He drove the rest of the way to Sasha’s house in a blur of nonsensical thoughts. At one point, he turned his iPod so loud that the car shook with the vibrations just to try to blank out his brain. It didn’t work; his mind just started screaming and that made all the thoughts far worse.
She was tricking him, no doubt about that. She either wanted to have him arrested—no police car to be seen, thank God—or she wanted him to know he was a father. He tried to recall Bio—could a woman know so soon? If prison awaited him, he’d take it like a man and then cry late at night. If it was parenthood, he’d do whatever he had to, short of pushing her down the stairs, to convince her that abortion was the only sensible choice. But if she said surprise you’re a father and here’s Officer So and So to arrest you for raping me, Tyler was out of ideas, though he imagined he wouldn’t wait to start crying.
He parked in the street and walked up the driveway. A few dogs were barking nearby, their barks echoing off the hills and reverberating toward the lake. Two bushes that had been carefully pruned into identical round shapes boarded the front steps. “Nice bushes, right?” Sasha had said. Meaning what?
From her front steps, only the far corner of the lake was visible. Too many houses and hills blocked the view. Was the calm blue water he could see from here the same dark water that had rippled behind him when he—you raped me—had sex with Sasha? In all the burning lights of the thousand-eyed monster, had any one of those lights seen something? If someone had, he or she would have thought it was just two young lovers getting frisky, not—
But that’s all it had been. Don’t let her get in your head and convince you of something that didn’t happen. Women are nuts, remember. You even told Brendan that. Don’t forget your own warning. A bitch could beg for a good fuck and then turn around and point the finger with tears in her eyes and cry, “Rapist!” You have to be conscious of these things and don’t let them trap you.
Those thoughts sounded like Paul, and Tyler was glad that at least Paul’s sentiment had followed him here. Once he entered this house, he would need all the support he could get.
Sasha answered on the first knock. She was freshly showered, her wet hair hanging loose around her face, which was make-up free and healthy pink. Was that the pregnant glow he had heard about? She wore jeans and a baggy sweatshirt that made it impossible to admire her breasts. She invited him in and until she smiled he had completely forgotten her snaggletooth.
He had expected swollen red eyes and ratty hair and twitchy fingers, but instead Sasha was calm and happy. Refreshed. Was that because she was pregnant and happy or because she was happy that the police were on their way with cuffs that had his name on them?
“Hi,” was all Tyler managed to say.
Her house was something right out of a Make the Best of Your Trailer Park Life book. The outside had been well landscaped and the house gave off a healthier aura than many of the other mobile homes scattered over the hills. This one had, at one time, been a mobile home but it was now anchored solidly to the earth and the illusion of home living truly perfected. The walls resembled those in his own house, though smaller, but suggesting strength and professional polish. Pictures decorated these walls and clean carpet lined the floors. Only the faintest sense of claustrophobia or maybe an actual smell (something sour, almost rancid) suggested that this home was not all it appeared to be.
A few steps led up off a tiny foyer to the main living area where a gigantic television dominated the living/dining room. The TV was so close to the dining room table that during Thanksgiving meals someone probably had to sit on the television. A few more stairs descended from the foyer where an abundance of coats dangled from hooks to a smaller basement-like area. Red light flickered down there and something else, a sound, like a dying whisper, floated on the air like the vanishing wisps of cigarette smoke.
He started to peer down there and Sasha grabbed his arm. “My room is up here.”
She pulled him up the few steps but before he took those steps, he managed to duck down just enough to see into the downstairs. The angle was steep and since he was in mid-stride his angle was askew like the way little kids sometimes take pictures with the camera turned practically sideways. Red tea light candles had been set atop a long table covered with a white sheet at the far side of the room. To the right of the table, nearly out of sight, stood someone in all black, back to him, head bowed. The whispering was louder suddenly and he caught a few words—it sounded like sack rice and luff chide—and then he was upstairs and headed down a narrow hallway to a small bedroom.
Sack rice. Sacrifice? Maybe. If her mother was downstairs casting some witchery, sacrifice would be one of the most common words. But luff chide? What the hell was that?
“Is your mother home?”
She pulled him into a bedroom saturated in pink—comforter, pillows, curtains. How very unwitchy of her. She pushed the door closed but it didn’t shut all the way, leaving a sliver of space between door and frame.
“No. She went out.”
Then who was downstairs? “You sounded like you were in a hurry,” he said. “On the phone.”
She smiled; her snaggletooth protruded out from beneath her lip like a venomous bug sliding out of its dirt hole. “Sorry. I just really wanted to see you again before … things got out of hand.”
“What do you mean?”
She laced her hands together in an awkward way and her fingers began to fight each other. Her eyes drifted from his for a moment and then zeroed in on him again. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“So, we’re okay then?”
The fingers on her right hand had overtaken those on her left and her knuckles had gone white from the pressure. What was going on in her head? Where was the trap? Was she waiting for the police?
“I didn’t want to wait until Monday at school. You know … ”
“Did you tell anyone about last night?”
Her hands broke apart as if the left hand had discovered a secret weapon to protect itself and then her fingers found the edge of her sweatshirt; in one quick movement she pulled her sweatshirt off over her head and tossed in on the floor. Her breasts were popping out of a bra that was a size too small. There was only one way to interpret this gesture, but the look in her eyes stopped him. Her eyes didn’t say, take me or let’s fuck; they said, I’m lost and I don’t know what I’m doing.
Tyler opened his mouth expecting something to come out but nothing did and he simply stood there, mouth agape, Sasha’s breasts a foot away. Her fingers resumed their war. She tilted her head slightly and smiled, not too large and risk showing off that snaggletooth, but just enough to push away the caution holding him in place. Her eyes might be confused, but her smile said, Come and get it.
He leaned in for a kiss and her hands grabbed the back of his head. She buried her face against his so hard that their teeth mashed together and pain shivered through his face. She didn’t pull back; she actually pushed harder and forced her tongue into his mouth. Instead of fighting with each other, her fingers twirled in his hair and burrowed into his scalp.
She’s mauling me, he thought, like a bear. That didn’t stop him, however, from unsnapping her bra and slipping it off her without breaking the embrace. In two short days, he had become quite the suave player. He should have asked her out back in September. He could have been having sex for months already.
He kissed her aggressively, grabbed her ass and squeezed it hard. When she finally broke the kiss and started sucking on his neck, she said through hoarse gasps, “Bed … bed.” He pushed her toward the pink-covered bed, their feet tangled together, and they collapsed onto the bed, he on top. She moaned when she bounced on the bed like he was fucking her already. Her fingernails scraped at his scalp and her teeth gnawed at his ear.