Hide and Seek

"He doesn't touch me. Not ever. I touch him if I feel like it, but

nothing else is acceptable. And every time he forgets that, I make him

pay. Every time."

I knew a girl once who was rumored to have slept with her father. A

local girl. She was a pinched, starved little thing with frightened

eyes who held her books tight to her chest and ran on spindly legs from

class like something vast and evil was always in pursuit. Sitting next

to me now was the opposite of her, tempered maybe in the same waters

but unbroken, raw and splendid with physical health and power. This

one had turned the tables, pursuing the pursuer with a ferocity that

probably would have amazed that other girl, but that she would have

understood thoroughly.

I wondered, though. I'd met the man. To me he was just ashadow.

Insubstantial, insignificant. And I wondered if in that place within

where we're all blind and dumb to ourselves, the cat wasn't chasing its

own flayed and miserable tail.

"Let's drive," she said.

I started the car. Since we'd met, how many times had she said that

now? Let's drive. Let's just drive. It never mattered where. Slice

a fissure of black macadam through time.

Drive me.

Orders from the lost to the superfluous.

And I think I saw, glimpsed where I fit in then. Where Kim and Steve

fit in too.

We were just diversions, really. Bodies of water suitable for a brief

immersion. I diverted her into passion. If we were lucky, orgasm.

Steve and Kim into something that looked like friendship but was

probably more like continuity, habit. Company. There was nothing--not

even herfatherorthe memory of her brother--between Casey and Casey. Not

anymore. She'd expelled everybody else. Maybe it's like that for all

of us. I don't know.

I know we all are lonely. Locked off from one another in some

fundamental secrecy. But some of us declare war and some of us

don't.

This isn't a value judgment upon Casey. I'm sure she had her reasons,

that for her it was the only strategy. I don't think she came to it

out of any elemental cruelty.