Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

Author:Rebecca Dinerstein Knight [Knight, Rebecca Dinerstein]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

BEANS

“From behind.”

“Stop.”

“What? You asked. I fuck her from behind.”

We were sitting in an empty Chinese restaurant, a speaker above the door was playing a wind instrument I could hardly hear but the sound moved through my veins like a sleeping pill, I couldn’t stand up and walk out and break that peace. Tom’s ever longer hair swayed under the ceiling fan.

“Forget I asked. I’m sorry I asked.”

“She really likes it.” It was as if all my ambivalence toward him in bed were coming back in the form of a viper, as if he now had the evidence to prove his desirability, as if I’d been wrong to not want him and he’d built his case. “She keeps asking for more and more. We finish and she wants more.”

“You must be very satisfying,” I said, ten cold sesame noodles dangling from my lips like a car wash.

He paused. Joan I started to cry.

“What the hell, Nell,” a new rhyme for him, “what?”

I didn’t know what. I hated myself for never having wanted him, I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I didn’t want to fuck you from behind, I didn’t have a pulse.

“Jesus Christ I won’t tell you any more,” he said, quietly, “I thought we were, you know, enlightened exes who could maintain a sexual discourse.”

I wished for a moment that Tom had a sister whom I could fuck from behind and tell him about it. The closest thing was his mother, Mother Veronica, a woman so apparently cold-blooded I wished nothing more for her than that somewhere, sometimes, her husband Harvey succeeded in holding her in whatever way she privately hoped to be held. I stopped my tears by imagining Veronica and Harvey snuggling, a ridiculous word for Tom’s mother, snuggling with all their might, under Harvey’s valuable Hans Holbein the Younger.

Another man, or any woman, would have asked me just then What are you thinking about and I would have said Your mother snuggling and we would have been able to return to our noodles in good faith but Tom in those blank moments asks himself what he is thinking about.

The waiter came by and refilled our waters. Tom abruptly grasped the bowl of orange wonton crackers, threw them down his throat, and then asked the waiter to bring more of them. The waiter laughed because he’s a nice guy. I slid the rest of the sesame noodles onto my plate, as if we were in a race or interested in wastelessness. The waiter brought more crackers, took the empty plate. For a moment there was nothing in the center of the table and we both looked at the brown wood.

“Do you feel any guilt?” I asked the table.

“She started it,” he said. “More to the point have you ever felt any guilt? You’ve been, what, casting spells against this marriage for years. You probably have more to do with it than I do.”

I rehearsed the work Mishti and I had done Halloween night. I wondered if

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