by Daniel Lowe
She heard something scurry near a trash bin next to the school building, and flinched.
“It’s nothing,” Genevieve said.
“I thought the guy from Salt Lake was making another appearance.”
“That’d be something, wouldn’t it?”
Claire was remembering.
“So we’d sit at that table and sip that first shot of whiskey. And for a long time, each time seemed like the first time, if you know what I mean. Like we were friends, or on a first date. We’d talk about the chicken on the loading dock, or the sweet old man who came into the market all stooped over and ordered the same sandwich every day, or how Seth saw a falcon flying above one of the city’s skyscrapers, or how sometimes I could wash the smell of onions from my hands, and sometimes I couldn’t. And we’d sit at that table each night, and he’d say, ‘Can I smell your hands?’ and if the scent of onions was there, you could see his face—and he was beautiful in the way boys that age are. He looked feminine. I mean his face did. Narrow. An almost delicate, thin nose, and a shy, sideways smile. Wet eyes. But what I mean is that when he would smell my hands, this sense of relief would pass over his face. As if he were thinking, Okay, now I know you. Because of the onions. Now you’re familiar again. And then he’d pour us another whiskey into each of our shot glasses, which we’d drink faster. Because what we were really doing was trying to get to each other’s body.”
Her skin was flushed warm with the memory, and her scalp was tingling.
“We’d have four or five drinks like that. One after the other, and somehow we’d know when it was the last one, and we’d look each other in the eyes before downing it in a single swallow. And then I’d reach across that metal table for his hand, and we’d pull each other to our feet. I’d feel the whiskey burning in my veins, in my throat and stomach, but, you know … it didn’t hurt or make me sick because I knew what was coming. I knew that meant that we were going to the bedroom. It made me excited. By the time he pulled me down onto that beat-up mattress, I was almost panting.
“At first, it was the way it always is when you’re young. I was so hungry for him. Any part of his body. I wanted my mouth on it, or I wanted it in my mouth. Of course, we were drunk. I remember once I was kissing his legs. His thighs, his thick muscles. And then I started kissing his knee. This will sound silly, but he had beautiful knees. And I guess I was trying to—see it with my lips, too, and my tongue. The way the bone was rounded and how if I opened my mouth at its widest I could almost hold it inside. I mean, it was his knee. And then the slope just below that that led to his shin. I followed that with my tongue. And the dimpled spaces on either side. And the filaments of hair there. After a while, I felt his hand on my head, and he said, ‘You okay?’ I probably had been obsessed with his knee for five minutes. But it would be his ears another time. Or the small of his back. Or his rib cage when he lay back naked with his hands behind his head.”
She heard Genevieve’s steady breathing beside her, but she knew she wasn’t asleep.
“I knew I was troubled. I mean, not because of the sex, or even the drinking. My head wasn’t right, and my mother and father and the doctor said I wasn’t right. They worried that I was depressed, that I was bipolar, that I suffered from schizophrenia. I said stuff like, ‘Look at the schizophrenic world. I’m taking its cues.’ But the thing was, I knew. I knew it. I knew how I always felt the dark half of the world was screaming at my door. And then with Seth’s body—for a while all that mattered was that. I endured the day to get to the table and sit across from him and drink, and then I endured the drinking to get to our bed.”
Genevieve said, “For a while?”
“I’m getting to that. And it went on that way. He was taken with my body as much as I was taken with his. He would linger over my belly. He’d breathe in the scent of it, deep breath after deep breath. He’d lift his fingers to his mouth and get some saliva on the tips, and then he’d rub it into the crease behind my knees. And then he’d kiss those places. And all of this lasted for what seemed like a long time, probably into February. But, you know, even when you’re that young, that level of fascination has to turn into something else. You can’t live in that narrow space, even though I wanted to.
“At that age, I considered myself political. You know, angry at the hypocrisy of the world. There was the war in Afghanistan, and I’d go to protests, but there’d be maybe twenty people at those protests. Mostly older people carrying signs and waving at those who honked their horns in support.”
She thought for a moment about the man at the rest stop eating his sandwich with his wife, and how he’d chided her for losing touch with her father.
“And I was outraged. Not so much at the world, you know, but instead that I had to live in it. But in that time with Seth, those first weeks, I would hear the radio. In the little market where I worked, we kept it on. I’d hear the reports at the top of the hour of civilian deaths, or drone strikes. And I’d shake my head, but I’d be shaking my head into a grin. Thinking of him. The way the winter light struck his chest that morning. Like that boyfriend you described with the shadow of the snow falling on him, remember?”
“Sure.”
“Everything else seemed like a cartoon. Except then, you know, it shifted. Like it always does. We’d still do our little evening ritual. Sitting at that table and talking, sipping, and then swallowing those full shots of whiskey. And taking each other’s hand. But when he was inside me, and we were making love, he started talking to me. I mean, I know that’s what people do. I even knew it then. But it was the first time for me. And the things he would whisper to me were gentle at first—about how much he loved me, about how it felt so good, about the smell of my skin when I was excited—but then, after a while, the things he said became, well, there’s no way to describe it but to say they got more violent.”
Saying this made her pause for a moment. She listened to the moths battering the streetlamp. Not a single car had passed along the road that led past the school lot in the time she was speaking. She could distantly hear the cars along the highway a mile or so away, and their rushing past sounded like a faraway wind, but the air wasn’t moving at all. She had to remind herself they were just over the Nebraska border. She was on her way back to Michigan.
“It’s so ungodly quiet here,” she said. “I mean, it’s June. We’re out in the middle of nowhere with trees and grass and this empty school. No crickets, no katydids. I’d love to hear an owl, or something.”
“Maybe they think it’s going to start to rain.”
“I don’t think everything goes quiet because of the rain.”
“I guess not. But sometimes it seems that way once you start to hear it fall.”
She turned her head and looked at Genevieve.
“You’re right about that. It does seem that way.” She couldn’t see Genevieve’s eyes in the shadow cast by her head, and felt herself wanting to. “Why don’t the moths disappear if it’s going to rain?”
“They’re distracted by the streetlight.”
“Ah. You have a kind of answer for everything, don’t you, Gen?”
“Not really. What did you mean by violent?” Claire remembered Genevieve’s questions the night the fat man had come to their truck when she’d told the story about her family’s dog that killed the chickens.
“He would talk to me. He’d tell me the kind of things he would do to me. It wasn’t particularly dramatic at first. About how he was going to tie me down so I couldn’t move, and then how he’d gag me so I could barely breathe. Or how someday when I came home from the shop he was going to meet me at the door and knock me to the floor and tear off my clothes and take me from behind. Those kinds of things.”
Genevieve, who had been listening the whole time with her hands folded under her chin, now turned away and ran her fingers along the edge of the truck bed, but didn’t speak.
“But even then, I didn’t think much of it. We were drunk, and it was exciting. They were fanta
sies, and I knew about fantasies. To speak them out loud—well, I loved words enough back then. They seemed new to me, too, at least when Seth was saying them. It was a kind of thrill—the words close to what we were doing in the bed. I don’t mean close to describing what we were doing in bed. I mean close as in proximity. As if when he gave them a voice they were wrapped around us almost as tightly as our arms and legs.
“But then—I don’t know. I don’t know why. It got darker. We were drinking more. We’d finish half a bottle of whiskey between us. I think both of us were pushing to see what would come next.
“I’ll tell you one story that I remember, Genevieve. I try not to think about it, not because it’s horrifying, or anything, but because in some ways I’ve wondered how it affected what happened next. I don’t know. I’m not superstitious, or anything. But when you are making love—when a man is inside your body, and you’re wanting him to come inside you harder and harder—and then there are these words in the air that are so close to you, like I said, well, the words become more real, like a physical presence in the room. It was like they wanted a life of their own. And that’s why I think I was hurt, that’s why I think I was attacked. Does this make any sense?”
Genevieve was still turned away from Claire, propped up on an elbow, the top of her head silhouetted against the pale night sky. Claire couldn’t see her face.
“Maybe. I’ll let you know when you tell me what happened next.”
“Well, like I said, I’ll tell you one story. We were both really drunk. I mean way over the line. He was lying on top of me and had his face pressed hard to mine, and I could feel how his whiskers were chafing my face, but that felt good, too. I was staring at the spinning ceiling, that lone bulb turning in its socket, and I was trying not to feel sick.
“And that’s when he started talking to me, though it was almost like he didn’t care if I was listening. He told me we were downtown, late at night, walking hand in hand. We’d seen a movie, and we were going back to the car, and I was wearing tights and a short black skirt. And that the whole time we were watching the movie he’d been sliding his hand up the tights and under the skirt and fondling me, so the cloth between my legs was already damp. And as we were walking, he was holding my hand, only he was also using his fingernail to lightly scratch the skin on my palm, which is something he knew I liked. And we wanted each other, he said. So badly that even though we were only a few blocks from the car, we slipped into an alley between buildings that had a closed end. He told me how he pinned me against a wall, pushing me hard, first, so my head hit the bricks, and then he’d yanked my tights off of me, and lifted me up and then I’d wrapped my legs around him while he flattened me against the wall. He was pulling my underwear to the side so he could enter me, he said. And just as he was about to do that three other men turned into the alley and caught us there.”
She stopped and found herself listening again. She imagined she heard footsteps, but it was only the story. Something like a soft pellet struck the asphalt outside the truck where they were parked.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah,” Genevieve said. “I think it’s a raindrop.”
“Did you feel any yet?”
“A couple.”
“Do you think we should go inside before the skies open up?”
“I don’t think they’re going to open up.”
Just then a raindrop hit the roof of the cab.
“You sure about that?”
“No, but I think we can wait. Keep telling your story.”
Claire lay flat on her back and waited to feel the rain on her face, and continued. “So Seth kept talking to me as he was pushing inside me. He told me that the men were drunk, just like we were. And he told me they were laughing when they came into the alley, but as soon as they saw how he had me pinned against the wall they went completely silent. They stood there watching me, he said, and that I was still breathing hard because I couldn’t help myself, and he said he was frozen there with his body against mine, and he told me how the three men were standing there, and how you could see the veins in their arms, the same way that I liked to trace the veins in his arms with my fingertip, and even from where he was standing he could see in their veins their pulses quickening. And then he said he slowly let me down, let my back slide against the wall until I was on my feet, and he turned to face the men, but they were already on him, and one had slammed his head with a broken piece of brick, and almost knocked him out, and he was slumped down at the base of the wall opposite me, his head bleeding, and barely conscious, and the other two men were already on me. They’d forced me to the pavement between the alley walls, and they were holding me down on my hands and knees, and when I struggled to get away, one had slapped me open-handed hard against my face, and this had made me go still, and one of the men was holding my hair tight to the base of my scalp, and the other was tearing at my skirt and panties, and he told me, Seth told me, that they both entered me at the same time, one of them in my mouth, and one of them from behind, and that the man who had knocked him almost unconscious with the brick had taken hold of Seth’s bloody hair and was forcing him to watch as the men did this to me. He told me how the men were getting more and more excited, how the stones and broken glass in the alley were cutting my knees as they thrust against me, and when he started to tell me how they were coming inside me, Seth himself came so hard that he knocked me off the edge of the mattress and onto the wood floor, and it was ten seconds before he could say, ‘Sorry! Sorry! Sorry if I hurt you.’”
Genevieve was lying still with her head turned away. She could hear her breath moving in and out of her nostrils.
“I admit, I thought part of it was exciting. I don’t remember if I came myself; we’d been drinking so much, and I don’t know if I was excited because of what he was telling me or excited because it excited him. But it was only a minute later that we were back on the mattress with my head on his bare chest, and he was stroking my backbone with his fingers as gently as if he were sorting pearls. And a few minutes later he was asleep, and I could feel my head rising and falling with his deep breathing, and in a half dream I was seeing him as a boy kneeling at the edge of the water along a lake with a pebbled beach, and turning over small stones and holding them up to the sun, and I was wondering what it was inside of him that would want to be bleeding and half-unconscious while his love was raped in front of him.”
For a full minute neither of them spoke. Finally, Genevieve said, “I wish I knew how to answer that, Claire.”
“He was only twenty. A boy. In my memory, I can see him as a boy. And when we woke the next morning, our heads hurt. We’d drunk more than we ever had. And it was late February, but it was one of those winter-into-spring days, where somehow the temperature had risen overnight, and when I walked from the bedroom to the front window, I could see the mounds of snow melting into rivers that ran down the street, and there were people outside in the sun walking without their coats on. Seth came up from behind me and was holding me while we looked out the window. A boy was out on the sidewalk kicking a soccer ball. I remember it surprised me because I didn’t think there were any families living in the neighborhood. He kept kicking it toward the front porch steps of his house, and it would careen off in different directions, and he tried to keep saving it from going into the street. I watched him for a while and then turned my head to look back at Seth. ‘What?’ he asked, but I didn’t say anything. Then I told him I wanted to take a walk.
“So we got dressed then, and went out into the day. And Genevieve, it was one of those magical mornings. The kind you always remember even years later, maybe even when you’re very old. The air had that fragrance, you know? That smell of moisture and warmth that I’d lived long enough to know was how things turned green. The patches of grass in the row houses down our street weren’t winter dead anymore, and we could see bulbs pushing out of the ground where a few of the older people who still lived in the neighborhood had planted them. A man
was walking a puppy, and I remember watching how it sniffed at every melting and fragrant thing, all those smells released by the cold, and yeah, there was some garbage, and yeah, dog shit in people’s yards, but it didn’t matter. I liked how everything seemed released, and we saw a couple walking up the street, on the other side, opposite to us, holding hands, and it was like we recognized each other, recognized ourselves as mirrors of each other, and the girl even smiled at me and gave a little wave.
“Near the main drag through that part of town, so many people were out. Some of them in overcoats, even though it was sixty degrees, but out of habit, you know, because it had been so cold. But also boys in shorts and basketball jerseys. And all the sounds were amplified. People’s conversations, the roar of buses, the flap of pigeons near the library steps. And Seth and I, we hadn’t intended to go to the bakery. It was too expensive for us, and we saved our money for drinking, though I don’t think we ever said that out loud to each other, but the smell of bread that was hovering near the door—the proprietor had propped it open; it was one of the last original bakeries in the city, and he knew how to draw people in. He was old, and he ran the shop with his wife, and I think it was only a month or so later that they closed.
“Anyway, Seth and I went in. Several customers were inside. They still had people take numbers, and we took one, even though Seth had only a couple of dollars in his pocket, and that might have been enough for a single salt roll. When it was our turn, I smiled at the man behind the counter. He was short, Italian, and you could tell he was full of the spring day, too. He spread his arms as if he was offering everything in the glass case in front of him. Beside the loaves of bread were beautifully glazed cinnamon rolls and these almost shimmering nut rolls and muffins that seemed more blueberry than muffin.
“I remember saying to him, ‘I’m sorry we’re taking up your time, but we have almost no money. Would it be okay if you held up one of those beautiful loaves of bread, and I could just take a deep smell of it?’ On another day, maybe he might have told me no, and asked me to leave, but he smiled at me, and said, ‘Sure, no charge,’ and he pulled a loaf from the rack and held it out over the counter in his gloved hands, and I brought my face close, and breathed it in. When I pulled my head away, I said, ‘Thank you so much,’ and he laughed, and I looked at Seth and said, ‘What?’ and he rubbed his finger across his own nose. ‘You got a little flour there. You took a little too big a whiff.’ I turned to the baker and said, ‘I’m sorry!’ but he was already sliding the loaf in a paper bag, and then setting it on the counter, and saying, ‘On the house, my girl,’ and when we walked out of there, he called out after us, ‘Enjoy the bread! Enjoy your youth!’ and Seth held my hand as we walked home, except when we were tearing away pieces of the loaf. It was so good. The sun on our faces. The warmth of that bread in our mouths.”
