He has been lying down on his back but then his back hurts from
lying down.
The local wineshop was owned by a short rotund bald headed man. The owner had set up a large flag with the word wine on it.
They played American pop songs sung in Vietnamese and Indonesian.
He read the NY Times, there wasn’t as much in the Oregonian. It hurt when he breathed deeply.
She said that strengthening the core would help one’s back.
His stepfather had spent days on his back when he had been very stressed out as a young man. He was surprised he hadn’t had problems before with his back. He was six foot three and had a very long back.
Close up she looked Russian with high prominent cheek bones.
Her eyes were very clear and emotional. He thought that he looked
unlike her and that he was more like her when he was with her than he was himself and that that was an auspicious thing. He kept his eyes closed and waited for her to kiss him. When he opened his eyes he saw that she had freckles on her forehead and that the center of her part was orange red and white. What was the color of her eyes?
He looked and saw that they were brown as he had remembered.
Are you looking at my freckles, she said.
Yes, he said. I like them.
They get really colorful summertime, she said.
He wanted to smell them. He thought they would smell like briny skin in the sun. He wasn’t able to smell anything when he pressed his nose to her forehead. There were times his sense of smell was very strong, or overwhelmed and revived by a powerful smell and then there were times he couldn’t smell anything.
They saw a movie about African boy soldiers. The boy warriors were brainwashed by a senior charismatic rebel fighter with the ambition to be made a general. They had no idea where in Africa the movie had been shot and felt that they should have known even though the story takes place in an unnamed African country.
She had traveled to South Africa in her late twenties. She had used the trains when she was there and had been stared at by South Afrikaners. She had to explain to two Afrikaners at a hostel that she had to use sun screen when she went outside.
There had been two previews that he wanted to see. One about a dying woman and a high strung man who they say is not unlike Harvey Kietel and another about Arabs in the desert. He hadn’t remembered wanting to see a movie in a long time.