Free Everything Happens Today by Jesse Browner Page A

self-confident precisely because they don’t engage in interior struggle, and that if they did they couldn’t be arrogant or self-confident. How did that work? The more you think, the more you feel you should think less, and the more you feel, the more you think you should feel less? And the worse thing about it was that those who actually did think and feel less didn’t seem to suffer from a similar sense of insufficiency—the smart people wish they could be more like the stupid people, but the stupid people never seem to want to be more like the smart people. Which hardly seemed fair.
    Natasha was still singing, and André was still angsting. It was kind of weird, and a little sick, that all these grown men were lusting after a teenage girl, and Tolstoy let them do it without any sense that it was inappropriate. What was André—in his late twenties, maybe? He had a moustache and whiskers, he was a soldier, a hardened veteran, rich and sophisticated. He had probably fucked lots of peasants and whores. And Natasha was only fifteen, younger than Lucy. She had thin arms and a barely-formed bosom, Tolstoy said. Wes knew what that meant—a mature Russian woman, even the most beautiful, would have shoulders and arms rounded out by a little fat, big billowy boobs that had to be strapped down, a slight tub in the gut. But Natasha was probably more like a supermodel, or the star of some teen movie, with pillowy lips, hard, perky little tits, a flat tummy, and sharp hip bones that looked great in low-slung jeans. Nowadays a guy like André would be considered a total perv just for looking at a girl like that. But André wasn’t thinking about her body, probably; he wasn’t there, listening to her sing, trying to make out the outline of her nipples under her dress or imagining what she’d be like in bed. He was thinking of her unwearied soul, shining through her clear eyes and her piping voice, a beacon of purity and optimism and sincerity in a fallen, cynical world. That was all well and good, but a total turn-off as far as Wes was concerned, and she was still a kid no matter what you said. A freshman, for god’s sake.
    Now Hélène, that was a woman in every sense of the word. If Wes were in
War and Peace
, if he were André with all his money and connections, he’d have made a play for Hélène first thing, before Pierre could get his fat, clumsy hands on her. She was the kind of woman that every man who saw her wanted. Wes had been surprised at how low-cut the aristocratic women wore their dresses in those days, how Hélène was constantly flaunting her “high, beautiful breasts.” Just that word “high” had been enough to send shivers down his spine. They were probably powdered, too. That scene where she leans over Pierre and he can suddenly picture her entire naked body beneath her dress.
    Wes thought of Lucy and Delia and the differences between them. Physically, no doubt about it, Lucy was all Natasha, although probably darker of complexion, but much more like Hélène in temperament—manipulative, insincere, comfortable with her power over men, haughty and dismissive towards those who had nothing to offer her. Wes was certain of one thing—that he could never fall in love with someone like Lucy. Delia, on the other hand, was a full-blown woman like Hélène; true, with her pale skin and freckles and curly red hair pulled back in a casual ponytail, she didn’t look much like Hélène, but she was dignified and quietly authoritative, self-possessed and powerfully built, not at all a svelte little seduction machine like Lucy or Natasha. Wes had never seen Delia in a low-cut ball gown, but he had seen her in a bathing suit and she definitely had softly rounded shoulders and high, beautiful breasts. Still, neither Lucy nor Delia was a Marya or a Sonya, earnest and devoted, but weak and at the mercy of the whims of fate. He