Aaron Hellem

Contrariety and Consilience

Across the country, one on each coast, over the telephone I plead for her to have faith in Newton and all he prophesied about particles. It’ll bring us closer, I offer.

She’s made it perfectly clear she has no intentions of ever relocating to the West Coast. They have no culture, she once proclaimed, after too many glasses of sherry in downtown San Francisco. Those people think they invented the counter culture, she continued, her voice rising above the hum of rush hour traffic, when all they can lay claim to is suburban sprawl. She spit on the vehicles traveling in the carpool lane. Move to the city! she screamed at them. The officer would’ve arrested her if I hadn’t told him she was from out of town. The other side of the country.

Something about a particle’s mass, I offer.

It’s the time zones more than anything, she says. These three hours, when you’re just getting home and I’m getting ready for bed.

I tried the weekly continental flight, but discovered I have a weak stomach. In the meantime, she made partner, started making her bed, and made plans to buy her own house. You’re leaving me behind, I accused one night, once again over the telephone; this time it was me with one too many sherries. You’re leaving me far behind, more than these measly three hours, I said. Decades now. Decades will exist between us as you repair leaky roofs and replace antiquated boilers.

On the West Coast, I offer, everything is electric.

Your concerns are legitimate, she says, and that’s when I know she’s already kissed another man, has already gone out dancing with him and already let him touch her under her sweater because we live on different coasts and she knew I’d never find out. It means a corner office, she tells me, and a thirty percent pay increase.

I’ve never been impressed by percentages, I say.

I know she’s already kissed a guy named Chad, a patent attorney named Chad with a ritzy two bedroom apartment and an impressive investment portfolio. I already know he has all of his own teeth and all of them are white. Purely white. As are his neckties. His bathroom tile. His omelets.

All of our answers are in particles, I tell her.

That doesn’t mean anything to me, she says.

It has something to do with our mass. The distance between us. According to those who know more than I do, the universe is cambered like a sink drain. Yes, I know it has something to do with our mass and the distance between us and the way the universe resembles a sink drain, I say.

Everything has to do with the distance between us, she says. These damn three hours. I can hear the confession in her voice, his name underlying the tension contained in her inflection. Chad. White Chad. I feel it rising up out of her inversely proportional to how the kiss originally went down her: on a street corner waiting for the light to change, he grabbed her shoulders and they knew exactly what to do with their tongues, naturally, without the initial hesitation of kissing someone for the first time.

It’s supposed to tell us how to move, I say. It’s supposed to steer us toward each other. Yes, I think, that’s how it works. Despite the distance and the time between us, I tell her, the force is what draws us together.

Being within walking distance is what draws people together, she says. You want to believe in this fairytale of mere gravity saving us. A fairytale.

Even if I proved it to her that it’s cambered like a kitchen sink so that eventually we’ll meet in the middle, she wouldn’t believe me because she can’t see it happen. Because it happens so slowly, she’d say. The kiss happened and she’s getting ready to say a final goodbye, preparing to hang up with me for a final time. I wonder how different the world would look if Newton, long ago, had fallen in love and had his heart broken. All movement is but a memory of what has already transpired, and, consequently, a record of what is already done and can’t be changed.

 

Return to Volume 1.5

 

 

 

 
 

 

All files © 2005-2012 Blood Orange Review