What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander

Author:Nathan Englander
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2013-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

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“Touch,” she says. She is looking right at him; she can see him. This is not how Allen Fein remembers past visits, not with the women staring back. There are four women seated on a carpeted platform, and all, eyeing him, make the same offer. “Touch,” they say. “Touch.” Well, three of the women say it. The fourth—sitting in a cheap plastic lawn chair, too wide for it, her thighs, cut in half, drooping, like her breasts, in languid arcs toward the floor—is reading a book. She’s got glasses on and is holding a page, ready to turn it, and Allen knows the motion will be slow and lazy, as weary as her posture.

They are all naked, or almost so. The second woman wears a bra, the third panties, and the fourth has the book and glasses. It is the first one who is, to Allen, beautiful.

He has not set foot in a peep show since boyhood, but he recalls almost everything from then. He remembers shivering so badly that his teeth chattered, his hands pressed between his legs for warmth. He’d been afraid that he might freeze to death, actually expire from excitement. And he’d often indulged this nightmare, squandered precious viewing time on the darker fantasy of dropping dead right there in the booth. Allen remembers the old setup. The sound of a token dropping and then the labored spin of gears. He remembers the strip of light at the bottom of the window frame as the wooden partition was drawn up into the wall. Behind thick glass—smudged and fingerprinted, always fogged with heavy breath—were the women. They danced as if they cared, moving to titillate the observer.

The individual booths are more or less the same. It’s the windows that are different. Allen is shocked to find that the glass is gone. The women just sit on their chairs, vivid, looking back.

The stage is circular and completely surrounded by the inner wall of the booths. Many of the partitions are raised, and Allen can see men in their compartments at all angles. One middle-aged, broad-headed voyeur is clearly masturbating with vigor. Allen catches the eye of a Latino man off to the side, wearing the very same tie he is. Allen puts a hand on his chest and feels the tie pulsing along with his heart. The Latino man, such a good-looking man, turns away from Allen and makes eye contact with the woman in the bra.

She stands up and walks over to the man, and his hands come out through the window, penetrating the fantasy world. Allen has never seen it broached before—the world of dreams cracked open.

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