“The renunciation of lust is not the end of the event.” That’s what he said to her, leaning one of his stork elbows against the granite counter in the kitchen. “The renunciation of it is not the end.”
She turned and began to gather her things. Her mind was flat and without velocity. An empty mat of sand next to the ocean, being plucked and lifted every so often by a current that, if it had been asked, would have had the following to say about the evening.
“I could really give a shit about the whole business of ecosystems.”
Dennis moved into the living room and now grabbed the top of the doorframe. This was skill of his. The ability to, upon entering a new space, immediately bend his tall body casually into a corner. “I thought we had a word, or something. That we’d agreed on. For times like this. To return things to before.”
Imogene turned and made a tisking motion with her lips. He felt motion in his pants. She noticed. “Boy, you are kind of an animal. You know that?”
In response he approached swiftly, and earlier events cycled backwards. There was an intense proximity. He looked as closely as he could at the junctures where individual hairs left her scalp. He tried to see if there was something in between pink scalp and brown hair, if there was some transitional layer, some mucus or, membrane, to separate the dead matter from the living, but nothing was clear.
She stopped and looked up and smiled for the first time in at least half an hour. “You’re crazy too.”
He smiled and felt proud. She saw this look of pride, and remembered. “I’m not doing this right now.” She grabbed her things once more.
“Who would ever, if given a choice,” Dennis said. “Call hair dead and forehead life? Who would ever choose the skin of a person’s face over the texture of hair? Who in the fuck? If it came down to finding life.”
“What?”
“I did not mean to say that out loud.”
She sighed and made a movement with her head. He studied. “Why couldn’t you just do this right,” she said. “I’ve had a rough week.”
“What?”
“I said why couldn’t you be normal at dinner and then have sex with me in a way that was like cordial to both my existence as an agency-bearing member of the human race and my nature as an animal composed of deep, continentally shifting urges for strength and fury?”
“I don’t think race is really the appropriate word there.”
“Wow, you are looking for a verbal dropkick.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need you to say sorry. I just needed you to understand.”
“I don’t.”
She turned to head for the door, but he leapt over the couch and past her to block the opening. “I don’t want our little back and forth to be done.”
“There isn’t anything honest about this,” she said. “This is an ugly consumption you are plotting.”
In his fantasy, he imagined reaching for her shoulder. He imagined his arm being brushed aside. He imagined her delivering a small blow to his ribs, and he imagined Imogene sprinting down the stairs of his brownstone and out into the street, and he imagined himself in chase. After several blocks or buildings, she would stumble or something and they would meet. But in this moment, she would turn and hold her arms straight and perpendicular to her torso, and he would do the same, and their palms would collide.
“I have more nice things to say,” he says. “I mean no harm. This isn’t what it looks like.”
And in response she would be calm and say “I know.” And in response she would be in fury and say “Leave me forever.” And in response she would be in truth and say “I’m tired. I’m really tired.”
And when she said this, their palms would push away from each other with maximum force, and they would sail off, in opposite directions, untethered, into space.
He watched her retreat in his view, past the brick walls of the corner store buildings, past the Lego-Block skyline of Chicago, way out to the edges of the lake and further past that, to a place of deer and trees and running, of mushroom mouths and cellular growth. And there in a clearing she would lay down finally on the ground to sleep, and he would watch her from a distance. And he did not know this, but she was his mirror. From her position on the ground in this distant foggy world. She stared back with eyes almost closed, and what she saw was the same.
