by Lisa Tuttle
“Uh, was there anything about last night that you didn't entirely hate?”
“Yes.”
“And what was that, Ms. Grey?”
“Kissing Alex.”
“Kissing Alex.”
“And being kissed by him, of course.”
“Of course.”
“It was like a dream—really, it was a nightmare at first. I was sure he hated me. I wanted to die.”
“And then he kissed you good night?”
“No, no, no! We said good night at the door, I came in, burst into tears, blah blah blah, then I came up to my room and looked out the window and he was still down there. He was just standing there by the pool, like he was just as miserable as me about the way things had gone—God, I can't tell you, we just disagreed about everything—but—well, when I saw him there, I went straight down to him and he just put his arms around me and that was it.”
“So what did he say?”
“He didn't say anything. That's the point. He didn't have to. I didn't have to, either. We came inside and sat on the couch and, well, you know.”
“You tell me.”
“God, Roxanne. We kissed.”
“And?”
“Kissed some more. That's all. Well, it's not all, it was more than enough. It was wonderful. We just kissed and kissed and—God, now I know what all those songs and poems are about!”
“Awwww. That's great, Grey, that really is wonderful. I'm so glad it worked out; I'm so happy for you. Want to go out and do something today, or are you going to be tied to the telephone all day, waiting for HIM to call?”
“I guess I should go out, or he'll think I don't have anything better to do than sit in all day waiting for HIM to call.” She grinned as she spoke, so certain was she that there would be no need for games and strategies like that with Alex. In one enchanted evening they had leaped over all of that, into the sort of closeness she had dreamed of all summer. Maybe he would call and maybe he wouldn't; either would be fine, and they would see each other again tomorrow, at school, no longer just classmates, no longer unequal, but boyfriend and girlfriend.
From the moment she arrived at school on Monday morning she was one quivering, sensitive antenna attuned to his presence—but she didn't see him anywhere.
She loitered in the hall for a while, hoping to catch him, but then she began to feel too nervous to pull off a casual act—and, anyway, she didn't want to act with him—so she went into the English classroom and took her usual seat.
Alex was not actually late, but the bell began ringing seconds after he slid his long legs beneath the desk beside hers. She noticed that his hair looked uncombed and his glasses were smudged, and he had a pimple on his neck. He felt her looking at him and turned to give her a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
She felt the radiance of her own smile die, felt it slip from her face to land rather heavily somewhere in her stomach.
The teacher had already started talking and there was no possibility of exchanging words with Alex. She had to get through the class, wait for the sound of the next bell, before she could say anything to him.
When the bell rang he began to gather his books together without even glancing at her; he seemed unaware of her presence.
She spoke despite the painful lump in her throat. “Want to eat lunch together?”
He rolled his eyes like a horse about to bolt. Maybe it was just surprise. “Uh, sure, if you like. I'll look for you.”
“I usually eat with my friend Roxanne under one of the big trees out front—”
“Okay, I'll look for you. I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I've got chemistry next, and I left my notes in my locker which is at the other end of the building, so I do have to run. But I'll see you at lunch.”
She would see him at lunch. They could talk then. She held on to that promising thought to ward off the bleak memory of the way he had looked at her—and not looked at her. Not like her lover. Not like a lover at all.
It was raining at lunchtime. Usually when it was wet she and Roxanne ate their sandwiches beneath the overhang at the top of the front steps to the school, or in the foyer of the auditorium. But she hadn't made any contingency plans with Alex.
“Drag and a half,” moaned Roxanne. “I can't stand the caf; it'll be a zoo.”
“Don't come, then.”
“Are you kidding? I'm your chaperone, baby. I'm the only thing standing between you and complete moral ruin.”
“Just you, the cafeteria staff, half the teachers and the entire student body.”
“Can't be too careful when there're raging teenage hormones involved.”
The cafeteria was worse than a zoo. At first she thought she wasn't going to be able to find him in the crowd. Then she caught sight of him, sandwiched between two members of the school debating team at a table without a single empty chair. She wasn't going to go over there and not get invited to sit down. And if somebody else made room for her, it would be worse than English class, having to sit next to him when he seemed so indifferent to her presence. In this public, crowded place, under the interested eyes of his friends, he would not hold her hand, would not touch her or kiss her or say anything she wanted to hear.
“This is awful,” she said. “There's nowhere to sit. Let's try the auditorium. I'll find him after school. He'll call me tonight; I'm sure he'll call me.”
But he didn't call, and she couldn't bring herself to call him. She could think of nothing else. Why had he been so cool to her? Did he regret what had happened between them on Saturday night? Or had he somehow misunderstood? When she fell asleep—was it possible he'd interpreted her utter relaxation with and faith in him as indifference or boredom? Oh, he had to call, he had to let her explain herself—he had to!
Just before she went to bed she walked out onto her balcony. She was thinking about Alex so hard, as she had been all day, that at first she didn't believe she was actually seeing him, that dark figure in the courtyard below, standing in the shadow of the bamboo hedge just where she had first seen him on Saturday night.
“Alex?”
It was only a whisper, but as if he had heard he stepped forward so that she could see him, and then, the next thing she knew, he was actually running toward her, and leaping up to scale the wall. Within seconds he was climbing over the railing and then—just as she was thinking her mother would have a fit if she knew how easily a man could break into her bedroom—he was beside her, and she was in his arms, warm and safe and loved again.
They went inside and lay down on her bed.
The idea of having sex with a man was frightening to her. No matter how it was dressed up with romance in books and movies, the mechanics of it (as far as she understood them) seemed to her peculiar, unpleasant and awkward if not actually brutal. Maybe someday she might be willing to have somebody's penis pushed inside her, but the change of attitude that would entail would have to be years in the future. In her summer fantasies about Alex she had sometimes waltzed up to the idea of sex, and then waltzed around it. They would kiss and hug and fondle, and he frequently brought her to orgasm, but if he ever tried to go further (because, people said, boys generally did) they would be interrupted.
She had no fear of Alex. She knew he would not try to take her further than she wanted to go; also, that he would go with her as far as she wanted. They loved each other in a gentle, unintrusive way for hours, without taking their pants off. She had several orgasms, but if he climaxed she didn't know it. His desire for her never pushed past the boundaries she set, so she never had to speak, never had to tell him no or stop him. She was blissfully unaware of the passage of time until her alarm clock woke her, and she found herself lying on top of her still made-up bed, half-dressed and alone at seven o'clock in the morning.
At school, in English class, Alex was again a stranger.
“Morning,” he said, and yawned, turning away to page through his ring binder.
“Tired?” He didn't seem to feel her stare, the
anxious frustration that had her near to tears. He nodded and shrugged without looking at her.
“I guess you would be. I guess you didn't get much sleep last night, hmmm?”
He turned a startled face on her. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Miss Grey. Mister Hill. If you could manage to disengage your attention from your so-fascinating selves and give it to me, please?” Miss Beadle smiled when she saw that she had caught them, and nodded. “Thank you. So kind. As I was saying, if we consider the case of a writer still very much under the influence of Victorian morals and manners . . .”
As soon as the teacher began pacing and she felt herself unobserved, Agnes looked at Alex. He had flushed a dark red and was staring fixedly at the front of the room. He did not look at her again.
“What's wrong with him?” she demanded of Roxanne at lunchtime, sitting in the shade of one of the big oaks on the school's front lawn. “He acts like we barely know each other.”
“You do barely know each other.”
“He doesn't talk, he hardly even looks at me—I look at him and he looks away, like he's scared.”
Roxanne took a sandwich out of her lunch sack and began to unwrap it. “Well, maybe he is scared.”
“Of me? Roxanne! Be serious!”
“I am. I don't mean scared of you, specifically, but of the situation. They'll never admit it, but boys are scared of sex, too. He doesn't know what's going to happen next but he knows it's up to him. Whoa! What's happening? Is he ready for this, does he really want a girlfriend? He probably just wants a little distance between you so he can think about things before he goes out with you again. Look at it from his point of view: you already wanted him, but he was fancy free, he'd never given you a second thought till you called him. So he goes out with this girl for the first time and boom! You get along like crazy, it's like magic, and—”
“But we didn't get along. Not when we were talking to each other. It was awful, really, every time I opened my mouth I either disagreed with him or said something he didn't like. It was only later, when we weren't talking, that things were better, perfect, really, when we started kissing. And when he—” She stopped suddenly, remembering that Roxanne knew only about the events of Saturday night. She hadn't told her about his visit last night.
“So now you expect him to want to talk to you? Give the guy a break! Look, I know it sounds like a cliché, and I know you don't like game-playing, but—he'll feel less threatened and be more interested if you play it cool. I promise you. Just lay back, give him some space, and wait for Saturday.”
She had just opened her mouth to tell Roxanne about last night, about his visit, about the hours they'd spent in each other's arms on her bed, when she heard Alex call her name.
She looked around and saw him coming toward her across the grass, and at once she forgot everything except the intense pleasure of his presence.
“I remembered you'd said you usually had lunch under the trees. I wanted to ask—Hello.”
“Hi. I'm Roxanne.”
“Yeah, I know. I'm Alex. . . .”
“I know. And you want to talk to Grey, so I'll take my sandwich and sneak away.”
“No, no, don't do that. I don't want to chase you away—I can't stay, I have to go see the printer. Running errands for Miss Beadle, you know, the editor's primary task.” He gave a crooked smile.
“That's for Visions, yeah? Well, Grey's on the staff, why don't you take her with you? I'm sure you could use an assistant, somebody to take notes while you talk to the printer.”
“Oh, well . . .” The crooked smile vanished and he looked stiff and uncomfortable, shooting a little glance at Agnes but directing his reply to Roxanne. “It sure would be more fun with her along, but somehow I don't think Miss B. would see the necessity—I don't want to abuse the privilege. Maybe some other time . . . Anyway, Agnes, I wanted to ask you, about Saturday night—would you like to go out to dinner first? What do you think about The Red Lion?”
The Red Lion was considered romantic, a place for a special date, popular with teenage couples; very different from the bright, cheap fast-food restaurants everybody went to for refueling. “That would be wonderful.” She felt like crying. His eyes still would not meet hers for more than half a second. It was hard to believe this was the boy who had been kissing her so passionately only a little more than twelve hours before. Still—The Red Lion was something, had to mean something.
“That's great. How about if I pick you up about six? Is that okay? Great. I have to move—I'll see you later, okay? Nice meeting you, Roxanne.”
“Why didn't you say something?” Roxanne demanded. “Why didn't you go with him?”
“Because he didn't want me. You could see.”
“That boy doesn't know what he wants. He needs somebody to tell him. You could have made him want you. Honestly, I don't understand you sometimes. If you want him, go get him!”
“I thought you told me to play it cool?”
She laughed and sighed, shook her head, then put an arm around her in a quick hug. “Maybe I was wrong. I don't know him. But—he's so uptight! But maybe that was my fault. Things might have been different if you were alone together.”
“Things are fine when we're alone together. They are.”
“Then there's nothing to worry about. That's all that matters.”
She didn't expect to see him alone again until Saturday night. But on Friday night, bored, restless and lonely (her mother and Roxanne both were out on dates) she went out onto her balcony like Juliet and there he was in the courtyard below, her Romeo.
It was dark but still early, barely eight o'clock. They could have the whole, long night together in the privacy of her room. She thought, before he came up, that she would ask him about his behavior toward her at school, she would ask why he hadn't called her, at least. But when he was beside her, close enough to touch, that was all she wanted. Words were worse than unnecessary; like clothes, they got in the way. All that was necessary could be expressed without words, with hands and lips. It no longer mattered to her what had or hadn't happened at school, out there among other people; the only thing she cared about was him now, here, with her.
There was all the time in the world, and this, the two of them here together in this moment, was all that mattered. The feeling of his skin beneath her lips, the sound of his breath in her ear, the smell of him, the feelings he aroused in her. Gradually, eventually, they took their clothes off to embrace more fully and intimately. And finally, when all strangeness was gone, when she felt she knew his body better than her own, when there was no fear left in her but only desire, they did what had once, only days ago, been to her unimaginable. So this was sex! It astonished her. Not the intensity of pleasure—that she'd almost expected—but the strange familiarity of it. This was not a new exploration but a return—somehow, sometime, she had been here before. For a moment, looking at his face, she became disoriented, unclear whether she was looking down or up at it, and then it changed, his features altered, until she seemed to be looking into a mirror.
In that moment she could as easily have felt terror as joy—the whole range of possible emotions wavered before her, just there, she had only to reach out and pick the one she preferred. She could have whatever she wanted, be whoever she wanted—it was all so simple, it was all up to her.
And then, even as she understood that she and Alex were the same, that there was no meaningful difference between them, she felt understanding slipping away from her. It could not be held, only briefly apprehended, like this peak of pleasure, like this night of love, it was always in the process of ending.
She slept late on Saturday morning, and floated through the rest of the day, too happy to mind her mother's running commentary. This time her mother didn't object to her choice of clothes which were ethnic and romantic, a full skirt with a scoop-necked, embroidered Mexican blouse.
When Alex arrived her mother invited him in and off
ered refreshments, which he declined politely. “That's very kind of you, Mrs. Grey, but my friends are waiting for us in the car.”
“Well, they're welcome to come in, too.”
“We really can't stay—we have reservations for dinner, and they might not hold a table for us if we're late. It's a popular place.”
“Oh, go on, then. Have a nice time. And you don't have to worry about bringing Agnes home early—I'll be out late myself tonight.”
“Friends?” she asked him as soon as they were outside, hoping he would laugh, and hug her, and say it was just an excuse to get away.
But he said, “Oh, yes, I hope you don't mind. My mom's car is in the shop and my dad wouldn't let me take his, so we're going with George and Lindy. You know George from English. He lives next door to me.”
She knew George and Lindy; everybody did. George Sefton was a football player and also on the debate team, winning honor for the school in both areas. Lindy Silko was a cheerleader and a star of the Mixed Chorus, and a good bet for this year's Homecoming Queen.
The idea of going on a double date with their class' most admired and envied couple made her feel slightly stunned. It might have been somebody else's dream of the perfect date, the chance to be, or pretend to be, part of the “in crowd” for at least one evening. But what she wanted, time alone with Alex, was made impossible.
But she couldn't brood or mourn in the professionally friendly company of hearty George and sparkling Lindy. Dinner wasn't the romantic tête à tête she'd imagined, but it was fun, with everybody clowning and laughing a lot. Even the normally tense and serious Alex loosened up and visibly enjoyed himself. But he kept his distance: remove George from the picture, she thought, and an observer would not have been able to guess which girl was Alex's date.
At the dance, though, pairing off was required. At their school there was no tradition of cutting in or trading partners: you danced with the one who brought you. So she and Alex dutifully bopped around the floor together, performing the modified free-form versions of the twist, frug, shag and monkey which everybody attempted, with more energy than skill, but as soon as the band launched into a slow number, Alex headed back to their table to sit it out. The same thing happened with the second slow number, and she protested: “Oh, come on, you can't be that tired. . . . I love this song, let's dance.”
