Alone With You in the Ether Page 2

  “What?” Marc asked groggily.

  “Nothing,” she said over her shoulder.

  They’d fucked last night to moderately successful results, though Marc never got particularly hard when he’d done that much cocaine. But at least she’d gone home with him. At least she’d gone home at all. There had been a moment when she might have opted not to; when a stranger standing in the corner near the back of the room might have been the more interesting choice, whereupon she might have hazarded a little sashay his way. All it would have taken was a breathy laugh, a sly Take me home, Stranger, and then wouldn’t it have been so easy? There were a million spidery webs of possibility in which Regan had not come home, had not slept with her boyfriend, had not woken up in time for work, had not woken up at all.

  She wondered what she was doing out there in all those mirror-shards of lives unlived. Maybe there was a version of her who had woken up at six and gone jogging on the lake path, though she doubted it.

  Still, it was nice to consider. It meant she possessed creativity still.

  This version of herself, Regan calculated, had fifteen minutes to get to the Art Institute, and if she believed in impossibilities she would have believed it to be impossible. Fortunately or unfortunately, she believed in everything and nothing.

  She fingered the bloody tears of her earrings and pivoted sharply, eyeing Marc’s shape beneath the sheets.

  “Maybe we should break up,” she said.

  “Regan, it’s seven in the morning,” Marc replied, voice muffled.

  “It’s almost two-thirty, dipshit.”

  He lifted his head, squinting. “What day is it?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Mm.” He burrowed his face in his pillow again. “Okay, sure, Regan.”

  “We could always just, I don’t know. See other people?” she suggested.

  He rolled over with a sigh, propping himself up with his elbows.

  “Regan, aren’t you late?”

  “Not yet,” she said, “but I will be, if you want.” She knew he wouldn’t.

  “We both know you’re not going anywhere, babe. All your stuff is here. You hate inconvenience. And you’d have to use condoms again.”

  She made a face. “True.”

  “Have you taken your pills?” he asked.

  She glanced at her watch. If she left in five minutes, she’d probably still make it.

  She considered what she could do in five minutes. This isn’t working, I’m not happy, it’s been fun—that would take what, thirty seconds? Marc wouldn’t cry, which was something she liked about him, so it wouldn’t be terribly inconvenient. Then she’d have four and a half minutes to gather up the things that mattered and throw them into a bag, which would really only require about two. Which would then leave two and half minutes. Ah, but thirty seconds for pills, she kept forgetting. Five seconds to take them but twenty or so to stare blankly at the bottles. Which… what could she do with the remaining two minutes? Eat breakfast? It was nearly two-thirty. Breakfast was out of the question, temporally speaking, and besides, she wasn’t sure she could eat yet.

  Motion from the clock suggested that Regan’s five minutes for flight had dropped to four. There’d be such a terrible restriction on her time now unless she recalculated, rescheduled. Changed her priorities.

  “I have to do something,” she said suddenly, turning away.

  “Are we breaking up?” Marc called after her.

  “Not today,” she told him, snatching the orange bottles from their usual place beside the fridge before making her way to the bathroom. She set the pills aside and pulled herself onto the sink, hiking one leg upright to rest her heel atop the marble counter, and slid her hand under her seamless thong, unlocking her phone with her free hand. She’d never enjoyed porn, finding it kind of… upsettingly unsubtle. She preferred mystery—craved it like a drug—so she pulled up a password protected note on her screen.

  the first photo is a grainy shot of a nondescript male hand under a short skirt, positioned lasciviously between the slim curves of female thighs. The second is a black-and-white image of two female torsos pressed together.

  This, Regan determined, was worth it. This was the better decision. She could have ended her relationship, true, but instead she had these four minutes. No, three and a half. But she knew her physicalities well, and therefore knew she’d need only three, tops. That left at least thirty seconds.

  With the remainder of her time, she could do something very Regan, like tucking her underwear into Marc’s jacket pocket before she kissed him goodbye. He’d find it later that evening, probably while he was schmoozing with some bespoke-suited exec, at which point he’d sneak into a bathroom stall and take a picture of his dick for her. He’d expect something in return, probably, but in all likelihood she’d be sleeping. Or maybe she wouldn’t have come home at all. What a mystery, her future self! The possibilities were fascinatingly mundane and yet, somehow, perfectly endless, which was close enough to elation itself.

  She came, biting down on the sensation, and exhaled.

  Forty-five seconds.

  regan reaches for the bottle of pills and says nothing. She wonders how long it will be until she feels something again.

  Aldo was getting his Ph.D. in theoretical mathematics, which meant a broad variety of things depending on who he was saying it to. Strangers were typically impressed with him, albeit in a disbelieving sort of way. Most people thought he was joking, as people who looked like him did not typically say the words “I’m getting my doctorate in theoretical mathematics” unironically. His father was proud of him but blindly, having been bewildered by most things Aldo had done or said for the majority of his life. Others were unsurprised. “You’re one of those brainy fucks, right?” Aldo’s dealer used to say, always asking about the chances of winning this or that, and though Aldo would remind him that statistics was a practical application, i.e. applied math, his dealer would simply shrug, ask something about life in outer space (Aldo didn’t know anything about life in outer space) and hand him the items he’d requested.

  Aldo’s students detested him. The truly gifted ones tolerated him, but the others—the undergraduates who were taking calculus to satisfy requirements for study—positively loathed him. He lent very little thought to why, which was likely part of the problem.

  Aldo was not an especially good communicator, either. That was what the drugs had been for to begin with; he was an anxious kid, then a depressed teen, and then, for a brief period, a full-blown addict. He had learned over time to keep his thoughts to himself, which was most easily accomplished if his brain activity was split into categories. His mind was like a computer with multiple applications open, some of them buzzing with contemplation in the background. Most of the time Aldo did not give others the impression he was listening, a suspicion that was generally correct.

  “Exponential and logarithmic functions,” Aldo said without preamble, walking into the poorly lit classroom

  scene: A university classroom.

  and suffering the usual itch to dive out its institutional windows. He was exactly one minute late, and, as a rule, was never early. Had he been any earlier to arrive, he might have had to interact with his students, which neither he nor they wished him to do.

  “Did anyone struggle with the reading?”

  “Yes,” said one of the students in the second row.

  Unsurprising.

  “What exactly is this used for?” asked a student in the back.

  Aldo, who preferred not to dirty his hands with application, loathed that particular question. “Charting bacterial growth,” he said on a whim. He found linear functions banal. They were mostly used to simplify things to a base level of understanding, though few things on earth were ever so straightforward. The world, after all, was naturally entropic.

  Aldo strode over to the whiteboard, which he hated, though it was at least less messy than chalk. “Growth and decay,” he said, scrawling out a graph before scribbling g(x) beside it. Historically speaking, this lecture would be extremely frustrating for all of them. Aldo found it difficult to focus on something that required so little of his attention; conversely, his students found it difficult to follow his line of thought. If the department were not so hard-pressed for qualified teachers, he doubted he would have been promoted to lecturer. His performance as an apprentice had been less than stellar, but unfortunately for everyone (himself included), Aldo was brilliant at what he did.

  The university needed him. He needed a job. His students, then, would simply have to adapt, as he had.

  For Aldo, time in the classroom regularly slid to a crawl. He was interrupted several times by questions that he was required by university policy not to remark were stupid. He enjoyed solving problems, true, but found teaching to be more tedious than challenging. His brain didn’t approach things in an easily observable way; he unintentionally skipped steps and was then forced to move backwards, usually by the sound of some throat-clearing distress at his back.

  He knew, on some level, that repetition was required for some base level of learning—extensive boxing training had been part of his self-inflicted rehab, so he knew the importance of running the same drill over and over until his head pounded and his limbs were sore—but that didn’t stop him from lamenting it. It didn’t keep him from wishing he could walk out of the room, turn a corner, and head in an entirely different direction.

  Theoretically speaking, anyway.

  The first of the day’s tours included an elderly couple, two twenty-something women, a handful of German tourists, and what Regan furtively ascertained (having made it a custom to check for rings whether she was interested in the outcome or not) to be a married couple in their mid-thirties. The husband was staring at
her, poor thing. She knew that particular stare and was no longer especially flattered by it. She’d started using it to her advantage as a teenager, and now simply stored it among her other tools. Philip’s head, paintbrush, saturation scale, the attraction of unavailable men; it was all the same category of functionality.

  This particular husband was good-looking, sort of. His wife had a pretty but unremarkable face. Likely the husband, a “catch” by virtue of what Regan guessed to be a practical job selling insurance, saw the Chinese mixing with Irish in Regan’s features and considered it some sort of exotic thrill. In reality, she could have been the genetic combination of half the Art Institute’s current occupants.

  “I’m sure many of you will recognize Jackson Pollock’s work,” Regan said, gesturing to the Greyed Rainbow canvas behind her.

  the narrator, a teenage girl who is barely paying attention: The piece Greyed Rainbow by Jackson Pollock is basically just a black surface covered with splotches of grey and white oil paints with, I don’t know, some other colors at the bottom. It’s like, abstract or whatever.

  “One of the most remarkable features of Pollock’s art is how tactile it is,” Regan continued. “I encourage you to step forward to witness the painting’s depths up close; the layers of paint have a distinct solidity you will not find elsewhere.”

  The Wife stepped closer, eagerly eyeing it upon Regan’s suggestion, and the others followed suit. The Husband hung back, hovering in Regan’s eyeline.

  “Amazing they even call this art, isn’t it? I could do this. Hell, a six-year-old could do this.” The Husband’s gaze slid to hers. “I bet you could do it much better.”

  Regan estimated his dick to be average-sized, and while that wasn’t necessarily problematic, the fact that he probably didn’t know what to do with it was. A pity, as he was handsome enough. He had a pleasant face. She guessed that he was unhappily married to his college sweetheart. She would have guessed high school girlfriend, given how that was relatively standard for people with his Minnesotan drawl, but he seemed like a late bloomer. She caught the faint pitting from acne scars on his forehead, which was a detail that most people probably missed—but they wouldn’t have missed it in the tenth grade, and Regan didn’t, either.

  She had a couple of choices. One, she could fuck him in a bathroom stall. Always an option, and never not worth consideration. She knew where to find privacy if she wanted it, and he seemed like he’d probably strayed once or twice already, so there wouldn’t be a lot of easing his conscience beforehand.

  Of course, if she wanted mediocre dick, that was deplorably easy to find without picking this mediocre dick. Out of all the things in the museum to focus his attention, the fact that Regan was his object of choice said far more about him than it did about her.

  It could be a diverting ten minutes. But then again, she’d had more fun in less.

  “Jackson Pollock was highly influenced by Navajo sand painting,” Regan said, her own gaze still affixed to the painting. “With sand,” she explained, “the process is just as important as the finished product; in fact, more so. Sand can blow away at any moment. It can disappear in a matter of hours, minutes, seconds, so the process is about the moment of catharsis. The reverence is in making art—in being part of its creation, but then leaving it open to destruction. What Native Americans did with sand, Jackson Pollock did with paint, which is perhaps an empty rendition of it. In fact, he never openly admitted to adopting their techniques—which makes sense, as it’s far closer to appropriation than it is to an homage. But could you do it?”

  She turned to look at The Husband, sparing him a disinterested once-over.

  “Sure, maybe,” she said, and his mouth twitched with displeasure.

  The art is always different up close, isn’t it? she thought about saying, but didn’t. Now that he knew she was a bitch, he wouldn’t bother pretending to listen.

  Eventually the tour ended, as all tours did. The Husband left with The Wife without having fucked any docents that day (that she knew of, though the night was still young). Regan readied herself for the next tour, feeling a buzz in her blazer pocket that meant Marc had found the underwear she’d left for him.

  Everything was so cyclical. So predictable. At one point, Regan’s court-appointed psychiatrist had asked her how she felt about being alive,

  the narrator: That whole thing was honestly so stupid.

  and Regan had wanted to answer that even when it was never exactly the same, it seemed to follow a consistent orbit. Everything leading to everything else, following the same patterns if you happened to look closely enough. Sometimes Regan felt she was the only one looking, but she’d given the doctor a more tolerable answer and they’d both gone home satisfied, or something. Mostly Regan had felt thirsty, a result of her recent lithium increase. Dehydrate even a little and the pills would gladly offer her the shakes.

  “Saint George and the Dragon,” Regan said, pointing out the painting to the next tour. A visiting family’s teenage son was staring at her breasts, and so was his younger sister. There’s no rush, Regan wanted to tell her. Look how warped the Medieval works are, she wanted to say, because there’s no perspective; because once upon a time, men looked at the world, took in all its beauty, and still only saw it flat.

  Not much has changed, Regan thought to assure the girl. They see you closer than you are, but you’re further from reach than either you or they can imagine.

  Aldo lived in a building of lofts that had once been occupied by a printing company in the early twentieth century. Initially he’d lived closer to the University of Chicago, on the city’s south side, but restlessness had driven him north to the South Loop, and then slightly east to Printer’s Row.

  setting: Printer’s Row is a neighborhood south of the Chicago downtown area known as the Loop. Many buildings in this area were once used by printing and publishing businesses but have since been converted to residences.

  It was warm this evening, the air still playing host to remnants of summer’s humidity, and Aldo opted to take advantage of an evening run. He didn’t live particularly far from the lake path

  the narrator, an overzealous cubs fan: Nowhere in the city of Chicago is ever too far from the lake path!

  but he often preferred to run on city streets. The beat of his stride against pavement was too similar to a pulse sometimes. Without interruption, it was disquieting. Made him too conscious of his breathing.

  That, and the path was often occupied.

  After his run was shadow boxing, bag work, occasional sparring. Aldo wasn’t training for anything, as such, but he supposed he was ready if it came. He’d always been naturally wiry and thin

  the narrator: One of them skinny little shits like my cousin Donnie, eh?

  and lacking much in the way of ego or temper. Generally speaking, Aldo was unlikely to get into any sort of street fight, much less a formal boxing ring. He just liked the reminder that, from time to time, he retained the option of adrenaline and pain.

  After three or so hours he’d come home, locate a couple of chicken breasts, probably some spinach, and definitely some garlic, for which he didn’t use a press. (Diced garlic was an outrage, as his father had told him many times, an abomination for its lack of taste. When it came to garlic, Masso said, it would have to be crushed or whole—no exceptions.)

  Few people ever came to Aldo’s apartment, but the ones who did had commented without exception on the sparseness of his possessions. It was an open-air loft with red Ikea cabinets and modern stainless-steel appliances, and Aldo owned exactly one pot and one pan. Two knives: a Santoku knife and a paring knife. His father had always said that was all anyone ever needed. Aldo did not own a can opener or an ice tray. He did own a pasta maker, though he preferred to make ravioli or tortellini the way his nonna had insisted. Adalina Damiani had taught both her son and her grandson to cook, but while Masso found cooking to be a religious experience, Aldo considered it something best reserved for special occasions, or homesickness. Though, in his experience, most people considered religion precisely the same way.

  On nights when Aldo couldn’t sleep (i.e., most of them), he would head up to the roof to light whatever remained of the joint still languishing in his jacket pocket. He specifically chose the type of marijuana reserved for bodily aches and mindlessness, soothing the prattling going on at the back of his head. His bones would cease their frantic motions for the evening, and inevitably his body would buzz, searching for something new to fill its vacancies.