I climbed into bed. Since Josh had left I’d slept far to one side, almost on the edge, so as not to disturb his blanket and mattress space. So his imprint was still there, and a strand of hair, the smell of rock. I thought of his body burned into the California desert, if the heat had turned the desert sand to glass. I wondered how long the scar of his footsteps’ trek would last. I wondered if they searched for and found every last shred of him, packed up every scrap in tiny ziplock bags. Leave no trace. Or if a limb was left behind. A dead, rotting Josh limb, now food and home for the termites and kangaroo rats, his energy recycled, transformed. He would have liked that.
I got up and went back to sleep in the bathtub.
AFTER A FEW weeks, Paul had the idea to transfer to UCLA. He decided to just forget about fall quarter at UCSB so he could stay in L.A. and hang out with me, then start winter quarter down here. What he really wanted to do, he confided one night, was drop out altogether and do something really cool and free-spirited like Josh. He didn’t really want to be a doctor, but his parents were pretty invested in it. In one of their sons achieving, being successful. And now, you know. . His voice trailed off. He asked me if I had talked to my parents. If maybe I wanted him to call them for me. And I said No, they never even met Josh, I haven’t even seen them for a few years. We’ve never been very close. They’re not your kind of parents, all nurturing and invested, I told him. My parents were always off being very busy, always leaving me to go off by themselves.
Paul was sleeping in the bed by then. I’d given him Josh’s space. I was sleeping in the bathtub, but I’d leave the door ajar and the shower curtain tugged open to talk at night until we fell asleep. And after a few months he decided he didn’t really need to get his own apartment, that he should probably stay with me so I wouldn’t be all alone and he could take care of me. I gave him Josh’s clothing to wear, all of which is too big for him and full of threadbare spots, but he likes it. He wears Josh’s French Foreign Legion caps. Josh would have liked that, too. Their parents call every few weeks to see how we’re doing. I hear Paul tell them he’s worried about me. They tell Paul they read an article that says the first year is the hardest, but then it gets better. They tell Paul they’re going to send the article, so that I can read it. They say they want to come visit us. None of them seems to realize it’s my fault we all lost him. That it’s because of me we all have to cling to each other and shrivel up and pay.
Paul tries so hard. He goes to the grocery store and makes us pizza from scratch. He goes to the laundromat. He downloads all of the newest releases, because I won’t even debate the idea of going out. He seems to think I’m very fragile, about to wilt and expire, or explode. He says he doesn’t like to leave me alone, but I think he just doesn’t like to go out by himself. I urge him to go. I tell him We don’t have to spend all of our time together, do we? I tell him to make some friends from school. I tell him he needs to give me more space, and his scared look has started coming back.
I’M ASLEEP THE night he comes home sometime in April, after hanging out with his new friends from school. I wake up because he’s loud and stumbling, a little drunk, and comes into the bathroom to tug on my arm. Please, Holly, he says, wake up. Please come sleep in the bed with me tonight. He strokes my hair and my shoulder. We’ve never touched. We’ve been together almost a year, and we’ve never even slightly brushed against each other. I barely even sense him in the apartment, rarely sense his energy or heat. He starts crying now, I miss Josh, he says, trying to grip me, I’m lonely, please, isn’t it time, aren’t you lonely? and I think What difference does it make? I let him pull me out of the tub’s cool hug and pull me into the bedroom. We get in the bed together, both of us in Josh’s T-shirts, and he’s fondling, clutching at me. My skin just feels numb. It’s dead skin, and he’s rubbing me as if trying to make it alive. He enters me, I’m dry as dust and I don’t even feel it. He’s trying to get further inside me, and I realize, then, what he’s really trying to do. Get me to unfold, to pulse. It’s April, and he’s trying to get me to flower again. He’s trying to peel back a layer of me to get where it’s pulpy and soft. He’s feeling so much, and he’s trying to make me feel, too, expose me to where it’s dangerous and full of unseen, searing threat. He’s touching me as if he’s capable of that. But he isn’t. He’s weak, insignificant, a pale imitation. And he’s just clutching at me because I’m here, not because I mean anything, am anything to him, really, he’s just clinging to whatever happened by. Anyway, I won’t let it happen. I suddenly see myself making love to Josh, then, opening up to all of it, I feel myself start to get wet and I chew my tongue to bleed and keep me from it, so I won’t cry, fall apart, split open into the tenderness and the sweet. I hold myself stiff as wood, I gulp and gulp to hoard up all the wet, keep it inside of me, and when he finally finishes I gasp and prickle with relief.
I LIKE TO keep the front door triple-locked, and it takes me a moment to remember, deadbolt first, that’s right, then knob. I leave the chain on and peek out through the gap at the empty street, the sleeping ceramic child, the cactus. It’s grown bigger. It’s taller than I am now, cuddly and blameless-looking, its spines silver and luminous in the moonlight. I unchain the front door and step outside. The outside air feels exactly the same as the inside air, and I think Of course, there is no difference. It isn’t safe anywhere you go.
The cactus is waiting for me, and very welcoming. It isn’t punishing or mocking; it’s kind. It knows I want my spines back. It knows my moisture, heat, energy, and yearns toward me. It yearns toward my legs, first, my thighs, then the insides of my open arms, my throat, embraces me even before I’ve pressed against it with my breasts, attaches to every inch of my skin with its greedy tines. The cactus needs me. It finds me significant, and I embrace it back, hard, to feel its spines enter and become mine. Each pierce creates a vivid bloom. Each spine taps my blood, then my bones, and this makes me feel boundless, and vast. And this is something I can succumb to, this is something I can feel.