American Appetites Read Online Free Page B

this.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Ian asked. “What is ‘this’?”
    â€œI’m paralyzed; he’s got me,” she said. “I can’t go forward or back.”
    â€œWho is ‘he,’ your lover?”
    â€œWon’t let me have an abortion, says he’ll kill me if—”
    â€œYou’re pregnant?”
    â€œâ€”if I kill it . Six weeks, only, and already it’s beginning to—”
    â€œIs that it? You’re pregnant? Is that why you’re so upset?”
    â€œâ€”exert its own will . Sucking the life from me .”
    She began, with no warning, to beat her fists against her belly. Ian caught her wrists, forced her to lie still. With surprising strength she twisted free, clawing and kicking, and, on her feet now, ducked away behind him. Ian saw to his astonishment that the back of his hand was badly scratched; tiny blood beads appeared between his knuckles.
    He said, “You’d better calm down, you’re making yourself hysterical.”
    â€œGo away and leave me. What difference does it make.”
    â€œIf you are pregnant, it’s a relatively simple—”
    â€œ I can’t go forward or back .” She pressed her hands over her ears, bent nearly double, and would not hear. Ian went to touch her, and she shrank away. “No. No. No. No. No.” She stumbled into one of the coyote-hide chairs and, in a sudden rage, kicked it and sent it flying against a wall. Ian watched in helpless fascination, as he’d once watched his two- or three-year-old daughter in the paroxysm of a temper tantrum, as Sigrid Hunt, dazed and lethargic only a moment before, began to curse, slam, pummel, kick, throwing things about, overturning furniture, tearing at her own hair. Ian thought, I will have to get help. I can’t do this alone.
    He was sweating inside his clothes. An old terror of sudden and unanticipated intimacy rose in him, a memory of other such situations when, thrown together with another person, whether a man or a woman, in one or two cases children, he had been taken off guard: had simply not known what to do. Glynnis would have known: would take the girl’s hands in hers and embrace her, speak soothingly to her, brush the damp strands of hair off of her forehead. It’s all right dear don’t be frightened dear I’ll help you dear there are people who will help you please don’t be upset. But Ian dared not touch her.
    He said, looking for a telephone, “I’m going to call an ambulance; you’re hysterical, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
    Sigrid cut her eyes at him and said, panting, “Leave me alone, just please leave me alone .”
    â€œDon’t be silly, I can’t leave you alone,” Ian said. He advanced upon her and said, “I don’t want to leave you alone.”
    Like Glynnis, though not so easily as Glynnis, Ian took the girl’s hands in his—both her hands, in his—and urged her to sit down. Suddenly obedient, she sat: began to sob, pressing her forehead, which was damp but surprisingly cool, against the backs of his hands. He thought, She is Bianca’s age; she is Glynnis’s young friend. So long as he could think of Sigrid Hunt in those terms, in that specific equation, he believed he would be all right. His alarm, his excitement, even his acute sexual arousal, could be contained.
    As Sigrid wept Ian told her, in a low, calm, unemphatic voice, as one might speak to a sick child, or an animal, that he could help her; he wanted to help her, if she would cooperate. He was not going to leave her, in any case. Not in the condition she was in. “What kind of drug have you been taking?” he asked.
    â€œNothing,” she said. Then, “Just something to help me sleep.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œOf course you know.”
    â€œI want to sleep and I can’t sleep , my head is