quietly. “Like time?” “Yes, like time. Or—” He broke off. “Or you.”

“Jesus, we’re fucked, aren’t we?” Yes, yeah, probably. “Who cares.” “Exactly.” She sounded smug. “Besides, if we fuck it up, you can just go back in time and fix it, can’t you? Promise me that, Aldo. If we fuck this up and it goes badly, then okay fine, you’ll go back in time and make sure we never meet. Okay?”

If this is what it is to burn, he thought, then I will be worth more as scattered ash than any of my unscathed pieces.

Aldo, I cry when it rains, I pick fights sometimes, I don’t know why. I look at the sky and feel this inexplicable sense of dread. I’m afraid that everything will end; are you ever afraid like that? No, you’re never afraid, you have numbers and thoughts and your genius to keep you warm. You don’t need me, I need you, and it will always be like that, unequal like that. I will always cling to you in gratitude and you will always be kind, you’re just made that way. You’ll let me do it but eventually I will make you unhappy, and then it will be on me to leave, because you are much too good to give me the ending we both know I deserve.

“So when people say we’re alone in the ether…?” “Alone in everything. In time and space, in existence, in religion.” “But,” she said, and stopped. “But the bees.” She felt certain she could feel him smile. “Yeah,” he said, “the bees,”

He loved her fiercely for that. He didn’t see the problem in loving her that way, with a savagery that felt as ancient as his sorrows, until he realized that he could no longer recall a life without her. It was as if the older versions of him had been erased and could no longer exist. He realized that his relationship with time, whatever it was before, was now forever altered.