Ways to Disappear

by Idra Novey

And then it came to him: the bubble bath scene in the opening pages of the novel that had put his press on the map. Luisa Flaks with her head back, her long wet hair spread out like a spider web against the porcelain of the tub. Sensual, ordinary Luisa reclining in the bath, or not quite ordinary, as she’d had the nerve to resist turning off the faucets, had let the water spill steadily over the edge of the tub and across the tiles and seep into the apartment below, had let the spill go on until her skin had shriveled at the center of her fingertips and her toes and she could no longer feel her backbone against the porcelain. Rocha had been concerned that the scene was too extreme, that the descriptions dragged on too long, but Beatriz had insisted that was the point: to push everything—the amount of water, the details. To take all of it too far.