It is near sunset when Ivy comes back. The sky is orange and the sun is the color of blood.
I wonder if she can tell, if she has a sense of what we’ve been up to. If she can smell us on each other’s bodies.
She will not tell us about the meeting. She makes us promise to not ask questions. All her shiny things have fallen off and her skin is raw.
She returns with more bottles, more vials, more pills, more potions to conjure magic.
“I did everything he wanted” is all she says. “I did everything I know how to do.”
My rage is big enough for both of us. Its source is infinite, as old as skin.
The fires have gotten worse. They are coming down the mountains, eating up the small towns a hundred miles away. We have to stay inside. Outside the glass walls is a thick soup of smoke. The world is on fire.
We don’t bother with fancy drinks anymore. We don’t bother with clothes. Time is running out. We burn the tiny paper umbrellas in the sink. Garbage piles up around us.
My foot throbs. I think it’s infected.
“Are you happy?” I ask Ivy.
A glass shatters on the floor. I cut my finger as I try to clean it up.
“Who said anything about happy?” she says. “I’m just trying to survive.”
She takes my hand and puts my finger in her mouth. I feel her warm wetness close around me and pull. My blood is inside her now. There is a piece of her inside my foot, turning into a pearl. We are fused. Whole. We can never be separated.
It is better this way. I am not enough on my own.
Our teeth grind themselves into stardust. Sparks shoot out of our eyes.
“We are bottomless pits,” we say. “We are black holes.”
Ash says: “But you’re a star.”
We say: “Stars and black holes are related.”
We look it up. We read, brow knitted: “‘A black hole is a massive star that runs out of nuclear fuel and is crushed by its own gravitational force.’”
Ash says: “Look who’s an astrophysicist all of a sudden.”
Some stars have twins. From far away they look like a single star, but when you get closer, you can see there are two orbiting around the same empty center.
There is not enough to go down our throats or in our noses. There is not enough to fill us up. There is not enough to put the fire out.
“Black holes are invisible,” we say.
Ash says: “Huh.”
There is never enough of anything.
“A black hole is a star dying.”
Ivy has told the housekeepers to leave us alone. Outside, everything is brittle tinder. Inside, the smell is earthy, moist.
Ash pulls us toward him. We pulse with the chemicals inside us. We move in and out of each other’s bodies and lose all our edges. We keep going and going, always just on the verge, but never finished.
We are made out of want. We are made out of always needing more.
Is this what I wanted?
We have turned. We have gone rotten.
We are a mess of body parts. We are blood inside and out. We are gaping mouths. We are animals. We are holes.
We remember: Men. Expensive suits. Expensive couches.
The couches are always leather. They tear at bare skin.
I know because Ivy knows.
I look at my foot. It is reddish purple. It is swollen and bubbled with something wet just barely inside.
Elevators into the sky. Receptionists who say nothing.
We are eighteen. We are fifteen.
We are twelve.
More things in our noses, in our throats. In our other warm and empty places. We are desperate to be filled.
We are made out of fear of losing it all.
Ash paints us with his breath. He does not know we are only our body parts.
This body part remembers. So does this one.
All the vials, all the pills, all the bottles in the world will never make us forget.
The hands, the mouths. The men.
Now Ash is done. His glassy eyes close and he turns to stone, unreachable. He is leaving us. He is going inward. He is going the wrong direction.
This body part remembers too.
We are afraid of falling asleep. We are afraid of that space between sleep and awake when everything opens.
We remember: That time with our dislocated shoulder, our bruised ribs.
We remember: That time we tried to tell Mom, that time we tried to ask for help.
We remember: That time with Mom’s slap across our face.
We can never un-rot. We can never un-break.
Everyone in the world is asleep except us. Our heart beats inside our chest at a troubling rhythm. We want to scream, but there’s no point. Ash cannot hear us inside himself. The glass walls are thick and shatterproof. We are protected by gates and walls and smoke and mirrors and the best security money can buy.
What does a heart attack feel like?
We remember:
Mom already knew. Of course she knew. She’s the one who made it happen.
A black hole is a star dying.