Amory Blaine’s Reviews > Trust Exercise > Status Update

“It’s all right … sweet Claire … it’s all right…” Finally getting her footing she kneed him. She missed but he lurched back and then stood glaring stormclouds of scorn.
“We seem to have had a misunderstanding,” he said with admonitory coldness as she heaved, leaning on the door handle as if she’d just come up from swimming a race. “You’ve embarrassed me,” he added as she yanked the door open.

She twisted and broke away, gulping mouthfuls of air as if stuffing her stomach with air would prevent it from hurling its contents. And it worked, she willed down her own vomit, the prospective shame of which was so great that it didn’t cross her mind that her vomit might serve as a weapon. “Oh dear,” he was tutting, with her wedged against the door again while swarming his hands like flesh spiders.

As she gagged against the taste of masticated ceviche mixed in his saliva he seized her right hand and pushed it inside the front of his pants.... “There,” he rasped, “there.” He scrubbed her hand roughly against the damp noodle of flesh which secreted warm goo but did not come to life. In her panic Claire wished that it would, was conscious of a failure and possible worse consequence if it didn’t.

“Some fresh air? I thought you might like the view from the roof. I have a private roof terrace.”
This did seem like something she would have enjoyed at some previous time. “Okay,” she said and swaying to her feet followed him again, up a short staircase of tight bends, out a door into the warm wet night air.

Is this why Karen lets slip her secret—because she wants to break into this circuit of David and Sarah, and seize attention, at last, for herself?

No. She lets it slip because she does. Don’t ask her Why now? Ask her Why not every moment up to now?

[2]It was all business, it was not sexy, you were not meant2feel excited or strange as you roughly handled someone else’s body&clothes as if they were a doll you didn’t love. Yet it was sexy, exciting,&strange, or maybe only Karen felt tht way, back when their feelings were so sternly policed tht you got in trouble if you didn’t feel 1way on command&also in trouble if you felt another way that had not been commanded.

[1] Karen remembered the quick changes she’d done years ago when they all were in school, the cold intimacy of pulling open Melanie’s zipper, yanking down her dress2a pool@her feet, pulling the donut ofthe new dress swiftly over her head&her arms while she stepped out ofthe old dress, dropping onto all 4s 2grab her feet 1@a time, push them into her shoes while she did up her buttons, all breathlessly fast inthe dark.

[3] Martin’s “witch hunt” is made up of women who insist they have a case, but what’s different about them, exactly? Karen’s attitude toward them is violently mixed. She might defend them to David, but in her bowels she scorns them, these young women who made a bad judgment and now want to blame someone else.

[2] experience, she can see that he was ugly, provincial, duplicitous, and untrustworthy; even cruel. The fact remains that she wanted him. Her wanting him means that she chose. She doesn’t have a case here, she’s fully aware; this would be why she’s kept her mouth shut and kept her problem to herself.

[1] Karen has thought about this, believe her. She knows she’s not a special kind of victim, for having gotten shown the ropes by a much older man who, it turned out, did not care about her. She knows this is perfectly common; just look at all the stories/plays/movies about it. She wanted him. In her ignorance and inexperience she thought he was handsome, worldly, earnest, and reliable, and now, with her knowledge &