The force of my attack knocked him over. His long blond locks splayed out across the couch and his eyes opened wide in an expression of anime surprise. It was as if he’d never seen me before. I watched myself choking him, kneeling on his chest. I felt as if I’d snorted ketamine and had suddenly been gifted all the time in the world, time to notice the pores in his face and the hole in his right earlobe where he’d removed a stud. I wanted to speak to him, but my mouth was dry. A crust of white powder rimmed his left nostril and I contemplated it, this scurf of whatever he’d been snorting, and I told him I’m not a violent person, though I don’t think I spoke the words out loud. Then, for a shocking instant I was looking at myself, lying there on the couch, at my own eyes wide open in an expression of surprise. I must have slackened my grip, because he twisted round and shouldered me off onto the floor. I kept hold of him, bunching fistfuls of his shirt, his hands now at my throat. As we rolled onto the carpet, I heard the crunch of the mandolin under my back.
Of course there was some truth in his accusation, otherwise I wouldn’t have lost control of myself so catastrophically. I have always respected material objects. Not as status symbols or anything like that. I don’t have any particular need to be envied. Carter had never had to yearn for anything, a tool or toy or an instrument, something that would enlarge his possibilities or make his life easier. If he wanted it, he clicked and it came. I’d spent hours of my life, days, weeks at a time, fantasizing about musical equipment that I could not afford to buy. That mandolin was beautiful because it was useful. The sound of it breaking took all the heat out of my attack.
Carter broke my grip and straddled me, pinning my arms with his knees. Then he began to punch me in the face. People always look aroused when they’re acting violently. They’re abandoned, their guard is down. I tasted blood in my mouth and in my jolted, jumbled state it occurred to me that if I let him beat me unconscious, to death even, all my problems would be solved. It would be easy to fall into darkness, watching the wild expression on his face.
But it didn’t work out like that. No beautiful death for Seth. I let my body go limp and closed my eyes but my surrender must have bored Carter because he stopped hitting me and sat back against the couch, breathing heavily and rubbing his throat. I rolled over, coughing. The mandolin was in two pieces, the neck snapped clean through, just below the headstock.
—What the fuck? he croaked. What the actual fuck?
—You shouldn’t make everything about money.
—Get away from me.
—You shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t do that to people.
—If you care so much about that stupid box, I’ll get you another.
—Do what you like, I don’t care what you do.
I woke up the next morning to find him gone. I supposed our friendship must be over. I thought he’d come home and tell me to move out. But he never did. Days went by, a couple of weeks. I served customers at the deli and wrote job applications in a state of numb depression. I didn’t think about making music. There is a place I sometimes go to where no value attaches to anything. The world is flat. One sensation is exactly equal to the next. Putting your hand on someone’s skin or in the flame of a candle. When it’s particularly bad, it becomes a visual condition. I can look out the window and see only churn, shapes and colors that don’t add up to anything. Visible light of various wavelengths. I can spend hours playing computer games or watching internet porn. Food, when I remember to eat, tastes like ashes on my tongue.
As I waited for Carter to come back and end it, I ran through mazes with a machine gun, masturbated, bombed alien cities flat, and all I really thought about was how I’d burned out my palate and couldn’t taste my food. One afternoon, I returned from work to find, among the pizza boxes and dirty underwear on my bed, a brand-new digital delay. Seeing it, pristine in its shrink-wrapped box, I underwent an ecstatic convulsion. I’d been forgiven. Pacing the apartment at night, I had called Carter terrible names, spiteful names designed to push him away. But now he was home and I was forgiven and I danced a fucked-up celebration dance, one hand in the air, the other clutching the waistband of my sweat pants, which were about to slip off. When I got myself together I scooted through the apartment, cleaning up around the sofa where I spent most of my time, picking up soda cans and tipping the contents of several makeshift ashtrays—plates, cans, a small plastic bottle—into a grocery bag. I took a shower and examined myself in the mirror. When I sucked in my stomach, my jutting hipbones framed a concavity. I could count my ribs. I wondered if Carter would notice.
I’d done the dishes and was mopping the floor when he breezed in, a joint drooping from the corner of his mouth. He had been staying with friends in California and was sporting—I think that’s the word—a porkpie hat and an army jacket and vintage Nike sneakers and two fistfuls of silver rings. I hadn’t seen any of it before. He must have spent all his time in California buying hats and jackets and sneakers and rings.
—Hey brother, he said, all Superfly.
I resisted the impulse to hug him and modulated my voice to match.
—What’s up?
—Expressing with my full capabilities. I got you another box.
—I saw. Thanks, bro. About the mandolin—
—Don’t sweat it. I ordered another.
And with that, the fight was over. Often it was like that with Carter. By mutual agreement, we would close the trapdoor on a thing and never speak of it again. That same night he asked me if I wanted to move to New York with him. I couldn’t believe it. Reality had inverted itself. I had been so full of despair, and now I was going to live in New York with Carter. I was one of the Lord’s anointed.