We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons

Author:Kimberly King Parsons [Parsons, Kimberly King]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2024-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

Part Four

THE BOILING RIVER

Pete sighs, deep and shuddering. The water cuts him at his neck and wrists, his submerged body pale and greenish, an odd contrast to the healthy tan of his face, his golden hands moving in his beard.

“I’m remembering things wrong,” Pete says. “Or I’m, like, forgetting things I thought were unforgettable. Brian takes his coffee like a dipshit—four fucking Splendas—but I can’t remember the first time he said he loved me. I remember when I said it to him. Too soon, and he didn’t say it back. I said, ‘I love you, you know,’ and he said, ‘Aw, Deet, thanks for telling me.’ All the pet names we called each other—I don’t know where they came from. He was Bird and Birdie and later he was Kicks, because he had so many damn shoes. He called me Kicks too—somehow at the end we were both Kicks. But where did Deet come from? Just the rhyme, or was it something else?”

Pete’s hand snakes in and out of the water as he talks, takes the pale green cast on and off like a glove.

The current rushes too hot, hotter than it’s been, uncomfortable. I want to make the joke about slow-boiled frogs when I notice Pete’s eyes are brimming. For a second I think he might cry, something I’ve never seen, and I’m not sure how I’ll handle it. Then he sneezes, loud and terrifying.

“I told you he’s deathly afraid of blind people? No, I didn’t, because he specifically asked me not to. Irrational and totally inappropriate. He traced it back to getting shampoo in his eyes. I said, ‘That’s a fear of going blind, Bird, not the blind.’ What a monster. Four Splendas, and if he has even a sip of coffee, he immediately has to take a shit. Even in a restaurant! And his shit smells like chemicals—like a perm. I mean shit smells how it smells, but his is beyond.”

Pete is talking so loud, the older couple upriver squint and glare at us. “I’d watch him take that first hot sip and picture his ass popping open like a spigot. I’d see his coffee mug in the cabinet and retch.” I lose it, laughing. Pete waves at the river jerks. He splashes his face with water, slicks back his hair.

“Fucking Brian,” he says. “That’s all I’m going to say.” He relaxes his shoulders, tilts his head from side to side to pop his neck. He reaches for my underwater hand and we lace our fingers together.

I’m feeling less high, less druggy, but there is still a sense of calm at my core, a keen relaxation. My cheapo therapist would be proud of me, that I even have a core, that I can feel it, that I’m sitting in my body for once. I want to be present for Pete.

So often I’m adrift, a brain in a jar. I used to try to pour myself into other people’s bodies. Entering a person, being entered, it stops time, bends it.

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