“That was better than just getting it over with,” I say.
I tip my head up to see his reaction. Though his eyes are still shut, he smiles.
“I’m glad.”
I wish he’d say more. With passion fading, I feel the need for some reassurance. That I did all right, for my first time. I wish he’d at least look at me.
I don’t expect a declaration of love, or anything, but…something…more. I just gave him my virginity, after all. Even if I’d intended just to get rid of it, it was still a gift. Wasn’t it?
Maybe Joe doesn’t think so. Maybe he’s counting the minutes until he can get dressed and head out. Maybe I should leave before he can.
I get up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The carpet feels matted under my feet. Dirty. I don’t want to think of who else has walked on it, or for that matter, how many couples have fucked on the bed I’m sitting on. My skin crawls suddenly and I shudder. I pick up my bra, then look for my panties. The white lace has vanished against the white tangle of the sheets, and I paw through the hills and mountains of fabric we made with our fucking.
Joe opens a sleepy eye and rolls on his side to watch me. I find my panties and snatch them up triumphantly. I want to wash, rid myself of the stickiness. There’s no blood, at least, and I send up a prayer to the real Virgin Mary, though, of course, she’d hardly have approved of this night’s adventure.
I go to the bathroom, grab a washcloth, and run it under hot water. Joe enters behind me, and I keep my gaze focused on the water running in the sink. He strips off the condom and tosses it in the trash, then lifts the lid on the toilet and urinates, a long, hard stream. I’m mortified. He reaches into the shower and turns it on. Steam wreathes the air.
“Want to join me?”
“No!” My answer blurts out louder than I’d meant it to.
I step into my panties and hook my bra, then grab my blouse and skirt from the hook on the back of the door. I put my clothes on faster than I’d taken them off, even though my fingers are shaking and I have to redo the buttons.
He’s staring. He’s naked. I smooth my hair and catch sight of my face in the mirror, blurred by steam. Eyes a dark smear, mouth a red slash. I’ve become faceless, which is good because I don’t need to see myself right now.
I can’t read his expression. I’m not sure I want to. A few minutes ago I was desperate for connection. Now I can’t wait to get away.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“Nothing. I have to go.”
“Are you sure?”
I’m torn between gratitude that he’s being so calm, and despair he’s not more solicitous. “I’m sure.”
“All right,” he says and turns to step into the shower. “Drive carefully.”
My breath squeaks out of me and I snatch up my purse from the bathroom counter. He looks at me over a shoulder marked by my fingers. His brow raises.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes!” I shout, though I’m not. My voice has gone high and wavery, as if I’m holding back tears. I clutch my purse to my chest. “Thanks for the favor!”
He turns all the way around, hands on his hips, and I wish he’d at least wrap a towel around his waist.
“Look, I’m not sure what the problem is—”
“Of course you don’t!” I won’t insult myself by explaining, either.
“Mary.” Joe’s voice is calm. “Did I misunderstand you back at the Slaughtered Lamb when you put your hand on my ass and whispered, ‘I’ve got at condom with your name on it?’”
That had been my friend Bett’s idea. Not mine. It had worked, yes, but—
“Hey.” He pulls a towel from the rack and covers himself before stepping toward me. He reaches to push my hair over my shoulder. “I thought it was what you wanted. It’s what you said you wanted.”
I can’t argue with that. I’d like to put the blame on him, make it his fault, but the truth is clear. The burden of my virginity had been lifted from me in a pretty spectacular fashion. I was only being a fool if I expected more.
“I did.” My voice still sounds thick, as if I might cry. But I know I won’t.
“You knew what you wanted and you went out and got it,” Joe said. “What’s so wrong about that?”
“Nothing!”
“Sure I can’t convince you to join me?” Joe backs toward the shower as he drops the towel. His grin is quite tempting, but I shake my head. “Okay. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” I think it’s only half a lie. “I have to go.”
“Drive carefully,” he says again.
When the shower curtain rattles closed, I almost change my mind. Instead, I finish dressing and flee the hotel room, leaving behind the stranger who made me into a woman.
“That’s a nice story,” I said. “I like the part about how you made her a woman.”
Joe reached for his paper cup of soda and took a long drink, as though talking had made him thirsty. “Didn’t I?”
“What I find interesting is the idea that a woman has to have sex to become a woman.”
He shrugged and tore open the paper wrapped around his sandwich. He always waits until after he’s told me the month’s tale before he eats, then falls to with gusto as though the telling has given him an appetite. He has turkey on wheat, the usual, but this time with tomatoes. I watch him pick them off, one by one. Joe hates tomatoes.
“Doesn’t it?”
I say nothing, content to sit and watch him eat. I needed time for my body to ease back to the real world, for my heartbeat to slow and my breath to follow. I pulled my sweater around me, feigning a chill, to hide the fact my nipples had gone stiff. Later, at home, I would recall his story, the small details of it, and I’d touch myself until I came. For now, I played the cool observer, the same as I did every month when we met on this bench in the atrium or the one outside in the garden.
“I don’t know what her problem was.” Joe chewed and swallowed. A pearl of mayonnaise clung to the corner of his mouth, and I pushed a napkin toward him.
“She’d just lost her virginity to a stranger. Maybe she felt awkward.”
Of course, I had no idea what Mary felt, any more than I knew what any of Joe’s women thought or felt. My imagination filled in the details of their coupling, taking what he told me and painting a picture from the feminine point of view.
“She was on me like butter on a biscuit. How was I supposed to know she was a virgin? She didn’t act like one.”
“How’s a virgin supposed to act?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know. But she acted like she knew exactly what she wanted. So why was she so upset when she got it?”
I didn’t answer for a moment, thinking. “Maybe she was disappointed.”
He gave me the grin, the bad boy smile. “Sadie, I did not disappoint her.”
“Oh, that’s right. You made her a woman.”
Joe frowned. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“No. Losing my virginity didn’t make me a woman. Did it make you a man?”
His one-eyed squint shouldn’t have been as enchanting as it was. “I lost my virginity to Marcia Adams, my mother’s best friend. It made me a man pretty fast. I wouldn’t have survived it, otherwise.”
This is a story I’d never heard and my face must have shown it. Joe laughed, one eye still squinted, face tipped up toward the atrium’s glass ceiling.
“Are you going to tell me about it?”
He looked, for one strange moment, shy. I hadn’t thought him capable of it. He shifted on the bench, and I was sure he was for once not going to tell me.
“I was seventeen. She asked me to take care of her garden. Money for college. She told me I could use her pool every day, when I was done mowing the lawn.”
“Sounds like you did more than mow her lawn.”
He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
“And you really think that’s what made you
a man?”
I watched him curiously. He turned to look at me, his face solemn and nodded slowly.
“Yeah. I think it showed me what to expect, anyway.”
“I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”
“Well, if losing your virginity didn’t make you a woman,” he said, “what did?”
I said nothing to that, a topic into which I didn’t wish to delve. After a moment, he shrugged. “Mary acted like I was handing her a twenty and kicking her out.”
“Maybe she assumed you were the sort of guy who picks up women in bars and sleeps with them, then expects them to leave.”
“I’d have let her shower first!” He cried, indignant. “Jeez, I’m not a total asshole.”
Yet he didn’t deny he was, indeed, the sort of man who picks up women in bars and sleeps with them, perfectly satisfied with one night.
I didn’t respond, just sipped my drink. Joe set his sandwich down. The sun shining through the glass overhead cut through the giant Boston ferns hanging above us and striped shadows in his dark blond hair. His frown pulled his full mouth into thinness.
“Say it.”
I pretended not to know what he meant.
“Say it,” he repeated. “You want to. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Say what?” I relented. “That you are the sort of man who does that?”
“Keep going.” He sat back against the bench, his arms crossed.
I smiled. “That you’re a cheater? A rogue? That you don’t know the meaning of fidelity? That you go through women like wind through lace?”
“Don’t forget that I’m a silver-tongued devil who’ll say anything necessary to get into a woman’s pants. That my Holy Grail is pussy. That I’ve split more peaches than a porn star.”
I laughed. “Split more peaches? That’s a new one.”
Joe wasn’t laughing. “Go on and say it, Sadie. I’m a manwhore. You think I’m a slut.”
I studied him before I answered. “Joe…”
He wrapped up his food and stood, then tossed it in the pail next to me. He moved like a marionette dancing under the hand of an uncertain puppeteer, all jerks and twitches. He was angry. Really angry, and I stood, too.
“Joe, stop.”
He turned to me. His suit today was black, his shirt bright blue, his tie black with tiny blue dots scattered on the fabric. He put his hands on his hips, ruining the cut of his suit, which probably cost as much as my car payment.
More shadows speckled his blue-green eyes, his high cheekbones, the slope of his nose. No sign of a smile. His glare wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and it wasn’t fair they only made him better looking instead of haggard.
“I know you think it, so you might as well say it.”
“But, Joe,” I said gently. “It’s true.”
“It won’t always be true!” His words rang out, echoing.
The plants seemed to recoil, startled at this shout interrupting their usual peace.
I shouldn’t have scoffed, but his anger had made me angry, too. “Oh, please.”
Joe stalked toward me. I didn’t move away. He stood only a few inches taller but he seemed bigger in his anger. I refused to flinch even when he leaned in so close he could have kissed me, if he’d wanted. This was my role, disinterested observer, as his was playful rogue. I acted as though I wasn’t intimidated, though the truth was, being so close I could count his eyelashes, smell him, feel the heat of his breath on my face, I was. Underneath, I always was. Intimidated and turned on.
“It’s true,” he insisted through gritted teeth.
“I’ve heard that before. But every month you come back here and tell me a new story about some new woman. Or more than one. So you’ll have to forgive me if the idea of you suddenly becoming Mr. Faithful sounds a little funny.”
He jerked away from me, his finger pointing. “And every month, you listen.”
I lifted my chin. “Is it my fault you have stories to tell?”
He made a disgusted noise and gestured with his hands as if he was throwing something away. Maybe me. I wasn’t sure.
“I don’t have to prove myself to you.”
“No,” I agreed. “So why are you trying so hard?”
We’d never argued. Arguments were for people more intimate than I’d ever have admitted we were. Now my heart thumped and heat rose in my cheeks. My stomach churned and a sharp sting in my palms made me realize I’d clenched my fists. So much for the cool demeanor. I relaxed them with conscious effort, and the motion drew Joe’s gaze. He looked at my hands, then back at my face.
“What about you? What are you trying to prove?”
“Me?” The question surprised me. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why do you listen?”
Now it was my turn to gather up my garbage and toss it in the trash. I gave him my back, intensely aware I didn’t have to see him to know he was looking at me.
“Not so nice when it’s turned around on you, is it?” I could hear his smirk.
I looked at him again. “I’ve been listening to your stories for more than a year now, Joe. I guess it’s just become a bad habit.”
His body didn’t flinch, but his eyes did. “Bad habits should be broken, though, right?”
He turned on his heel and stalked away. Panic flared in me. He was messing up the parts we’d been playing for the past two years. What did that mean? That he wouldn’t be back? Or just that he wouldn’t have another story?
“Joe!”
He didn’t turn, and I had too much pride to call after him again. I waited until he’d disappeared beneath the hanging greens and I was alone in the quiet before I sat on the bench again, my mutilated fists in my lap.
The flowers reproached me, but since they had no voice, I didn’t have to listen.
Chapter
02
I met Adam at a party my freshman year of college. Not at a frat house, this party was at “lit house,” a three-story Victorian monstrosity that had been home to half the English department, grads and undergrads, for as long as anyone could remember. It was its own frat house, in a way, though the graffiti on the basement walls featured quotes from Wilde, Shakespeare and Burns, and the limericks were clever in addition to being filthy. I was there by invitation of my roommate Donna, an English major.
I wasn’t much a fan of beer, but I carried a cup anyway. Donna had abandoned me to hook up with a cute guy from one of her classes. I moved among the crowd in search of the bathroom, listening to drunken discussions about iambic pentameter and poetic imagery along the way.
In the kitchen, looking for the toilet I’d been assured was “just through there,” I found Adam. He lounged on top of the kitchen counter, his incredibly long legs encased in faded blue corduroy pants, immense feet shod in the shabbiest brown oxfords I’d ever seen. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a famous punk rock band. He had an earring glittering in one lobe and long hair. He had a cigarette in one hand and a green short-neck bottle of Straub beer in the other.
“Bathroom?” When I nodded, he pointed to the small door just beyond the door to the cellar. “The door doesn’t lock. But I’ll watch out for you.”
He flashed me a grin of perfect white teeth, the upper front tooth slightly crooked. I was smitten. I used the bathroom and came out to find him in discourse about the writing of Anaïs Nin and how it compared to present-day erotica. I didn’t leave the kitchen for the rest of the night.
It was the first time I ever got drunk.
Later, stumbling home, Donna asked me who he was.
“I don’t know,” I said with beer-bleary lips. “But I’m going to marry him.”
Two weeks later, as I left my room to go to class, I saw him leaving a message on the door of Rachael Levine, my resident assistant. Rachael was fond of lecturing the rest of us on the dangers of drinking too much and having indiscriminate sex. She didn’t seem much good at applying the same lectures to herself, though, even at twenty-two st
ill hitting the frat parties and making a point of leaving her ample supply of condoms out in her room for anyone to see. She also liked bragging about her “brilliant” boyfriend.
His name was Adam Danning.
He turned and flashed me the smile that had so intoxicated me. “Hey. I know you.”
Between one heartbeat and the next, my entire life changed.
“You’re Sadie.”
He knew my name.
How did I talk to him? Tall, handsome Adam. Brilliant lecturer on the differences between erotica and pornography. Drinker of Straub beer and smoker of Marlboro. Boyfriend of Rachael.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to talk much. He walked me to class and spoke about his work in the English department. About the University. About a movie he’d seen the night before. He made it easy to be silent, and I drank his words with more enthusiasm than I’d consumed the beer.
“Lit house party this weekend,” he said as we parted ways at the top of the hill, he to work and I to my introduction to psychology class. “Will you be there?”
Oh, yes. I’d be there.
Six weeks into my first semester, we were eating lunch together three or four times a week and walking to class more often than that. We talked about everything. Politics, movies, art, books, sex, drugs and rock and roll. He recited poetry to me. Adam introduced me to the power of words.
He never talked about Rachael, though she spoke of him, often, to anyone who’d listen and anyone who didn’t. Though Adam and I made no secret of the time we spent together, she didn’t seem to consider me a threat. She went out of her way, in fact, to take me under her wing. She gave me advice, unsolicited, and kept back rolls of toilet paper for me during rush week when the fraternity pledges were ordered to steal it from the dorms and all the stalls went empty. She treated me like an amusing, perhaps slightly retarded, younger sister. She didn’t view me as a threat, probably because I’d carried my “smart” façade along with me from high school. If I’d been “the pretty one,” she might have worried more.