The stories that don't work as well feel forced, including ones about presidents who are reincarnated as horses and partygoers who attempt to tailgate in Antarctica. In the end she has one wish for the soldier: that he can find "a story he can carry, and a true one." This story about touch, literally, is also by far the most touching story in the volume. She thinks it is on a par with the Dutch masters, amazed at the level of detail: "Practically every pore on his back is covered: in the east, under his bony shoulder, there's an entire village of squat huts …." Even though her career was a default cut-your-losses move, Beverly is filled with wonder for the human body: "The same spine that has been inside her since babyhood is hers today, the exact same bones from the womb, a thought that always fills her with a kind of thrilling claustrophobia." With its blend of the fantastic (the war-themed tattoo coming alive in the midst of the death it represents) and the routine (the U-shaped pillow, the heated oils, the expert application of enfleurage and cross-grain techniques), it manages an equipoise missing in some of the other stories. The tattoo on the young man's back stuns her. Of all the stories, perhaps the most memorable is "The New Veterans," in which Beverly, a masseuse, is assigned to 10 sessions with a new vet in a program paid for by the military.
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