Henry of Atlantic City Read Online Free PDF

in caves for so long nobody knew what they were when they were found. When they were put there they were one thing and when they were discovered they were the samething but the world was something else, like if you put a piece of meat in the oven and then burned down the house and then opened the oven and the meat was still raw.
    There were magazines in the dumpster. They had pictures of naked men and women doing stuff to each other. Henry guessed it was fucking but even though people said
fuck
all the time, he wasn’t sure it was like the pictures. He remembered one day when he was out on the beach with Helena and she talked to him about her mother. “She’s an exhibitionist,” Helena said. “All she wants is to be looked at all the time.” She explained how her mother used to be in movies. “It’s so embarrassing! If anyone at school ever found out about my mother, I’d have to leave.”
    Henry asked why.
    “Because she used to be a porn star.”
    Henry asked what a porn star was.
    “You know, pornography?”
    Henry asked if it was like spirograph.
    Helena laughed. “Right. It’s just like spirograph.”
    They stopped talking for a little while. Then Helena asked, “Do you even know what a spirograph is?”
    Henry said it was an instrument for recording breathing movements.
    “Where’d you hear that?”
    Henry said he read it in a book.
    Helena dug her feet into the sand. “Well, it’s a toy too. I used to have one.”
    Henry was digging a hole, scooping it out and pilingthe sand around the edge to make a fort. Helena watched and then after a while she said, “She isn’t really a whore—even though everybody calls her that.”
    Henry kept digging and when the hole was big enough he told Helena to come into it with him. They worked together making the walls higher and higher. “Has anyone ever talked to you about sex?” Helena asked.
    Henry didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything.
    Helena was quiet for a while, then she said, “You can’t imagine what it’s like to have these dumb men hanging around my mother all the time.”
    Henry said he guessed not.
    “Just because they saw her fucking in a movie, they somehow think
they’re
going to fuck her too. They’re always surprised when it doesn’t happen.”
    Henry said he guessed so and piled more sand onto a collapsing wall. He asked Helena if her mother had ever shot anyone.
    “Are you listening to anything I’ve said?” Helena asked.
    Henry said yeah.
    “If I think about it too much it drives me crazy.”
    Henry asked what drove her crazy.
    Helena dug her foot into the wet sand and kicked a blob of it onto the wall Henry was working to build up. “I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. You’re too young.”
    Henry piled the sand faster and faster as a wave sent abig lip of foaming water into one side of the fort, making the outside walls smooth. Helena kicked more wet sand onto the wall Henry was working on. “I’ve never seen any of the movies my mother was in,” she said. “When I was twelve she told me about everything. She said she wasn’t sorry for anything she’d done, and I shouldn’t think that what she’d done was bad. She said she wanted me to know everything since one day I’d find out anyway. She offered to let me see one of the movies if I wanted, but she said she’d prefer it if I chose not to. You want to know how I see it all now?”
    Henry said okay.
    “I have this friend at school named Martha. Her dad was in the Vietnam War. Martha told me that as long as she could never imagine what he’d seen and done, it was okay. It’s
normal
not to imagine your parents doing certain things.”
    Henry asked Helena if sex was fucking.
    Helena got a surprised look. “I can’t believe I’m talking to you like this.” She didn’t say anything for a while and began smoothing out one of the sand walls and patting it with her hand. Then her face got all red. “Forget what I said, Henry.” They smoothed