“I just don’t think the government is telling us the full story, you know?” he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke into my face. His voice is high-pitched, his beard admirable.

IN THE DIM LIGHT OF MY APARTMENT, HE is still smoking.

“I don’t really smoke in here,” I say.

“I do!” he says, smoking.

He stubs the cigarette out and presses his mouth against mine. I become the plume. We move our bodies toward the bed, his hands already on my breasts.

“You’re the full meal,” he whispers.

I picture it like that: My body a cooked carcass, a side, a dessert, a table set to serve. He runs his hands over the knot, and he doesn’t hesitate about it, not even once.

He rests his hands on my hips below the knot before he enters me and our bodies work together frantically.

His hand finds my throat. He squeezes until the lack of air brings stars to the corners of my eyes, until pleasure shakes us.

VISION

The dark loneliness which has been hibernating in my ribs becomes a thick onyx slab that presses down over me.

It takes all of my strength to reach beyond the weight of the slab to pick up the phone. I manage to do it, then I dial the number.

“Thanks for calling Stranger Sleep. How can we help you?”

“I’d like to request a visit.”

“Would you like the same as your last order?”

“Yes, please.”

“Fifty dollars will be charged to your account. He should be there in ten minutes.”

I lean back against the pillow and the next nine minutes stretch black desert miserable, but I face it, I face it head on, I lie beneath the black rock and let it hurt, let it crush the ribs a bit.

When the doorbell rings, I struggle out from under it. I open the door, and he steps into the yellow foyer. He is tall and handsome. I avoid his eyes. Now the loneliness is a large black cube resting in my stomach: square, blunt.

“Hi there,” he says.

“Hello.”

I move down the hallway and he follows.

It is strange to see him in my bedroom, a rare creature in a new environment. I imagine a bull in a grocery store.

I climb into my bed and he follows suit, then turns to face me. He holds the side of my face for a moment, staring into my eyes. It is a calm look, the bottom of a swimming pool, the loneliness a dark triangle in the center of my chest.

“Now?” he asks.

“Yes, please,” and then I roll over, curling, waiting for him to do it.

He moves his body around mine and presses, wraps his arms and one leg around me, buries his face into the back of my neck.

I exhale and go another type of soft, a softness unrecorded before, I sink back into him, rest my body on his thighs, chest, more. He holds tighter, tighter, and then the loneliness gets small, smaller, smallest until it is a pinprick, an inverse star, a dust.