Sina Cleaning the Bathroom
Nothing left to do but keep breathing. In and out. For all time. Until you find me, settle deep in some fold of my soul, finally feel how good I could be for you—decide you want no one else, send the vultures home. My nightmares grow stronger, weaker, stranger. Coughing trees. Blonde girls. Horses moving like water.
When I open my eyes again, the powder lies scattered carelessly beside you. Your breasts glow blue in the moonlight—I haven’t seen anything that beautiful in a long time. For hours I watch the rises and falls, the measured rhythm of your existence.
No trace left of the one-sided blackout after the great collapse. Head clear again, soaked through with the murky thoughts of recent weeks. How completely everything can change. You, me, both of us. Next to your red-blonde hair lies Hugo, smiling, drooling, asleep.
An insatiable hunger tears through me. My thoughts circle around limp cheeseburgers, greasy pizza, noodles buried under fried eggs and melted cheese. I nearly retch from pure appetite. I stand up without kissing your forehead and walk naked through the apartment.
The fridge holds beer, Red Bull, and champagne. Nothing edible anywhere in sight. The room begins to spin. The bright light drives itself directly into my stomach, my lungs, my legs. I sink to the floor and start crying, starving magnificently.
When Sina finds me the next morning, curled like a fetus in front of the open fridge, she starts kissing me everywhere—doesn’t stop until I open my eyes, take her head in both hands, and look into her ocean-blue ones.
Countless stars shine in them. The end of the world. The meaning of life, close enough to touch. My parents are singing a cheerful song somewhere. Dolphins are leaping. And just as I’m about to unlock the final secret of all existence, the doorbell rings.
Sina smiles, stands up, and opens the door for the postman without bothering to cover herself first. He doesn’t flinch—just presses a package into her hands and says goodbye the way he always does, polite and utterly indifferent to both of us. I feel somehow embarrassed. Are you hungry?
she asks me then. I’ll order us a pizza, if you want.
It takes almost an hour before I finally have something edible between my teeth. We sit on the couch watching The O.C. on DVD. Sunlight pours through the enormous windows of the old apartment. On the horizon, the television tower stands.
When Ryan holds Marissa dying in his arms, I run to the bathroom and throw up in the tub. It seems, in that moment, like the more appropriate vessel for my spontaneous intentions. Sina follows me in and we fuck on the cold tile floor. When I’m done she asks: Promise me it’ll always be like this.
I nod in silence. She climbs off me.
The package contains a new camera I’d ordered online. Expensive, beautiful. The first thing I photograph with it is Sina cleaning the bathroom. Whenever I see those pictures now I feel a kind of cardiac spasm—an overwhelming, bone-deep ache about why I didn’t take better care of her. Why I wasn’t there sooner, when it happened.