Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

“I am real,” said George. They were leaning against a column, George ducking down to hear her and speak into her ear, Irene clutching her drink, wanting to inhabit the space between his arms.

“But this is—” she began, “This can’t be real. It’s too silly.”

“It’s not silly! We are meant to be together. We’re twin souls! I swear it on Compton and Batteau and Yeats and Toledo General.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not.”

“But George, you’re a cosmetologist! You of all people should know.”

“It’s cosmologist, actually.” George rolled his eyes, and smiled, all too familiar with this intentional jibe on his branch of astronomy.

“You’re a cosmetologist! The first axiom of cosmetology—”

“Cosmology!” George corrected her gently.

“Is that there are no special places. The universe is heterogeneous. This place”—here Irene pointed to her heart—“cannot be special. See?”

George shook his head.

“The second axiom of cosmology,” she went on, “is that there are no special directions. So no special places, no special directions. No soulmates. No twin souls. Random intersection of lives, sexual attraction, mating. Just like lizards.”

“Lizards don’t have sexual attraction for each other.”

“You don’t know.”

“So you admit you have sexual attraction for me.”

“Do you need me to say it again?” said Irene.

“Come with me,” shouted George into Irene’s ear. “I need to take you in a special direction and show you a special place.”

She followed him across the dance floor, where it was possible to feel the house music thumping through her feet.

“What is this music?” she shrieked up at him.

“Chaldean house music,” he answered. “Base six or something. The DJ is a Ph.D. in anwa. You know what anwa is, right?”

Irene nodded but didn’t.

“If you listen close, there’s a sample of frequency in this song,” George told her, “that comes from a black hole. You know, like the black hole is singing.”

“Black holes don’t sing,” Irene shouted, over the buzz of the music. “It’s periodic oscillation. That’s not song!”

“You don’t know,” George grinned at her, pulling her by the hand. “You don’t know everything.”

She knew that every girl in the place was giving her a once-over and lots of people were calling out to George. People recognized them, maybe wondered why they were here together. Sometimes he shouted back random things like, “Hey!” or “Yeah!” Other times he appeared to be staring up into the rafters and then shaking his head. Irene followed him closely, and then the stairs opened up and they were headed down. Downstairs was quieter. There was a woman in the corner playing a mechanical harp. Dancers writhed in glass tubes.

“I want to get to the part where we’re alone,” said Irene.

“Are you sure you want to?” said George.

“Yes,” said Irene. “I’m sure.” She felt herself begin to laugh or cry. Was this what sexual frustration felt like?

“OK,” said George. “Right this way.”

Down a hallway, down another flight of stairs, they came to a little room and went inside. It was paneled, like a sauna, but there was a cool breeze coming from a vent. She set her drink down on a little table. George shut the door, and Irene’s heart raced. There was a desk in the corner, some papers, a laptop. A sofa pressed against the wall with a lamp on each side.

“Whose office is this?” she asked.

“The owner. Don’t worry,” he said. “No one will come.”

For a moment she was shy. She couldn’t look at his face. He was so near to her, so captured in this privacy, she wanted to take each breath from him, think about it, see it, experience it. When she did look at his face, he was looking at her. She saw the skin of his neck, so close, the blood vessels beneath it. His chin bent down close to her. She saw the muscles behind his ear. It didn’t make her uncomfortable. It moved her. She felt a significant inner peace, inside some dark place of her body, cooling and spreading out, as if it was overtaking her with calm. She felt good.

“Are you claustrophobic?” he said.

She laughed. She touched one of his hands with hers and he clasped it, so they were holding hands. His face looked smooth and young, and she thought, It’s so improper. Me the damaged, soulless thing. Him this beautiful boy that everybody wants to be next to. Why is he here with me? Why is he holding my hand? She could see something in him that was hers, something beckoning to her to find it, take it, use it. Irene watched him unbutton the collar of his shirt, and his hair fell down over his forehead, and she wanted to reach out for it, that piece of shirt, that curl of hair, to touch it and make sure that it was real. She felt that each of her breaths was fighting to leave her lungs. She felt her ribs fighting to pull the air back in. She sat back against the desk.

“Take off your clothes,” said George. His hands on his own buttons.

A burst of fresh air came from the vent, smelling a little bit of cucumber, like the drink she’d barely touched. What was in her blood right now, making her lose her grip on twenty-nine years of keeping her legs crossed? Making her want to open them, tear off her shirt, spread her breasts across the room for him, feel the cucumber air make her shiver? George reached inside the collar of her shirt and touched her just above her heart. It was the simplest touch, not a stroke or a caress, or even really purposeful, but just a finger moving from up to down, touching a little stretch of her. Maybe he did not even notice it. She said nothing. But she knew that she would remember that touch forever, until the day of her death, as the moment she woke up. It was a moment of total danger and fear followed by a moment of complete surrender.

“I want you to take them off,” he said. His voice was deep.

She knew in that moment there were two Georges: the wisecracking, sunny-smiling George whom she could tease and ridicule over fish tacos, who made jokes and made things easy for her. And then there was another George, inside that George, that was darker, and more strange, and she felt in that one finger pulled down across her chest that the animal George inside had reached out through the human George and touched her.

All men are just this way, she thought. Until now she would have looked upon this animal with contempt or just disgust, with a glowering, impatient desire to bring out that animal and tame it and destroy it. But now Irene felt a new thing: a desire to meet that animal and to know it. Her own animal rising. This was the danger: the animal inside her, pushing to the front. This was the surrender: but she didn’t care. She could growl and snap if she had to; she could wail and moan. He wasn’t going to look on her with anything other than the best of love. He wasn’t going to let her out of this room until she was done. This was where it was all going to come apart: here in safety, here with George. She put her hand over his heart, inside the collar of his shirt, and pressed her fingers into his skin. When she looked up at his face, it was her real face looking up, her animal face from dark inside, and his animal face responded.

He made a noise inside his chest, she felt that noise as a vibration in her hand, and it was the most powerful stimulant she had ever felt in her life.

Gone the snide remarks. Gone the lifetime of making men subservient before her. Gone the wide cracks in her, the bitterness with which she filled the cracks. She looked into his face and she knew him, and she let the cracks fall wide open. She began to undo his belt. He lifted her shirt up and pulled it over her head. She yanked the buttons of his shirt. He pulled her jeans to the floor. They moved like automatons, held in each other’s notice, and frantic to get more close, more near.