A Normal Word
“It was a normal word — check. With a word like that, he could drive home.” He goes back upstairs, “two at a time,” and explains to himself why: to tell him about the kitchen — “That was a normal reason. With a reason like that, he could go upstairs.” His lips end up at the temple — “the way you put a period at the end without reading what’s been written.” Three hours later, in the locker room: “He needed to check how he was doing. It was a normal word — check. With a word like that, he could drive home.”
This is how a closed-off person issues himself permissions: every movement toward another has to be wrapped in a practical pretext so that it need not be called what it is. It is not a lie to others — it is a lie inward, and it works exactly as long as the pretext is plausible (see “A Lid Over the Real Thing”). Note the price: the pretext allows him to go upstairs, but not to stay. A kiss “without reading what’s been written” is tenderness that is forbidden to know about itself. Downstairs, Simon is taking apart “the new thing” — he was left to wait, not thrown out — and “couldn’t find a side to start from.” Both stand before the same fact from different sides, and neither has words for it.
