Binary Star (9 page)

I’ve told him to talk to his doctor. He’s changed medications over and over. They all do this.

I’ve told him not to drink with them but I know that’s ridiculous.

He snores so loudly sometimes that he wakes himself up and looks around like he’s surprised. In the light from the neon sign next door, I can see that he’s seeing visions. He looks at the backs of his eyes.

Sometimes I wake him on purpose and ask him to stop but this makes him angry.

That’s if I can even wake him. Most nights I shake him and shake him and he never wakes up.

Or I shout his name directly at him many times, but even this doesn’t work.

The day after one of these nights, he’ll sleep until four in the afternoon. I spend the time that he’s sleeping reading on the leather couch, or wasting away on the Internet, or playing with Dog.

I’ve never had keys to his apartment. He won’t make them. I’m afraid that, if I lock myself out, he can’t let me back in.

I’ve said this to him many times but he says that there’s nothing he can do, that I’ll have to get used to it.

I sit on the back porch for hours with Dog. By four o’clock, I feel like I’ve opened my skull and scraped the inside clean and filled it with dust.

I think that, if I can find the center of the noise, I might be able to make peace with it. That maybe, if it’s the only thing I hear, I won’t even hear it.

In order for this to be true, there would need to be no other sound. But there is Dog, and there is the fan, and there are the sounds of the building settling. Then there are neighbors.

I think that his neighbors downstairs must hear him.

They must have said something, if not to John, then at least to the landlord.

They are like watchdogs.

Do they lie awake worrying he’s died when the sound stops
suddenly? Do they think about coming upstairs? About knocking on the door, to be sure he’s still living?

Would they do that?

Or are they only concerned with their own sleep?

I’ve thought about calling John’s parents but he would consider that crossing a line.

If John were to call my mother, I don’t know what would happen. Something drastic, I think.

THE SECOND DREDGE-UP

THE RED GIANT HAS TWO SHELLS: ONE INNER, burning hydrogen, and outer, helium.

The star begins to cool and hydrogen burning is pushed to the core. The surface grows opaque. Convection extends inward.

The convective envelope penetrates the hydrogen, and dredges to the surface the products of the burning.

This is the second dredge-up.

I sleep a deep, hyperbolic sleep all the way to Raleigh. I awake with my face in the sun. It is wet with sweat. I’m nauseous. My mouth tastes like acid.

We’re stopped outside a Shell gas station, and a thick brush forest behind the Shell. There’s a picnic table between the forest and the curb, a few thousand feet from the freeway, where a family sits eating Lunchables and passing around Juicy Juice boxes.

The sounds of cars are a hush in the distance. A sign by the freeway tells us we can also find Cracker Barrel, Subway, and Quiznos at this exit, and a BP further on. John opens the driver-side door.

What do you need?

Aquafina, Red Bull, Ultra Lights.

Banana?

No. I’m nauseous.

I watch him enter the store and then I open the door and step
into my Converse, leaving the laces untied. The day is cold and bright. I close my eyes and stand. Blood rushes from my head.

The hard air blends with the sweat on my skin. I’m alive. I have breath. I have heat from the car. I expand and I cool.

I sit on the curb and pull up my sleeves. My wrists are thin and pale and I turn them over, hold them away from my body. A semi-truck hauling milk passes another semi hauling bread. I place my hand before it and let it drive through my palm. The road curves. The truck follows it.

I feel that, starting here, I could become anything.

I feel that I could climb into any car in this lot. Go anywhere.

Who would stop me? Not John.

Red Bull, he says. What are you looking at?

Nothing.

I got Corona. Let’s sit at that table.

I’ll follow you anywhere.

He seems to like this.

We call a Days Inn and reserve a room with a queen-sized bed and a flat-screen TV, which makes John happy. I use the bathroom in the gas station and smell the soap and rub it under my armpit and wipe it off on a rough hand towel because I don’t feel like showering later at the motel. I don’t feel like seeing myself naked.

We bring John’s Corona to the picnic table and I sit across from him drinking my Red Bull and shivering, smoking an Ultra Light, which tastes like air. He slides a bottle into a paper bag, opens it, and offers it to me but I decline. Behind him, cars are turning on their headlights and exiting toward Virginia and South Carolina as the night falls, going wherever they’ve decided to go. Or at least, wherever the road leads them.

I think we should live together, says John.

I ash my cigarette. I don’t know what to say.

You think so?

You’re not excited.

I just didn’t know you felt that way.

Don’t you?

Of course.

John picks at the beer label.

It’s hard being apart.

Of course. I miss you, too.

When we originally went to the moon, our total focus was going to the moon. We weren’t thinking about looking back at Earth. But now that we’ve done it, that may well have been the most important reason we went.

The family that ate their dinner here earlier is exiting the gas station and walking toward their Honda Odyssey. They open the back hatch and pull out two overstuffed duffel bags. The kids each take one and walk them inside, with the parents following. Everyone is eating Fruit Roll-Ups.

There’s a class I want to take in New York this summer. I can stay at your apartment and commute.

This is why. He doesn’t want to love me.

What about Dog?

Michele.

All summer?

Michele would do anything for me.

I know this is a test.

So would I.

No I wouldn’t.

I’m better.

None of these.

We look at each other for a long time. I wonder if he’s talked to Michele today.

I know you would, too. That’s why I’m telling you, he says.

Okay.

Okay.

So take the class.

You think so?

Of course.

You haven’t asked me what it is.

What is it?

Vegan ethics. I’m going vegan.

The periodicity of Earth’s mass extinctions is estimated at 27 million years, the same as Nemesis’s orbit.

That summer, I take John to a party at a friend’s house in Brooklyn. We get there in the rain and the streets are black and shimmering in the storefront lights. We hold our coats over our heads.

Inside, bodies heave together and the music is turned up so loudly it shakes the fixtures. Red Solo cups cover the floor. In the kitchen, a game of doubles beer pong has drawn a crowd. John looks around for the keg.

Where’s your friend?

I don’t know. I’ll go and find him.

I haven’t seen my friend since before I went to Chicago, halfway through the spring semester. I find him talking to a girl on the couch. They look happy. He is happy to see me.

When you have a minute, I want you to meet John, I say.

He’s here?

He’s here!

We walk around in circles and finally find John standing in a corner. He’s holding a Solo cup and looking desultory.

This is the person whose corner you’re standing in, John.

I hear you’re taking a class in the city, says my friend.

Not anymore.

It’s over?

No, the people who ran it are idiots.

My friend is speechless.

I’m sorry to hear that. What are you going to do now?

Nothing to do. Get drunk.

My friend looks at me.

You’ve come to the right place, I joke.

Good start, says my friend.

John holds up his cup and pretends to drink to my friend, then looks away. My friend looks back at the couch.

Well, it was nice to meet you, John. I’ve heard a lot about you.

Yeah, nice to meet you, John says.

My friend returns to his girl friend.

He’s nice, isn’t he?

He’s okay. Kind of a tool.

I see a girl I know from a class and we fall into talking about deep time. John listens at first, but quickly grows bored and disappears into a room with some people. They shut the door.

A little while later, I see my friend talking to our other friend in the kitchen. They see me. I wave. My friend comes over.

You have to get your boyfriend out of here.

What happened?

He punched someone in the face.

He wouldn’t do that.

Now he’s in the backyard yelling with a two-by-four.

John?

No, our friend. John’s laughing at him out the window.

I walk to the room where John disappeared. He’s talking to someone on the street and slurring his words, and laughing.

What did the guy do? I ask my friend.

Look, I don’t like your boyfriend. We can chill whenever you want, but not with him. To be honest, I don’t know what you’re doing with him. He’s a prick.

He’s really not.

He certainly seems that way.

John follows a few steps behind me toward the subway. I keep my eyes on the ground as it disappears behind my Converse.

That guy went down so fast. He screamed like a baby.

What did he do to you?

He was just talking shit, like the people at the Free School. Nobody knows what the fuck they’re talking about. Nobody’s willing to be militant. They’re all a bunch of pussies who don’t know what they believe.

You’re wearing a leather belt.

I had this before I went vegan. It would be disrespectful to the cow if I threw it away.

Fair enough. But why is it okay to hit someone and not okay to hurt an animal?

Because that guy should know better. A monkey in a vivisection laboratory doesn’t know better. He gets locked in a cage and abused, and he internalizes it, and then when someone comes to hurt him one day, he acts out and bites the hand that hurts him. That’s understandable. That ape at the party deserves to get punched.

Maybe that guy has internalized his oppression, too.

That guy is not oppressed.

People don’t like it when their beliefs are challenged, John. They’re fragile enough already.

We walk past a dollar store and a discount clothing store and two bodegas. I stop to look closely at the ads.

I just didn’t want to leave.

Are you serious? That party sucked. Those people are idiots.

He drinks the rest of his beer and tosses his cup in a trashcan, then asks me for a cigarette. I wonder if he’s right about my friends being idiots.

What do you want to do now? he asks.

Go home.

Really? It’s early.

I just don’t feel like being out.

You’re such a baby. You’re just sad about having to leave the party.

I don’t answer.

I don’t know why you like those people.

I stand at the back of the classroom drinking mate because it’s an appetite suppressant and has as much caffeine as coffee. At six in the morning, I drank eight ounces of rice milk with freeze-dried açai berry powder and followed it with a 24 ounce Starbucks Iced Americano. At ten o’clock, I ate a half-cup of grapes. Every two hours, I allow myself one half-stick of celery from the bag in my purse. At two o’clock, I can have one whole banana and my first sugar-free Red Bull, to burn it off. At five o’clock, I can have half a McDonald’s side salad with no dressing, cheese, or croutons, and a cup of ice water. If the hunger becomes overwhelming, I chew a stick of Orbit. If, by eight o’clock, I’m feeling weaker than usual, I allow myself an apple after doing two sets of twenty sit-ups. Throughout the day, I take Zantrex-3 as needed. This afternoon, I will lead a lesson on common envelopes. A common envelope is a short-lived phase in the evolution of a binary star. It begins when a binary orbit decays or when one star expands rapidly. Write this down.