disappeared. Her mind drifted in a still way   if she thought too much about
his
thoughts sheâd lose that drifting. Any practical thought that appeared was like a raised nail on a smooth wooden floor. Following a dreamy train of thought kept her in a voluptuous haze. She pictured him chasing her through a burnt, ravaged landscape and catching her and throwing her roughly down on a hill of dirt and pinning down her arms and brutally taking her. That was a nice thought. She stayed with that.
A PLANE FLEW overhead, low, out the window. You didnât notice planes much in the city. When he was little, planes were so rare he and his brothers used to run outside on the lawn and point up when an airplane went by.
After he made the decision to stay with Vanessa, bleak months followed. The only time he wasnât miserable was when he saw how grateful she was. She dropped her chin and gave him her maternal, cherishing look and he was proud heâd stuck with her. People gave you a lot of credit for that, sticking together. They admired it. Apparently, sticking together was good, in and of itself. No matter what might be going on inside. So Benjamin hung on to that notion. At times it even seemed true.
He convinced himself heâd done the right thing. He certainly didnât believe in abandoning a person whoâd been good to you. A lot of women wouldnât have put up with his unemployment, or helped so much with the movie, or thrown that party, or put him in touch with the guy who knew the guy who helped get him into the San Sebastián film festival which, even though it wasnât big, was a good one, and got him his foreign distribution. And even though
The Last Journalist
didnât have an American distributor yet, it did have its own little impact. After he screened it in Washington, the U.S. embassy in Guatemala had set up an investigation into the disappearance of Amy Anderson and the Red Cross workers with her that day. Of course, it had helped that Vanessaâs mother knew the ambassador and helped arrange the screening. Still. So once things were happening for him he wasnât going to be one of those assholes who abandons the person whoâd been there all along, in order to take up a new life with someone else.
Though sometimes he wished he were one of those assholes. He had once pictured himself married to Kay, and liked how he saw himself, hardworking, with Kay carrying their kid in one of those chest straps. But here, in this moment, he saw himself with Kay objectively, with her bare arms draped over him and the somewhat unnatural position of her face being sort of passively assaulted by him and he got the unnerving feeling that he was, in fact, another kind of asshole. Of what kind exactly, he couldnât say.
SHE COULD FEEL the cleft on top with her tongue and the raised contour of the veins against her lips if she kept them soft.
Sometimes it put her off, doing this. Contrary to what she assumed she was supposed to feel, she did not always find the penis to be an object of fascination. When she was young, it had been foreboding. It had taken her years of familiarity to develop a fondness for it. For a long time it was out-and-out frightening. But like sex it had many aspects to it.
When she first became lovers with a man, it was the private thing she felt too shy to look at. She couldnât say why. Because there were other times when she didnât feel shy, when the man was familiar and easy and she very naturally held it warmly in her hand and felt how sturdy it was and how this was privately him and sheâd feel protective and think how important a part of him this was, to him, and therefore to her, and how despite its sturdiness how it was also vulnerable. She liked how, by simply holding it, she could feel it grow, like a plant, slowly filling her palm, becoming bigger than it seemed it was going to. Then it would lose its vulnerability and become
his
thoughts sheâd lose that drifting. Any practical thought that appeared was like a raised nail on a smooth wooden floor. Following a dreamy train of thought kept her in a voluptuous haze. She pictured him chasing her through a burnt, ravaged landscape and catching her and throwing her roughly down on a hill of dirt and pinning down her arms and brutally taking her. That was a nice thought. She stayed with that.
A PLANE FLEW overhead, low, out the window. You didnât notice planes much in the city. When he was little, planes were so rare he and his brothers used to run outside on the lawn and point up when an airplane went by.
After he made the decision to stay with Vanessa, bleak months followed. The only time he wasnât miserable was when he saw how grateful she was. She dropped her chin and gave him her maternal, cherishing look and he was proud heâd stuck with her. People gave you a lot of credit for that, sticking together. They admired it. Apparently, sticking together was good, in and of itself. No matter what might be going on inside. So Benjamin hung on to that notion. At times it even seemed true.
He convinced himself heâd done the right thing. He certainly didnât believe in abandoning a person whoâd been good to you. A lot of women wouldnât have put up with his unemployment, or helped so much with the movie, or thrown that party, or put him in touch with the guy who knew the guy who helped get him into the San Sebastián film festival which, even though it wasnât big, was a good one, and got him his foreign distribution. And even though
The Last Journalist
didnât have an American distributor yet, it did have its own little impact. After he screened it in Washington, the U.S. embassy in Guatemala had set up an investigation into the disappearance of Amy Anderson and the Red Cross workers with her that day. Of course, it had helped that Vanessaâs mother knew the ambassador and helped arrange the screening. Still. So once things were happening for him he wasnât going to be one of those assholes who abandons the person whoâd been there all along, in order to take up a new life with someone else.
Though sometimes he wished he were one of those assholes. He had once pictured himself married to Kay, and liked how he saw himself, hardworking, with Kay carrying their kid in one of those chest straps. But here, in this moment, he saw himself with Kay objectively, with her bare arms draped over him and the somewhat unnatural position of her face being sort of passively assaulted by him and he got the unnerving feeling that he was, in fact, another kind of asshole. Of what kind exactly, he couldnât say.
SHE COULD FEEL the cleft on top with her tongue and the raised contour of the veins against her lips if she kept them soft.
Sometimes it put her off, doing this. Contrary to what she assumed she was supposed to feel, she did not always find the penis to be an object of fascination. When she was young, it had been foreboding. It had taken her years of familiarity to develop a fondness for it. For a long time it was out-and-out frightening. But like sex it had many aspects to it.
When she first became lovers with a man, it was the private thing she felt too shy to look at. She couldnât say why. Because there were other times when she didnât feel shy, when the man was familiar and easy and she very naturally held it warmly in her hand and felt how sturdy it was and how this was privately him and sheâd feel protective and think how important a part of him this was, to him, and therefore to her, and how despite its sturdiness how it was also vulnerable. She liked how, by simply holding it, she could feel it grow, like a plant, slowly filling her palm, becoming bigger than it seemed it was going to. Then it would lose its vulnerability and become
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