played online poker, too, which would be a vice, he knew, for a person with less money and time. As it was, both money and time were abstract curses, and Sebastien could not reproach himself much for a habit that squandered either of them.
He thought often of selling the things. The house was overrun with expensive and oppressive objects—his mother’s jewelry, his father’s antique weapons, all manner of treasures plundered from all corners of the globe—and it would not have been hard to get rid of them. He could have sold them online—Sebastien vacillated between an intense solitude-compounded agoraphobia and a loneliness so clawing and vast that it was like vertigo—and he could have donated the proceeds, of course. (He could not bear the thought of acquiring any more money; he’d never live long enough, or have enough of a populated life, to spend what he had already, and this felt like a particular brand of bitter reproach in a newly capitalist society.) But somehow he never got around to it, just like he never got around to going over to the Carrizos’ house and introducing himself. The objects kept sitting there,accruing talismanic qualities and dust, and Sebastien himself kept sitting there, accruing only dust.
In spite of his close observation of the Carrizos, the arrival of Katy and Lily was a surprise—and perhaps it was the fact of the surprise that moved Sebastien more than the girls themselves, at first. Though he’d barely met the Carrizos, he had not expected them to make any sudden moves; he’d known when they were going to buy the new car, for example, and he had not been shocked when the rumors emerged of Carlos’s shady business dealings (you had to only look at the man’s leisurely hours and unlikely acquisition of exponentially more expensive household goods to know that something was amiss). But the girls—one light haired and delicate, as lovingly formed as a deer, the other pale and inquisitive looking in a way Sebastien rather liked—were a mystery. Were they far-flung—and hopefully wayward—young cousins? But then, they looked too different to be related, and their closeness in age could not be entirely coincidental. They were foreigners, it was clear, though they were both lacking the slouchy sexuality of the European girls he had known; they were attractive, but there was a frankness and—he thought at first, before he knew them both and before he loved one of them—a kind of dumbness to their beauty: It was so sincere, so unreconstructed, so unapologetic. It was being subverted by nothing. It was just there, flapping about in the wind, like a flag.
Basic questioning of the women at Pan y Vino bodega revealed that the girls were Katy Kellers and Lily Hayes—what a fussy, old-fashioned, Edith Whartonish name that was!—and that they were study-abroad students from the States. Sebastien watched them for a few days—their comings and goings, their outings, and occasionally, though not often, their evenings—against the shining backdrop of their breathtakingly well-lit house. He found himself continuing to like Lily the better of the two, though not for her appearance, particularly. She was pretty enough—with reddish hair and high-arched eyebrows that made her look
extremely
wide-awake—but pretty girls were like flowers: astonishingand utterly common, both. Instead, what drew him to Lily was what appeared, at least from a distance, to be her strange solitude—a solitude much less complete but, he had to assume, far more elective, than his own.
It had been a long time since Sebastien had had a crush on an actual girl. He watched a lot of pornography, though he didn’t really like things quite so mechanized and denuded; there was something about the clinical insertions and withdrawals that always reminded him a bit of the dentist. He was aesthetically though not ethically opposed to prostitution. There were women at Pan y Vino, where he went to buy his toilet paper and
He thought often of selling the things. The house was overrun with expensive and oppressive objects—his mother’s jewelry, his father’s antique weapons, all manner of treasures plundered from all corners of the globe—and it would not have been hard to get rid of them. He could have sold them online—Sebastien vacillated between an intense solitude-compounded agoraphobia and a loneliness so clawing and vast that it was like vertigo—and he could have donated the proceeds, of course. (He could not bear the thought of acquiring any more money; he’d never live long enough, or have enough of a populated life, to spend what he had already, and this felt like a particular brand of bitter reproach in a newly capitalist society.) But somehow he never got around to it, just like he never got around to going over to the Carrizos’ house and introducing himself. The objects kept sitting there,accruing talismanic qualities and dust, and Sebastien himself kept sitting there, accruing only dust.
In spite of his close observation of the Carrizos, the arrival of Katy and Lily was a surprise—and perhaps it was the fact of the surprise that moved Sebastien more than the girls themselves, at first. Though he’d barely met the Carrizos, he had not expected them to make any sudden moves; he’d known when they were going to buy the new car, for example, and he had not been shocked when the rumors emerged of Carlos’s shady business dealings (you had to only look at the man’s leisurely hours and unlikely acquisition of exponentially more expensive household goods to know that something was amiss). But the girls—one light haired and delicate, as lovingly formed as a deer, the other pale and inquisitive looking in a way Sebastien rather liked—were a mystery. Were they far-flung—and hopefully wayward—young cousins? But then, they looked too different to be related, and their closeness in age could not be entirely coincidental. They were foreigners, it was clear, though they were both lacking the slouchy sexuality of the European girls he had known; they were attractive, but there was a frankness and—he thought at first, before he knew them both and before he loved one of them—a kind of dumbness to their beauty: It was so sincere, so unreconstructed, so unapologetic. It was being subverted by nothing. It was just there, flapping about in the wind, like a flag.
Basic questioning of the women at Pan y Vino bodega revealed that the girls were Katy Kellers and Lily Hayes—what a fussy, old-fashioned, Edith Whartonish name that was!—and that they were study-abroad students from the States. Sebastien watched them for a few days—their comings and goings, their outings, and occasionally, though not often, their evenings—against the shining backdrop of their breathtakingly well-lit house. He found himself continuing to like Lily the better of the two, though not for her appearance, particularly. She was pretty enough—with reddish hair and high-arched eyebrows that made her look
extremely
wide-awake—but pretty girls were like flowers: astonishingand utterly common, both. Instead, what drew him to Lily was what appeared, at least from a distance, to be her strange solitude—a solitude much less complete but, he had to assume, far more elective, than his own.
It had been a long time since Sebastien had had a crush on an actual girl. He watched a lot of pornography, though he didn’t really like things quite so mechanized and denuded; there was something about the clinical insertions and withdrawals that always reminded him a bit of the dentist. He was aesthetically though not ethically opposed to prostitution. There were women at Pan y Vino, where he went to buy his toilet paper and
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