Chapter 1: A Night Out
“Are you certain you mean to go through with it?”
Bethany did not answer at once. She kept her eyes upon the windshield, where the parking lot’s sodium lamps burned in a jaundiced row, flattening everything they touched into a colorless glare. The light struck her dress—cheap, lacquered, and far too eager for notice—and drew from it a restless shimmer that betrayed every small movement of her hands. She had been worrying the seam without knowing it, rubbing the narrow ridge between finger and thumb as though it might fray under sufficient attention.
Jason reached across and covered her hand. His touch was cool, deliberate; not forceful, but steady enough to interrupt the motion. In the reflected glow he appeared younger than he had any right to look—earnest, composed, almost solemn in his encouragement.
“I’m certain,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Not the neighbors. Not anyone. What matters is that you choose. That you find someone who interests you.”
He spoke the word choose with an emphasis that suggested generosity, even bravery. Yet it landed upon her with an unexpected heaviness. To be granted liberty so plainly—to be told that the burden of decision rested wholly with her—was not the relief she had imagined. It seemed instead a mantle set upon her shoulders without warning and left her short of breath.
Outside, a car door slammed somewhere across the lot. Laughter drifted and then was swallowed by the dark.
She drew a breath, slow and careful, as though the air itself might steady her. The door handle waited beneath her palm. Once opened, it would be difficult to pretend the moment had not arrived.
Beyond the streaked and untrustworthy glass of the windshield, the tavern declared itself less by any civilizing sign than by the disorderly life that pressed about its entrance. A knot of patrons surged in and out as though the place could scarcely contain them, their laughter breaking loose in gusts, their arguments carried on with cheerful ferocity, all of it wrapped in a bluish fog of tobacco smoke and the rich, itinerant smell of fried meats from a truck stationed nearby like an accomplice. One flushed young fellow, transported by spirits of more than one variety, had been lifted bodily onto the shoulders of his companions and borne along in triumph, though whatever victory he proclaimed was swallowed whole by the surrounding din; while not three yards off, a couple a couple were knotted together beneath a neon tube which flickered and buzzed fretfully, as if irritated by its own obligation to shine.
Jason inclined himself nearer, so that his words might reach her without joining that public tumult. His breath, cool against her ear, was composed in contrast to the revelry outside.
“You go in first,” he said quietly, with the air of one arranging a practical detail already settled in his mind. “It will come easier if you appear unattached—a girl at liberty, not one already accounted for.”
Bethany opened the car door and stepped out with more resolution than comfort, though the resolution wavered the instant the night air met her, cool and inquisitive, as if it too had come to examine what she had chosen to display. The dress—selected an hour before in a mood of reckless determination—now clung to her with an intimacy that felt almost accusatory: black lace drawn tight over curves she ordinarily contrived to disguise, its faint artificial sheen catching the scattered lights and returning them with an honesty she might well have preferred denied. She had meant it to be striking; it was, perhaps, too successful. The rose and fell over a bosom too ample for modest indifference, lay close against the soft swell of her stomach, and clung to the weight of her hips and seat with a candor that felt accusatory. She was not a slight girl, nor built for discretion; the dress acknowledged as much, fitting itself to her over-abundance as though eager to advertise what she had so long taken pains to conceal.
A small company gathered near the entrance, engaged in the idle fellowship of those who linger chiefly to see who else may arrive. Their conversation slackened, not dramatically but by degrees, as attention shifted. She became aware—not at once, but in a slow, unmistakable accumulation—of glances measuring what the neckline revealed, of eyes noting the brevity of the hem, of that peculiar public scrutiny which is neither wholly rude nor in any way kind. It was as though she had stepped, unseasonably and unprepared, into a harsh noon-light that showed every outline; and having done so, she could not retreat without acknowledging that she had walked there of her own accord.
She pushed through the heavy door, and was met at once by the tavern’s breath: a warm, close exhalation compounded of stale beer, sharp detergents, and the long inheritance of smoke that had worked itself into beam and board over many uncounted years. Within, a jukebox laboured in one corner, its bass notes beating dully through the air so that she felt them less as sound than as a trembling somewhere behind her teeth. Bethany made her way between the crowded tables with what composure she could summon, conscious of elbows, of glances half-lifted and then returned to their business, until she reached a small round table standing vacant near the middle of the room.
She sat, the cracked vinyl giving a faint protest beneath her weight, and gathered her purse into her lap with both hands, holding it there in a manner suggestive of defense. From this uneasy station her eyes moved restlessly: to the long mahogany bar, bright with glass and brisk movement; to the barkeep, whose practised efficiency suggested a man not inclined to indulgent questions; and then back again to the company about her—a scatter of loud parties, worn solitary drinkers, and faces so weathered they seemed part of the establishment itself.
She could not rid herself of the expectation that someone—barkeep, proprietor, or any self-appointed guardian of order—would presently demand to know her age and discover, to her public disgrace, that she had no rightful business in such a place at all. Each time a glance strayed toward her she felt the blood rise, certain she had already been judged an interloper and was only awaiting dismissal. But no such moment came; the patrons were indifferent, and Bethany hoped they would remain so, as long as he herself made no show of ordering drinks beyond the limit of her maturity.
Jason entered a moment later and took his place at the bar’s far end, in the poorest light. He did not look toward her, nor she toward him. To anyone else they were unconnected. The position had been settled in advance; from there he could see her plainly without seeming to belong to her at all. She knew he was watching. That much was part of what they had so thoroughly arranged between themselves beforehand; she had not dressed and come out merely to gratify his curiosity. Bethany sat where the room might take notice of her, bore that notice without shrinking, and let it rest upon her long enough to invite reply. Whatever pleasure he found in observing, she herself meant to be approached, and not merely admired.
They sat close about their table, jackets still on despite the heat, the leather creasing at the elbows when they lifted their drinks. Tattoos showed in glimpses where collars dipped or cuffs shifted—a dark band at one wrist, the edge of a serpent rising from beneath another man’s neckline, a knuckle marked in faded blue with lettering now too blurred to read. There was no doubt the lot of them were bikers, and not just the ordinary variety of ill-behaved man; a helmet rested on the floor beside one chair, and a pair of gloves lay folded near another’s glass. They spoke in low bursts, leaning toward one another to be heard over the music, their conversation contained to the small circle they made, as though the rest of the room were of no consequence. There was, in their rough appearance, something at once alarming and oddly attractive to her unsettled spirits; and before she knew it she was wondering—not without a quickened pulse—how she might feel if one of them, familiarly and without ceremony, laid a hand upon her back.
In the very moment that she so wondered, one of them—a bear of a man, his greying beard thick as winter brush and his eyes hard as chipped flint—intercepted the stray current of her glance as though it were something thrown, not merely cast, and fit to be caught. He nudged a younger companion at his elbow and bent his head to murmur into it, the confidence of the gesture suggesting long practice in such assessments; and whatever passed between them drew the younger man’s mouth into a slow, measuring smile that traveled over her with no pretense of modesty.
Bethany felt the blood rise to her cheeks—a swift, treacherous warmth that betrayed both her awareness and her willingness to be seen aware—yet she did not look away. She held her ground and returned their appraisal with a smile of her own, tentative but sustained, as if steadiness alone might convert their scrutiny into control. After all, this was why she was here.
The younger man broke away from the others and crossed the room with an unhurried stride, not weaving through the crowd so much as expecting it to part. To Bethany's ears, his heavy boots seemed to sing against the boards. He took the chair opposite hers across the small oval table and sat down as though it had been kept for him.
He leaned forward and set his elbows on the table, heedless of its stickiness. His attention moved over her in a way that was neither hurried nor apologetic. It passed first over the arrangement of her hair, which she had pinned up with more care than she would have admitted, then down across the black lace drawn tight over her breasts and the slight roll of her stomach, and finally to her hands, which she had folded together to keep them from fidgeting. The look was not covert; she was made conscious of it in stages, as one becomes aware of standing too near a fire.
He asked her where she was from, and whether she came often; listened with an attentiveness that might have passed for courtesy; nodded at the appropriate intervals. Bethany knew enough to guess where he was leading the conversation, though he took his time meandering. The conversation moved slowly—her work, what music she liked, the inconvenience of traffic near her apartment—subjects so ordinary they scarcely required discussion. Yet by degrees his remarks began to lean elsewhere: an observation on how crowded the room had grown, a comment on the difficulty of hearing one another, a suggestion that some places were better suited to conversation than others: "We could go somewhere else to talk." When he mentioned, at last, a room not far away where they might speak without interruption, he did so in the same tone he had used to discuss the music—practical, almost offhand—as though the proposal were the most natural continuation of what had already been set in motion.
At the far end of the bar Jason sat where he had been waiting, making no attempt to approach for better vantage. He leaned against the wood with his arms folded, waiting. Nothing in his posture urged her on; nothing recalled her, either.
Under the table the biker’s knee pressed against hers and remained there, not shifting, not testing whether she would object. She let it stay. Bethany lifted her eyes to his. She adjusted her position—only enough to settle more squarely toward him—and rested her forearms on the table instead of drawing back. The movement was slight, but once made it could not be mistaken for hesitation.
“I should say,” she began, and had to begin again when the first attempt failed her, “I should mention—my boyfriend is here.”
He looked at her without understanding, waiting for the rest.
“He—” She lowered her voice. “He likes to watch. If we were to go somewhere, he would come too. He wouldn’t interfere. It’s only… it’s something we do.”
For a moment he did not move at all. The look he gave her was no longer appraising, but searching, as though he suspected he had misheard, and hoped to catch the plainer sense of meaning if she would repeat it. The noise of the room pressed in around them; someone laughed too loudly nearby.
“You’re serious,” he said at last.
Bethany nodded, because the explanation, once begun, could not be recalled.
He sat back then, not quickly, but with a gradual withdrawal that carried his knee away from hers and made use of the full width of the table between them. The chair legs grated against the floor. Whatever delight had first drawn him across the room now gave way to a flat displeasure, a disappointment in unexpected strings attached to unspoken promises.
“You can't be serious,” he said again, not quite a question. His eyes moved briefly past her, as if measuring the room for evidence of the man in question, though he failed to discover Jason in the shadow of the bar. “That’s the arrangement?”
She inclined her head. The word felt too large to repeat.
A short breath escaped him—less a laugh than an exhalation of impatience. “So I’m meant to perform,” he said, “while he stands by and takes notes. On stamina, and technique, I suppose?"
“It wouldn’t be like that,” she answered quickly. “He wouldn’t interfere.”
“That’s not the point.” He shifted further back, the table now a deliberate barrier. “If I’m with a woman, I prefer her attention undivided. I don’t care to share the audience.”
Bethany swallowed. “It has to be with him there,” she said, more steadily than she felt. Her face was flush with heat, so much so that she wondered if others might notice the change of temperature at their table. “That’s what we agreed.”
She invoked a prior agreement with Jason deliberately, as though they possessed between them a history sufficient to justify so singular a condition. She did not say—indeed could not have said without betraying herself—that no such history existed, only an intention, new-made and uncertain, which now appeared to her in the light of this interview a most questionable contrivance.
“Your agreement,” he repeated, rising.
The movement was sudden enough to startle, yet not theatrical; he stood as a man stands when he has resolved to end a matter. The chair legs scraped sharply behind him as he pushed it back into place, not looking at her again once he was upright.
“Well,” he said, “you may keep it.”
With that he turned from her and went back to his companions without further acknowledgment. Bethany, who had not moved, saw him bend toward their table and make some brief explanation, punctuated by a backward motion of his hand in her direction. Whatever words he used were swallowed by the general noise, yet their effect declared itself instantly: a burst of laughter, loud and unrestrained, broke from the group and spread outward, catching here and there among those who had already begun to observe.
She did not move, but remained seated as though fixed there by some minor public disgrace, her hands folded before her upon the table with an attention that suggested they must on no account be allowed to tremble. The smile she maintained bore little resemblance to cheerfulness; it was the sort of expression one wears for the benefit of strangers, and forgets to remove when it has ceased to answer any purpose.
From across the room came, now and again, a disturbance of laughter not wholly absorbed by the general noise—bursts too pointed, too recurrent, to be comfortably mistaken for accident. She could not hear the words, yet felt, with uncomfortable certainty, their direction. Once, venturing the smallest glance aside, she found two men looking away with exaggerated innocence, as though they had been caught in some boyish impropriety. The knowledge left her unsure how to compose herself: to rise would be to concede defeat, to remain was to endure inspection.
The jukebox changed its song and changed it again. The neon behind the bar pursued its weary flicker. Time, which elsewhere in the room appeared to move briskly enough, seemed here to have adopted a more deliberate pace, obliging her to sit through the consequences of her experiment and to consider, with growing seriousness, whether she had misjudged not only the man who had left her, but the company into which she had ventured at all.
It was only when a general stirring announced their leave-taking—chairs thrust back, boots crossing the floor in a noisy file, the unmistakable rattle of keys and chains—that she understood the party of bikers she had hastily engaged was now breaking up. Their progress toward the door drew notice as such movements always do; the room shifted to accommodate them, then closed again behind their passing. A moment later there came, through the opened door, the harsh ignition of engines and the rolling thunder of their departure, which carried their laughter away into the night.
Bethany remained where she was. She had the curious impression that a small space had been cleared around her, not by design but by a kind of collective discretion, as though the recent scene were already being absorbed into the tavern’s stock of anecdotes. Here and there a glance still came her way, quickly withdrawn. She could not tell how much had been observed, nor how much merely guessed.
A chair shifted near her table. Bethany looked up, expecting some new attempt at conversation, and instead found Jason drawing it out and sitting down.
For a moment she only stared at him. He was not meant to be there. He had been, by their own careful agreement, to remain apart—another patron, unconnected, unremarked. His joining her now, in plain view and without hesitation, told her more clearly than any signal that their arrangement had already begun to collapse.
Seated so near, he appeared slighter than he had across the room. The narrowness of his shoulders showed through his shirt; his wrists, resting upon the table, were fine-boned and almost delicate, as though better suited to books or instruments than to the coarse surfaces of this place. There was an earnestness in the way he inclined toward her—eager, intent—that might elsewhere have passed for youthful charm, but here only emphasized how little he resembled the company that had just departed.
“Don’t be discouraged, Beth,” he said, lowering his voice, though there was no longer any real use in secrecy.
She glanced about the room again. A few people still watched with the idle interest reserved for the aftermath of a small public misadventure. Whatever anonymity they had hoped to maintain was gone; they were visible together, and unmistakably so. Jason, however, seemed resolved to proceed as though the alteration signified nothing of consequence. His manner retained its encouraging steadiness; indeed, there was in it a touch of eagerness, as though he were anxious to repair by presence what absence had failed to accomplish.
“You look very well,” he continued. “Anyone can see that you do.”
The reassurance, offered in the open air of their shared visibility, had less the effect of restoring her confidence than of confirming how entirely the evening had slipped from the character they had meant to give it. She understood, with a clarity at once mortifying and relieving, that whatever was to come of their experiment would not occur tonight.