I ask Mr. Novak what he likes best about America…

I ask Mr. Novak what he liked the most about America. ‘The wide open space,’ he said. ‘Nobody can find you here. It’s good for that. You don’t have to hide to not be found. God can find you in the reeds, nobody else. Montana is the best for that, but it’s too close to Canada.’

His house is bare, à la mode of the average human male. Most of his books are decades old and reread a thousand times over. There’s a lot to be learned in the same pages. Words can take on new meanings and connections can be made that weren’t made prior—this character meant this or that, same in films. Luke, I am your father is reduced to water by the diluting prequels. Mr. Novak doesn’t really care for films and has no TV. His computer is choking to death from all the dust on its face.

A bar of soap made from animal fat sits in the centre of the bathroom sink. It’s the colour of skin, human skin. We don’t really think about skin that much because it’s everywhere—the film on top of a yoghurt, the placenta-like SCOBY (sp?) in vinegar or wine—and it only gives the sensations other organs make. When you hit your thumb and it pulses, it’s the blood beneath it, not the skin. Anybody with acne might disagree but it’s all part of a larger internal plumbing system.

The water here is bottled or recycled from rain. It tastes bad either way, metallic and faintly sour like there’s a pill crushed up into it. 

Sven is nineteen and speaks with his mouth like THIIIIS, all teeth, two neat rows of them. It figures that dental hygiene in a place like this would be an afterthought, after hunting-and-a-shooting, but his are beautiful, perfect ivory. Swedish-American— He’s old enough to get shot to bits but not have a beer. He opens a bottle with those beautiful teeth and