- Comfort?
- A mirror
- A mirror?
She said nothing until, like a drowning swimmer, words bubbled up from the disconcerting ocean of silence that she so cherished. - For the same reason you became involved with me, Nawin. You needed to marry someone who reminded you of what you were, how you were alone in your family, to remind you that the world was not right for someone else and it wasn't just you aching and mad in your own thoughts. So the furniture gets shoved to the back of the room, so I look into space.
- What?
- As a mirror.
- What does that mean…'as a mirror?'
For a few seconds she withdrew to the cat, petting it but with eyes that seemed to pass through that which she needed to neediness itself. Then she looked back at him—I don't find it lonely just to sit here.
- You should.
- Should I? I don't know. Being with you, not knowing what you think of me…you in these women's company constantly, and me in their shadows…Often I just want to be contained here in my space. Here I don't feel so inadequate to your women, or the need to deprecate myself so much for feeling that way…so inadequate to your disadvantaged, dirty women.
- I'm sorry.
- Inadequacies are fired onto me daily, you know, even if I do tell myself its inside me and that you do not pull the trigger…. No, it isn't the affairs. What you press against your body is none of my business. It isn't as if I need to inspect the underwear you plan to put on…if its cotton or silk, bikinis or boxers, clean or dirty…what you press against your body, who massages it, and how, I don't care.