My body heats all the way through—all the way from my too-red face, right down to the tips of my toes. I can feel each finger he’s touching exactly, and when he moves closer to me I do what I would never dare to in real life. I sway closer to him, as though we’re magnets and metal. As though I cannot help it, and I suppose that is true. I cannot. I want to edge closer to him, and feel every word he speaks with that mean mouth—because he says so little and yet I am certain he says so much. He is the ghost who tries to speak without a mouth, he is the center of my maze, the gleaming spire, oh, lord why am I thinking any of this? Perhaps he is making me, I consider—yes, perhaps. It could be that the very purpose of his machine is to fit strange images and fantasies into a young woman’s mind,
