i really don’t know where to begin. sometimes it feels as if i knew amanda before i even met her. she had that quality: she reminded you of someone you had hurt and you were compelled to make amends. for all of her strength and intelligence, she would often come off like a wounded animal. and while most of the time you were tempted to put her out of misery, you found yourself more often than not tending to her, licking her wounds, brushing the hair out of her eyes, and holding her through the night.
little did i know that more i held her together, the more i came apart.

amanda comes to me in the dark, she’s been dead for a little over 48 hours, but still she comes to me. i see her ravaged, i see her broken, her lip split, a foot missing a shoe, hobbling. she comes to me with one arm limp down her side, the other reaching out for me. and as i breathe heavy into the dark, i can see her trying to say my name, trying to say something, some stark refusal that she is dead. i shiver and sweat and wait for her. i wait for her to reach our bed and take my life for hers.

when they found her, there wasn’t much of her to find. twigs and cracked blush. her nails had always been cut to the quick but painted a deep red, almost black. i would want the blood to be seen, she would tell me, when i made you bleed. her eyes were still open, staring at strewn tic-tacs inches from her mouth. as if she threw them up. a twisted arm was snapped out behind her, her palm in that half grip of someone just barely hanging onto their purse while chasing down a cab. they found one of her shoes by the curb, about fifteen feet away, where she must have tripped, they say, trying to get away. she got away with everything but in the end, it all caught up with her.

and she has breakfast in bed with ian the way normal people do with a cinnamon raisin bagel for herself and a wheat one for him. he globs on the cream cheese in a way that makes her laugh and she doesn’t think about the others, she doesn’t think about harry or tom. instead she bites into it, telling ian about her next project, telling ian about the dream she had. he listens and nods and chews, a dab of cream cheese caught in the corner of his lips. suddenly she kisses him there and he kisses her back and the bagels fall onto the bedsheets then fall onto the floor as they tumble over each other.

and when tom negotiates a deal he sees all the angles and plays it cool, plays it like a hand he’s been dealt before and he already knows its outcome. tom never comes unprepared, tom never goes in blind. he’s seen it all before, he’s looked hard and long into the mirror and he knows the man he is and could be. he’s been there, done that. just barely past thirty and he’s beaten the liquor that put his father into the ground, he’s beaten the coke that drove his friends to ruin. he’s risen above it all and he’ll keep rising, keeping plugging along until he doesn’t have to sit at any table to negotiate a deal anymore. he won’t even have to show up. he’ll have someone else do it for him. he’s almost there, but not quite yet.

harry’s seen them go from gears and levers to circuits and touch screens and everyone he looks at is a series of controls run amok, a set of frayed wires connected to circuits running for miles bundled up in muscle and flesh with plastered teeth and blunt nails broken. he sees everyone as a series of functions that have been bent by damaged childhood and warped experience, he sees everyone on the verge of rust. and when amanda walks into the room she is just like them, he is just like them, he thinks, we are all like one another, and he’d like to believe that, he’d like to believe he’s just another broken cog in a vast machine. but then amanda suddenly smiles and she tells him there’s no one quite like her in the world, there’s nothing quite like them anywhere to be found.

and when she straddles me with her hips over my head and tells me she wants to fuck my face, my hand undoes my belt and she rubs her muff along my chin and when her clit brushes my lips i feel myself harden and go absolutely mad because i can smell her, just barely taste her and it’s good and i dart my tongue into her and her fingers grab hold of my hair tugging and with one free hand i cup her ass and bring her closer to me and i want to say her name but she says mine instead when my mouth is full of her and before i know it my hand is full of my own cum and amanda smiles in the dark reaching back for that same hand and brings it towards her lips.

and every pain amounts to a phantom limb dangling inches from me, every pain a soreness i can’t fucking recover from. i can feel it just there at the periphery, just beyond my reach, a relief from all this, the promise of fulfillment, of being made whole. but i lie in the dark beside him and it’s a fucking miracle that i don’t skin him alive. that i don’t show him exactly how it feels to be this open and lacking, to be driven mad by the thought that there’s something vitally important missing inside of me and he just refuses to fucking see it.

and when ian sees her, it’s been so long that he’s forgotten what it feels like to see her again, to be with her in all her amandaness again, that energy, that excited state that pronounced her and defined her, that announced her. he hugs her, and it all comes back to him, when he’s come home again, the solidness of her, her body pressed close to him, the smell of her hair. and even though he can never be enough for her and she can never be enough to him, just holding her now is enough to come back home.

she shows me her film and i don’t know to make of it. she did it on the computer i bought her and i think what a waste. i try to smile at first but when the actress goes to the bathroom and sticks her fingers in her mouth on her knees in front of the toilet, we can see the fingers right in there “nice and deep”, she says, “notice the rack focus?” i feel like gagging with her. i see the bile and focus instead to the emblem on the plasma screen and while a part of me wonders what they used for it, i’m distracted by the sound and turn to amanda. “what is this shit?” i ask her but she’s transfixed, in some other fucking place like usual, some place she’s told me i don’t belong. i wish i could grab hold of her and snap her out of it, just as the actress wipe the spittle with the back of her hand. i wish i could her hold her and bring her back to me, as she smiles and i hear the actress flush the toilet in this stupid fucking movie amanda has made.