She snorted at the thought. Several of the girls giggled.
“But if you don’t go and everybody else goes, you feel like a dweeb, so we all go.”
Jesse smiled.
“And the boys went,” Jesse said.
“Yeah,” Bobbie said, “sure.”
Jesse nodded.
“I remember,” he said.
Bobbie stared at him a moment, as if it had never occurred to her that Jesse had ever been in junior high.
“You go here?” Bobbie said.
“No, Arizona,” Jesse said. “But school is pretty much school.”
Bobbie nodded.
“So, before the dance,” Bobbie said, “Old Lady Ingersoll lines us up and marches us into the girls’ locker room and starts checking us out.”
“What did she do,” Jesse said.
“She picked up my skirt,” Bobbie said, “and looked at my panties.”
There was a small, uneasy stir in the crowd of kids and parents.
“She tell you why she did that?” Jesse said.
“She said”?Bobbie lowered her voice in mimicry?“ ‘Proper attire includes what shows and what doesn’t.’ ”
“Did she say what would have been improper?” Jesse said.
“She said anyone wearing a thong should leave now, because they’d be sent home if she saw one,” Bobbie said.
“Anyone leave?” Jesse said.
“Couple girls,” Bobbie said.
“Thongs?” Jesse said. “Or silent protest?”
His face was perfectly serious. Bobbie grinned at him.
“Or nothing,” she said.
Most of the girls giggled.
“That’d probably be even more improper,” Jesse said.
Some of the mothers joined in the giggle.
“Anyone object to the, ah, panty patrol?” he said.
“I did,” Bobbie said, “and a couple other girls, Carla for one, and Joanie.”
“And Mrs. Ingersoll said?”
“She said it was all between us girls, and she was trying to save us from being embarrassed, if somebody saw.”
Jesse took in a deep breath and let it out.
He said, “How old are you, Bobbie?”
“I’ll be fourteen in October.”
“Thank you,” Jesse said. “Anyone have anything to add? Carla, Joanie?”
No one said anything.
“Parents?”
One of the fathers got to his feet. He was a husky guy, with the look of someone who worked outdoors.
“Can you arrest her?” the man said.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Charles Lane,” he said.
“I’m not sure quite what the charge would be, Mr. Lane,” Jesse said. “Molestation generally requires sexual content. Assault generally includes the intent to injure. There might be something about invasion of privacy, but I don’t know that it would hold.”
“We are not going to let this go,” he said.
“No, sir,” Jesse said. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“So what would you do?”
“I am going to talk to someone from the Essex County DA’s office,” Jesse said.
“You think we should get a lawyer?” Lane said.
Jesse grinned.
“That’s pretty much what I’m doing,” Jesse said.
4
JESSE HAD made sangria. He and Jenn sipped some as they sat together on the small balcony off his living room, looking at the harbor. It was early on a Saturday evening. Jenn had brought Chinese food, which was still in the cartons, staying warm on a low temperature in Jesse’s oven.
“You know,” Jenn said, “I realized the other day that we’ve been divorced longer than we were married.”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“And yet, here we are.”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
Jesse had made the sangria in a large glass pitcher, with a lot of ice. It sat on the low table between them, the condensation beading on the pitcher and making small tracks down the glass.
“I can’t imagine life without you in it,” Jenn said.
“Can’t live with them,” Jesse said. “Can’t live without them.”
“There are people who are doing worse than we are,” Jenn said.
It was still daylight, and Jesse could see several people in rowboats scattered around the inner harbor, bottom-fishing for flounder. Jesse drank some sangria.
“And some doing better,” Jesse said.
“Yes,” Jenn said, “of course.”
In one of the rowboats a young boy hooked a fish and hauled it in hand over hand. His father helped him take it off the hook.
“Is everything all right, Jesse?” Jenn said.
“It never is, Jenn,” Jesse said.
He drank some sangria.
“But it’s not worse than usual?” Jenn said.
Jesse looked at her and smiled.
“That might be our motto,” Jesse said. “It’s not worse than usual.”
Jenn nodded.
“Are you seeing anyone these days?” she said.
“Several people.”
“Anyone special?”
“They’re all special,” Jesse said.
“Because they have sex with you?”
“Exactly,” Jesse said.
“Am I special?” Jenn said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “Even when we don’t have sex.”
“Is anyone else special like that?”
“No.”
They were quiet for a time, drinking sangria, as the sun went down and the small boats came into the dock, and the lights went on in the boats moored in the harbor, and across the harbor in the houses on Paradise Neck.
“Maybe we should think about supper,” Jenn said.
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“We could eat out here,” Jenn said.
Jesse nodded.
“You gonna spend the night, Jenn?”
“If I may,” Jenn said.
“You may.”
“I think we should have sex before we eat,” Jenn said. “I do so much better on an empty stomach.”
“You do well in any condition,” Jesse said.
“Does it make me especially special?” Jenn said.
“One of the many things,” Jesse said.
5
THE ADA was a tall, athletic-looking woman named Holly Clarkson. Like a lot of assistant prosecutors, she was young, maybe five years out of law school, and earning some experience in the public sector before she sank comfortably into some law firm somewhere as a litigator.
“You want to arrest the principal of the junior high school?” Holly said. “And charge her with what?”
Holly always wore oversized round eyeglasses as a kind of signature. Today she was dressed in a beige pantsuit and a black shirt with long collar points.
“Whatever you can come up with,” Jesse said.
“And you actually want to put her in jail?”
“Yes.”
“You do know that her husband is the managing partner of the biggest law firm in the state,” Holly said.
“Jay Ingersoll,” Jesse said. “Cone, Oakes, and Baldwin.”
“Correct,” Holly said. “And she is accused of picking up the skirts of some junior-high girls and checking their underwear.”
“Yes.”
“That’s idiotic,” Holly said.
“It is,” Jesse said.
“I admit,” Holly said, “that it would be fun to see her do a little time, get her attention, so to speak.”
“It would be,” Jesse said.
“But you can’t arrest somebody because it would be fun,” Holly said.
“I can’t?”
“No,” Holly said. “And if we started prosecuting people for being idiotic . . .”
“Be a hot one for the press and the talk shows,” Jesse said. “Elevate your profile.”
“I’m not that ambitious,” Holly said. “And if I were, the approval of Jay Ingersoll would be more valuable to me than anything the press could give me.”
“You got kids?” Jesse said.
“Not yet,” Holly said. “First I need to get married.”
Jesse nodded.
“Sure,” Holly said. “I know if it were my kids I’d want to strangle the bitch. But to prosecute her for . . . whatever we come up with, and get buried in paper by a platoon of lawyers from Cone, Oakes. You know what they’ve got for resources?”