[...] Do you like that? he asks. Look of desperate gratitude she turns towards him. What he feels also and can’t express. I love it so much, she says. I feel really safe. I don’t know. When it’s like this, I get this feeling. I feel so safe, I can’t explain. All over himself a strange rising intensity like heat looking down at her. To give her that feeling, yes. Naomi, you are safe, he says. Completely, I promise. Everything’s going to be okay. For a moment longer just looking at one another. The same desperation they feel, the same terrible gratitude, tender painful vulnerability, depth of pleasure. Gasping contractions of her breath. Peter, she says. Fuck, I’m sorry. He also then. Wet inside her, which she loves. Hears her dazed voice under him mumbling: Oh, it’s so nice. Her irrepressible love of life, he thinks. Pulling fried chicken apart with oily fingers. Last sip of soft drink rattling in the straw. Or trying on a new dress, the way her body luxuriates in tactility. Pleasure of her own gorgeousness in the mirror. Deep complete joy she finds in being alive. No job, no family support, no fixed address, no state entitlements, no money to finish college. Owner of nothing in the world but her own perfect body. Men, and even other women, and systems, bureaucracies, laws, intent it seems on breaking her, forcing her to accept misery. And here she is laughing, drinking sugary coffee, begging to be fucked. He loves that in her. Wants to protect her at times even from himself. Her freedom, wild animal that she is. Both finished they lie in silence side by side. He thinks of her staying a while, however long, her underwear drying on the clotheshorse, dishes in the sink. Sees himself cooking dinner while she sits with bare feet on the sofa recording some interminable voice note for her friends. I literally can’t believe he even said that. Undressing her for bed at night, kissing fondly her unresisting lips. Far away here from anything that could harm her. Object only of idiotic desire and love.