Animal People by Charlotte Wood

hand away from the scar, slowly drew up her knees to curl on her side and face him, his hand held between both of hers. She gazed at him, and he understood that life had toughened her. Childbirth had done it, and marriage, divorce.
    Her husband had wanted a girl, not a grown-up, she told Stephen. And so he found one, at work. The first time she’d got past it, for the sake of the girls, but after that it was impossible.
    â€˜I can’t do that little-girl, wifey shit anymore. I’m an adult now,’ she said calmly. And in the jut of her chin, the gentle seriousness in her eyes, Stephen saw how hard won was her strength, and what courage it had taken for her to come to him, how fiercely she wanted his desire. For the first time in his life he found himself wanting to live up to something—to meet her, to take this beautiful risk—and it made the wave of his need for her crest and break again, unashamed and glorious. And as she rose above him in the dark he glimpsed it again, the ruby-throated bird. He lay awake beside her all night, falling in love.
    But bodies, he thought now, watching the butchers hefting flesh, didn’t matter. Fiona’s story about the cooking smell had not unnerved him in that way: he was unfazed by the knowledge that human beings were made of meat. In fact—he had never voiced this, but—more and more he thought that surely any immorality in eating animals would vanish if it were permissible to eat people too.
    Perhaps he should share his theory now, with Savannah. She lifted her avid, righteous gaze to him. He decided not.
    â€˜Ask yourself a simple question, Stephen. Does your palate or pleasure or fashion sense justify the suffering or death of another creature?’
    She waited. He was forced now to look down at the picture she held open. In some gloomy darkness, a huge sow lay on its side on a concrete floor behind thick stainless steel bars. The pig’s belly faced the camera, pressed up against the bars so its legs and teats stuck through the rails. In the foreground of the picture four little piglets, separated from their mother by the bars, suckled at the sow’s teats through the gaps. The animal’s eyes were open; it stared into the middle distance. Lying helpless on the cold floor, its expression was unmistakable: the pig was in sheer and utter misery.
    â€˜That’s . . . terrible,’ Stephen murmured, looking away.
    The poor creature, his mother would say (why could he not shake off the burden of her, this of all mornings?). She said it often, about everyone; a neighbour with the flu or a murdered policeman on the television news, it didn’t matter. Poor creature was for all suffering, everywhere.
    Savannah’s eyes shone. ‘ Yes,’ she said, triumphant. ‘It is.’
    She sighed then, as if this simple admission was all she wanted from Stephen, all she wanted from anybody. They stood there together. Her sudden stillness made Stephen wonder what other people said when she made them look at the picture. That the image was doctored, perhaps, or this one was an aberration, or that the animal didn’t mind.
    There was no way out now. He slid the credit card from his wallet and signed over fifteen bucks a month for the promotion of animal rights.
    Savannah bent to fill out the paperwork, glowing, it seemed, with the shock of her success. Stephen thought grandly that there might even be something a bit like love for him in her gratitude. He stole a glance down the curve of her spine to where her army trousers gaped to show the soft, inviting hollow of her bum. But he looked away quickly before she stood up. He was aware now that women knew when you looked at their bums or their boobs. Fiona had set him straight on that one time, laughing at his denials and blushes.
    Savannah ripped the form off her pad of tiny-print credit-card forms and thrust them at him. As he folded the page into a small grey wad, regretting the