Now I told her he’d asked me was I looking for something. And that it had caught me off guard because that’s the kind of thing we usually say to them. Right there he’d flipped the game, right from the start.
“And you felt?”
“Interested,” I said, which was true, but I left out wary and guarded. And I left out afraid because it wasn’t the image I had of myself, especially not of myself working. It sure wasn’t something I ever wanted a client to see and I didn’t want her seeing me this way either. Already I found myself measuring her all the time, trying to find where she fit.
“Why interested?” she asked.
“Because he didn’t act like the others. He didn’t check his watch or look around. He didn’t act like he’d ever be explaining anything to anyone waiting at home.”
She didn’t say anything to this and so I went back to what happened, told her how he’d come right out with what he’d wanted. She asked me what that was and I had some trouble telling her. I had to keep myself from getting up again. Settled for shifting my legs around.
“What did he want?” she asked again and her voice was so soft I could almost say I hadn’t heard her but instead I said, “He wanted to fuck my ass.”
I didn’t look at her when I said it and she wasn’t looking at me. I knew this because when I did look at her she was lost out the window. And I could tell that was where she’d been for a while.
“You agreed?” she said, still looking out there and so now I could look at her.
“Uh huh,” I said, but I didn’t say anything more.
She said, “What happened?”
It was her voice, how gentle it was; this let me tell her. I said, “We got into his car – in the front seat. He told me to take off my underwear.
“I did what he said. Then I started to reach for him but he took my wrist. He said, ‘I don’t want you to do that.’
“He told me to lift up my skirt. He looked for a while, then he touched me and I sort of… See, I don’t usually, but they don’t usually. It was the way I started breathing and he knew, he said, ‘Come on.’
“He pulled me out after him; pushed me on to my stomach on the backseat. I was half on my knees and half lying down and it started out not so easy because I couldn’t give in.”
I stopped here because telling her was putting me back there and I needed something from her. She seemed maybe to know this because she met my eyes and the look in hers – I felt like I’d never been cared for this way.
I began talking again. But now my voice was broken and soft and not behaving. “It hurt,” was what I said. “It hurt a lot. That way it does at first if you can’t ease up. But then he said, ‘Come on, kiddo, we had a deal.’
“He put his hand under my belly and then lower and it got easier. Up until the end it did.”
I stopped again. I wanted Beth. She was still gazing at me that same way, and at first I liked it. At first I handled it, but then I had to look down.
When I did this she asked, “What happened at the end?” She had that same catch in her voice, only this time, what with where I was, it made me wary, tempted me to play her. I looked at her for a little while.
“What happened at the end?” she said again. “What made it hard for you?”
And something about her, or me, or what I needed to say, made me shift, made me hard, but I still told her.
“He got me to come, okay? That was his thing. He’d get me to come and, I don’t know, always before he did. And then I’d be in that place of not feeling so good and he’d…”
“What happened that time?”
“He got me turned over. He got me turned over on my back. And he put his knee up between my legs and he got me to suck him. But he still didn’t come. And I hadn’t said I’d blow him and then he jerked himself off anyway. All in my face, in my hair, like before, like he always…”
“Like when?”
“That night with Ingrid.” And now I didn’t know how I’d gotten here from there, from where I’d been talking. I looked at Beth. I looked to her for help with the how of this. But seeing her convinced me I’d made some mistake. She’d stiffened to where I thought she’d get up but she didn’t and I didn’t either, though I felt this pull to, not to leave but to go to her.
We stayed dead here, neither of us saying anything more. It left me lodged between shame and anger – left me wanting something to hold that could hurt me.
She spoke first. She said, “What exactly went on with you and Ingrid?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and it was true. It’d been something I couldn’t explain to myself because I could never explain Ingrid or my importance to her. I couldn’t believe my importance to her, and it did keep changing. One day with her wanting me and another day not. One day her playing his wife in on the game and another pretending her ignorance of it.
And me, well it left me not a bit easier to see myself in this. And instead of lending compassion or understanding I found hatred. Stronger for her than for him. Him, I could dismiss. Or at least pretend to.
These were all things I thought but didn’t give voice to. I could hardly keep them sorted in my head. I feared terribly what might happen if I let them come out of my mouth. A sleepiness always attended this kind of thinking. An inability to press on with it, and instead a tremendous pull to give in, to give up. And to get up I suppose, too, because that’s in fact what I did, almost without realizing it.
It wasn’t the hurried run to the door like before but more a walking slumber and maybe for this reason Beth didn’t follow. I was in the waiting room, almost to the door before she caught up with me. We sat down on a couch there and I sank so easily into her. I rested. And I didn’t feel her arms or her hands but just felt her as one complete thing to lean on.
I don’t know how long the two of us stayed that way. Don’t know whether I actually slept or if I stayed in this place so nearby it. I do recall waking up, or something similar to that. She’d shifted her body and I started. Jumped up, only to find myself on my knees on the floor. I couldn’t have said what was happening. I remember claiming my leg had fallen asleep, “with the rest of me,” I think I said, trying to laugh about it.
She watched me from the couch, seeming dazed herself and uncomprehending. It was as if the emotions had been sucked from each of us and she looked pale from it. I didn’t know whether I should leave, just leave her there.
I got back on my feet. Tested myself by walking around. I didn’t know the time and there wasn’t a clock in easy view. I considered picking up the phone. Finding out that way because suddenly it seemed a very important thing to know. And while Beth wore a watch, I realized I wouldn’t believe what it said.
I let all this pass before I sat down with her. She’d regained herself. She said, “I think you better leave.” I didn’t question her. I simply did what she said.
On my way home, I drove past the train station. This wasn’t planned or unusual, it was simply the easiest way home, or the second easiest. The route I took most often and usually without too much notice. It was too late for commuters and, while I wanted to, I didn’t drive through the lot. And I didn’t think about wanting to. I didn’t dwell on it. Instead I saw it as something natural. Something bound to happen at one time or another.
Fourteen
I went to bed easily that night, what with being already asleep before I got there. Waking up, then, was the hard part. I guess Beth and I had had a late night if I thought back to it. I didn’t get home until sometime like midnight and here I was getting up again. All those hours asleep on her couch making me somehow less rested instead of more.
I went through the motions at work. And they seemed untroubled by this version, which was friendly if a little hazy. They didn’t know me any differently. By mid-afternoon I caught myself already watching the clock, already fidgety.