Chapter 2: A Friend in Need
By the time Bethany next took stock of her surroundings, the sense of experiment had quite left the evening. She and Jason sat still together, his occupation of the vacant chair undoing whatever careful fiction they had meant to sustain. The separation they had contrived—so that she might appear unattached and he merely incidental—had come to nothing.
The men who had laughed were gone, yet their laughter seemed to have remained behind them. Here and there a glance settled and shifted away; a smile, quickly suppressed, suggested that some account of the recent exchange had already found its way across the room. She could not hear what had been said, nor see who now repeated it, but she felt the difference plainly enough. They were no longer anonymous; they were understood.
Whatever liberty she had hoped to taste that evening had altered its character. To be visible was one thing; to be visible in that particular light was another.
The room had settled again into its ordinary patterns of drinking and talking and more drinking, yet not entirely. Now and then a glance strayed toward them, accompanied by a look of private amusement quickly suppressed, as though the account of Bethany's inclination toward another man still carried outward from the earlier disturbance and found fresh ears to listen. No one addressed them; the knowledge required no tending. It lingered of its own accord.
A drink might have steadied her, yet the prospect of approaching the bar only introduced a fresh uneasiness; they possessed no credentials, no practiced assurance in such matters, and she shrank from inviting a scrutiny that would end in refusal. She became newly conscious—sitting forlornly without beverages of any sort, in a tavern filled with drinkers—of how young they would appear to anyone who troubled to look closely, and she began to consider whether it might be wiser to leave the place altogether.
But before she could speak, a movement at the edge of the table interrupted her. A tall man had come up beside them and laid hold of the back of the vacant chair. He drew it out with an unhurried certainty and sat down, not glancing from one to the other, not offering apology or explanation, but arranging himself as though the seat had been waiting for him.
Bethany did not speak. The interruption held her longer than it should have. She found herself looking first at his hands, tattooed with spidered webs and skulls, as he settled them on the table, then upward, taking in by degrees the length of him as he fitted himself into the chair as though he meant to remain. Beside him, Jason seemed to contract rather than move, drawing in slightly, as though uncertain how much room he was entitled to occupy.
Seated there, the other man did not make himself smaller for the cramped table but occupied it fully, long legs set and shoulders squared, his height apparent even at rest. He might have been in his fifties. Grey showed at the temples, yet the rest of him was hard and spare, the kind of frame that suggested active use rather than comfortable living. His face was narrow, clean-shaven, the skin drawn tight along the cheekbones.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked, though he was already seated. His gaze moved between them, resting on Jason a moment longer than courtesy required. “I gathered enough of your situation,” he said. “I'm Russ, by the way. And you're the boyfriend, I take it. The one who likes to watch?"
That he spoke of it so plainly fixed the matter in a way the earlier laughter had not. It was no longer a vague amusement passing through the room; it had a shape now, and that shape was her—her intention to leave with someone else, to be taken by someone else, while her own boyfriend witnessed it. At the thought of herself at the center of this gossip, she felt a confused heat rise in her, as mortifying as it was undeniable, forcing her to sit very still lest she betray herself with some outward sign of indiscrete excitement.
Jason shifted in his seat, his shoulders lifting in a small, defensive motion. “Yes. That’s… that’s me,” he said, the last word catching despite his effort. “Jason.” He cleared his throat and pressed on with hurried earnestness. “It’s something we’ve discussed. An arrangement.”
Russ did not acquiesce; he rested his hands upon the table, looking at Jason with a faintly confused expression, as though the meaning of Jason's words were not plain, as though more information were required. Jason, under the forceful pressure of his easy stare, obliged.
“It would please me,” Jason continued, the explanation gathering speed rather than strength. “To see her enjoying herself. Properly, I mean. She ought to have that.” He glanced toward Bethany and away again. “It isn’t about me. I would rather—well. It removes a difficulty.” He faltered, then inexplicably forced the matter further. “The attention isn’t on what I cannot manage. She may have a fuller experience that way.”
Bethany kept her eyes lowered. The words, offered with such anxious sincerity, seemed ill-suited to the circumstance, yet once spoken could not be recalled. They hung there, unattended. Russ allowed them to hang. He neither encouraged nor objected, but waited until Jason had quite exhausted himself and fallen silent.
For a moment nothing followed. The faint music from the jukebox resumed its claim upon the room; somewhere behind them a chair scraped, and a glass was set down. Jason sat with his hands clasped together, as though uncertain what should be done with them now that speech had failed.
Russ leaned back a little, the chair giving a reluctant creak beneath him. His glance passed from Jason’s hands, still fastened together as though they required supervision, to Bethany, who had not yet entirely raised her eyes. He drew breath once, unhurriedly, and let it go again before speaking.
“So,” he said, in a tone of plain inquiry, “this is an established practice between you?”
Jason opened his mouth at once. “We’ve come to an understanding,” he answered, with an eagerness that outran precision. “Only lately, that is—but we are agreed. Beth is to decide for herself. Entirely for herself.” He shifted on the seat, which protested audibly, and continued, as though amendment might improve what had already been said. “If she chooses to go off with someone, she is free to do so. That is the intention. I impose nothing.”
This time Bethany nodded in agreement, a stiff, small motion. The agreement, so theoretical in her dim apartment, now felt like a contract read aloud in a public court.
Russ regarded her for a moment, not curiously, but attentively, as if confirming a detail already supplied. “And this evening,” he said at length, “you are here with that design in mind. She is expected to depart in other company. The rumors of your purpose are true."
Bethany felt her throat draw tight. There was no mistaking his comprehension. What she and Jason had contrived in private—so cautiously discussed, so variously imagined—stood now reduced to plain outline, as intelligible to him as if he had been present at every earlier conversation. He did not press the matter. He waited.
The sounds of the tavern went forward without regard: the low persistence of the music, a burst of laughter quickly spent, the dull contact of glass upon wood. At their table, however, nothing advanced.
She found herself unable to speak. Her eyes lowered of their own accord and fixed upon the small, indifferent objects before her—the faint mark left by a previous glass, the worn edge of his sleeve near the wrist, a darkened patch upon the tabletop where the varnish had long since given way. Russ waited until she looked up again, not urging her, merely allowing the pause to do its work.
"You need not trouble yourselves so much, dancing around the thing as it is called,” he said. “It is a common enough practice, whatever delicacy people pretend. In ordinary speech and liberal places, you would just call yourselves swingers."
He said it in the same tone one might use to identify a profession or a habit, not waiting or even caring if either of them would think to object.
“If this is just your recent experiment, it accounts for this timid air of negotiation about you both. A pair more accustomed to such arrangements would arrive with matters better settled between them—what is desired, what is to be avoided, and what, precisely, they look to another man to supply.” Jason shifted, but Russ continued, as though the slight movement was somehow confirmation, and answer enough. “So you’ve come out to see how it feels in practice,” he continued. “She is meant to go off with someone, and you are meant to see whether you can make your peace with her liberty. That’s the long and short of it, isn’t it?”
Bethany swallowed. “It isn’t only my liberty,” she said, making an effort at steadiness. “Jason is to be present—to see it, as much as there is to see. That is the… the mutual understanding.” The words sounded more deliberate aloud than they had in her thoughts. “It is meant as something for us both,” she added.
Russ received this without interruption; after a moment, a slow, considering smile appeared, as though he had ascertained her meaning with a sudden clarity. He leaned forward, his elbows planting themselves firmly on the sticky wood.
“My suspicion,” he said, lowering his voice so that it seemed meant for them alone, “is that your prospects this evening are not so poor as you suppose. A little patience may improve them.”
He held her gaze while he spoke, and then, as if the remark required no further support, drew back his chair and rose. There was no leave-taking in the action. He simply turned and made his way toward the bar. Bethany followed him with her eyes. He joined himself to the small press of patrons waiting there and addressed the barman in a tone too subdued to carry across the room, standing with his back to both of them, as though the conversation at their table had been only an interlude now concluded.
Jason inclined himself toward her, speaking low. “I would not have chosen that word,” he said. “Swinging. It sounds—” He faltered, as though the word itself had already done the damage.
“Hush,” Bethany said. “It is near enough for what we mean.” She kept her eyes before her as she spoke, as if the matter were already settled and required no further handling, though the firmness cost her more effort than she cared to show.
Across the room Russ had taken his stand at the bar with an air of complete detachment, one boot resting upon the rail while he spoke to the barman. The brief transaction that followed was conducted without haste: coin laid down, bottles produced, their caps struck free in two quick motions. Nothing in it referred to Bethany and Jason at all, and yet she found herself watching for its conclusion.
When he returned, he set one of the bottles before her and retained the other. Only then did he look toward Jason. “You will be driving,” he said, as if settling a minor point in advance. “So I have brought you nothing.”
Jason seemed about to object, but the objection did not take shape in time. He inclined his head instead, as though the matter had already been sensibly arranged.
Russ took a draught from his bottle. “And how far is it to your place?” he asked.
Jason answered at once. “Not far. A few blocks only. We can take the back streets.”
Russ regarded him steadily. “Good,” he said. “That makes it simple.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth, drank, and lowered it again without shifting his attention from the table.“ No need to trouble with main roads at this hour.”
Bethany took the bottle more quickly than she meant to. The first swallow was colder than she expected and made her catch her breath; she lowered it again at once, composing herself, and watched a bead of moisture gather and fall across her thumb. The warmth came only after, spreading by degrees through her chest and settling in her stomach before she had thought to question it.
Russ, seated opposite, drank with a composure that appeared habitual to him, and did not trouble to disguise that his attention rested freely upon her. He set the bottle down with a quiet sound and leaned forward upon his elbows, the sleeves of his jacket drawing back enough to show the ink continuing from beyond his hands up beyond his wrists.
“Well,” he said after a moment, as though taking up a matter already sufficiently considered, “that appears to arrange itself.” His glance moved briefly toward Jason. “You will follow in the car.” It returned to her. “You’ll ride with me. You can guide me through those back streets of yours.”
The arrangement, once spoken, seemed already underway. Bethany inclined her head before she had quite considered why; the assent came readily, with a warmth she could not attribute wholly to conviction. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
She lifted the bottle again, though she had only just set it down, and drank longer than was necessary. When she lowered it, Russ was speaking, and she found that she had already nodded without knowing quite what he had said.
Jason watched her. The look was brief, touched with uncertainty, yet he offered no protest. He drew his chair a little nearer to the table. “You'll need a helmet,” he said then, with more firmness than he had shown before: “She'll have one.”
Russ dismissed this with an easy motion of the hand. “She can borrow mine,” he replied. “I'll be well without it, if the distance is as short as you describe.” He turned to Bethany as he spoke, fixing her with an expectant glance. “If have no objection?”
Her attention, which had begun to wander, returned at once to him. “No,” she said. “I will use yours.”
She took another swallow from the bottle; the glass had grown cool and wet beneath her fingers. Russ and Jason were speaking now of streets and turnings, of which way would carry them most directly and which ought to be avoided, Russ’s voice steady and practical, Jason supplying with difficulty an occasional name in assent. Their words reached her without becoming meaningful, like the sound of passing wheels heard from a distance.
Then, in a pause so slight that neither of them appeared to notice it, the sense of what they were arranging came together in her mind all at once. She was consenting to take this man—a stranger, older than either of them by many years, marked by a life she could not guess at—back to the small, orderly apartment she shared with her mother, there to receive him as her lover under Jason’s very eye, and to submit to intimacies they had until now only dared to imagine in private speech. The feeble, ill-defined pact she and Jason had once discussed so tentatively now appeared thin and contrived beside the plainness with which it was being carried into fact.
The beer, which had seemed to steady her, lay suddenly heavy. She set the bottle down with care, the sound it made against the table curiously hollow, and kept her hands upon it as though to assure herself of where she was.
Russ finished his own drink in one long, unhurried pull and set the empty bottle beside hers. He turned to Jason, his movements economical and direct. “You will see to it,” he said, glancing toward the bar. “There is no need for us all to crowd the counter.”
Jason looked at them, then at Russ, and then, with a small tightening of his mouth, reached for his wallet. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
Russ gave him a brief nod and turned back to Bethany, shifting his chair aside to clear her passage. Jason went toward the bar, joining the line of waiting patrons with an air of intention that did not entirely survive the journey. When at last he reached the counter, he paused there longer than the others had done, speaking, then stopping, as if obliged to begin again. The barman looked past him once or twice before attending to him directly. Bethany watched this only in fragments; the press of bodies and the noise intervened. It seemed to take Jason an inordinate time to accomplish what should have been simple. He glanced back once, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face as he saw Russ already standing, leaning down to speak close to Bethany’s ear.
“Time to go,” Russ said, his voice so low that she seemed to feel it rather than hear it.
Bethany rose. For an instant the room shifted about her—not sharply, but with a slow, uncertain motion, as though the floor had lost some of its firmness. The sensation passed almost at once, and she set it down to the act of standing too quickly, to the effort of freeing herself from the reluctant grip of the chair. The sounds of the tavern pressed nearer than before: the knock of glass upon wood, the rise and fall of laughter, the restless stir of bodies. She drew a breath in the smoke-laden air, yet it did not quite restore her composure.
Russ laid his hand upon the small of her back. The touch was steady and matter-of-fact, the breadth of his palm felt plainly through the thin lace of her dress, and with it he directed her forward from the table. She moved as he moved, more from the assurance of that pressure than from any formed intention of her own.
They passed between the closely set chairs and tables toward the door. A man with a florid face and sleeves rolled to the elbow, engaged in an argument of considerable volume, broke off long enough to draw in his chair and stare after them; his companion, a narrow woman with a glass suspended midway to her lips, allowed herself a small, speculative smile. Whether these minor accommodations were made in deference to Russ or merely to the steady forward motion of his stride, Bethany could not have said. She felt, in fragments, the weight of notice—the way her dress declared her body under the lights, the unmistakable fact of his hand at her back, the suggestion carried in their joint departure. The impressions brushed against her and slipped away again. The tavern’s smoky glow receded behind them, and the darker air beyond the entrance received them without ceremony.
The night air met her with a sudden coolness that seemed to clear the lungs even while it startled them, bearing with it the mingled scents of frying grease from the nearby truck and the ceaseless murmur of the street beyond. Russ’s hand did not leave her back, remaining there as they crossed the uneven surface of the lot, guiding her without haste yet without pause. A little apart from the cars stood the motorcycle, dark and weighty, its metal catching the scattered light in sullen flashes. It leaned upon its stand with a singular patience, like some waiting creature that required only the briefest summons to rouse itself.
As Russ stepped toward it, she glanced back once. Through the tavern window, blurred by smoke and reflection, she could just make out Jason still at the bar, waiting to be settle his account while louder men pressed before him. The sight held her no longer than a moment.