Age of Consent

by Marti Leimbach

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s that test tomorrow making me worry.”

  Even now, while he was driving, he moved his wide hand on her thigh, reaching higher, almost to where the money was. She held her breath and waited, waited for him to wrap his fingers around the wad of bills and then ask what in the hell was that in her pocket. Her head began to wag back and forth, as though saying no, no, no to a conversation that ran inside her mind. She better tell him, tell him now before he discovered for himself. She opened her mouth to speak but suddenly did not know what to say.

  She took a long breath. She willed her heart to slow, but it would not. Meanwhile, his hand moved down to her knee and then up again, climbing her leg one finger at a time as she stiffened under his touch. She waited, and hoped, and tried not to seem as though she was hiding something. She prepared an explanation, then gave up, deciding there was no explanation. He would tell her she was selfish. He would say she was a thief. She was about to confess the whole thing when he rolled his palm away, this time toward the inside seam of her jeans, just beneath her crotch. He could not feel the money there, or where he went next, so she said nothing.

  They drove a rural route, passing a farm on their right, an abandoned gas station attached to a miniature golf course, now closed down. She wondered if there were anywhere left in the world that didn’t look like this, haggard and worn, in need of repair. For years, the recession had caused her mother to worry she would lose her job. When the cupboard door broke, her mother had tacked it back up with the wrong hardware. When the dishwasher leaked, they began using the sink to wash dishes. Now, she had five hundred dollars, money out of the blue. If only she could get home without Craig finding out.

  He kept touching her, then looked over.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  She felt like a bug next to him, even more so in her thin shirt and wooden Dr. Scholl’s sandals, blocky slabs without any heel, castoffs from her mother who said they made her toes ache. She tucked up, trying to hide the outline of the bills through the fraying cloth of her jeans, and rested her head on her knee, her face turned toward him. She hoped her expression portrayed fondness, not fear.

  “You know they’re still hassling me at work,” he said. “That asshole girl.” He was referring to a girl who had come into the station asking after Craig and telling everyone that she knew him. The girl was a high-school student with acne and frizzy hair. The program director had told her to stay away from the station, but she’d kept insisting that Craig was expecting her. “I know Craig. We’re friends,” Craig said now, imitating the girl’s light, high voice. “Friends, bullshit. But that big shit-eating pig of a program director makes a huge deal of it!”

  He had one hand spanning the wide circle of the steering wheel, and with the other he found her knee. He articulated his story with little prods from his fingers. Big-poke-shit-poke-eating-poke-pig. He pointed the Buick down the smaller road that led to her neighborhood, rolling the steering wheel with his thumb, all the while playing his other hand up and down her leg.

  “And I don’t know this girl!” he said, all innocence. “Anyway, she’s already sixteen!”

  Sixteen was legal, Bobbie knew. Just as she knew she was illegal.

  “And anyway, I wouldn’t cheat on you,” he said, then suddenly drew his attention to the radio. A song ended and he lurched forward and flicked the dial, turning it up so the sound boomed through the car. “Hang on, here comes a break!”

  He was obsessed with breaks, with all performance from disc jockeys. He listened only to the station he worked for, never changing it even if he hated the song. And when he liked a song, he’d crank up the volume so high she could feel the base thumping her chest. He’d make a fist and tap the air like he was playing the drums, his expression concentrated inward, his drumming hand fastened to the rhythm, eyes half closed in concentration. She’d watch him, feeling the music pressing into her, and she’d think, This is embarrassing.

  But the songs didn’t mean much to him. They were filler; what he cared about, cared greatly as though every deep-voiced radio jock on the East Coast was in a contest with him, were the times in between songs when the DJ came in with that all-important break. That is when he’d really turn up the volume. Right now, a guy he hated who had the spot before his, a guy whose hire he’d opposed, who he’d heard had drinking problems and sleep problems, was talking over the guitar intro of a current hit, and this fact pissed him off. He listened, his face darkening as the voice ran into the song, interfering with the lyrics. Shaking his head, Craig gave Bobbie a look like Can you believe this shit? before moving the volume back to a normal range and returning to his conversation.

  “I told that pig, I already have a girlfriend. And he says, ‘How come I never met her?’ And then, guess what? He starts asking how old you are.”

  He’d half convinced himself she was of age now, so often had he lied.

  “What did you say?”

  “Eighteen.”

  She felt her head buzz. Eighteen. That was ridiculous.

  “Actually, I told him you’d be nineteen soon. But it’s none of his business. What’s he, your goddamned father?”

  Her father was dead. Heart attack in his twenties. This made no sense to Bobbie, how someone could have a heart attack at such an age, but she’d seen the death certificate in a box in the closet alongside old wedding photos of her parents. Her mother, pregnant in a big white dress; her father, a young man in a dark suit, a gold ring on his finger.

  They turned off the road and suddenly they were nearing her neighborhood, gliding beneath traffic lights suspended on wires, passing a parade of shops, what used to be a restaurant, then a dance club, now a nursing home. In a few more miles he would pull the Buick into a space at the top of her drive. She’d hear the crunch of his tires over the pebbles, see the reassuring light that shone by the front door. He’d stop some way from the house, pull up the parking brake, and turn toward her. Then he’d do something to remind her about the sex. He’d put her hand on his crotch so she could feel the outline of his dick, warm, already swelling, waiting for their next time. Then he would tell her he loved her. “I love you, babe,” he’d say, just like Sonny to Cher. If she didn’t say it back, he’d look at her with big eyes and keep holding on to her until she did.

  Once, she had almost believed that she did love him, because he’d paid her such a lot of attention, and told her how pretty she was, and how mature. You’re different from the other girls, he’d said. You’re wise for your years. Those were the early days, back when he was being nice. He would take her to restaurants, pull her chair out for her, tell her to leave room for dessert. He’d sneak her into the station and let her choose records. She’d wear his headphones, talk into the microphone, hear her voice in a recording he’d play back to her. He made her feel special, clever, somehow above the pettiness of junior high in which friendship and popularity hung on such small matters as whether your hair was “good” or you had the right jeans. Then one day, he told her he wanted to marry her. Marry me? she’d said, stunned, terrified. He’d nodded confidently, as though that had always been the plan. He’d worked it out that they were like Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed and forbidden because of her age, but for no other reason. No legitimate reason. Plenty of guys were older than their girlfriends, he’d told her. In other countries, men older than himself married girls her age.

  Who do you belong to? he would ask her, pinning her on the mattress. She’d tell him what he wanted to hear. You, she’d say. The thought scared her because she worried—she really did—that if it came to it, he’d get what he wanted and she would be his. His now and forever. And then all her life would have led up to marrying him. But how do you get out of such a thing? After you’ve had sex with a guy and told him that you loved him? And she had told him, too, more than once. It was too late to take it all back.

  But it wasn’t too late, she told herself now. It wasn’
t. They sailed down the dark street, too far out in the country for streetlamps. He sang along to the radio as they passed the elementary school. His favorite song, “Three Times a Lady,” by the Commodores. She hated the Commodores. Syrupy, worse than her mother’s Tom Jones. That he could even like this song bothered her. Surely she didn’t have to carry on meeting him, driving with him, having sex with him. There was an out—it happened all the time. She just had to try.

  She said, “I don’t like that song.”

  He sang another line, as though she just needed to listen a little harder and she’d see how fanfuckingtastic was this band and its number-one hit. “Number one,” he reminded her, holding up a finger. “You can’t argue with that!” Then he said, “So I told that prick boss of mine, that I already got a woman and not to take seriously this stupid girl and her ridiculous accusations.”

  Back to the program director, whatever he’d said about the girl Craig knew, or didn’t know.

  “I said to him, the idiot, I said, ‘Are you listening to crazies off the street? Fans, oh man. They are the true head cases and a good reason to get and stay stoned!’ And then you want to know what happened next? You want to hear?”

  She breathed in, and he took that as a yes. He said, “I held up some weed and we went into the parking lot and got high.”

  He laughed out loud. Spit foamed a little at the corners of his lips. He was always complaining about dry mouth, a side effect from all the pot. It was the weed’s fault but who could blame weed? He’d drink Dr Pepper or beer, or Nestlé Quik, or rum. Then he’d scream, I’m drying up! My tongue is numb! Like he’d never heard of water.

  He said, “Reach behind my seat and see if you can find my pipe, wouldja?” His face glowed from a Mobil sign they passed, then from a restaurant’s neon lights in the shape of a cactus, then from the red of the traffic light at the end of the long road.

  She brought out the pipe, but it didn’t feel familiar in her hands. It was a little stainless steel “L” with purple ceramic on the stem, lightweight, compact, but it wasn’t his pipe. His was a red and blue one with a longer stem and a Confederate flag. This one, specked in rust, its stem clogged with oil, was so tiny you’d likely singe your lashes smoking it.

  “You mean this?” she said, holding it out for him.

  He nodded. “I left my good flag pipe in the head at the station and it was taken by that skinny boy-wonder piece of shit they brought in who talks over the fucking lyrics!” He yelled this last part straight into the radio. “I hate that little fuck. He always plays my favorite records so I can’t repeat them, and now he’s taken my goddamned Confederate flag pipe, the cock!”

  He threw the matches at her. “Light up the bowl,” he said.

  She didn’t want to. If they smoked in the car, she’d reek of it. “We can pull over, can’t we?” she said, then remembered the money and hoped he wouldn’t stop.

  “No, we can’t pull over. Jesus, you should get high. That’s what is actually wrong with you, if ever you were wondering. The government makes shit up. Think about it. If everyone switched to weed, who would pay their fucking tax for alcohol?” He laughed, then tossed over his Bic but she dug in her purse for matches because she wouldn’t burn her fingers so easily with them. That was when he saw it, saw the money making a bulge in her pocket.

  “What is that?” he said, his voice suddenly slow and deliberate. He had his fingers around the roll of bills and he wasn’t letting go.

  “What’s what?”

  He jiggled his fingers, pinching the roll of bills tighter, his voice even. “In your pocket,” he said.

  She said, “Nothing.”

  “You better show me.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing is nothing. That,” he said, pointing, “looks like a dime bag.”

  “Is that what you think it is? Drugs?”

  “Pot, not drugs! All this anti-marijuana from you, Miss Mouth, and meanwhile you’ve got a dime bag in your jeans!”

  “It’s not a dime bag!”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Nothing!”

  Sudden commotion, her whole head in a spin. She saw the glass in front of her, then away; her vision bouncing. He stopped the car fast, swerving right as he did so, and she flew forward, her head banging the windshield, then thwacking the seat back. The car came to rest on the side of the road—dust rising, the tires cooling, the engine making its ticking noise—the whole thing settling like a big fish hauled onto shore after a long ocean chase.

  He said, “You should have been wearing your seat belt.”

  There had been no need to stop like that. No other car or giant pothole or blown-out tire. They were off the road now, parked squarely in a bus turnout. The only reason for him jamming to a sudden halt was his temper, that old grizzly that caused him to do this kind of thing, break a bottle, hit a wall, pick a fight with some stranger in a car.

  “Why did you do that?” she said.

  “Do what? I only stopped the car.”

  She touched her legs, her face, her arms, smoothing down the goose bumps, the knots of muscles, the galloping pulse. Her nose was running but there was no blood. No blood she could see. She was about to turn on the inside light and look in the visor mirror to make sure, but he scratched up a flame on a matchbook and the fire lit his face so she could see his eyes, and that stopped her dead.

  “Give me the pipe,” he said. His words, their tone, and the way his eyes focused on her, made it sound like he was accusing her of stealing it.

  She didn’t know where the pipe was. She started to panic a little, or maybe she was already panicking. Her head felt light; she was floating. This same feeling had visited her some months back when Craig had found her talking to a boy at a public swimming pool, a boy her age. The boy and she stood waist deep in the water, leaning against the wall of the pool. They’d been laughing. She looked up and there was Craig, standing like a lion behind a little chain-link fence. He’d called her over, and just by the sound of her name in his mouth, she’d known she was in trouble. She’d been scared. She climbed out of the pool, not even taking the time to find a towel, and went to where Craig waited. She stood with her bare feet on the hot sharp grass, her face squinting into the sun, her arms together at the elbows, hands cupped on one shoulder, dripping water. He looked down on her as though he had never seen anyone so disgusting. Insects swarmed, mosquitoes, gnats, while he whispered every imaginable threat in a low voice so that others could not hear. She’d felt helpless and stupid; she’d felt she’d done something very wrong. It was the same feeling she had now, like she was in trouble, like all hell was breaking loose and somehow it was her fault. All her fault. Her head hurt. She felt a bubble of tears, but she swallowed them back and held on.

  He sighed, cleared his throat, lit another match, holding it in the air. “The pipe,” he said.

  She willed herself to remain calm. Calm and smart—when was she going to learn that? He was about to say something more. He was about to make his point and she needed to say nothing—nothing at all—even though she wanted to run and kick out and scream. Outside, a willow leaned its tangled branches over the hood of the car and tapped in the breeze. She could climb out and shimmy up its leafy fronds. She could throw the door open and tear down the road. But she couldn’t, and she knew it. She felt her blouse wet down the length of her back, and a headache blooming between her eyes, and the pain in her face, right in the middle of her face, was like a target. She thought of all the times she’d found herself saying, I want to kill myself, found herself recently saying exactly these words, and she hadn’t known why. But this had been why.

  “Barbara,” he said, drawing out her name. “I want that pipe.”

  She knelt on the mat of carpet in front of the seat, keeping her eyes on him as she did so. The floor mats were full of grit and twigs and dust. There was no air that wasn’t tainted with a bitter dampness, with spilled bong water, stale beer, soured milk, puke. She didn’t ca
re. She scrambled on the floor in the dark. It was time to find the pipe, find it now. She groped around on the floor, her hands moving across the carpet like little windup toys, jerky and erratic. She squeezed her hands into fists and then released them again, trying to steady herself.

  She worried maybe there was a time limit for finding the pipe, like he had her on a timer and she’d taken too long already. She was in trouble. She felt it deeply, as though she’d already heard a ding! But then—thank holy Jesus—her palm moved over a bump in the carpet. It was the bowl, like a little marble of gold, and for the first time in what felt like a long while she let out her breath.

  “Don’t get angry,” she said, bringing the pipe up to him.

  “I ask you a question! A simple question, like ‘What is in your pocket?,’ and you give me all this shit, then tell me not to get angry!” He was exploding; he was orbital. But there was her friend, the clock on his dashboard, moving toward midnight when he had to be at the radio station, sitting in the big swivel chair in the center of the studio. Midnight to five a.m., he was on the air. He didn’t have much time to go crazy. His crazy time was confined as she was confined.

  “What do I have to do to get a straight answer out of you, Barbara?”

  She rubbed the pipe clean, tried to get him to take it from her, but he acted like he didn’t want it now. She pressed it toward him and he pushed it away. Finally she gave up, placing the pipe on the seat between them.

  “If I ask you a question, answer the question.”

  “Okay,” she said, patting the air. “No reason to get us killed.”

  She regretted saying this. Right away, she regretted it. His anger ignited freshly, and she felt his grip as he grabbed the top of her belt, hauling her up like a bucket, then tunneling his hand deep into her pocket for the money before shoving her back onto the seat again. She felt a scrape on her hip from his wristwatch. She felt her pocket empty of its treasure.