Audition

by Katie Kitamura

Its source was an imbalance of want. Two people who want the same thing will never generate the same intensity as two people who want different things, or one person who wants into an absence, a void—as was in fact the case with Xavier, who wanted something from me that I could not give.

I nodded, and asked how I could help. I had reverted to the most distant version of myself, the version that sounded like a bank manager or hotel concierge,

Because in fact we don’t want to see the thing itself, on a screen or on a stage, we don’t want to see actual pain or suffering or death, but its representation. Our awareness of the performance is what allows us to enjoy the emotion, to creep close to it and

It was as if a break had been called, as if it had suddenly occurred to both of us that his lines were insufficient, my characterization lacking, the entire plotline faulty and implausible. Or perhaps he was only acting out. Perhaps it was only that, and less than I thought it was. Can things be unsaid and undone, can the clock run both ways, backward and forward, can the story unspool in both directions?