I send him a heart emoji, and when he sends me one back, it feels like a blessing.
In the bakery section by the bread, I spot a six-pack of donuts. According to the plastic dome, they were packaged four days ago. The top one has kissed the inside of the box, leaving a smeared ring of glaze. It looks obscene. They’re the exact ones I want. There are half pies packaged in semicircles, but I get a whole one. Apple. It’ll go well with my cheese.
I select a sleeve of macarons. Not very nice ones. Not at all the kind you’d get for an aunt.
I grab a coconut water for health. A tub of mac and cheese from the hot bar, because why the fuck not.
I rove the walls of snacks. The metal basket handles pressing urgently at my forearms. I grab a box of Nilla Wafers and Wheat Thins because Triscuits by the box are too scratchy and pointy and because I want a snack I would never normally buy. One that feels as though it belongs to someone else. I also pick up an entire barrel of non-GMO cheese balls.
I pay for it all on my own debit card. Rent is due in three days and I haven’t checked my balance in weeks.
I hurtle myself to the apartment. Flying so I can’t change my mind. I shove my arm into the plastic bag twisting round and round my wrist and scratch the top of my right hand, trying to pry open the clamshell of donuts. I retrieve one and cram its cloying stickiness into my mouth. Press it in as I gnaw. Heaven. I lock eyes with a girl in a cheetah-print jacket talking on her phone. She has the decency to look away.
I lick my lips and grab another. Gorging. The streets are packed with commuters. Flocks of moms. Some are even jogging. Jerks. That’s what I both love and hate about Brooklyn. It’s so densely populated, I’m camouflaged. They barely see me. And if they did, they don’t care. By the time I’m back in my lobby, I realize my mistake. Six donuts is not enough. I should have gotten twelve.
I race up the stairs, pulling myself up with the banister handle, calves complaining at the fourth-floor walk-up.
Galloping.
Thundering.
I’m so, so close.
Cumbersome fingers fumble with my keys. Part of me wishes Jeremy were home when I crash through the door. I would vaporize him if he tried to obstruct my course in anyway.
I kick off my shoes. I lock the door even though I’m alone. I peel off my coat and my sweatshirt, dump them into the tub, tie my hair up, and sit on the floor in my bra. It’s dirty and it’s exactly what I deserve. I gather my companions around me as I eat and eat as fast as I can, before the rest of me notices and tries to stop.
Adrenaline is shunted straight into my heart.
Gratitude floods my nervous system as the sugar takes hold. I eat so fast that it doesn’t count. I eat as a velveteen curtain of serenity descends over me, the mechanics of my jaw hypnotizing me the way competitive marathon runners hit a rhythm. I swallow and swallow until my stomach is distended and my head aches from repeatedly grinding away at the mouth-fucking. I stack Wheat Thins three high and bite into them. I put the flattened part of the Nilla Wafers together and make little spaceships and destroy them and do it ten more times. Twenty.
Sweat gathers at the small of my back and seeps into the waistband of my jeans. At some point I’d undone the top button and unzippered them but at no point do I personally witness this occurring.
The macarons look like those cupcakes that are actually soap, but they’re pretty. Colorful and like jewels. I hold the glassine box to my nose and smell nothing. The pads of my fingers are impossibly sensitive, trembling, and I’m gripped by a singular purpose. I eat them in order. Begin too bright, tart, or even too dark and robust and you’ll deaden your taste buds for everything else. Green is pistachio, and pistachio is perfect. The sensation of my teeth piercing the delicately crispy outer layer, easing into the ganache, the viscid chewiness, makes me close my eyes—it’s too narcotic, too pleasurable, and still I can’t even tell if it tastes good. Orange. Brown. Lilac. I’m bludgeoned by sugar. I can’t discern perfume from texture.
I’m thrilled at the devastation. Destroying beautiful things so carelessly and so fast.
The mac and cheese is a paste. It’s gloriously gluey, sticking my mouth together, cementing all the sharper foods, lending a contrast. Some cushioning. I crash-land a Nilla spaceship into the tub and scoop it into my mouth. I eat a fifth donut. And then just the top of the last one. I dig into the glaze with my thumbnail and rip it off and scrape it into my mouth.
It’s almost time.
I run my tongue on the roof of my mouth. It tastes metallic. It’s pulpy and stinging, cut up from all that’s going in.
The cheese balls are a mistake. They dissolve too quickly, so they don’t provide that choking feeling as they’re going down. But they taste great after vanilla glaze. The whole ritual feels as though I’m being run over by the slowest-moving train. I can’t get off. I vaguely want to, but it’s overruled. Because truly this is the only thing I can count on. This has never left me no matter where I am.
I polish off the last macaron, and there is no enjoyment. Finishing is drudgery and it’s still all in my teeth. I’m still chewing when I crawl out on my knees. This view I hate. Looking at the toilet bowl from this angle. Directly into it. As if at an altar. I retch into my hand, another kind of sacrament. I do this so the telltale splash doesn’t give me away. Even when I’m alone. I’ve always been a little proud of this. How quietly I can hit reset. I keep going, putting my mouth where people shit and abasing myself the way I always do, trying to exorcise the hate and anger and never managing to get it all out.
The Korean word for punishment is “bee.”
When I flush again, the swirl is still a sour, hazy rose-orange.
Blood.
Body.
I sit in the tub, on top of my clothes, knees gathered to my chest. The faint whine of tinnitus tethers me to reality, alerting me to my movements. It feels like the high-pitched hiss of air escaping my head. It’s only then do I notice how cold the room is. That the heat is out.
I hoist myself up and I look in the mirror. Eyes watery, panting, cheeks purpling, bright-red lips wet. Flecked with slick clumps of undigested food.
I am ruptured.
I’m crying. And watching myself cry only amplifies my sadness. I’m filled with devastating pity for every single mirror version of me, all those times before, the youngest ones making me saddest of all. Watching myself have compassion for me in the absence of anyone else makes me cry harder.
I wash my hands with soap. Thoroughly, front and back. I dry them. I bring my fingers up to my nose. They still smell of ruin and spoil. I rub toothpaste all over them, hating myself, hating the way it feels. Hating that I have to watch myself do it. Unable to tear my eyes from this horrible shadow version of me that gets its way every time.
My phone rumbles on hard tile. It’s still in the plastic bag where I’d chucked it. I reach over and drag the bag toward me by the handle.
It’s Jeremy. He wants to know if I’m in the apartment. I listen for sounds. A jangled key, creaking floorboards in the hall, but it’s quiet.
Three dots. He’s thinking.
When the dispatch comes, a burble hints at the back of my throat. I’m confused at the list until I realize it’s a series of his records that he’d like me to look for.