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skittish.
    “There’s just a few more questions.”
    “All right.”
    “Why do you think Definitism frightens people so?”
    “Because it’s powerful. It glorifies the freedom of the individual, and nowadays that sort of philosophy is labeled fascistic. People think if you make moral judgments, or work hard for a goal and don’t let yourself be deterred, if you accomplish something, that you’re right wing and somehow unfeeling to other people’s plights.” I glanced out my windows into the health club across the street. The exercise class was starting. I could make out the dim shapes of thickset young men in shorts stretching themselves, posing on steely machines, prowling. “People made a lot of assumptions about Granite that simply weren’t true. It’s possible to have great humanity and be a Definitist. I once protected a prostitute from an abusive client—let her stay with me, helped her get back on her feet. And when people who knew I was a Definitist heardthat I’d done that, they were shocked that I would protect such a woman, as if being a Definitist and a compassionate person were a contradiction in terms.”
    They were lining up, jostling into position like ponies, pointing their toes against the floor to flex their calves. The instructor stood by, slim hip tilted, indolently lifting and dropping a small barbell in one hand. I wasn’t usually awake to see this class. They were restful and pleasing to watch when they did their exercises in formation: dozens of boys bending, stretching, and jumping in harmony, standing splay-legged to lift weights, or on their backs, rapidly curling and uncurling like wounded ants.
    “People only accept the validity of movements that champion the underdog and scorn those that champion people of great accomplishment. You always have to take the dumbest as your lowest common denominator.” The phrase caught in my throat; it had a hard, treacherous shape. I imagined my words tumbling atop each other, snarling together, forming a hostile tangle around my feet that I vainly struggled to escape as a chorus of Granite’s enemies stood and pointed and said, “So! You despise the weak, the helpless . . .” “So people start to think that someone like me, a Definitist, would not feel sympathy for the weak and helpless. Well, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Pardon my French.” I wrenched myself free of the trap and stood defiant, fists clenched at my sides. Justine stared at my sudden anger. “I had a friend once named Kim who happened to be retarded. We used to belong to a women’s support group, and those women there, those Marxist, feminist bitches, they ignored Kim, they hurt Kim, they would kill Kim if they thought it would further a cause. They would victimize the weak and the helpless. Not me. And not Granite.” Kim’s loose-eyeballed face and pathetic form stood peeping from behind my defiant, fish-clenching figure.
    The exercisers began their jumping jacks.
    “How did Granite react to the press?”
    “She was hurt by them. She could never really defend herself against them, especially after Bradley left. She was a tough lady supreme. But somehow her very toughness made her vulnerable to jerks. If she was wrong but thought she was right she would goto the death to defend it—and she did in the case of Beau Bradley. She was brilliant, she was powerfully sexual, and she spoke with a glamorous accent. When the average person sees a woman with all these qualities plus, he is going to be overwhelmed with how small he is in comparison. She scared the shit out of them. She believed in herself and they didn’t believe in themselves, and they hated her for that. The critics gang-raped her. She tried to fight back but she just wasn’t capable of dealing on their niggling, ugly level.”
    The boys across the street blurred before the vision of an elderly Granite on the dull gray box of my TV set. She was the guest on a talk show, sitting in a