He is unshaven but his hair is damp, and he has a freshly scrubbed look about him. His flannel shirt is soft with age, drooping over the bump of his shoulders, the cuffs rolled up over his brown forearms. He has a cup in his hand and under his arm a book that he lays on the table as he claims the seat across from me. Intensity. Dean Koontz.
In the distance, the tsunami siren blares. We recognize the test pattern and ignore it.
“You’re a writer, then,” he says.
“Nothing gets past you.” I sink into my chair, still collecting my notes and battered index cards. I wind a rubber band around the latter and shove them into my satchel.
“So hostile. You got no time for the guy who caught you breaking and entering?”
His tone is even, but the challenge in his eyes, framed by the heavy rims of his glasses, stops me. I snap my bag closed and lean into the back of my chair.
“I apologized for that. What else is there to say?”
“People do have unnecessary conversations sometimes, Alice.”
My name sounds too easy coming from him. Too familiar.
“Look. I get that you feel entitled to mess with me. But unless you’ve got something to tell them down at Barney’s cop shack, you can fuck straight off.”
“Got it. But have dinner with me first.”
“Yeah. That’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
I don’t want to answer. The fact that he’s here makes me uneasy. I know his schedule—at 7:00 a.m. he should be at work. It occurs to me that he may have followed me, and I don’t like that turn of the tables at all.
I get to my feet and sling the satchel over my shoulder. “Let’s just say, it seems like a bad idea.”
“I can’t believe that’s something that normally stops you.”
Heat rushes up my neck. I pull up my hood to cover it, and carry my dishes to the plastic bin next to the trash can.
He raises his cup to bid me goodbye. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
I grit my teeth and turn away. It feels like a long walk to the corner where I’ve left my bike, and with every step I feel his stare at my back.
It takes all I have not to turn around.
* * *
He is all I can think about on my way home from the café, through my hot shower, as I brush my teeth and hair and crawl at last, at 9:00 a.m., into bed.
At first his face fills my mind’s eye. The sharp line of his jaw; the row of even white teeth, flashing like sunlight on water; the double frame of his glasses and thick dark eyebrows, under which his eyes gleam with mischief. But as I lie in my bed with the memory of him, stroking tentatively over the thin, warm fabric of my cotton underwear, his face becomes shrouded, dissolving into obscurity. I know it’s him the way you know it in a dream: it’s his presence, his name in my mind, but he has become both more and less than himself. In my fantasies, he’s an archetype, faceless and almost formless. He is what he does. He is the idea of a man.
I remember his house, the doorknob cold in my hand, his long arm stretched above me to hold the door closed. He’s angry that I’ve invaded his space, angry that I want to leave. I have crept deliberately into his den and my curiosity has a price.
You want to know me, he says, and his hand is in my hair. The scent of him fills my mind. He tips my head back and kisses me openmouthed, laying a first easy claim to the inside of me. I feel his attention, all his focus on me. He has tasted me now. He can smell me. His hand moves down the front of my body to my breast, and I feel my nipple gather in his palm. His body stiffens, slows for a moment, and I sense the predatory tension in him.
One of my hands is flat against his chest, the other clutching the doorknob at the small of my back. But I know from his kiss and the boldness of his hand on my breast that I won’t be leaving until he has fucked me. The inevitability panics and excites me. This could hurt, it could be awful; I could get pregnant. A procession of frightening consequences marches through my mind, but every protest is swept aside by the simple, profound need of his to fuck me. Of my need to let him.
He reaches under my shirt, subduing me with the weight of his body, and unclasps the front of my bra. He moves back, assessing, arrogant, and lowers his head to my breast as he unbuttons his jeans, then gathers my skirt to hitch it over my hips. He strokes me through my underwear, one finger teasing at the hem as if there is a choice in this for either of us.
I open my mouth and he kisses me again, puts words literally into my mouth.
You wanted to get caught.
He drags one knuckle over my clitoris and traces my lower lip with his tongue.
Wanted to get fucked, didn’t you.
He slides a finger under my panties, inside me, and I hear the breath hiss past his teeth as we discover together how wet I am. His one finger is joined by a second, and he draws them up my folds, over my clitoris, circling.
He moves back to see my face, my bare breasts, then his mouth returns to mine. His mouth is hotter, more demanding. He licks my teeth and bites my lip. His fingers are back inside me, two and then three, his eyes on my face as my resistance dies away.
I begin to move with him, following his rhythm. The tips of my breasts are drawn up tight against the rasp of his shirt. I test him with a twist of my wrists and feel the fingers of both his hands tighten against me. This comforts me somehow. I know he won’t let go, will not stop, and the knowledge gathers between my legs like lightning in a storm, and with his mouth over mine I am coming. Pain and desire meet inside me, sharp as a thunderclap. My cunt grabs and releases, clenching hard around his fingers, an undulating ripple moving upward through my body. I am still coming when he lifts me up and open, his hands around my knees, then pulls me down on top of him. He is huge and I feel the invasion of this, but I spread my legs and let him in until he’s buried inside me, immediately orgasmic, pounding his need to the depths of me with long, firm strikes against the wall of my cervix. He shudders, and I feel the trembling pulse of his ejaculation—the final evidence of his domination, of my surrender.
Yes, he says, oh, fuck yes.
I open my eyes, blink into the morning light with the blood still roaring in my ears. The sheets are damp, my limbs buzzing as though I’ve just taken a hard electric shock.
Jack’s face reforms in my mind’s eye. It’s his smile I see as I drift off to sleep, my hand still clamped between my legs.
CHAPTER THREE
There was a boy in my third-grade class named Danny Kukal. When they lined us up for the yearbook photo, he was at the tall end, while I brought up the rear as the smallest in class. He ran with a pack of unruly boys with chapped lips and cowlicked hair, easily dominating even the fifth-graders on the playground. Every recess they took over the tetherball courts and the coveted red rubber balls, merciless and loud and endlessly annoying.
I felt myself somewhat protected from the worst of their behavior. I was a girl. A pretty girl, apparently. But as the school year went on and the boys settled on their targets, my distaste for them grew. Danny Kukal was the worst. I resented his popularity, his quick cruelty toward the smaller kids, his arrogance. I detested his wide yellow teeth, too big for his face, and the swaggering upturn of his butt under the school corduroys. Quietly my disgust swelled into a hatred too big to contain. I began to offer a snarky counterpunch to his taunts, under my breath at first, then bolder as others heard and appreciated my childish wit. I felt my power. The power of words, of mind over might.
Danny heard, too, and didn’t know what to do about me. I could see the struggle play out on his face and in his attempts at bluster. I was an unfamiliar target. A girl. Even a kid as charmless as Danny