I worked at not worrying. And then at not thinking about it at all, and soon enough I stopped. I had other things occupying me – this new stupid job very much like the old stupid one and trying hard not to do anything afterwards, trying just to go home.
Going home was easier because I had my own place now. A small apartment Beth had helped me find. My view was a pharmacy and I liked watching the neon sign flashing DRUGS in fancy pink script all night long. It kept me company.
Beth did too. Part of the deal with my getting out was I’d see her. They’d made her part of the package. Stamped her right on my ticket. So here I was with this new life, which wasn’t different enough from the old one.
Anyway, her office wasn’t far from where I was living. Close enough you could walk it, though I had my car back. Beth’s husband had had his hand in this too. Apparently the thing had sat in that parking lot piling tickets until finally they’d towed it. I sure didn’t have the money to bail it, so they wangled it, which way I never did get clear. I understood clearly about the favors, though. And, being me, already I worried about payback time. I wasn’t keen on owing so much to a couple. I mean, look where I ended up when the couple owed me.
I kept pushing these things to the back of my brain. If I’d let myself think too much about any of them, or all of them, I wouldn’t have made it to work in the mornings. And I sure wouldn’t have made it to Beth’s office afterwards.
That’s how it had begun to line up – most every day now I saw her. Though how or when it had turned to that often, I’d been unaware. It seemed almost like something someone else had decided and not her. Except it was her.
Sometimes I got there as the other people were leaving – the people she worked with, the shrinks and all. Usually I’d wait this little time out in my car because I hated how they looked at me. The way their friendliness gave away everything going on underneath it. Sometimes I sat there so long she’d have to come get me. And when she did, I liked how she put her arm around me while we walked in together.
But once we were in her office, it always took me a while to sit down. I’d kind of wander around, though it wasn’t a big enough room to keep that going for long. She’d ask me how work had been and we’d start out talking small like that for a bit. Then finally I’d sit down when I thought she might not notice I hadn’t been sitting all along.
I sat in this chair opposite her. She didn’t have a couch. This was probably a good thing because, after all, if you’re having trouble sitting, how much more trouble are you going to have lying down?
I’d behaved this way from the very first day. Not the sitting in my car part, but the rest of it. Now that I was out I didn’t know how to be with her. I felt embarrassed about the way it had been between us. The way we’d been before. And I thought maybe she did too because we were both like that – shy of each other and cautious. Neither one knowing where to start and, for me, this was made worse by feeling there was nothing to say. So I stumbled around to keep from talking.
I guess that’s how the small talk had begun. That very first day with her asking about my first day at work, and those first days always the same. Going by in a blur and leaving you shaky and faltering. Making you feel like maybe you should go back to the thing you’re good at. Making me feel that way. That pull already there and somehow surprising me.
If she knew this too she didn’t say so. But once I’d got myself sitting down and we’d finished with the weather and the rest of that kind of thing she said, “So how did it start for you?”
If it hadn’t taken me so long to get into that chair I would’ve gotten back up because this is what they all ask. The ones buying it. Sooner or later they do. If you’re young anyway. And while she phrased it different, I wasn’t sure she meant it any different so I teased her along. I said, “How did what start?”
I said this mostly because I wanted to hear how she’d put it. What she’d call it. But she didn’t say anything, which was probably smart.
Her not talking meant neither of us said anything for a while. And just when I thought I wouldn’t be talking to her ever again I began telling her. And I began hating her some because I knew I wanted to tell her. I don’t mean I wanted to tell someone and she happened to be there and asking. What I mean is I wanted her to be the one I told it all to.
But I didn’t think she wanted to be listening. I could see in her eyes how she felt. And it wasn’t what I expected. Not that I could have said what that had been, just that I didn’t think it’d be standard. She looked like she might cry or like she was angry. She looked a lot like she had the day Ingrid came to see me.
I stood up to go because this seemed over. But when I started for the door, she got up quickly and held on to me. It was the same thing we’d done all along. But this time it felt different. Being here felt different. I let her hang on for a while. And I held her, too, because, near as I could tell, it seemed to be what she needed. And because doing this reminded me we weren’t new to each other.
She sort of pressed into me and nothing was terribly plain about it – the same way I couldn’t pin down what I did to her, or could let it go by if I wanted. I could tell you I put my hands on her ass only because it made it easier to keep my balance. I could almost offer this explanation and believe it myself while still knowing the other. But then having two things going on at the same time is not something I question. It’s just something I do. Something we all do. Everyone does. All the time.
Beth wasn’t much shorter than me but I always felt huge around her. My hands large and marauding and her small underneath them. I didn’t pay so much attention to her hands. Not at first I didn’t. But then she put one on my back pretty low. The other one, she kept moving it around on my neck. Not her whole hand, just the heel of her palm. And then she’d tucked her fingers inside my collar, stroking soft there until my knees started to bend.
I don’t know which of us broke away first. I remember her asking me to come back and sit down, and I did this. Sat there all gangly and loose and trying to make sense of the questions she asked. Being slow about this, what with not having any blood in my brain.
She seemed okay, just nervous a little. She said, “What made you try to run out?”
I had to stall because I didn’t remember. Not right off, so I said, “What, was I running?”
“You seemed in a hurry.”
There was this little catch in her voice that would give me a way in if I took it. But at the same time it reminded me of what made me get up and so I left her alone. I couldn’t see telling her it’d been the way she acted, how she’d gone all hot in the face.
I stonewalled her. I said, “I don’t know. I guess I felt tired of telling you things.”
She seemed not at all satisfied with this but she let it go. “Do you still want to leave?”
I didn’t, of course, but that was all about wanting her touching my neck and not at all about talking. I supposed if talking would lead us back there, I’d do it. I said, “No, I don’t want to leave. Not anymore. It’s okay now.”
I’d forgotten what I’d been saying to her. It sure hadn’t taken long to tell her my first time, blowing that guy for the twenty. I remembered that much. Where we’d gotten to after that? I didn’t know.
She said it was Ingrid’s husband, my first time with him. She said I’d told her how he hadn’t seemed to come from the train but from somewhere behind me, that then I’d gotten up.