“Good?” he asked.
“Divine,” she said, leaning her head against the booth’s vinyl cushion as she slouched down in a state of limp-limbed ecstasy, both legs fully outstretched.
He smiled knowingly, then dropped his gaze to his plate.
（“How compulsive would you say you are?” her psychiatrist had asked her.
Enough to agree to six conversations with a stranger, Regan had thought.
“I don’t know,” she’d said, “maybe a little.”）
The outer bone of her ankle brushed the inner bone of Aldo’s, lingering there.
（“And how are your moods?” the doctor had asked.
The thing about pills, Regan wanted to say to the doctor who had clearly never taken any, was that the ups and downs still happened; they were just different now, contained within brackets of limitation. Some inner lawlessness was still there, screeching for a higher high and clawing for a lower low, but ultimately the pills were loose restraints, a method of numbly shrinking.
Every time a pill sat in Regan’s palm she suffered some new strangulation; a faint memory of some distant need to force her heart to race. She’d crave a senseless rage, a dried-up sob, a psychotic joy, but find only pulse after pulse of nothing.
Without the volatility of her extremes, what was she?
“Managed,” she’d said.）
She blinked herself back to the moment at hand, taking another bite of cake and glancing up again at Aldo. His silence was less weighty than hers, or so she imagined. He seemed settled, or at least calm. He was considering something out of sight, gaze fixed on nothing.
His hair was falling into his eyes and it irked her, twitching between her scapulae.
“Do you live far?” Regan asked him, and Aldo looked up, dragging himself back to the present.
“No,” he said, “just a couple of streets over.”
Good. Perfect. Ideal.
“I’m going to cut your hair,” she informed him.
（“How compulsive would you say you are?” the doctor had asked.
“I can’t fucking remember!” Regan hadn’t screamed.）
Aldo’s gaze on hers intensified, a chatter somewhere in his mind rising visibly to the surface.
Then, abruptly, it went quiet. In his eyes, acquiescence was soft.
“Okay,” he said, returning his attention to his sandwich.
* * *
LETTING REGAN INTO HIS APARTMENT was precisely the sort of conundrum Aldo had never cared for, because it was difficult to quantify the projections involved. For example, would she think differently of him once she’d seen the way he lived? Presupposing he had any idea what she thought of him now, which he didn’t. Still, would she find him dull? Dysfunctional? Would she ultimately wish to excise it from what she already knew of him, and would he be able to sleep there for any nights afterwards, having witnessed in such detail all the places she had been?
Not that it mattered. He rarely slept, and she’d already been in all his other places, anyway.
He let her in, holding the door open for her, and she crept in quietly, carefully, as if she might disturb something. Don’t worry, you’ll fit perfectly, he thought. Don’t worry, there’s nothing here for you to break.
She straightened upon entry, glancing up. “High ceilings.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
She nodded, sparing a brief look around, then turned to him.
“Do you have, you know. A shaver?” she said. “Clippers? I don’t know what they’re called.”
He arched a brow. “Should I be worried about what you’re going to do to my head if you don’t even know what the tool is called?”
“I really couldn’t make it worse, believe me.” She fixed her gaze on his again, surveying his hair. “It’s really bad. And you haven’t cut it since I met you, so…”
She trailed off.
“Bathroom,” he said, gesturing her towards it, and she pulled her shoulders back, nodding. 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. Aldo, on the other hand, was typically subjected to the laws and customs of the room.
She vaulted herself onto the counter upon entry, watching with her usual keen-eyed observation as he dug around for the hair-cutting set he’d gotten one year for Christmas and never touched. He half expected to blow a layer of dust off the case.
The moment he’d slid it out from one of the drawers, she leapt down again, reaching for it.
“Okay, now—” She glanced around, frowning. “Sit,” she said, gesturing at first for him to straddle the toilet, but then she stopped herself. “No, wait. First your shirt.”