LITMIR.BIZ

      Copyright © 2005 by Peter Rock

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Published by MacAdam and Cage 2005

      Published by Pharos Editions 2016

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

      ISBN 978-1-94043-639-5 (e-book)

      Pharos Editions, an imprint of Counterpoint

      2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

      Berkeley, CA 94710

       www.pharoseditions.com

       www.counterpointpress.com

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

       Deep gratitude to Ella Vining, the champion; love to all Vinings (especially Motoko, for expertise in Japanese) and Rocks. Thanks to Kate Nitze, David Poindexter and everyone at MacAdam/Cage. A debt to Ira Silverberg. Susan Choi, Stacey D’Erasmo and Whitney Otto are generous friends and sharp readers. Thanks once more to Kate Nitze, sharpness itself.

      for Ella

      They created in a single night a new situation and now it appeared to bewilder them.

      For the moment, their bewilderment was their only etiquette.

      —Yukio Mishima

       The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

      Contents

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      PART TWO

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      PART THREE

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

       ONE

       1.

      NATALIE LIKED TO WALK IN THIS RAIN. It tasted metallic to her, just a mist drifting down before six in the morning. The train tracks were slippery underfoot, the greasy wooden rails, and I-5 only fifty feet to her left, trucks rattling north to Seattle and beyond. Across the dark river, across the Burnside Bridge, a neon sign was visible—a leaping stag, the words Made In Oregon.

      She walked with purpose, and fast, like a man with things to do. People often asked her if she was going somewhere; she had no patience for that question. She was straight adrenaline. She was electric, up all night.

      The bridge spanned back toward her, toward the Towne Storage building with its dirty red brick and rows of dark windows, its black water tank pressed into the sky, its paintings of lions’ heads, looking down. Lions were famously brave, and they lived together, in prides. She herself was alone, and proud, and brave.

      Above, ahead, the Burnside Bridge crossed I-5, and 84 forked east, all the overpasses looping and swooping around each other, the colored cars blurring as they slipped past, the tiny round heads of people within, looking out.

      These people could see Natalie, standing here, dressed like a man in her Dickies and work boots. She didn’t know why she still wore her long, dark blond hair; she’d braided it twice, twisted it up under a baseball cap. She wore knee socks, like always, but the people above couldn’t tell that. To them, she probably looked more like a boy than a man, her body wound tight as she walked, her ears pierced but without earrings; she couldn’t always stand metal on her body—the back of her watch had burned a patch on her wrist, so she threw it away. Now she never knew what time it was; she guessed by the sun, when it was visible, which wasn’t often. She could carry a watch in her pocket, perhaps, if there were room. Her right front pocket held a plastic barrette shaped like Daisy Duck, the keys to her truck, trailer and the storage locker, a chili recipe she’d never use, a Leatherman multipurpose tool, a shrill whistle in case of trouble. A pencil stub. A battery. Her other pockets held photographs of her girls.

      The people in the cars might believe she was a girl or man or boy or woman, but they had no idea, they could have no clue what Natalie was up to, out this morning in the rain.

      Scrub bushes and chain-link fences were the best places, the natural habitat. She looked past scraps of clothing, torn plastic and then, here, Holy Crow!, homed in on torn paper—the dull shine of a photograph, the color of skin, a promise. She kicked gravel, going after the scrap as if someone else might snatch it first. The paper was nicely worn, stiffened and damp in her fingers. It was not one of hers, and there was some excitement in that, a pleasure, a sentimental glimmer. The woman’s face was torn in two; still she smiled. It was a piece of a Fred Meyer catalog, from the department store, depicting modest and high-waisted lingerie, a support bra that must weigh five pounds. The half-faced woman was someone’s wife, some proud middle manager in Beaverton saying he was married to a model. Her body looked soft and inviting, her dark hair perfectly curled and clean. The disembodied hand of another woman reached toward this woman’s bare shoulder; the two women had been having one of those underwear parties catalog people enjoyed, and then this friend had been torn away, perhaps more desired.

      Natalie dropped the scrap, replaced it, left it behind for someone else to discover. Standing, she walked away, satisfied. There were only her footsteps and the sandpaper sound of her stiff denim jacket, her arms swinging as she turned right, away from the tracks and the interstate and the river. The smell of garbage seeped from dumpsters, laced with the exhaust in the air, sifting through the misty rain. Three blocks away on MLK, traffic lights turned green, tiny winking eyes.

      She had three of her girls with her, all from 1976, all folded in the pockets of her jacket. Yes, these ladies were over forty years old now, but she preferred them as they were, in 1976, wishing America Happy Birthday. She could still find the old magazines, in antique stores—some of the shop owners even held them out for her, the Bicentennial issues, in clear plastic covers, pages smelling of mold. They were often well preserved, but she roughed them up slightly before bringing them out. Sometimes she ripped her girls a little, and imagined the excited dissatisfaction of finding only the legs, the ass, the high heels. A faded face here, a breast there, a bare foot with a chain anklet, an ear, an expression of pain or pleasure, torn in two. That’s how she had found them, and she knew some believed pornography was boring because it was artificial, yet the feelings she remembered were

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