Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley Page A

takes a few seconds for my eye to pick up the lines of dialogue that in a movie take much longer to say, and once my eye has picked it up, I can go on to the stuff I’m really interested in, which is what the characters are thinking or whatever. I think books move a lot faster even than a movie everyone thinks is fast, like
The Matrix.
I hated in
The Matrix
how you were always having to stop with the story and watch them fight. I would rather the story would go on and on, and then the fight would start, and then, right away, they would cut to the end of the fight and you would know who won, and then the story would pick up again.”
    “Spoken like a girl.”
    “Well, so what? I don’t like chick-flicks, either. I don’t mind documentaries. I saw this one about an art class for schizophrenics at a mental institution in New York State that I thought was wonderful. So I’m not cinematically impaired.”
    “I thought you were stoned.”
    “I’m not anymore. It wore off.”
    “Want another hit?”
    “No. I still like
The Lion King.
I made Leo watch it just the other day. If they ask for suggestions, that’s going to be mine. What’s going to be yours?”
    “I don’t know yet. I have to think about it. I don’t want it to be anything symptomatic.” He said this seriously, thinking how much people could tell about you when you suggested a movie for everyone to watch, but she barked out a laugh, which made him smile. Then she said, “Sweetie, I don’t think anyone but me cares enough about you to want to diagnose you.”
    The effect of this remark on his body was instantaneous, like an electrocution. He felt the nerves in his chest and arms light up and blood rush to his face, which, in the dark, thank God, she didn’t notice. He cleared his throat. She was moving around, making herself comfortable, totally unaware, as far as he could tell, that she had more or less done him in. Of course it was true. He knew that because nothing, no name, no face, popped into his head at the moment she said it. He cleared his throat again, and said, coolly, he thought, “But you do?”
    She turned her head in the blue light and was still smiling. She said, “Well, I do, yes. You were nice to me. You are nice to me. I don’t care about diagnosing you the way I did Leo, so we could fix it because it was interfering with my plans. I don’t have any plans with you. So I care about diagnosing you for you, so that something better could happen to you.”
    He said, jokingly, he hoped, “I hate that thing where you suddenly see yourself as others see you.”
    “That is a bitch, honey.” She reached up and stroked his forehead, and just then, as if his electrocution had turned something on, no more voluntary than that, he felt tears run down his cheeks. She said, “You’re crying.”
    “Well, I’m not actually crying. I’m just reacting.”
    She said, “Stoney. Stoney Whipple. I hurt your feelings.” She sounded genuinely surprised.
    “Talk about a diagnostic.”
    “Oh, honey. Gosh.” She pushed the hair out of his face and continued to look at him; then she picked up a pillow and wiped his tears away with the corner of the pillowcase, first the left cheek, then the right cheek. Then she put the pillow down, got off the bed, and stepped across the floor toward the bathroom. When the bathroom door opened, a big square of yellow light yawned into the darkness of the bedroom, blacking out all the blue windows. She came out, closed the door, came back to the bed. She handed him some tissues and said, “So blow your nose.”
    He blew his nose and wiped his face more thoroughly. The tears had stopped, and now he felt that washed-through feeling of involuntary relaxation that could have been pleasant if it didn’t remind you of the agony you had felt and didn’t also suggest that this could happen again. As a rule, Stoney preferred sensations to be spaced widely apart and to be mild. He liked the hours to become days and the