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Show 159 to take a last walk together. I was so sad that I almost said no, but of course I went, and just about the time it started to get dark there we were again, on that concrete bench in the garden, talking about skin. "My problem," he said, "was that I didn't feel the way I looked." "And my problem," I said, "is that I don't look the way I feel." "But you look fine," he said. "What's wrong with you?" It was enough to send my nails deep into my flesh. "Let me show you something," he said, and for a moment I was worried, remembering the last time he said something like that and his pants came down. In front of me and the spotted old ladies too. But that wasn't it, not quite, it was his hand moving up my arm, where my eyes were already focused on my skin, and then moving on my bare leg, where they weren' t, moving beneath the shift I had worn for the evening. He was showing me my skin in a new and different way. "How do you feel now?" he said. I couldn't answer. Not because I was unable to speak, but because I really didn't know, I had never felt that before. And then his hands were moving all over me, which I couldn't quite understand either until I saw that my dress was on the ground, on the grass, and so were we; and then for one moment I looked up, expecting to see the old ladies standing over us, because Owen's pants were off again, and I could feel his bandage, but the ladies weren't there and I saw only the white forms moving at the windows, before I closed my eyes and put my hands on Owen's shoulders, and just |
