Ultraluminous

by Katherine Faw

  * * *

  The Sheikh only had a hot plate. I stood beside him while he made us something.

  “Four threads saffron, it’s very important. Are you listening?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  * * *

  I think they won’t have it and then I won’t be able to make it. But there they are: thin, handsome saffron threads coiled around inside a glass jar.

  “Fucking Whole Foods,” I say.

  The guy stocking the shelves looks at me knowingly.

  “There’s no way you have rose water,” I say.

  “Baking aisle,” he says.

  I make the khabeesa on my real stove. I make too much, enough for two people, and then I can’t eat it. Ice drops out of the sky all day.

  * * *

  I get on top of the desk of the guy who buys me things. I crawl a little and then I look at him. He snaps his fingers at me.

  “Bathroom.”

  “You are zero fun,” I say.

  He brought me back here without me asking again. I think he is pleased with me. With him I am doing everything right.

  * * *

  “Come here,” the junk-bond guy says.

  The master bedroom is at the end of the hall and the bed is bigger and whiter than the son’s. I sit on it. I lean back on my elbows.

  “Is this weird?”

  “Come here,” I say.

  Him too, he is pleased.

  * * *

  I found my tone as a whore almost immediately. It was instinct. It is false submission. Instead of shopping for what I need I let the guy at the MAC store do my makeup.

  “Do you bake?” he says.

  I let this go. He means my face, floured with setting powder to lock it in place. That Whole Foods is just next door is of no consequence.

  “I do everything,” I say.

  I let him do whatever he wants. He glues on the most extreme faux lashes. He’s giddy.

  “Girl,” he says.

  On the train a little girl stares at me with her lips parted. I can’t decide whether to smile. I do.

  27

  The bartender is burning a piece of wood and catching the smoke under a whiskey tumbler.

  “I’m a partner,” the calf’s brain guy says.

  I look at him.

  “My bonus was six million and it wasn’t enough,” he says.

  Neither the bartender nor I make any sound. I squeeze the calf’s brain guy’s knee.

  “Thank you for telling me that, baby.”

  The bartender pours our drinks into two smoky glasses. He presents them with a flourish. He gives me a meaningful look that I hate. I take a sip.

  “This drink tastes like lung cancer,” I say.

  * * *

  The art guy announces we’re going dancing. The second thing he says is that the sound system is crystal.

  “Am I going to need ecstasy to enjoy this?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  He tosses a white-powder baggie on his island.

  “It’s molly. You lick it,” he says.

  I look at it. A tremor of anger moves through me.

  “How much does it cost to buy into your fund?” I say.

  The art guy crumples his face like he is irritated.

  “One million. Or five if you want my father to return your calls, not me.”

  But when he says the words that are numbers he has the same smug satisfaction as the calf’s brain guy, as any rich man I have ever met.

  “You looking to invest, Miss Thing?”

  I shrug. I lick my finger and drag it through the molly.

  * * *

  I turn my head and the zombie girl’s there. She touches my hair. I lay my face on her tits.

  “Louisa,” I say.

  Ecstasy was for the Saudi’s parties.

  * * *

  I had been with the Qatari man for a year and I was rusty. In the bathroom at the Saudi’s party I did coke with a Polish girl who looked like me ten years younger. We did a double together and in the morning I was smugly satisfied when the man asked me, not her, to go home with him. My body was just dregs, the ecstasy and coke and heroin trailing out of my system, and I was still so unused to being outside when a few hours later the woman came up to me and I apologized for my blood staining the sidewalk.

  * * *

  I lie facing the ex-Ranger with my head on his chest. We’re not asleep. We’re awake. We’re warm, high, sweating on each other. After the man tried to kill me I thought the Sheikh would hear. I thought he would contact me in some way.

  * * *

  The nail girl doesn’t have to skip that finger. It’s back to looking unhurt like the other ones. I get spiky EKG lines in crazy pink.

  “You want any flat lines?” she says.

  She does the sound of death, the hospital-machine sound, and then she laughs.

  “The last five,” I say.

  * * *

  The new stamp is LIFE SUPPORT. There is a new eel roll at Duane Reade.

  “Is this a sign that everything is going to change?”

  I say it half-heartedly and the cashier sighs at me.

  * * *

  The guy who buys me things is fucking my face and I gag. I knee him off hard and it’s so reflexive it scares me. I look at him. I scramble down the hotel bed to his feet. I leave my face pressed against one until I feel his hand on me. It slides between my ass and into my pussy.

  “I’m sorry. I need you,” I say.

  * * *

  I make myself sick. I text JBG: “I want your cock in my mouth, gagging me, so I can’t speak.”

  * * *

  I walk with the junk-bond guy across the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Where is your family from?” he says.

  “Here,” I say.

  “Originally.”

  “Here.”

  Under our feet the river has a dirty shine.

  “You’re a Manhattan Indian.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Me too.”

  As soon as we get to the Brooklyn side we turn and head back the way we came. I can see the city so clearly. It’s crystal. It does touch me, as it is and not as it was. Of course it does.

  28

  Not to be cold is the easiest pleasure. The weather is manipulative. I walk across Fourteenth Street wearing that leather jacket that will last me forever with its fringe bouncing off my butt.

  * * *

  In the locker room I peek into every alcove looking for the TODAY girl. I squat down to see the feet in the showers.

  “You lost something?” the cleaning lady says.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  * * *

  This trash restaurant must be a joke. It’s a pop-up. I tell our waitress recycled food sounds like a euphemism for puke and I know she wants to agree with me.

  “It’s about the luxury of waste,” the waitress says.

  I kick the calf’s brain guy and he grabs me by the calf. When our drinks come he holds his up.

  “To the luxury of waste,” he says.

  “To you and me,” I say.

  I eat an unlaid egg. He eats a fish’s fried collar.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “I just get bored with everything,” the calf’s brain guy says.

  I sit back in my seat and narrow my eyes and smirk at him.

  * * *

  I am creative in the bathroom of the trash restaurant.

  “That was inspired, what you were doing to my dick,” the calf’s brain guy says.

  He’s pissing in the toilet. Now I smirk at his back, my anxiety eased.

  * * *

  We have to wear paper slippers over our shoes so we don’t smudge the infinity room. It is made of mirrors with a maze that ends in a chamber. In math there is the idea of infinity. I look at the art guy and me, multiplied, on all four sides, and above our heads and below our feet. The trick is LED bulbs. This room is finite like everything.

  “I’d like to have
a thousand of you,” the art guy says.

  “What a hell that would be,” I say.

  * * *

  I jam my pointy elbow into a point on the back of the ex-Ranger.

  “God, yes,” he says.

  “Don’t you wish you could do this to your brain?”

  “Yes.”

  With my other hand I drink my Cherry Bomb. The ex-Ranger’s head is in his hands. He gets the same tricks as the others. A thing rich men have taught me is that it either has to be prohibitively expensive or it has to be free.

  * * *

  I pin down each of his shoulders with each of my knees. I put my hands on either side of his head.

  “You live in a room inside my brain,” I say.

  He closes his eyes. He opens them and spits in my face.

  * * *

  I found the sound of the call to prayer menacing. I met the Sheikh and I found the sound beautiful. He disappeared and I found the sound indifferent to me.

  * * *

  I buy a street kid another drink. He’s drinking Cherry Bombs like me. I tell him I used to live in Dubai.

  “How much did cigarettes cost?”

  I’m pleased by his relevant question.

  “Ten dirhams or three dollars,” I say.

  He whistles.

  “Isn’t it oppressive that everything has to have a reason?” I say.

  I fold my elbows on the bar and smile at him.

  “Are you about to say something about God?”

  I shake my head.

  * * *

  There will be nothing left to see it, there will be nothing but nitrogen ice, but it will be gorgeous. The swelling sun will boil off the oceans and blow gas into the sky that will be lush and sunset-colored: pink and gold and orange. I stare at my stained ceiling.

  * * *

  On my knees I mimic the waiter from lunch.

  “Sparkling, sir? And for the lady no water at all?”

  The guy who buys me things laughs. I think there is nothing wrong with that restaurant either, in the Time Warner Center, like there is nothing wrong with this office with its view of the East River. In my life I have choices. Everything is going fine.

  “Suck my cock,” he says.

  * * *

  For the junk-bond guy I jump up and down in the middle of his big white bed. The Saudi himself bought me my tits. They’re pretty Bs. At any time one could burst and kill me from the inside and that would save other people pain, like his wife who also sleeps in this bed.

  “Sit on it,” the junk-bond guy says.

  29

  There is a planet in such permanent winter that its atmosphere has frozen and fallen to the ground.

  “There is a planet covered in creatures who do not accept that they will die. They are constantly surprised.”

  The Sheikh laughed. I was so pleased to please him.

  * * *

  I present my ass to the dermatologist’s nurse.

  “Do you do this to yourself all the time?” I say.

  “It’s the only way I keep going,” she says.

  I nod at her. She shoots me up with B12.

  * * *

  I snap at the calf’s brain guy.

  “Stop being paternal. It’s weird,” I say.

  He lets go of the door so it shuts in my face. I immediately want to get high.

  MON: CLOSED

  TUES: CLOSED

  WEDS: CLOSED

  THUR: CLOSED

  FRI: CLOSED

  SAT: CLOSED

  SUN: CLOSED

  “If I had a store those would be the hours.”

  The art guy laughs and holds my hand.

  “I thought you were always open,” he says.

  In the glass of the painting I look at us and I am shining so bright it’s like he’s not there. I despise everything about me. I fix my hair.

  * * *

  At Whole Foods I’m in a checkout line with everything I need to make lasagna. I abandon my cart and just leave.

  * * *

  I wear my six-thousand-dollar dress to the cop bar. The ex-Ranger’s not even there. One of the gray drunks wants to dance with me.

  “You don’t get to touch me,” I say.

  He touches my bare arm. I throw my Cherry Bomb in his face.

  * * *

  Right now if I asked the ex-Ranger any question I think he would answer. He’s lying on my back with his dick still in me.

  “What else is in that closet?” I say.

  * * *

  All his guns and ammunition are laid out on a bedsheet.

  “Is it weird you have a gas mask?”

  He picks up a pair of brass knuckles. He gets down on one knee. He takes my hand. I switch with him.

  “It’s the left hand,” I say.

  He slips the knuckles on and they fall off. They nearly dent the floor between us.

  “Is that a silencer?”

  * * *

  In the middle of a Romanian movie I think I have seen before I close my eyes and when I come to I can’t decide if the scene has changed or if my computer was stuck and spinning the whole time and it only woke up when I did.

  “Viorel,” the man says.

  That’s his name. When a man says his name it is important that I remember it. It’s good for my livelihood. I think about my real name.

  “Viorel,” I say.

  * * *

  “Would you say you’re a venal man?”

  “I don’t really know what that means.”

  “Look it up on your phone.”

  The guy who buys me things doesn’t.

  “I would say you’re a venal woman,” he says.

  We’re stuck in traffic. He already came. It’s that drowsy, piss-colored afternoon light in New York.

  “Would you say money is the most important thing in the world?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  * * *

  “This place has really gone downhill,” the junk-bond guy says.

  I spin our lazy Susan. I keep looking around for the dessert-cart lady because I want an egg custard that will only be texture, no taste. We’re on the sixth floor of a dim-sum parlor on East Broadway and the carpet is crunchy and I feel safe. The junk-bond guy sticks his fork in the gelatinous brown sauce of the clams. It stands straight up.

  “It’s exactly the same,” I say.

  * * *

  I can walk for blocks and blocks. I’m fucked-up and it feels like floating. It rains for three days and then it commits to mildness. I throw my puffy coat in a trash can.

  30

  I buy an iced coffee and walk around drinking it. I walk up to the Home Depot on Twenty-Third Street. I buy nails and paint. I’m going to paint my ceiling. At Forever 21 I buy five pairs of white panties.

  * * *

  One by one I put on the panties and take a picture of my butt. Via text message I distribute the photos evenly.

  * * *

  The calf’s brain guy fucks me through a hole he’s ripped in the crotch of my panties. I lie flat on my stomach with my skirt flipped up. I twist my fingers with his. I hold his hands for a long time. We’re at the Pierre again.

  “Are you sad?” I say.

  “No,” he says.

  The past is a pattern but trying to re-create it is an echo. I could tell him but he wouldn’t listen like I wouldn’t listen.

  * * *

  The enormous canvas looks like the proofs of every page of a long book unbroken by chapters or paragraphs. And when I get close I see the sentences aren’t sentences and the words aren’t words and the letters aren’t letters but stylized black scribbles.

  “I like this,” the art guy says.

  “It’s a nightmare,” I say.

  I feel unsettled all the way to the deepest part of me.

  * * *

  “Will you control her?” the bartender says.

  I sit down next to the ex-Ranger.

  “Control me,” I say.

  The bartender is already making a
Cherry Bomb. The ex-Ranger looks at us, confused.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the ex-Ranger says.

  “I threw my drink on a drunk last week.”

  Everything doesn’t have to be a secret. I touch him.

  “I want to make out with you in the ladies’ bathroom.”

  “Me too,” he says.

  * * *

  This yoga teacher touches but not everyone. I think she must decide by class performance. I perform very well. I lie on the floor and anxiously wait for her. I smell her stop. She is preceded by the smell of lavender. She rubs her hands above me. She presses my shoulders down and holds them there. As soon as she leaves they pop back up.

  * * *

  I go into the Strand because I want a book. I buy a suicidal poet. By its nature the end of everything will have a meaning. It will stop chaos. I want confirmation.

  * * *

  The delivery guy has shed his sweatshirt and his T-shirt says THAT OLD COKE MAGIC under a photograph of Magic Johnson in a full fur.

  “I like your outfit,” I say.

  The delivery guy peeks under my arm.

  “Usually I get to come in,” he says.

  I shut the door in his face.

  * * *

  “You don’t want to come in, do you?”

  The delivery guy for the Polish diner looks at me quizzically.

  “I know,” I say.

  * * *

  I’m drinking with the guy who buys me things. He buys us both Bushmills and I think I know nothing about him.

  “Are you a Protestant?” I say.

  He laughs.

  “I’m not anything. Are you anything?”

  “No,” I say.

  * * *

  The junk-bond guy is upstate for the week, not just the weekend. In a show that is about time there are over thirty years of nine hundred telegrams that say I AM STILL ALIVE and one that says I AM NOT GOING TO COMMIT SUICIDE DON’T WORRY. I am at the Guggenheim by myself.

  * * *

  When the plane lifted off it banked and then left the Gulf behind and I thought: I am doing the right thing. Passport control at JFK was the most familiar chaos.

  “Welcome home,” the man said.

  I know he says that to every citizen. He stamped me in.

  31

  I’m walking on Avenue A when a cuff falls off my arm and goes spinning down the street. I need to eat.

  * * *