Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

Irene was naked now, the clothes gone. The light was bright, and she stood there in that little room, exposed and raw but closer, closer to him and his body. She wanted to be close. She could see all of him, open to her. He put his hands gently around her and she took in a deep breath. There was no place to go but onward. There was no reason to it, and no sense. Then he was moving her to the sofa, his hands fully locked around her rib cage, his mouth on her neck, and the feel of him was pure other-George, the George behind the sun, the dark animal she had felt moving the hand over her heart. She felt him so acutely that it made her cough. This black animal, grappling with her blackness. Bathed in the brightest light, naked to each other, locked in.

She felt the pressure as he pushed against her, heard a soft moan, was it him or her with mouth open, making sounds come out? And then he pushed on inside. It was so easy, and it was done. She lost herself immediately, her legs wrapped around his thighs, her belly against his, her breasts against him, hands raking along the cushions of the sofa to get herself closer and closer. She wanted to scream, This is how a vagina should be! Full. How stupid I’ve been carrying around an empty one for all this time.

“You can never take it out again,” she said to the side of his face. “Just remember that. Never never. I never want to lose you again.”

He began to move inside her in a way that was rhythmic and thrilling, and she felt her mind tripping away. She was spinning in this world, on the point of him in her, and as she felt herself joined up with him, there in her depths, in the geometric depths of her round cervix, her mind spun again, and she saw what was entirely mathematical. A vision before her face of a circle and a point and a line, and the way they moved together, up and down, back and forth. One circle inside another circle becomes a point that moves just up and down.

“It’s the Tusi couple,” she said to him. “It’s the Tusi couple. It’s happening inside me.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good. Can’t talk now.”

“It’s the Tusi couple, George!” she said. “It’s happening inside me!” Rolling around, rolling around. Up and down. He wouldn’t tell her no, his forehead was pressed into the fabric, his hands around the back of her, and the feeling she was having inside her only grew.

“You know about the Tusi couple, George,” said Irene. She was grasping, grasping to hold onto her words. “You know what it is.”

“Shhh,” said George. She glanced at him, her eyes open wide in the light. Was he smiling or was that a grimace? Was his head thrown back in laughter, or was it pain? What was happening inside her, between her legs, so sweet and urgent.

“Copernicus,” she gasped. “This is Copernicus we’re talking about! Copernicus!” How can Copernicus be wrong?

“Copernicus, shhh…” said George, his voice rough and low. His hands now found her breasts, and he rolled her nipples roughly between his fingers. He sank his teeth into her shoulder, his tongue following the line of her collarbone, and the firmness rubbing between her legs, shooting up into her and drawing down again, sending electric shocks out into her extremities, tunneling into her body and filling it with energy.

Then Irene found she couldn’t talk either, and the Tusi coupling inside her found its own rolling rhythm, and she and George, pining for each other, and finding each other, pressed together on themselves. In the dark behind her eyelids, she lost track of who she was, and who was with her, and who was not her. She felt him through her body, inside her body, and she could feel the whole of him. And there, down inside, she met him, quiet and slow and dear.

“George, there’s something wrong with you,” said a voice inside them.

“No, there’s not,” said another voice.

“I can feel it. I can see it. I can’t be this close and not see it. I can’t be so near, and not feel it.”

“No, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“It’s you, not me,” said a third voice. “It’s you there’s something wrong with.”

The Tusi couple went on spinning in itself, one circle rolling inside the other circle, the point on the line going up and down, up and down, and the deep conversation hovered on the edge of her consciousness, until she could hear that it was just repeating. When it was over, Irene locked her arms around him. “You can’t take it out,” she said again, her voice sounding strange to her now. “I already told you that.” She felt likely to cry. She felt likely to shut off the lights, yank off her face, crawl under a rock. The fan blew its cucumber air. The sofa creaked behind her back. Had it always been creaking? “Please don’t leave me,” she cried. She calculated the effort it would take to pull her clothes back on, yank the door open, march back up through the club and out, give the ticket to the valet, get her car, drive to the Anthony Wayne Bridge, stop the car, get out, climb over the railing, jump off, and die. Or the effort it would take to stay here, entwined with this creature who was so strange and so familiar, whom she did not know she had been missing so much.

Belion stood on the other side of the small door. He had decided to shrink himself. He had already gone through the door. This was the only course of action he could pursue. He had now pursued it, and he was on the other side.

Silvergirl’s avatar was nowhere on the regular map of the game. She was in a dark spot on his map, or to put it in coding terms she was in a set of numbers that had no definition. The game was coded in chunks, in blocks, and every space, every object, every creature had a number. The numbers she inhabited had not, it appeared, been assigned. They had been skipped.

It was as if when she passed through that door she went into another world—one that had ceased to exist or had not yet been created. Or had she given up on him, quit the game, deleted her character, ended her life? He had never been told by an administrator, “This player has committed suicide. Please erase her avatar and distribute her belongings among her friends.” You couldn’t kill yourself in the game universe. You fought for your life, because a fighter never quits. That was the whole idea. Stabbing yourself in the guts with a knife was an invalid operation. You could, however, inadvertently become a jumper. People did that all the time. Only to regenerate at the fountain in their hometowns, good as new.

On the other side of the door, he quickly made himself big again. He got back his water buffalo horns. He put back on his large-size armor. Enough of being small and going through stupid little doors. He was now gigantic again and a god. He followed a path out of the cave and through the dim forest, listening to repeated ambient noises of birdsong and the rustle of squirrels on a loop.

Belion, sitting in Toledo, turned to a different monitor and checked that he was still listed as online. He was. His character appeared in a dark part of the map. He could see Silvergirl there, too, but he couldn’t see what was between him and her. Belion felt, for the first time in a long while, worried about his safety. He had no idea if he was still invincible. The thought that he could be killed or even hurt was new to him. But instead of unpacking the idea, he felt like throwing it down a well. Stupid idea.

He came to a grand gate in a stone wall. On each side of the gate were huge carved figures, like solemn pillars. They had cone-shaped beards made of regular stone curls, and they wore fez-shaped hats. Their round eyes regarded Belion without concern. Above them was a huge stone lintel, carved in pictures and angular marks. The gate was just an opening in the wall, and nothing was stopping Belion from going inside, so he did.