"I know." She pierced him with being lost. He was lost too but resented having it being mirrored onto him. It wasn't the model for being a man that he could pass onto his sons should he have sons, and he felt that he should have sons no matter what his sexual feelings were. "What's happened to you?" he asked mildly. "For one year you've been a stranger. I can guess. I'm always left guessing." "I've been ill -- so ill." "Ill?" He wanted to believe her. Strangely, he wanted to believe in viruses that blackened eyes. He wanted to believe in physical sickness, which often had cures. It wasn't a major divergence: sickness meant being overtaken by a virus that was alien and so with love it could be as unwanted as this. One could be inundated with pleasure- neurotransmitters like anyone whose consciousness succumbs to a knockout gas. This was his subconscious association; and yet consciously he wanted to believe that she was literally ill and despised her for not being so. "Take my hand. Let's go upstairs." "I'll die if I go up there." "No! Mom, Dad, and I will help you to become well…if you're sick." He emphasized "if you're sick" doubtfully. Then he became aware of the fact that he was playing a game the way he had always been led around by childish games when he was a naive and gullible boy. He hated her for making him look foolish once again. "Go up, June!" "Sang Huin, if I go to my bedroom I'll slit my wrist. I'll jump from the window headfirst. I don't know. I'll end it somehow." "What are you saying?" "Feel it!" She put his hand on her lap. "It's alive." He took back his hand in revulsion of it being placed there. Then his face grimaced. "You're pregnant with a guy that gives you this!" He lifted her lowered face in his palm. "What's the name of this guy?" he demanded. He knew and it wasn't just a guy whom she had bred with but the adrenaline of being with one who had power, the glitter of being with one who had money and influence, the love of a body, and the friendship with this man who was her boss. She had been seduced by the demonstration that some male birds give to prospective mates when dangling worms from their mouths. It was the American dream. He had always believed that womanhood and prostitution were the same thing. "Release your hand from the railing." "No, please, I can't go up!" "Who's to say anything about going up. We're going down, down to him. I'll give you to him since you are his second marriage. He signed it with that thing growing inside you. Maybe you'll be his wife's servant. You're definitely his whore. You've seen this home for the last time." Chapter Twenty-Three