The n-Body Problem

I keep my eyes closed and reach out to lay a hand on the grass near Y. I can hear water moving. He’s getting my clothes. Doesn’t like to see his uncle naked in the park.

“I’m sorry. These are wet.”

They are. I move my head so that the egg is in my shoe. Not sure why. I salute Y.

“Get dressed,” Y says.

I fall asleep for a second. “Okay. Help me.”

Y sits me up and drops the icy shirt over my head. It’s good. I wake.

“I found something else. Look.”

I drag the denim up my thighs and pinch the button closed.

“Look.”

A portable full-spectrum lamp. I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. Very expensive.

“It was in our trunk. My dad bought it for my mom for her birthday.”

I turn it on. Bright. Good batteries. Holy shit.

“My dad had money. He owned the quarry.”

I hold the light up to my face. Y keeps talking.

“What’s wrong with your stomach? It’s huge.”

I can’t answer. The light and the pills are profound in me. It’s like the cells are giddy. Everything is turning in every direction. There is so much good.

“My mom’s gone.”

That’s good. Made the pick-up.

“She’ll be up there.”

I grunt. I feel freshly split cedar in my marrow. Dark rich hardwood in my veins.

“We could clean up the car.”

Nope.

“I mean. It’s a car.”

Not a chance.

“How you feel now?”

I pass Y the spectrum.

“Much better. Here. Take a turn. Five minutes.”

I have stopped the cascade. Not solved the problem but at least I won’t die in the park this morning.

“Thanks. Your belly is still big.”

It is. Not getting bigger any more. But if this is what I think it is then it’s left me a little present. Y looks thirty. Teen mom appears behind Y.

“What are you guys doing?”

She takes it in. She turns, runs.

“Shit.”

Y stands to see where she goes.

“What?”

“We just lost an advantage.”

Y looks like he’s going to run after her.

“Why?”

“Your Seller knows we’re still alive.”

Y takes a step back. Attaboy.

“Let her go. Can’t go around killing moms in the park.”

I try to stand. There is pain but it’s not from anything advancing. It’s from the volume in my abdomen. I can walk.

“Let’s go find a sharp knife. I’m gonna need you to cut me open.”

can a toaster cry?

I remember Barack Obama. I re-member terrorism. Higgs-Boson. I remember a cure for AIDS. Charity walks for breast cancer. I remember when they told us to sit up straight at computers. To clench and unclench our buttocks while we sat. Guns going off. Iron Man 4. It’s strange that you stop thinking about things. Even further back. I remember Iggy Pop. Safe havens in Bosnia. Me as a teenager. I didn’t really know it at the time but there was nothing to it. It’s not that things fade in time. It’s that they were never really there at all. All of it. Light as birthday cards. Gone.We are at the loading dock behind the hardware store. Y has snuck in to steal a blade. Narcotics have encased my bowels in concrete. It’s better than collapsing in shit, but it hurts. It’s hard to move freely.

What I think I have is… it’s a cancer that coats organs in the abdominal cavity. Doesn’t enter the lymphatic system. Not for a while. I hope it hasn’t anyway. It starts like a coating on the spleen. A woman’s shawl. And it triggers peritoneal fluid to build up. Ascites. The bells thicken and the cancer cells are released into the fluid-like spores from a bumped fungus. They drape the liver. They drape the colon. The stomach lining. The fluid accommodates this by separating the packed bodies. Creating living space for itself. And the more this cancer silt builds, the thicker and heavier the mucous becomes. Eventually the spleen sloughs off its new deadly skin and releases it as a transparent tube, a hovering jellyfish in a dark thick sea. It is a new part of you. It is a distinct creature looking to live in you. Your body recognizes it. Even in the insensate mash of glue and fatted lungs, it is awake to this new thing, the birth of this tube. And your body trusts its origin. It is a child of the spleen. It is your tissue. It is splendid and structured and hungry. So the body feeds it. That’s how you die. Your body is so desperate that this tube survive that it takes all the blood and oxygen away from what you really are and feeds this new child. This lovely tube-shaped wonder. It flattens and expands and floats. It is free. It is alone in you. It is wonderful. And then you die. Not of cancer. The cancer is just starlight. The cancer is a maker. You die of a neglected liver. Abandoned to necrotize like an old city. You are ruins.

So I’m cutting it out. I’m waiting for Y. I look around for a place to do this. I can’t walk far. I walk bowlegged to a derelict car by the dumpster. I will sit with my feet on the ground and my belly hanging. That way when we cut the base it’ll drain straight away. The cut will have to be big enough for his hand to get in. He’s going to have to pull this out.