His fingers were moving; he’d caught onto something again. Something caught flame in his head and it showed in his limbs, disrupting them. His brow had furrowed; he’d pulled his knee in closer. She could see the lines on his stomach where his abdomen had been compressed. The slope of his torso to his hips was more obvious now, and everything was all wrong. He was himself again, precisely the way that she’d always known she would never be able to capture.
“Stop,” she said, and his thoughts jolted back from wherever they’d gone, his attention snapping back to hers. “You’re moving too much.”
“Oh.” He shifted, trying to adjust himself. “Like this?”
“No, Aldo, not—” She sighed, setting her sketchpad down and coming over to him, readjusting him. “Leg here, hands here. Relax your fingers,” she said, shaking out his knuckles, and he gave her a look of amusement. “No, relax them, just—here, let me—”
She slid her fingers between his, curling and uncurling his hand with hers, and then let her fingers drape smoothly over his knee, silently beckoning for his to do the same. She waited, palm resting warmly over his knuckles, and then gradually, finger by finger, he relaxed.
She could feel the stillness in his torso; he wasn’t breathing. She’d told him to breathe, and of course he hadn’t listened. “Breathe,” she instructed, and his fingers tensed again. “Aldo,” she said, exasperated, and then, nudging him over, she sat beside him, fixing things as she went.
Knee like this, yes, thank you. Arm like this. Curve the hand, yes, like that, let it fall.
She turned, his eyes rising from where they’d been on her neck.
She couldn’t prevent the urge to know his thoughts. She wanted to lace them between her fingers, to root them in her hands, to twine them around her limbs until he’d secured her within the invisible web of his carefully ordered madness.
“Time,” she asked him, “or bees?”
“Just regular old quantum groups this time,” he said, gently. She felt the words as if he’d placed them in her hands. “I don’t actually think about bees as much as you think I do.”
“What’s it like,” she murmured, “thinking so much that your whole body changes?”
“Fairly normal by now.” He paused. “When I’m not in motion, I feel sort of … stagnant.”
“Racing thoughts make the rest of you want to run, too?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
She ran her fingers over his knuckles, flexing and unflexing them.
You and me, she thought rhythmically, you-and-me.
“Can I tell you the truth?” she asked, not looking at him.
He leaned forward, his cheek brushing her shoulder, and nodded.
“I’m not taking my pills,” she said. “I’m not sleeping.” She exhaled raggedly, “I’m … I have problems. Like, diagnosed ones. Ones I should be treating somehow.”
Then, regretfully, she added, “I suppose I should have told you that before.”
He turned his head. She could feel his eyes on her, even if she refused to meet them.
“Do you feel like you have problems?” he asked.
“No.” She turned to face him, grimacing, and he let his posture fall, abandoning the effort of posing. “I feel a bit like … I don’t know. Like I did, or maybe I still do, but not the same. The roof’s been patched but the shutters are still broken.”
“And before?”
“Water got in everywhere. No floods, just a steady drip somewhere impossible to locate. Always about three degrees colder than I’d like to be.”
“Ah. What changed?”
“I’m painting now.” I can paint now, again. “I don’t want to stop. I don’t even want to fix the shutters, I just want to flood the damn house.” She cleared her throat. “No, I’m lying. I don’t want a flood, but I don’t even want the house.” A pause. “I want to light the house on fire and walk away while it burns.”
“Okay,” Aldo said, “then do it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s technically mania. Or hypomania.”
“Well, I’m not a doctor.”
His mouth was twisted up and if she looked down, she would see herself—she would see the way she had leaned into his arms—but she didn’t. 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.