Weird shit has been making me nauseous lately: country blues guitar, commercials with soothing voices, and sustained eye contact. I’m at my clinic and try to keep it together for my one client of the day. This woman is old and funny and has a low, salty rasp, but today she sobs and heaves on the acupuncture table. Someone has died or disappeared, she tells me; I can’t follow with all the wailing. I say nothing but take her pulse and check her tongue. My stomach roars when I lean over her face to insert a needle between her eyebrows, and that’s when she snarls. She sits up and the needle wags as she scolds me. I’m wrecked by the time she’s done and gone, and I take a nap on the clinic floor.

I call my girl to tell her I’ll be late. My girl smells like maple syrup and hay. She’s my girl when I’m dog tired and we’re on the sofa and she’s pressed up against me like mortar on tile. Or when she’s making me breakfast, or when we laugh long and loud together, her feral giggle in tandem with my Moe from the Stooges howl. But otherwise, she’s my friend. I leave it at ‘friend’ most of the time, and that’s the direction I’m headed when I get up from my nap. I snooze the alarm once, but when it goes off again, I’m struck hard with an image of her face: eyes averted, mouth slack, and a sigh like it’s her last breath. I force myself to stand up, and I stumble out the door and into my truck. The night is dark and freezing. When I turn the first corner en route to my friend’s house, the fatigue pummels me again. I think I’m about to fall asleep at the wheel, and that’s the first thing I tell her when I get to her place.

I slither onto a stool. Stooped over, stomach rumbling, and prickly as hell. She should know better than to rub my back, but she’s got a heart softer than a baby animal, and I let her. I try to enjoy it, take her sympathy for what it is, but I’m also not one for pretending, and she knows that.

My friend wears a black dress I’ve never seen before. Tight but not snug; it shows off her curves but not in an explicit, club girl way. She’s too old for that. We both are. Neither of us has ever been to the club. Out here there are two bars: one that serves burgers and one for retired townies. We’d as soon stay inside than go out, but it’s Valentine’s Day, and my friend planned for us to go to the pizza place in the next town over.   

But there isn’t going to be any pizza. There’s a throbbing or a heaviness or tight pressure in my stomach that could very well cripple me if I don’t go back to sleep soon. This intestinal curse, the client, my friend who looks at me like a monk who’s just eaten his one meal of the century — all of it — rips me to exhaustion. When it’s tough to hear, it’s not going to land well no matter how you put it. I tell her I’m only stopping by. I rub my eyes and yawn.

We zoom into silence. This kind of news would usually trip her up for a moment, but she’d find my rational quick and her disappointment would dissolve. Then we’d find something new to talk about, a show to watch, a walk through the neighborhood, or more often than not, have sex. There’s a graceful way to shift gears. There’s that initial prick but then everything smooths out. I wait. The pellet stove clinks, the dishwasher gurgles, and my friend sucks on her bottom lip and looks straight past me.

She paces across the living room and holds her head between her hands. I want to lasso her, wrangle and hold her, and pet her long, wavy hair that’s fancy and draped over one shoulder. I had a dog named Wanda who she reminds me of right now. Wanda would scour the floor for her ball or toy or whatever, and when I’d scoop her up, she’d forget about her search and we’d nuzzle on the couch as I scratched her belly. I loved that dog more than anything. She’d sit at my feet and howl while I played guitar. We’d look into each other’s eyes and sing together, and I’d laugh at our impassioned warbles. She would’ve laughed too if she wasn’t a dog. Wanda was my companion for sixteen years. I miss her every day.

My friend hasn’t said a word. I want to take my phone out of my pocket but I don’t. She disappears into the kitchen, and I hear running water and a pot bang against the stove. I said something earlier about my friend looking at me like a monk, and that metaphor is spot on, but more literally speaking, she’s a devout Buddhist — a more serious one than me. She meditates two hours a day, and her wheels of compassion are constantly spinning. She smiles when she’s on the phone with the customer service people and lets their loud sighs and patronizing riddles roll off her shoulders. My friend has an impenetrable forcefield of understanding. She doesn’t get angry or sarcastic and doesn’t ask me to change out of my jiu-jitsu clothes when they reek to high heaven. I’d like to see her flip out sometime, be something that isn’t a stoic dolphin. It’d be exciting to see her fiery, or even mean.

I move next to her and put my hand on her arm that’s shaking and holding the pot of water. She throws her hands up and runs out the front door. I see her through the window crouched on the front stoop and her cheeks are red and wet. A few moments later, she charges back into the house. She mutters about needing to eat. Wanda would whimper and race around the house when she was hungry. She had a sharp bite and tore into my step-dad’s hand once when he teased her with giblets. He laughed as he dangled them above her and then threw them in the sink. It was a deep bite and went through a few layers of skin. She’d never bit anyone that hard. I love my step-dad but he’s an asshole, and that wasn’t the first time Wanda stood up to him.

My friend is making macaroni and cheese from the box. The kitchen is really hot all of a sudden even though she only has one burner on. She hovers over the stove with her hands on her hips. The water isn’t close to boiling, so I grab a lid for the pot but she throws her hair over her shoulder with the force of a whip, and I back off. She starts talking in a low, serious voice. Her normal tone is warm, on the slow side with a curious lilt like she’s practicing a foreign language. I grip the pot lid with both hands and lean closer to hear her. She goes on about all the things that are wrong with me. I’ve heard this stuff before but in her detached, dhamma-talk way that feels like a deep tissue massage on my psyche. I like prodding and digging into my instincts and behavior and finding meaning. I like cataloging and organizing the layers of my consciousness with abstract labels. We’re not doing that now, though. This is an attack.

She rips open the packet of powdered cheese with her teeth, dumps it into the steaming pot of noodles that isn’t drained, and stirs it in with a large wooden spoon. Cheese clumps to the spoon and water and powder spray her red face. She hisses she doesn’t want to be with me. She mashes and splashes and breathes out long, jagged sighs.

I take out my phone. On the home screen is a photo of Wanda asleep the day before she was put down. There’s been a lot more silence in my life since she died, and right now, that void threatens to expand. I put the phone back in my pocket and take off my jacket. The kitchen is stifling, but I like it. I have peace in my bowels. There’s a sutra about how the solar eclipse is a catalyst for power and desire, and I realize my girl is the sun. She’s a burning sun. A bright light against the darkness of winter that’s making me swelter. I put my arm around her. The risk of getting scorched feels good and right.