| within your own fingers, taking a certain grim pleasure in the puncturing of his skin with your nails, and with the energy of pent-up years released, you soar with him to an uncharted continent, the most remote mountains. With an avalanche and a fracturing of rock and snow, he crashes onto the peak. In a world where hate never fades, this gesture may be but a token; nonetheless, a branch has been snipped, this specific contagion has been disinfected. And so he curses and spits at you as you leave him, but you are comfortable with your decision, because you know that to cross these moun-tains and return to humankind would take eons, lifetimes. And yet, every so often at night, as you watch the sun shrink to a dot on the horizon, you think that perhaps the dot is actually the man's lantern, still borne high on his rage, as he works his way back, peak by peak. ***  | Lin Page 13 The taxi driver first told you that the dance would cost fifty dollars, and now it has been bumped up to a hundred, for the local villagers must dance with the girls as well, and it would not be right to let them do so without giving them money to pay the girls. You argue, not because money is any kind of issue with you, but because this sort of haggling is tradition, spice, life. Ultimately, a compromise is reached, and a bonfire is lit in the center of the field. Under a nearby pavilion the orchestra bangs out a sinewy, circular rhythm, and the dance begins. The fifteen-year old girls bare stomachs and legs to you, they smile suggestively because it is custom and mandate. The true laughter is in their headdresses of mock gold and sequined robes as they titter with each little shake, and the dresses that spill out with every color you see in children's books. You stagger towards them -- even after all this time,  | |
