Luster(33)

* * *



Akila is in the middle of it, hitting her marks with confidence and even a little style, her place in the hierarchy clear even without the signifier of her belt, a dark purple that I see on only one other student. Her focus is so intense it is almost embarrassing to watch, though when they bring out a stack of small pine boards for breaking drills and I see her go through three at once my breath catches in my throat. Then the master takes the other purple belt, a small white girl with dark, sunken eyes, and the class settles down onto their knees as she and Akila spar. It is over quickly. Aside from a brief fall onto her back, Akila is reserved, less interested in force and more invested in precision, her contact so light and matter-of-fact you can feel her keeping careful score, an infuriating thing for her partner, who is good, but too upset by Akila’s composure to compete.

“That pairing seems a little unfair. Look at her,” a parent says. Of course, it is not unfair. They are of the same belt and roughly the same age. Akila extends her hand, and the girl turns her back. In the car, Akila guzzles a bottle of water and takes out her phone to record the calories burned.

“You were amazing,” I say, but Akila just turns the radio up. I’m excited to hear that it is Sister Sledge.

“I hate this,” she says, connecting her phone to the aux cord, putting on what sounds like Japanese ska. We travel in silence. I glance at her and again she is turned to the window. She seems smaller now, more the girl who held the notebook to her chest. The song turns out to be over six minutes long and relentlessly manic, the trumpet and gurgling bass alternating over rapid-fire Japanese.

“I thought it was good,” I say as we pull into the driveway.

“What?” she says, already halfway out of the car.

“Your story,” I say, and she stops and looks back at me, her eyes soft. Then she turns, shoulders her gear, and marches into the house without another word. Rebecca is still not home, and so when I look through the pantry, I take my time. I find a box of powdered milk and take it to my room. I mix it with some water in my Captain Planet mug and then I add a little of the cyan. I find my palette and mix a few more shades of blue. I open my photo gallery and find the picture of Akila and Rebecca. I take a book from the living room and tear out the copyright page. I work until 3 a.m., until the two of them are down on the torn, yellowed paper, craned over a single tomato. In my sleep, Clark Kent arrives on the planet alone and falls into endless wealth, and across the country, a young Bruce Wayne is adopted by sweet, midwestern parents. There is no Batman, but there is still a Superman, a deadened übermensch who imposes his idea of purity onto the earth.



* * *



In the morning, I wake up in a panic. It is not just that Eric will be home in a day and I still haven’t found a way to leave or tell him I was here. It’s that I’ve forgotten something. I wash up in the sink and throw on some clothes. Downstairs Rebecca is asleep on the couch in her jacket, and for a moment I pause and take her in, her open mouth and soft, nasal snore. On the train into the city I consider other men. All of them are asleep and exotic in their inertia, so still and distant that I’m free to notice their throats and fingernails. The train car is silent and filled with innocuous trash, a newspaper open to a group of charter school kids lobbing softballs in Ditmas Park, an umbrella stripped and inverted like an aluminum flower. The doors jam at every platform, but no one is coming in. During a long transfer, two Swedes roll by with teal suitcases, and a tired violinist leans away from the wall, props his violin under his chin, and then reconsiders.



* * *



I arrive at my old apartment and feel no tenderness toward it. The stairwell is still rotting and the roaches are still capable of flight. My landlord is there in what was presented in the apartment listing as a laundry room, but which is in actuality a room where 4C deals coke and where the walls are brimming with hardy city bees. I can hear the bees in the walls when I speak to her. I tell her that I left something behind of great sentimental value, and as I was not the best tenant, I am prepared to give her a light bribe, two five-dollar bills, but she pauses in the middle of whisking her matcha and says to go ahead. She says, We should’ve partied more, and smiles, revealing to me some new information, which is that I was at some point prominent enough in her world to party with, and that she is missing a tooth. I try to think of something to say as she sifts through a drawer of keys. I feel bad for how I avoided her every time rent was coming due, and I think about the hypothetical drugs we could’ve done together, what it would’ve been like to hold back her hair. She says, It was a bummer to evict you, and then I go upstairs and the place is freshly painted and spackled, the wet ecru making it feel for a moment like beyond the barred windows and brick there might be a sun. I close my eyes and enjoy the smell of the wet paint, the synthetic resin exact in where it shreds the sinuses. There is no sign I was ever here and that is kind of a relief. I reach into the back of my closet. If I’m honest, a part of me hopes the painting won’t be there. But it is still there, and when I give the keys back to my landlord, I make sure the canvas is turned away. On the train, that isn’t so easy. A few commuters look up from their phones and stare, and there is a man in a corner seat who keeps looking at my painting like he has never seen a dead woman before.



* * *



By the time I get back to the house, the afternoon is gone. Akila is shut up in her room with a K-drama and Rebecca is up and about, a moist yoga mat unfurled on the floor. She emerges from the bathroom with a roll of tinfoil, looks at my painting, and doesn’t comment on it. She asks if I can help her dye her hair. As I begin to apply the dye, she adjusts the towel around her neck and glares at herself in the mirror with such a private disdain that I feel I shouldn’t be in the room. Our eyes meet in the mirror and I hold her gaze, though sustained eye contact has a way of quickly becoming unfriendly, the ratty terry cloth cape and tinfoil mohawk a sympathetic combination on any other woman, but sort of scary on her. I tell her to get on her knees. I bend her over the tub and secure her by the neck. She presses her face into the towel and I rinse the dye out, and it is only then that I think about the color, the blond now black, making her look paler, a little dissonant, like an adult actress assuming the role of Snow White. She looks at herself in the mirror and smiles, disappears into her room and comes out in all black. She asks me if I have any plans, though of course it is not really a question, and she ushers me outside, where there is an angry, orange dusk.