Homing by Stephanie Domet

out, it was considerably worse.
    â€œNo,” said Amanda, “forget it. I’ll just go sleep at my boyfriend’s.”
    â€œYour
what
?” Henry sputtered. “Your boyfriend? What the fuck are you doing with a boyfriend?”
    Amanda looked at him coolly. “The usual stuff,” she said, “movies, dinners, long walks in the park.”
    â€œYeah,” Henry said, “but, okay, then, what the fuck are you doing with me?”
    â€œWell, nothing,” Amanda said pragmatically. “If I hadn’t locked my keys inside, maybe, but, you know — ”
    â€œJesus Christ,” Henry moaned. “Jesus fuck,” he continued.
    â€œOkay then,” Amanda said, “I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you around. Take care, Harvey.”
    She walked away, a bit drunkenly, hips swaying, knee-high black boots kicking through the snow.
    â€œIt’s Henry,” he called after her. “My name’s Henry.”
    â€œWhatever,” she called back, not even looking over her shoulder. She disappeared down Seymour Street, while Henry stood in the snow, cursing.
    * * *
    Nathan couldn’t sleep. More and more these days, he was having trouble drifting off. It was no good, he’d discovered, to think about Rebecca, no good to wonder how his parents were, to wish Leah would pop by for a visit. It didn’t make him feel better, and as a matter of fact it made him feel a good deal worse. Instead, he thought about math. He’d always found his comfort in the ordered march of numbers, theorems, formulae. He sat in the bushes outside the main branch library on Spring Garden Road in the dead of night, and thought about Pythagoras and his theorem: Pythagoras Theorem asserts that for a right triangle with short sides of length
a
and
b
and a long side of length
c
,
a
2 +
b
2 =
c
2. He thought about all the times he’d used Pythagorean theory to figure stuff out — not just pure math stuff, either. Once he’d used it with his dad to help put the legs on a round tabletop Leah had found years ago and dragged home to furnish her first apartment. She was impressed and proud, he remembered, smiling, watching as he drew triangles and arrows and did computations on the underside of the big circle. He drew his knees up to his chest and leaned his chin on the platform his knees made. He pictured himself back in that kitchen. They were so young then, totally unformed. Her biggest fear had been that gravity would stop working. His had been that he’d never fall in love. And look at them now, he thought. And then he burst into tears.
    * * *
    Charlotte flagged a cab. “Windsor Street,” she said, climbing inside.
    â€œRight,” said the cabbie, his long dirty white beard waggling. Charlotte sank back into the seat and started laughing.
    * * *
    It was a long, miserable walk home. Henry jammed his hands into his pockets and felt sorry for himself. Fucking women.Unfuckingtrustworthy women. The wind whistled over the Common and parted his hair. He felt kicked, that was all there was to it. It wasn’t Amanda, of course. Who cared about her? It was everything. His fucking songs, his fucking life, his fucking undone laundry. And Tina, Tina, always Tina. Jesus. His guts roiled, twisted, bucked and turned. It took his breath away, it really did, the thought of her, the way she used to fold herself into him in bed at night, the way she looked in the morning, all sleepy and dear, the way she’d looked that night in the kitchen, the way she’d looked at him. The way she looked in his imagination, astride some grizzled artist, head thrown back in ecstasy, the way it rarely had been for him in recent years, her tender throat bared, her tiny perfect breasts bobbing on a sea of beauty. It was too much. Too much entirely. He sank down in the snow, put his head in his hands and cried.
    * * *
    Leah hugged Neil hard enough to make him squeak. Maybe now, she thought.