Chapter 3: New Friends and Introductions
The settlement at the bar had stretched into a trial of trifles. The barman’s thin patience, the clumsy search for the proper notes, the faint adhesion of the bills to one another beneath his uncertain fingers—each small obstruction detained him there longer than dignity permitted, as though the room had resolved to witness the exercise. Through the streaked glass he caught, too late, the brief red flare of the motorcycle’s light before it was swallowed by the road. When at last he stepped out into the lot, the air had grown markedly cooler in a stillness so complete that it rendered audible the unsteady labour of his own breathing.
He drove by habit rather than attention, his grasp upon the wheel so firm as to border on strain, while the streets themselves passed unnoticed and unregarded. In their place his imagination supplied images with an exactness he would gladly have been spared: Bethany leaning forward upon the machine, her arms fastened about the man’s middle for balance, the red disorder of her hair carried out behind them by the wind. He had anticipated such a scene often enough in the privacy of speculation, arranging it there with careful allowances, softening what must be sharp, directing what must occur. Yet the present reality refused all such management. It moved of its own accord, indifferent to rehearsal, and—most discomposing of all—proceeded entirely beyond his observation.
As he turned into the familiar entrance of the complex, his lamps fell at once upon the motorcycle. It occupied his assigned, covered stall—the place for which Bethany paid extra each month—with the settled air of a usurper already installed. The dark mass of it received the light and gave it back in sullen metallic glints. The engine had not long been stilled; a faint disturbance wavered upward into the cool night, slight but persistent, marking its recent arrival.
A sharp apprehension took hold of him. They had been here—alone—for some minutes already. How many he could not determine; the reckoning of it resisted calculation and yet demanded it. What might have passed in that interval? What degree of familiarity, what irrevocable step, had been undertaken while he stood at the bar, laboring over notes and coin for beverages he had never tasted?
He brought his foot down hard upon the brake, and the car checked itself with a jolt in the middle of the lane. The prospect of circling for a proper space was intolerable. With a rough, impatient turn of the wheel he forced the vehicle into a narrow angle beside the dumpster enclosure, leaving it ill-set and obtrusive across a portion of the drive. Whether it impeded a neighbor’s passage was a question he did not stay to weigh; such civil scruples were overborne by the urgency that pressed him forward. He cut the engine and stepped out at once, abandoning even the small precaution of the lock.
The air in that corner lay heavy with the mingled sweetness and decay of refuse. He raised his eyes. Above the brick recess that housed the bins, beyond the line of the second-story walkway, was the window of the apartment—Bethany’s apartment, properly speaking, though she had always treated it as theirs. The thin white curtains were drawn, yet the lamps within shone through them, forming a pale, yellow oblong against the night. As he watched, a shadow passed across the dining-room window near the door: broad, unmistakably masculine in outline, and gone again before he could be certain he had seen it.
He remained where he was upon the asphalt, not yet advancing, the keys pressed so tightly in his grasp that their edges made themselves felt. This, in its general outline, was the very conclusion he had once contemplated with a tremulous anticipation—the subject of those low, halting conversations shared with Beth in the late hours, when they lay close together and found boldness easier in the dark. They had constructed it then as a notion manageable by degrees, something to be approached with mutual assurances and careful leave-taking.
Yet the fact, now present and irretrievable, bore little resemblance to those modest designs. The intruder was no longer hypothetical but installed above him, within those lighted rooms, while he himself lingered below amid the refuse, uncertain at what point speculation had hardened into reality.
Even so, there lingered in him a wish to remain where he was, to allow whatever passed above to proceed without his inspection, and to be spared the knowledge of its particulars. He might sit out the interval in the car, or even withdraw altogether, and receive afterward only such account as Bethany chose to give. There would be a tidiness in that arrangement, leaving her the liberty they had so often discussed. Yet another impulse, less yielding, urged him toward the stair. He knew too well what want of his had brought them to this pass; their late-night conversations had not circled delicately around abstractions, but returned, with painful honesty, to the fact of his insufficiency and her disappointment. It was precisely because she desired a length and girth he could not supply that he had consented to seek another in his stead. To retreat now would be to ignore the very remedy he had proposed. She meant to claim from another man the satisfaction denied her at home, and some troubled mixture of loyalty, curiosity, and self-reproach compelled him to be present for it.
He mounted the metal stair, and each step rang out with a hollow clang that no tenant of the building could mistake; the clattering structure was such that anyone within the building when another climbed the stairs without. Before he reached the landing, the sounds from the apartment came clearly to him through the thin pane of the living-room window: the low persistence of the television, left playing, and beneath it the measured tone of a man’s voice, the words indistinct. Once it was crossed by Bethany’s laughter—quick, a little unsteady—and then the murmur resumed.
With an unsteady hand he produced the key by habit, forgetting even to try the door first, and was about to set it to the lock when another voice, close at hand, cut across the muted sounds within.
“Jason? Is that you, dear?”
He turned at once, his heart giving a disagreeable start. In the neighboring doorway stood Mrs. Miller, from the apartment next to theirs, holding her door open just a sliver, as though unwilling to venture farther without encouragement. The dim light of the hall struck her spectacles and rendered her eyes two pale, enlarged circles of concern.
“Is everything alright?” she asked, in that watchful tone she seemed to reserve for any occurrence within earshot of her own rooms; Jason had grown familiar with it in the months of their proximity. “We heard that awful machine pull up, and I saw Bethany come up with a gentleman I’ve never seen before.”
“Yes, everything’s fine, Mrs. Miller,” Jason said, producing a smile that resisted him as though it had set hard. “He’s just a friend. She wanted a ride on the bike, that’s all.”
He set his key to the lock with unnecessary care, hoping by that motion to close the exchange; yet the narrow opening of her door widened instead of retreating. She stepped out into the hall, drawing her paisley housecoat together at the throat, her attention sharpened rather than satisfied. “A friend? He looked a bit old for your usual crowd. And he had a bottle with him, dear—a big one. I could see it clear as anything.”
Her words, dropped to a confidential murmur that nevertheless filled the narrow hall, remained between them. Jason felt the blood rise at once to his face as he realized Russ must have brought liquor with him, carried up from the motorcycle. “It’s just something he brought along,” he said, aware even as he spoke how unconvincing it sounded. “It’s nothing, really. Bethany won’t have any.”
“Bethany’s a sweet girl, but she’s young,” Mrs. Miller continued, as though obliged to persist until sense prevailed. “Too young for that sort of thing, if you ask me. And that man’s old enough to be her father, Jason. Turning up here at this hour with a bottle in his hand—well. One does wonder. She looked a bit flustered already.”
The phrase touched an uneasiness he had felt earlier and tried to dismiss. “He means no harm, I assure you,” Jason replied, his politeness thinning. “We’ve known him a long time. You’re very considerate to worry, but it’s just a visit. Nothing more.” He gave a short, concluding nod and turned the key at last. “Thank you, Mrs. Miller. Goodnight.”
“Well, I only—”
“Goodnight, Mrs. Miller. You’ll excuse me.”
He pushed inward before she could complete her thought and slipped inside, drawing it shut with deliberate care behind him. The solid meeting of wood and frame was a relief out of proportion to the small action. He remained there a moment, his back against the door, breathing in what ought to have been the ordinary air of the place—lavender from Bethany’s detergent, the faint residue of his coffee—but those domestic notes were now overtaken by others less settled: leather, oil, the faint, peaty trace of whisky, the faint odor of the other man.
From the bedroom the television murmured steadily, its light shifting along the walls. No voices carried over the room now. The absence of their sounds pressed harder than the laughter had done. A hotel would have been safer—anonymous walls, indifferent corridors, no Mrs. Miller at the turn of the stair. But that alternative had already been forfeited. They had brought the experiment home. And it was proceeding here, within their own rooms.
The living room stood empty, lit only by the amber spill of light from the bedroom beyond. Upon the low table rested the bottle which had so troubled Mrs. Miller, its cap left off, the contents already diminished; beside it were two glasses, one drained, the other still holding a shallow trace of whiskey. Over the arm of Bethany’s favored chair, where her purse sat upon the seat, there also hung the man’s black leather jacket, set precisely with an obvious degree of claim upon the spot.
Jason’s attention moved away, down the narrow thoroughfare of carpet behind the furniture of their living space, toward the small hallway that separated the washroom from the bedroom. There it stopped. A shape of black lace lay gathered upon the worn carpet just short of the bedroom doorway, which sat askew—the dress, abandoned in transit, neither in one room nor the other, but left behind as though discarded without pause. From within came Bethany’s laughter again, clearer now, quick and startled, and after it the lower sound of a man’s voice, indistinct yet continuous.
He moved forward at once, though the cheap carpeting seemed to catch at his steps as he crossed the narrow room and reached the short hall. The bedroom door remained partly open beyond the abandoned dress. From within issued sounds that admitted no orderly pattern—soft and wet, irregular, yet unmistakable—accompanied, incongruously, by the continued murmur of the television behind him as it recited its cheerful advertisements. His heart gave a troubled start; he knew, before looking, what the room would disclose.
Stepping through the open door, he saw at once what the sounds had already made plain to him, the scene laid out with a precision that felt at once clinical and violently unreal.
Russ was already engaged with her, the fact unmistakable at a glance.
Bethany sat at the edge of the bed in her black underclothes. Freed of her dress, her figure resolved itself more plainly before her new parter: the generous swelling of her breasts, the soft fullness at her sides, the weight of her hips settling heavy into the mattress. The straps and fabric of her delicates, slightly displaced, marked where they had shifted against her, leaving faint impressions that had not yet faded. Her head was tilted back, her eyes closed, her coppery hair tumbled loose over her bare shoulders, the careful arrangement she had made earlier entirely undone. Strands clung where they had fallen, others bent at awkward angles, as though she had stopped noticing them altogether and had neither the balance nor the inclination to set them right.
Before her stood Russ, his stance set wide and deliberate, the black denim of his jeans and the heavy boots lending him an immovable aspect. He had not troubled to undress beyond what necessity required; the front of his trousers hung open now, a small but decisive alteration that disturbed the order of the room more than any discarded garment might have done. His left hand was lost in the mess of her hair, clenched with an air of direction that admitted no doubt of his purpose. His other hand rested upon his hip. He did not so much as glance up when Jason nudged the door farther inward, his attention remaining fixed upon what he was doing, as though no interruption of consequence had occurred.
Bethany’s head moved in slow, deliberate motion, finding its cadence by degrees as she worked him toward the firmness she sought. The motion of her head showed no careless ease, but a marked effort, a bending and recovery that made plain the difficulty of what she attempted. It came upon Jason, with unwelcome clarity, that even in its unroused state the man’s person was of daunting proportion, so that Bethany must labor merely to bring it to readiness. A faint sound escaped her, quickly stifled, and Russ’s hand, already lost in her hair, closed more firmly in answer.
Jason remained where he was, one hand still upon the edge of the door. The measure of the man was substantially more than he himself possessed, and then another good measure beyond. Yet Jason had many years ago released all delusion on the ledger of that score; he had too-long lived with the knowledge of his own limits to feel now in this moment any more than the faintest flush of jealousy and envy; what he saw did not produce the sharp pang he had feared, when Bethany suggested such an experiment might not be too distasteful. Her eagerness admitted of no polite misreading, and in the plainness of it he found, to his own quiet astonishment, a species of comfort: she was not merely indulging his insecurity by entertaining Russ, nor submitting to an experiment of his private, selfish contrivance, but meeting something long denied her.
“There’s a good girl,” Russ said, the words delivered in that low, steady tone he employed for all instructions, as though praise and command were matters scarcely to be distinguished. He did not so much as glance toward the doorway. “Just so. That’s it.”
Jason lingered where he was, struck less by what they were doing than by the plain fact that it was already underway. They had not waited. The little formality he had imagined—the pause, the look toward the door, some signal that he was meant to see—had passed unobserved, as though it had never belonged to the occasion at all. He made a sound then, intending to speak and failing of it: not a word, not even a cough, but a dry catch of breath forced out by a throat that had tightened without his leave.
At the sound, Russ raised his head, not hastily, but with the untroubled deliberation of a man interrupted in nothing of consequence. His look settled upon Jason, measuring him in an instant. The faintest suggestion of a smile appeared, broad and unembarrassed. His hand did not yet give Bethany occasion to pause.
“There you are,” he said. “Thought you might have lost your way. Come in, if you’re coming. Don’t hover about the door.”
He gave a short, deliberate tug on Bethany’s hair, drawing her back just enough to break her rhythm. A small, thwarted sound escaped her before she could prevent it; her eyes opened, unfocused, passing over Jason without quite finding him. “There now,” Russ said evenly, as though correcting a minor oversight. “Your boy is here. No need to worry on about him.” He kept his gaze upon her as he spoke, not upon Jason. “She was keen enough to start,” he added, with a note of dry amusement. “To show good hospitality to her guest, while you delayed so long on your errands.”
Bethany blinked, her glance drifting in Jason’s direction yet failing to settle there, as though the effort of fixing it required more attention than she could readily command. A vague, softened smile came and went upon her lips. “’S true,” she murmured, the words unsteadied by drink. “Didn’t want… to keep him waiting. Had to be polite.”
Russ, receiving this as sufficient confirmation, inclined her forward once more with an easy, proprietary assurance; and she returned at once to what had occupied her, the brief exchange lost as completely as though it had never interrupted her at all.
Jason felt the blood rise sharply into his face, not from outrage but from a confused sense of having misplaced himself. This was not how he had imagined the moment: he had meant to be present to it, to see and to be seen, to occupy—however modestly—the place he and Bethany had contrived for himself. Instead he had arrived to find the arrangement already altered, his part diminished without announcement.
“The bartender kept me,” he said, after a moment, hearing the insufficiency of it even as he spoke. “And Mrs. Miller stopped me in the hall.”
The explanation sounded thin and oddly formal, as though he were accounting for a tardiness no one had thought to question.
“Did she now,” Russ said, the words delivered without curiosity, as one dismisses a matter already exhausted. His attention settled again where it had been, his hand moving with an idle familiarity along Bethany’s temple. “Well. You’ve made it at last. Sit yourself down. That chair by the window will serve you well enough.” He inclined his head toward the worn chair Jason most often occupied while dressing, the cushion bearing the faint impress of habitual use. “Best seat you’ve got.”
Jason did not move. He stayed where he was, one hand still on the door, as though he had paused only for a moment and forgotten to go farther. Russ stood easy and certain, entirely at home in the space; Bethany, her motions slowed and loosened, gave herself over to what she was doing with an attention that left no remainder for anything else. The confidence she had once spoken of in private was no longer spoken of at all, but simply acted upon, and that plainness—more than any slight—kept him standing there.
“The chair, Jason,” Russ repeated, the words not an invitation but a command wrapped in a veneer of hospitality. His voice was a low vibration that seemed to still the very air. “Or stand there gawping like a child at a keyhole.”
A slight unsteadiness came into Jason’s hands, which he checked by drawing them close against his sides, as though to remind himself of his place there. The moment, now fully before him, bore little resemblance to the cautious fancy he had once entertained; yet it did not repel him. It held him instead in a strained, attentive stillness, compelled as much by the completion of what he had intended as by the novelty of seeing it accomplished without him.
He lowered himself into the chair by the window, the seat yielding with its usual familiarity. From there he could see them plainly. The sounds of movement and breath carried across the small room without obstruction, impossible to mistake or ignore.
Russ’s head tipped once, almost idly, and a subdued sound escaped him. His hand remained in Bethany’s hair, altering her pace with the same assured economy he had shown in every other action that evening. Light from the other room, thrown intermittently by the television, passed over them in dull flashes, flattening color and then restoring it again, so that Jason saw the scene by turns clearly and dimly, like something observed in passing yet never left behind.
If there was pain in it, it was of a quieter sort than he had feared—an inward contraction, quickly followed by the recognition that Bethany was receiving, plainly and without apology, the satisfaction he had wished for her when the matter had been only theoretical. He saw the way she steadied herself, unselfconscious and intent, and understood that this, however discomposing to witness, was the very exchange he had consented to set in motion. Its reality was neither delicate nor ceremonious, but direct; and in that directness lay both the discomfort of exclusion and the sober confirmation of his own design.
“She learns quickly,” Russ remarked, the observation made with an air of quiet appraisal rather than praise. His gaze did not shift from Jason as he spoke. “Don’t you?” Bethany answered with an indistinct sound, scarcely more than a murmur, and Russ’s mouth curved slightly. “You see,” he went on, as though pointing out some small accomplishment. “No objection to being observed. Some take to it at once. A natural aptitude, you might say.”
The remark lingered, mingling with the slickly suckling sounds of Bethany’s exertion, which had now achieved its intended effect and had drawn the older man into his fullest size, creating a protrusion extending far from his body and up into the room. Something in her manner altered as she continued—what had been tentative grew more assured, more insistent—until she made an effort to speak and found herself unable to do so, and a small, involuntary sound of gagging broke the silence. She drew back at once, seized by a fit of coughing that bent her forward, the effort momentarily overcoming her composure, her chest rising and falling as she struggled to recover herself before resuming.
“Jason ought…” she tried again, the effort of shaping the words seeming almost beyond her, “ought to be allowed… a little more.” She looked up at Russ with an uncertain, imploring expression, as though appealing for some benevolence she could not quite name. “He’s waited so long, you see… and he did want to see. It must be—must be difficult for him, just sitting there. You might let him… just a little. If you would. Please.”
Her plea to Russ was offered with the timid earnestness of one soliciting favor from a superior whose mood must first be divined; she spoke of Jason as though he were absent, or younger, in need of indulgence, careless with her demeanor in a way that plainly showed how thoroughly the drink had overtaken her. The thickness of her voice and the wandering course of her thoughts left little doubt. This was no light conviviality; the drink had gone deep. His mind turned to the bottle on the table in the other room, already so much diminished, and he found himself reckoning—uneasily, and with a precision he would rather have avoided—how much might have been consumed in the short interval of his detention.
Russ’s gaze, lately relaxed, turned at length toward Jason. He regarded him for a moment with a measured attention, and the faint smile that followed carried no goodwill. He looked down at Bethany, his fist still closed in her hair, holding her bent near him.
“You asking me to let your boy have a go, sweetheart? A little stroke while he watches?” His tone was one of cruel beneficence, as though he conferred a grotesque favor.
A cold misgiving took him, sharper than any he had felt that night. He had agreed to watch; he had not agreed to be set forward and displayed. The difference mattered. He could endure the comparison at a distance, even take comfort in it—but to be pressed into it, at her urging and under this man’s eye, stirred in him a resentment he had not expected. She had wanted this freedom; he had granted it. Now she would have him stripped of the one protection he had kept for himself.
Bethany, mistaking his hesitation for nothing more than bashfulness, nodded with an earnest excess that the drink rendered ungainly, her head swaying upon her shoulders in a manner almost comical. “Yes—do let him,” she urged, with thick insistence. “For him, if you please. It’s only fair.”
“Fair,” Russ repeated, as though the word were a small object of doubtful value which he must test between his fingers before accepting. His eyes settled upon Jason and held him there, not fiercely, but with a composure that admitted of no easy escape. “Well now, my lad? The lady of the house has spoken. It would scarcely become you to make a difficulty of it. One does not quarrel with a kindness when it is offered.”
He gave the faintest inclination of the head, an assent delivered on Jason’s behalf rather than requested of him. “Come,” he added, almost pleasantly, “do as she asks. There’s no sense in standing upon ceremony. Off with those clothes.”
The words fell lightly, yet they carried the quiet finality of something already decided, and in their wake the room seemed to contract, as though even the walls had drawn closer to witness what must follow.