12

“Who—?”

Jack’s head snapped off the pillow. In his dark bedroom he had been asleep on his stomach. His right leg was over someone else’s legs. Those legs were muscular, and smooth. His right arm was over someone else’s stomach. He withdrew his arm and propped up his shoulders by his elbows. He thought he had been dreaming. He had begun to move. He was primed. He slid his leg off the legs of the other person’s. Holding himself up on one elbow, gently he felt the other person’s breasts.

A naked girl had gotten into his bed with him.

He breathed hard. He listened to the low hum of the window air conditioner.

It had been weeks since a girl had been in bed with him.

After biking in the dark back from Vindemia Village he had played his guitar softly half an hour, thinking about his conversation with his father, about the previous weeks, setting The Tribe story up with the authorities, his five weeks in the maximum security prison in Kentucky, his time in the encampment in Alabama, his working day and night in Virginia, how confining Vindemia was.

He had been thinking about sex, how long it had been since he had loved anyone, anyone had loved him. Thinking about girls he had loved and who had loved him. Thinking about the when and where and how of some of the times he had made love. Wondering how in this life with people moving great distances continuously boys and girls, men and women got together, gobbled each other up, sometimes their minds and spirits as well as their bodies, given to each other, taken from each other, really loved and sometimes learned from each other, and then been separated by circumstances, families, schools, schedules, jobs, mobility, distances, no reasons romantic or usually even emotional. Perhaps because of practicalities, society’s new lessons, through its courts, the centeredness on self in mental health practice, Jack’s generation had been taught above all else that long-range relationships did not, would not work; one must not hope or even think of such.

So there were many of whom he thought, many missed, each once a swelling on his heart now a scar.

He ran his hand down the girl’s body.

He said, “Shana?”

There was an explosion next to him in the bed.

The sheet was flung, kicked up into the air.

A fist pounded down hard on the muscle below his right shoulder blade.

A hand gripped the muscle of his right shoulder. Another gripped his right hipbone.

He was flipped over onto his back.

She sat on the base of his stomach.

She was slapping his head, face, shoulders with both hands.

In the dark he tried to find her flaying arms, grab them, protect his head.

Finally he crunched his stomach muscles, sat up enough to get his arms around her back. He pulled her down to him.

She straightened her legs along his.

He rolled over on top of her.

She stretched her legs wide, hustled him inside her, gripped her legs behind his back.

It continued violent and was sudden.

Letting out a long exhale, she said: “Alixis.”

Then, almost immediately, she said: “More.”

There was more.

•

He did not realize the skin of his back was torn until the shower’s hot water hit it sometime later.

There was blood mixed with the water on the shower’s floor.

After drying off, he twisted to see the length of the gash on his back in the bathroom mirror.

Then he was sitting on the edge of his bed.

Behind him, on the bed, Alixis asked, “Anything the matter with you?”

“You cut me.”

“Oh, poor Jack.” Instantly, in the dark, the tips of her fingers ran along the cut on his back. She had known she had cut him, exactly where.

The cut was sticky and made her fingertips sticky.

He was still bleeding a little.

“Poor you,” she said. “Red blood. Red blooded boy.”

“Just thinking,” he said.

“What is poor bleeding boy thinking? Can’t afford the blood? Do you mind losing it that much?”

“If I did to you what you just did to me, I’d be in prison for twenty years.”

“Shit,” Alixis said. “I’m not the first girl who’s snuck into your bed while you were asleep and fucked your brains out.”

“No,” Jack said. “You’re not.”

“Boys like it any time, any place. Isn’t that right?”

Jack didn’t say anything.

“You all come with Everready batteries. I know that. I mean, you have it. You’ve got to give it. It’s got to go some place. Isn’t that true?”

He said, “Yeah.”

“And you can’t get pregnant.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Girls have something long considered an asset, something they can sell, give away, or not. It’s their choice.”

“And boys don’t have a choice?”

“Not if a girl wants it. Boys are sexy. They produce and produce and produce. Onto the ground or into a girl. It’s a girl’s choice to take it or not.”

“I see.”

“Boys can’t get hurt.” She knelt on the bed behind him. She folded her arms around his chest. She put her cheek on the top of his head. “Did poor Jack get hurt?”

“You can’t hurt a boy,” Jack said, “is what you said.”

“I’m sorry I scraped your back.” Moving against him, she was smearing the blood dripping down his back onto her belly.

“It’s all right.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Stings.”

“You shouldn’t even complain about it.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“You can’t say you didn’t enjoy it.”

“I enjoyed it.”

“Boys always enjoy it.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Sure,” she said. “Boys can’t stop themselves. Good boys always enjoy it. Good boys are fucking machines. They’re just there to be fucked. And what’s also nice is that they never complain.”

“No,” Jack said. “Never.”

She clutched his hair with her fingers and pulled his head back, way back. Her other hand clutched his extended throat, his neck muscles, and squeezed.

Her lips found his mouth. She forced her tongue through his lips, his teeth, into his throat.

He had to twist toward her. Again he wrapped his arms around her arms, around her back.

Alixis said: “More.”

There was more.