I scroll to the bottom of the article where a cursor sits blinking in an empty text box. “Want to leave a comment?” I type, “Re: ‘an amazing person’—Trust me, he’s not,” but the article is two years old and Henry didn’t do anything that bad anyway, so what does it matter? I toss the phone across my bed, go back to sleep.
Strane calls when I’m walking to work, stoned from the bowl I smoked while getting ready. My phone vibrates in my hand, the screen flashing his name, and I stop in the middle of the sidewalk like a tourist, oblivious to the flow of pedestrian traffic. I bring the phone to my ear and someone smacks my shoulder, a girl in a jean jacket—no, two girls in matching jackets, one black-haired, one blond. They walk with their arms linked, backpacks bumping against their tailbones. They must be from the high school, sneaking out during lunch period to roam downtown. The black-haired girl, the one who ran into me, shoots me a look over her shoulder. “Sorry,” she calls, her voice lazy and insincere.
On the phone, Strane says, “Did you hear me? I said I’m vindicated.”
“You mean you’re ok?”
“I’ll be back in my classroom tomorrow.” He laughs as though he can’t believe it. “I thought for sure I was finished.”
I stand on the sidewalk, my gaze still fixed on the two girls as they move down Congress Street, their undulating hair. Him back in the classroom, once again unscathed. Disappointment seeps into me as though I wanted to see him fall, a meanness that catches me off guard. Maybe I’m just stoned, my mind tumbling down a rabbit hole of feeling. I need to stop smoking before work. Need to grow up, let go, move on.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” Strane says.
The girls disappear down a side street, and I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I am. Of course I am. That’s great.” I start walking again, my legs unsteady. “I bet you’re relieved.”
“I’m a little more than relieved,” he says. “I was making peace with the idea of spending the rest of my life in prison.”
I stop myself from rolling my eyes at the exaggeration, as though he might somehow see me. Does he really believe he’d ever go to prison, a Harvard-educated, well-spoken white man? The fear feels unfounded and vaguely performative, but maybe it’s cruel to criticize. He’s been panicked, in crisis. He’s earned the right to some melodrama. I can’t understand what it feels like to stare down that kind of ruin. The risks he took were always greater than mine. Just be nice for once in your life, Vanessa. Why do you always have to be so fucking mean?
“We could celebrate,” I say. “I can get Saturday off. There’s a new Scandinavian restaurant everyone’s crazy about.”
Strane sucks in a breath. “Not sure that’s going to work,” he says. I open my mouth to offer something else—a different restaurant, a different day, to drive up to Norumbega rather than have him come here—but he adds, “I need to be cautious right now.”
Cautious. I squint at the word, try to understand what he’s really saying. “You’re not going to get in trouble for being seen with me,” I say. “I’m thirty-two years old.”
“Vanessa.”
“Nobody remembers.”
“Of course they do,” he says. Impatience sharpens his words. He shouldn’t have to explain that even at thirty-two years old I’m still illicit, dangerous. I am living, breathing evidence of the worst thing he’s ever done. People remember me. The whole reason he was on the brink of disaster is because people remember.
“It’d be best if we keep our distance for a while,” he says. “Just until this all cools down.”
I concentrate on breathing as I cross the street to the hotel, throwing a wave to the valet standing at the entrance to the parking garage, the housekeepers in the alley taking long drags from their cigarettes.
“Fine,” I say. “If that’s what you want.”
A pause. “It’s not what I want. It’s just how it has to be.”
I open the lobby door and my face is hit with a waft of air thick with jasmine and citrus. They literally pump the scent in through the vents. It’s supposed to energize and rejuvenate the senses; the kind of attention to detail that makes this a luxury hotel.
“It’s for the best,” he says. “For both of us.”
“I’m at work. I gotta go.” I hang up on him without saying goodbye. In the moment, it’s enough to make me feel I’ve won, but once I’m settled at my desk the pit in my stomach takes root and blooms into humiliation—discarded again at the first opportunity, tossed aside like trash. The same thing he did when I was twenty-two, when I was sixteen. It’s a truth so blatant and bitter, not even I can sweeten it into something easier to swallow. He only wanted to make sure I’d stay quiet. He used me again. How many times? What’s it going to take, Vanessa?
At my desk, I pull up Taylor’s Facebook page. At the top of her feed sits a status update posted less than an hour ago: The school that once promised to nurture and protect me has sided with an abuser today. I’m disappointed but not surprised. Expanding the thread of comments, one with a couple dozen likes shows up first: I’m so, so sorry. Is there any other course of action you can take, or is this the end? Taylor’s response turns my mouth dry.
In no way is this the end, she writes.
During my break, I go outside to the alley behind the hotel and dig a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the bottom of my purse. I smoke leaning against a fire escape, scrolling through my phone until I hear the scuff of shoes on pavement, a shush, a muffled laugh. Looking up, I see the two girls from my walk to work. They stand now at the far end of the alley, the blond girl clutching the black-haired one’s arm.
“Go ask her,” the blonde says. “Do it.”
The black-haired girl takes a step toward me, stops, crosses her arms. “Hey,” she calls. “Can we, um . . .” She looks over her shoulder to the blonde, who holds a fist against her mouth, grinning behind the cuff of her jean jacket.
“Do you have an extra cigarette?” the black-haired girl asks.
When I hold out two, they both rush forward. “They’re a little stale,” I say. That’s ok, they say. That’s totally fine. The blonde swings her backpack off one shoulder, pulls a lighter out of the front pocket. They light each other’s, cheeks hollowing as they inhale. They’re close enough for me to see the cat-eye points of their eyeliner, the tiny zits along their hairlines. When I’m around girls their age, the magic age Strane taught me to mythologize, I feel myself become him. Questions pile up in my mouth, ones designed to make them linger. I bite down hard to keep them from pouring out—what are your names, how old are you, do you want more cigarettes, or beer, or weed? It’s so easy for me to imagine how it must’ve been for him, desperate enough to give a girl whatever she wanted to keep her close.
The girls thank me over their shoulders as they move back down the alley, their giddiness replaced with a languid cool thanks to the cigarettes between their fingers. Swaying their hips, they turn the corner, give me one last look, and are gone.
I stare at the spot where they disappeared, the setting sun glinting off a stream of water leaking from a dumpster, the windshield of an idling delivery van. I wonder what those girls saw when they looked at me, if they sensed a kinship, if the reason they dared ask me for a cigarette was because they could tell that, despite my age, really I’m one of them.