Sarah Gerard - Binary Star

I know. I’m cold, too.

You’re always cold.

I don’t know why.

Yes you do. You always shiver. You know exactly why.

I start the car and turn the heat on.

You’re wasting fuel, he says.

Remember the time you gave me your coat at the movie theater?

No.

We’d just started dating. It was sweet. It smelled like you.

We saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at midnight.

That night.

Then we met up with Michele at three in the morning and drank Johnnie Walker Red.

Yeah. It wasn’t fun after that.

Are you kidding? That was awesome.

You haven’t eaten for hours. How are you awake? How can you drive?

I’m always awake. I’m always driving toward something.

Right now, I’m driving a line toward the void.

There is work to be done, but I won’t do it. I’ll circle my apartment elliptically burning calories from the kitchen to the bathroom.

I’ll eat a cup of grapes and purge, eat a cup of grapes and purge, eat and purge.

Fall into my hunger but never reach it.

Orbit its atmosphere.

Objects that fall into orbit around Earth can’t stay there forever. They must come down sometime.

These objects experience gravity but acceleration cancels gravity. Therefore, they are weightless.

They orbit for months or years, but without periodic bursts of energy, they start to slip.

Falling to Earth, burning up on the way down.

We never see them hit the ground.

It’s a month of orbiting the hole between us, of the lights of cities looking like land-bound stars as we approach from the distance. In San Francisco, I become viral in the upstairs bedroom of a Hostelling International and beg to be hospitalized.

Abnormal food behaviors affect the immune system.

I have made sure that John sees me eating. I only eat a little, and only when he’s looking, and only sometimes. This is enough to give him a general impression.

Starvation causes cognitive instability.

It is not exactly lying. Nor is it purging.

John cares very little about a schedule usually. He is not aware of the time unless someone is wasting his. He feels that the San Francisco hospital wastes his time. Or he feels that I waste his time. Time is so personal.

John feels that his time has been wasted when someone leaves him. I’m afraid of this.

I’m afraid of being wasted.

I believe I’m a waste.

I have a fever of 104 degrees.

John lies with me in the bed and holds my waist and we turn together beneath the sheets. I burn him, sweat the virus into the bed, into his hands.

This is the hottest I’ve ever felt you, he says.

Fuck me right now and I’ll burn your dick off.

Turn over. You’re sweating.

You keep trying to be funny.

Turn over.

He sleeps in the chair beside me.

The nurse brings me food. No, thank you, I say. I’m not hungry. Or I’m vegan. I’ll eat it later. Or I’m nauseous. I’m concerned about throwing it up and blocking my helmet’s respirator. I get motion-sick, you see.

Just some water, please. My fever.

John watches me.

I’m angry.

I’m angry with you, I say.

Why with me?

You lied.

You’re lying right now.

I sleep and feel the ocean around the city churn the sky and terrain together.

I like the attention the nurses give me.

I like them seeing the attention John gives me, especially because he’s angry.

I like to make myself a victim.

I lie.

I like to be victimized.

I like when you hurt me. It reminds me that I’m here. I make you angry.

I lie in bed and feel the moon pulling the plates beneath us together.

I feel you move me.

I pull the sheets over my head and stare at the dark, I stare at nothing. I pant. I’m falling through space. I fall through a void without coordinates.

I think that John doesn’t want to be here. I think he’d rather be moving. I wonder if I’m faking it.

I’m lying. Am I lying?

Faking it?

Am I being fair to John?

I wake with a tube in my arm. Calories.

I think I can stop when I want to.

I can be well when I want to.

I can stop this right now.

Be whatever I want to be.

Nothing.

Whatever I want.

What do I want?

Fill me with fluids.

Shed unnecessary matter, I say.

They’re not listening.

What do I want without John?

I love you.

I want nothing. Nothing. I actually want Nothing.

But to chew on the hospital sheets.

A binary star is a system containing two stars that orbit their common center of mass.

The relative brightness of stars in a binary system is important. Glare from a bright star can make detecting a fainter companion difficult.

Except in the case of spectroscopic binaries, where we know that stars share a binary relationship by their shift from red to blue.

Stars will shift from red to blue to red as each moves toward us, then away.

In Oakland, we stay with an old friend who hasn’t seen me in years. He’s shocked when he opens the door. He comments on how much I’ve changed.

A complete one-eighty, he says.

More like a three-sixty, I say.

He puts his arms around me.

You’re so tiny.

I’ve lost weight.

I guess I’ll have to feed you. Bring your bags inside.

We come in and put our bags in his living room. John is upset by my friend’s observation. I can see it in his face.

John, it’s nice to finally meet you after… How long has it been?

A year last month, I say.

Congratulations! It must be hard to live so far apart.

Yes and no, I joke.

John looks at me, surprised.

We’d drive each other crazy being together all the time.

John doesn’t find this funny.

Our friend invites us to sit and John asks if there’s somewhere nearby where we can get a drink. There’s nothing I can say to oppose this that won’t embarrass him.

The bar down the street just reopened, says my friend. It’s red and black inside. Hip.

We like hips, John says.

My friend is confused.

Sounds good, says my friend. Let’s get a quick drink.

“Quick drink,” John parrots.

On our way to the bar, my friend asks me if we’ve eaten dinner. I tell him not to worry, that we’ll have something small when it’s convenient.

Budweiser, Sam Adams, Coors, Corona, Bass, Grolsch, Modelo, Yuengling.

John and I flip through the jukebox playlist. My friend stands behind us. The options seem endless. The record spins.

Then it repeats.

What do you want? says John.

A love song.

Pussy.

I want love, I say.

You shouldn’t have a hard time feeling it.

Burn.

That sounds like an accusation.

Okay. Motown.

Jackson Five.

No, Shirelles.

It’s my money. He drops a quarter in the slot. Jackson Five.

You get three plays for fifty, says my friend.

Maybe stay out of it, pal.

Here’s another quarter, man. He walks away.

John drops the quarter into the slot.

Jackson Five.

No fair!

Too late. He smiles.

I’m sitting down.

No, stand. Burn calories. It’s what you want.

We hug the edge of the Earth all the way to L.A. We take turns choosing the music: John, me, John, me. We always end with John.

We play a game where I name a band and he names a band that ends with the last letter of my band. We play until we come around to bands we’ve named already.

We drive in circles whenever we leave the Pacific Coast Highway, not knowing where on Earth we are.