Kate’s untitled

Kate’s character Charlie is moving. He is incredibly real to me and something is seriously bothering me, and I am concerned for him. He “tries to ignore the almost gooey noise his tires make in the slush,” but obviously hasn’t. The slush bothers him. He wants things clear — he likes dry concrete. He hates when his pant legs get wet. I feel like I can make inferences about his character because he is there.
And he has lost something or someone. And now he is stiff and he squeezes things — a lot. Kate has created a time bomb and I am afraid for him.
I am interested in the bit where the phone is ringing and he is freaking out on the couch. Kate writes a sentence for the space between each ring, which creates an interesting tension as the reader reads it because it takes longer to read the line than it would take for the phone to ring again. In this way, it blows out time and makes the reader very uncomfortable, which is exactly how Charlie feels at that moment. I think it’s brilliantly written.
Kate has an incredible way of making her words work for her to allow the reader to feel as she wants them to.
It is also amazes me how well Kate has created a male character. She obviously thought a lot about him because I buy his maleness throughout the whole story. I think a moment that really sells it to me is during the rings when he is freaking out: “He closes his eyes tries to keep the image in his head, tenses and moans stretches and then collapses second ring.” The build-up and relieving release is such an inherent male action that I almost started to wonder if he was masturbating or something instead of having a panic attack (or whatever it is).