Notice

by Heather Lewis

  So I walked. And it settled me down some, though it pumped me up, too. Woke me up. I thought I was okay by the time I got to her office. Though, really, I suppose I must’ve been kind of a mess. If I go by the look on Beth’s face, anyway. A look you’d call wary or guarded, or maybe simply confused.

  I did my normal walkabout. She just waited it out. Neither of us talked and the silence finally sat me down.

  “What happened?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  I started badly. I said, “I’m sick, is all. My stomach’s upset and so I took the day off and fell asleep.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Why are you making up stories?”

  It was true I’d kind of forgotten who I was talking to. But at the same time I knew I had a reason for evading her. I couldn’t place it, though. I couldn’t remember back to the last time I saw her or what had gone on between us.

  I stalled by not answering. Used simple silence. She leaned forward in her chair, rested her arms on her knees and clasped her hands. And when she spoke, she made her voice very soft. She said, “Please tell me what’s going on.”

  When she talked to me like that, with that little catch in her voice, I could never defend myself. Before I knew it I was telling her. I was saying, “I got mixed up in something over the weekend and it stretched out. I couldn’t get home and I couldn’t get to work. And I guess I couldn’t get here either.”

  “What, what did you get mixed up with?”

  By now I’d recovered myself enough to see where I was headed. There was probation to worry about. And how much could I tell her without stretching her thin. I said, “Is what I say really between us?”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “No. Maybe it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “I think you better tell me.”

  “Who do you tell then?”

  “No one. I don’t tell anyone.”

  I considered this a moment. I don’t know if I believed her. What made me go on was realizing nothing had happened. I hadn’t sold any sex and while I’d done drugs, that wasn’t prohibited; well, that’s not what was spelled out in my release agreement. It wasn’t a condition. Drugs hadn’t even come up. It had been all about hooking. And so what could they get me on now? Intent to commit prostitution? I didn’t think so.

  So I made up my mind just to go ahead and talk, but I still had trouble starting. I’d left out too many things along the way. Things I wished I’d said because it’d make this easier to explain and just plain shorter. I wanted to start from the beginning but as I searched back for that, my brain grogged out while my body sharpened.

  The way I was sitting hurt all of a sudden so I uncrossed my legs. Before I knew it I was rubbing my thighs, trying to get the pins out. I stayed in the chair, though. I considered this an accomplishment. And eventually I stopped my hands, stopped them moving, but I couldn’t let go of my legs. It seemed if I did I wouldn’t know where I was.

  Beth didn’t say anything about any of this. When I looked at her, she’d sunk back in her chair and was watching my hands. We both seemed to have lost any sense of time. I’m not sure she knew where to go anymore than I did.

  I only knew not to make a run for the door, though I couldn’t say why. And my hands on my legs, instead of stopping the tingling they absorbed more and more of it until it travelled up my arms. I rolled up my sleeves, made small tight folds that stopped just above my elbows, thought this could tourniquet me off, keep my chest clear anyway.

  “Why don’t you tell me,” she said finally, and it was a suggestion, not a question, so it seemed a way in.

  I told her the events without filling in what went on behind them. I didn’t say I was looking for money, didn’t say much at all about Burt or Jeremy. I kept it to drugs, and a party that dragged out, and not having a ride home.

  Beth said, “You know, you need to hang on to that job.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said.

  She said, “No, really. It matters.”

  I knew she was talking legalities but I also knew the probation was pretty short. That I’d be free of it in a matter of months. I didn’t care about keeping the job, not beyond the absolute minimum to be practical. But I saw what had happened by having left so much out, and so how could I blame her for choosing the wrong tack in all this?

  Unless I gave her more to go on I knew she couldn’t help much. I crossed my arms and hugged my chest because despite all my efforts the quivering had found its way there.

  “Are you cold?” she asked.

  “No, not exactly.”

  She leaned forward again, clasped her hands again. What she said was, “I think we need to talk about Ingrid.”

  This I didn’t expect. I found myself clutching my chest even tighter until I let go altogether and instead tried to breathe. Breathing worked better.

  She still sat that same way. She looked at her own hands now, not mine, and I thought I saw something sad, but shifty, going on in her eyes.

  “Why Ingrid?” I asked.

  “Because she’s where we keep stopping.”

  Beth still watched her hands. What she said was the truth, but not all of it. What she wasn’t saying – that’s what made me tell her, and so my reasons weren’t much better than hers. I wanted to get her going, wanted to upset her so I started hard. “So, you want to know how we fucked, or maybe how much, or how about where?”

  She acted as if I hadn’t put it this way. She said, “I want to know what you need to tell me.”

  I said, “Well, I want to know what you need me to say. Or how about why?”

  I stopped myself here. I could see what I was doing. The corner I’d backed into felt almost homey.

  I needed to decide why I was stalling so badly on this. I mean, sure, I could put it on her and why she wanted to know. And her reasons not being stellar made this all the more tempting. But it still fit much too neatly with my need not to talk about this.

  Beth and I would get where we were headed whether I told her about Ingrid or not. This I already knew but chose not to acknowledge. If anything, I could’ve used Beth’s intentions as incentive. Let them egg me on as a kind of reward. The kick was I could only actually see it that way if I thought it wouldn’t happen. And lately, who knew?

  And Ingrid? To see what happened with her made me feel dumb and run over. Like all the time I’d spent so worried about her husband was wasted because it left me wide open to her. And then she’d hit me so hard I barely noticed.

  You understand, right? How I could land on my back and just lie there? From that position, it’s hard to make sense of things. Hard not to get caught up in someone telling you the things you’ve wanted to hear your whole life, and so does it matter if what they’re saying is true? In that moment, I mean? Does it matter?

  I’m not saying Ingrid lied. I know she believed the things she said if only because she had to. How in hell else could she possibly see me as a way out? That piece had always been pretty hard to swallow, but it gave her a push. And me? Not much else was asked but to be who she needed me to be, which was exactly the thing I’d been born to.

  This wasn’t the stuff I planned to tell Beth. I’d keep that to what she wanted to hear because like I said I’d been born and bred that way and it’s a hard thing to break out of. Besides, breaking me out wasn’t something either of us was up to, or planned on – maybe not ever and surely not right now.

  Beth had let my last question hang, the one about why she wanted to know. She looked hurt about it and I couldn’t decide whether to lay off or go in for the kill. “Never mind,” I said, trying to pick a place in between. “Never mind. I think I know why.”

  After I’d said it I realized it could mean anything. And the way I’d said it, which was sort of gently, anyone’d think…

  “What is it you think I should tell you?” I said this gently too because now that I’d started this way, and almost by accident, a pull had begun and I couldn’t resist it. It was all I could do to keep from
actually comforting her. By this I mean getting up and putting my arms around her.

  “Why don’t you just start where it starts,” she said, and she sounded so weary.

  It wasn’t until then I realized I hadn’t said any of it. That I’d stayed with stories about harmless commuters and any time I got near Ingrid and her husband I circled back. Not quite – I mean I had told her about my first time with him. I was pretty sure of that. Well, not entirely, but pretty close to certain.

  “Did I tell you about going back to the house?”

  She shook her head rather than speaking and looked out the window. It was too dark out there to see anything and soon she got up and pulled the shade. When she sat down again, she looked at me. I realized what I should’ve done was go to her at the window. This would’ve been a way out except I’d missed it, been too slow on the uptake.

  “I never went home with any of them. It never entered my skull and none of them asked. They were all hiding from home.”

  I carried on this way for a bit, making the important discovery that I could stall and talk at the same time. I could probably keep it going for hours and never get to the door of Ingrid’s house.

  I don’t know why I didn’t do it that way, but instead I found myself getting to the point and kind of quickly. Began telling her about sitting on their couch with Ingrid’s head in my lap and him behind her.

  Something about telling this was catching me up. So much so I didn’t look too close at what was happening to Beth. Instead I watched the small crack of blackness at the bottom of the window shade – the place where it almost hit the sill but didn’t.

  I noticed, by chance really, that she’d focused over my shoulder. And though it wasn’t something I’d ever done before, I stood up and went to the other window, the one behind me. I pulled that shade down.

  I guess I knew it was an invitation. She must’ve known too but she didn’t take it, and so I stood there until I felt foolish for standing. Now that I felt weak like this, she got up and came over. She stood near me, first without touching and then she took my hand.

  It could’ve been she’d heard enough. Or maybe that I’d become lost and foggy. She just stood there holding my hand and if I wanted a way out it was right there before me. I’d come to understand that when we went that route, I’d have to start it. That she’d need it that way. That it was the one thing she couldn’t quite do.

  But I couldn’t do it either. Not right now. Not with the last few days catching up to me. And not stuck right smack in the midst of that first time with Ingrid. That was where Beth had left me. I suppose this was why I shook loose from her and went to the door, and maybe, too, it’s why she didn’t stop me.

  I just walked out and kept walking. I walked until I got to the train station. My idea had been to pick up my car. And I did. I picked up some cash on the way, did a couple of guys on their way home from the bar. Just blow jobs. I guess this time I’d been looking to. I guess I’d been looking to since Friday.

  Eighteen

  I went back to work the next day. My day job. Though I guess I went back to the other thing, too, and for a while it kept being harmless. I couldn’t pick up the guys right off the train and still get to Beth’s on time, so what I started doing was heading over to the station afterwards. Getting the guys coming out of the bar. And while their being drunk made some of them easier and more generous, it made others nastier. Impatient and impotent – this combination I seemed to encounter more and more often until I got nasty back and then got off on it.

  I was working this fine. It made more sense all around. And it gave me something to look to while I sat with Beth and tried to answer her questions. It distracted me and I used the distraction to keep her at bay. I even convinced myself she didn’t notice the change. Or that if she did, like me, she saw it was for the better.

  The money helped, too. Though it started that same calculation in my head. The “why am I keeping this stupid job?” I suppose I was keeping it for Beth – because to quit would give her something to latch on to and worry about, give her a distraction. I suppose I was keeping it because of what happened the last time I quit.

  I still looked for him, for Ingrid’s husband. I knew he probably wouldn’t turn up. And I knew I wasn’t looking for him in the right way. I wasn’t anxious and fearful of an encounter but instead longed for one. I couldn’t conveniently file this; couldn’t make it about getting to Ingrid. It was about that, but not only. What I’d had with her had been so vested in him – so in relation – that when she got free of him, even if only in theory, there wasn’t much left between us.

  I figured they’d found someone else by now. Someone closer to home or farther away. Maybe they went to her, or to a hotel. Maybe she was younger and easier, or older and more of a pro. I still had a lot to learn about indifference.

  Despite knowing all this I kept looking for him but the one I kept finding was Burt. By comparison, he seemed a lightweight. Someone I could easily handle and therefore, I guess, boring. The hold here was drugs – coke, the promise of junk, an occasional Quaalude. I couldn’t conceive he was playing me and so I didn’t worry much along those lines. He was something to do at the end of a night. Someone I didn’t have to do and so, if my body could rest, he could fuck my mind all he wanted.

  That’s what Beth seemed to be doing, too. Every afternoon like the last one, sitting in her office while she tinkered and I kept remote. We went on this way some weeks before she said, “What is it with you?”

  It was her voice, the bite in it that made me sit up a little. Cross my legs one way, then put them back the way they’d been all along. I looked at my watch, trying not to make it obvious. The crowd I usually caught would be starting out of the bar about now.

  “You have someplace you’d rather be?” she asked.

  This seemed an odd way to put it, plainer than she’d been lately. It made it easier. “I’ve got a night job,” I said as if she might not know what I meant. As if she was dumb.

  She didn’t say anything right away. Looked unsurprised but maybe deflated. This led me to fill space.

  “It’s not like before,” I said. “It’s nothing dicey.”

  “Do you want to get arrested? Is that it?”

  “I never would’ve if he hadn’t set me up. They don’t care what goes on there.”

  We didn’t take it much farther than this. She let me leave a little bit later but I didn’t go to the station. I told myself it was too late to catch enough action.

  Instead I drove around. I drove until I found myself cruising back and forth past Ingrid’s driveway. I even drove a little way up toward the house. I was looking for lights, but I knew I wouldn’t go in. I wasn’t sure whose house it was now. I couldn’t tell just by looking because nothing had changed. This was the idea I went home with.

  Two nights later I was back hitting the parking lot. I’d just done a guy, just gotten out of his car, when I saw her car – Beth’s – stopped at a light that had already turned green. She was looking my way, but looking at me? I couldn’t tell. I could practically convince myself it wasn’t her. That I couldn’t be sure.

  The next afternoon I was sure. She didn’t say anything about it but she looked at me differently. Like what she hadn’t believed before, not entirely, was suddenly true and made her mad. That’s what I thought at first, until she said, “Let’s go for a drive.”

  We’d never done this before and so I got into her car wondering what she expected of me. Was I supposed to put my head in her lap? Was that what she wanted? Or was this simply her way of keeping me out of other people’s cars?

  She drove us around for a while and then up a long driveway, one that started out paved and then turned to dirt. When we got a certain way up, there was a bend. From there if we went any further someone would see us so she turned off on to the grass. She parked there and I knew she wanted something but she wasn’t saying what it was. She took my hands in hers and then began talking about how I worried her
and what was I doing, why was I doing it?

  I couldn’t answer her. Not just because I didn’t know how to, but because of how she was. Because of the force of her hands on mine and the look in her eyes and the sound of her voice, which was desperate. I wanted out of her grasp, out of her car, but that’d leave me standing in the middle of somebody’s field and then too I didn’t think it would solve anything.

  I knew Beth wouldn’t just leave. I tried to remember if there’d ever been a time I’d wanted to get away from her. If it’d happened before, this feeling I mean, exactly this one.

  What I did, because nothing else seemed possible, I just sat there. I hoped that if I could just manage to stay in the car we’d keep things contained.

  I waited it out, saying nothing. This bothered her, got her more rattled. And we might’ve sat there for ever except this guy came across the field. He looked every part the hillbilly protecting his land except he had no gun in his arms. It took me a moment to be sure of this.

  He told us to get off his land. Beth went beyond flustered trying to explain who she was and what we were doing except it seemed she didn’t know either and he absolutely didn’t want to hear it. He said he knew exactly what she was and what we were doing and that he didn’t want us doing it on his land.

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it because what he was driving at was so obvious and it was a relief to have it spoken. And then too I was angry at her and felt some power in watching her scramble, in hearing this total stranger say out loud what she and I had been playing with for months.

  What could she do then besides start the car? She didn’t say anything driving back and I sure didn’t and so this became a thing we never mentioned – something that had happened between us but that we’d never speak of. And not the first of its kind.

  Nineteen