The Fifteenth Minute

by Sarina Bowen

But he just shakes his head. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” he says, and my heart crumbles a little more. Because we both know that’s just an excuse. If he trusted me as much as I trust him, he’d tell me the problem.

  DJ stands up, and I know he’s about to leave. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “There’s just no other way.” He reaches for the door.

  “Wait,” I say instinctively. There’s something final about the way he’s turned away from me. Exit, stage left. “I still need to read Shakespeare,” I blurt out. “You’re kind of leaving me in the lurch, here.” It’s the weakest excuse in the world, but I am not ready for him to just walk out of my life.

  He stops, glancing back at me. “Well.” He clears his throat. “Can we do it over the phone?”

  Do it over the phone. My stupid brain turns that into something dirty. Phone Shakespeare. Gah. How ridiculous. And how completely unsatisfying. “I guess,” I say, still disappointed.

  “This weekend, maybe,” he says.

  “Okay,” I whisper. I know DJ has a problem, and that everything isn’t about me. But he won’t tell me what it is, and that hurts. And I don’t have to be happy about it, either.

  “Goodbye,” he says, his voice rough.

  “Later,” I answer, just to be difficult.

  He smiles, an unexpected parting gift. And then he’s gone.

  16

  Full of Scorpions

  DJ

  The night before my lawyer interview, I can’t sleep.

  I find myself awake at four-thirty in the morning, thumbing through my copy of Macbeth. Most people wouldn’t consider it a comfort read. But I hear Lianne’s voice while I read. And I like imagining her copy is beside her bed somewhere in Beaumont House where she’s sleeping peacefully.

  Besides, Macbeth is a verifiable tragedy. And it takes me out of my head.

  I’m fascinated by the funny scene with the drunk porter, because it comes at such a weird moment in the play. The king has just been killed, but the porter doesn’t know that. So he’s drunk and full of bawdy jokes. But that’s how life really is. Sometimes you’re the fool who believes everything will be fine in the morning.

  Giving up on sleep, I keep reading. The hardest scene to read is the one where Macbeth is half out of his mind at the dinner party. He keeps seeing the ghost of Banquo. The guilt is making him crazy, and Lady M just pleads with him to keep it together. He can’t do it, though, no matter how much she begs. “Full of scorpions is my mind,” he says.

  Mine too, buddy. Only I’m going mad because people think I’m guilty.

  Eventually I fall asleep with the paperback on my chest. When I wake up a few hours later, I’m still clutching my place in Act Four.

  I’ve skipped breakfast, but that’s okay because I have never been less hungry. After a shower and a careful shave, I put on some khakis and a button-down shirt. There’s probably no reason to dress up for my own lawyer, but I can’t help but play the kiss-ass. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that telling the truth isn’t enough. The universe works on another set of rules, and I don’t own the manual. So all I can do is make sure my face is smooth and my shoes aren’t scuffed, and hope it somehow makes a difference.

  I’ve borrowed my brother’s car for this adventure. At ten o’clock I’m behind the wheel of Leo’s Jetta. At a few minutes to noon, I’m pulling up in front of a suburban law office in Westchester County. There is exactly one other car in the parking lot—a shiny BMW. I’m sure my father is making one of the lawyer’s car payments today. It can’t be cheap to have this man’s Saturday.

  God, I hope he’s worth whatever I’m costing my dad.

  There’s a sticky note on the glass door to the law firm’s office. “Come on back, Daniel. Second door on the left.” I pocket this note and go inside, removing my wool overcoat and tossing it onto a lobby chair on my way toward what turns out to be a rather fancy office. The big oak desk and oriental rug practically shout “SUCCESSFUL ATTORNEY.”

  “Afternoon,” a well-dressed man says, standing up to brush muffin crumbs off his tie. “I got us some sandwiches.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I say, leaning over the desk to shake his hand. He’s a little younger than I’d pictured. I have to wonder what his usual case load looks like. Does he specialize in rape accusations? Is that a thing?

  Everything about this case makes me feel dirty. If there’s an industry niche for getting young jocks out of trouble, I don’t really want to know. For the millionth time, I wish I could just wash my hands of the whole episode.

  Out, out damned spot, as Lady M would say.

  “You can just call me Jack, okay?” He passes me a paper plate with a club sandwich. “Now, Daniel,” he says, sipping his coffee. “Let’s get started. We have a lot of ground to cover. I’m going to ask you some questions. There’s a lot in your file, but I need to fine tune some things. Lots of little, picky details. And sometimes you’re going to say, ‘I don’t remember.’ And that’s fine. You’re going to find my level of detail annoying, but it’s my job to ask you every little thing. Because one of these details is going to matter, okay?”

  “Okay.” Sounds like a fun time.

  “You mentioned the last time we spoke that on the night in question, you and the girl were at a party. Can you tell me about this party?”

  I clear my throat. “We call it an Around the World party. There’s, uh, a different drink served in every dorm suite. And you go around and try them all.” And since we were all nineteen when this happened, I’m incriminating myself.

  “Uh huh,” he says, unfazed. “Did your room serve any drinks?”

  “No sir. The party was in the next entryway over from mine. We were just, uh, guests.”

  “You and the girl were both guests. Because you live in the same entryway?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Did you serve anyone an alcoholic beverage that night?”

  “No. That night I only drank other people’s liquor.” I’m a criminal and a mooch. Awesome. My lawyer actually chuckles, but I have more to add. “At that kind of party they only serve in these tiny cups. So you can taste everything without bankrupting the hosts.”

  “Got it. Do you think you could find some of those cups if I needed you to?”

  “You mean…at a store?”

  “Yes. If we had to figure out how many ounces you drank.”

  “Sure. I could find the cups, but I don’t know how many drinks I had. And I don’t know how alcoholic they were.” Probably not very alcoholic, actually. Because making drinks is expensive. And it’s not that easy for freshmen to buy liquor from a store.

  “I know we can’t be precise,” my lawyer admits. “But we could figure out the maximum you drank—the number of rooms in the entryway times the volume of the cup. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. It’s not polite to double dip, although I’m sure some people do it.”

  “But not you.”

  “No.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  “Not really. I had a little buzz, maybe. But those cups are small, and we did a lot of standing around talking.”

  “Was Annie drunk?”

  The sound of her name makes me feel cold inside. “No—she doesn’t drink.”

  “She said that?”

  “Maybe?” Did she? “I never saw her with a drink in her hand. Ever.”

  “Was anyone drunk that night?”

  “Yeah, sure. One guy from my entryway had a flask he kept using to refill his cup. But my little group didn’t get sloshed.”

  “All right. At what point did Annie ask to stay the night in your room?”

  “I don’t know what time it was. We were standing in the stairwell of the entryway that was hosting the party. There were a few people there. And she said her sister was there for the night because she was being recruited by the crew team.”

  “So this is a younger sister. Did you meet her?”

  I thought about that. “Yeah, but only for a se
cond. It was when we were all about to go next door for the party. The sister was running off with her rowing buddies, but I remember being introduced.”

  “Okay. How did Annie ask you if she could stay with you? Did she ask you by yourself, or did she ask you and your roommate at the same time?”

  Jesus Christ, I have no idea. “It was a long time ago. And at the time, it was not that interesting of a question.” Little did I know… “I… I just have no idea if my roommate heard the question. I think I answered it by myself, though.”

  “Okay. Do you remember what words she used when she asked?”

  “She said, ‘I told my sister she could have my bed tonight.’ Then she asked if she could use the camping mat we keep in our room for when visitors come. My roommate Jake had most of the visitors. But it’s my mat.”

  The lawyer is quiet for a second. “The way you put that sounds as if she meant to borrow it and take it back to her room.”

  “I know. That’s what I thought she’d do.”

  “Okay. When did it become clear that she intended to sleep in your room?”

  “Um, I’d already brushed my teeth when she knocked on our door. She was wearing a nightgown and she had a sleeping bag under her arm. She said that since she and her roommate had taken apart their bunkbeds, there wasn’t enough room on the floor for her to unroll it. She said, ‘I’m going to sleep here if you don’t mind.’”

  “What did you think about that?”

  “I felt like a dick for letting a girl sleep on the floor while I stayed in my bed. But I didn’t say anything, because she seemed happy with the arrangement.”

  We’ve been talking for maybe ten minutes. And now I have a splitting headache. I hate the way I sound when I explain myself. And I hate the way we sound like a courtroom drama.

  I hate everything about this discussion, and if I could rewind my life I would have avoided what came next that night.

  “What happened next, Daniel?”

  We were here to practice, so practice I did. I told him how Annie initiated everything. A girl climbs into my bed and starts kissing me. I kiss her back. She starts touching me. So I touch her, too.

  I guzzled the whole cup of coffee while I’m telling it, because it all sounds so fucking sordid. Sure, I never looked twice at you before. But let’s get it on.

  We had sex. Unremarkable sex. It wasn’t worth it. In hindsight it sure wasn’t worth spending a Saturday telling my very expensive lawyer the blow-by-blow of my sex life.

  Next come his questions.

  “Let me back up to the kissing,” my lawyer says. “When she kissed you, how did she position her body?”

  “Uh…” My head stabs me. “Like, half on my body.”

  “Did she say anything when she climbed in your bed?”

  “She said ‘hi.’”

  He makes me walk through everything again—when Annie kissed me. When I kissed her back. When I grabbed her ass. When she started grinding on me.

  The lawyer stops for clarification. “She pushed her pelvis up and down on your pelvis, as if for sexual stimulation?” he asks.

  Uh, yeah, dude. Grinding. “That’s correct.”

  My head is practically splitting apart when I tell him that I put my hands under her nightgown. She sheds her nightgown. I lose the flannel pants I’m wearing. She asks if I have a condom.

  “She vocalized this question?”

  “Yes she did.” This is one of the details that keeps me sane. Even if it’s deeply confusing to me why I’m here, I’m not confused about what happened that night.

  “And did you vocalize your answer?”

  “I’m not sure. I know I opened the bedside table, but she had to fish them out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was on my back, and I couldn’t see them.”

  “Okay—at what point did you flip over?”

  “I didn’t. I took the condom from her and I put it on.”

  “Did she help you put it on?”

  “No. I always do that myself.”

  “Why?”

  “So it goes on the right way.” Because I used to think it mattered. Before this year, I thought I could prevent disaster by being careful.

  “Then what happened?”

  I already told you. “We had sex.”

  “In what position?”

  Shoot me. “I was on my back. She was on top of me.”

  “The whole time?”

  “Sure.”

  “At any point did you move from that position?”

  “When I got up to throw the condom away.”

  For a long moment, the lawyer is perfectly silent. “She brings up the condoms. And you’re always on your back. What I wouldn’t give to cross-examine this girl.” He sighs. “Sorry. I got sidetracked. We can’t prove your innocence without the young woman’s help. We really need to figure out why she’s saying this wasn’t consensual…” He flips a folder open on his desk and starts sifting through the papers inside.

  Meanwhile, I’m trying to picture telling a room full of people—including my family—the details of how we did it cowgirl style. And isn’t that what a guilty man would say, anyway—that everything was her idea? Will anyone believe me?

  He looks up at me with a serious expression, then sets his pen down. “Was there any point during this encounter when the young woman hesitated? If she said ‘yes,’ then ‘maybe not,’ then ‘yes,’ I need to know that. If you discussed it at all, I need the details.”

  I just shake my head. “There wasn’t any discussion. She never stopped. She never even slowed down.”

  “Did you…” He clears his throat. “Hold her in a way that restricted her movements? Where were your hands? I’m still trying to figure out the basis of the dispute.”

  Me too, buddy. “Not at all. I mean…” I clear my throat, too. “I, uh, had my hands on her, um, breasts, I think.”

  He makes a note on his pad, and I stare into the bottom of my empty coffee cup, praying for the end of this inquisition.

  * * *

  “Let’s move on,” my lawyer says a few minutes later, after we’ve literally discussed the dismount. “I want to ask you about her state of mind afterward.”

  I should be relieved to change the subject, but the truth was I was more embarrassed about this than anything else.

  “We didn’t discuss it,” I say. “I mean…at bio lab the following Tuesday, we just worked on the assignment.”

  My lawyer nods. “Did she do anything weird? Anything at all?”

  That’s a tough question to answer. I didn’t really know Annie well enough to say whether she was acting weird. “I don’t think so. But I really didn’t want to talk about what happened. So I wasn’t the most attentive lab partner that first day.”

  “You were nervous?” he probes.

  That sounds guilty, too. “Nervous isn’t the right word. How about sheepish?”

  “All right. Tell me why you didn’t want to discuss what happened.”

  “Because it’s stupid to sleep with your lab partner, especially if you’re not really into her.” Into her. Ugh. I wish I’d chosen different words. I wish I’d chosen not to sleep with her at all.

  “So you and Annie didn’t talk about it. Who did you discuss it with?”

  “My roommate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he woke up at some point during, um…”

  “He heard you having sex.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he was in the bunk above you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘You and Annie? I didn’t know you were into her.’ And I said ‘I’m not, and it was probably a stupid thing to do.’”

  My lawyer clears his throat. “I’m going to need to speak to your roommate.”

  Good luck with that. “He’s in Tibet this year.”

  I swear the lawyer says “fuck” under his breath. “Okay. I’ll need his email address. They have em
ail there, right? And maybe Skype?”

  “Probably.” I haven’t spoken to my roommate all year, though. He’s not here, and I’m too embarrassed. Hey man, how’s Tibet? Remember that night I had sex in front of you?

  Talk about awkward.

  The questions last for hours. And then finally we’re done. Jack is packing up his papers, and I unfold my stiff body from my chair.

  “Let me run something by you,” he says, tucking yet another folder onto his stack. “You weren’t really planning to have sex that night.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “But you let it happen.”

  “Yes.” Didn’t we just spend three hours on this?

  “Did she force you?”

  “What? No!” That’s the most ridiculous idea ever. If he’s even half serious, I need a new lawyer. Because this one is cracked.

  “But you regret it,” he says.

  “Of course I do. How could I not?”

  His nod is serious. “You regretted it before she accused you, though.”

  “Yeah. I regretted it because it was awkward. And I wasn’t interested in her. What’s your point?” Maybe that sounded rude, but I was seriously running out of patience.

  My lawyer taps his fingers on the desktop. “I have a suspicion that this whole case boils down to regret, which is not the same as force. But I don’t know how to prove it if the college won’t let me interview her.”

  In other words, this whole session was for nothing. “But even if they do let you talk to her, I’m still the guy who’s accusing a girl of lying.” It’s hard to imagine a worse position to be in. I watch the news. No matter which side prevails, nobody ever wins. The guy comes across looking shady as hell, and the woman gets harassed all over social media. Disaster for everyone.

  “Unless she withdraws her complaint, or else Harkness dismisses it,” my lawyer says, rising from his chair. “We have to let the college know that they’ve dropped the ball all over the place. That they didn’t bother gathering any of the facts. That’s my only play here.”

  He comes around the desk, but I’m still rooted to his rug. Because there’s one thing that neither of us has said yet. “It’s probably not going to work, is it?”