Chapter 18: 18

The day passes in a tangible awkwardness. We still walk hand in hand like a proper couple even though we're anything but. We visit little art galleries that line the main street of the Vieux Quebec core, everything ranging from glorified souvenir shops to enormous lofts with ten-foot-tall, $10,000 abstract masterpieces lining the walls. In a photo gallery, we linger in front of a series featuring raw, grainy black-and-white close-ups of a sex act, an anonymous penis and vagina through every stage of the process, every fold and vein and ingrown hair depicted in unflinching detail.

It makes the picture Elizabeth took of my naked back seem downright chaste.

"So," she says, elbowing me in the ribs when the gallery employee is out of earshot. "How about this one for the living room, huh?"

I tilt my head: it's a view from below of a vagina being penetrated. I can see a smear of wetness on the shaft, the glossy skin inside of the labia like a fruit split in two.