He needs to take a piss, he says. He keeps talking to her when he does it, through the window on her side. He simply walks over, sticks his head in the window and then she hears the whoosh and the splash and sees the steam rising. The sound sends a message to her own bladder and now she has to go again. He opens the door for her and takes her in his arms cradle style and carries her a few feet away from where he peed and sets her down gently. Tobacco and cologne, experience, the way a man should smell. His arms feel strong. He can probably kick her father's ass. Kill him, if need be. She would never ask but she bets he could do it if he wanted to. He's certainly way taller than him. Split his bald head open like a Thanksgiving squash. He walks her to the side of the road, to a small clearing between stands of scrawny aspen. She lifts the bottom of her dress and squats while he grips her tightly by the wrists. The sound of her pee first hitting the ground startles her.
He chatters away about his novel while she tries to lift her dress high enough so she doesn't urinate on it but not so high as he can see her vagina. She wants him to see everything down there but not while pee is coming out of it. He's goofy. Not very subtle. Not infallible like her father. It makes her not embarrassed in front of him. Afterward he gets her a single tissue to wipe with and when she's looking for a place to throw it and grabs it from her hand and shoves it in his pocket. "No point in littering, kitten."
Instead of getting back into the cab, he gives her a lift up to the bed and climbs in after. He has an air mattress back there as well as some couch cushions. And several layers of blankets. He arranges the cushions so they can sit up and lean back. They finish the pot and share a cigarette. He opens the back window of the cab and the music floats out. She's close enough to feel the warmth from his body. Every time she moves, her dress crinkles.
"You have a future, kitten. Far away from this place. You are the best writer I've ever had."
"Because of that essay I wrote about Hamlet?" she says.
"You're smart. You have what it takes. You're not perfect, you need help, but I can get you there. I'll tutor you. You think maybe you're old man will pay for tutoring? If not, I'll do it for free. So we can still be around each other if I don't move. Moving is up in the air right now."
"I'll get him to pay," she says, feeling desperate.
"You can babysit my kid, too, when me and the Missus split up. I'll need help. You wanna help me play house, kitten?" He empties another beer and belches loudly.
"Okay," she says, not quite sure what she just agreed to. The sky is full of stars, as if scattered by a giant hand, and the moon glows full and yellow. "You're getting a divorce?" she asks hopefully.
"Surely I am. As surely as you and I and sitting here, princess."
"Do you and her ever have sex?"
"Christ, no," he says. "We pretty much put away that part of our lives when the kid came. Even months before that."
"Never?"
"Oh we tried once or twice after the kid came. It wasn't the same. You'll find out. Excuse my analogy but it's like getting fucked for six hours straight by some guy with an eight pound, six ounce, twenty-one and three quarters inch long cock, only he's fucking you from the inside out, trying to make it last as long as he can. And he's got the oddest shaped cock. A whole bunch of people will be standing around watching. Nothing's ever the same after that. Oh, foreplay is nine harrowing months. Sorry to once again have to be the bearer of bad news, kitten, but someone needs to warn you. All the pretty ones need to know. You're more vulnerable than the plain ones. The unexceptional ones. The world is awash in unexceptional people. They're everywhere. A girl like you stands out like a fully-formed diamond in a bag of charcoal briquettes."
She's drunk. She had four beers. Not drunk drunk, but drunk just the same. The weed is strong or maybe it's just smoking it out here surrounded by towering evergreens, crickets and cicadas and frogs and whatever else is making all those noises, the sound of the creek running over rocks, rubbing them smooth and bare, sitting next to Josh with the sky fully opened above them, maybe it's just that which is setting her mind so free, allowing it to sort through the good and the bad thoughts and safely tuck the bad ones away. Her mother was a good mother, most of the time. She always defended Jade from her father. In the end it became nobody defending her from either one of them, the sounds of broken plates and slammed doors and her mother's sobs punctuating each and every day. But good thoughts, Jade. Think good thoughts.
"You have some sort of curfew?" he says.
"No," she lies.
"I'm staying out the whole night myself. Maybe sleep in the truck, maybe grab a motel. I'm not coming home to that tonight. She'll be laying in wait with some story about how her parents were right about me. No bed of your own, kitten. Don't ever forget that. No bed of your own. There's no more beer. I just drank eight. You might have to drive." He raises his arms above his head and yawns.
"I drank too," she says.
"Your point being?
"Let's just stay here. It's nice."
"Nice and tempting," he says. "If you have any more bud, you might as well refill this. It's cashed." He tosses the pipe and it lands in her lap.
He doesn't seem to be in any hurry to make a move on her. Instead he talks more about his novel, how it's going to save him from his hell of a life and without a job he'll be able to devote all of his time to it. Though without a wife he'll have to actually get a job and since he'll be paying child support he'll have to work twice as hard just to stay even. "My head aches from it all," he says despondently. "I need a little victory here."
She tries cheering him up. "I'll tell you why I took my panties off," she says.
"I already know." He's staring at her. Finally he says, "I could see it in your face; I could smell it on you. Hope I didn't spoil your fun."
A blanket covers her lap and her thighs are sweating, the heat radiating upward. He's smoking a cigarette and rapping quietly along to the music.
"You're the best teacher at the school," she says.
"Kitten, I'd like to curl up and make a bed for myself inside of your uterus. That's how good you make me feel. If you don't mind, kitten. I won't be any trouble at all. You won't hear a word of complaint."
"Not from you, maybe." Now is the time, she thinks. "You can, you know. If you wanted to be in there."
"I doubt I'd fit, darling. Might be a load of fun trying. Regular barrel of monkeys."
She persists. "You know what I mean. You can. I want you to."
"Oh, kitten," he says. "If you had any idea how hard it is for me to keep from doing anything but thinking about what you look like under that dress, picturing it and caressing the picture, doing all sorts of nasty things to that picture, acts so nasty I'd be too embarrassed to even describe them to you, if you knew that then you would know the true extent of suffering. We're talking Christ on the cross suffering. You're the cat's meow, kitten. You're the princess of the ball. All you need is the glass slipper."
She sidles up next to him under the blanket and he doesn't object. He also doesn't snuggle against her; instead he stays inert, now staring at the sky intently, as if he's trying to calculate the distance between stars. "So. Then do it. You said I should grab life."
"You should grab it. Not me. I've done enough grabbing for three lifetimes. I do something with you, kid, I end up on the list. You end up on the list your life is over. Can't even go to a Little League game. Certain places won't let you in just to get a pizza."
"I'm not the kind to tell," she says, taking one of his limp hands and dropping it onto her lap. "You already said I'm not the telling kind."
"Mighty brazen, these kids today. You do make a valid point," he says, the hand coming to life and working its way up under her dress. She opens her thighs wide and the heat is released. She's been fingered before, by boys at her school, once even by her brother a few years ago, before he became a complete and total asshole, an echo of their father, but it wasn't the same as this. Those fingers were poking at her, constantly running into dead ends, wiggling themselves around, sometimes managing to get a few of her hairs wrapped around them. He knows right where to go. His finger curls back and finds her in that place, the mirror opposite of her labia, and begins to stroke. Now it's his fingers. She opens her plump lips wide when he leans in and kisses her. He tastes like cigarettes but he also tastes of himself. The dress comes off over her head. "When'd you start your last period?" he says.
"I just finished it a day or so ago," she lies and then he's on her, on her but not in her, as instead he puts his mouth where his fingers just were. She leans back on her elbows so she can watch the top of his head, just to make sure it's actually happening, not wanting to miss a moment. His looks like the head of a child. Probably the hair. Soon she collapses back and waits for what comes next. He's kissing her breasts, kneading them gently. He doesn't think they're too small. He likes her ass. He doesn't think it's fat. Instead he flips her over and puts his tongue inside of there until the tickling is too much to take. The blankets smell musty. He takes his time, goes very slowly, kisses her the entire time, especially making sure to kiss away of all her tears when she starts crying. Then there's pain and the pain is stretched out for a long time, but the longer it stretches the less it becomes pain and the more it becomes a pleasant internal song. A popular jingle. Something that stays in her head. It closes with a soaring, a soaring and a tremble. He whispers to her, calls her kitten and kiddo and darling and princess. Says she is his princess. He makes her laugh when he says, Look at me. I'm no prince charming, princess. Don't be counting on me to rescue anybody's ass, no matter how pretty that ass may be, but my own. It's the first time outside of doctors and relatives that another human being has held her naked body, and outside of taking a bath now and again with her mother as a baby, the first time the person holding her is naked too.
Driving home they're both quiet. She doesn't know what to say. It's just like Ronnie told her. She'd feel no different afterwards. She cleans up what she can with her panties but she's still sticky down there. He breaks his no littering rule and tosses them into the woods for her. He's cute, trying to hold them in such a way as to not get his own cum and her blood on his hands. When he finally does talk, it's a block from her house, where he pulls over. "You're going to have to walk from here, kid. Can't risk anyone saying they saw me drop you off. If your old man called my Missus looking for you I am creamed spinach. Say I dropped you off at that party and a friend gave you a ride home."
"I can't tell him I was at the forest. He'll freak."
"Tell him whatever, I don't care. Help me out here. Just don't say I was there with you. A friend picked you up. I never gave you a ride anywhere. You make up your story and I'll make up my own."
"Which friend?"
"You're breaking my balls," he says. "I can see that you're breaking my balls."
She pictures them, his balls, bigger than she expected, the veining and mottling visible in the moonlight. Heavy too, they felt like hard boiled eggs in her hands, freshly peeled and still warm from the pot.
"In school on Monday just act normal. No winks or mooning or knowing glances. Got it? If anything, ignore me. Don't go into a snoot when I ignore you."
"I don't want to wait until Monday," she says. "How about tomorrow or Sunday? You can tutor me, give me a writing lesson."
"Oh. Those, he says. She scooches over on the seat and tries to kiss him. "Not here," he snaps. "Jesus. Someone might drive by, even this late. Speaking of which, I need to get home."
"You said you were going to sleep in the truck or maybe get a motel. I'll stay with you."
"Scratch those plans. I'm in enough Dutch with the Missus as it is. I'm going to go home and slink onto the couch. Hopefully I can snare my pillow without her hearing me, otherwise I'll get the lecture on no sleep and worse yet, she'll be delivering it on hardly any, a recipe for an all-nighter."
"I'll keep you warm," she says, once again being pushed back when she tries to lean in and kiss him. "You might leave. You might be gone in December."
"Why would I leave?" he says, a look on his face like she just said something distasteful.
"Your job," she says. "Your divorce."
"I can't afford to get a divorce. You saw how we live. We can barely stretch enough to live in that shithole as it is. My job will be fine. Nothing's official. I doubt I have anything to worry about as long as I can get up early tomorrow and start grading and to do that I need to get some sleep. Time to punch the clock, kid."
"You said you got fired." There's a swing attached by ropes hanging from a tree, swaying gently in the wind. An invisible rider.
"I did? I didn't mean to give that impression if I did. No, I'm just stressed over my review. This one big review. It'll be fine. Not to be rude, but get out. My truck should have turned into a pumpkin three hours ago."
He backs up and turns around, his tires whining on the brick streets. Jade walks home, digging in her purse for a house key, though she's sure she won't need it. A swift wind lifts her dress and chills her bare ass. She can see her breath. The living room lights are ablaze, her father's bald head floating in a window. She needs to finally tell him how she feels, tell him about what is always burning inside of her. She feels emboldened. What did Josh call her? Brazen. She's feeling brazen and she and her father are going to talk, or rather, she is going to talk and he will listen. For once he can listen. She'll give him something to listen to. He'll sit up and notice. On a night like tonight, almost anything is bound to come out.
Tom Bonfiglio's stories have appeared or are forthcoming in over a dozen publications, including Fiction, Northwest Review, The Florida Review, Lake Effect, The Literary Review, Wag's Revue, Mixer and Fringe Magazine. He won the Robert C. Martindale Prize in Long Fiction, and has received Special Mention in the Pushcart Prizes: Best of the Small Presses. He lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
Comments (closed)
JPenton
2011-10-01 22:40:54
The thought of publishing this story made me very uncomfortable. The problem, in case it's not clear, is that the story is sexy. It's sexy throughout, so much so that even though the author telegraphed the ending all over the place, I couldn't help but wonder if Josh "Harvey Keitel" Channing was supposed to be a sympathetic character; if he would not get his comeuppance. It's an issue of style. Based on what I've read of Tom Bonfiglio, the man would inadvertently make a grocery list sound sexy. It's a burden, I suppose.
So I decided to define the story as transgressive literature, and I asked myself a general question, a litmus test for transgressive literature: does this story prove a point in a way that a less-transgressive (in this case, sexy) story, with the same plot, could not? And I came to the ending, and to the one word: brazen.
Now, I was a teenaged father, but one doesn't need to be a teen parent to notice: society doesn't actually give a shit about teenage girls. It finds them awkward, socially undesirable, and would just as soon be rid of them. And sexually active teenage girls? American society fucking HATES them. So America's obsession with protecting teenage girls from statutory rape seems a little hypocritical. Generally, if I feel protective of someone, it's not tied directly to hate. Sure, yeah, love/hate relationships, but America's relationship with its teenage girls does not strike me as love/hate.
So I ask myself: what's the deal? Why is Josh the undisputed villain? Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe high school teachers should refrain from fucking their students -- it's bad for the students. But if the average American cared about the emotional and academic success of students, it would be a different world indeed, wouldn't it?
But now? Jade has become brazen. She's not going to stop fucking. She's probably not going to stop fucking older men. What she's going to do is start telling people the truth. She's going to expose to them the hypocrisy, greed, and selfishness in their own lies and lusts.
This story reminded me that the laws against statutory rape aren't there to protect the people getting fucked. They're there to protect the adults AROUND the people getting fucked. There to protect adults from living in a world in which teens see, and speak, uncomfortable truths.
And yes, I think the sexual descriptions were necessary to give us that kind of glimpse into Jade's head, to prove that point.
Naomi
2011-10-04 13:54:44
Bonfiglio's way with dialogue is comparable to Tarantino's. His brilliant way of forgoing political correctness in this story allowed the characters to be portrayed in a believable way, yet with an air of "film noir."