Binary Star (6 page)

You good? he says.

Not really.

What’s wrong? This is fun.

I don’t want to be here, John.

Just enjoy it. You never enjoy yourself.

He leaves me and moves toward the neon corner that marks the bar. The song changes to Britney Spears’s “If You Seek Amy” and the dancer spins in tighter concentric circles around the pole. Then she stops, facing me.

She points her legs away from both sides in a perfect cross. Her skin is shining. She’s radiant. Sexy.

She rotates slowly on her axis and slides down, crossing her ankles. She puts her hands on the stage, bent backward.

Mirrors surrounding the stage reflect her body from eight different angles. Every reflection is ideal, every line a smooth curve joining every other into a full form. She twists her feet to the ground and crawls toward me like a tiger, her hair covering her face.

Do you feel objectified? Disrespected?

No. Never.

Her eyelashes burst in black flames.

You have an accent. Where are you from?

I am here for winter from Russia.

Do you like it?

It’s the same. Shallow, cheap.

The room spins and bodies move around us but we remain still. She brings her hands to my face. She touches my mouth.

You’re beautiful, I say.

You like me?

How do I get it? How do I know when I’ve gotten it?

Do you see how she moves? John says.

He puts two Coronas on the table.

This is fun, isn’t it? he says. Do you want a lap dance?

He pulls a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and hands it to me. He’s slurring his words. He’s had drinks at the bar.

Are you drunk?

I am not.

You know we still have to drive tonight.

Yes.

I can’t drive. I can’t see, John.

And I thought you weren’t drinking.

We’re at a strip club.

You’re a liar.

You’re a liar.

I give him back his fifty and say that I’m going outside to smoke.

One more drink, he says. Then I swear we can go. Here, drink your Red Bull.

You can drive a little bit, if it makes you feel better.

It doesn’t.

Bourbon Street is a hot mess.

I drive us past the Superdome and out of New Orleans and pull off I-10 just after Gulfport, Mississippi, seeing out of one eye. We stop at a Best Western that’s full except for one room with two twin beds. It comes with a bible and a
TV Guide
in the bedside table, an assortment of Ghirardelli chocolates, and a refrigerator fully stocked with Coca Cola products marked up
two hundred percent. The top drawer of the dresser has a guide to local restaurants that top out at P.F. Chang’s.

John turns on the TV and falls asleep in his clothes on one of the beds. One foot remains resting on the floor. He begins snoring.

I turn off the TV and sit on the other bed and watch him. His mouth hangs open and a pool of drool is beginning to form in his lower lip. His tongue rests fat and pink over his teeth. A receding hairline makes a widow’s peak above his broad white forehead, growing pasty with sweat. His cheekbones are lost beneath his cheeks.

I reach over and shake him.

John, you didn’t take your pills.

Huh?

You didn’t take your pills.

Oh.

His eyes drift halfway open and then close. I shake him.

John, you didn’t take your pills. Wake up.

I’m awake.

You said you wouldn’t drink.

He licks his lips, turns over onto his back, and brings his leg up onto the bed. His foot hangs over the side.

John. Wake up.

I don’t really want to wake him.

John.

Snoring.

You didn’t take your pills. You said you weren’t drunk, so you need to take your pills.

I walk to the bathroom and turn on the light and look at myself in the mirror. I smell the tiny soaps and unwrap a plastic cup, fill it with water and sit on the toilet seat, listening to him snore.

I stand up again and get my purse and come back to the bathroom.

So, I’m out here alone.

I light a cigarette. I ash into the sink and look at the time. It’s four thirty. The last thing I ate was a handful of almonds at eight o’clock, followed by two cups of coffee and a Red Bull.

I walk to the mini fridge and open it. Coca Cola. Diet Coke. Minute Maid Cranberry. Sprite. Barq’s. Seagram’s Ginger Ale.

John’s snoring has become an oppressive presence.

I slam the bathroom door.

I blow smoke into the sink.

I turn on the shower as hot as it will go and undress in front of the mirror. I hear John’s snoring above the rush of the water and imagine his tongue falling into the back of his throat.

The tops of my thighs almost touch. My lower stomach extends past my hipbones. My upper arms look flabby. I can’t see my chest bones without pushing my shoulders forward. My collarbone looks okay but my breasts sag.

I turn.

My ass should have its own atmosphere.

I stand on my toes. My shoulders are too wide when they’re seen from the back.

I turn to the side and suck in my stomach. I hold my breath.

I shouldn’t have to do that. This is how I should look all the time without trying. I exhale. I watch my stomach expand.

I touch my hipbones and feel the hollow inside them and face the mirror.

I am so, so wide.

I’m fucking huge.

I grab the backs of my thighs and pull them apart, making a space between them.

This is how I want to look.

This is how I’m going to look.

This is 85 pounds or I’m fucking dead.

The mirror is getting foggy. I climb into the shower without feeling the water. It burns and my skin grows red instantly.
I hold my face beneath the full force of the pressure. I can’t breathe. I lie down and close my eyes.

I hate you, John.

I stay there until I can’t feel the heat anymore and a calm overtakes me. I breathe.

I turn the water off and stare at the ceiling.

He’s still snoring.

I wait until the air gets cold.

Belief is brittle. My skin is dry and brittle and cracks. I am always bleeding, especially from the fingers. I do not believe that John loves me. There.

I believe that John used to love me.

I do without my body: I am you, I am me, I am you, I am me: I always end with you.

Do you remember what happened last night?

I don’t.

The question is what do I want in my center? The question is What Do I Want? I blow smoke into myself.

Do I want anything without John?

I know what I don’t want. I know some of what I don’t want. I don’t want to be heavy. I don’t want to be a burden.

If I believe in anything: lightness.

I once thought you were a neutron star.

I thought I was a neutron star.

I could never be a neutron star.

There is not enough of me to be a neutron star.

A white dwarf is the final state of a star whose mass is too small to be a neutron star.

We’re confusing terms.

A white dwarf no longer uses fusion.

It is held together by degeneracy pressure.

Extreme pressure.

This is the only thing supporting it against collapse.

This is also the only thing that keeps it from exploding.

A white dwarf depends only on density. A white dwarf isn’t burning.

It isn’t doing anything productive.

It doesn’t matter that I’m not burning anymore. I haven’t burned for a long time.

I approach my natural state of being. Cold is my natural state of being.

I grow dimmer every day.

Lightness very much depends on will. I have basically starved myself of will. Of want. Of whether and what I believe.

In happiness?

In being better?

Better.

I was born without will. I was born with certain beliefs.

In sacrifice. Humility.

I am mostly devoid of feelings on purpose.

Feeling is fleshy. Don’t touch me.

If you touch me, you have to hurt me. I don’t want you to be afraid.

What matters now that isn’t?

You used to paint. Now, when you paint, it is shapes overlaying each other. Transparency. Reds, blues. I see through them all.

John is mostly concerned with appearances. In this way we’re alike.

In this way we’re destructive.

We have only ever believed in appearances. Even now.

You have only ever believed in appearances.

A white dwarf cannot exceed a certain mass. I reach a limit that my pressure can’t sustain.

You want me to be better.

John wants me to be better.

John doesn’t want me to be better. John doesn’t want to be better.

John doesn’t want me.

Is that true?

Let’s stop. We’re circling each other.

I feel that the sun is rising. I have made more coffee. It burns in the gut, in the kitchen.

I move from the couch. I am little but a shadow

I feel that everything is a matter of because, because John and I talk on the phone but it is mostly trying to understand.

Now we’re eating ourselves and the star chart moves and everything seems to be curving around what I want, but I can’t find my way to it.

The main-sequence chart. Are we on the main sequence?

We’re dim.

I’m the center of the room.

I’m fixed. I’m not fixed: I careen.

I’ve been still for too long.

What was I thinking?

I was thinking about the scroll. But scrolls end in circles.

Clothing tags. Toe tags. Taglines.

All seems to move except for me, and yet I feel that I’m in motion. I vibrate against you.

I’m spinning. I’m spinning. John, I’m spinning.

I’m spinning. I’m spinning.

I’m spinning. I collapse.

There are binary companions we never see.

Like black holes.

When a body crosses the event horizon surrounding a black hole, it shifts to red.

The body’s redshift is its infinite gravitational lensing.

I walk down the street without feeling. I always move without feeling.

It is something I will.

So oblivion is a verb.

Redshift.

I think the pharmacist feels me. He anticipates my needs.

Can I help you?

No, you can’t. I’m here again. You’re in my periphery, so I see you.

You see me. You look concerned.

Are you sure I can’t help you?

Actually, no.

The modern value of the limit of white dwarfs was first published in a paper:

“The Maximum Mass of Ideal White Dwarfs.”

Can you explain that?

I stand in the diet aisle. Hydroxycut. Lipozene. alli. EAC. Metabolife. Sensa. ReNew. Natrol.

Zantrex-3. SlimQuick. QuickTrim. Mega-T. Slim FX. PhytoGeniX. Xenadrine. Dexatrim.

Thermonex. NitroVarin. Stacker. Labrada. Irwin Naturals Triple-Tea Fat Burner Softgels.

I stand at the counter. Christina Ricci. Nicole Richie. Portia de Rossi. Mary Kate and Ashley.

That’ll be twenty.

Mischa Barton. Victoria Beckham. Bethenny Frankel. Allegra Versace.

Is that all?

Kelly Clarkson. Lily Allen. Keira Knightley. Ginger Spice.

Credit or debit.

Lindsay Lohan. Lady Gaga. Fiona Apple. Isabelle Caro, who’s dead.

Felicity Huffman. Calista Flockhart. Tara Reid.

Karen Carpenter, who’s dead.

Would you like a candy bar for a dollar?

Fuck you.

The Barbi Twins. Lara Flynn Boyle. Paula Abdul. Joan Rivers. Sharon Osbourne.

The ladder is the ribs, the lines in the chest.

The gap between the thighs.

I want the rings around the eyes.

Nobody ever talks about the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy, or the fact that most, if not all, galaxies orbit supermassive black holes.

It is not good for casual conversation to talk about circling oblivion.

Death.

By death I don’t mean individual inevitable conclusion, but the death of any trace of any of this. Deep death, if you consider that death is a matter of time.

The nature of a supermassive black hole is such that the density of its singularity is less than that of a smaller black hole. In some cases, it is no denser than water.

This means that a body traveling toward the black hole center will not experience significant tidal force until very deep into the black hole.

An observer would notice very little change. Once a body crosses the event horizon, it redshifts, but it never disappears.

We stop in Savannah to see the moss on the trees.

We lie in the grass in one square, then another. We sleep with magazines over our faces.

John, I need to tell you something.

He’s sleeping.

Can I hold your hand?

Why are you crying? he says.

Do you love me?

What do you want me to say?

That you do.

Okay. Of course I do.

John bought me this mirror for my birthday. Or John used his parents’ money to buy me this mirror for my birthday. John used his parents’ money to buy me a gift card. I used the gift card to buy this mirror for my birthday.

I look at myself for hours each day.

I see myself and in that sense I’m real.

I practice saying no to various kinds of food.

No, thank you. I’ve already eaten. I’m cleansing. I’m fasting. Making myself pure. Eating vegan. Eating raw.

No, thank you. I’m an activist. I’m starving in solidarity with Ethiopians.

No, thank you. Another time.

We go out to The Cheesecake Factory the night of my birthday. It’s June. We drink wine and eat vegetables covered in butter.

John refuses to acknowledge the butter because he’s been drinking since the afternoon. He says it is something else, but he won’t say what. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to see it.

It’s not about personal purity.

But it’s also about purity.

John, is it ethical for a vegan person to eat here, even if they’re eating vegan food?

He’s not listening.

I read somewhere that the Bistro Shrimp Pasta has over 3,000 calories, I say.