The Human Stain

"Do you want to know what I feel like?" she asks him.

"Yes."

"I feel so good."

"So," he asks, "who can get out of this alive?"

"I'm with you there, mister. You're right, Coleman. This is going to lead to disaster. Into this at seventy-one? Turned around by this at seventy-one? Uh-uh. We'd better go back to the raw thing."

"Keep dancing," he says, and he hits a button on the bedside Sony and "The Man I Love" track starts up again.

"No. No. I beg you. There's my career as a janitor to think about."

"Don't stop."

"'Don't stop.'" she repeats. "I've heard those words somewhere before." In fact, rarely has she ever heard the word "stop" without "don't." Not from a man. Not much from herself either. "I've always thought 'don't stop' was one word," she says.

"It is. Keep dancing."

"Then don't lose it," she says. "A man and a woman in a room.

Naked. We've got all we need. We don't need love. Don't diminish yourself—don't reveal yourself as a sentimental sap. You're dying to do it, but don't. Let's not lose this. Imagine, Coleman, imagine sustaining this."

He's never seen me dance like this, he's never heard me talk like this. Been so long since I talked like this, I'd have thought I'd forgotten how. So very long in hiding. Nobody's heard me talk like this.

The hawks and the crows sometimes in the woods, but otherwise no one. This is not the usual way I entertain men. This is the most reckless I have ever been. Imagine.

"Imagine," she says, "showing up every day—and this. The woman who doesn't want to own everything. The woman who doesn't want to own anything."

But never had she wanted to own anything more.

"Most women want to own everything," she says. "They want to own your mail. They want to own your future. They want to own your fantasies. 'How dare you want to fuck anybody other than me.

I should be your fantasy. Why are you watching porn when you have me at home?' They want to own who you are, Coleman. But the pleasure isn't owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you. Oh, I see you, Coleman. I could give you away my whole life and still have you. Just by dancing.

Isn't that true? Am I mistaken? Do you like this, Coleman?"

"What luck," he says, watching, watching. "What incredible luck.

Life owed me this."

"Did it now?"

"There's no one like you. Helen of Troy."

"Helen of Nowhere. Helen of Nothing."

"Keep dancing."

"I see you, Coleman. I do see you. Do you want to know what I see?"

"Sure."

"You want to know if I see an old man, don't you? You're afraid I'll see an old man and I'll run. You're afraid that if I see all the differences from a young man, if I see the things that are slack and the things that are gone, you'll lose me. Because you're too old. But you know what I see?"

"What?"

"I see a kid. I see you falling in love the way a kid does. And you mustn't. You mustn't. Know what else I see?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I see it now—I do see an old man. I see an old man dying."

"Tell me."

"You've lost everything."

"You see that?"

"Yes. Everything except me dancing. You want to know what I see?"

"What?"

"You didn't deserve that hand, Coleman. That's what I see. I see that you're furious. And that's the way it's going to end. As a furious old man. And it shouldn't have been. That's what I see: your fury. I see the anger and the shame. I see that you understand as an old man what time is. You don't understand that till near the end. But now you do. And it's frightening. Because you can't do it again. You can't be twenty again. It's not going to come back. And this is how it ended. And what's worse even than the dying, what's worse even than the being dead, are the fucking bastards who did this to you.

Took it all away from you. I see that in you, Coleman. I see it because it's something I know about. The fucking bastards who changed everything within the blink of an eye. Took your life and threw it away. Took your life, and they decided they were going to throw it away. You've come to the right dancing girl. They decide what is garbage, and they decided you're garbage. Humiliated and humbled and destroyed a man over an issue everyone knew was bullshit. A pissy little word that meant nothing to them, absolutely nothing at all. And that's infuriating."

"I didn't realize you were paying attention."

She laughs the easy laugh. And dances. Without the idealism, without the idealization, without all the utopianism of the sweet young thing, despite everything she knows reality to be, despite the irreversible futility that is her life, despite all the chaos and callousness, she dances! And speaks as she's never spoken to a man before.

Women who fuck like she does aren't supposed to talk like this-at least that's what the men who don't fuck women like her like to think. That's what the women who don't fuck like her like to think. That's what everyone likes to think—stupid Faunia. Well, let