Dermaphoria by Craig Clevenger Page B

with her fingertips. The slow guillotine descent of the window ends with a bindle in the tip slot. She remembers me.
    Please don’t be mad at me, Desiree.

    ten
    T HE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MAN ON PAROLE AND THE MAN ON DEATH ROW is sometimes two inches of locked bathroom door or a single moment’s hesitation. The difference between those men and a chimpanzee is 2 percent of their genes and the difference between a man’s healthy tissue and his tumor is even less. Every man and every insect are made from the same six molecules of DNA, the same five atoms. One of these atoms makes the difference between speed and cold medicine, between paint thinner and TNT. Every identical act is distinguished by its intent and every intent is judged by its action. The difference between consent and rape can be a single drink or a single word.
    Everything in the universe is everything else. A man is a killer is a saint is a monkey is a cockroach is a goldfish is a whale, and the Devil is just the angel who asked for More.
    Doomed but destined to forever want the closest thing beyond our grasp, we fled the trees, stood on our hind legs and reached with our new hands. We learned to sharpen sticks, then rocks, to scream, then grunt, then speak. We were hardwired for desire, and our wanting drove us to evolve, so we evolved wanting. More food, more fire and more offspring. More gods. Gods for harvest, fire and fertility. One day, one god said, No more. No more other gods, no more of More. A million years of More were flushed away, cesspooling nine circles below the earth, a million years too late. Man’s nature has been set to be unsatisfied.
    Everyone craves the same grand version of every fortune-teller’s surefire, shotgun guess list—money or love, and there’s never enough. The richest men in the world scheme to become richer. Anyone serving time in a beige office cubicle knows this. Anyone paying mortgage on a beige house, spending what they don’t have at beige strip malls on amusements for their beige children with beige futures, knows this. Every drink, roll of the dice or second glance at a woman whispers More into a man’s ear when he’s not listening to that one god, when he’s looking where, or thinking what, he should not.
    I’ve spent my life giving people their More. I’m a chemist.
    A woman carries a torch for a lost love and her husband never knows. A man loses a child, a wife or a brother. Maybe it’s his fault or maybe it isn’t. People carry losses their whole lives, loss of a job, a friendship, a marriage, a reputation, a fortune or the life of a loved one. Some have regrets they feel every waking second, and some they feel in their sleep.
    Imagine the one god himself has reversed his clock and reversed your regrets. Imagine knowing the bone-deep truth that whatever impossibility would make you truly happy has been granted. Imagine knowing you can once again hold your lost lover or your newborn child. Imagine what you feel during those first seconds of knowing. Now, imagine those first seconds last for days on end.
    If you could buy that seventy-two-hour moment for the price of a tank of gas, would you? Go on, give it a try. God said it was okay.
    Like I said, I’m a chemist. It’s all coming back to me.

    eleven
    T HE RIDGE OF YOUR SPINE BRUSHES THE TIP OF MY NOSE, THE SKIN SLOPING from your shoulder blades grazes my lips, but my arms pass through a hole in the air when I try to wrap them around you. My heart collapses under its own sudden weight and falls into the bottomless black well of my chest. I hold still and feel you again, a warm surge from that bottomless well sets my heart right and you’re once more here beside me.
    The blanket fell from my window and now streetlights shine from the mirror. Room 621 glows like the surface of the moon. Another room replaces mine when I close my eyes. Open, close, open, close. One room swaps places with another, my field of vision changes like flipping channels.