if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go
morning, frank o'hara
.
.
.
i. on grey mornings with death in my mouth
In the world, there is horror and sorrow and misery. There are women entering his office with blood in their eyes and a hand on their hollow stomachs, and there are women bleeding out on his operating table, and there is a woman in the bed across from his with hope dulling her eyes like dust and dust and dust.
Facts, each and every one of them, though they get lost in translation more often than not. Bill Masters lives in facts, carves out a home in their cold, hard, undeniable centers. He does not get lost in translation. He cannot afford to lose his resolve. He decided long ago that it was only for the rest of them to do so.
In the operating room, there are people waiting for him, waiting for the great Bill Masters to swoop in and save the day. A bastardized deus ex machina for a dying girl, her body already a cemetery, a tube stuck in her thin throat. He watches them, putting off the inevitable. Looks at them as they look at him with blood and terror in their eyes.
He takes a breath. He opens the door.
ii. look out the window at the noiseless snow
Libby reminds him of the sun, her yellow hair and cheerful eyes. She's young and pretty and brisk, bright and burning with everything she has the potential to do, to be. A woman like Libby was born to be a mother, to love and give and shine, and a man like Bill is always there to wreck it.
"We'll try again," she says to him, and there is so much hope in her eyes he almost wants to die. "Won't we, darling?"
He nods. He does not open his mouth, for fear the truth will come spilling from him, as corrosive as acid, because a woman like Libby was made for better than what he can give.
A beautiful woman takes his hand, and in return he takes something out of her, always, even when he doesn't mean to. She smiles. "We are going to have a child, Bill. I just know it."
He is cold, and he can do nothing but freeze her. He takes his hand away, lest she begin to ice over. "Of course," he says, lies.
He only thinks later that maybe she wasn't so much like the sun, after all.
iii. the car is empty as a bicycle
There's a beautiful woman in the passenger seat, and she is not his wife.
"Are you alright?" Virginia asks him, concern lacing her tone. She never lets emotions come through her voice the way anyone else does, always skirts around them, with her dark eyes and wide smile and hand reaching across his desk, her wrist pale and thin. He thinks of how he wants to take her wrist, sometimes, and he wants to take her, too, and he wants to take everything out of everything, and he wants, he wants, he wants.
"I'm fine." Bill checks the side mirror, and lights from another car shine in the reflection. It catches in his eyes, blinds him for a moment. When he looks back at the road, he sees stars on the pavement.
She purses her lips, as if knowing he's lying. Finally, she nods.
He doesn't tell her anything else. She doesn't ask him again.
iv. last night the stars were numerous
It's a violent act, sex. You don't think so when it's happening, but behind one-way glass, it's easy enough to see the connection. Bill is a researcher, first and foremost, so any and all observations are relevant.
The man on the other side of the glass grabs at his partner's hair, tugging, and the cry she gives seems more from pain than pleasure. When the woman finishes, her fingernails claw and clasp and rend her own flesh.
Virginia makes a note on her clipboard, her handwriting small and neat. When she catches his eye, she smiles.
Later, he digs his fingers into the skin of her legs, and he thinks of leaving bruises, the way they always seem to leave marks, temporary as they may be. He thinks suddenly that he must be wounding her. He stutters, for a moment.
Then she makes a sound in the back of her throat, and he forgets what he was thinking altogether.
v. do you know how it is when you are the only passenger
There's thunder rolling in the distance, the sound gaining momentum as it rumbles toward them, and all Bill can think is, of course. The day his life crashes and burns would have some kind of symbolism, as obvious as it may be. It feels appropriate, almost like karma, the lightning flashing in through the windows, the rain against the roof like nails in the wall.
He rolls his glass on the polished wood counter, watching the drink slide with his every motion. There's nothing left, he thinks suddenly. There are no more desperate women in his office and dying women in his operating room. His wife would be happier with someone who could give her more. The study is dead. Twenty years of work circling the drain, and Bill Masters sits in a bar with a tumbler full of something that tastes like gasoline.
"I'm gonna go home," he tells Barton, and stands up to leave. He can't lose his resolve, he knows this like he knows his own face, even if nowadays he finds himself difficult to recognize.
He drives, first aimlessly, then to the hospital. The buildings are short and white, sturdy. They've been there before him, and they'll be there after, go on existing. The rest of the world will go on, and Barton will go on, and Libby will go on, and he will go on.
Virginia will, too. He thinks of her, in her little house that he's never been inside of, her children sitting in the kitchen, Virginia bent over the stove, her hands too calloused for what she could do. Ethan has seen the inside of her house. Ethan, with her children in the kitchen, or with Virginia in their car, or with Virginia in her room -
He listens to the glass window shatter the way one would listen to a symphony. He can't lose his resolve, not now, not with twenty years of his life circling the drain. Not with the second name on his study in a house he's never been in, maybe even now waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Bill leaves the hospital for the last time and gets into his car, sits with his hands clenched on the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. Listens to the rain against the car roof, the sound as steady as a drumbeat. He drives home.
He doesn't get lost on the way.