Noma Plus

one lightsoff acceleration go and he found himself moving arrhythmically across the surface of an abandoned parking lot and she was backlit by the diffident blaze of a burning mailbox at the edge of a sidewalk shattered into fragments like a bar of bleached chocolate and his brain reciprocated like a pane of spun stunt sugar and the faded lines of forgotten parking spaces had somehow managed to scribble a commentary on the illegible event even afterwards she gained on him like a fibonacci sequence

 two they had sex on a sunday made love on monday trysted on tuesday wanked on wednesday thrilled on thursday finally fucked on friday and saturday they just sat there staring at each other the whole week long their lovemaking had been morbid and obtuse with lots of jagged edges alternating movement and pauses with an underscoring of flat black rhythm

 three he had developed deepseated misgivings about her body and this fact unnerved him even though he was willing to overlook this uneasiness due to her advanced sexual abandon and freakish prowess he spent most of his time in bed with her wondering what it was about her body that did this to him it was neither her extremely pale skin nor her dusting of freckles of cinnamon pigments in cool constellation not the shape of her nose nor the jarring metallic obstruction that he could feel at the gate of her cervix in fact it was upwards of two weeks of horizontal time spent together before he realized what it was about her body that disturbed him she had no nipples her areolae were as though newly nonexistent and her breasts were twin smooth hemispheres tipped with indifference

four time tore across like a sheet of knit skin seconds flaking away like dead cells her movements were those of an oiled baton as she offered him another cigarette he accepted with one hand while arranging particles of shattered safety glass with the other they were sitting in a far corner of the large and deserted parking lot where they had first encountered each other nothing was now on fire her face carried a strange hue from the inevitable glare of the sodium arc lamps as his impromptu mosaic resolved itself into her faint smile as he concluded not looking right at her

that's it I'm at a loss for words and I am not comfortable with that condition you've been into me like this since that first night when we went to that vietnamese restaurant and you had the waiter bring us that special dessert because you knew the owner those hideous drinks red and green with the sugarysweet beans at the bottom and those tendrils some sort of plant of a plasticene consistency choking the body of the glass nothing could have been more in violation of nature than those drinks she yawned once and smiled oh you mean the rainbow delight she interrupted weren't they good though what else tastes like that as the lines of the parking lot scribbled an empty apparatus around her question the flavor he said was indescribable when sampled again outside mingled with the smoke of your burning I knew or didn't know which is worse

she ripped the cigarette from her damp lips abjectly not knowing she said illustrating her brief answer with an exclamation point of ragged exhalation

you're not used to it it doesn't suit you I don't like you when you're like that he said you're the cause you're a living non sequitur how do you remain so physically articulate your body travels as though it's already been where it has yet to go and when you dance you move like sculpture like I heard it sung once in an old song in words she looked at him full on precycladic head tilted slightly back eyes blank do you really want to hear the explanation she asked when I see other women with attributes that I wish to possess I hunt them down sometimes in deserted parking lots like this one kill them and eat the relevant portions these lips 

and she touched her lips

I acquired that way my eyes my thighs my innermost secrets

touch touch touch

all these things were hunted killed and eaten practical animism older even than witchcraft simple direct effective

he shook his head and laughed

I can't say that I'm completely surprised animism is about the only religion that makes that kind of sense anymore I suppose this means that it is fruitless attempting to be the human equivalent of the aya sofya she said it will never happen unless you go there and eat a portion of it and then he said I read a book once about a man who ate a car on national television and then she said now that I know that what do I do and then she yawned for the second time aren't you afraid that I might want to know what you're thinking all that tasty data

he put out his cigarette abstractly repeatedly he drew an illegible design above her safety glass smile with the faint ash and fading coals it might have been a skeptical eye

they used to call this drug lady nicotine because it was discovered by a man named nicot

a world tilted in vain

is that what I am lady nicotine

she said as she blew more vapor at the distant lights

no

he said

you're just NOMA and I'm just words and when you get out of the shower you dry yourself off as though you were searching yourself for concealed weapons except that none of your weapons need concealment you're garbling me I can't think I've told you everything that I wanted to tell you and I've forgotten half of it and inextricably mutilated the other half and then shut up she said kindly you are only half to begin with I'm the other half the half that you forgot that you had to remember because you never knew it in the first place

her shirt drifted open as the threatening assemblage of her collarbone stained with incoherent light targeted an emergent rondelet of discordant breast and the drone of distant traffic made the sky hum

five it was in one of the many restaurants of the interchangeable maze of restaurants that constituted his life then that she informed him that she had a sexually transmitted disease his sandwich died in his mouth and he removed it and set it down carefully on a plastic plate

didn't you hear me I said that I have a sexually transmitted disease I'm carrying I'm transmitting she moaned at him softly i heard you the first time he said dully you better get yourself examined as soon as coherently possible she advised this disease slowly turns people into buildings over time

he sat there appalled at her blatant fabrication as she handed him a card that said something on it about a specialist in something calling itself gynaecological architecture

what are you talking about this is crazy he said jesus this is like getting gonorrhea off the statue of liberty

she stared at him not seeing she ate not tasting her food as she wondered internally when the change would come and what it would feel like to become and be a building and what kind

six many years back he had dismissed her from mind and gone to live and work in the city and every day a commute back and forth between the subway station and his office building and in between there was once a large building and then overnight a gaping pit where the building used to be shrouded in hanging tarps and braced with vacant scaffolding and it was like that for a long time and then just as suddenly he was walking to work one morning and the pit had been filled in and completed by a new building and it was her and she smiled at him and he stopped staring wondering if he were losing it and she was still smiling at him from her windows and doors and he went on to work thoughtfully there was a small pocket park in front of the building of her and he began to eat lunch there day after day because he couldn't take his eyes off of her and it was like all of the past days when they used to eat together and make love together and remember everything together and one day he walked up to the front door of the building of her and put his hand on the door handle and he was about to open the door and walk into her but then he decided not to.