Read Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else for Free Online Page B

bored. Two or three times they invite Sasha over for a snack, but in the house she turns glum again.
    One evening my mother says Sasha is a dim bulb.
    â€œShe’s got breasts big enough to be nursing, but every year she’s got September makeup exams around her neck.”
    It doesn’t make any sense to me. Sasha doesn’t seem at all dim. On the contrary, she’s fabulous. For example, she figured out how to freeze all by herself. I have never seen anyone freeze, so I have nothing to compare it to — but she can stiffen up like an icicle. She says I have to massage her with snow. Everest diligently rubs her hands, calloused by her coat fasteners, but Kilimanjaro does not wake up.
    â€œKiss me!” she hisses suddenly, still unconscious, her eyelids squeezed shut.
    How do I know that the fateful moment has come? Like the snake-prince, I can see in the dark. I know things I’ve never encountered. With a single tug I rip off my oxygen mask. Everest falls head over heels in love.
    The elderberry thicket closes over us. The stillness rumbles like a cracked bell, and the distant roar of avalanches gradually falls silent. Face to face with the sheer frost of death, Everest comes to know the terror of love. Practically without touching her, in a panic, he kisses her frozen face. Sasha immediately opens her eyes, and — although she knows I don’t like it — the cunning girl licks me all over.

    One evening there’s a commotion downstairs. Sasha and I secretly peer through the window. Miss Zámsky is chasing her brother around the kitchen; when he stops and cowers in horror against the wall, she swipes at him with a broom and, his hand shaking, he parries with his cane.
    â€œYou pig, shame on you!” she screams, swinging the broom round her head. “I’ll throw you out of the house! Go back to Votice, you pig! Bet
they
don’t want you either, you swine!”
    She throws a brush at him. Mr. Zámsky bursts through the door and makes his getaway. Sasha’s eyes are shining. “I know why my aunt’s upset!” she whispers. She bites her fingers so hard she leaves red welts on them, and brushes against me, giggling with excitement.

    By the end of the week Sasha starts to rebel. We’re all scratched up, we’ve broken our nails, and under our sweats our knees are thoroughly bruised. We’ve already climbed a slippery path along the Wall of Death, where the brushwood straggles to the ground. Sasha grumbles that she’s lost interest.
    I understand. After all, we’re always playing the same thing. What’s more attractive in love than the starting line? Again and again I wind the hands back to zero. Sasha freezes, Everest stands over her. The circulation of his blood pauses, like a paternoster grinding to a halt. This helping of emotion is quite enough for me, but Sasha is still grousing. She wants to know when we’re going to get to the top.
    The worst thing is that I don’t know myself. The Young Writer is stuck in a creative crisis. I dragged us out to the ends of the earth and for a week I’ve held us there like a customs official. Just short of the goal my imagination has run dry. What awaits love at the summit of the Mountain of Mountains?
    I compress my feelings like gas in a cylinder. I cross out the kisses; we’re fighting for every gasp of air. The Mountain belches frost. I camp just shy of the summit, lacking the courage for that final step.
    â€œI’m not playing!” Sasha pouts. Spitefully she sticks a thorn through my sweats. I beg her — just one more time. We both roll down to the fence; relieved, I slip back under the starting line oflove and once again I’m crawling along on my belly like a newt.

    On Sunday Sasha gets the flu. I can’t see her and I’m desperate. I thrash around the apartment like a Christmas carp in a trough, I talk back, cut people off, and am so nasty that my