Monsters by Liz Kay

little, more to release the tension than anything. I drop to my knees, sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the table, pick up the vodka, but I don’t drink it. I just hold the glass in my hand, rub my thumb through the condensation on the side.
    â€œThis isn’t a Disney story. I mean, we’re exploring this whole system of privilege and oppression and then you want to turn this into ‘Oh, she’s a plucky heroine, so she’s fine, she saves herself in the end.’ That’s not real, that’s not true.” I turn the glass in my hand again. The ice is melting. I finally take a sip. “We have to take the reader, the audience, whatever, all the way. We have to make them feel complicit.”
    Tommy sits for a minute. Maybe he’s waiting to see if I say more. Maybe he’s just thinking. “Okay,” he says. “But you’d better sound a hell of a lot more eloquent tomorrow. And with Jason, you know, it wouldn’t hurt if you wore something a little more revealing.”
    â€œIf you think it’ll help,” I say. “But you’re with me on this?”
    He nods, sets his glass on the table. “I always was.” He reaches his hand out, pulls me to my feet. “You want me to take you to dinner?”
    I hate being in public with Tommy. I hate feeling watched. “I don’t know. I’ve been traveling all day. Can’t we just stay here?”
    â€œWe can do anything you want, baby.” When he says this, he gives my hand a little tug and raises his eyebrows. “Or did you want to wait till later?”
    â€œJesus, you are obnoxious.” I try to say this like it isn’t a relief to have the question answered.
    â€œYou didn’t think I was gonna have a room made up for you, ’cause I most certainly did not.”
    â€œWow,” I say, pulling my hand out of his. “That’s a hell of an assumption to make.”
    He moves toward the door. “The word ‘assumption’ implies the possibility that I could be wrong, and you know, you’d think as a poet you’d be more mindful of your vocabulary.”
    â€œYou’d think as a human being you’d be more mindful of being a dick.”
    â€œYou’d think, yeah”—he turns back toward me and nods—“but you’d be wrong.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    I wake up around five, which is seven o’clock back home. It’s practically sleeping in. Tommy’s arm is under my head, sort of on my hair. It’s hardto get free without waking him, but I do. It’s so early no one will be here, so I don’t really bother getting dressed. I just pull on my T-shirt and slip out to the kitchen, make coffee, take a mug of it into the study, and sit with the script. I read the whole thing. I start on page one, and I read and read and read. Sometime around seven, I hear Tommy in the kitchen, and when I look up, he’s leaning against the door frame.
    â€œWhat the hell is wrong with you?” he says.
    â€œCan’t sleep.” I lean forward for my coffee, but when I pick up the cup, it’s almost empty.
    He walks behind the couch, massages my neck, works his fingers up into my hair. “You should try staying in bed.”
    â€œIt just makes me feel anxious.”
    â€œThen you should try going back to bed.” He leans down, kissing the curve between my shoulder and neck. He works one hand through the neckline of my T-shirt, rubs his thumb across my breast.
    I say, “I’m trying to work here.”
    â€œYeah, me too.”
    He takes the script out of my lap and tosses it on the table in front of us, and the pen I had tucked in the middle of it falls to the floor. He reaches both hands around me, his fingers massaging the insides of my thighs.
    â€œJesus, Tommy.”
    â€œYou can keep fighting me,” he says, his mouth against my ear. “I mean that’s a