Alone With You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

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 happened or the outcomes that might have been.

things in their entirety were less fragile and therefore less beautiful than the pieces within the frame.

“You are brilliant. Tell your mind to be kind to you today.”

What a mystery, her future self!

It’s like, abstract or whatever.

Masso found cooking to be a religious experience, Aldo considered it something best reserved for special occasions, or homesickness. Though, in his experience, most people considered religion precisely the same way.

“I like it,” he said. “What?” He loosened the wine from his lips. “Your brain.”

He doubted there was any mental space he could occupy that Regan would disrupt.

Catholicism yearned for flight as much as it championed a healthy sense of fear.

He was definitely doing math, and she reveled in her possession of it; in being the instrument to channel his thoughts.

It occurred to her that Aldo Damiani was probably something of a rarity himself.

He wasn’t just unconventionally handsome, she realized. He was uncommonly beautiful.

“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.

She had a distinct ability to take up space, he thought. She made her surroundings part of her dominion, her atmosphere bending to the strike of her stride.

She had her lip caught between her teeth, pink tongue slipping out every now and then in concentration,

Aldo, Regan said behind closed eyes, did you learn anything about me? (Haven’t you been paying enough attention to run?)

That old reflex never died; the little pang of Don’t go, just stay. Settle over me like the tide, cover me like a blanket, wrap around me like the sun. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.

This wasn’t even close to enough. She had a voracity she could never quite quench, a fear she couldn’t stifle, a sense of dread lingering constantly overhead. She had a need, several needs, that she could never manage to extinguish. But people didn’t like needy, so she’d learned to transform it. To bury it, cleverly disguised, in someone whose compulsions matched hers. Complementary shapes into fitting pieces. Flaws, she thought, were just vacancies to be filled.

“Oddly,” he said with another sidelong glance, “some people seem to have no interest in bees.”

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.”

“Not bees,” he said, and handed her the blunt. “Bees are for you.”

He didn’t blame her for not seeing it. He blamed everyone else for letting her forget.

“Yes,” he said—he would have said it to anything, she could have suggested a mutiny and he’d have searched tirelessly for an axe, a pitchfork, Excalibur itself—and she smiled up at him, lifting her chin to permit him full view of her approval. The prospect of it, of anything, buzzed in his veins.

Regan, come closer, let’s see what happens, let’s see how the stars shine on your skin.

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.

With the way moonlight fell over them it seemed to him that they were each one half of a person, divided in two, each fraction left to be the other’s reflection. He felt the echoes of her touch unfurling in gooseflesh down his arms, his legs, spreading to the soles of his feet.

Regan, he thought, Regan, this night is stolen, I want grand larceny and this is petty theft.

“Are you asking me to leave,” he said, “or to wait?” Her eyes opened. She stared blankly at the road. “I don’t know,” she said.

You and me, you and me, you and me, Aldo, Aldo, Rinaldo, I am more addicted to the thought of your name on my tongue than I am to any other form of vice.

I used to burn out, now I just burn.

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.

Which was when she’d picked up the phone, choosing the contact that read For When You’ve Found It, and dialed Rinaldo Damiani.

“They have no religion—which makes sense, really, because what is religion except the vague promise of a reward nobody’s ever seen?”

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.

What were you painting? She says very seriously, You, always you, I can’t help it. Only you these days.

My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her.

He kisses her, thinks, Go on, ruin me. Wreck me, please. She kisses him back and she does.

Am I the girl who stays while others leave?

when she said ???, he said !!!, and did not dismiss it. He didn’t say, Regan, do you really want to do this now? Regan, I’m tired, let’s not. Regan, go to bed, it’s late and you’re arguing just to argue. He doesn’t do any of that, instead he !!s when she ??s and when she !!s he ??s, and she should be annoyed, she knows.

She wants to fling things at him wildly—God is a myth! Time is a trap! Virginity is a construct! Love is a prison!—just to make him say it again, to make him prove it true.

Can you love it when it doesn’t love me?

Sometimes I think: No wait I’m lying, all the time I think: Everyone else is right about me. I am the common factor, aren’t I? So that must mean everyone else is right.

Even the prospect of a crash was better than floating aimlessly.

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.

Yes it does, he doesn’t want to be the person she hides from, he wants to be the person she hides with.

He could feel Regan twining her fingers with his and pulling him along—What about this, have you thought about it this way, Aldo? Aldo, make love to me and answer all my questions, placate me with answers!, with attention!, with your touch. Aldo, fuck me until my mind stands still; plummet with me, euphoric, over the edge of a fucking cliff.

“I suppose,” she sighed, “I should just do whatever you ask, shouldn’t I?” “Do I ask for much?” “Oh, only everything,” she said, half-smiling, and turned her head.

“I want your future, Aldo. I want it for me.”

Rinaldo Damiani knows how to love me, and I didn’t even think to put it on the list.

“I’m going to replace those memories, Aldo. I’m taking them back for me.”