hands on both his hips with both his elbows pointing out. She sat on a chair. She felt the urge to spin, say, Is this okay? Is this? So she was seventeen, and calling herself—she didn’t know. A list of choices in her pocket. Make me choose, she says, when they are driving, when they are turning in a driveway toward the first. Two: just up the hill. The room’s the same. Wallpaper, pictures, squares of wallpaper underneath them dark when the picture frames swing. It smells like smoke; those sliding glass doors. There was a gun battle here, she says. What? he says, from the little bathroom, the mirror and the sink on the outside, not the inside, of the door, so she is reflected, or at least her knees are, cut off from the rest of her. She sits in a chair, puts her feet up on the windowsill, the window shaking in the frame when her foot touches it. This should be dramatic, she thinks. Of course, she says. It was a western. There were men who came in wearing boots. There was a woman tied up in the hall, heels tight, ankles tight, as if she were in danger, as if a train were coming toward her. And a fight. There was a screaming fight. There was a gun battle. One: Adele, he says. So it’s settled. Adele. It sounds like…something. Not familiar, but something. She is on the bed. His hands have covered up her shoulders, bounced off to her thighs. He has looked at her, kissed her on the forehead, once. He walks away. She sits. She has three pairs of underwear, a
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