Apathy and Other Small Victories Read Online Free PDF

flinched as she moved towards me, bracing myself for more punishing sex. But she draped her arm over my chest instead.
    “Even if you were, I’d help you,” she whispered as I slipped into a coma.
    “So?” she said, some time later.
    “Huh?”
    “Do you want me to talk to anybody for you?”
    “Huh?”
    “Haven’t you been listening? At Panopticon. Do you want me to talk to anybody about you maybe getting a job.”
    “Huh?”
    “You’d have to start out on the ground floor, maybe even as a temp. But you’d move up quickly. I know you would.”
    “What?”
    “There’s a lot of opportunity,” she said, and raised herself up on one elbow. “So do you want me to talk to anyone for you?”
    “At your insurance company?” She actually seemed serious. “No thanks, I’m all right.”
    She looked at me for a long time. Not long enough for me to turn my head and look at her, but still pretty long.
    “You’re so, independent ,” she said.
    It was nice of her to want to believe the best about me. People tend to do that with the strangers they’re fucking. If she wanted to think that apathy and independence were the same thing, good for her. Maybe she was right.
    And it was nice of her to want to help me out with a job, whatever her real motivations were. Apart from beating the shit out of me during sex she seemed like a nice person. But nice just isn’t enough anymore. Everybody’s nice, or they at least try to be, or pretend to be. You have to go to France or New York City to find a real asshole these days, and they’re only doing it because people expect them to, like those monkeys at the zoo who throw their shit at visitors through the bars. It’s more reputation than a real desire to smear feces all over somebody. And that’s just sad.
    “What are you thinking?” Gwen said.
    I pretended to be asleep.
     
    Marlene had been teaching me sign language during those hours when Doug was on the couch in his office, sipping iced tea and sobbing into his hands. She said I was getting pretty good. I knew the whole alphabet and a couple of words, but I mostly said fuck , shit , dick head , asshole and sex . It was just like first grade.
    And just like in first grade, shit was my favorite. To make the sign you stick out your thumb and then close your other hand around it, then pull your thumb down out of your fist. It’s disturbingly graphic. You can almost hear the plop . Marlene said I should be a translator, like at the United Nations, but there’s no country where everybody’s deaf so I don’t know who I could represent. And even if there was a deaf country I doubt me telling the Lebanese ambassador to go fuck himself in sign language would go over too well, geopolitically speaking.
    Doug was amazed.
    “I can stand here and ask her the same question five times and she has no idea what I’m talking about, but you just move your hands around and she knows exactly what you mean!”
    Doug never really understood the concept of sign language. And most of the time I wasn’t even signing. I was mashing my hands together and flittering my fingers while clearly mouthing the same question to her that Doug had just asked five times. When he talked he mumbled or played with his mustache or turned his head in mid-sentence. Then he’d say the same thing again, only louder. Doug never understood that for someone to read your lips they need to see your mouth, and that volume doesn’t matter when you’re deaf. Doug never understood a lot of things.
    “I can’t believe how quick you picked it up. Did you speak any sign language before you started coming here?”
    “No, I did not,” I said, while signing I hate you .
    Marlene barked a laugh, then pressed her lips together as her face went red.
    “That’s great,” Doug said, smiling. “Say something else.”
    “I speak sign language, but I am not deaf,” I said, and signed I want to throw my shit at you .
    Marlene was trying to strangle the laugh in her