Page 72 of Alone With You in the Ether

“Do you feel like you have problems?” he asked.

“No.” She turned to face him, grimacing, and he let his posture fall, abandoning the effort of posing. “I feel a bit like… I don’t know. Like I did, or maybe I still do, but not the same. The roof’s been patched but the shutters are still broken.”

“And before?”

“Water got in everywhere. No floods, just a steady drip somewhere impossible to locate. Always about three degrees colder than I’d like to be.”

“Ah. What changed?”

“I’m painting now.” I can paint now, again. “I don’t want to stop. I don’t even want to fix the shutters, I just want to flood the damn house.” She cleared her throat. “No, I’m lying. I don’t want a flood, but I don’t even want the house.” A pause. “I want to light the house on fire and walk away while it burns.”

“Okay,” Aldo said, “then do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s technically mania. Or hypomania.”

“Well, I’m not a doctor.”

His mouth was twisted up and if she looked down, she would see herself—she would see the way she had leaned into his arms—but she didn’t. She couldn’t look away from his face, which did not say: What’s wrong with you?, but instead, said: Hi. Hello. Nice to meet you.

“You haven’t asked me if I’m lying,” she said.

He shrugged. “Because I already know you’re not.”

“The drawing thing,” she said, “it’s not a ruse. I’m really going to draw you.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know, I believe you.”

“But you said I seemed different.”

“Yes, and you are. You sound different.”

She grimaced. “That would be the racing thoughts, probably.”

“Take your pills, then. If that’s what you want.”

She spread her fingers over his chest, possessing him.

“I don’t want to,” she confessed. “I can’t go back, not anymore.” You don’t just unburn, she thought desperately, and in answer, Aldo smoothed a cool hand over hers, tracing the shapes of her fingers.

Her nose slid under his chin, grateful, as her lips brushed the motion of his swallow.

“Go back to what?” he asked.

The question smelled like him. His fingers were toying with her spine, skipping over her vertebrae like the motion of his formulas. What would they do, she thought, when they were put to work solving her?

She shivered, breath quickening, and his touch at her back rested where cashmere met skin, expectant.

“You can’t fix me,” she whispered to him, her mouth tracing his neck. Do you understand, do you know what you hold in your hands, do you know how readily it breaks?

“I don’t see anything to fix,” he said.

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