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Nicky von Hartz Shapiro

Fiction

March 14, 2025

One last try…

24 messages

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Fri, Oct 13 at 10:23 PM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

Dear Svetlana,

I’ve tried everything. Figured this’d be worth a shot. Don’t ask me how I found it.

After a week of unanswered messages, I figured I wouldn’t see you again. This, on its face, I could understand. I do understand. It’s a premature ending, but as you and I discussed, this had to end sometime. Now or later, it’s not so different in the long run, the sort of long run we knew. Somewhere inside I know I will, someday, accept it, that you and it will fade, become one great learning lesson, everything dissolving into the great puddle of shit I’ll force a smile and call a learning lesson for the rest of my life.

But there’s acceptance and there’s that other thing, the doubt, blasting me over and over, replaying our last conversation dozens, hundreds of times in my head. I’ve thought of every alternative, every path I could have wound our last conversation down by replacing a noun here, a word there, adjusting my tone at a critical moment, switching to the passive tense at a crucial juncture.

That the outcome holds in each imagined scenario hasn’t stopped my ongoing search for a different destination. I hold onto the hope I’ll get there. I imagine the most crushing blow will come only later, when the fact of my finally having discovered the right formula will run into the truth that I found it too late, and, worse, that it was only in my own head, not out there where it counts. Where you’d have any chance of realizing I’d even tried to get it all back.

It must have been that talk. Right?

You make a decision and you take whatever you want with you when you walk away. I haven’t spoken with many people about you, but the few I have talk about debt. She owes you an explanation. She doesn’t owe you anything. Owing, not owing. Would our debt have ever been settled? Was our language insufficient? Did we not transcend?

Nate

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Sun, Oct 15 at 8:21 PM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

Dear Nate,

Last night, a mountain lion chased me through the streets of the city. I never actually saw it until the very end, but I knew it was there, and I knew I had to get away. I sensed it, in the beginning, near the train station. I don’t remember how. I only began to run.

I sprinted in every which direction, surprising myself with the turns I took, the routes I followed. I tried outwitting the mountain lion, and I felt the best way to do it was to outsmart myself. Complicating the whole effort was that while I sprinted for basically as long as I wanted (I impressed myself with my stamina) my feet never quite made as much traction with the ground as I would have liked. I would say it was like trying to run on ice, but that wasn’t quite it. It was as if every street, park, and lot I ran through was covered in loose, invisible gravel. Of course, there was no gravel anywhere. Each surface was perfectly normal, but my soles kept slipping, surprised air kicking up behind me with each dubious tread. Anyways, even if I’d had a good grip, I knew, the whole time, that no matter what I did the mountain lion would find me. I continued to run.

* * * * *

“So, for the record, you received the chain of messages how long after his disappearance?”

“A little while after.”

“A little while after?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll remind you, Olivia, that I know exactly how long it was, down to the minute, between the moment you were alerted to Nate’s absence and the moment you received the email chain. I’m merely asking for the record.”

“Four days.”

“Four days?”

“Four days.”

“Okay. So help me understand something—”

“Can we not review the conversation again? I told you, I already said everything I remember, and it’s getting harder for me the more I have to think about it.”

“Forgive me for being especially curious about it given my position.”

“Remind me, again, what exactly that position i—”

“You understand my confusion, don’t you? I know this week has been a lot for you. But you have to try to help me out here.”

“I don’t really understand, honestly, no.”

“You don’t understand how it might appear a little strange to me that you had a perfectly normal, completely mundane final conversation—”

“It wasn’t a final conversation.”

“What’s that?”

“I just mean I didn’t know then that it would b—it’s just not gonna be our final conversation.”

“I understand that at the time you spoke you didn’t realize it would be.”

“You keep saying stuff like that. ‘Final conversation,’ with so much certainty. Like you have any idea what’s going o—“

“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make this wor—look, Olivia, this is why I’m here. To work out, with you, what’s happened to your friend. It’s why I’m in the room with you now and a cop isn’t.”

“I’m honestly having a hard time recognizing the differe—“

“Olivia, the only thing separating you from the position you’re in now and having a lawyer next to you is your cooperation here.”

“Super un-cop like. That sentence you just said.”

“His parents decide in an hour to take this to another level and there’s nothing stopping them. They trust me. They trust you. They don’t want to have to take it there, because they don’t want to make it antagonistic. They’ve acquiesced, really entirely on your behalf, because they know the second they go to the police what’s going to happen. And they don’t want it to go down like that.”

“And? What would happen?”

“Olivia.”

“Yeah.”

“I need to spell it out for you? Seriously?”

“You think I’d go from cooperator to suspect as soon as the cops got involved.”

“Not necessarily suspect, but—“

“Yes, you do. It’s fine.”

“I’m honestly not sure what else to say to the parents after we wrap up here. ‘She’s getting more uncooperative the longer we talk?’ I mean, seriously. What do you want me to tell them?”

“I really do apologize that you’re not sufficiently satisfied with my account of our last conversat—”

“You realize when I say Nate’s ‘final’ conversation, I don’t just mean it was his last conversation with you, right?”

“We’ve been over th—“

“I mean it was his final conversation, period, with anyone. That after your ‘catch up,’ we have no recorded contact between him and anyone else. Not just anyone else. Anything. The world. His debit card goes black. Phone stops pinging towers. No last minute cash grab, call to distant relative, passport activity at the border. You have what you describe as a pleasant, half-hour long conversation, and within seconds of his departure he drops off the face of the earth.”

—

“Olivia?”

“I told you. It had been a little bit. We caught up.”

* * * * *

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Mon, Oct 16 at 9:02 AM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

I wasn’t expecting you to respond, but even if I had been I would have been blown away by the honesty and openness of your reply. We’ve talked so much about all the little cues we’re expected to perceive when we communicate, how all the unsaid stuff matters so much more than the words we actually choose. A glance here or there, a stage command in a script, the push and pull of wrists just slightly bumping against each other on a late night walk, reveals more than even the most well constructed sentence ever could. Which is ironic, I guess, considering how much time we spend practicing language.

The most special thing about you is the particular way in which you, from the first time we met on that rusted park bench, cut through those signals, obliterated those infuriating norms, with your total directness. It hurt so much to lose you, of course, but it was especially wrenching to consider the rest of the world in the wake of your disappearance. I just couldn’t understand how you could do something like that, pull the exact move you’d decried so often. I thought if YOU were capable of it…it just made me really worried about the rest of the world.

I guess the reason I made the extra effort to reach out at all is because I knew you must have had some explanation to clear things up a little. No matter what happens from here, I’m forever grateful you got me at least a little bit closer.

Nate

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Tue, Oct 17 at 1:47 AM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

I arrived at a zoo outside town. Dust hung in the still air. Sharp, dirt-caked mountains dotted the background of an apparently endless tundra. An assortment of zoo animals lay strewn in front of me, each organism in its own birdcage. Elegant bars swooped up, meeting at central points overhead. Each elephant inside its own, oversized pen, the kangaroos and leopards in medium-sized ones, the snakes trapped in thin, short cages appropriate to size. The creatures were marvelous. I was so entranced by the animals, and their peculiar terrariums, that the chase I’d just been completely preoccupied by drifted out of mind.

I was particularly transfixed by the hippopotamus. I suspect most people have never considered the absolutely tremendous size of a hippopotamus. The elephants and the giraffes were probably larger, but no other animal exuded volume in the same way. I suppose most would call it fat, but that wasn’t exactly my experience observing it. Instead, it seemed to me its innards—all its organs, muscle, flesh, blood, everything which really made it a hippopotamus—swelled flamboyantly in every direction, as if in a coordinated effort to burst through its thick, silver hide. With the faintest shift of the creature’s weight I heard all those insides sloshing around.

Suddenly, I could feel them swaying inside me. I instantly began to associate the animal in front of me not with its outer shape and behavior (in other words the usual traits by which I have always considered animals like the hippopotamus) but with all those warm, pulsating bits beating around through my gut, warming my veins. My hands inflated with blood, my feet grew swollen and stubby, and for a moment I really knew what it was like to be a hippopotamus. I was huge! But the moment was fleeting; my hands quickly contracted, feet molded back into form, and I returned to considering the animal as I had just before. There was the familiar shape of its head, long black whiskers, protruding ears. A hippopotamus as I’d always known it again stood before me. I remembered, of course, that I’d actually been the animal just then (if only for a few seconds), but I forgot what it had really been like. Such knowledge is practically useless to me now. You either are a hippopotamus or you’re not. Remembering you were one once—well, it doesn’t do much.

As the hippo dipped into its pool—it’s an amphibious animal, after all, so its cage accommodated a pool—I remembered I was still being hunted. Just then, in fact, I pivoted to discover the outline of the mountain lion on the horizon, its body a silhouette atop the valley, stalking the sun on the edge of a steep, mud-colored precipice. It was skinnier than I imagined it’d be, and I thought that it must be very hungry. At this point, I rediscovered the fear which had driven me to the zoo in the first place. A very specific fear: that of being eaten.

Struck by some old fact about the hippopotamus being the deadliest safari animal, I realized I might be able to play the intimacy I’d quickly discovered with my hippo to my advantage. As I spun my head towards its cage, though, I was dismayed to discover that the animal, its enclosure—in fact, all the animals and all their enclosures—had disappeared from the valley. It wasn’t much of a valley anymore, either, all the spiky, distant mountains had shrunk enough that it now seemed plausible I could run from one end of the dusty basin to the other in less than a minute. I might have considered the size of the new arena in those terms because now the mountain lion had really honed in, it descended the same steep mountain as before, tossing one flippant paw in front of the other, only now it was within clear sight, and the “mountain” was now a large, sloping hill. The environment had transformed into a seatless amphitheater, with slowly rising inclines all around funneling into a flat, dusty surface, where nothing, not a weed, a clump of grass, an imprint of an object, appeared to have ever been. The mountain lion and I, I realized, were destined for a duel in the middle of this space.

* * * * *

It must be really shitty for you.

What part?

The part of that report which said 80% of girls are only swiping on the top 10% of guys.

Oh.

No, I didn’t mean it like tha—

It’s fine.

No, Nate. That came out wrong. I meant it in the general sense. The “you.” I was using the general “you.”

Okay.

Really, Nate, I was. “You.” “Men.” Anyway, It’s like we were saying earlier, the whole thing is so fucked up. For both sides. It’s so toxic. We didn’t exactly need an investigative team to dig into it, I guess, to know that.

I don’t know.

You don’t know what.

I’ve had some really good experiences on there.

Nate.

What?

Come on.

What.

You know what I’m going to say.

What?

The Russian girl?

Svetlana was different.

What do you mean, different?

It was—do we have to do this again, Olivia? It was just a really specific thing with her. She had all sorts of shit going on, it really wasn’t about us or me and it wasn’t that deep—

Nate, you were apoplectic over Svetlana. We talked about it in this exact spot as it was ha—

I was not apoplectic over Svetlana.

How many times did you see her?

Five or six?

Five or six. You think it’s normal—as in, something that was happening pre-apps—to be ditched like that after hanging out with someone five or six times?

I would imagine ghosting was a thing a long time bef—

Stop it. Honestly.

What?

Because I’ve heard you talk about this before. You know how much the apps have warped everything. Created this whole cultu—

I would argue it was far easier to ghost someone a hundred years ago. Like, so much easier it almost sounds stupid to spell it out. You didn’t even know if your messages were being delivered back th—

Because of technological limitations, Nate. You’re waiting weeks for a fucking telegram or whatever back in the day or you pick a meeting point five months in advance and the person doesn’t show. There’s a million justifications for why that other person might be ghosting. Typhus, et cetera. The technology didn’t even allow for a true ghost back then, I’d argue. A ghost is a ghost is because you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the other person has received your message—or, you know, messages. And then, having received your message, and with the knowledge not only that a response is expected but that it would take fifteen total seconds to execute, the other party chooses to ignore the received communication, sometimes in the middle of an entire vibrant, meaningful conversation. Or after having met up five or six times.

The ten—the tendency is the same, though. Between then and now. Too much intimacy and you—the general “you”—shut down. Pre-app, post-app, whenever. We’re not built for it.

So it’s about human nature, then.

The Svetlana situation had nothing to do with human nature.

I see. Svetlana was immune from the human fucking condi—

You know what I’m saying.

I super don’t.

* * * * *

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Tue, Oct 17 at 10:05 AM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

I appreciate your vulnerability, but you knew I was fine waiting. You knew it wasn’t something that bothered me, or that I needed. Did I not make that clear when we spoke last?

It’s like I’m talking underwater, sometimes, when I’m in the middle of conversations like our last one, I’m not sure exactly what sounds I’m making through the bubbles and I can only be down there for so long. So maybe it came out wrong. But I promise I did my best to let you know I was seeking something greater, that if anything it’d just gotten in the way before. We talked about it, no? How it would be clarifying, how it’d make me face up to what I was actually looking for, how I’d have everything I wanted once I stopped chasing it. I was so looking forward to not chasing you, and I was ready to continue with you in whatever way you were most comfortable with. I thought I’d made that all really clear. I’m above water, right now, and I’m telling you I still feel the same way. I was committed, and I thought, at least by the end, that you’d been too.

All I wanted was to be near you. I’d have taken whatever whisper of your skin temperature might have wafted over me just by standing next to you, knuckles dangled side by side, in the long shadow of an ancient clock tower whose hands stopped turning forever ago. I’d still take it.

Nate

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Wed, Oct 18 at 11:56 AM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

Tracing a convoluted, erratic path over the valley floor, the mountain lion closed in tauntingly. I’d backed myself to the flat ground’s edge, and I felt any further effort to escape was pointless—the space too vast, my body too inadequate. I dug my heels into the gentle incline on the precipice of the basin and squatted to the level of the predator’s head. Lowered my gaze, closed my eyes, collected myself for a breath. Attempting to mimic bravery but also vaguely sensing I was now being watched, I slowly fluttered my eyelids up and lifted my head to face the mountain lion.

Its neck was drooped below even my shortened sightline, head lowered into a position I couldn’t quite decipher. Was it ashamed? Poised? The consequences felt equally devastating, but what was the point of such interpretation? Thoughts like this continued to flow despite the stakes. I could make out its individual teeth now, yellowed and shiny, corners of the mouth pulled back into a snarl, and it was so close I caught individual strands of fur in its dark, crisp shadow. Its tail snapped menacingly in the background. The animal weaved its paws between themselves as it creeped forward, bulging yellow pupils, highlighted by the gauntness of the predator’s face and the black of its eyelids, piercing my forehead.

What to do in such a compromised position? I briefly raised into a crouch, lifted flat palms below my cheeks. Protect the head, I thought, though when the soft flesh in my stomach felt particularly vulnerable I retreated to my lower squat, knees jammed into my pounding chest, hands up just under my eyes. As if sensing my body shift, the lion sprung into a more active position, appearing ready to pounce. It shifted its weight to its hind legs, strutted up a plume of dust with its front left paw, and released a low, deep purr. I turned my left shoulder up slightly, squinted past my knees, and braced for impact. The animal leaned back, front legs lifted off the ground like a distressed horse, and its sharp, ragged claws began falling directly towards me. I clenched my face and squeezed my eyes shut.

The immediacy of the situation gave way to a certain acceptance, one which was still accompanied by fear but which nonetheless brought me out of my distressed state. Knowing it was here, I no longer dreaded the sound of my snapping forearm, the sting of shredded skin, the sight of my unspooled, shimmering guts piled up in my lap. I was aware of all this not just in retrospect but as the event itself was unfolding. I was shocked, in fact, at how capably my mind continued racing even amidst this infinitesimally terminal moment, how much I could fit into such a truncated space, amidst so much turmoil. Surely I should be under attack by now, victimized by the great hunter leaping before me. It’d make contact any millisecond now, all thought ripped from me in a single swipe.

It was peculiar how long it was taking, though. It was more than peculiar. It was nonsensical. The timeline didn’t add up. Seconds had passed. Right? It wasn’t just the rapidity with which thoughts flashed by in the intensity of the moment. The mountain lion should be on top of me, tearing me apart. That it wasn’t was unsettling. I was certainly glad to feel safe, eyes squeezed tight in the dark, but it was unnatural, this alternative, the elongated pause in the action. It wasn’t supposed to be.

Such inner debate, the sort I’d always assumed would be obliterated by something like the exact life-or-death situation I presently faced, raged on despite the circumstances, and I became so engrossed in this ritualistic self-awareness that the utter novelty of my surroundings completely melted away. I felt a disappointing comfort in life returning to what it’d always been, a series of minor, internal equivocations, complete inertia and total numbness. Maybe I wanted to be mauled?

CLANK.

Meditations interrupted by the screeching clash of metal. My eyes instinctively snapped open, and I tumbled backwards out of my squat onto the slanted wall of the amphitheater. No sign of the mountain lion. Where was I? Where had I been?

A rush careened through my chest up through my shoulders, all the pent up hormones too shy to deploy when I’d really needed them tardily coming to the rescue. A wave of relief followed; I’d imagined the whole thing. I was safe. I leaned up and reached to dust my elbows. A single glint of silver reflected in the distance. My hand froze in place, and I raised my head slowly, this time out of dread, not performance. My eyes met an object in the distance. Organs sank to the bottom of my stomach.

Sprawled motionless on its side, maybe a hundred feet away, was the mountain lion. Just the rear quarter of its tail twitched, listlessly slapping the ground to a slow, repetitive beat as it stared towards me. It lay inside its own, mountain lion-sized birdcage.

* * * * *

“Upon receiving the email chain, how did you feel about its contents?”

“How did I feel about its contents?”

“Correct.”

“Well, I think I probably felt the same as anyone else who’s read them.”

“And who else would that be?”

“I don’t know? Me, when I first got them, then his parents when I told them about it, then you and, yeah, that’s all I know of.”

“You didn’t send it to anyone outside his parents?”

“Of course not, no.”

“Okay. The emails themselves.”

“Yes?”

“What was your reaction upon reading them?”

“I told you. Same as you, I’m sure. Super fucking confused.”

“And its contents in no way mirrored the last conversation you’d had before you received it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Or any conversation you’d had prior?”

“I’m sorry, but—“

“You know these are questions I have to ask.”

“Sure, but, like, no, no, we didn’t talk about lions or hippopotami or trout or anything else in the animal kingd—”

“And metaphorically?”

“Metaphorically?”

“Yes, metaphorically. Was there a connection, or a potential connection, between any of the themes of the emails and anything that you’d ever, or in particular during your last conversation, discussed?

“Aren’t you biting off a little more than you can ch—“

“Olivia.”

“No. Even from a metaphorical perspective, I find it difficult to see how anyone could draw a connection between the emails I received and any aspect of Nate and I’s relationship.”

“So that’s it? You read the emails, think, huh, no one’s seen Nate in four days, and this is something that belongs in my inbox?”

“Well, no. It more than that, of course. I was creeped out, for sure, more than just confused. I mean, I’ve never read anything like that in, I don’t know, a book or whatever, a place where I’d have at least expected it, and then for it to appear after I’d just heard from Nate’s mom. It was eerie. Bizarre. Creepy, yeah. I think I said that. That’s why I told the parents right away. Forwarded them everything. It’s why I’m talking to you.”

“But why were you the recipient of the emails?”

“I have no idea.”

“Come on.”

“Truly. That was the most confusing part, obviously, if I haven’t already made that clear. I’ve thought about it, of course, why I got them. Who might have sent them, why.”

“You doubt the identity of the sender?”

“I mean, I assume Nate, right? I’d guess you do too. But, yeah, I don’t know for sure, of course, because the original email address was so jumbled. You said it was encrypted? You haven’t figured it out, have you?”

* * * * *

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Wed, Oct 18 at 2:19 PM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

Okay, so it was the way I said it. I’m sympathetic to this being a difficult conversation for you, but I’ve gone over this a million times and I honestly can’t think of how I might have addressed this to fit your definition of appropriately sensitive given that we did have to talk about some pretty deep stuff that day. I really did the best I could.

And I honestly don’t understand your concern over my friends, that getting in the way somehow of whatever we had. Really? As if I’m this totally different person around them? I promise there’s nothing I’m telling my friends which I wouldn’t tell you, and vice versa. I think you’re putting that onto me, a tiny bit, maybe because of past stuff, and I understand, but I haven’t done anything to justify you thinking that even a little (it doesn’t actually matter since you never gave me the chance to introduce you).

I don’t really understand what you’re getting at. It seems you’re trying to say lots of big things, but I sense you’re getting caught in the details, using them as excuses when there’s still this fundamental question you won’t answer. You’re justifying it by getting stuck in the weeds when all I every wanted to know was:

Why didn’t you just say all of this from the beginning? Why did you leave me in the dark?

Nate

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Wed, Oct 18 at 9:46 PM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

Later that day, it must have been around sunset, endless waves of orange light cut diagonally into the valley. I stared beyond the gray bars, multiplied beyond recognition as they drifted in and out of focus, into the mountain lion’s roaming, blinking eyes. I stayed like this for many seconds. In a flash, the lion’s gaze shifted to meet mine. I felt a tremendous fear, far greater than the one I’d experienced earlier in the day, the one of being eaten, and I realized I was more scared of the encaged animal than I’d been when we stood face to face, convinced it would maul me. I couldn’t bear to face it any longer. I turned away, right into the brilliant, bright rays of the sun.

Just then, I was struck by an old memory.

As a young child, I spent long summers in the country with a distant cousin. A small brook ran through the property, funneling into different ponds, and in those days, before the stream dried up, trout would jump airborne over a shallow channel at a specific point to avoid getting caught in the waterhole behind the house. The older boys spent hours at that spot, mostly failing to catch trout out of the air with their bare hands. I’d watch from the side, heart pounding in my little stomach, and screamed and shouted and jumped with the rest of them on the rare occasion someone knocked a fish out of the air. I wanted nothing more on those trips than to catch one myself, but I could never, the first few years I visited, mount the courage to try.

On one of those summer days, it began pouring rain. Alone on the screened porch, staring out into the downpour, listening to the rushing brook, taking in the patter of the stone patio, I turned onto on my stomach, legs kicked into the air behind me. It occurred to me then would be a perfect time to go for a fish. Everyone was inside, I guessed. No one would be watching. I peeled off my sweater, opened the squeaking screen door, and stepped outside. On high alert, peering around with just my pupils, I descended a small, slippery hill towards the stream, bare heels sliding as I trudged through the long, wet grass, and settled down, on my shins, right in front of the gurgling brook. Fabric clinging to my skin, I extended my arms in an imitation of the older boys, opening my palms in what seemed the correct position.

I caught one immediately. Clean. The first fish that jumped. I unclenched my shoulders, opened my eyes, and turned to face the writhing trout, locked amidst my trembling hands in the exact spot I’d grabbed it. It oscillated through the air, midsection wiggling furiously between its dual traps, shooting electricity through my bones, vibrations over my guts all the way down into my folded toes. Unadulterated awe, irrepressible elation. The trout was huge, much bigger than anything I’d ever seen the boys catch. It was so big I was afraid if I left it alone to flop in the grass to die out it’d be powerful enough to propel itself back into the stream. I worked up the courage to lower my arms and gently placed the fish into the soggy grass, pinning it down from its top side, one hand each over its head and tail. It struggled powerfully there on the soft, slippery ground, muscles writhing desperately, zapping pupils searching inconsolably for traces of any long-lost appendage which might have helped it claw out of its present jam. Itching to return to the house to show it off, I sat alongside the rushing stream impatiently, still on my muddy shins, jamming both ends of the fish into the earth until its squirms decreased in violence, tail pressed against my palm with diminishing force, and it, over the course of many minutes, weakened and died under my weight. I lifted my hands and sat there in the rain, just me and this dead, bulging fish, with a lifeless spotted tail and an eternal look of shock in its now-inert eyes. I scooped it up and dashed over the bank to the front door.

It went just as I dreamed it would. One by one the kids gathered under the television swiveled over to the door, towards me, and rushed over, screaming and hollering and leaping like I was accustomed to doing for them. I raised my idol high in the air, twirled around amidst the group, fending off questions like how’d you do it and have you ever seen such a fish, playing coy and basking in it, spraying muddy water over the walls as I spun.

It wasn’t until the celebration subsided, a minute later, that I noticed Alex, the oldest and most revered of the cousins, had remained still and seated on the couch through everything. The other kids must have perceived this, too, because suddenly everyone turned to face my stoic older cousin. A single tear ran down his left cheek.

What is it, Alex, someone finally asked. A long pause. My cousin choked down a swallow.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he said through a cracked windpipe, turning directly to me. “Do you?”

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Thu, Oct 19 at 12:32 AM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

Okay. I understand. I mean, in one way, at least, like I wrote at the beginning, yeah. I guess there’s just a lot here I’ll never know, lots I’ll have to try to accept on my own. Which is good for me, I suppose. Like I already said. Yeah. I’ve been longing and longing and longing and I don’t know when it’ll end but I think this puts me closer. I mostly disagree with you, of course, but having heard you out I’m at least nearer than I was. Thank you for that, I guess.

Where do we go from here?

Nate

* * * * *

You know why the Svetlana situation was different, Liv.

Right. The virginity thing.

It really sounds like you’re trivializing it when you cal—

Sorry. The thing where the immutable fact of her being a virgin caused her to stop responding to your messages, out of the blue, after a month of being in co—

She was twenty-four years old and she was a virgin.

And?

And I felt like that was a red flag.

So much of a red flag that when she told you about it after your fourth da—

First.

Huh?

It was on our first date. At the end. That’s when she told me.

Okay? So when she told you about it on your first da—wait, I didn’t know that.

—

Nate?

What?

She told you about it after your first date?

Yeah.

Why did you go on four or five more?

What do you mean?

You just said her virginity was a red flag. So why did you go on more dates with this girl when she told you after the first one?

—

If you knew from the beginning?

—

Nate?

I didn’t think I could change her. I know that’s what you’ll say. “You thought you could change her.” I didn’t want to—look, can we talk about anything else?

Nate, I know you didn’t think you could change her. That’s not your thing, and it’s not where I was go—.

Can we cut this? Please.

Yeah, we can. But you’re dodging.

Come on, Liv.

What?

You’re being unfair.

I’m just saying.

What?

That you’re someone who puts a lot onto other people. And I think you don’t admit it and I think it’s worth discussing.

What are you talking about?

You were intimidated by Lou’s friend. For example. The one who showed up last week.

Who?

Roland.

If you’re suggesting a single thread of connection between Svetlana and Roland—

You were intimidated by him.

No—it wasn’t that. At all. At all. He was German, that guy. He didn’t understand what we were saying, so he just sat there reading Kafka or whatev—

It was Calvino. Translated. He spoke perfect English, and you know it. I went over a few days before and he was helping Lou put together an IKEA table. They communicated flawlessly.

The defining feature of the IKEA manual is that it features no words.

You fucking get what I’m saying.

I actually super don’t.

You do this thing where you assume people who linger in the background have this whole hidden side to them. You mistake silence for mystique. You think they’re better than they are—better than you—just because they don’t say anyth—

I do not mistake silence for mystique.

No, you do. The less someone says, the more of a blank slate they are for you to project whatever image you w—

I do not mistake silence for mystique.

You might be in denial a li—

I do not mistake silence for mystique.

* * * * *

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Thu, Oct 19 at 3:38 AM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

Alex stepped forward silently, scooped the trout out of my hands. Turned it over gently in his palms. Ducked through the archway leading to the kitchen in the next room, placed the fish delicately on the stainless steel counter next to the sink. Silently, he pulled a pocket knife out of his trousers and unfolded the blade with just his left hand, so that it dangled loosely by his waist, limply facing the floor. He lifted his right hand and began stroking the trout with the backside of his index and middle forefingers, head to tail, with the direction of its scales. His fingers made four delicate, complete strokes over the body. Then, breathlessly, he raised the knife into his right hand and, without a hint of indecision, jabbed the blade deep into the trout’s underbelly, sliding it three inches back to its tail. With his free left hand, he grabbed the fish by the head and dangled it over the sink, tail swaying towards the drain, and placed the knife, dripping purple with blood, on the silver counter, in the beaded residue of the fish. Blood congealed around the gash, dripped slowly into the sink.

Raising his right hand, he wrapped his pointer finger and thumb around the fresh incision. Turned to gaze deep into my eyes. Squeezed his fingers together, just outside the edges of the gash, ran his hand down the length of the cut. A wave of tiny, round objects, reminiscent of the orange beads I’d been threading into bracelets all summer, drenched in purple slime, poured out of the gash and landed in the bottom of the deep, empty basin with tiny, individual thuds, stray peas missing the strainer as they’re poured out of a scalding pot. His fingers made four more passes over the opening until its contents emptied.

thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud

thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud

thudthudthudthud

thud

My throat tightened, breath shortened. I gasped for air, began doubling over my knees before discovering I couldn’t move. Alex’s stare never left my eyes. I couldn’t look away. Only the firm poke of a finger on my right ribcage interrupted the trance. I’d forgotten anyone else was there. The finger belonged to Sasha, a few years older than me, another cousin. Her mouth opened carefully, as if held back by a tight spring, and once her lips grew to shape a perfect oval they snapped together to make sound.

“BABY…KILLER!” she shrieked. I turned to face the group, and I could see it in each of their eyes, the exact moment, on every face, when shock gave way to comfort, horror dissolved into to glee. More voices joined the chorus, some interrupted by cracks, others by squeals, but all repeating the same words.

“BABY KILLER! BABY KILLER!”

Alex released the trout, still hanging like a floppy kite on a still day from his hand, into the sink amidst the screams. Cushioned by the pile of beads, it landed stealthily at the bottom. My cousin glided away without washing up, droplets of bloody rainwater streaming from his long fingertips onto the linoleum floor as he swung his hands in stride. I could only move my head. Before I knew it, thick arms scooped me up from under my knees and back. I lurched around in the air, head elevated exactly to the height of the kitchen counter. At the bottom of the sink, strewn amidst piles of hundreds of small, round pellets, dark dots glowing translucently from within each orange sphere, soaked in its own oozing blood, was my trout. Head lost at the bottom of a vertiginous, clumpy rainbow, tail flipped over its body into an arch, it had assumed a pose I am certain it never occupied at any other point of its existence. It was, at most, half its original size. I floated upstairs into bed.

Later that day, vision fuzzy, gait uneasy, I stepped on a bumblebee. I’d been terrified of bees my whole life, but here I’d finally been stung and it didn’t feel like anything. I plopped down in the grass amidst the buzzing gnats and screaming cicadas to scrape the bee and its half-lodged stinger out of my calloused foot. I held the striped, furry insect in front of my nose, watched it squirm slowly in my palm, oozing a little where its stinger had deployed. It spun meekly in my hand, slowing progressively, and dizzied to a halt. I pinched one of its pointless, dead wings and flung it aside into the glistening, uncut lawn. I never ate fish again.

I flinched away from the sun, back towards the mountain lion, which hadn’t moved its eyes off me, and just then all my insides vacated my body, my bones disintegrated, arteries emptied, organs shriveled, and I crumpled to the ground in a heap, face smushed against the loose dust of the valley floor. I awoke some time later, parched to the bone, head overinflated, and, with great effort, gently lifted my gaze. The mountain lion, the cage, the animals, they’d all disappeared. It was dead dark but for a dim crescent moon, which provided just enough yellow light for me to sense that I’d changed irreversibly, transformed intractably, occupied a body whose rhythms would take a lifetime to master, whose limbs would require total effort to stir, whose sense of self had, in a single, blinding moment, been obliterated beyond recognition. My new eyes caught a glance of a subtle movement near the ground. I couldn’t be sure, but I’m pretty certain it was the twitch of a left paw.

Have you ever seen a mountain lion in a zoo?

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Thu, Oct 19 at 7:35 AM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

What can I do to get you back?

Nate

* * * * *

Look, I’m sorry this upsets you, really, but dramatically repeating that phrase isn’t going to change much about the underlying situation.

I’d really like to move on, Olivia.

Okay. As long as you have some other outlet for this stuff, some way to let it out.

I do.

You do?

You sound surprised.

Well, I guess I’m sort of wondering to myself who else, exactly, there might be? James and the gang? I get the feeling they wouldn’t be so…amenable? To the insecurities of which you speak.

I wouldn’t really call these insecurities.

Okay. The…stuff you’re talking about.

Yeah, well, I don’t talk to them about it.

* * * * *

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Fri, Oct 20 at 6:43 PM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

Wait.

* * * * *

“And you and Nate weren’t…”

“What?”

“Please, Olivia.”

“I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking”

“You weren’t…involved with each other at any point?”

“What do you mean?”

“Olivia.”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing ever happened between you two?”

“What do you mean by happened?”

“I will kindly remind you that the only person hurt by your continued obstinance is yo—”

“I think what you see as ‘obstinance’ I view as an attempt to get you to confront the root of your question. To make you understand the place from which you’re asking it. And the more I think about it the more I’m sure if you continue to ask the sorts of questions you’re asking, meaning that if you continue to operate under the assumptions you’re making right now, you’re just not going to get it.”

“I’m not going to get what?”

* * * * *

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Fri, Oct 20 at 6:51 PM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

As long as it takes.

* * * * *

Therapy?

No.

* * * * *

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Fri, Oct 20 at 7:07 PM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

Often the shortest-lived friendships are the most meaningful.

* * * * *

“You’re just not going to get it. Let me ask you: how hard has it been to avoid asking that question until just now? To wait until we’ve had a few days, gotten comfortable with each other, built up the trust to soften me up enough to give you the answer that’s gonna crack the whole thing open? I’m in love with Nate! A-ha! Or, better, he’s in love with me! I’m just too stubborn, too oblivious, too young to see it. How really it’s me who’s at the center of everything. I want to be clear that my perceived uncooperativeness does not stem from my unwillingness to participate in the process of getting Nate ho—figuring out what’s going on. I miss my friend very much, and I’m hurt and angry and confused, all of which I’ve told you, and I don’t know why it was me who he, or whoever, involved in this. It comes from my complete certainty that you’re totally off the mark. You gave that question away with the first thing you said to me, the tone you’ve used from the beginning. The patronizing omnipotence. You never smile but I hear the stifled chuckle undercutting everything you say. The little shake of the head, the corner of your mouth up, the look into the fucking camera. As if it would all come down to a crush, as if love, this love only you know, explains how the lions and hippos and trout lead to Nate in a direct line through me. You didn’t need to ask that question to give it all away.”

“You say you’d never heard of the girl?”

“Right. Back to it.”

“It’s my job to ask questions.”

“Great. Please repeat the last one.”

* * * * *

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Fri, Oct 20 at 7:12 PM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

Is all you want a “friendship”?

* * * * *

So?

—

Nate?

I’ve been writing.

Oh. I didn’t know you wrote.

* * * * *

Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com> Fri, Oct 20 at 11:56 PM

To: Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com>

You know that’s never been true.

* * * * *

“You told me Nate never mentioned the girl.”

“Which girl?”

“Olivia, please. You caught up four days before you received that email dump and you say he made no mention of any girl in particular?”

“He talked about a few, really gave a very broad overview, and then we moved on. It wasn’t the sort of thing we talked about in great detail. That wasn’t our relationship.”

“So he made no mention of the girl?”

“Which girl?”

“You know who I’m referring to. The girl in the emails. Svetlana.”

“We never discussed anyone named Svetlana.”

* * * * *

Nathan Cole <nathanco97@gmail.com> Sat, Oct 21 at 12:07 AM

To: Svetlana <svetllama214@yahoo.com>

Really?

* * * * *

Not, like, real writing. Just jotting stuff down. Things I think of, things I remember.

Oh. Cool. What sorts of things?

* * * * *