The Kiss

One of today's best young American writers transforms into a work of art the darkest passage imaginable in a young woman's life: an obsessive love affair between father and daughter.

We meet at airports. We meet in cities where we've never been before. We meet where no one will recognize us.

A "man of God" is how someone described my father to me. I don 't remember who. Not my mother. I'm young enough that I take the words to mean he has magical properties and that he is good, better than other people.

With his hand under my chin, my father draws my face toward his own. He touches his lips to mine. I stiffen.