These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

What is it about the fucking British? Zan seethes, mostly at himself for being baited into this. Politely hostile. Gracefully aggressive. Zan says, “Torture is fear of death — like waterboarding, thinking you’re going to drown. Infliction of pain. Drilling someone’s teeth like that movie where Laurence Olivier is a Nazi”—he goes for the British actor, of course—“pulling out fingernails, hanging by eyelids on meat hooks. Being tied to a chair and made to watch a naked woman? You pay money for that in Vegas.”

“I see,” says Brown. What happened to the trusty silence into which Zan reliably falls when confronted by the indignation of others? It’s like the woman on the plane berating him for irresponsibility; suddenly he’s surrounded by people whose politics take on the tone of personal accusation. Or is it just a sign of Zan’s newly less-than-robust objectivity about things concerning the new president, a deeply dangerous protectiveness? In his own way, has he gone off the rails about his country no less than everyone else?