Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

mouth, Karl,” says Joanne mildly. “Hi Allie.” She puts her cigarette out on a litde plate and smiles. The girls smile, too—not only Jason’s Heather and Joelle but also seven-year-old Trisha from down the block. They’re at the table, drawing pictures. Another roommate, scrawny, pissed-off Karl, stands there bare-chested, raging about his golf course job. He’s hunched over Joanne, sending small, concentrated rage at her, like she’s standing there with a big bag to catch it. He looks at me, his raging head pulled into such a point, it’s like his eyes are on the end of his nose. He says, “Hi,” then continues his rant.
    “I’m gonna tell that. . . that. . . pig, that fat pig—”
    “Look,” says Heather. “Look at my castle and my glass mountain!”
    “I’m not gonna tell him anything! I’m gonna go to Loomis and tell him what’s been going on in accounting! And then I’m gonna get Harris and get him together with—”
    “Want some tea, Allie?” Joanne is sandy-colored, her skin and her hair. Her eyes are light brown, and they remind me of Alain’s because they are sometimes filled with pouring movement. Except her movement isn’t in pieces. It’s continuous, like the movement of a plant or human cell fluxing with light or water or blood. Joanne is drinking from the world through her eyes, maybe even from beyond it.
    “Look at my beach birds!” cries Joelle. “Look at my bird balls!” The children crowd around Joanne as she’s trying to get up, loving what is in her eyes.
    “I’ll get the tea,” I say, then realize I forgot to take off my wet shoes. I’ve tracked dirt through the house like a stoner or a senile old lady. Oh well. I bend to pull off my shoes. I feel my aging gingerly. I sit up. The children’s faces are bursting with expressions, each gently crowding out the others. Karl looks at them, and his eyes go back where they’re supposed to be. He
    turns around and gropes through a cabinet, pulls out a box of cereal with a cartoon tiger on it. The tiger roars as magic sugar flies over his giant bowl of cereal.
    “Joanne, look! Look, Alison!” Trisha is dancing and waving her drawing. She is erect and seeking, and her white skin is as vibrant as color. Her brown eyes are radiant, but her small lips have a soft dark color that suggests privacy, hiddenness. Her dancer is red leaping on white, with wiggle arms and pointy yellow shoes on the ends of wiggle legs.
    “Wow!” I say. “This is a real dancer. This is like real dancing!”
    “Yes,” says Trisha, “now look!”
    Even Karl looks as Trisha stands exulting with her arms in the air. “All the way up to here!” She bends and puts her palms on the floor; her cartwheel is a quick, neat arc. “All the way down to there!” Her belly flashes its button. She laughs, cartwheels again, out of the kitchen into the hall. Heather and Joelle somersault after her, screaming, “Me, too! Me!” We applaud. I get a mug from the cabinet, brushing against Karl as I go past. His rage is still there, but it’s inside now. I picture a little metal ball with spikes, rolling in one spot, tearing a hole in his heart while the rest of Karl holds it together, eating his cereal and thinking about other things.
    “I’ll get it.” Joanne brushes past me, gets the kettle, runs water into it.
    “It’s total disrespect,” says Karl. “He’s shitting on me, and he’s doing it so everybody else knows.”
    “Karl,” I say. “I don’t exactly know what you’re talking about. But if you’re talking disrespect at the workplace, I once worked with a photographer who told a girl to put her hand down her pants and masturbate.”
“What.V*
    “He put it more nicely than that, but he meant, Stick your hand down your pants and masturbate. He wasn’t kidding, either. And she was fifteen.”
    This happened in Naxos, Greece. The photographer #1 an American named Alex Gish. He was considered an artist Whatever he looked at, he took apart and