[reaction]
Did he ever have a childhood like this one? No, not that he can recall. Childhood had kindness in it, but it also had hard faces, harsh realities, small rooms. This gilded world is not of him, but he recognizes it. Oh, he recognizes it.
He knows these faces, and the curl of a banister and the placement of a picture on the wall match like puzzle-pieces to distant memories, well-buried. "Happier times." He might even be talking, inside the where-ever-he-is.
In reality, he's holed up in the creaky, musty second floor of the house by the lake, lying on his stomach on the splintering boards, waiting for sunset with a weatherbeaten paperback. In his mind, he is small and happier than he can remember being. A balloon lifts inside his chest, and, not being himself, he breathes, laughs, feels the wholeness of happy childhood inside a warm cocoon. The beautiful woman with the long dark hair, she is the only thing that gives him pause, even inside the moment. The bubble doesn't pop until the memory is over, but her face is burned into the back of his eyelids - her face and the warm glee of the happy girl doing everything she wasn't supposed to, and reveling in love.