“Oh, good,” she said when she woke to the sight of him, and that’s what he thinks while he kisses her.
Oh, good. It’s you.
There is a brief reprieve as she comes with him to church. This time she holds his hand while they enter, doesn’t drop it. They should have showered, probably, but he likes that she’s all over him. Makes him feel holier that way, shrouded in something that contains no doubt. He wears the smell of her draped over his shoulders, where her legs have been. No one else knows the lengths he has gone, the man he has become since touching her. He thinks of all the other versions of himself making love to all the other versions of her and resolves to pluck them out of their alternate realities, out of their alternate spaces and times, to place them in this one. He hopes she has not developed the ability to read his mind, that she isn’t seeing herself bent over the pew or perched, queenly, atop the altar, with his rapturous head between her legs. He is especially worshipful this Sunday. This particular Sunday, he willingly falls to his knees.
The fifth time is all newness and strangeness, unfamiliarity itself. She shows him the studio she’s rented. It’s difficult to get to by public transportation but he prefers to walk, anyway. She shows him her paintings, her drawings of him. All of it is impossible, fuck, she’s impossible. She took a blank page and turned it into something beautiful, how could she do that? She’s a magician, of course she can read his mind, she knows exactly what he was doing to her for an hour in the Lord’s house. She smiles, You’re being awfully quiet, he says, Am I? She shrugs, We should shower. She is slippery, difficult to hold, but still he holds on tightly.
They part for a while, he has to work, though in truth he doesn’t want to overwhelm her. What he wants to do is get on his bike and go somewhere he can scream into empty air, where he can take a breath that is not full of her just to prove it can still mean something, just in case. Just in case. She’s elusive, impulsive, she wanted him yesterday and he was “Oh, good,” today, but will he be something less tomorrow? Will he be “Oh, hm,” and then eventually just, “Oh.” He writes down his thoughts, or tries to. What escapes him are shapes, organized ones, fitted cleanly together. Order, that’s what he needs. His apartment is a mess, it has dirty dishes and the washing machine contains a stained shirt and she is everywhere. She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. 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.
The sixth time, he notices paint flecks on her arms, a little on her cheek. He laughs, What were you painting? She says very seriously, You, always you, I can’t help it. Only you these days. Jesus, he thinks, something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. Empires have fallen like this, he thinks, but it only makes him want her more, makes him look at his hands and think, My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her. What a waste, and then he says aloud, JesusfuckingChrist what have you done to me? And she says, Kiss me.
He kisses her, thinks, Go on, ruin me. Wreck me, please.
She kisses him back and she does.
* * *
THE FIRST TIME THEY ARGUE she is sure that she loves him. It’s the first time she really knows it, because even though her thoughts have been telling her so for days and somewhere there is a burning for him that is impossible to extinguish, she doesn’t really believe that love is anything more than science. Hormones, evolution, love, nuclear fusion, quantum theory, it’s all just a theory. It’s all just a sensation they tried to give an explanation to because humans are small, and stupid. Because people want to be romantic about everything, they want to give names to the stars, they want to tell stories. Love is a story, that’s all, until she fights with him for the first time.
The first time they fight, she knows she loves him because she has never been worth the fight before. With others, with Marc, it was always Regan, please be reasonable, Regan, I don’t want to do this right now, I’m tired. Regan, are you being difficult because you’re bored? And for her, it was always Fine, fine, I’m sorry. Maybe not the I’m sorry part because she was almost never sorry, but the giving up was always there. The sense of resignation, it was inescapably tied to The Fight. Before Aldo, love was concession. Love was a withering Yes, Dear, and the sensation of Don’t fight, Be careful of the eggshells, You are not at home here and can easily be sent away. She had thought love meant being Reasonable, a proper noun for a proper effort, for the evasive toil of Love and Relationships, and it made her think, from time to time, of her briefest love story. Of the time in Istanbul when she’d been crossing the street, a train blocking her path, a boy standing inside the middle car, beautiful. His eyes found hers somehow （eyes always found hers） and he beckoned to her, Come, come. She shook her head, No, don’t be crazy, he pouted and mouthed, Please. And for a second—for a moment—for a breath—she considered it. Considered boarding the train just to tell him: Is this destiny? She didn’t and he disappeared, gone forever. She doesn’t remember his face anymore but remembers the sensation: Am I the girl who stays while others leave?