Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. He’s like Humbert Humbert, assigning mythical significance to certain ages. I ask, “Don’t you mean nine to fourteen?” I mean it in a teasing way, figure he’ll understand the reference, but he looks at me like I’ve accused him of something horrible.
“Nine?” He jerks his head back. “I would never. Jesus, not nine.”
“It’s a joke,” I say. “You know, like in Lolita. The age nymphets are supposed to be?”
“Is that what you think I am?” he asks. “A pedophile?”
When I don’t answer, he stands, starts to pace again.
“You take that book too literally. I’m not that character. That’s not what we are.”
My cheeks burn at the criticism. It feels unfair; he’s the one who gave me the novel. What did he expect?
“I am not attracted to children,” he continues. “I mean, look at you, your body. You’re nothing like a child.”
I narrow my eyes. “What does that mean?”
He stops, momentarily snapped out of his anger, and I feel the power shift slightly back to me. “Well, what you look like,” he says. “You’re . . .”
“I’m what?” From the couch, I watch him fumble for words.
“I just mean you’re fairly developed. More like a woman than not.”
“So I’m fat.”
“No. God, no. That’s not what I’m saying. Of course not. Look at me, I’m fat.” He smacks his stomach, tries to get me to laugh, and part of me wants to because I know that’s not what he’s saying, but it feels good to make him feel bad. He sits beside me, takes my face in his hands. “You’re perfect,” he says. “You’re perfect, you’re perfect, you’re perfect.”
We’re quiet for a while, him gazing at me while I scowl up at the ceiling, not wanting to lose the upper hand so soon. I glance over at him and see a bead of sweat run down his cheek. I’m sweating, too—in my armpits, under my breasts.
He stares straight into me. “The thing I asked you to say on the phone? It was a fantasy. I wouldn’t really do that. I wouldn’t be that.”
I say nothing and turn my face back toward the ceiling.
“Do you believe me?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
He reaches for me, pulls me onto his lap, wraps his arms around me and holds me so my face rests against his chest. Sometimes it’s easier to talk this way, when we’re not looking at each other.
“I know I’m a little dark,” he says. “I can’t help it. I’ve always been this way. It’s a lonely way to live, but I’d made peace with that loneliness until you came along.” He tugs on my hair. You. “When you started turning in those poems and chasing after me, at first I thought, ok, this girl has a crush. No big deal. I’ll let her flirt and hang around the classroom a bit, nothing further than that. But the more time I spent with you, I started to think, my god, this girl is the same as me. Separate from others, craving dark things. Right? Aren’t you? Don’t you?”
He waits for my answer, for me to say yes, I am those things, but what he describes isn’t how I’ve ever thought of myself, and his memory of me chasing after him seems wrong, too. He gave me books before I ever gave him poems. He was the one who said he wanted to kiss me good night, that my hair was the color of red maple leaves. That all happened before I even realized what was really going on. Then I think of him insisting that I’m the one in charge and that he doesn’t care about the nonexistent dalliances I’ve had before him. There are things he needs to believe in order to live with himself, and it would be cruel for me to label these as lies.
“Think of the way you reacted when I first touched you,” he says. “Any of those other girls in your class would have been horrified by me doing that, but not you.”
He takes a handful of my hair and pulls my head back so he can see my face. His hold isn’t rough, but it isn’t soft, either.
“When we’re together,” he says, “it feels as though the dark things inside me rise to the surface and brush against the dark things inside you.” His voice shakes with feeling and his eyes are big and glassy, full of love. He studies my face and I know what he’s looking for—recognition, understanding, reassurance he’s not alone.
I think of his knee pressing into me behind his desk, his hand stroking my leg. I didn’t care that he hadn’t asked if it was ok, or that he was my teacher, or that nine other people were in the room. As soon as it happened, I wanted it to happen again. A normal girl wouldn’t have reacted that way. There is something dark about me, something that’s always been there.
When I tell him yes, I feel that, too—the darkness in him, the darkness in me—he’s all gratitude and adoration, his hand pulling tighter on my hair. Behind his glasses, his eyes dilate from wanting. He just wants and wants and wants. Sometimes when he’s on top of me, when he’s moaning with his eyes squeezed shut and not even noticing if I’m excited or sad or bored, I get the feeling all he really wants is to leave part of himself inside me, to stake his claim, not to impregnate me or anything like that, but something more permanent. He wants to make sure he’ll always be there, no matter what. He wants to leave his fingerprints all over me, every piece of muscle and bone.
He pushes into me then, braces his legs against the arm of the couch and groans into my ear. It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.
2017
There’s an Oktoberfest event at the hotel, the courtyard full of kegs, plastic beer mugs, and middle-aged couples stuffing their faces with bratwurst. Meanwhile, I sit at the concierge desk picking apart a soft pretzel with my fingers, the guests far too drunk to need anything from me.
Most employees are drunk, too. The restaurant manager was nearly falling down when I first came in. He’s in the back office now, gulping black coffee to sober up before the dinner rush. The valets park cars with loose limbs and unsteady eyes, and behind the front desk, even the owner’s daughter, only seventeen, sneaks sips from a highball glass. I have two Sazeracs in me, just enough for a soft buzz.
Idly, I click around on the computer, cycling through the endless loop of email-Twitter-Facebook-email-Twitter-Facebook. The journalist wrote to me again, a polite but pushy follow-up—Hi Vanessa, I wanted to reach out to you again and reiterate how committed I am to getting your truth out there—strain in her words as she tries to appeal to the desire for retribution she assumes I have.
From the corner of my eye, I see a drunken guest stagger into the lobby, and I stare more intently at the computer screen, hunch my shoulders, and scowl, knowing he’s less likely to bother me if I look like a hag. I hear the man say, “Hey there, honey,” and my stomach drops, but his eyes are set on seventeen-year-old Inez behind the front desk. I turn back to the computer, the journalist’s email. Getting your truth out there. My truth. As though I have any idea what that is.
Behind the front desk Inez tries to hide her glass, but the man sees. “Whaddya got there?” He peeks over the desk. “Drinking on the job? Bad girl.”