I gave a brisk shake of my head, trying to keep listening to my parents.

“Opera is so boring,” he whispered. “Right?”

I looked away from him, out into the orchestra. In the aisle, a tall woman stood in a long velvet dress, her sharp shoulders jutting out from the straps. Her companion was much shorter than she, a stubby and balding man, but they fit together, her effervescence shining onto him and his plainness grounding her.

“Right?” Leroy said again. “Isn’t it boring?”

I ignored him. I didn’t think the opera was boring at all. I thought it was devastating.

“Devastating,” Freud echoed.

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“Werther loved her!” I said, my voice catching unexpectedly. “He loved her and he couldn’t have her…” Saying the words, I felt my chest go tight, the same feeling I’d had the day before, on the back patio, the feeling that had made me desperate for the man with the cigarette. I needed to fuck someone now, I needed it, if I didn’t I might die, I might explode—

“What are you thinking?” Freud said, but I could only shake my head beneath his palms.

Many minutes of silence.

Finally Freud spoke again. “He couldn’t have her, just as you couldn’t have your father.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said quickly. Do you mean I can’t have you? Werther’s odes of horrible sorrow played again in my mind. Charlotte’s voice was high and screeching, it drilled into the top of my skull; but Werther’s slid straight down my throat and through my chest and into my stomach, where it made a red-hot home. He was in agony. Again and again, from my perch above the orchestra, I imagined running toward him on the stage, threading my arms under his long black coat; he would wrap it around the back of my head, press me to him, press his hard stomach back into me. He would hide me, swallow me, no one would even know I was there. Pricks of pain burned along my thighs; I was digging my nails into the skin.

I remembered looking up at my dad, who stared impassively at the stage. On impulse, I touched my finger to the front of his part and dragged it down the length of his head. He shuddered, then turned to me, his face a map of repulsion. I had already retracted my bad hand, was hugging it to me.

“I did not like that,” he whispered, his voice like sandpaper. But why? Why didn’t he like the feel of my finger on his head? Why hadn’t he laid his head on mine when I’d rested on his shoulder, making a sandwich? He didn’t, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered back. “It looked shiny…“