Age of Consent

by Amanda Brainerd

  Bruce lurched.

  Clay ducked.

  Bruce tried to dunk him, but Clay grabbed his wrist. Bruce swung with his free arm, but Clay spat a spout of water in his face.

  “You’re getting me wet!” India complained.

  “It would take a lot more than that,” said Bruce.

  India looked unperturbed, rolling a joint.

  “But you’re not my type,” Bruce continued. “I like mine with meat on their bones.” He glanced at Justine.

  How she loathed him, she thought, feeling the straps of the lounge chair cutting into her thighs.

  Bruce hoisted himself out of the water. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and stood up. “Where’s the beer?”

  “In the kitchen,” Clay said, “but don’t drip all over the floor.”

  When Bruce had gone, Eve said, “We have to get rid of that jerk.”

  “What is he even doing here?” Justine spoke for the first time.

  India waved a hand in disgust, indicating that the cretin did not merit words.

  Clay climbed out of the pool and perched on the side with his legs dangling in the water.

  “Why on earth do you put up with that fuckhead?” Eve persisted, over her sunglasses.

  Clay stared into the chlorine. “It’s not his fault he has massive parental damage.”

  “Oh bullshit, we all have that,” Eve retorted.

  They all laughed, except for India, who was taking a deep toke from her joint. She stood up and handed it to Clay. He took some and passed it back.

  “Anybody home?” a man’s voice called from the driveway.

  Clay held his finger to his lips. Justine froze. India stubbed out the joint.

  “Helloooo? Clayton?” A man with neat gray hair and Italian loafers slid through an opening in the hedge. “I knew I heard voices,” he said.

  India and Eve got to their feet.

  “Hi, Mr. Bradley,” Eve said, kissing him on both cheeks. Justine stood up, squinting at Clay’s father, trying to recognize him from the taffeta-clad man she had seen at the Pyramid.

  “What are you doing here?” Clay growled, getting up from the edge of the pool.

  “Hello, India,” Mr. Bradley ignored him. He held his hand out to Justine. “Philip Bradley.”

  “Justine Rubin,” she said. His skin was smooth as he gripped her hand. He had Clay’s green eyes, but his nose was more prominent, his lips thinner.

  “I said, what are you doing here?” Clay repeated, tucking the end of a towel around his waist.

  “I just have to pick a few things up. Your mother said she’d be gone.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here. I read the agreement.”

  “Funny thing to call it.” Philip laughed. He began to walk toward the house.

  Clay’s voice rose. “You can’t sneak in and grab shit.” He followed his father.

  The sliding door opened. “Heineken or Bud?” Bruce asked, holding two beers. “Oh, hi.”

  “I’m Philip, Clayton’s father. Owner of those trunks. Heineken, please.”

  Bruce handed Philip a beer. Mr. Bradley opened it and took a sip. He wiped his mouth.

  “Go and get whatever you came for and leave,” Clay said, his jaw tense.

  But Philip was still admiring Bruce. Justine and Eve exchanged a worried glance.

  “Cheers,” Bruce said to Mr. Bradley. He took a big swig, letting the foam run down his chin onto his chest.

  Philip stared, transfixed.

  “Get out!” Clay took a step toward his father, his fists clenched.

  “Relax,” Bruce replied, grinning at Philip. “Your old man’s gotta finish his beer.”

  “I told you to get out.” Clay’s face was flushed.

  Clay moved, but Bruce moved faster, blocking Clay’s blow. Clay staggered, and for a moment his arms pinwheeled, then the back of his skull hit the edge of the pool with a loud, hollow thunk.

  Time stood still as they watched blood pouring from Clay’s head into the pool, billowing into a purple plume.

  “Ambulance!” Justine cried, her voice sliding into a higher, panicked key. She ran into the house and grabbed the phone.

  “Nine-one-one. Where’s the emergency?”

  “Hang on,” she said, panting, as Eve came up behind her. Justine handed her the receiver.

  “Twenty-three Hedges Lane. Yes, of course.” Eve hung up.

  They stared at each other in terror.

  “Fuck, what do we do?” Eve said. “Fuck! I’ll get ice. You go help.”

  Justine had no idea what kind of help to give. She ran back to the pool.

  Philip was sobbing and cradling Clay’s pale head in his arms. His khaki shorts and shirt were covered in blood.

  “Is he okay?” Justine asked stupidly.

  Philip wailed. “Oh my God! There’s so much blood.”

  Eve appeared with a plastic bag of ice for Clay’s head. She touched his wrist.

  “His pulse is really fast.”

  India was hugging herself with her arms, her brown eyes huge, frightened.

  Bruce was sitting farther off, still holding his beer, face blank.

  They were all frozen in a film still, the only sounds Philip’s sobs and the sucking of the pool filter. After an eternity Justine heard sirens, the ambulance screeching to a stop in the driveway. Two brawny paramedics brought in a stretcher.

  As they took Clay away, the last thing Justine saw was the red of his blood on the fresh sheet, spreading like a halo.

  TEN

  The hospital smelled like cleaning fluid and antiseptic mouthwash. Justine stared at the red, yellow, and blue taped arrows on the floor and wondered where they led. Some to the morgue, probably, with those steel drawers full of cadavers. That severed head on Barbara’s wall. The staring eyes. Sweet Clay, so pale as the blood seeped from his body.

  Philip opened the door, looking authoritative. “He’s going to be okay.”

  Justine felt her shoulders unclench.

  Philip sat next to them. The blood on his clothes had dried to brown. “He needed a transfusion so I donated my blood. You can visit him now, but one at a time.”

  “You first,” Eve said, placing her hand on Justine’s arm.

  Justine stood up, trembling with exhaustion as she walked into Clay’s room. Barbara was leaning over him, kissing his bandaged head. He was hooked up to an IV, his pale naked shoulders resting against the pillow.

  Barbara gave Justine a teary nod and left.

  Justine sat beside the bed and grasped his hand. She leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were soft, and he closed his eyes like a child. When he opened them, they were wet. He wiped at the tears with his bandaged IV arm and blinked.

  “How’re you feeling?” she managed.

  “Tired,” he said, almost inaudibly. “You?”

  “Fine.” I only thought you were going to die.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “About what? It wasn’t your fault. It was Bruce!”

  It was always Bruce, she felt like saying.

  “Bruce didn’t ask Philip to barge into Mom’s house.”

  But that wasn’t the point. Every time Bruce showed up something terrible happened. Justine wanted to tell Clay that, but she didn’t want to argue, not when he seemed so defeated. She just squeezed his hand. He gazed at her, and she gazed back. Were they communing or just realizing how separate they were from each other? Justine turned away and looked out the window. An old man in a hospital gown was taking jerky steps down the path, accompanied by a nurse in an old-fashioned uniform, big white shoes, puffy cap.

  “Justine? I need you to be honest about something.”

  She turned back and nodded.

  “When did Barbara get here?”

  Clay’s face was
full of apprehension. For a moment, Justine didn’t know how he wanted her to respond.

  “She’s been here all night.”

  “Are you sure? She smelled like she’d taken a shower, and if she’d been here all night . . .”

  Justine moved closer, speaking softly. “She went home around six this morning to change. She had been in the same clothes all night. You know how much she loves you.” How much I love you.

  He shrugged and fiddled with the tube in the back of his hand.

  “I can’t live with Barbara anymore.”

  “It’s only another month or so,” Justine said. Even so, if she had had to live with Miles and Cressida this summer she’d have gone completely mental.

  She wished Clay would come and live with her.

  “Listen to me. I need to sleep, so please don’t take this the wrong way . . .” he continued. “Bruce has a room in his apartment. I was thinking of camping out there for the rest of the summer.”

  Justine stood up and walked to the window. The old man and his nurse were gone, the bench empty. A lump rose in her throat and she willed herself not to cry. But she couldn’t help it, she’d been up all night and didn’t have the strength to fight it.

  “Please don’t cry,” Clay begged. “You just said it’s only another month or so. You never have to come over there. I’ll come to your place, I promise.”

  She turned around. “Why don’t you care about what he did to me?”

  “I do.” He sank into the pillow, looking exhausted. “But living with him is better than watching my mother get stoned and paint decapitated men.”

  Justine wiped her face. She wished he could live with her, but she knew it was India’s apartment and not hers to offer. She thought about Barbara and the hookah and her glazed expression.

  “It’s just a few weeks. It’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  • • • • • • •

  Eve glanced over at the former Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, both staring at the wall of the waiting room in tense silence. How had those two ever gotten married? Philip didn’t have a hair out of place, he was plucked, primped, and buffed. Barbara, by contrast, was ragged and frayed. They’d met when they were hardly older than her and David.

  Philip stood up. “I’m going for coffee. Get either of you some?”

  “Please,” Barbara said. “The usual.”

  “Fine. Eve?”

  “Tea, please.”

  “How do you take it?”

  “Milk and sugar.”

  Philip walked away.

  Barbara grunted something unintelligible.

  “Working on anything special?” Eve asked brightly.

  “Oh, this and that. I’ve made a recent foray into sculpture.”

  “Cool! What medium?”

  “Stone. Behold.” Barbara held out her right hand, the dry skin mutilated by several deep cuts.

  “Wow, is that infected?” Eve asked, stubbing out her cigarette.

  “Nothing can be learned without pain.” Barbara placed her ungouged hand firmly over Eve’s. “I wanted to thank you.”

  Eve had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You’ve been such a dear friend to Clayton,” Barbara continued. “When I think back, you’ve always been there.” Barbara’s eyes filled with tears. “I really thought I might lose him.” Tears ran down her wrinkled cheeks.

  Eve shifted uncomfortably.

  “You’ll understand when you have children.” Barbara sniffed.

  “Not planning on it. I’ll be running a gallery. Having kids will get in the way.”

  “Ah, you want to emulate Margot?”

  “I’ll be nicer,” Eve said, then added, “but hopefully just as much of a force.”

  “She’s a force all right,” Barbara said.

  A sudden plan occurred to Eve.

  “Speaking of, well, art and so on, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’d ever consider selling your Salome?”

  Barbara pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. “It’s an awfully good painting,” she said.

  “It is. And I could get you a very good price for it,” Eve said, trying to keep her voice confident.

  Barbara sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve gotten so used to seeing it every morning. Anyway, sweetheart, Holly handles all my sales. I have to admit I take very little part in that.”

  Eve tried to imagine how the dead staring eyes would strike her on a daily basis. She had to see the Avedon of the man covered in bees, it couldn’t be worse than that.

  “It would be for my mom and dad,” Eve admitted.

  This seemed to charm her. Barbara smiled and patted Eve’s knee.

  “Barbara, please don’t be offended, but Holly is kind of fading into the woodwork.” Eve leaned closer. Barbara’s mascara was smeared. Eve looked around to see if anyone might be nearby, but they were alone. “You’re a great, great artist, and you deserve more exposure, especially now that you are doing sculpture. Think about it, you could switch galleries and open this spring with all this amazing new work!”

  Barbara raised an eyebrow. “Well, well,” she said after a moment, “you may be the next Margot, after all. Did she put you up to this?”

  “No!” Eve said. “This is my idea. Margot worships you, and if I brought you in she’d have an orgasm.”

  “A first!”

  They laughed.

  Philip was back. “There was a line,” he said, handing a coffee cup to his ex-wife. “Your tea,” he added, handing the other cup to Eve.

  “Thanks, Mr. Bradley. I’ll pop in on Clay,” she said and walked toward his room.

  “Come in!” Clay called.

  “Sorry to break up the lovefest,” Eve said. “It’s real fun out there with Punch and Judy.”

  Despite her parents’ strictness and social climbing, at least they didn’t want to tear each other limb from limb.

  “Why are you crying?” she asked Justine lightly. “Your boyfriend’s alive.”

  ELEVEN

  Eve picked up the phone on the gallery desk.

  Barbara answered on the tenth ring.

  “Mrs. Bradley? I mean, Barbara? It’s Eve Straus.” Eve could hear Leonard Cohen in the background, and people talking.

  “I was wondering, could I come talk to you about the Salome?”

  “If you don’t mind that I have company.”

  Eve stood up and slung her purse over her shoulder. Without a word to Raymond she swept out of the gallery.

  A few blocks later, she rang Barbara’s bell.

  When Eve stepped from the elevator, she found Barbara sitting in a rattan peacock chair, naked, except for a few slave bracelets and an enormous evil-eye pendant between her soft, pointed breasts.

  Of course Barbara was entertaining friends in the nude. Had everyone gone crazy in some bacchanalian way? Nothing made sense anymore.

  Several other people slouched on the sofa around the hookah, a bearded man, a bald guy in a black turtleneck, and a frizzy-haired woman in a long afghan, strumming a guitar.

  Barbara stood up. “Darling!” she said. “We’ve got great hashish. Care for a hit?”

  Eve shook her head, keeping her eyes resolutely on Barbara’s face.

  “Help yourself to a drink, then.”

  Eve headed into the kitchen and opened the fridge, trying to compose herself by concentrating on its contents. How was she going to make a deal with a naked person? A few kinds of seaweed, a jar of wheat germ, a tub of tofu, some exotic-looking vegetable in the cabbage family, Mountain Dew. She took one and opened it.

  Eve walked back into the living room, eyeing the Salome, which hung on the wall in a ray of sunlight. Exquisite as ever. She perched on the sofa next to the bearded man, whose shirt was open to his navel.

  He exhale
d a deep cloud of smoke from the hookah, and it smelled earthy with a bitter edge, like burning dung.

  “Vince,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Eve.”

  He offered her the hose.

  “No, thank you.”

  She looked at Barbara refilling wineglasses, her evil eye swinging over the table. The woman playing the guitar smiled at Eve, revealing a gold tooth.

  “You know Hatshepsut entertained in the nude,” Vince commented. “I’ve always believed that Barbara was an Egyptian princess in another life.”

  “Queen,” Barbara corrected him.

  “Can’t you feel how powerful she is?” Vince gestured with the hookah hose. “The human force flowing through her is so intense, that’s gotta be some royal karma.”

  Eve stood up. This was never going to work. Rummaging in her bag, she pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and walked closer to the painting. Daylight illuminated the silver of the plate, the blue-gray tinge of the severed head. Salome stood holding the platter in front of a red velvet curtain, which an invisible hand had drawn aside. Behind was a room submerged in shadow.

  Her ash had become perilously long.

  Eve didn’t have the faintest idea what Barbara’s paintings were worth. She ran through the prices of the Sforza show. Barbara’s were probably worth half, she guessed. The best of Massimo’s were selling for fifty thousand dollars. What if she could get that for the Salome? It was a shitload of money, but if Eve could pull it off, Barbara might switch to Margot’s gallery. The sale would set a record.

  “How much?” came Barbara’s voice, startling Eve, as her ash fell to the floor. Eve straightened and turned around.

  “I know you’re not here on a social visit,” Barbara said, “so let’s just cut to the chase.”

  * * *

  • • • • • • •

  India rang Massimo’s buzzer and waited. After ringing a second time she pushed the door. It swung open onto a steep flight of steps. A piano melody drifted through the hallway. As she climbed, the music grew louder. A Chopin ballade? The arpeggios descended and the piece ended in a few thunderous chords as India reached the landing. Had he played piano for her mother?