Fiction

Ebbing had perfect fetal recall.

“Tell me what man would drive all that way if there wasn’t something waiting.”

Is that bizarre? he asked. That such a brief experience of love was too much?

He had Alex now, he thought. He wouldn’t feel those old pangs. But the loneliness greeted him like a—well, not so much like an old friend. But. You know. Like loneliness.

The videos were different from anything I’d ever seen. Rope, leather, buckles, straitjackets, Lycra, latex, gas masks, ball gags. The women had ideas and Vanessa let them act the ideas out.

This was a real friend. Like old times—better times. When your chip bags spilled over and your idols reeked and all your friends tried to kill you.

Fate gives the enigmatic-yet-still-relatable protagonist the good partnering fortune she deserves.

I see now that I’m synecdochic for every institution she’s felt pinched by, every older person she’s felt used by. She wants to summon what little power she has left and ruin.

There was, I thought, a type of man who’d frequent a bathhouse. This turned out to be ignorance.