“Look,” Matteo said. “Who’s to say some people don’t have different perceptive abilities? I mean, we only have three cones in our retinas to help us perceive light. Mantis shrimp have sixteen.”
Violet engulfed the bodies of every diner in the restaurant. It slid up the table legs, over the white cloths and the leafy, trembling centerpiece.
“Well,” Howie said. “But there’s a physical reason for that.”
“Why do you know how many retina cones mantis shrimp have?” Dawn said, laughing.
The violet was crawling up my arms. I could feel it, the pleasure extreme. When I masturbated, I often thought before coming, why don’t I do this again, again, again? That same feeling spread over my skin.
The food arrived. Violet flooded my vision. And then—my eyes were everywhere.
“What is it?” Dawn asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea.”
Matteo leaned over and spooned up a green liquid from the bowl the waiter had set before me.
“Pea soup,” he said.
“Ohhh,” Dawn said.
My body was covered with eyes and I saw from all of them at once. In fact, I could perceive from every living surface within a few feet. From a leaf of the English Ivy centerpiece, I looked up Howie’s nose. From the quivering mass of a still-live oyster on Matteo’s plate, I saw his sun-cracked lips ready to slurp me into his dark, warm mouth, felt my terror as his teeth sunk into me. From Dawn’s elbow, I saw the ingrown hairs on Howie’s forearm. What’s more, I could suddenly see the memories of every being I regarded, the images tucked in the folds of their grey matter or chlorophyll like tiny holograms. The English Ivy remembered winter which, inside the restaurant, never arrived.
I didn’t have to turn to see Matteo’s face, I could see him from the back of his hand, and mine. He was six, sitting with his parents, joyously discussing the categorical imperative. He was fourteen, a skinny nerd beaten bloody by some boys near a cowpea field. He was twenty-two, fantasizing about my roommate in Chicago while we all watched television together; he sobbed in his apartment after she moved out. When I wanted to look away from Matteo, Dawn was ten times worse. She was naked except for little girl skivvies as her smiling uncle put his hand inside them. She was coughing beneath the mildewed air conditioner she’d loved in a dark, shag-carpeted room full of cigarette smoke and too-loud TV. A girl injected her with heroin. She injected herself with follicle-stimulating hormone. Howie was shaving his arms in the shower. He did this every morning. He loved having smooth arms, a smooth chest, a smooth crotch. He remembered nothing before he was eight years old.