Wavelengths

Wavelengths

1

As I work my way around the window sashes, dusting my drafty house, the radio announcer fades in and out. M bursts from the bedroom, ripping apart an Instagram profile, flipping through photos, bemoaning me, yet another whore, our collapsing relationship, the collapsing world, but I can hardly hear her over the white noise purring from the speakers, her body somehow obscuring the signal.

2

A brothel of cats slink around our home, fighting in the crawl space, napping in the shade of the magnolia out front. At night while reading, I hear them screeching and crying, unsure if they’re in heat or hungry or just chasing their own shadows.

3

In the mornings light pours into the house and before the summer heat settles in, she switches off the radio, shoves aside the couch and pushes the dining room table to the wall, transforming the living room into a dance studio. From the corner where I write and read and drift off into fantasies, I watch her convulsing along with the online Gaga instructor, swirling to the pianist and ballet teacher: knees bowed, legs streaming in and out, arms floating in the air like wings.

Sometimes I wonder when she’ll decide to flap right on up and out the window.

4

When I open the front door, I startle awake a grey cat sleeping on the doorstep. Its head jerks up, crystal blue eyes blink open. For a beat, while listening to the newscast seeping outside, it seems unsure if it should scram or can fall back asleep. I’m about to shoe it off my porch, but before I can it bolts away.

5

She rolls out her muscles. The tops of her thighs, shins, calves, before flipping onto her back. Her body’s more than just an abstract home, but a tool that’s tuned, repaired, polished. While rolling back and forth atop the meat of her hip, she catches me watching. M stops, stares up at me from the floor, flashes an aristocrat’s grin.

What? she asks. Some new whore on Instagram you want to talk about?

Never, I’m writing, I say, pretending to scratch words into my black Moleskine. Her intuition is frightening, how she knows I haven’t written a word in weeks, as if she could see right through my notebook’s covers, right through me. I need to take care of the cat problem.

What cats?

The ones squatting beneath the house, I say. I spoke to a contractor, he estimated that because my house is a crumbling slum it’ll cost about $20,000 to replace all the clapboard, seal it up correctly, repaint the entire place. All that just to get rid of the cats.

Oh, those cats, she says, twisting onto her flat stomach, stretching out her legs, facing away while arching her long back towards me. I don’t mind them in the least.

6

The radio barely functions. Eating at the table, another station blurs in. Washing dishes, the signal disintegrates into mud.

Good grief, throw it away, M says, rising from the couch, Kindle in hand. There’s so much in this place you need to throw away.

I suppose I could toss the radio, maybe burn the entire house to the ground. Start fresh. But I have a soft spot for broken things that no longer function.

7

You’re a child, she says, brushing curls from the flesh of her throat. Holds my gaze, never flinches. Her honesty frightens me, her words and pain simple, clear, sharp as shards of glass. She holds my gaze, eyes hallowed and hazy, welling with a streetlamp’s lemony light. M swallows. I could have anyone I want.

8

While watering the yard I spot the grey cat grooming itself in the Magnolia’s shade. Though feral and homeless, like all cats, the grey feline exudes dignity, nobility. It looks posh and regal even while tonguing its asshole atop a mattress of dead grass. My yard’s a depressing bald patch of dirt. I rarely water it. Less out of any environmentalism than to neglect this home that demands so much. While licking its paws, the cat doesn’t even deign to acknowledge me, as if it knows I won’t dare do anything. I spray it with the hose. The cat scrambles to its feet, shocked, its pride wounded. Hissing, it slinks away.

9

She lays on the bed backwards, head in the center of the mattress, lower back propped up on the pillows, legs split in a wide y, as if she’s sitting on the wall.

I’m stretching, she says. Don’t bother me.

10

Sometimes days pass without leaving the house. I write or read or take stock of every crack in the crown moulding, chip in the paint, fracture in the grout. I search out dust among the bookshelves, under beds, clean grease from the vintage enameled oven.

M finds this baffling, infuriating.

I need to move, she says, gliding past me, filling a glass at the kitchen sink. She drinks it, vanishes into her room. I don’t like wasting all day in this cold, dark cave.

11

Tweaking the radio’s bunny ears, I twist the dial, trying to pick up a clean wavelength. She glances up from her Kindle, face composed, still as the cup of mint tea beside her. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Watery eyes, wide, suspicious and anxious like a deer’s. Cursive lips. Glassy skin. Her body lithe and strong. I turn the dial, pick up a signal. I join her on the couch, she scoots away, the signal fuzzes.

12

When LA lifts the lockdown, we start playing tennis. I love the sport’s physicality, my heart hammering in my temples when I sprint across the court to keep the ball in play. I’m terrible, but it’s exhilarating to be back outside, to see strangers, to watch the middle aged Korean mafia that takes over the courts every evening, elbowing out all the artisanal, farm-to-table mommies and daddies, all while sipping bottles of Hite between sets.

Despite not picking up a racquet in 15 years, M has a pro’s ease on the court, natural form, backhand surprisingly strong, footwork fluid.

I’m better than you, she says, stuffing tennis balls under the seem of her shorts. And you play everyday.

Well, I say. I wasn’t raised at a tennis club full of millionaires.

I know why you like playing, she says, ignoring my shot at her background. Are all relationship long simmering civil wars? Glancing around at the couples on the neighboring courts, she steps behind the baseline. Why you really come here every day.

Yeah, why’s that?

She serves the ball. It bounces softly towards me. I wind up to swing, catch her smiling at me and entirely miss. The ball hits the back fence, rolls towards the couple playing beside us.

You know.

13

While dragging the trash bins back from the street, an old Mexican woman hobbles by, a black cane held in her crepey hand.

Good evening, I say.

Are you the new guy? she asks. The one feeding the all cats?

No, I’m actually saving up the $20K as we speak so they’ll stop living beneath my house, I explain, though the longer I save, the more unlikely it seems I’ll ever collect that much dough. That’s how much it’ll cost to fix up my house so they’ll leave.

Good God, twenty-thousand dollars?! she gasps. That’s what it costs these days? Everything’s out of control.

14

I’m an artist, M says. My entire life is arranged to be best the artist I can be.

Mazel tov, I say, pouring myself a tequila, pulling out my nice black ink pen, hiding in with my little black notebook.

Beats getting drunk every night.

There are no more bars, I remind her. Like salt enhancing certain food’s flavors, anger both darkens and deepens her beauty. There’s no more going out. Everything’s closed. Remember?

M eyes me, less a deer, more a wolf.

And yet you still manage to go out and chase whores.

15

Go to your room, she says, switching off the lamp, sliding on an eye mask, plugging her ears with gobs of wax. I can’t sleep when you’re here.

Returning to my room, I lay in bed and write until late. Friends are baffled when I explain our separate bedrooms and bathrooms. Weeks pass without entering her room, which once was my room. The pharmacy of vitamins and moisturizers crowding every surface, the chaos of clothes strewn about, hair everywhere. Her bathroom, I shouldn’t even start. I don’t even look inside it anymore. Her messes repulse me. Yet love is a messy affair.

We’re like aristocrats, I tell friends when they inquire about our peculiar living arrangement. Sleep in different beds.

Few get the joke. Maybe it’s not a joke. I don’t know. I keep reading, even as the cats beneath the floorboards screeching hits a feverish pulse.

16

Hairline cracks creep across the concrete floors, cobwebs in the corners of ceilings, a gossamer of black dust on the sheer white curtains. I find M’s hair crotched into couch cushions, wrapped around a salt shaker, somehow even in my bathroom’s medicine cabinet. This house needs a deep clean, an entire renovation.

17

M’s millionaire parents send me a check for a cool $20K. I guess they don’t like the idea of their daughter living in a home infested with cats. I hire the contractor and his crew gets to work: sealing, sanding, painting. Within another week I don’t see the cats during the day or hear them at night.

While wiping up the dust that relentlessly accumulates on every surface in my home, I realize the radio’s signal hasn’t been this clear in years.

18

Where are you going? I ask.

M snaps around, whipping her wild black hair. She’s about to say something, thinks better of it, grabs her keys, slams the door behind her.

19

I do miss the cats loafing around. Sometimes, when I’m lonely, I set out a dish of milk on the stoop, hoping to lure them back.