When all is done, but not all is said, when everything he did began to hurt, when his arm, like the exposed root of a sinewy tree, slipped beneath her back, warping her vertebrae by vertebrae, she began to sleep facing away from him, curling around herself like a comma.<\/p>\n
One sleepless night, Thora climbed out of the only window in their apartment and sat on the fire escape, that emergency exit. The black and skeletal overwrought iron bars pressed into her feet. She kicked over the harvested basil plants and a dead orchid, the stem arched like a slouched spine.<\/p>\n
When the \u201cP\u201d on the neon PHARMACY sign across the street flicked on and off, it flashed HARMACY.<\/p>\n
_______________<\/span><\/p>\n When she willed herself to feel sorry for Burke, she thought of a picture of him she had seen at his mother\u2019s house, little Burke, clutching a kite he had made by tying a dirty string to a Styrofoam take-out carton, smeared with orange grease, the sunlight bleaching out the lenses on his glasses.<\/p>\n She thought of how Burke\u2019s father had died when he was four, and how his mother was too busy with work, and how there hadn\u2019t been anyone to teach him how to ride a goddamn bicycle. She remembered Burke\u2019s frail frame as he once tried to ride her squat bike, his eyes lowered to the ground in front of him, pedaling jerkily, the front wheel quivering to and fro, until the entire bike gracelessly trembled to the pavement, his limbs splayed like a starfish. When she crouched over him to ask if he was okay, he pulled her down next to him, and he held her while they lay there on the sidewalk until a stray dog began sniffing their heads.<\/p>\n When Thora could no longer sculpt love out of a lump sympathy, she began to hurt herself to hurt him, the last frontier beyond the pain threshold.<\/p>\n When Burke yelled at her for leaving the coffeepot on, she smashed the coffeepot to the kitchen floor. She, the only one who drank coffee, was her own victim.<\/p>\n One night, she threw up aspirin and whiskey and bile on the bed, staining the white sheets. She cut out the graham-cracker colored stains, the gaping holes exposing the rough mattress, the stitching in the pattern of half of an hourglass, endlessly repeating.<\/p>\n Burke stared at the sheets.\u00a0 \u201cAnother casualty in the war,\u201d he said.\u00a0 Thora was pretty sure he had thought of that one a while ago.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t that Burke didn\u2019t fight\u2014he just fought quietly. If she was a tank, then he was chemical warfare. He would say, \u201cI still<\/em> love you,\u201d emphasis on the still, his inflection, inflicting. There was an unwritten list of grievances in that still;<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 I love you, albeit\u2014<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 I love you, in spite of\u2014<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 I love you, notwithstanding\u2014<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n She jogged along Lady Bird Johnson Lake one Sunday morning while he slept until noon, unusual for him, who raced the sun to wake. She came home and sat on the bed next to him in her sweat-soaked sports bra, unbraiding her hair, gold and dry like wild barley. \u201cLet\u2019s shower,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But she was sick of sharing the shower with him, of her body being half submerged in scalding water, the other half shivering in the cold, the bipolarity of bathing. She said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to shower with you. I hate showering with you.\u201d<\/p>\n She watched him for what seemed like a long time through the open bathroom door. He began picking the paint out of his soft curly hair, watching his own naked reflection in the mirror, his skin nearly translucent from the vanity lights. He began to sing one of the silly songs he always sang, nonsense, somewhere between three and five voices, vaguely operatic, simple rhymes, with frequent references to his name, her name, his nudity, sometimes sadness. He left the bathroom, not having showered, and sprawled out on the bed next to her. He began to sing that old song by the Faces, \u201cOoh La La.\u201d It took him a few false starts to find a good key and to remember the order of the verses. He sung the titular line at the end of the song in a falsetto, the lyrics, seemingly an expression of delight and bedazzlement, were somehow incongruous with the raspy, almost exaggerated delivery, like a wretched desperate cry, in the voice of a grandfather to a grandson, perhaps\u2014she didn\u2019t quite know. Lying on the bed, he wept and wept the words, \u201cOoh la la, ooh la la, la la, yeah, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n It was at that moment that she realized she no longer liked to see him sad.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n He moved out of their apartment, went to visit his mother in New Jersey, the land of exits, infinitely branching out, the silhouette of a dead tree.\u00a0 She took a week\u2019s worth of personal days, her back now hurting from where his arm wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n She remembered past break-ups\u2014which she hadn\u2019t had since college\u2014after which, all food lost its taste, but she must\u2019ve been less creative then. She ate yellow hot peppers from the jar with bites of cottage cheese to reprieve her tongue.<\/p>\n She left once, to meet her friend Cynthia for a cup of coffee. When Cynthia asked about Burke, she felt her bowels contract. She excused herself, and went to the bathroom, where her phone fell out of her back pocket and into the toilet. She was disheartened only because it hadn\u2019t quite broken, except for the waterlogged speaker, which was tinnier. Silences crescendoed into static.<\/p>\n Thora fell asleep stretched out on her bed, but awoke in the fetal position, as if her body were begging, Take me back.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Thora began to organize her life in interminable lists.<\/p>\n Things to do day:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Get out of bed, notwithstanding.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Get out of bed, withstanding.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Even though she knew that Burke, who painted white lines in parking garages by day and canvases by night, wouldn\u2019t be walking downtown in the morning, Thora searched the faces of the men for his, sculpting their features into Burke\u2019s, narrowing the bridge of their noses, lightening their hair, rearranging their features, looking for anagrams. They kept walking, each one of them was the one that got away. It was too easy to fall in love during the postbellum.<\/p>\n After she had returned to work at the telephone company, that world of dockets and Dockers, Aric walked over to her cubicle. He was dressed in a dark suit with a narrow tie, like the Blues Brothers meet Brooks Brothers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019ve you been, No T?\u201d he asked. When he had started working with her a few months ago, he introduced himself as \u201cAric, with an A.\u201d She had toasted him with her empty coffee mug, she introduced herself as \u201cThora, with no tea.\u201d\u00a0 Now he called her \u201cNo T,\u201d but said it quickly, so that it sounded more like \u201cNaughty.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRecovering from a contagious illness,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n As she was in the coffee room that day, she heard Aric telling a joke to her boss, Ed. \u201cWhy do both lobbyist and sex-offenders have to register with the government?\u201d Aric asked.<\/p>\n \u201cBeats me,\u201d said Ed.<\/p>\n \u201cDrum roll, please . . . they each have ulterior motives for buying you dinner,\u201d Aric said.<\/p>\n Eye roll<\/em>, she thought.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n When Thora was late to the afternoon meeting, she was stuck in the back of the conference room, and sat next to Aric, the only open seat.<\/p>\n As always, Ed passed out an agenda that he never followed. He talked in hyperlinks, jumping from topic to topic faster than her synapses could fire. She heard only his nouns, \u201csynergism\u201d and \u201cthe Internet\u201d and \u201cseverance.\u201d<\/p>\n Aric leaned over her agenda and began to scribble in the margins, drawing a series of dashes like an incomprehensible Morse code. It was that thing that children played\u2014hangman\u2014that word game that ends in death.<\/p>\n _ _ _\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 _ _ _ _ _ _\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 _ _ _ _<\/p>\n She wrote \u201cN\u201d faintly, for which Aric drew a head hanging on the gallows. I should have guessed a vowel, she thought. \u201cO\u201d she wrote. Aric added a stem to the body, like a lynched lollipop.\u00a0 He\u2019s going to think that I\u2019m saying NO, Thora realized. What letter should she guess next? NOW might seem like some sort of sexual innuendo, I want you NOW. NOT and NOR were as a bad as NO, and so was NON, if Aric read French. NOP was practically NOPE. D? NOD was the opposite of NO. But was it too affirmative? Or would he think that NOD was some sort of subliminal message that she was bored, that she was nodding off?<\/p>\n Z. Z was innocuous. She guessed Z.<\/p>\n There were no Zs. There were never any Zs.<\/p>\n She guessed A.<\/p>\n There were no As.<\/p>\n She was beginning to think that Aric was making up words.<\/p>\n She guessed I.<\/p>\n _ _ _\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 _ _ _ _ _ _\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 _ I _ _<\/p>\n She looked back at Ed, who was raising his eyebrows excitedly whenever he said the word \u201cfiber optics.\u201d The fun part of the game was feigning absorption in the meeting. She waited a few minutes before guessing S. No S. Her stick figure avatar was precariously close to death. Aric looked as if he were suppressing a smile. She liked his choppy dark hair, shiny skin, the stark curvature of his chin, and the smile she couldn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n As she had only deciphered\u00a0 _ E _\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 _ R E T T _\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 _ I R _\u00a0 before the stick figure plummeted into a pool of sharks, she spent the rest of the day wondering what was left unwritten.<\/p>\n HEY PRETTY GIRL?<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Words to Make Him Fall in Love With You:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Replace with verb \u201clobby\u201d with \u201clobotomize\u201d<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Potential nicknames:<\/p>\n a.\u00a0 Air-Head 3.\u00a0 Tell him \u201cTexans\u201d is an anagram for \u201cSexant\u201d<\/span> [Note: Sexant is not a word, and if it were a word, it would not mean what you thought it meant.]<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Tell him \u201cAustins\u201d is an anagram for \u201csustain\u201d<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 \u201cHang in there, Mr. Hangdog expression. We can hang out and play hangman and get hangovers. Hang ten!\u201d<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 tell him that you like him<\/span><\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Aric leaned against the counter in the break room while Thora was changing the coffee filter.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d he said, in a diluted Texas twang.<\/p>\n \u201cHi.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow are you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood. Yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDoing well.\u201d<\/p>\n Amid the silence in the room, Thora\u2019s stomach growled, lamenting the lunch that she didn\u2019t eat.<\/p>\n Aric laughed, \u201cI, like you, want to go eat.\u201d<\/p>\n She spent the rest of the day re-punctuating his sentence, \u201cI like you. Want to go eat?\u201d<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n On Friday morning, Aric walked over to Thora\u2019s cubicle, looming above the carpeted walls.<\/p>\n \u201cHi.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHey. What are you doing tonight?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n She had a fundraiser dinner for multiple sclerosis. \u201cNetworking. Then working on the Net. Net-working and networking.\u201d<\/p>\n Aric laughed.<\/p>\n \u201cNot-working, basically,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not working, too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cNice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYup.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI will\u2014talk to you later.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBye?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBye.\u201d<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n When Thora saw Aric lingering in the lobby of the building, she flailed her arm like she was catching the last taxi to the airport. \u201cAric!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHey.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can take the lobby out of the lobbyist\u2014\u201d she began.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you can\u2019t take the lobbyist out of the lobby.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWaiting for John. We\u2019re going to a steakhouse. You\u2019ve been to the Chop House?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to go to this taqueria on Congress, but John can\u2019t stand spicy. You like spicy?\u201d<\/p>\n She wondered if he was asking this because she smelled of the hot peppers she always ate. \u201cI love spicy food,\u201d she said. \u201cEspecially Mexican.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d love this taqueria.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere is it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPretty far east, past the interstate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d probably get lost trying to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a great place.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre they still doing construction on the interstate?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cProbably. Austin wouldn\u2019t be Austin without traffic cones.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd those giant cranes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut this taqueria, I could eat there everyday,\u201d Aric said.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you go there often?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOften isn\u2019t often enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMexican food is my favorite, probably,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cMe too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d John yelled from across the lobby. \u201cSorry I\u2019m late. Ready to jet?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHave a good time,\u201d Thora said. \u201cSee you tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n On the bus, Thora pulled out her driver\u2019s license, just to make sure that she really was twenty-seven years old.<\/p>\n The next day, she walked to Aric\u2019s cubicle. She stood there holding her breath in silence.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d he said, stretching arms above his head, resting his hands on his choppy hair, so dark and slick it looked as if he dyed it with crude oil.<\/p>\n Thora almost spoke, but she was suddenly hyper-aware of the saliva that was accumulating in her mouth. She tried to swallow without making a noise, but gulped like a cartoon character.<\/p>\n \u201cDrinks tomorrow?\u201d Thora asked.<\/p>\n \u201cSure. After work?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPost-office. Sounds good.\u201d<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n In the afternoon, Thora stopped by Cynthia\u2019s cubicle. \u201cWhat am I doing?\u201d she wailed. \u201cI need a drink before I can get a drink.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, you don\u2019t. You\u2019ll be charming.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat if Aric doesn\u2019t think I\u2019m\u2014oh my god.\u201d Thora began to whisper. \u201cDo you think he can hear me?\u201d She leaned against the wall of Cynthia\u2019s cubicle and slithered to the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, he can\u2019t hear you, he\u2019s all the way on the other side of the office.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre you sure? Oh god, I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m acting like a high school girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Cynthia offered Thora her hand to help pull her up from the floor. \u201cIt\u2019s okay if you need to act like a high school girl. Whatever helps. It\u2019s been a tough month.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am sweating? Why am I sweating?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThora,\u201d Cynthia said, as she tossed her a granola bar from her desk. \u201cEat something before you have a drink.\u201d<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n A List of Questions to Forestall Awkward Silences\/Segues into (Additional) Dates:<\/p>\n 1. From which post-secondary institution did you receive your degree?<\/p>\n a. What a fine school! Did you enjoy your tenure as a student there? 2. Are you originally from the city of Austin?<\/p>\n a. Oh, then where are you originally from? 3. In which part of the city do you live? [Not that she was stalking him or anything.]<\/p>\n a. That\u2019s in close proximity to where I live! Perhaps we could arrange an outing. 4. Are you a fan of the Texas Rangers?<\/p>\n a. I am excited about their forthcoming season and hope to attend a game! 5. What enjoyable activities do you participate in?<\/p>\n a. I also enjoy participating in such an activity! We should participate in that activity together!<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n From work, they each drove separately to a martini bar 6th<\/sup> street. Each wall was painted a different Rubix-cube color. The drinks, too, came in Rubix-cube colors. Thora realized that this was the first time she had been on a first-non-date since college, which perhaps justified this juvenile anxiety she felt whenever she spoke to Aric. She felt over-caffeinated. She ordered a scotch. She watched the bartender make a martini for Aric, made from gin the color of a Windex bottle.<\/p>\n They sat at the bar, bodies curved inward towards each other. The stools were like pieces of Plexiglas sculpture, curved and seemingly gravity-defying. She couldn\u2019t understand why the stool wasn\u2019t collapsing beneath her. She felt dizzy. She ordered an appetizer sampler. Everything from the stuffed mushrooms to the cheese had been deep-fried, but she didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n Aric tipped the bartender with Susan B. Anthony dollars, hundreds of which had been bequeathed to him by a recently deceased uncle.<\/p>\n \u201cThese make me feel like a meth addict who just raided his kid brother\u2019s coin collection,\u201d Aric said. \u201cI should melt these down for the silver. The fucking economy,\u201d Aric said. \u201cI hope this bar is okay for you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe colorblind don\u2019t know what they\u2019re missing.\u201d<\/p>\n Next, they ordered flights of wine, as Aric sustained the conversation. If he were some sort of barge commandeering the waves of words in which they floated, Thora was treading water, white crests rising above her head. She sat and listened; she was relieved to be relieved.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Without splitting rent and utilities with Burke, Thora was going broker than her heart.<\/p>\n Get Rich Quick Schemes:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Sell Chicklets and trinkets on the Drag<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Sell loosies on the UT-Austin campus<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Rent out apartment as a youth hostel<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Cobble shoes<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Commit insurance fraud<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 Sell Oxycontin to elementary schoolers<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 Impersonate a charity<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n At work on Monday, Thora found a Susan B. Anthony dollar on her desk and an E-vite in her inbox, sent only to her, requesting her presence for a kayaking excursion Saturday afternoon, one of the Enjoyable Activities In Which Aric Participates. His e-mail signature was \u201cAric L. Davidson, Esquire.\u201d<\/p>\n After she responded to Aric, she forwarded the email to Cynthia. \u201cPlease tell me he\u2019s using \u2018Esquire\u2019 facetiously.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy favorite way to see the world is the view from a kayak,\u201d Aric e-mailed back.<\/p>\n Thora tried to think of a clever response. \u201cKayak my favorite palindrome,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Make counterfeit Susan B. Anthony dollars<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n They rented kayaks in the late afternoon. Thora found the repetitive rowing motion sedating. Crew teams glided past them. They stopped at the Congress Bridge to watch the bats take flight at sunset. They sat bobbing next to each other while the sky bled together in streaky shades of pink and purple and black, like tears ruining make-up. They waited until Aric pointed to a solitary bat that had flown out from beneath the bridge\u2019s arches.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a scout bat.\u201d<\/p>\n Thereafter, a streak of bats flew out from beneath the bridge, not all simultaneously, as Thora had previously imagined, but in a streamlined flow, like a wispy black cloud, neat as a funeral procession.<\/p>\n \u201cThey always fly east,\u201d Aric explained. \u201cFor about ninety miles, to find food, then they\u2019ll fly back before morning.\u201d<\/p>\n Thora imagined what it might be like to be a bat, the sun stinging her eyes, searching for everything around her with echolocation, only knowing where she was through the reflection of sound bouncing off of something else.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n She went to Aric\u2019s apartment for the first time that night, a white and gutted loft in the Warehouse District. \u201cNEWLY REHABBED APARTMENTS\u201d the sign on the side of the building said. As if the apartment had been a junkie. \u201cRECENTLY CONVERTED\u201d as if it had been damned.<\/p>\n He saw her staring at the gleaming hardwood floors.<\/p>\n \u201cBamboo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy panda rugs would love them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Sepia-tinted photographs of old-timey Austin were hung all over the apartment, mass-produced photographs of trumpeters in fedoras playing outside brick buildings and close-ups of hands dancing across pianos. While Aric went to grab beer, Thora stared at the furniture, trying to decide if she should sit on the couch or the armchair. She strategically opted for the floor, leaning against the couch, where she could be more mobile, could naturally elevate to the sofa stratosphere if she wanted.<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t the bamboo great?\u201d Aric asked, crouching onto the floor next to her.<\/p>\n \u201cDazzling. Bamboozling.\u201d<\/p>\n Aric smiled genuinely, and seemed to Thora to be entirely devoid of irony, earnest and undamaged in a way that only dogs and little children were. She deserved him. She willed herself not to move away from him. When he wasn\u2019t there, she thought about him, and now when he was there, she tried to think about not thinking about him.<\/p>\n Things to do today:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Aric<\/p>\n As they sat on the floor, Thora pretended to be chewing gum. She imagined that her body was calibrated for previous lovers, syncopated to, not harmonious, with his. She tried to slacken the tendons in her body like a drooping marionette.<\/p>\n Aric told Thora about his two older brothers, Air Force brother, stationed in Okinawa, and granola brother, who taught yoga in Nashville. When she began to breathe deeply, she smelled him, or his apartment, the scent of soap suds and suede. She wanted to be warmer person; she tried to imagine what Cynthia would do. She might touch his forearm.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you religious?\u201d Aric asked.<\/p>\n Thora was thinking about how to best articulate her answer this question, found herself ricocheting between \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno,\u201d when Aric began kissing her neck.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n There had been little things, like when she called the Thai restaurant and almost ordered drunken noodles for Burke along with her eggplant and tofu curry. Or the time she had checked and rechecked her dry cleaning receipt because the weight of the hangers in her hand felt too light, until she realized that she did not pick up his dry cleaning any longer.<\/p>\n But the smallest thing of all might have been the biggest thing, when she was walking across the First Street Bridge, up above the dog park, and for a moment, without realizing it, she must have thought that Burke was walking alongside her. It was like d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, but not quite. If d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu was when one mistakenly thinks a moment in life is a memory, then she was feeling the opposite of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, mistaking a memory for life. It was like vertigo, a thump in the heart, before she nearly fell back into the distance from here to there.<\/p>\n The entire loss of him was compacted into that single second, when the world turned surreal, and it seemed strange that a sidewalk was a sidewalk, or that a bridge or a lake should even exist at all. She looked around her, and resented the world for remaining unchanged. She saw the world as if looking through gasoline shimmering in the heat, though she knew no one else could see what she saw. It was like an inside joke that no one laughed at.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Thora called Burke. \u201cI\u2019m seeing someone new,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Thora called Aric. \u201cI\u2019m not ready to be seeing someone new yet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Thora called Cynthia. \u201cI can\u2019t see,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Cynthia and her husband Evan begged Thora to come to their house for risotto one night. Cynthia stirred the gooey pot, her hand going around and around like the second hand on a clock.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are exceptional,\u201d Cynthia said. \u201cBut Aric is exceptionable. Do you even like him?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOn good days, I like him a lot. He has this indefatigable joie de vivre. And a Netflix subscription.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the other days?\u201d asked Evan.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing around him is like a head rush, a little high.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA relationship is not like huffing Windex,\u201d Cynthia said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it is <\/em>like Windex. It\u2019s clean and fresh. Free of incriminating fingerprints. And Aric is so patient. He knows I\u2019m still recovering.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you still talk to Burke?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBriefly, infrequently, awkwardly, adverbially. He\u2019s living down on Oltorf now, above a bodega.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat went wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am the worst person I know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s drive to Marfa this weekend,\u201d she suggested to Aric while walking to work. \u201cWe can see the Texas version of Aurora borealis. The Northern Lights of the South.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy brother will be in town,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care about your brother,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Aric laughed. Aric was resilient, beyond resilient, impervious. It was impossible for her to be the villain when there was no victim.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to a Longhorns basketball game. I can get an extra ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is Denton, the Air Force brother?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it\u2019s Jesse, hippie-brother.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWon\u2019t he want to catch up with you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe wants to meet you.\u201d<\/p>\n She imagined the loud synthesizer, crowds of people all standing up, Aric and Jesse talking in a pidgin language of childhood phrases and secret jokes she didn\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll meet up with you afterwards, maybe?\u201d<\/p>\n Thora had no siblings, and the idea of a brother, a male counterpart to herself, the product of the same nature and nurture, was frightening, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. She thought of a sibling as an extension of oneself.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n She was calculatedly late to meet Aric and Jesse at the bar, so she wouldn\u2019t be there first, sitting alone. She saw Aric at a table, sitting next to a man with a shaved head, shorter and squatter, but unmistakably his brother.<\/p>\n Jesse squeezed her hand with both of his. \u201cThora\u2019s here!\u201d he said, as if they were old friends.<\/p>\n Jesse was smiley, his nose crinkling like a little rabbit\u2019s when he laughed. He held his head in his palms. His forearms were covered with tattoos in Hindi. Jesse looked back and forth at them, beaming, nearly proud.<\/p>\n \u201cAric graduated first in his class at Rice,\u201d Jesse said. \u201cI bet he never told you that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd last in my class at law school,\u201d said Aric. \u201cOr almost.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe was in a band in college, The Ipso Factos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSomeone threw a beer bottle at me once, onstage,\u201d Aric said. \u201cJesse was there, and gave the fucker a shiner.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe fucker doubled my money back and gave me two shiners.\u201d Jesse said.<\/p>\n \u201cHey, it\u2019s not like I\u2019ve never taken a bullet for you before. Remember when you pushed Denton off the waterslide and I took the blame because I was still too little for Mom to get mad at me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re still<\/em> too little for Mom to get mad at you. Aric\u2019s Mom\u2019s favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n These are happy people, Thora thought. Nice people, normal people. Her parents, still legally married after thirty-five years, lived on the corners of Texas, like the tips of constellations. Her mother, in the desert outside of Brownsville; her father, in El Paso near the border with New Mexico, that rigid, octagonal state, leaving her in the hinterlands between them. The state of Texas, nearly the largest in the country\u2014she couldn\u2019t count Alaska, she imagined it as a floating iceberg, all water and no terra firma\u2014could barely contain her family. If only she had had a brother to inoculate her against all the sadness in the world, maybe she could\u2019ve been more like Aric and Jesse, less like a leper, smelling of maladies and loneliness.<\/p>\n Aric could introduce her to this lifestyle of lawn mowing, bocce ball, and pillow talk. She wasn\u2019t beyond redemption, yet.<\/p>\n Jesse sent her an electronic greeting card with a dancing frog, telling her it was nice to meet her.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Cynthia invited Thora and Aric to a gallery opening downtown, a glossy corner building cramped with people dressed either in black or grey. Nearly everyone was wearing glasses with thick black frames, as if this were a convention for myopics.\u00a0 Everything was written in sleek lowercase letters, grammatical nihilism. There were plastic glasses and uncorked bottles of wine, and a tray of white champagne cupcakes.<\/p>\n Thora and Aric scooted sideways across the crowded room to the corner where Cynthia and Evan were standing, with their fingers braided together. Hanging on the walls were soft white canvases, unprimed, loosely stretched on crooked frames, billowing like pillows. Some of the canvases were subtly slit; others had barely visible perforations.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is so interesting,\u201d Aric said. \u201cWhat do you think it means?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI need a glass of wine,\u201d she said. She pinched her shoulders together and squeezed through the masses of people to the refreshment table. It felt like a high school dance, cliquish and overcrowded.<\/p>\n Thora poured herself one glass, then another for Aric. She downed half of her glass and refilled it. By the time she jostled her way back to Aric, Evan, and Cynthia, she had finished the second glass. Aric was telling a story about the time he was driving to Galveston and he picked up a hitchhiker.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was like he had Tourette\u2019s,\u201d Aric said. \u201cBut instead of obscenities, he kept shouting out Canadian provinces. Nova Scotia! Manitoba! Saskatchewan!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat did not happen,\u201d Thora said.<\/p>\n \u201cI was walking around a harbor in Halifax once, and they had all of these signs that said FAQ. I didn\u2019t know if it meant that the people around us could answer our questions, or if it was just a label for mysterious objects. Turns out, it stands for \u2018Free Alongside Quay,\u2019\u201d Cynthia said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was a kid, I thought it was an abbreviation for \u2018facts,\u2019\u201d said Evan.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was a kid, I thought that Auschwitz and Austerlitz were the same place,\u201d said Cynthia.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you know that the word \u2018nap\u2019 comes from Napoleon?\u201d asked Aric.<\/p>\n \u201cThat doesn\u2019t even make sense,\u201d Thora said. \u201cAnyone want a cupcake?\u201d she asked, as she left to get another glass of wine.<\/p>\n She returned with a half-full glass of white and a half-empty glass of red. Like a cancer patient losing blood cells, she thought to herself, as she poured them into one glass.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you okay?\u201d Cynthia asked, pulling her away from Evan and Aric.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m fabulous,\u201d Thora said.<\/p>\n \u201cIs that a ros\u00e9?\u201d Cynthia asked, looking at her pale pink wine solution.<\/p>\n \u201cSure. You want a glass?\u201d she asked, leaving before Cynthia could ask her.<\/p>\n She returned with fresh glasses in each hand. When Aric tried to squeeze her shoulder, she lurched away, spilling a glass of red wine all over one of the pillow canvases.<\/p>\n \u201cShit.\u201d<\/p>\n She looked around, to see if anyone besides Cynthia, Aric, and Evan saw, but everyone was more interested in each other than the deflated paintings on the wall.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d Aric said. \u201cI\u2019ll buy it. I wanted one, anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve already forgiven you.\u201d<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n As Aric drove her home the morning after the gallery opening, she stared into the passenger\u2019s side mirror, CAUTION: OBJECTS IN MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.<\/p>\n Aric parked the car outside of her apartment. It was hot, the asphalt looked gooey, as if her feet would sink into the tar, trapping her with its gravity, like some sort of black hole.<\/p>\n \u201cCan we drive to Oltorf?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you hungry?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI just want to drive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n She wasn\u2019t sure which apartment belonged to Burke, only that he lived above a bodega. They drove past strip malls and tire places and pawnshops and stretches of dying grass, before Aric asked her what she was doing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can go back now,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know where we\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n The gallery had made her miss Burke, and the way she had always felt like an insider at his openings. He had started out as a photorealist, but had moved on to acrylic abstractions before she met him. Before he had moved out, however, he had decided to return to photorealism because those paintings sold better. He planned to begin a series of paintings of cell phone pictures, grainy and pixilated images of \u201cdownward-angled-pouty-self-portraits.\u201d She missed being called Tora.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Things to do Yesterday:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Apologize for what you did<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Apologize for what you\u2019re doing<\/p>\n 3. \u00a0Apologize for what you\u2019ll do<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Apologize for what you didn\u2019t<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Apologize for what you don\u2019t<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 Apologize for what you won\u2019t<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do what you did<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do what you\u2019re doing<\/p>\n 9.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do what you\u2019ll do<\/p>\n 10.\u00a0 Do what you didn\u2019t<\/p>\n 11.\u00a0 Do what you don\u2019t<\/p>\n 12.\u00a0 Do what you won\u2019t<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n How to Teach Him to Ride a Bike:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Buy training wheels<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Hold the back of the seat<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Handle with care<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Push him along<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Then let go!<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Things to do Two Days Ago:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Buy him a helmet and kneepads<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n After seeing Burke\u2019s new neighborhood, she began to worry about him, financially. She liked that Burke had called her the breadwinner, and had called himself the soup-loser. She wondered if he had changed all of his passwords, knowing that she knew them. At work, she decided to check his online bank statements. Since they had broken up, he had overdrawn his bank account at least twice, and currently had $53. She noticed that his rent checks had always been cashed late. She transferred $200 into his account. He was always sort of oblivious to his bank account balance, and hopefully wouldn\u2019t notice his sudden windfall.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n While shopping with Cynthia, she tried on a buttery leather vest.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve lost weight,\u201d Cynthia noticed.<\/p>\n When she had first met Burke, he was on Methadone, a by-product of a former morphine addiction. She used to watch him dissolve the Methadone in glasses of water, like Alka-seltzer. The Methadone had given him an insatiable sugar craving. When he was taking it, he\u2019d cut off the tops of entire packages of Pixi-stix, and would pour the pastel sugar into a bowl, and eat it with a spoon. Even after he no longer needed Methadone, he still had a residual sweet tooth. Nearly every night, when she came home from work, she would find him in the kitchen baking a dessert. Fried beignets, mousse, strawberry rhubarb pies, plantains, chocolate fondue, lemon bars\u2014these were sometimes their main course. Without Burke\u2019s desserts, she had shrunk. The smell of vanilla made her think of him.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n Things That Break Her Heart:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 The narrow Lady Bird Johnson Lake, which for so long she thought was a river, continuing on forever, before she went on a long run, so long that the constant swinging of her legs against her shorts chafed her inner thighs, leaving rashes, such a long run that she circumnavigated the entire lake, ending where she began.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 The time she rode a human rickshaw in China, that wiry man carrying her entire weight, as if he were bovine. She felt like an amorphous blob leeching onto sinewy calves, his legs pulling her, the rickshaw, himself; pulling the earth against its rotation, as if he were Atlas.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Burke\u2019s scarless body, smooth knees left unscathed from never having ridden a bicycle as a child<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 The lemonade stands among the ranch houses in SoCo, a Dixie Cup for an Eisenhower coin, the infinite profit margins, and worst of all, as she over-tipped the flaxen haired five-year old proprietors by a thousand percent, her unquenchable jealousy, the feeling, stronger than any feeling she\u2019d ever felt, that she should still be the little girl sitting in the Fisher-Price chair behind the cardboard box.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Her favorite painting of Burke\u2019s\u2014one that had never sold\u2014of blue and orange music notes, not arranged on a staff, but a cacophony of floating notes, treble clefs, and bass clefs.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 Her driver\u2019s license, without the telltale heart of an organ donor printed onto it, and every time a bartender asked to see it, she was reminded of the tissues and organs in her body that would never be grafted onto someone else\u2019s, reminded of all the lives she would never save.<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 Herself. She breaks her own heart.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is Thora,\u201d she said into the receiver. \u201cCan Burke come out and play?\u201d<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n She walked up the narrow flight of stairs to Burke\u2019s new apartment. He opened the door, and looked at her with eyes that seemed more wrinkled, a line for every time he couldn\u2019t sleep without her. He was wearing new canvas shoes that were already covered in orange paint.<\/p>\n She looked at him, and remembered how, a few months ago\u2014or was it centuries?\u2014her love was skyscraping. It was something she couldn\u2019t look up at now, like the pain of staring into the sun.<\/p>\n \u201cHow\u2019s your new boyfriend?\u201d was the first thing he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m<\/em> doing very well, thanks. And how are you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t care; I\u2019m happy for you, I don\u2019t care who you like as long as you like yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Cheese<\/em>, she thought.<\/p>\n His apartment was covered in half-finished canvases. He had turned the bedroom into a studio and used the living room as his bedroom.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s our anniversary,\u201d she said. \u201cSeven years and negative four months.\u201d<\/p>\n There was a silence, not the type of silence in which nothing was said, but the silence of a slight pause after a fragmented sentence, the space for a quick breath before one\u2019s voice was about to choke, extended into the space of a minute.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was like this semantic breakdown,\u201d he began. \u201cYour name meant love to me, and if Thora didn\u2019t mean love anymore, then all the other words lost their meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n Skin was too porous, she realized, always absorbing the air around it, turpentine and pollution mixed in with the oxygen in his bloodstream. She inhaled and exhaled his quivering fragility. He needed someone more like a mother, someone unconditionally loving, not a love full of whims and provisos and broken clauses.<\/p>\n \u201cI still love you,\u201d she said, and in that \u201cstill,\u201d there was a ceaseless continuity that extended beyond all of everything.<\/p>\n _______________<\/span><\/p>\n A relapse, occurring when:<\/p>\n When you can\u2019t wash the paint out of paintbrushes.<\/p>\n When the entire state of Texas isn\u2019t big enough.<\/p>\n When the arrow doesn\u2019t fit the wound.<\/p>\n When love and alcohol are both anonymous.<\/p>\n When you can lead a girl to a bottle, but you can\u2019t make her drink.<\/p>\n When many things can make you happy, but only one thing can keep you sober.<\/p>\n When there are many ways to leave, but only one way to stay.<\/p>\n When staying is just not leaving.<\/p>\n When you can switch words around, but you can\u2019t change their meanings.<\/p>\n When tears fall, and so do people.<\/p>\n When withdrawal is the new addiction.<\/p>\n When the Declaration of Independence, that long list of grievances towards the ruling party, has nothing to declare.<\/p>\n When two addicts are forbidden from falling in love.<\/p>\n When an endless parade of commas separate those interminable lists\u2014<\/p>\n \u2014or\u00a0 when one\u2019s entire life hinges on that comma between two sentences that should never have been conjoined in the first place.<\/p>\n When he\u2019s only a flight, or a flight of stairs away.<\/p>\n When all is done, but not all is said, when everything he did began to hurt, when his arm, like the exposed root of a sinewy tree, slipped beneath her back, warping her vertebrae by vertebrae, she began to sleep facing away from him, curling around herself like a comma. One sleepless night, Thora climbed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-w7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10481,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991\/revisions\/10481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nb.\u00a0 Air-Force (One)
\nc.\u00a0 Er-otic? Eros?
\nd.\u00a0 Call him A-rigatoni or A-ricotta and invite him over for Italian food.
\ne.\u00a0 Challenge him to a game of wastepaper basketball, then call him Air-Ball or A-ricochet depending on the shots he makes.<\/p>\n
\nb. I am unfamiliar with that school. What was your experience like?<\/p>\n
\nb. Oh, really? Has it changed much since your boyhood?<\/p>\n
\nb. I am rarely in that area; however, I would like to become more familiar with it. Have you any recommendations?<\/p>\n
\nb. If I owned a television, I would enjoy watching them lose their games on the local NBC affiliate!<\/p>\nTasha Matsumoto<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"