Lip Gloss

 

The snow had begun to fall and the line for self-checkout at Kroger stretched well into the liquor isle. Levi got another text, something else Violet, his wife, said they needed though the kart was nearly full. He had flour on his black work pants and a spot of tomato sauce on the toe of one shoe. Early in their relationship, they’d been content eating pizza several nights a week but that was when Violet was young enough to have been impressed by the leased Mustang he’d afforded as manager of the East Washington Street Poppa John’s. Now, she liked different things.

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As Levi pushed through one of several sets of fire doors in their apartment building, he thought of the water tight compartments in the hull of the titanic. Nearly half were breached by the glacier, Levi remembered - sinking the unsinkable ship. There was a handwritten sign taped to the wall that read: LET FAUCETS DRIP. Carrying the groceries, Levi thought of the building, of its interiority. Wires, like electric veins traveling behind the walls, copper pipes penetrating, syphoning natural gas, the foundation groaning with water-filled pipes. 

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The TV was on. With the cartel, you have a choice, a man on the screen said. You can take the gold or get the silver. Levi flicked off the set and put the groceries on the counter next to the sink and turned the faucet to drip against the cold. He called out his wife’s name but heard nothing in return. He thought of the conversations he’d scripted in his imagination. He had in his mind what he’d say. He had in his mind what he thought she might say. But was it even possible, he wondered, to simulate a divergent reality separate from one’s own? To imagine the mind of another is like trying to conjure a new primary color. To be objective, felt like trying to separate the sound of English from its meaning, to hear a spoken word the way a non-English speaker might hear it. Just a sequence of sounds. He called out his wife’s name again.

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The winter whispered in through the poorly sealed windows. There was an open bottle of wine on the coffee table. Levi turned off one light after the next, leaving darkness behind him as he walked toward the bedroom.

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The walls were lined with photos that had been taken over the years. All selfies, shot by Violet, that captured the couple - smiling, faces pushed together, in different locations ranging from The Grand Canyon National Park to New York City. Walking the hall, Levi studied one photo after the next, noticing, for the first time, how he and Violet wore the same expression in each - the same rehearsed on-demand smile, regardless of locale and context. In the photos, they looked consistent, but identity, Levi knew, was always emerging. There were those moments, too when one’s inner universe collapsed, was compressed, only to explode; matter reconfigured rushing outward in all directions.

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What is, he thought, is often built of what remains. 

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“Come to bed,” she said, the words breathy, blossoming atop her lips. She wore an old grey t-shirt, the neck oblong and stretched out, her lower body covered by the thick, pillowy floral comforter. 

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The room was almost dark but for the groping of passing headlights. Levi stood by the door. Next to the bed, on the nightstand, was an empty wine glass and a framed photo of the couple in Florida. 

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“Are you ok?” Levi asked, unbuttoning his shirt. 

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“I’m ok,” Violet said, her eyelids fluttering, face averted.

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He thought of how honey bees were able to communicate the location of flowers by dancing. What would he say, how would he respond if she asked him if he was ok? He put a knee on the bed, leaned towards her. 

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The photo framed on the nightstand had come from Violet’s Instagram. At CVS, Levi had printed all the photos from his wife’s public Instagram after they last moved. You don’t realize what you have until you move, Levi had thought. And what’s missing when you move in. They didn’t have any photos of themselves. Not together. Not printed-out. All of that had been online, for years - all they’d done together existed online for public consumption yet there was no private memory box or scrap book  They needed a shared alter, an artifact, a totem, a talisman. Anything to ameliorate the feeling of performance.

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The yellow glow of the streetlight beyond the ground-floor window bled through the slats of the closed blinds, striping her face with lines of light. Her eyes were closed now. He put a hand to her face, tenderly, almost the way a parent might a child who seemed unwell. Her auburn hair spilled across the pillow like a slow moving resin. All your life, you’re young until you aren’t, Levi thought. She turned toward him, nuzzling his hand.

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“Where are you right now?” Levi asked, sitting on the bed, legs over one side, his upper body turned towards her. 

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“I’m right here,” she said, breathy, languid, kissing his hand.

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Levi thought about how desperate people sometimes fake their deaths to avoid debt or somehow profit from life insurance. Some fake their deaths, he thought. And others, well others fake their lives.

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He lifted the comforter and pulled it aside with care as if turning the page of an ancient manuscript. He surveyed the landscape of her body. Her hips and ass had widened over the years but her breasts remained pert and pronounced. She had on his old grey Radiohead T-shirt and white cotton panties. Next to her hand, the face of her iPhone lit with a notification. He picked up the phone. The contact was named “friend”. As in, Message from Friend. Levi put the phone on the nightstand. 

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He’d love to go through her phone. Because, deep down he knew that would be the closest he’d ever get to truly being inside her. But for now, there she was. 

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Levi laid down beside her and pulled the comforter over both of their bodies. He kissed her lips but she turned her face from him. And so he kissed her neck, slowly, then her cheek. He raised up on one elbow and again tried to kiss her mouth but she turned away, giggling. She guided his face back to her neck. Levi went to put an arm across her midsection but she guided his hand to her breast. Her iPhone lit up on the nightstand and in the electric blue glow of a notification, her half-smile glistened with lip gloss, cherry, the kind she had worn so many years ago. He had smudged it when he kissed her and transferred it,  cherry red smeared across her neck like a candied vampire wound. 

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Violet took his hand and slid it down her body. She arched her hips, inhaling through her nostrils as his fingertips grazed the warm, loose flesh of her stomach. Levi began teasing her inner thigh and kissing her neck. He could taste it now, the cherry lip gloss. And as she moaned, arching her hip towards him, he could smell the faint perfume of alcohol on her heavy breath. He put his hand between her legs, her panties were warm and wet. When he slid his hand beneath her panties, she bit her lip. “I want you to go down on me,” she said.

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Beyond the window, he heard two male voices. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the dialogue volleyed back and forth between speakers, a rapid-fire staccato of alternately raised and lowered volume and undulating inflection as if questions posed were immediately answered. Violet was moaning, her fingertips pressed into Levi’s scalp, massaging his hair, forcing his face into her, her hips thrust up and forward, hungry, needing. Outside, someone was scraping a windshield. An engine churned in the darkness, trying to turn over. The starter clicking, the key forced forward, the wine of the machinery beneath the hood. A foot on the gas, and then it growled to life, a fiery inferno banging inside the cylinders, miniature explosions, revving and revving, suddenly alive.

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Her body shuttered, moaning and then she went quiet. Levi lingered. The night was still, the voices outside had been whisked away, going somewhere, their truck crunching through snow, penetrating the night. Levi raised up, and when he went to look into his wife’s eyes, they were closed. Not squeezed shut, but fallen, blank and empty. Her breathing was deep and rhythmic. She had gone somewhere, fallen into sleep, receding into the somnolent liquid swirl of dream and wine. 

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Levi rolled onto his back and stared at the texture of the ceiling as if trying to discern some meaning in the hieroglyph of lines and indistinct shapes left in the polystyrene and paint. The wind blew against the window, forcing itself inside past it seals, pushing the blinds, causing them to tap and clang against the glass. Levi thought of the Titanic, of the grand departure, hands waving, hats thrown into the air. The hubris of steel slicing through the frigid and indifferent ocean.

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The photo on the nightstand. They had stood on beach at night, a backdrop of a million stars and a malevolent moon. Levi rose out of bed and went to the window. And as he looked into the static of snow flurries lit an impossible brilliant white by the streetlight, Levi wondered if he’d have chosen to be born, if somehow, 41 years ago he’d been given the choice.