by Bryn Roar
Tuesday, October 12th, 2,004
A fine mist falling from the fast moving clouds overhead woke Bud early that morning. At some point in the night, Josie had crawled into the oversize bag with him. She lay curled up on his side with one toasty leg thrown over his thighs. He hated to wake her, but the mist was already turning into a nagging drizzle. Jack was creeping up the seaboard, softening up the coast for the big blow.
While Josie made frantic tracks for the bathroom downstairs, Bud and Tubby dragged the Zenith back into the clubhouse. All three boys were pissing off the side of the roof, facing the Pines, when Bill made an appearance.
Rusty gave him the business. “Was that you down there, Bilbo? I’m sorry for peeing on you, man! I thought you was Lester Noonan!”
“It was Lester,” Bill intoned darkly. “He’s waiting downstairs for you, Rusty.”
“Bill…that’s so not funny, man.”
Bud zipped up and laughed. “Morning, Pop. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, first of all, how’re you guys feeling?” Bill asked, staring into their eyes.
Bud smiled. “Real subtle. But as you can see, none of us are foaming at the mouth. Now what’s up?”
“Just wanted to pass on some good news.”
“Oh yeah? The hurricane going to slip by us?”
“Not that good, I’m afraid. Still, you might be happy to know that Mr. Frazier cancelled school for the rest of the week. He called me personally. It seems along with half of the island already making plans to evacuate today, the other half are using it as an excuse to stay home. There aren’t enough teachers to go around.”
“Hurricane flu,” Rusty said. “Tubby and I were only mentioning it yesterday. A lot of the kids called in sick. We practically had the lunchroom to ourselves.”
“I could sure use your help today, Bud. We've got a lot to do, getting the museum storm ready. After we get you checked out at Bidwell’s, let’s get on that right away.”
“You bet, Dad.”
“Are you evacuating with us tonight, Mr. Brown?”
“I don’t know yet, Ralph. I’m still waiting to see how bad it’s gonna get. And what’d I tell you about calling me Mr. Brown? It’s Bill or Bilbo. By the way, nice coat.”
“Thanks Mr.—um, I mean, thanks, Bilbo.”
“Some guys got to learn the hard way. Ain’t that right, Bill?” Rusty said, plopping down into a beach chair.
“Don’t get too comfortable, Short Round. Your dad called, too. He wants you home instamatically, if not sooner. They need your help around the house.”
“I knew it was too good to be true,” Rusty sighed. He got up and followed Bill to the rooftop door.
Bud put his arm around Ralph’s shoulders. “So,Creep. What’re your plans for the day?”
“I guess I’ll help my folks out, too,” Tubby replied, only half truthfully. “What time do you think we’ll need to be at the docks?”
“Ham’ll call us, don’t you worry. I don’t think it’ll be any later than six. Weather’s starting to turn.” Bud lifted his face up into the mist. “If I know Ham Huggins, he’ll want to get ahead of the nasty stuff as soon as possible.”
Josie bounded out of the rooftop door, fresh from a shower. Bill had told her the news on her way up from the apartment, reminding her to be on time for her doctor’s appointment. “Peg Leg’s at lunch?” she said to Bud.
“You’ll have to hunt me down, Big Red. After I get back from that pain-in-the-ass doctor’s visit, I’ve got to help out around here.”
Josie watched Bud head for the stairs, waiting until the door shut behind him. “How long did you say it took for your physicals yesterday?” she asked Tubby.
“Less than an hour for the both of us.”
“We’ll give it until 8:30 then, just to be sure. Up for some breakfast, Ralphie, me darlin’?”
“Sure. Let me call home first. You think we’ll be done by ten?” He looked guiltily over at the rooftop exit. “At the doctor’s office, I mean.”
“You’ll be home way before then. I sure don’t want to be alone with that man any longer than I have to. As soon as you photograph the folder’s contents, jet on over to the payphone in front of the Town Hall. I’ll give you ten minutes before I get up to leave. Your phone call will make my escape easier. I can’t imagine you’ll need more time than that.” She gave him two quarters and a slip of paper with the doc’s office number written on it. “Don’t hang up until he answers, ‘kay?”
“What if he recognizes my voice?”
“You don’t have to say a word, tiger. Just wait till he answers and drop the receiver. By the time he gets pissed off and hangs up I’ll be skipping out the front door.”
As soon as Bud and his father drove down the street, Tubby and Josie strolled over to Peg Leg’s. Having cheated on his diet the night before, Tubby kept his order to a bowl of cereal. That rarest of species, a healthy white girl who didn’t give a shit about calories, Josie ordered French toast and sausage links. As she stirred the syrup with a Jimmy Dean, she talked about the stories she’d read the night before. “I especially liked the one called The Happy Place. So dark and erotic! I never knew you were the sensual type, Ralphie! Damn fine prose, my friend.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that to be nice?”
“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head. There was so much more to Ralph Tolson than met the eye. Still waters really did run deep for this boy. “I can’t wait for you to read my stuff now! I brought it along in my gym-bag.”
“Joe, how come you don’t want me to help you box up a few more of your things? At least your Stephen King books! Is it because of what I did in your…” Tubby couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
Josie shook her head. “No, love. I told you, I’m all over that, and I wasn’t kidding. I just don’t care to go home until Joel comes back. As for that incident in me john…I’ve been reading this book on teenage sexuality, and it explained a lot of stuff I was ignorant about.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Well, for instance, how often the average teenage boy masturbates.”
Tubby’s eyes and mouth expanded like three separate balloons. He looked around the restaurant to see if anybody had overheard. Josie said ‘masturbate’ with the same tone and inflection, as one might say ‘Pass the peas.’
“For goodness sake, Ralph. Are you blushing?”
“I-I guess. It’s embarrassing, you know.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be. Every guy does it—and I do mean every guy. Although, I don’t recommend you do it in me bathroom again.” Josie saw that she had shamed him, and she patted his hand reassuringly. “It’s all right, Ralphie. You know, in a way, the whole thing was sorta flattering.”
Tubby looked up to see if she was still teasing him. “How can that be? I mean, I was…I was spying on you!”
“Yeah, you’re right. That wasn’t cool. Friends don’t spy on friends. Especially in their altogether! But the question remains: Why were you spying on me?”
Tubby looked down at his half-eaten bowl of Rice Chex, and stirred the soggy cereal around. The skim milk looked as blue as he felt. “B-because you’re so beautiful, and it was like I had to do it or…explode!” He looked back up at Josie, his brown eyes wet and shining. “But I’d never do that again! Cross my heart and hope to die!”
Josie smiled, letting him know it was All Good. Even if it wasn’t. “I know that, babe. And I am flattered that you think I’m beautiful—”
“Josie, it’s not a matter of opinion. You are in fact beautiful. You’re not going to tell Bud, are you?”
“Tell him what? That I am in fact beautiful?”
She said it in jest, but Tubby could read the hurt in her eyes. The weariness. Despite her offhand manner, he could tell Josie wasn’t in fact “Flattered.” It suddenly occurred to him that Josie’s physical beauty was to her a burden. It seemed inconceivable to him that she should feel this way. He envied her and Bud the
ir good looks. Their bodies, so ripe with perfection. It was to Tubby’s credit that he understood this was somehow at the heart of Josie’s problem. Her physical perfection seemed only to define her as an object of desire. A male fantasy. No more real than the slick images in Playboy or Penthouse. A repository of lust. Maybe over time she’d get used to it, all the sidelong looks, but really, was that a good thing? Tubby looked into Josie’s eyes, brimming now with tears, and he realized his true sin. How he had diminished this lovely human being—not in his eyes, of course…but in her own. He watched a tear track down her face and splash on the tablecloth, the wet spot growing and growing. He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Josie.”
And although it wasn’t his first apology to her, Josie saw that for the first time Tubby truly understood why he was sorry. She managed a wan smile in return.
She wiped her face dry and signed the check Mr. Pete had left on the table. “And to answer your question, no. I won’t tell Bud. That will always be our little secret.”
Tubby’s face revealed relief. Not because he was afraid of what Bud would do to him—by now he knew Bud wasn’t that kind of guy. Ralph had been scared of losing his friends. Banished to that lonely life of sitcoms and snacks.
She looked out the window as the Jeep drove by. “They’re back. Time to initiate Operation Doctor Dildo.”
“Doctor Dildo?” Tubby giggled.
“Would you prefer Doctor Dickhead?”
They waited a few more minutes before leaving Peg Leg’s. The Jeep was in its customary slot in front of the museum. The Browns’ nowhere in sight. “Come on,” Josie said. “Let’s get this over with.”
They scurried down the street in case Bill or Bud should step outside and see them. Although, for the life of her, she couldn’t see why they were going to all the trouble. Bilbo already assumed her appointment was shortly after Bud’s. Maybe it was because she knew they wouldn’t approve of what she had in mind.
Yeah. That’s putting it mildly! Those two would come storming in like the Howling Commandoes!
At least for the time being the rain had stopped. They made a left at the end of Main, onto Town Hall Lane. Josie glanced back up the street—still in the clear.
Walking up the stairs, Josie began to second-guess this harebrained scheme of hers. After her last visit in August—shortly after Bud’s return from the hospital—she’d sworn she’d never set foot in Bidwell’s office again. It had been her annual check up; a routine she’d gotten used to a long time ago. This visit, though, turned out to be anything but routine. Like most girls who blossom overnight, Josie wasn’t prepared for the unblinking glare of the male libido. She was no longer a little girl with pigtails and a boyish physique, and boy, did Bidwell take notice! He must have complimented her on her maturing body six times before Josie saw Thatlook in his eye. A look she had since become well acquainted with in members of the opposite sex. She even had a name for it: Thatlook. As if it was one word. A word that embodied the arrogant essence of an appraising stare. Thatlook…
Still, up till then, a rude stare is all it had ever amounted to. Yet unlike most boys and men who are too scared to do anything more than openly ogle her, Bidwell had decided he wanted more than an eyeful.
He sent his nurse out on some errand to the mainland, and after she was gone, he asked Josie to disrobe. That wasn’t unusual—after all, she was there for a physical. But the fact that he’d had no patient’s gown for her to put on? Yeah, that had been weird. It was just good old Dr. Bidwell, though. A man who’d seen her naked dozens of times before. Nothing to it, really. She sat on the padded table in her undergarments, hoping he wouldn’t insist on their removal as well. He checked her heart, blood pressure, all that stuff, but Josie noticed how his eyes kept returning to her bosom, bulging in the top half of her too-tight bra. He told her that since her breasts were getting so large (and Josie, have I told you how great you look?), it was high time he showed her how to perform a breast exam on herself. She remembered how the goosebumps had broken across her skin, the involuntary hardening of her nipples as he fondled her breasts…
Despite all that she had stayed put—too embarrassed to leave—even when he performed the gynecological exam without her consent. By that time, she was too scared to leave. Too unaware to get the hell out. He’d performed, what she thought at the time was, some cheap circus trick on her. To help put her at ease, he claimed. Josie hadn’t believed in hypnosis, so she’d played along. She didn’t know what happened after that.
The next thing she remembered, Bidwell was helping her get dressed. And she was sore down there…
Josie was certain he hadn’t raped her. A girl just knows. But he’d done more than examine her. That was for certain. Along with her tender privates, her mouth felt…well, used. Her stomach and breasts had been sticky.
As if…
After it was all over with; after he ‘d stripped off his glistening gloves and tossed them into the can like soiled condoms; after he’d apologized and promised her money and the finer things in life for her assurances of silence, she’d told him to go fuck himself. She told him the only promise he would get from her was an assurance that he was no longer the O’Hara family physician! And yet, here she was again. Asking for trouble.
She took a deep breath and grabbed a hold of Tubby’s hand for strength. His palms were as sweaty as hers. She wondered what Tubby would say if he knew how Bidwell had violated her that day. It had never occurred to Josie to tell anyone else, not even Rusty, about the molestation. If her daddy had been alive, she would have told him in a New York minute. But she was different now that he was gone. Tougher. More self-reliant. Good qualities, to be sure. Then again, qualities she’d had to develop overnight out of necessity.
“It’s not too late, Joe,” Tubby appealed to her. “Let’s go back, okay?” He may not have been aware of how Bidwell had all but raped Josie, but he thought the man might be capable of such an atrocity.
There was something about his eyes…
Josie bit her lip. “No. We need to do this. I’ll signal you when I’ve gone back by knocking my chair against the wall. You should be able to hear that from out here. Give it, say, sixty seconds before coming in.”
“If you say so,” Tubby sighed listlessly.
“And don’t stay in his office more than nine minutes! After ten minutes I’m getting up to leave, whether you’ve placed that call or not.”
“What if he has other patients scheduled today? They’ll see me go in there!”
“Without his nurse to assist him? No. I don’t think so. That’s why he only scheduled Bud and me this morning. I already called and said my mom and I were coming in at nine. So I know he’s expecting me.”
“He might tell you to come back when you have an adult with you,” Tubby said, stalling for time. It was obvious he didn’t want her going in there. His concern made her want to bawl like a baby.
She kissed Tubby on the cheek, close to the corner of his mouth. “He won’t,” she said sadly. She gave him her father’s old Nikon that she’d brought along in her gym bag. It made more sense, she’d decided, to take photos of the folder’s contents, and what other information Tubby could find, rather than stealing them and alerting Bidwell to their skullduggery. Before Tubby could think of another objection, she was gone.
When Josie entered the reception area Dr. Bidwell was talking angrily into his nurse’s phone (something about the government screwing him to the wall). He looked up, saw Josie, and waved her curtly to the back door. Josie nodded and threw her coat on one of the waiting room chairs. She then pushed it hard against the wall; the other side of which, Tubby stood listening.
Bidwell looked up absently at the noise.