Stranglehold (4 page)

He put the bottles down on the coffee table and kissed her.

Her father had never kissed her.

He hadn't done that at least.

But she'd thought she would never want a boy to touch her after what he'd done, that at sixteen she was through with sex forever. So she was surprised at how quickly and how much she'd wanted Martin.

She thought he was beautiful to look at and even more beautiful to touch. He was hard and warm and smooth everywhere. And if he got a little pushy sometimes like he had about the gun and was just a little too full of himself sometimes it didn't matter because men were like that. And the first time, in the backseat of his father's Cadillac, that he'd brought her to orgasm—she didn't really think it was possible for girls to have an orgasm despite what everybody was saying—she felt like she'd gotten her virginity back just to lose it all over again.

It was only afterwards that she felt like the same old damaged goods.

She always did. It was as though sex were some sort of drug that cured all the loneliness and guilt and unhappiness but was also, for her, a deadly poison.

She tried never to think about what it would be like afterwards.

She wouldn't now.

He unbuttoned her blouse and pushed the bra up out of the way and cupped her breast. Her nipple rose beneath his palm and sluiced sudden magic through her body. He could make her have an orgasm sometimes just by stroking one of her nipples. He didn't know that.

He didn't know a lot of things about her. Nobody did. "Come upstairs," he said and took her hand.

She followed.

It was the first time he was ever rough with her.

She didn't know why. She wondered if it had anything to do with the gun. Some aggression thing.

Her nipples ached where he'd squeezed them. She ached inside too and there'd be bruises on her upper arms tomorrow.

She'd had no orgasm. Not this time.

When he dropped her off it was clear she was mad at him. She hadn't said a word but she knew he knew. The silence itself was enough to tell him.

What he didn't know was that she was probably just as mad at herself. For not stopping him.

She'd never even tried to stop him.

She'd just
let
him.

"I'll call you," he said. He sounded a little remorseful. Not remorseful enough.

She slammed the car door and didn't look back.

She wouldn't be taking any calls from Martin, she thought. Not for a good long while and maybe never. There were other boys.

You just don't do that to people, she thought.

You just don't hurt them for no reason. Just because you want to and somebody lets you.

She walked up the steps to the porch, opened the door and walked inside.

Her mother was sitting in the living room reading a day-old newspaper. Judging by the good, rich smell coming from the kitchen, dinner tonight was going to be ham and cabbage.

"Hello,
Liddy
," her mother said and looked at her over the top of the paper. She saw her expression darken. Then she put aside the paper.

"What is it?" she said.

And all she could do was cry a little while her mother got up and put her arms around her and hugged her and asked her what was wrong? what had happened? because she couldn't tell, she wasn't supposed to be making love to boys in the first place, not at her age, not coming from this family.

So
Liddy
had yet another guilty little secret.

Plymouth, New Hampshire

July 1971

They were sitting at a desk inside the small glassed-in cubicle when Harry
Danse
came shuffling through the stationhouse door. The glass was cloudy from years of cigarette smoke but Harry seemed to spot his son immediately. He walked over.

"
Hiya
, Ralph."

Duggan nodded. He saw Harry was putting on weight. His son wouldn't look at him.

"How's Ruth?"

"Same."

Ralph Duggan felt bad for the man.
Harry'd
married a pretty young woman who'd turned into one salty old ball-breaker of a wife and here was his boy Arthur in trouble again.

Only this time they'd caught the kid red-handed.

"Before we get into what, uh, happened here I'd like for you to see something," Harry said. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

"What's this?" said Duggan.

"High school report card. See what it says there? All
A
's but for one
B
in algebra. See, the boy's doing pretty well, Ralph."

"This Ruth's idea?"

"I guess so, yeah. She'd of come down herself but she's not
feelin
' too well."

"Flu?"

"Uh-huh."

Duggan sighed and settled back into his chair. He looked the card over. Harry wasn't kidding. All A's. Duggan handed the report card back to him. Harry folded it and tucked it into his shirt as carefully as though it were a page from the family Bible.

"Let me ask you something, Harry. Sit down here. How's the store
doin
'?"

Harry sat.

"Not bad. Still the only place to buy beans and boots in the town of Ellsworth. Still a long way for folks to come into town here or on over to Compton."

"That new complex out on 93 hurt you any?"

"Some, maybe."

"How come the boy don't work for you, Harry?"

"We was planning on sending him to college next year."

"You can do that?"

"We think we can."

Duggan looked at the boy and then at the father. The boy was slumped in his chair, frowning, looking grim. He guessed the boy didn't much care for getting caught. The father leaned hunched toward Duggan across the desk. For whatever reason he reminded Duggan of a dog hoping for a treat—looking at him with sorrowful big eyes. Well, he wasn't getting any treats tonight.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the fat red Swiss army knife.

"You stock these in the store, don't you?"

"Sure I do."

"They go for about how much?"

"That kind's twenty-five, twenty-six dollars maybe."

"So what's Arthur doing stealing this knife from Becker's?"

Harry looked disconsolate. He shook his head.

"Right. Damned if I know either," said Duggan.

He let the silence work awhile. He could do that much anyway.

"The fact is that Becker's not pressing charges. I got to tell you, that's against my better judgment. But Old Man Becker knows you and respects you, Harry, the two of you being in pretty much the same business all these years. If it were me, I'd see your boy in Juvenile Court. You know and I know this ain't the first time he's been in trouble, even if we couldn't make it stick to him."

He heard the boy mumble something.

"'
Scuse
me?"

"I just said ... you never ..."

"That's right. We
never
. But I'll tell you something, kid, all I had to do was take one look at you to know you were guilty as shit on that break-in last summer so don't you try to bullshit a
bullshitter
. You're right.
We never
. But someday, somebody's going to. You can bet your A-plus college-bound pants on that. Somebody's going to."

He looked at Harry. Harry reminded Duggan of that same old dog only now the
dog'd
been beaten.

Why was there always the fucking temptation to apologize to this man?

"You can take him home, Harry. Tell Ruth I said hello."

He opened the door for them. The boy went first, gangly and moving fast. His father followed more slowly a few paces back. They could have been a pair of strangers coincidentally walking down the same hall at the same time.

Duggan leaned out the cubicle.

"Hey, Harry?"

He stopped and turned. His son kept going out the door. "What college, Harry? Where's he going?"

"Boston University. Boston, Massachusetts."

He said it with what for Harry almost amounted to pride. Duggan nodded.

"Well, good luck, Harry."

He watched the man walk away. He lit himself a cigarette and sat back down at the desk.

He wondered if he'd seen the last of Arthur
Danse
. Probably. The boy was going to college in the fall. He couldn't say he'd be one bit sorry.

Boston University. The school had a fine reputation, even Duggan knew that. He was impressed by that much about Harry's kid, anyway:

A punk's a punk, he thought.

Probably Arthur was Boston's problem now.

Boston, Massachusetts

 
September 1974

"I thought you ought to hear this personally," the girl said to him. "Go fuck yourself."

She turned to leave.

Oh, yeah
, he thought. You're very tough. Sure. Play it that way.

But he'd made a hell of a mistake on this one. He had to admit it.

"I didn't know, Annie! I swear I didn't. Come on in, will you? Just listen to my side."

"
To hell
with your side, Arthur."

"Just give me a minute, will you? Hear me out."

He stepped to the side. He looked at her. She hesitated for a moment and then marched into his apartment. He could see she was seriously pissed. No act. He liked her mad. In fact he felt more turned on by her right now than he'd been when he was fucking her two nights ago.

"You realize how humiliating this is? I let you make love to me Friday, and then Saturday night you're screwing my
roommate
?"

He closed the door behind her.

"I didn't
know
that. Look, Annie. Why would I do a thing like that? Do I look stupid? Do I look like I have the urge to self-destruct here? You were just two attractive women, that's all—two
very
attractive women. Denise and I danced at the freshman party. You didn't go, you weren't there. Then later on, after the dance, I asked her out. That was last weekend, Annie. I didn't even
know
her. I
barely
knew you. You and I hadn't gone out yet, we'd only made the
date
to go out. So who could tell how you and I were going to ... get along? I sure didn't know we'd be making love the night before last, now did I?"