Ultraluminous
Page 14
* * *
On my phone almost all my voice mails are from the ex-Ranger. I listen to the last one.
“Katya. You whore,” he says.
On a street in Queens I stand across from his apartment. What I would like is to have sex with him and while he’s fucking me to look at him above me and will him to open his eyes and see me so I could tell him it was the last time and it was with him. Then I might kill him, too. I might unlock his closet and get out the hatchet he has in there and hack off his fingers on both hands, not just one. I text him.
“Check your mailbox, baby. I just gave you something.”
I walk back to the train. He can stay alive in the dying universe somewhere like the Sheikh, as an echo of the Sheikh. What I gave the ex-Ranger was all my money. I throw my phone in the trash.
* * *
My apartment smells stale. The sponge on my kitchen sink is shriveled and stiff. I open my closet and on its floor is a tarp. I lift up the bomb I’ve made and put it gently in the box for the pressure cooker and then I put the box in a big Barneys shopping bag. I find blood behind my ear and I don’t know whose it is, like it’s come. I laugh. I think maybe it’s for the last time. When I look out the window the two razed lots are geometrical with steel girders and now I can’t see where I used to live. I say something to the city even though it can’t hear.
* * *
I carry the shopping bag in my arms, against my tits.
“What’s that?” the guy who buys me things says.
“A pressure cooker.”
I set it down on one of the chairs in front of his desk and then I wander into his bathroom. I sit on the bathroom counter. I unbutton the one button of my red suit jacket. Underneath I’m naked.
“Fuck me,” I say.
He fights me when he sees the gun. He slams my wrist into the bathroom wall. We struggle. We roll all over the cold tile floor. I have eight bullets left but it’s the middle of a workday. He’s bigger than me. He’s stronger. I’m lucky. I stab him in the balls with the point of one of my heels. He yells but we’ve had sex in here so many times. I get the gun flush to his neck, behind his ear, and shoot once. For a few seconds I’m unmoving, holding the guy who buys me things under the armpit, with the bloody Glock in my mouth. I wait. Nobody comes. I snort the last of my heroin. I squat to my feet but tell myself to stand up. From the chair I pick up the shopping bag. I walk out of his office and down the hall. I walk to the middle of the wealth-management floor of Deutsche Bank. Bankers look at me and I look at them. I think I’m sorry but I can’t just shoot the men because then it would only be a domestic dispute between a whore and her clients. I think terrible things happen every day and today it’s to you. I put down the bag and open the box. Before there is the suck of pressure, before I change state into light and then ash, I run my hands over my hips, this body. I have no expression on my face. I say nothing. With my foot I kick the switch that is the detonator. I see the world clearly.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Sean McDonald, Emily Bell, Chris Parris-Lamb, Maya Binyam, Claude Faw and all of my family, and Richard Hell.
A Note About the Author
Katherine Faw is the author of Young God. She was born in North Carolina. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can sign up for email updates here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
MCD
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Katherine Faw
All rights reserved
First edition, 2017
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71664-6
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
www.mcdbooks.com • www.fsgbooks.com
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @mcdbooks