Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  After, she couldn’t believe she’d done it. PaisleySHE AND MAIA take Victoria to dinner to celebrate her job. She’s the first of them to know what she’s doing next year. When Maia asks, What does Bru think? Victoria knocks over her glass of red wine. It spills on the white cloth and onto Victoria’s lap. In the commotion that follows, the question never gets answered. She assumes that means Victoria hasn’t told Bru yet. But she’s sure he’ll follow her anywhere. She’s decided Victoria is impossibly lucky. Ever since she spent Labor Day weekend on the Vineyard and had the chance to get to know Bru, she’s developed a teensy crush on him herself. Obviously, she’s careful to keep these feelings to herself. She would never act on them except in her fantasies and fantasies don’t count. Or maybe what it’s really about is seeing her friend adored by a great guy. Either way, Victoria has it made. [image file=Image00006.jpg] BRU CAME TO SEE VIX the first weekend in May, during a freak spring storm that began as wet snow, turned into a serious thunderstorm, and knocked out half the power in Cambridge. Not that they cared. They were in bed most of the time. Bru pinned her wrists above her head and watched her face as he drove into her. It was fierce, possessive sex and it made her uneasy. Not that it didn’t turn her on. Put her near Bru and like a knee-jerk response, her juices ran, her Power lit up. Her attraction to him never wavered. When the rain ended they ventured out to walk along the muddy banks of the Charles. Vix longed for sunshine. She tied her new silk scarf around her neck and zipped her jacket. She’d been waiting for Bru to ask to see Five Minutes in Heaven . So far, he hadn’t. She would offer to show it to him later, after dinner, then break the news about her job. Suddenly he stopped and blocked her path, his hands on her shoulders. She couldn’t tell from his expression what he was thinking. He took a small jeweler’s box out of his pocket and handed it to her. “We don’t have to get married right away,” he said. Married? “We can wait a year if you want … but I need to know at the end of my wait you’re going to be there for me. You’re going to be my wife, have my kids …” She opened the box and choked up as she looked at the tiny diamond set in gold, sparkling on blue velvet. Do you marry someone because the sex is good? Do you marry someone because you know, deep down, he’s a decent person, even if you can’t talk about the same books? She thought about the couples she knew—her parents, Lamb and Abby, even Loren and Tim Castellano. What was it that made them choose one another? How do you ever know it’s right?

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Ah, Therese, Therese, prove to me that it is true, this project... put me in a way that will prevent me from doubting; I need all that may aid in extinguishing the sentiments my unthinking heart dares yet preserve for the monster...." And then I brought the package of poison into view; it were difficult to furnish better proof; yet the Marquise wished to experiment with it; we made a dog swallow a light dose, shut up the animal, and at the end of two hours it was dead after being seized by frightful convulsions. Any lingering doubt by now dispelled, Madame de Bressac came to a decision; she bade me give her the rest of the poison and immediately sent a courier with a letter to the Duc de Sonzeval, related to her, asking him to go directly, but in secrecy, to the Secretary of State, and to expose the atrocity of a nephew whose victim she might at any moment become; to provide himself with a lettre de cachet; to make all possible haste to come and deliver her from the wretch who had so cruelly plotted to take her life. But the abominable crime was to be consummated; some inconceivable permission must have been granted by Heaven that virtue might be made to yield to villainy's oppressions: the animal upon which we had experimented revealed everything to the Count: he heard it howling; knowing of his aunt's fondness for the beast, he asked what had been done to it; those to whom he spoke knew nothing of the matter and made him no clear answer; from this moment, his suspicions began to take shape; he uttered not a word, but I saw that he was disquieted; I mentioned his state to the Marquise, she became further upset, but could think of nothing to do save urge the courier to make yet greater haste, and, if possible, still more carefully to hide the purpose of his mission.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  He said he knew how much hatred there was on each side, going back for decades, and that an intervention from the top was necessary. An hour later there was a call in their hotel room saying the commissioner would see them the following week. In that first meeting with Goldberg, in a drab government conference room at a giant table, Miscavige, Rathbun, and Heber Jentzsch were facing about a dozen upper-level government bureaucrats, including the commissioner. The level of distrust between the negotiating parties was extreme, made even greater for the IRS representatives who knew that Scientologists had stolen documents and wiretapped meetings in that very building. Both sides had an incentive to bring the hostilities to an end, however. Miscavige and Rathbun made their carefully rehearsed presentation. Miscavige recited a litany of examples in which he felt the IRS had singled out Scientology for unfair treatment. “ Am I lying?” he would turn and ask Rathbun theatrically. Rathbun had a briefcase stuffed with documents obtained from the 2,300 Freedom of Information Act lawsuits the church had filed, or the countless public records that the church had combed through. Among the many internal memos the Scientologists had gathered was one they called the Final Solution document. It was the minutes of a meeting in 1974 of several top IRS executives who were trying to define “religion” in a manner that excluded Scientology but not other faiths. Miscavige made it clear that the barrage of lawsuits lodged against the IRS would come to an immediate halt if the church got what it wanted, which was an unqualified exemption for all of its activities. When Miscavige finished his presentation, Goldberg called for a break, but he signaled to Rathbun to hang back. Goldberg asked him privately if the government settled, would Scientology also turn off the personal attacks in Freedom magazine? “Like a faucet,” Rathbun told him. Goldberg appointed his deputy commissioner, John Burke, who had no history with the conflict, to oversee a lengthy review of Scientology’s finances and practices. That process went on for two years. During that time, Rathbun and Miscavige commuted to Washington nearly every week, toting banker’s boxes stuffed with responses to the government’s queries. Two hundred Scientologists in Los Angeles and New York were mobilized to go through the books of the church’s tangled bureaucracy. The odds against success were high; the courts had repeatedly sided with the IRS’s assertion that the Church of Scientology was a commercial enterprise. Miscavige and Rathbun were very much aware that the future of Scientology, if there was one, awaited the result of the IRS probe. Either the panel would rule against them, in which case the church’s tax liability for the previous two decades would destroy it, or they would fall under the gracious protection of the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment, in which case the Church of Scientology, and all its practices, would be sheltered by the US Constitution.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Davis has his mother’s sleepy eyes. His thick black hair was combed forward, with a lock falling boyishly onto his forehead. He wore a wheat-colored suit with a blue shirt that opened onto a chest that seemed, among the sun-worshippers at the pool, strikingly pallid. Feshbach, a slender, attractive woman, anxiously twirled her hair. Davis now told me that he was “not willing to participate in, or contribute to, an article about Scientology through the lens of Paul Haggis.” I had come to Los Angeles specifically to talk to him, at a time he had chosen. I wondered aloud if he had been told not to talk to me. He said no. “ Maybe Paul shouldn’t have posted the letter on the Internet,” Feshbach interjected. “There are all sorts of shoulda woulda coulda.” She said that she had just spoken to Mark Isham, the composer, whom I had interviewed. “He talked to you about what are supposed to be our confidential scriptures.” That I would ask about the church’s secret doctrines was offensive, she said. “It’s a two-way street happening,” she concluded.1 “Everything I have to say about Paul, I’ve already said,” Davis declared. He agreed to respond to fact-checking queries, however. THE GARDEN BEHIND Anne Archer and Terry Jastrow’s home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles is a peaceful retreat, filled with olive trees and hummingbirds. A fountain gurgles beside the swimming pool. Jastrow was recounting his first meeting with Archer, in Milton Katselas’s class. His friend David Ladd, son of the Hollywood legend Alan Ladd, had invited him to visit. “ I saw this girl sitting next to Milton,” Jastrow recalled. “I said, ‘Who’s that?’ ” Archer smiled. There was a cool wind blowing in from the Pacific, and she drew a shawl around her. “ We were friends for about a year and a half before we had our first date,” she said. They were married in 1978. “Our relationship really works,” Jastrow said. “We attribute that essentially a hundred percent to applying Scientology.” The two spoke of the techniques that had helped them, such as never being critical of the other and never interrupting. Scientology “isn’t a ‘creed,’ ” Archer said. “These are basic natural laws of life.” She described L. Ron Hubbard as “an engineer, not a faith healer,” who had codified human emotional states, in order to guide the adept to higher levels of existence—“to help a guy rise up the Tone Scale and feel a zest and a love for life.” Jastrow had been an acolyte in an Episcopal church when he was studying at the University of Houston, but doubts overwhelmed him. “I walked out in the middle of communion,” he said. “I was an atheist for ten years. That was the condition I was in when I started at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.” He had never heard of Scientology at the time. Archer said that the controversy that continually surrounds the church hadn’t touched her.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  She brought her legs together in anger. She thought that if this wild sexual mood took hold of her just then, she would not know what to do. Would she get up suddenly and say she had a headache and leave? Or could she turn towards Mabel—Mabel had always adored her. Would she dare turn to Mabel and caress her. She had heard of women caressing each other in the movies. A friend of hers had sat this way in the darkness of the movies, and very slowly her companion’s hand had unhooked the side opening of her skirt, slipped a hand to her sex and fondled her for a long time until she had come. How often this friend had repeated the delight of sitting still, controlling the upper half of her body, sitting straight and still, while a hand was caressing in the dark, secretly, slowly, mysteriously. Is this what would happen to Lilith now? She had never caressed a woman. She had sometimes thought to herself how marvelous it must be to caress a woman, the roundness of the ass, the softness of the belly, that particularly soft skin between the legs, and she had tried caressing herself in her bed in the dark, just to imagine how it must feel to touch a woman. She had often caressed her own breasts, imagining that they were those of another woman. Closing her eyes now, she recalled Mabel’s body in a bathing suit, Mabel with her very round breasts almost bursting from the bathing suit, her thick, soft laughing mouth. How wonderful it would be! But still, between her own legs, there was no warmth of such nature to cause her to lose control and stretch her hand towards Mabel. The pills had not taken effect yet. She was cool, even constrained, between her legs; there was a tightness there, a tension. She could not relax. If she touched Mabel now, she could not have followed with a bolder gesture. Was Mabel wearing a skirt that fastened on the side, would Mabel like to be caressed? Lilith was growing restless. Every time she forgot herself, her legs stretched open again, in that pose that seemed to her so obscene, so inviting, like those gestures she had seen in the Balinese dancers, stretching out and away from the sex, leaving it unprotected.

• From City of Night (1963)

  I found Neil at home one late afternoon watching television: a western; the box set completely out of place in that bedroom suffused with the atmosphere of some dim past. I could tell that watching that program was such a ritual with him that I sat alone in the other room. Through the door, I could see him. He was dressed in full cowboy costume, replete with holster, gun.... As the sharp bang-bang! of the television villain’s gun burst from the screen, Neil drew his own and made a motion of firing back. When the program was over, we sat in the bedroom (he pushed the television set out of sight), drinking tea.... The manikins stared menacingly. Today, one was a military policeman; the other, whose costume I couldn’t make out, was somberly dressed in black. “We have a fine relationship, dont we?” Neil said. The statement surprised me. The several times I had been with him since that afternoon with Carl—only briefly for lunch or dinner—I had felt an even greater tension and self-consciousness than before—especially since lately he had begun to talk to me in almost fatherly tones. “Except,” he went on, “that you hold back. Why? I know youre intrigued by Violence. I could sense your excitement when I presented you to the mirror. You saw yourself, Then, as you should be—as you would like to be!—as you could be! Out of my clothes, you know, youre very ordinary—like hundreds and hundreds of others. (Youre really not my cup of tea),” he added cuttingly. “But I can transform you—if you Let Yourself Go!” he exhorted me forcefully. “Let me!—and I’ll open the door—Wide!—for you. Youll exist in My Eyes! I’ll be a mirror!... Why should we fight our natures, which are meant to be violent?” he went on in the strangely gentle tones. “The past—with its grandeur, its nobility—yes, its purifying Violence—that was the time! It wasnt the ‘compassionate’ hypocrisy of our feeble day!” he sneered. He rose to add a thicker belt to the dummy in black. (Almost every inch of the dummies is covered, except for the faces.) He goes on, now speaking about the weak and the strong, how the former are to be used by the latter, extolling violence, drawing pictures of what his world would be like. “Power,” he was saying. “Contempt!” he shouted. “Contempt for the weakness of compassion,” he derides.... Tense, cold in the warm afternoon, I found myself—although I didnt realize it until he said what he did next—automatically twisting the ring on my finger. “Who gave you that ring?” he asked abruptly. I hesitated to answer. Finally I said: “My father—a long time ago.” Even to mention my father—to recall the memories of that ring—in the presence of this man suddenly seemed blasphemous.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —¿Por qué no te sientas diez minutos? No te he visto en un tiempo. El alivio me golpea, y estoy agradecida por el respaldo. Finalmente escucho a Cole soltar un suspiro y las patas de uno de los taburetes de la isla de la cocina raspan el suelo mientras toma asiento frente a su plato. Me aseguro que el horno esté apagado, agarro mi bebida, y sigo al padre de Cole mientras toma asiento, dejando el asiento entre él y Cole vacío. Lo tomo, estirándome sobre la isla y acercando el plato hacia mí. —Entonces, ¿cómo va el trabajo? —pregunta el señor Lawson, y asumo que está hablándole a Cole. La mano derecha de Cole encuentra mi muslo mientras usa la izquierda para llevar la hamburguesa a su boca, y miro a su padre, viendo sus ojos mirando hacia abajo y observando la mano de Cole sobre mí. Su mandíbula se flexiona mientras vuelve a alzar la mirada. —Es trabajo. —Cole se encoge de hombros—. Sin embargo, es mucho más fácil ahora que el clima ha calentado. Cole ha estado haciendo construcción de carreteras desde que nos mudamos juntos hace nueve meses. Ha pasado por muchos trabajos desde que lo conozco, pero este le ha durado. —¿Has pensado en la universidad? —pregunta su padre. Pero Cole solo frunce el ceño. —Tuve que esforzarme demasiado para terminar la secundaria. Ya lo sabes. Llevo la limonada a mis labios y tomo un sorbo, mi estómago se tensa y ahora no tengo ganas de comer. El padre de Cole mastica y deja su hamburguesa, levantando luego su botella. —El tiempo se mueve más rápido de lo que crees —contesta suavemente, casi para sí mismo—. Casi me uní a la marina cuando me enteré... —pero guarda silencio, termina con otra cosa—, cuando tenía dieciocho años. Pero creo que sé lo que iba a decir. Cuando me enteré que iba a ser padre. Pike Lawson no se ve lo suficiente mayor para ser padre de un hijo adulto, así que tuvo que haber sido muy joven cuando Cole nació. No más de dieciocho o diecinueve años. ¿Lo que lo pondría en unos treinta y ocho? ¿Más o menos? —Simplemente no podía comprender el hecho de que estaba renunciando a siete años de mi vida —continúa—. Pero siete años fueron y vinieron muy rápido. Asegurar un buen futuro requiere de una inversión y un compromiso, Cole, pero vale la pena.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  “‘Why, yes—yes and no. I want a portrait. At the same time, it is a sort of unusual portrait I want, I don’t know if you will . . . consent.’ “‘Consent to what?’I asked. “‘Well,’ he blurted out finally, ‘would you make me this kind of a portrait?’ And he held up the naked athlete. “He expected some reaction from me. I was so accustomed to men’s nudity at the art school that I smiled at his shyness. I did not think there was anything odd about his demand, although it was slightly different having a naked model who paid the artist for drawing him. That was all I could see, and I told him so. Meanwhile, with the right to observe that is given to painters, I studied his violet eyes, the fine, gold, downy hair on his hands, the fine hair on the tip of his ears. He had a faunish air and a feminine evasiveness which attracted me. “Despite his timidity, he looked healthy and rather aristocratic. His hands were soft and supple. He held himself well. I showed a certain professional enthusiasm which seemed to delight and encourage him. “He said, ‘Do you want to start right away? I have some money with me. I can bring the rest tomorrow.’ “I pointed to a corner of the room where there was a screen hiding my clothes and the washstand. But he turned his violet eyes towards me and said innocently, ‘Can I undress here?’ “Then I grew slightly uneasy, but I said yes. I busied myself getting drawing paper and charcoal together, moving a chair, and sharpening my charcoal. It seemed to me that he was abnormally slow in undressing, that he was waiting for my attention. I looked at him boldly, as if I were beginning my study of him, charcoal stick in hand. “He was undressing with amazing deliberateness as if it were a choice occupation, a ritual. Once he looked at me fully in the eyes and smiled, showing his fine even teeth, and his skin was so delicate it caught the light that poured in through the big window and held it like a satin fabric. “At this moment the charcoal in my hands felt alive, and I thought what a pleasure it would be to draw the lines of this young man, almost like caressing him. He had taken off his coat, his shirt, shoes, socks. There were only the trousers left. He held these as a stripteaser holds the folds of her dress, still looking at me. I still could not understand the gleam of pleasure that animated his face. “Then he leaned over, unfastened his belt, and the trousers slid down. He stood completely naked before me and in a most obvious state of sexual excitement. When I saw this, there was a moment of suspense. If I protested, I would lose my fee, which I needed so badly.

• From City of Night (1963)

  But I didnt. The words I had spoken had stirred other thoughts which I could not yet verbalize.... Looking at Jeremy, I was trying to conjecture a different direction in the journey I have embarked on. If I allowed myself truly to be loved—if I did acknowledge what I had just said—if I acknowledged love by merely accepting it—... ? I tried to imagine this: that miraculously I felt loved. And then? If that feeling proved to be false?... That question, I knew, was based on that inherited fear—the wind which sweeps through our lives shaping our destinies... eroding belief.... If it proved to be false? I remembered, then, that once as a child I had watched our neighbor kill a chicken. He had severed the head with an axe. For seconds, the chicken’s wings had fluttered urgently, the headless body quivering—the motions doubly terrifying in that the protesting sounds that should have accompanied them could no longer come from the lifeless head. The only sound was the desperate flaying of those wings (just as the wings of that rooster had fluttered earlier when I had stood by the French Market mysteriously intrigued: that rooster’s wings lashing as if in protest against the impending slaughter).... And then, that earlier afternoon, from that chicken with the severed head, the blood had gushed from the neck—spilling out deep, deep, violently deep red through that opening as if to seal the wound that was carrying all life out of the convulsed body.... Why, now, had I remembered that beheaded chicken? Bewildered, I looked at Jeremy. He seemed again to sense the whirling thoughts, which had carried me too far, too dangerously, too swiftly. And still resisting those thoughts—even after my acknowledgment of the bare possibility of “love”—I grasped for the memory of the earlier moments of sex with him, as if that memory were an anchor in turbulent waters. But my mind moves swiftly forward—the anchor buried in shifting sand; and I think: Now, beyond the spilled sperm—if nothing more than sex is possible—are we like enemies in that spent battlefield of fugitive sex—in which there is every intimacy and no intimacy at all?... My life was crammed with memories of that corpse-strewn battlefield. Those memories.... Mr King—pretending that he didnt give a damn (like me!—I thought suddenly— pretending like me! ); cultivating a veneer of toughness (“I know judo like the best of them,” he had said) to shield the vulnerability—to hide, in him, the decency in order to cope with the world.... Pete, pursued by nightmares of moviehouse scores.... Miss Destiny, perhaps this very moment plotting a new, impossible drag wedding.... Chuck, searching the lost horse.... Jocko, a lost trapeze.... Chi-Chi, futilely defying the world—with a cigarette holder....

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “I know they’re adorable,” Abby would tell her guests, “but just one little bunny can destroy your garden overnight.” The deer were another story. To keep them away, Abby tied bars of Irish Spring soap to the fence posts. When that didn’t work she scattered dried blood. Last summer Vix had seen a deer tear through the woods, leap into the pond, and swim all the way across. When he got there, he looked around as if he’d made a mistake, then turned and swam back, disappearing into the woods. Vix wondered if he had a family, if he was running away but changed his mind at the last minute. “When your mother gets here maybe we can sit down together and talk about school,” Abby said. She’d given up on the lady’s-mantle and was deadheading the fairy roses. What did she mean, school? “Lamb and I have been wondering if you’d like to go to Mountain Day with Caitlin?” “Mountain Day is a private school.” “Suppose you had a scholarship?” “A scholarship?” “Of course high school is just the beginning,” Abby told her. “Have you thought about college yet?” No one in her family had ever gone to college. She was hoping for UNM, though Tawny wanted her to become a medical technician. Healthcare, Victoria. That’s where the jobs are going to be. Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about . “I know it seems far off,” Abby continued, “but actually it’s right around the corner. You’ve got to start planning now. Maybe we can talk about the big picture when your mother gets here.” Vix kept weeding the same patch even after all the weeds were pulled. Was Abby having fantasies, too? She began to feel sweat trickle down inside her bra, a new kind of wetness that could spring from her pores in an instant, without warning, releasing a pungent odor, even if she’d just showered. She hated the unpredictability of her body. She hated being fourteen. It felt like a punishment. She just didn’t know for what. “I’m not making you uncomfortable, am I?” Abby asked. “No,” Vix said, too quickly, swiping her face with her arm, trying to get a whiff of her underarms. “It’s just that …” “I understand completely,” Abby said. “You do?” “Of course.” As much as she dreaded the idea of Tawny invading her space, Vix was relieved to find that the visit had nothing to do with Abby. She’d come because the Countess could no longer travel on her own and the Countess had too many friends in too many places to sit at home brooding over her emphysema and failing eyesight. Fortunately, the Countess kept Tawny busy. Everyone on the island wanted a piece of her. How did all these rich people know one another? Was there some sort of club?

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  So I entered a secret life, and when I was supposed to be posing for everyone else in the world, I was really waiting in a beautiful room for John. Each time he came, he brought a gift, a book, colored stationery for me to write on. I was restless, waiting. The only one who was taken into the secret was the sculptor because he sensed what was happening. He would not let me stop posing, and he questioned me. He had predicted how my life would be. The first time I felt an orgasm with John, I wept because it was so strong and so marvelous that I did not believe it could happen over and over again. The only painful moments were the ones spent waiting. I would bathe myself, spread polish on my nails, perfume myself, rouge my nipples, brush my hair, put on a negligée, and all the preparations would turn my imagination to the scenes to come. I wanted him to find me in the bath. He would say he was on his way. But he would not arrive. He was often detained. By the time he arrived I would be cold, resentful. The waiting wore out my feelings. I would rebel. Once I would not answer when he rang the doorbell. Then he knocked gently, humbly, and that touched me, so I opened the door. But I was angry and wanted to hurt him. I did not respond to his kiss. He was hurt until his hand slipped under my negligée and he found that I was wet, in spite of the fact that I kept my legs tightly closed. He was joyous again and he forced his way. Then I punished him by not responding sexually and he was hurt again, for he enjoyed my pleasure. He knew by the violent heartbeats, by the changes in the voice, by the contraction of my legs, how I had enjoyed him. And this time I lay like a whore. That really hurt him. We could never go out together. He was too well known, as was his wife. He was a producer. His wife was a playwright. When John discovered how angry it would make me to wait for him, he did not try to remedy it. He came later and later. He would say that he was arriving at ten o’clock and then come at midnight. So one day he found that I was not there when he came. This put him in a frenzy. He thought I would not come back. I felt that he was doing this deliberately, that he liked my being angry. After two days he pleaded with me and I returned. We were both very keyed up and angry. He said, “You’ve gone back to pose. You like it. You like to show yourself.” “Why do you make me wait so long? You know that it kills my desire for you. I feel cold when you come late.”

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  [image file=image_rsrc1RD.jpg] LindaLinda stood in front of her mirror examining herself critically in full daylight. Now past thirty, she was becoming concerned with her age, although nothing about her betrayed any lessening of her beauty. She was slender, youthful in appearance. She could well deceive everyone but herself. In her own eyes her flesh was losing some of its firmness, some of that marble smoothness that she had admired so often in her own mirror. She was no less loved. If anything she was more loved than ever, because now she attracted all the young men who sense that it is from such a woman that they will really learn the secrets of lovemaking, and who feel no attraction to the young girls of their age who are backward, innocent, inexperienced, and still possessed by their families. Linda’s husband, a handsome man of forty, had loved her with the fervor of a lover for many years. He closed his eyes to her young admirers. He believed that she did not take them seriously, that her interest was due to her childlessness and the need to pour her protective feelings over people who were beginning to live. He himself was reputed to be a seducer of women of all classes and character. She remembered that on her wedding night André had been an adoring lover, worshiping each part of her body separately, as if she were a work of art, touching her and marveling, commenting on her ears, her feet, her neck, her hair, her nose, her cheeks, and her thighs, as he fondled them. His words and voice, his touch, opened her flesh like a flower to the heat and light. He trained her to be a sexually perfect instrument, to vibrate to every form of caress. One time he taught her to put the rest of her body to sleep, as it were, and to concentrate all her erotic feelings in her mouth. Then she was like a woman half-drugged, lying there, her body quiet and languid, and her mouth, her lips, became another sex organ. André had a particular passion for the mouth. In the street he looked at women’s mouths. To him the mouth was indicative of the sex. A tightness of a lip, thinness, augured nothing rich or voluptuous. A full mouth promised an open, generous sex. A moist mouth tantalized him. A mouth that opened out, a mouth that was parted as if ready for a kiss, he would follow doggedly in the street until he could possess the woman and prove again his conviction of the revelatory powers of the mouth.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  She showed Elena to her room. It opened on a terrace, divided by bamboo partitions, which extended the length of the sunny side of the house, facing the lake. Elena was soon lying exposed to the sun, although she dreaded sun baths. They made her passionate and burningly aware of her whole body. She sometimes caressed herself. Now she closed her eyes and recalled scenes from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. During the following days she took long walks. She would always be late for lunch. Then Madame Kazimir would stare at her angrily and not talk as she served her. People came every day to see Madame Kazimir about mortgage payments on the house. They threatened to sell it. It was clear that if she were deprived of her house, her protective shell, her turtle back, she would die. At the same time, she turned out guests she did not like and refused to take in men. Finally she surrendered at the sight of a family—husband, wife, and a little girl—who arrived one morning straight from the train, captivated by the fantastic appearance of Casutza. Before long they were sitting on the porch next to Elena’s and eating their breakfast in the sun. One day Elena met the man, walking alone up towards the peak of the mountain behind the chalet. He walked fast, smiled at her as he passed, and continued as though pursued by enemies. He had taken his shirt off to receive the rays of the sun fully. She saw a magnificent athlete’s torso already golden. His head was youthful, alert, but covered with graying hair. The eyes were not quite human. They had the fixed, hypnotic gaze of an animal tamer, something authoritative, violent. Elena had seen such an expression in the pimps who stood at the corners of the Montmartre district, with their caps and scarves of bright colors. Apart from his eyes, this man was aristocratic. His movements were youthful and innocent. He swayed as he walked, as though he were a little drunk. All his strength centered in the glance he gave Elena, and then he smiled innocently, easily, and walked on. Elena was stopped by the glance and almost angered by the boldness of it. But his youthful smile dissolved the mordant effect of the eyes and left her with feelings she could not clarify. She turned back. When she reached Casutza, she was uneasy. She wanted to leave. The desire for flight was already asserting itself. By this she recognized that she was facing a danger. She thought of returning to Paris. In the end, she stayed.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And this then is why the money lies there waiting. This is why with words he has tried to keep me here—successfully—while the Carnival rages outside like fire out of control. “I’ll help you,” he went on softly. “I’ll help you—in every way.... But it will involve giving of yourself. Loving back.... No,” he said (and was there resignation in the following words?), “maybe only accepting love, with the same intensity it’s given.” As a child, I was afraid of the dark, terrified the moment the lights went out. I felt somehow like that now. Afraid of a type of darkness that would loom, paradoxically, the brighter the lights were turned on. Before the impact of his words can throw me off balance, I challenged him deliberately, like someone who must make a life-directing choice immediately: “What would keep me from going with you and walking out right away?” “If you went with me, I’d take the chance that it wouldnt happen. I have a feeling I know you that well.” “And the others that Ive always needed—that I might need again?” I asked. “I’d count that eventually, with me, you wouldnt need them,” he answered. “And if it ends?” I asked—and suddenly I regretted that question, which already I was correcting: “And when it ends?” “It ends,” he finished. “It’s ended—... many times before.... But beyond that theres something else: which makes life livable: at the very least, the attempt itself—no matter how often repeated... or, even, merely the remembrance of that attempt to share— in sex and beyond sex.... I think that you could love me,” he said quickly. I looked at him very long, and Im not sure what I feel: Resentment at his words? Or a hint of a kind of balm on the loneliness?... A possible substitute for salvation.... I got up from the bed and I walked to the mirror in the bathroom. (And I remember the times, the many times, when I had stood before such a mirror, forcing myself to think: I have only Me!) I still look Young. The streets outside.... The Carnival.... In this room, the world is flaunting before me what could, if tested and found false, be its most deadly myth... love... love which, even at the beginning, was revealing itself as partly resignation; perhaps offering only the memory of an attempt to touch... implying hope of a miracle in a world so sadly devoid of miracles. Surrender to a myth constantly belied (a myth which could lull you again falsely in order to seduce you—like that belief in God—into a trap—away from the only thing which made sense—rebellion—no matter how futilely rendered by the fact of decay, of death)—belied, yet sought—sought over and over—as this man himself has searched from person to person... unfound. I returned to the bed. “Well?” he asked me.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Marcándole a Jordan, bajo corriendo las escaleras cuando suena la línea y apago el televisor otra vez. Cuando la línea se levanta, una explosión de música golpea mi oreja y me estremezco, alejándolo solo un poco. —Hola —dice, y me sorprende que suene tan... calmada. —¿Dónde estás? —Fuera —responde—. Estaré en casa más tarde. —¿Estás trabajando? Se ríe, y escucho la voz de otra mujer y una serie de conversaciones en el fondo. —Uhm, no —responde finalmente. Entonces escucho un bramido de lo que parece ser como cuarenta hombres vitoreando de fondo, y me enderezo, tratando de descubrir qué demonios está pasando. —Jordan, lo siento, llegué tarde —le digo. —¿Huh? —¡Lo siento, llegué tarde! —grito en el teléfono—. Había trabajo que hacer, y tuve que quedarme. —Entonces, ¿por qué no llamaste? —responde, su voz es cada vez más fuerte— . No estabas en el trabajo. Estabas en Red's, y no voy a esperar. Ya no. Estoy fuera con mis amigas y me estoy divirtiendo. Estaré en casa más tarde. Y luego, toda la música y la voz del DJ en el fondo se apagan y la línea se corta cuando cuelga. Me cuelga. Bajo mi teléfono y miro fijamente la llamada finalizada. Ok, entonces está enojada. Creo. Sin embargo, no parecía enojada. O borracha. Sonaba indiferente, y por alguna razón, eso se siente peor. Puedo lidiar con la ira, pero no con una chica que parece estar perfectamente contenta con las conclusiones que ha sacado. Mierda. Entonces se me ocurre lo que anunciaba el DJ de fondo. Noche de Camisetas Mojadas en The Hook. Mis ojos se amplían. No sería tan estúpida, ¿verdad? Maldita sea. ¿Qué demonios se supone que debo hacer? ¿Se está divirtiendo como dijo o me está poniendo en jaque? ¿Está tratando de tentarme para que vaya a buscarla, amenazándome con hacer algo que no me gustará, o me quedo donde estoy, averiguando si miente, y veo qué pasa? Esta es la razón por la cual las mujeres y yo no nos llevamos bien y mis relaciones no duran. No tengo la cabeza para esta mierda. Pero el hecho que saliera fue mi culpa. Si hubiera llegado a casa cuando le dije que lo haría, estaría acurrucada junto a mí en el sofá en este momento, burlándose de mí con sus ojos, sus manos, su olor y esa sexy forma en que arquea su espalda cuando se estira. Suspiro y sacudo la cabeza. La deseo demasiado. Metiendo el teléfono en mi bolsillo, saco las llaves y me dirijo hacia la puerta. En cuanto la abro, veo a Cole ahí parado con su mano extendida como si estuviera a punto de abrir. Me detengo, mis cejas se disparan. —Hola —dice, su voz es inusualmente agradable. Abro la boca para hablar, pero me lleva un minuto encontrar mi voz.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  and space ... I trust her judgment.” “How much time?” Abby asked. “A day ... two days? We’re responsible for you, Vix. We can’t just let you live on your own. Your parents assume ...” Her parents! “Please don’t tell my parents I’ve left. Not yet ...” Then she added, “I’ll understand if you want to give the scholarship to someone else, someone more ... worthy.” Her voice broke on that. They wouldn’t be as lenient this time as when they’d found out she and Caitlin had been hitching. A few soft words, a promise they wouldn’t hitch again, and that had been it. Not that it mattered because by the following summer Caitlin had her license. This time was different. This time there was more at stake. Lamb and Abby looked at one another again. Then Abby said, “This has nothing to do with the scholarship. Nobody’s going to take anything away from you.” Vix wanted to cry with relief. How easy it would have been to go back with Abby. It wasn’t until later that Vix remembered Abby saying, I’d like to think if I had a daughter she’d be a lot like you. Yes, but ... if they had to take sides, no matter how much they cared for her, Caitlin would always come first. She would always be the daughter. And Vix would always be the daughter’s friend. When she came out of the Homeport, confused and exhausted after her first night on the job, Bru was waiting. “We have to talk,” he told her. They walked out to the end of the dock, where they sat swatting mosquitoes. “Whatever happened last night, I can live with it,” Bru said. Was it just last night? “I know it didn’t mean anything,” he continued. She looked at him, puzzled. “What didn’t mean anything?” “You and Von.” “Me and Von? There is no me and Von. Is there a you and Caitlin?” “Caitlin?” he said, as if he had no idea what she was talking about. He turned her hand over, studied it the way he had that first day on the beach, then covered it with both of his. “I think we should just forget about last night,” he said. Then his voice went all soft. “You’re my girl, Victoria. I knew it from day one. You’ll always be my girl.” And just like that she melted. Just like that they were back together. They saw each other every night, and Vix had no curfew, no one asking Does he do this? Does he do that? When are you going to ... ? This time she was the aggressor. She practically begged him. Please, she whispered. Please ... Bru. What guy could resist? He rolled on a condom right there in the dunes where they’d spread out a blanket and left half their clothes.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Bru HE’S ALWAYS WAITING and worrying she’s going to end it. Always looking for signs, expecting the worst. So he jumps the gun, says it out loud before she can. She doesn’t even cry. Nothing. That proves it, doesn’t it? Jeez ... she cries all the way home, then he tells her he needs a break and she just sits there like she’s made of stone. After he drops her off he’s shaking so bad he has to pull off the road, afraid he’ll plow into somebody if he doesn’t. Back on the Vineyard he has a beer with his uncle. Unloads his problems with Victoria. His uncle keeps nodding. Tell me about it, he says. They say one thing, they mean another. No way to understand them. I know it hurts but there’s other fish in the sea. And they’ll be jumping for you before long. Star comes on to him, suggests they get together. So they do. In the storeroom of her shop, on the floor, between cartons of chewable vitamin C and ginseng. Her breasts are small and lopsided. She makes animal sounds as she comes. There are other fish in the sea, he keeps telling himself. Do me again, Star says, an hour later. So he does her again. But when he falls asleep, he dreams only of Victoria.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Sin embargo, ahora salió de nuevo, dándose una ducha rápida y saliendo rápidamente después de llegar a casa del trabajo y darse cuenta que Jordan no estaba aquí. Pensé que podríamos ir a cenar tarde o algo así, pero al parecer, sus planes no se podían cancelar de nuevo. O tiene miedo de estar a solas conmigo. No es como si quisiera pelear, tampoco. Incluso simplemente ver juntos un programa en la televisión estaría bien. Quiero decir, hemos logrado no matarnos el uno al otro en el pasado. Solía caerle bien. ¿Y de dónde saca todo este dinero para salir de fiesta? Tiene que estarse gastando todo lo que está ganando. No es que tenga prisa por hacer que ahorre dinero y se vaya, pero creo que ahora puedo juzgarme tan duramente como juzgué a Jordan. Cuanto más haces por alguien, menos hacen por sí mismos. Soy tan culpable como ella. Cole no crecerá hasta que se vea obligado a hacerlo. Bebo el resto de mi cerveza y me pongo de pie, llevando la botella vacía a la cocina. Mi teléfono suena en mi bolsillo y lo saco. Dutch. —Hola —respondo, arrojando la botella a la basura. —Hola. Deberías venir a Grounders ahora mismo. ¿Eh? —Como en este momento —agrega antes que tenga la oportunidad de decir algo. —¿Por qué? —Porque... —hace una pausa y escucho una risa un poco entrecortada—, Jordan está, mmm... portándose mal, supongo que podría decirse. Me enderezo y frunzo las cejas. —¿Portándose mal? —repito—. ¿Qué significa eso? ¿Y por qué crees que me importa? No soy su papá. La música retumba en el fondo y puedo escuchar a una multitud hablando y riendo. Uno de mis chicos se va a casar en un par de semanas, así que el equipo lo sacó esta noche. Necesitamos al menos una persona sin resaca mañana, así que me quedé en casa. —Si tú lo dices, hombre —responde como si no creyera que no me importa—. Pero a tu hijo puede no gustarle lo que estoy viendo en este momento. Lo que todo el mundo está viendo en este momento. —¿De qué estás hablando? —pregunto. —Vas a tener que venir a averiguarlo. Solo espero que no llegues aquí demasiado tarde. Se escucha un clic y creo que colgó. —Dutch —grito al teléfono—. ¡Dutch! Exhalo y aparto el teléfono de mi oreja, cerrando de golpe la tapa del bote de basura. Pero me detengo, mirando bien algo que está encima. Levantando la tapa nuevamente, saco media hoja color rosa; la chica pin-up en el volante llama mi atención. Estudiándola, dejo que se cierre la tapa y la leo. ¡Noche de aficionados! ¡Mójate! (Tu camiseta, como sea) 27 de mayo a las 9 p.m. The Hook en Jamison Lane ¡¡¡Gran Premio $300!! Enderezo mi espalda, tomando nota de la fecha y luego me relajo un poco. Aún faltan un par de semanas, así que Dutch no se refería a esto. No está sucediendo esta noche y no es en Grounders.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Tampoco he hablado con Cole desde ayer, pero por alguna razón, eso no me molesta. Así es como funcionamos. Se fue ayer, para ayudar a un amigo con su auto, y para cuando llegó a casa yo estaba en el bar. Dormí hasta tarde esta mañana, más como un esfuerzo por evitar a Pike en casa, y solo desperté una vez cuando Cole dejó un beso de despedida en mi mejilla antes de irse a trabajar. He tenido un nudo en el estómago toda la mañana. ¿Por qué diablos estaba Pike tan enojado? Pensé que nos llevábamos bien. No hice nada malo. De hecho, estaba cortando su maldito césped, y lo siguiente que supe fue que estaba regañándome como si estuviera tomando el sol semidesnuda en el jardín delantero mientras niños de seis años andaban en sus bicicletas por la calle. Es tan volátil. Muy diferente a su hijo, que nunca se toma nada en serio. Salgo del auto de Cole, uno de sus amigos le dio un aventón esta mañana así yo podría ir a la biblioteca. Agarro la lonchera con el almuerzo de Pike que dejó en casa y echo un vistazo alrededor del sitio de trabajo. Está más ajetreado que la última vez que estuve aquí. Los trabajadores se mueven de un lado a otro, usando cascos de seguridad, con cinturones de herramientas de cuero marrón colgando de sus caderas, y el polvo se levanta por los camiones que entran y salen del área. Los martillos golpean el acero y hombres con botas sucias y jeans rasgados están sentados a horcajadas en las vigas, suspendidas en el aire, mientras hacen lo que sea que hacen para convertir los materiales en un edificio. No muchos llegan a ver los huesos desnudos. Me pregunto por qué Cole no trabaja para su padre. Este empleo tiene que ser bien remunerado. Después de todo, conozco a algunos de estos chicos. Mantienen a sus familias con este empleo. Mi mirada deambula, buscando a alguien accesible con quien dejar la lonchera, pero también estoy un poco alerta buscando los tatuajes de Pike. No quiero verlo, de verdad. Mi plan, cuando vi que había dejado su lonchera en casa esta mañana, era hacer una buena acción, entregarla, y dejar la pelota en su cancha para superar la discusión al tener que buscarme y decir “gracias”. Quiero superar cualquier incomodidad entre nosotros. Caminando por la suciedad y los escombros, me dirijo hacia la estructura y veo a su amigo, Dutch, inclinándose para recoger algo justo adentro. Me nota y se levanta. ―Hola, Dutch. ―Sonrío―. ¿Está Pike? Sus ojos se deslizan hacia la bolsa térmica negra en mi mano. ―¿Su almuerzo? ―Lo dejó en la mesa de la cocina. ―La levanto ―. Pensé en dejarlo mientras estoy haciendo recados. ―Eso es amable de tu parte. ―Pero no toma la lonchera. En cambio, lanza una herramienta en una caja y me hace un gesto―. Vamos, te llevaré.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  You are my ... In the whole world ... We could be ... If only ... They reminded Vix of the messages printed on little candy hearts, the kind her father brought home for Valentine’s Day. At the end of the week she laid them out, trying to find the hidden message, but there were too many possibilities. Abby convinced her to bring Bru home for dinner. “Really, Vix ... this is getting ridiculous. You can’t keep him to yourself forever ...” She knew Abby was right but she was nervous, afraid they would ... what? Judge him and find him lacking? She didn’t have to worry. He arrived on time with a bunch of cosmos for Abby. He was polite, almost shy, endearing. Abby served a simple summer meal of grilled sword-fish, island-grown corn, salad, blueberry pie. “We think of Vix as our daughter,” Lamb said, during dessert. “We’re her Vineyard family.” “Yes, sir. I know that.” “And we’re very proud that she’s going to Harvard in September,” Abby added. “I know that, too.” He squeezed Vix’s thigh under the table, letting her know he got the message, a gesture neither Abby nor Lamb missed. “What are your plans?” Abby asked Bru. “Do you think you’ll stay here, on the Vineyard?” “I’m an islander. I’ve got a good job with my uncles’ construction firm. So long as the market for second homes holds we’ve got nothing to worry about.” “He seems like a very decent chap,” Lamb said that night, after Bru left. “With a bright future.” “But Vix is so young ...” Abby argued, “with her own bright future.” “Vix isn’t going to do anything foolish, are you?” Lamb asked, to ease Abby’s fears. Before Vix could answer Abby said, “But she’s in love ... anyone with eyes can see that.”