Big Swiss

by Jen Beagin

I’m not attached to my suffering. I’m not attached to what happened to me. I don’t believe it explains everything about me, because I haven’t made it part of my identity.

Where do you imagine you are, Greta? Walter seemed to ask. The Italian countryside? Who do you think you are, Diane Lane?

She looked windblown but also elated and a little surprised, as if she’d arrived by parachute.

A lifelong romance with poverty. Meow, kitty.

Put on a blond wig and walk down the street. See what happens. You’d be shocked. And bitterly disappointed. A lot of dim men are into blondes.

It dawned on her slowly, a little painfully, that what she’d been looking for inside the dream house, and what she’d found, was her own appetite. She’d been famished all these years without knowing it.