by KT Morrison
“You’re fucking that guy now?” he spat.
“No, Jay, it’s—”
“You lying bitch—I was outside. I’ve been outside the ... what a piece of trash you are ...” he said, and he stalked toward the bed.
“Jay, please ...”
“Got your new boyfriend to come talk for you, tell me all that bullshit?”
She backed herself farther up the bed, wanting instead to race around him and get out of her room, but afraid he would grab her and her running would set off some predatorial instinct. “Look, Jay, I’d like you to—”
“You fuck around on your fiancé with me. Now you’re fucking around behind my back. Fucking the Best Man? Is he?”
“Is he what?”
“The best man?”
“Yeah, he’s the Best Man ...”
He sneered, “How fucking low are you?”
“Jay, please, don’t—”
He stepped closer, hunched over and menacing. She began to tremble. “What a piece of shit you are. Just a fucking whore. Low life slut. I can’t believe I loved you.”
It was the honest venom from him—mixed with a tightening fear—that brought her tears. His words were horrid. She never had anyone mad at her in her entire life. Her whole body trembled, her back spasmed, her legs jumped. Her eyes welled suddenly and completely and she began to bawl.
“Fucking crybaby,” he spat and lunged closer, big hands balled into fists. She put her hands up to protect herself and he grabbed her wrists and yanked her to the edge of the bed.
“Ow,” she cried and fell to her side, hiding her face from him.
“Look at me,” he hissed, and he sat her up by her neck.
Through warbled, tear-stained vision she saw the hate in his gray eyes and she felt an urge for her bladder to release. “Please, don’t hurt me,” she squeaked.
His eyes drifted low, and he saw her shirt.
“And I fucking loved you,” he murmured.
“How?” she cried. “We’ve only known ea—”
“I know,” he said. “How could I? Look at you ...” his eyes went up and down her like she was disgusting road kill, his lips snarled and nostrils flared. “Fucking lacrosse. You love that pretty-boy fuck?”
“No,” she cried weakly.
“You’ll just fuck anything,” he grunted and rose above her. She put her hands up again, but he reached around them and grabbed the shoulders of Cole’s shirt and he yanked it hard enough to lift her off the bed.
He tugged and wrenched and she resisted but in the end she lifted her arms and he pulled it right off her, turning it inside out. She was completely naked now, and she began to wail.
“Shut the fuck up,” he hissed.
She swallowed it, lay on her side, her hands covering her breasts and watched as he stood and tried to rip the T-shirt in two. He struggled and strained to the point it was comical, and if she wasn’t convinced he was going to harm her, she might laugh. He got it then, and the shirt came apart easily and he threw it on to Jessie’s bed.
“Please, Jay,” she whispered. “Please, don’t hurt me.” She cowered on the bed underneath him, her cheek pressed to the sheets.
His voice was calmer now, he said, “Hurt you? I don’t even want to touch you. You’re disgusting.”
“He’ll be back soon. You have to go.”
“Think I’m afraid of him? Maybe I’ll sit here with you and when he comes in, we’ll see what he does. I’ll twist his head right off his fucking body. You want that? Huh, you want that? Then you can be responsible for fucking up yet another man’s life, you cocksucking whore.”
“I’m sorry, Jay,” she whispered.
“Sorry,” he scoffed then sat on the bed, his back to her.
She thought to put a hand to him, lay it on his back to calm him down but pictured it then having the opposite effect, so she kept her arms folded up across her chest, laying on her side with her knees drawn up.
He looked over his shoulder and down at her and she saw his eyes gleamed wet. His expression was softer, his eyes less mean. He got closer to her, and she recoiled. He persisted, moving his face to hers and then kissing her cheek while she held her breath and shut her eyes tightly.
“How can you want to hurt me, Maggie?” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Can you ... can you please go?”
“Don’t you think we had something? We had fun ...”
“Yeah,” she sighed, her vision warbling with tears.
“We had something, Maggie. You meant something ...”
He turned away from her again, hands on the bed on either side of her raised legs, twisted at the waist, hanging his head and hiding his face from hers.
He sat like that for a long while and she was frozen.
He shook his head and cleared his throat.
“Please, Jay,” she whispered, “Please just go. You’re scaring me.”
He huffed and shook his head, he raised his eyes to hers and she scrunched hers closed. “What’s this?” he grunted.
When she opened her eyes, she saw him looking over her to the wall next to the bed. She darted a look behind, saw the drawing she’d done of Cole and had pinned there.
Jay reached across and she grabbed his arm and hugged it. “Wait, no please, no ...”
“You fucking drawing him now?”
She clutched his arm, but he reached with the other and snatched it off the pin, tearing a line across the top.
“Oh, please, please, Jay, seriously, don’t, okay?” Her voice was frantic, and she darted up onto her knees.
He put a hand on her collar, keeping her back while he examined the drawing, holding it in the other hand. When she reached to gently take it he pushed on her neck and she clutched her hands to her bare breasts again.
His mouth took a firm line, his plump lips flattening and then turning down as he looked at her sexy and sleazy drawing of the boy who she was sure right now she loved though didn’t want to admit it. All she wanted was to live another day so she could tell him.
“Please, Jay,” she said softly, and she pressed her palms together in the attitude of prayer and wagged them as she pleaded: “Jay, I’m begging you ... please, give me back my drawing ... Jay ...?”
“I fucking hate you,” he muttered. Then he tore the drawing once down the middle and she shrieked.
“Jay, no, please, don’t ...” She lunged to retrieve it but he moved away and he tore it again, taking the two halves and tearing them into four pieces now.
The tears streamed from her again as she sat and futilely watched Jay take that magic moment, that wonderful and beautiful treasure she had created with Cole today, and destroyed it forever. He tore it into increasingly smaller strips. She clutched her hands to her face and cried into them, sobbing and wailing.
Jay shoved her, and she rolled onto her back, drew her knees up, ankles crossing to cover her sex. He got over her, his legs straddling her hips, knees pressed down in the bedding on either side of her. He wrestled her hands away from her face and when she looked at him, he showered her with the confetti of the drawing.
She whispered, “Please, please, don’t hurt me, Jay ... please ...”
10
Crater
Sunday, October 22nd
While his plane arrived in Albany at 11 A.M., he had to wait until 1:30 before the Greyhound departed. It arrived in Farmingham at ten after three, dumping him in a Park-and-Ride lot behind the Mt. Victor’s Masonic Lodge, where he cut across the curb that separated the lot from a Fast Lube, turned left onto Main Street and at the sight of Altieri’s he felt at home.
He went straight to his dorm, looking to change then run over and surprise Maggie (even if she was with Cole, he didn’t mind, wanted to see him, too).
Sure, last night he’d had difficulty accepting the picture she’d sent him. Her chin turned up, a close-up of her mouth, Cole’s semen pooling in her phi
ltrum, blocking a nostril and streaming her pretty skin. He ate the steak. Not right away, it took some getting adjusted to the revelation of that lubricious image. Then he pushed it out of his mind, watched TV, lay in bed but couldn’t get to sleep. He tossed and turned a bit and a little after one, despite how disgusted he was by the picture, and how tender the head of his penis was, he masturbated under the covers while looking at it and then finally he got to sleep.
He’d focused on the moment before the picture was taken; how did it come to this, who suggested it? He wouldn't be surprised if it was something his fiancée would ask for. Though it was something a guy might try to coerce a girl to accept he didn’t think, given the breakfast at Denny’s and Cole’s demeanor, that he would ask that of their Maggie. It led him to think that his sweet but surprisingly dirty girlfriend requested it. That uncomfortable thought, while thrilling, came with the imagining of them together without him, laughing and enjoying each other’s company without the third member of the troika. It was jealousy, sexual arousal, isolation, and abandonment, all together for a pointed and magnificent pang that he hated to enjoy.
When he arrived at his dorm room, 312 Samuelson, he found his roommate Steve alone, studying at his desk. Max entered, and though he’d only been gone a day and a half it felt much longer. Steve half-turned, back hunched at his laptop, his eyes blinking behind his glasses, his face expressionless.
“Hey man,” Max said.
“You’re back early,” Steve said.
“Yeah, I booked an earlier flight. I like my parents and all, but you know…”
“I heard that,” he said in a low, careful and even tone.
Max threw his bag on the bed, knew he would unpack later—right now he just wanted to get comfortable clothes on and get his way to Keegan as quickly as he could. He rifled through his closet, pulled off his shirt and put on a sweater. A lot colder in Vermont than in San Diego. When he turned, headed to the dresser to retrieve pants, he found Steve still staring at him. He sat with his elbows on the arms of his swivel chair, a cursor blinking behind him, halfway through a term paper, and he regarded Max with that strange expressionless face, eyes still blinking behind glasses.
“What’s up?” he said, sensing there was something.
Steve slowly inhaled, eyes rolling to the ceiling a bit, he swiveled in the chair. Resolve gathered, he leaned forward again, put his elbows on his knees now and clasped his hands.
Max took out a pair of pants from his dresser, let them unfold and drape over an arm as he sat on the bed across from Steve. He waited.
Steve still said nothing, and it was obvious something needed to be broached. Max prompted him again: “What’s going on?”
Steve’s eyes came up to regard him and Max saw that they were troubled. He went to speak, paused, chewed briefly on the corner of his lip then said: “You were away, right?”
“Yeah, you know that …”
“No, I know that, I just mean … You were out of town.”
“Right …”
“Well, my brother hangs out with this guy at Keegan ...”
“Yeah, I know. I see him hanging out there.”
“Yeah, well he hangs out there, and …” He paused, scratched the back of his neck, winced at what he had to say, then continued. “Yeah, my brother was there, and he was on the second floor. You know, where Maggie is ...”
“I know.”
“Yeah, well he was there, hanging out on the couches there, you know where they are,” and he paused again, then said, “and you know your friend Cole ...”
“I know,” he said and now he knew where this was going.
“Well,” he said, “he was in there with Maggie.”
“They’re studying for her LSAT,” he said quietly.
“Okay,” he said. “But my brother said he was in there all day. Now, maybe he shouldn’t have done this, but he thought it was weird and I guess he likes you or whatever because he knows you’re my roommate, and well, he went closer, you know, to the door …”
“And …?”
“You know …”
He felt the heaviness now, knew what had happened in that room, had seen photographic evidence, and knew that his roommate and his brother had been talking about it. He said, “He heard something?”
“He did. He heard them …”
“What did he hear?”
Steve shrugged and gave him a pained expression, indicating it should be obvious and he needn’t say.
Max said, “He heard sounds?”
“He did. He heard them doing things in there.”
He debated just admitting it. Thought maybe it was time to just say Yeah, he probably heard them having sex. I know what they do and I’m okay with it. But maybe he wasn’t ready for the next step. The next step for him right now, his nerve building up on the hour-and-a-half Greyhound, was getting to Maggie and sitting with her and being truthful for once.
“Okay, I hear you. Thanks for telling me.”
“Is that okay?”
“That you told me? Yeah, you did the right thing. But you should know, it’s okay.”
“It’s okay?”
“No, I just mean that I’m glad you told me, and everything about it is going to be cool. You know what I mean?”
“No.”
“That I’m not upset. My feelings aren’t hurt. It’s not necessarily bad news.”
“It’s not?”
He shrugged, not wanting to be truthful with Steve, and not knowing how best to phrase this nor necessarily wanting to put the effort into it.
He stood up again, and squeezed Steve’s shoulder, said, “Thanks for telling me. I mean it. That must’ve been hard.”
“Yeah, it was.”
Max undid his pants and slipped on his jeans, discarded his loafers in exchange for sneakers. He threw on his peacoat while Steve watched him.
He said, “I’m going to see her right now. Would you believe me if I told you nothing’s changed? ... between her and I ...”
Steve shrugged, his face still expressionless but his eyes wider, trying to understand.
He said, “Thanks again. I’ll see you.”
This was way bigger than him, bigger than he could handle. How did he think he could control his Maggie like this? How did he think he had the power over her to manage her heart? He’d been so manipulative, shaping her into his fantasies, using the natural will of her own sexual curiosity to help her shape his perfect vagary. Only now it was ruined, the armature of their relationship exposed, the love and friendship and sanctity denuded, leaving bare jagged branches. Hopefully strong enough to survive a harsh winter, hopefully strong enough to bloom in spring.
Roommate Steve’s little brother was nowhere to be seen out front of Keegan. Probably for the better, Max was unsure how their eyes would meet. He trotted up the steps into the old hall, dashed the stairwell to the second floor, hesitated at the door to 204. Listened for a moment, hoping to hear a sonata, Boccherini, cello and bass. Heard nothing but a steady rasping whisper.
He knocked on the door and waited. The sound stopped and a girl’s voice, not Maggie’s, said, “Come in.”
He twisted the lever and stepped into Maggie’s room and saw only Jessie. She was on her side of the room, amid the clutter of her found objects wearing overalls with a red T-shirt underneath and welding without a mask.
He said, “You supposed to do that in here?”
She said, “It’s just a touch up. Hi, Max.” She shut off the torch and set it on the floor.
Maggie’s bed was unmade, littered with paper. Some of her drawers were open, and he saw that they were empty.
He said to Jessie, “Is Maggie around?”
Her posture was weak and her head hung low, she set herself on her bed and clasped her hands together between her knees. “No,” she said, “I don’t know where she is.”
“When did you see her last?”
She shrugged, said, “Yesterday. In the afternoon.”
He
stepped in the room, stood at the side of Maggie’s bed, looking out the window hoping he would see her walking one of the trails toward Keegan. He’d hoped to surprise her and didn’t want to do it by text.
He put a knee on her bed, picked up a scrap of torn paper and saw pastel on one side. Like it was a drawing that had been ripped up. It made him feel a little cold inside. Something about the room, something about the energy in here. When he lifted his head, he saw it.
“What happened here?” he asked Jessie.
She shrugged her shoulders as he crossed back to the door. Just to the left of it someone had punched the wall, putting a fist-sized hole in the drywall.
“What was she doing yesterday?” he asked her.
Jessie breathed a moment, lifted her face toward him but her eyes darted to the right, afraid to meet his. “I don’t know. She was here with Cole.”
“Were they getting along?” he asked, turning, brow lowered with puzzlement as his finger traced around the jagged, chalky hole.
“They were getting along,” she said.
“And you don’t know how this happened?” he asked, tapping under the hole in the wall.
“No, I don’t.”
“You okay?”
Jessie said, “Me? Yeah, I’m okay. You’re home early.”
He murmured, “Yeah, I love my parents and all but, you know …”
She nodded, and her gaze lowered to the floor.
In that simple movement of her head he saw a measurement of shame and it hit him that she could be the one who took the picture. He wanted to squirm right out of his skin. All that thought about how he was okay with this just spurting out of his grip. He wasn’t okay with it. Didn’t want others to know Maggie was shared. Didn’t want Jessie to know Maggie slept with Cole. He wanted sanctity again, he wanted Maggie all to himself. Of course it was all too late for that. From her face he could tell she knew. She’d seen them together, hadn’t she? Fuck, his heart sunk at the thought that she was the one who took the picture of her roommate fucking her fiancé’s best friend.