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: : : AT SOME POINT IN THE spring it shifts—she mentions that she's tired of paying the high prices at the bar, he suggests that they pick up a couple of cases of Old Style and bring them back to his place, soon it's a routine. They always end up in the one room in the apartment that's not the kitchen or a bathroom, which she guesses you'd call his bedroom, even though it also has his desk in there and his computer and his bookshelves and all his other office stuff, not just the bed.
She finds a copy of the Chicago Tribune in among the sheets. She looks at it, reads the first paragraph in an article about military personnel in Iraq stripping a sixteen-year old boy and splattering him with mud in order to torment his imprisoned father. She bangs the back of her head against the wall.
—Do you ever, Clark says, —do you ever just get the urge to destroy everything?
Oliver's next to her in the bed. —The urge to destroy is also a creative urge, he says. —Quick. Who said it?
—Please, Clark says. —That's an easy one.
Oliver rolls his eyes.
—But no, seriously, she says. —I mean, you read about these prison abuses—she flaps the paper in the air—and everybody pretends like they're so shocked and everybody makes noise like they're going to get to the bottom of it or whatever—but there is no bottom, I mean the thing I keep thinking is that these kinds of systems can't be redeemed, this is what military systems are designed to do, you know? They're designed to make you think of the people on the opposing side as like animals.
—Lower than animals, Oliver says. —I mean people have empathy for animals.
—Not in that environment you wouldn't, Clark says. —That kind of environment is designed to equate empathy and weakness. And if you're seen as being weak in that kind of environment you're in danger. So that's why—I mean it seems to me like you can't just fix one part of it—I mean all the pieces work together—
—You're spilling, Oliver says.
She looks down and realizes that, indeed, she's holding her can almost sideways and beer is pouring out onto the sheets.
—Oh, Clark says. —Let me fix that problem—
She tilts her head back and pounds down the rest of the beer. Some runs out of the corner of her mouth. When she's done she tries to crush the can on her forehead.
—Ow, fuck, she says. —I don't really get how people do that.
—Let me try, says Oliver. He takes the can from her and smashes it up against his forehead. He tries a second time: it bends in half but doesn't crumple. Clark begins to giggle. Oliver throws the can across the room; it bounces off of a bookshelf. Clark's giggles get worse.
—I know what you mean, though, he says, once she's settled down a little. —I mean I just look around at all of this crap and sometimes I just think—my God, you know, who collected all of this crap? Where did it all come from? Why do I have it? Sometimes I just hate it, all of this stuff, sometimes I just want to—
—Like burn it all down and just walk away?
—Yeah—just fucking torch it. He gets up, sets his beer down on the floor, and goes over to his desk. There's a plastic rack stuffed full of papers, he grips it with both hands. —I mean, look at all of this shit, he says. —What even is all of this shit?
He pulls a handful of papers out, crumples them in his hand, and lets them fall to the floor. —None of it's important, he says. —None of it. It's all like this baggage—this horrible weight—I just want to trash it all—
—Go ahead, says Clark.
—Go ahead?
—Go ahead. Trash it. Fuck it.
He picks up the rack and holds it out in front of him. —You sure? he asks.
—Yeah, she says. —Do it.
He picks the rack up over his head and then swings it down in an arc. Clark shrieks with delight as papers rip out of it into the air.
The rack hits the floor. Tiny pieces of it break off, ricochet and skitter. Oliver picks it up again and throws it into the corner, managing to knock over his beer in the process. He begins to pick up paper off the floor and throw it around the room.
—Wait a second, says Clark. She's noticed something. She moves to the edge of the bed. —Let me see your hand.
Oliver holds out his hand and she takes it into hers. There's a nasty-looking gash on the palm; he must have cut himself on the broken plastic.
—You're bleeding, she says.
He doesn't say anything. He's staring at her. His eyes are intense somehow—extra dark—the pupils are huge.
She lifts his hand up to her mouth and licks the wound. The next thing she knows she's sucking at it. He sort of pushes his hand into her face, pushes hard until she goes down onto her back. He pulls himself up onto the bed, straddles her, his hand still clapped onto her mouth.
Wait a second, she thinks.
Then she tells herself stop. Just stop. Stop thinking.
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