Age of Consent

by Marti Leimbach

  The cashier leaned forward from her chair. “You able to pay?” she whispered.

  She remembered how she’d left him. She had not brushed the dirt from his face, nor the little splinters of glass that sparkled like salt against his lips, nor allowed her gaze to rest on the spear of metal through his eye. There had been no moment of regret, no goodbye, spoken or unspoken. In her mind she saw his corpse all over again, and it was several moments before she realized that she was still staring at the cashier, who was waiting for an answer.

  “What?” Bobbie said.

  “Can you pay?” the cashier asked again.

  Bobbie nodded. But she was genuinely afraid to show her one of the fifties. It was as though the money had on it the written testimony of the night’s awful events: the image of Craig’s destroyed eye and the skewered face embedded in the bills just as indelibly as the Capitol. She felt a knot of pressure between her eyes, but then she remembered all over again how Craig had refused to pay the boy at McDonald’s, and how unkind he was, not just last night but often. He would tell her he loved her, sure. He would listen when she voiced her fears over pop quizzes and science labs. But there were things he did not understand about her body. He hurt her. He yelled at her for no reason. She remembered the day at the swimming pool when she stood on the scorched grass, her wet hair flat on her head, the August sun beating down, and how he’d threatened to tell her mother all about her, about the things she did with him, if she ever humiliated him like that again, flirting with another guy.

  “Hang on a moment,” she said to the cashier, then hunched her shoulders and leaned into her pocket, separating one of the fifties from its roll, bringing it up slowly, so that none of the others would come with it, and handed it to the cashier.

  The cashier looked at the bill carefully, angling it above her head and tilting it from side to side under the ceiling lights. Then she looked at Bobbie. “I’m supposed to get the manager for anything over a twenty,” she said.

  Bobbie waited. She wondered if the bills were counterfeit. She wondered if Craig had beaten a man half to death last night over fake money.

  “You on your own?” the cashier said. Her voice was light, even kind, like she wasn’t meaning any harm.

  “My mother’s working.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She sent me to get some clothes; she didn’t want me going around like this,” Bobbie said, hardly breathing now, allowing the woman to take her into her vision and draw her conclusions.

  The cashier nodded slowly. “Okay, then.”

  She thought she saw in the woman’s dark eyes a mixture of disapproval and pity, and a scrutinizing intelligence, too. She almost expected to hear the woman say, Where did you get this?, and then to watch helplessly as she signaled security, turning Bobbie over to the guard with the keys who had opened the doors. He had worn a uniform. He might even have a gun.

  Instead, the cashier sniffed, then looked at Bobbie directly. Then she ran her finger over the security thread on the bill, a little vertical strip embedded into the paper, opened the drawer on the register, and placed the fifty beneath the tray. Bobbie swallowed. She tried to act naturally, breathe easily, as though paying for the clothes had been nothing unusual, and there was no particular reason for the tremble in her hands as she accepted her change.

  ANY PERSON WHOSOEVER

  2008

  The defense counsel, Craig’s lawyer, the lean and hairless Ms. Elstree, sourced and subsidized by a pool of radio-station owners, turns out to be one of the most beautiful women Bobbie has ever seen. Over six feet in her heels, she looks to Bobbie like a runway model for Burberry in her navy blue suit and stout, square diamond earrings. She might have been too beautiful for the courtroom. She might not have been taken seriously by some of the less evolved male jurors or even inspired envy among the female ones, except for one fact: She had no hair, not a single strand. She is tall and she is bald, a raw truth she does nothing to hide. Confident, elegant, big in every way, Elstree has such presence that when she leaves her seat at the defense table and steps toward Bobbie, it is like seeing a lion sprung from its cage.

  “Good morning!” Elstree says. Her greeting is as fresh as though everyone has convened in the courtroom just this minute, not hours ago. Bobbie has already explained her story in total, every excruciating detail, as Dreyer led her through a long series of questions. She’d done well with her direct testimony, she thinks. But here is Elstree, filled with a kind of urgency, as though the jury should pay special attention now as the real story unfolds.

  Meanwhile Craig sits right in front of Bobbie in his own private hell, glaring just as he has from the moment she walked into the room. His expression had hardened when she gave her testimony to Dreyer. His face had changed color. But she told the story truly, just as she’d practiced with Dreyer, and ignored Craig.

  Now Elstree. She has none of the emotions of Craig. She is breezy, confident. She is as comfortable as if the courtroom were her home.

  “Just a few questions,” she begins, cozying up to the stand for cross-examination. Her first questions are so reasonable and matter-of-fact they might not even be leveled from the defense. “You told the jury you were thirteen when you met Mr. Kirtz?” Elstree begins. She is giving a show for the jury, encouraging everyone to trust in her sense of fairness and respect for the witness, Bobbie. “And that you were with your mother, who is now married to Mr. Kirtz. Correct?”

  “Yes,” Bobbie says, a bag of anxiety next to Elstree’s pleasant confidence. Meanwhile, she just can’t help it; she keeps noticing Craig, wondering how on earth he has the nerve to stare at her as he does. Then she remembers that the one thing about the man is that he is all nerve.

  “Okay,” Elstree says, as though they’d just come to a tacit agreement and all is right between them. The bald head gives Elstree a mystical appearance; the ceiling lights reflecting on her scalp make her seem almost to glow. She pauses a moment, eyeing Bobbie like a puzzle she is trying to figure out. Then she continues. “You’ve already told us that nobody saw you enter the motel the first time, nor when you returned for the rest of the money. Is that the case?”

  “Yes,” Bobbie says.

  “So you entered twice and you exited twice, but in neither case did any person whosoever see you, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though there were plenty of people around, I presume?”

  “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “What about the motel night manager, Mr. Williams? Did you see him?”

  “I didn’t know his name, but I know who you mean. Yes, I saw him.”

  “The motel room is where you saw the alleged fight take place between Mr. Kirtz and Mr. Williams, correct?”

  Bobbie is trying not to look at Craig, who keeps glaring at her. It takes every bit of concentration to give a simple answer. “Yes,” she says.

  “In your testimony with the DA, however, you claimed that Mr. Williams did not see you?”

  Bobbie pauses. “I don’t think he did, no.”

  “So nobody saw you at the motel, not even a man who was in the same room as you. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct. Nobody saw me.”

  “You stated earlier that you returned to the room in order to help Mr. Kirtz look for the money, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve already told the court that Mr. Williams entered the motel room after you were inside, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you also say he didn’t see you, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m a bit confused,” Elstree says. “Were you both in the motel room at the same time?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you saw him, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. You told us earlier that you were frightened. Is that the case?”

  “Yes.”

  Elstree says, “Even though you were frightened, you did not
call for help?”

  The judge, a black woman in her sixties with a wise face and graying hair and long flowing robes, a figure that awes Bobbie, breathes in a long breath as Bobbie says no, she did not call for help.

  Elstree tilts her head as though she is genuinely trying to see it from Bobbie’s point of view. Finally she makes a clucking sound as though, despite all her efforts, she just isn’t buying it. She shakes her head and Bobbie is again drawn to the shining scalp.

  “You told the jury earlier that you sprinted across the room and out the door in your bare feet. Is that correct?”

  Bobbie watches Craig shift in his chair. She stares into the courtroom, straight across to the opposite wall, and answers the question. “Yes.”

  “You have also said that you hid in the bathroom while the fight in the motel room took place, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that you ran from the bathroom out the door without being seen?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not so fast you couldn’t put hundreds of dollars in your pocket? Is that correct?”

  Bobbie thinks about the way she’d crawled along the floor of the room, how she’d suddenly seen the money, and then put it in her pocket.

  “I didn’t run the whole time. I crept along the floor and then dashed out.”

  “You’ve said you ran, but now you say you did not run. I am confused. How could you both run and not run?”

  “I crept along the floor first. Then I ran.”

  “Once you got the money?”

  Bobbie hesitates. “I ran with the money, yes,” she says finally.

  “You told us earlier this morning that you were very scared, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You used the word terrified?”

  “I was terrified, yes.”

  “But you got the money. You weren’t so scared that you didn’t have the wherewithal to pocket that. Correct?”

  Bobbie says nothing. Elstree does not say this but Bobbie imagines her saying, You were scared but you didn’t call for help. You ran but stopped long enough to take half a grand out from beneath the noses of two men in the same room without being seen. Who can believe you? Nobody can believe you…

  Meanwhile, there is Craig, sitting like an angry Buddha at the defense table, with his wide, wide chest and his unmoving face, staring. Remarkably, he seems to have two eyes. Two perfect eyes. And because he looks at her so unceasingly, it is difficult for her to tell which one is real. A flash of memory—the antenna in his right eye, the reflection of moonlight against its silver—and she knows that it is the left eye that is his own.

  “How much money did you say you picked up on your way out?” says Elstree.

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “You knew it was five hundred dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you had time to count it?”

  “No—”

  “You ran, you didn’t run. You know how much money it was. You don’t know how much it was,” says Elstree. Bobbie looks down. “A big noisy fight and nobody came to see what was happening?”

  “No.”

  “You are a kid in the middle of all this chaos and you don’t cry out?”

  “No.”

  “No calling, no yelling, you apparently aren’t even visible—”

  “I was visible. No one saw me.”

  “Except at a McDonald’s, where the attendant who served you did see you.”

  “Yes.”

  “A Mr. Daniel Gregory with whom you had a sexual relationship—”

  “We didn’t have a sexual relationship at that time,” says Bobbie. “I didn’t even know him then. And it was more romantic than sexual when we were…you know…together.”

  “More romantic than sexual,” Elstree repeats, as though trying to understand what Bobbie could possibly mean. “An interesting distinction.” Dreyer objects and the judge gives Elstree a warning. Elstree paces a little, then stands close to Bobbie.

  “Was it sexual?”

  “It was…” Bobbie hesitates and Elstree begins again.

  “Do you know what I mean when I say sexual?”

  “Yes.”

  “You may not remember exactly.”

  “I do remember.”

  Elstree looks down at her notes as though she’d been scribbling Bobbie’s answers there, though she has not been. “More romantic than sexual,” she says, repeating Bobbie’s words. “You aren’t answering the question.”

  “Yes, it was sexual.”

  Elstree sighs. “Thank you,” she says, as though at least they can now move on. “From what you’ve said to counsel this morning, in the entire fourteen-month period during which you claim Mr. Kirtz had sex with you on a regular basis, nobody ever saw anything. Right?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “No one saw him at your school?”

  “No.”

  “Nor at your house?”

  “Yes. I mean, he came to the house for dinner—”

  “And from your testimony we know that your mother was with you during these meetings at your house, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And as far as you are aware, your mother did not witness any behavior toward you from Mr. Kirtz that was of a sexual nature?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did anyone other than your mother see you with Mr. Kirtz outside of the home in which you lived with your mother?”

  Bobbie thinks hard. She says, “I think someone may have seen me at his work.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “But you can remember that nobody at all saw you on September seventh when you walked away from a near-fatal automobile collision. Nobody saw you, then. Is that correct?”

  Bobbie sighs. “That’s correct,” she manages to say.

  Elstree steps gracefully toward the jury. In the manner of a hostess asking them all to raise a glass and toast the witness stand, she invites them now to look at the monitors in front of them where they will see photographs taken at the scene in 1978, showing the condition of Mr. Kirtz’s car after the accident.

  “Do you recognize this vehicle?” she asks Bobbie.

  The images are old, the quality poor, but Bobbie sees the battered car, like a broken dinosaur unearthed and in pieces, and knows exactly what she is looking at. “That’s Craig’s car,” she says. She watches as Craig responds to his name from her mouth.

  “Correct,” Elstree says. She begins reading the forensics report aloud, describing the damage to the car, which had been so destroyed that it had been taken out in two pieces. The state of Mr. Kirtz, she explains, whose pelvis had been broken by the vehicle’s steering column, his right arm shattered, not to mention the substantial head injuries, had been understood as in keeping with the type of injuries likely to be sustained in such a collision. Expert opinion was that any passenger in the vehicle would have also sustained serious injury.

  Now Elstree turns to Bobbie. “But you walked away from this wreck,” she says. “Walked miles in your bare feet, you tell us. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How many miles, do you recall?”

  Bobbie tells her exactly. It is a number that Dreyer and she have discussed. “Seven,” she says.

  “Boy, that’s something,” Elstree says, as though genuinely impressed. “You must have been some kid. Do you do any extreme sports now?” The courtroom fills with half-suppressed laughter as the judge glares at Elstree, who bows her head and puts her hand up, accepting the caution. It doesn’t matter that the judge disapproves; the effect is clear on the faces of the jury.

  “I believe we have the route you took,” Elstree says. A map shows on the bank of computer monitors. Bobbie is shown the same.

  “Is that about right?”

  “I think so.”

  “You passed a phone booth just here, at the corner of these two roads. Did you call for help?”


  “No,” Bobbie says.

  “And here is an all-night gas station. Did you go inside and ask for help?”

  Bobbie shakes her head.

  “Into the microphone, please.”

  “No,” she says.

  “Were you aware there was a police station just here, not far from where you were?”

  “No.”

  “See here?” Elstree says, and indicates an area with her pencil. “There were houses all along here, with people inside who would have helped you. Did you ask for help?”

  “No.”

  “You say you were barefoot? That must have been difficult to walk all night on a road with no shoes. But you didn’t ask for help?”

  “No,” says Bobbie, feeling defeated, exhausted, wrung out.

  “So you never cry out, you never ask for help, your mother doesn’t know, and the only one who ever saw you with Mr. Kirtz other than your mother, Mrs. Kirtz, is Daniel Gregory, with whom you later happened to have a sexual relationship?”

  “Yes,” Bobbie says after some time. She had been warned by Dreyer that the cross-examination would be exhausting, but she hadn’t expected this.

  “Maybe a little recess?” Elstree asks Bobbie, as though she wants to do something nice for her, a little act of charity.

  DAN THE MCDONALD’S BOY

  1978

  Outside the mall, Bobbie had two problems. The first was how to get home. The other was hunger. Past a set of traffic lights, she could see an Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips, newly cut into the earth. Baby trees, caged from deer, edged the restaurant’s recently laid parking lot. But the lot was empty and she was pretty sure the banner pinned across the building would read OPENING SOON. Other than that, nothing but industrial buildings between vacant lots of wild overgrowth, and beyond, the highway with its dual streams of cars.

  On the road in front of the mall was a new bus stop with the route map bolted to a pole and a metal slab that served as a bench seat, so she went there. Staring at the map with its spiderweb of colored lines connecting in places marked with O’s, she realized she had no idea where she was. None of the names were familiar. If her house or street was anywhere on that map, or near the dozens of stops, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t know even which side of the road to stand on. She decided to ask the drivers of the buses that came along if they were heading anywhere near her neighborhood and figure it out from there. The heat was back, not much past nine a.m. and already hitting the upper eighties.