Ultraluminous

by Katherine Faw

I get frozen yogurt at Walgreens. I wander around the store and eat it. The guard starts to follow me. I look over my shoulder. I know I have to pay.

  “Don’t worry,” I say.

  * * *

  I put a ten down.

  “You’re a beautiful woman so you always get what you want?”

  “God,” I say.

  I throw down another five on the bodega counter.

  * * *

  The calf’s brain guy takes me to the restaurant in the Time Warner Center but for dinner. He orders all the supplements: caviar, foie gras, Wagyu. I calculate the bill in my head. I feel pressured.

  “Do you want to go to the bathroom with me?”

  “I want one year,” the calf’s brain guy says.

  I glare across the room at the different waiter.

  “You’ve never even shown me your office,” I say.

  * * *

  The art guy wants to film us fucking. I humor him.

  “What will you be wearing?” I say.

  “For one thing.”

  He holds me by the shoulders and looks at me intently.

  “Very limited-edition sneakers,” he says.

  “Absolutely not.”

  * * *

  The ex-Ranger’s started shooting up. He squats down on his haunches like a villager. One thing about him for which I am grateful is that he never talks about Afghanistan. I never talk about Dubai. I don’t bring it up again, the right way to do heroin.

  * * *

  These bricks are called RIHANNA. I lick a bag affectionately. I look around my apartment at what I will need to put away before I let the delivery guy in.

  * * *

  I look at Stuyvesant Town from the street. I don’t go in. We couldn’t have air conditioners until they rewired all the buildings when I was nine or ten. We had Hunter fans, all other fans were shit. When the buzzer was busted my mother threw the key out the window in a red felt baggie that had come with a piece of jewelry. I look up at our window with the Friedrich AC sticking out that is now only hers.

  * * *

  It’s not spring enough for rooftops. I slide off the lap of the guy who buys me things.

  “This heat lamp’s warmer than you.”

  He’s preoccupied.

  “If I go to the bathroom and don’t come back it means I saw somebody I know. I’ll text you where to meet.”

  “If I have to wait more than an hour you forfeit the date. I get my full rate either way.”

  “I know the terms,” he says.

  I look up. I can’t see a single star because New York City has its own glow that obscures all others. Anyway, their light is from ten or a thousand years ago. Right now the Empire State Building is the brightest thing I see and I greatly prefer it. He gets up.

  * * *

  I play with the junk-bond guy’s cock. I twirl the tip of my tongue around the flare like it’s an ice-cream cone. We’re at the movies and he moans audibly but I never get caught.

  * * *

  “You go over there you don’t get to call me for help, not even once,” my mother said.

  It was the day after my eighteenth birthday. It was hot. I was standing in front of the air conditioner so it blew up the back of my flimsy top.

  “I know the terms,” I said.

  * * *

  The nail girl paints her own finger while my hand sets in a UV dryer.

  “This thing gives you cancer,” I say.

  “Skin cancer.”

  My nails are gold teeth.

  32

  I put my wineglass down and it just shatters. Glass flies everywhere, in our steaks. I clamp my hand on top of his.

  “Don’t eat that,” I say.

  In his eyes there is a rush of feeling.

  “Don’t eat yours,” the calf’s brain guy says.

  * * *

  The art guy recounts the entire plot of a movie he saw recently. Now I want to talk.

  “I just saw this movie that was only blue screen. The filmmaker was going blind from AIDS. You could hear him but all you could see was blue. He said this thing about his mind being fine but his body dying. He said it was like a naked lightbulb in a dark, ruined room. I’m the opposite of that. My body is a naked lightbulb and my mind is a dark room.”

  I sniff coke drip up my nose. So does he. I can’t believe I said that out loud. I look at him with trepidation.

  “Your body is everything,” he says.

  * * *

  I’m lying on top of the ex-Ranger and he’s looking at me in a way that’s making me uncomfortable.

  “Let’s go get a drink,” I say.

  “What if I asked you to stop?” he says.

  “Let’s go get a drink.”

  * * *

  I look to my right and watch myself make cat and cow in the side mirror. Mostly I watch the clock. Forty more minutes, thirty more minutes, twenty more minutes, ten more minutes: it’s always ticking down and then yoga will be over. I never just walk out.

  * * *

  I sit on the couch with the ex-Ranger’s Glock in my hand. I have screwed the silencer to the muzzle. I think how I would be found by smell. My body two weeks rotted into the upholstery but still unmistakably mine, my teeth. At the end I don’t want there to be anything left of me. I would never kill myself like this.

  * * *

  The wax lady smiles at my pussy.

  “Very nice. How’s everything?” she says.

  “Very nice,” I say.

  * * *

  The guy who buys me things wants to buy me for the weekend. He wants to drive me out to Montauk. I’m superstitious about leaving the city, like I won’t get back in.

  “What if you murder me and dump my body in the marsh?”

  It’s teatime in the powder-blue restaurant at Bergdorf’s. I down my champagne. He eats a scone.

  “I promise not to,” he says.

  * * *

  I tap one of his gold teeth with one of my gold-teeth nails.

  “What?” the junk-bond guy says.

  I shake my head.

  “I just wanted to do that.”

  * * *

  I watched from his bed.

  “What does that do?” I said.

  “It conducts electricity.”

  The Sheikh turned over his shoulder to look at me. He was wearing latex gloves.

  “It’s very important,” he said.

  * * *

  A plane hovering just under the cloud cover is not enough. Australian salt fields will still look like blue stained glass. The Amazon River will still look like a curly muddy snake with a head somewhere and also a tail. It is best to see life satellite-like, with altitude. I let the MAC guy put gold lipstick on my mouth. He leans back and looks at me.

  “You thought you was fierce,” he says.

  I try to see myself but it’s hard to focus. I’m up to nine bags. I hold up my shaky nails to my lips. He snaps in my face.

  “Slay,” he says.

  33

  The blue woman sits down at my table. She has blintzes.

  “You’re too skinny,” she says.

  I’m already having hot-pink borscht.

  “I don’t want to have to pay for this.”

  “My God, it’s on the house.”

  I take a bite while she watches me. They’re cherry.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  * * *

  I have that sensation sometimes of waking up and not knowing where I am except that I’m not asleep. It’s the calf’s brain guy who grabs my face and kisses me hard on the street.

  * * *

  In a hot white tent on Randall’s Island, at an art fair, there are close-up photos of tongues with all their problems written on them in ink, like scallops, cracks, and spleen deficiencies. The white card says IT’S SYMPTOMATIC.

  “I’m afraid to look at my tongue now,” I say.

  “What do you have to be worried about, baby? I’m the one who let ten million walk out the door yesterday.”
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br />   I look at the art guy, concerned. This is the second time he’s brought this up.

  “Are you going to get fired?”

  “I’m his son. He can’t fire me.”

  I stick out my tongue at him. He sticks out his tongue at me. It’s fat and pink.

  * * *

  In the middle of the East River, on a ferry, I smile at the art guy and he puts his arm around me.

  * * *

  I run my tongue over his lips.

  “I lost my job,” the ex-Ranger says.

  “When?” I say.

  “Like two months ago.”

  I’m not surprised. I put my face in his neck and smell his skin. I think probably I won’t see that bad suit again.

  “Fuck Bank of America,” I say.

  Before I go I leave all the cash I have on me in his bathroom.

  * * *

  I took off the lid of one of the pressure cookers on his tarp. I looked inside.

  “Does it bother you? What I do for a living?”

  “No,” I said.

  The Sheikh crossed his arms. He smirked.

  “Violence is random unless you’re the violent one,” I said.

  I smirked at him. I put the lid back on.

  * * *

  I put a tube of lube and an eel roll on the Duane Reade counter. The cashier looks at me.

  “You seem like an interesting person,” he says.

  I laugh.

  * * *

  At the movies I sit in the junk-bond guy’s lap and cross my feet up on a seat in front of us. I tuck my head under his chin. I watch the black curtains and not the screen.

  “You’re a sweet girl,” he says.

  It did bother me. It bothered me that the Sheikh sold his bombs to the Saudi and then he had no idea where they went. He lost control.

  * * *

  This Belgian prostitute movie is nearly without story and yet there are mundane discrepancies, meant to telegraph an unraveling, until at the climax she comes and murders a client with scissors. I roll my eyes at my computer.

  * * *

  I meet the guy who buys me things in the lobby of the Pierre.

  “Happy weekend,” I say.

  “Happy weekend,” he says.

  * * *

  In the elaborate robot corset he bought me I crawl to him. I look at how his socks correspond with the carpet. They’re both diamonds. If they were hexagons it could mean I was in the same room as before, with the calf’s brain guy, and that would truly worry me. While I’m waiting I sway my ass back and forth, almost imperceptibly.

  “Do it again,” he says.

  I slink back the way I came.

  * * *

  “Let’s go out,” he says.

  “Why?” I say.

  I’m surprised. He sticks his foot out.

  “Tie my shoes.”

  * * *

  Barneys is around the corner. I sit inside a glass cube. The guy who buys me things holds one arm and the salesguy holds the other and they stand me up in the most fragile silver heels.

  “So she can’t run away from me,” the guy who buys me things says.

  I’m just inside a different repetition, his and mine. I know how it goes. I’m not concerned.

  “Exactly,” I say.

  The salesguy giggles in a squirmy way.

  * * *

  I look at my squid.

  “I believe in reason, too.”

  “Good,” the guy who buys me things says.

  I look at him. He winks at me and drinks his Protestant whiskey.

  “What happened in the world of wealth management this week?”

  “The wealthy got wealthier,” he says.

  “You’re a partner, right?” I say.

  He snorts.

  “You’ve seen my office.”

  * * *

  He bought us tickets to the ballet. During Act II, when Giselle is among the dead girls who dance men to death, the prima ballerina falls out of her zigzag jumps and cracks her ankle gruesomely. I jump like I’ve been shocked. She lost control in less than a second. His hand is in the slit of my dress and he squeezes me.

  * * *

  I snort my bags in the bathroom with the water running. I believe reason makes patterns more beautiful than ballet. The scissors in my makeup bag are tiny and pink. I look at them and laugh. I emerge naked though fully groomed.

  “Let’s walk in the park,” he says.

  “Why not,” I say.

  * * *

  We lie in the Sheep Meadow in Central Park on a Sunday afternoon on a blanket he bought.

  “I want to fuck you in the sun,” he says.

  I trace my fingernail up his open palm.

  “How much did you get for your bonus this year?”

  He looks at me like he’s been waiting for this question. His voice in my ear is a hoarse, bossy whisper.

  “Three million dollars,” the guy who buys me things says.

  * * *

  For dinner we have room service and airplane bottles from the minibar. He orders lamb shish kebabs. We’re slurry.

  “Do you only get wet for partners, or VPs, too?”

  He slides the stick through his teeth and reminds me of the Saudi. I am different from who I was then. I decide to give a variation on the right answer, a mundane discrepancy, I think.

  “VPs too,” I say.

  “How about associates?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Analysts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some toothless fuck on welfare who lives in his mother’s basement?”

  I laugh.

  “I’m always wet,” I say.

  The guy who buys me things gets angry. His style is contained.

  “If I dumped you in the marsh nobody would look for you,” he says.

  I eat a French fry and hold his unsteady gaze with mine.

  “You promised not to.”

  * * *

  In the middle of the night I wake up the guy who buys me things. I give him a theatrical blow job. I have a splitting headache.

  “Are you happy?” I say.

  “I am,” he says.

  The spice smell of leftover kebabs has settled like a usual fragrance.

  34

  “Okay, baby.”

  I stand outside the Pierre’s revolving doors and light a cigarette. The entrance is not heated or cooled. It’s spring and in between extremes of weather. I think I could send a telegram to somebody that says I AM STILL ALIVE.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  The guy who buys me things kisses me on the cheek and walks away.

  * * *

  The calf’s brain guy feeds me bone marrow on a spoon. I want our equilibrium.

  “I want you to punch me in the face,” I say.

  “I don’t care what you want,” he says.

  Under the table I slip out of my shoe and put my foot on his cock.

  * * *

  I stand on his balcony in the dusk and let him film my butt.

  “Look at me. Over your shoulder,” the art guy says.

  I do, slowly. If I’m really not the same I can improvise if I want without changing our rhythm. It’s nothing like unraveling.

  * * *

  “Okay, you can come in.”

  He grins all the way in and then he stops.

  “Yo,” the delivery guy says.

  I thoroughly cleaned up. I look where he’s looking, at the wall where I’ve taped up every empty dope bag, almost.

  * * *

  “I was going to send you a telegram the other day,” I say.

  “I don’t think that’s a thing anymore.”

  I put down my Cherry Bomb. I loop my hand in the ex-Ranger’s belt and tug him. I think he would look for me.

  “You’re getting skinny.”

  He looks at me grimly.

  “You know that thing I told you, about the whore in Colombia, that wasn’t the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen,” he says.

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sp; I let go of his belt.

  “I know,” I say.

  * * *

  I kneed him in the face. It was between my legs. He dropped what he had and I stabbed it into the first part of him I could reach, which was his back. It was a short, sharp knife. Luckily I was still dressed. It was all luck. I limped out the front door and took the elevator to the street, where I bled on the sidewalk until the woman in black gloves helped me. But I still don’t know how I got away.

  * * *

  The suicidal poet is romantic, as if he, as he is, will live on in the chaos of the world even after he’s dead. Life is decorative and confusing. Death should be clarity. I glance up at my ceiling as if for affirmation.

  * * *

  In the locker room I get so close to the mirror while I’m putting on my eyeliner my nose brushes it. If the TODAY girl is here I refuse to see her, even in the periphery.

  * * *

  In the soft hallways of the office of the guy who buys me things I don’t look at any banker and no banker looks at me. At the end of a hall I close the door. I sit across from him like I’m being interviewed, except I drape my legs over the second chair.

  “I’m listening if my eyes move. I’m just watching the screens,” the guy who buys me things says.

  On his desk are two computer monitors and there is a TV on the wall behind my head. It’s before four. The market is open.

  “I’m not saying anything,” I say.

  “Crawl under the desk and take off my pants.”

  * * *

  The junk-bond guy and I are back at the dim-sum parlor. The dessert-cart lady makes a beeline for me.

  “You are my customer, I remember what you like,” she says.

  The junk-bond guy gives me a pointed look. She is absolutely right that all I want for lunch is egg custards, just texture, no taste. I take four of them and the junk-bond guy passes her a folded-up five.

  “Do you miss Bonus Day now that you’re retired?” I say.

  He smiles at me.

  “I got my bonus in hundred-thousand-dollar checks. That was the highest amount payroll could issue. I got a stack of them. Have you ever seen a hundred checks for a hundred thousand dollars?”

  “I get paid in cash,” I say.

  * * *

  I flutter my fingers over the head of the junk-bond guy’s dick and then I mimic what the dessert-cart lady said.

  35

  Thirty-two girls make four rows of eight in eight columns of four. Over and over they do the same narcotic thing. Eventually there are small, synchronized changes. It looks like an opium dream, like it could go on forever, but of course it doesn’t. Again they are all meant to be dead. I bought a single ticket to La Bayadère. Ballet is just an excuse for patternmaking. This time nobody fucks up though I wait for it alertly.