arobotlivesdownstairs

“I want you to keep your face, so I’ll start just under the centre of your chin. Keep still.”

Trace a flat, 1-inch-wide, blade-shaped brush, semi-transparent, soaked in blue-violet ink. Spiral just under my jawline, around the nape, back again, now tracing below that first line, the edges just bleeding together. Like being coiled in masking tape with no gaps, but my skin and body hair show through. Around again, clockwise, five times, ‘til the collar bone is nearby.
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He was prescient. The proprietor. He didn’t cap the entrance on the front of his store. He left a square hole in the roof, creating an open-aired foyer, and didn’t bother with a door. The neighbouring merchants laughed at the rain and snow pooling on the tile while their own entrances stayed dry. His customers appreciated the lack of door when packmuled with enough shopping bags to require both arms, but always asked him about how he avoided theft, incredulously listening to his answer that people are basically good, and his cryptic assertion that infrequent theft was still part of his bargain with the future.
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Which one of us is going to die first? We made it to our thirties without a car accident, a suicide, or a disease. Our friends aren’t as simple to define as seven college buddies, bonded by nostalgia. There’s three groups of 6-8 people with some members in two of the groups, and some in all three like me. It’s like 19 people all together. 19 people is a lot to keep alive. We’re statistically anomalous, 19 still living in their thirties. So which one of us?
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I want to kiss her neck on the coffee table but she points to the jigsaw puzzle box, 2000 pieces, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, assemble it, two hours of alternating hands, brains synchronize pretty well, you take the edges, I build from them, it takes shape, a bad print of the painting, the lighting’s off, there it is, complete, take a picture on your cell phone, feel good about yourself for completing something, bask in that while you eat a butter tart, okay it doesn’t need to stay on the table, it’s not art, it’s a puzzle, fold it up, lift it as one like a bed sheet, let gravity tear at natural seams, split apart into mini puzzles, those jagged partial night watches you can toss like Frisbees, throw a couple of them to prove it, they glide, a little sharp on the edge, make a mark on the wall just above your shoes, then punch out, pop the tossable shapes into the 2000 original pieces on the table, one at a time like counting coins, each click and rattle the journey to tabletop, cup hand below table lip and drag other from center to edge, drop them clacking in hollow palm, empty into box, the hollow sound, a repetitive task with no invented machine to replace you or me, replace boxtop, the groaning noise of trapped air, can I fucking kiss you now?

I want to assemble a puzzle with her, but she points to her neck, sit down on the coffee table, sweeping aside the box, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, rattles floorward,  two hours of alternating hands on each other’s bodies, tongues and head angles synchronize pretty well, you taste my edges, I slip on yours, we form shapes, entwined silhouettes, the lights are on, there you are, pale skin, take a picture on your cell phone, feel nothing but each other, you taste like butter tarts, it’s okay we don’t need to stay on the table, back breaks the box as we crash to floor, it’s a puzzle, pieces stick to skin, we fold, we lift each other like bedsheets, let gravity pull us at our seams, you split apart into miniature trembling, those jagged movements unconscious twitches, toss you around me and the room, you glide, make marks on my skin just above my thighs, we explode in a shower of night watches, 2000 original pieces on the floor, all at once, each rattling and clicking, under the table top, cup hand below lips and drag from center to edge, hollow palms, empty, hollow sounds, a repetitive task with no invented machine to replace you or me, will never replace you, the groaning noises, can I fucking kiss you still?

A line of painishness, a pull from jaw to lower back that’s mostly a projection of the real stress in my brain, brought on by events I didn’t predict, and I’m a prognosticator by trade. When that happens I generally go to my library, select a book at random, and read it the entire way through, without a break no matter how long it takes. I did it once with Ulysses. I was up for 123 hours. That was after she came over for tea and left me with a bruise on my cheek and the taste of blood in my mouth. Whose? Harold Bloom’s little walk drowned out the questions so I never figured that out. But maybe I’ll ask them this time. The book I just pulled down is Underworld, and I’m no longer interested in sleep deprivation or post-modern literature. So I’ll put it away and reflect. That’s a good boy.
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There is that line between thinking and feeling. And we can think until we no longer feel, and we can feel until we no longer think. The line is wide, a gradient strip with blurred edges, and it’s slippery. My brother the academic crossed it when our cousin Kyle died, who was just a year out of high school. In my parent’s house, surrounded by a saddened family, my brother talked like there wasn’t anyone in the room that could contribute. He talked like he was presenting a thesis. I was glad Kyle’s mom wasn’t in the room. His Dad was, but had a congenital condition that made him misunderstand sentences in tenses other than past.
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“So, what’s that dark, then?” she asked, looking absently south, smoking a pipe, a needlessly overwrought affectation that against all reason gave me goosebumps; she was a combination of my crushes on Judy Davis, Greta Garbo, and Baudelaire.
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I smile, you smile, but it stops there. We both acknowledge the bizarre actions of someone else, that’s a shared moment, but it disappears. They always disappear. We have different stops. Even if we didn’t, you’d get a different bus, or you’d stop to buy a coffee and our narratives would branch apart. I’ve never seen you before, or spoken to you, but I see you every day, and wish I could speak to you.
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It started with my ears. Three months before, she took me to see an audiologist. She explained that my misunderstandings and constant ‘what’s’ when she was speaking couldn’t be explained by selective listening; she was concerned I was actually losing my hearing. As it turns out, she was lying, and my hearing was normal for my age.
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