The Flounder Complex

Book excerpt: THE STORY: As described in The Village Voice: Damato's protagonists are a paranoid, nearly blind old woman and a young girl who answers her ad for a servant. During the process of the interview, the old woman's fear of the outside world shows itself bit by bit, partly through the slightly veiled hostility of her questions, partly through her revelations about herself. She tells the applicant that she used to suffer from what she calls the Flounder Complex ('the flounder has a dreadful fear of death,' she explains. 'It buries itself in the mud at the bottom of the river and waits to be speared.'), but claims to have cured herself. When the girl realizes just how far gone her potential employer is, she decides she doesn't want the job after all; but the old woman, terrified because the girl-who now knows all about her-poses a threat to her safety, shoots her. The author draws from this confrontation a gripping tension, and the old woman is a remarkable creation, as blind and dangerous to herself as she is symbolically, to the outside world.