The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

“Wait, Kierk, are you saying that you—”

“I’m not claiming anything,” he says up at her, shaking his head. “I’m not claiming anything right now.”

“Let me guess. You have to go.”

“Yes. But only because I have to get it down, just make everything clear.”

“So . . . I just want to make sure,” Carmen says, sitting down on his knee, “that last night was, I don’t know, that you’re okay with all this? You’re kind of running out on me here.”

“What?” Kierk looks up at her. “No, I mean, believe me, this is amazing. You’re amazing.” He kisses her long and hard. “But this idea is just nagging at me, I really think . . .”

“Maybe we could brainstorm it together?” “Maybe . . . but it’s not . . . it’s more like seeing a pattern but you can’t . . . If you go to describe it too soon it’ll fall apart. Like marring the dust on a butterfly’s wings. Like Fitzgerald.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m just gonna need the day. To investigate this.”

Carmen is nodding in his lap. “Yeah, I mean, that’s totally fine obviously. I’ve got a lot of work to do anyway . . . I think I’ve got an idea for a . . . lead. In our case. Or whatever. That we could pursue. Maybe tomorrow?”

“Sure. We’ll meet up tomorrow. Text me whatever you come up with in terms of our murder-mystery stuff.”

Kierk kind of picks her up and sets her down as he stands. Now Carmen can’t decide between seeing him off and going back to put a shirt on but she’s worried he might be gone before then. He’s already putting his shoes on and she’s still standing there in her underwear with her untouched latte.

Finally she just says—“You’re an elusive man, Kierk Suren.”

Grinning up at her—“Yeah, but I make up for it in other qualities.”

After a quick goodbye kiss Kierk disappears out the door and she hears his descent down the chairs. At first she laughs but then it turns into a frown. Her phone buzzes. Alex has texted her HOWD THINGS GO LAST NIGHT and has also sent her a bunch of kissy emojis. Carmen sends him back an emoji of a thumbs-up and some fireworks and an eggplant, followed by a string of question marks.

There’s still a lingering contact high from Kierk. Maybe it’s the nicotine. Or maybe, Carmen thinks, she can blame evolution for making humans pair-bonding mostly-monogamous primates. After all, there’s Kierk’s intellect (showing an ability to plot on behalf of his genetic material), his broad shoulders (capable of brutish brawling with other male humans for dominance), his long legs and lack of adipose tissue (good for hunting, tracking, warfare), his combination of aggression and empathy (willing to commit violence to protect the genetic material he cherishes). And he makes her laugh (sexual market value). Of course she knows it goes both ways: her intellect also demonstrates an ability to plot on behalf of genetic material, her lithe and dexterous form (excellent for gathering, crafting, stealing), her facial and musculature symmetry (indicates lack of parasites and strong immune system), her beauty (as sexual selection becomes its own tautological self-reinforcing phenomenon wherein beauty is attractive because beautiful children are attractive), and her fat deposits are all in the right places (good for the creation of the brains of more genetic material, which are mostly made of fat). But at the same time Carmen hoped that all these things were merely expressions of something else, that the deep structure of the universe rewarded this reciprocal altruism between consciousnesses, that as one traced the physical to the biological to the psychological to the spiritual it was obvious no one description captured all of it—that there was the underlying abstract truth that two are better than one, that unification was primary in ontology, that all of metaphysics was love and strife—the evolutionary was just one level of description, a single-dimensional slice of a high-dimensional object.

Regardless of its origin or ontological status she really does feel different. Beyond the exchange of saliva and flesh and friction and cum and the pressing of our bodies and all that other truly excellent stuff there were other, deeper things at work, from the exchanging of the species of fungi that live in our lungs from our breaths, the microbiome of our mouths and urinal canals and in our eyes and hair and the colonies on our flesh, there was even the exchange of human cells, the development of microchimerism wherein genetically different cells from other people are found throughout our own bodies—while cells are often thought of as this strict matrix, the bricks we are made of, actually organic cellular structure is not like inorganic architecture at all. Cells migrate and move, the whole body is always shifting, a thing with its own currents and eddies and tides. And Carmen knows those cells with different DNA are taken up in our permeable bodies and end up in our brains as well as our bellies, our genitals and toes, our lips from kissing. We are destined to become a cellular chimera made out of our mothers and fathers and lovers and children, monsters all.

After some yoga and then taking a shower, Carmen begins to do what she has done for the last two Saturdays: investigate the case, as she thinks of it. First she cuts up a banana and sets it in a bowl with cream and sprinkles brown sugar over it, and then she sits by her open window looking out at the street with her Moleskine notebook, occasionally taking banana-slice bites, listening to the city sounds. Opening to a series of pages with names, times, and locations on them, Carmen flips past those to one titled “LEADS.” Alone with her thoughts this notebook has felt both funny and dark and necessary all at once, but when Kierk was here it suddenly seemed paranoid, ill-humored, and vaguely pathetic, like