After Obsession by Carrie Jones, Steven E. Wedel Page B

means.”
    Later, she came out of the shower wrapped up in a white bathrobe. Her hair dripped onto the floor, making little drip noises, a sort of splat as the drops hit the ground. She smelled like her lilac soap. She crouched down, adjusted her robe, and then put both her hands on my shoulders and said, “Sometimes I see a man, too.”
    “Really?”
    Her hands felt good on my shoulders, like they were holding me to the ground. She nodded. “On the river.”
    “On a boat?”
    “No.” Her lip quivered and steadied. “Just … just standing there.”
    She brushed some dirt off my shoulder and started to stand up, but I didn’t want her to go. I blurted, “What does the River Man do?”
    She froze in place. “Calls me. He calls me. He wants my soul, and then once he gets it, he’ll feed on it; he’ll be so powerful, baby. He’ll leave the river and walk into town and everything … everything will be gone.”
    Alan brings me home, and it’s a ten-minute ride of awkwardness. We talk about Courtney. Neither of us mentions Blake. I thank him and scoot into the house as quickly as possible.
    At dinner I want to tell Dad about Alan and Courtney, but I can’t because Benji’s yammering away about Cheetos and baseball and Gramps dating some woman named Doris, which is where he is now, and how disgusting girls are. I try not to be annoyed at Benji because I know he’s just psyched that Dad’s actually having dinner with us and not working late, but it’s hard.
    “How do they run with those … those things on their chest?” Benji moves his hands and totally inappropriately shows what he’s talking about.
    “Benji!” Dad acts horrified, but his eyes are laughing.
    “You call them breasts, Benji,” I say really slowly. I poke my fork in his direction. He scoops up some spaghetti.
    “Well, they’re disgusting,” he announces, then shoves way too much spaghetti into his mouth. It dangles out.
    “You’re disgusting,” I say. He shakes his head back and forth so the spaghetti flaps all around, flinging this way and that. “At least we don’t have penises and scrota. That’s what’s really disgusting.”
    “Aimee!” Dad scolds.
    “What? Like ‘penis’ is a bad word?”
    “I was more worried about scrota,” he says, and takes a sip of his wine. His eyes sparkle like he’s not really mad.
    “It’s the plural of scrotum,” I explain in a teacher voice.
    “I know what it is,” he says.
    Benji’s just looking at us, figuring things out. It takes him a minute to compute. Finally, he asks, “Is that the health class word for balls?”
    We all crack up. My father almost snarfs wine out his nose, but he eventually manages to nod.
    Benji starts chanting, “Scrota. Scrota. Scrota.” We giggle for a good minute, but Benji’s in fourth-grader overdrive and he can’t stop it, he just keeps going. “Scrota. Scrota. Scrota.”
    My father has had it. “Benjamin. That’s enough.” Benji keeps chanting and Dad has to use his authority-figure voice. “Benjamin. I said no more.”
    He stops. He sulks. He stabs his spaghetti and twirls it around like a madman before saying, “Why not? It’s not a bad word. It’s not like the f-word or something.”
    “Any word is a bad word when chanted incessantly at the table,” Dad says. He looks to me for help. I can’t really give him any.
    “It’s a pretty weird word,” I say.
    Benji pushes his plate away, sad faced, feeling betrayed or something. “Can I be excused?”
    My father and I look at each other like one of us should be the parental figure but neither actually wants to be. I scrape my fork around the plate. My dad sips his wine. Footsteps whisper across the floor upstairs.
    Benji’s back straightens up and his voice perks out, “What’s that?”
    My father holds his glass in midair. My fork stops by some clumped spaghetti. Dad puts the glass down slowly while Benji stands up. “It sounds like footsteps.”
    He races out of the dining room,