maybe it’s as simple as I don’t want to pick up garbage anymore.
Regardless, I kiss her. My hands are inside her shirt, her right nipple hard under my thumb.
“Not here,” she whispers.
“‘Here,’ ‘there,’ it’s all arbitrary anyway.”
In a world without objective meaning, in a world of cosmic emptiness, a lab table is as good as a bed.
But Alice doesn’t understand.
“Not here,” she insists, and breaks away from me.
With a sigh, I return to picking up trash.
Understanding Tertiary Care
SERVICES
•Memory and Physical Frailty Aid•
•Bathing and Grooming Aid•
•Incontinence Support•
•Medication Administration•
•Recreational Hour•
•Emotional and Spiritual Counseling•
•24/7 Nurse-on-call•
RESIDENCES
•Spacious rooms•
•Large, bright windows•
DINING
•Three Chef-prepared Meals Daily•
•Personal Meal Delivery•
Each lakeside apartment houses three to five students. Apartment 112 belongs to me, Marty, and Alice. I wanted Zach to be our fourth, to apply with us at the end of spring semester, when all the new students ditch their obligatory newsie-year doubles and triples for suites, singles, and Lakeside Apartments. But Zach already had a single and anyway, it’s hard to arrange living with someone if you never bring it up to him.
The mere thought makes me panicky.
In Alice’s room, I press my lip to hers. The lake outside glistens in the bright of the afternoon, and my head is full of Zach. Alice breathes into my shoulder, the smell of garbage hanging onto us, faint but discernible, and there before me is the blue of Zach’s eyes, the warmth of his hand on my shoulder. Afterward, lying naked in bed together, I watch her doze. My pants are on the floor by the bed.
I reach into a pocket and draw out the key.
How many times did Zach hold it?
I lean back onto the bed.
A quick glance at Alice assures me she’s asleep, so I bring the key to my lips, pop it into my mouth, and taste the metal, and after a moment, something more, the faint imprint of his touch.
She wakes with her head on my chest. When she speaks into me it tickles. After two hours of garbage duty, I have to admit, that’s nice. Nicer than sex, maybe. But I can’t understand a word she says. I turn briefly away, pretend to rub at my mouth so I can spit the key into my palm.
“What?” I say.
“I said you seemed a little distracted. You get this faraway look in your eye.”
“Is this a gentle way of critiquing my performance?”
“No,” she says, too quickly. “You’re not mad, are you?”
“For you not letting us do it on a lab table with a board full of chemistry equations as our background? Why would I be mad?”
“We have to keep it together, Noah,” she says, tracing the outline of my ribs with her index finger. “Once you stop caring about where you have, well, you know, soon enough you stop caring who you have it with. Stop caring about anything at all. . .”
“But the nihilistic void of nothing—” I start to protest.
“—is not something I want to bring into bed with us,” she says, elbowing me playfully.
I laugh. “Abuse!”
“You know,” she says, after a time. “You know, I was thinking maybe we could have a picnic sometime soon. Next week, maybe. Get some sandwiches together and take them over to the lake. I know you love any excuse to eat sandwiches. We could ask Martin to come. What do you think?”
“Okay,” I say.
I wrap my arms around her in a tight hug, and the metal of the key digs into my palm. But all I can think is that she is not Zach. She is not Zach she is not Zach she is not Zach, and I would rather be held than hold. It makes you feel like you add up to more than the nothingness inside you.
It makes you feel like you’ll never go anywhere, and that is the only therapy I need.
I close my eyes with the hope that I’ll dream of him.
DREAMS OF THE END
Noah knows the comet will hit.
In his final moments, he sits down to write a story.
But the blank sheets of paper taunt him.
To put words on paper is not a problem.
But the right words?
It used to be said that the Bible was the greatest book ever written. A myopically western-centric view, but, arrogance aside, the boldness of the claim, that is what appeals to Noah.
The libraries of the world are full of ancient books, populated by Gods and Heroes.
Are all these books holy, or are none of them?
Noah suspects the latter.
The blank pages on his desk leer at him.
His problem, he realizes,