Age of Consent (20 page)

“Talk to you like what?” he said slowly. His one eye blinked at her. “I'm only making an observation.”

“But you shouldn't say—”

“I already did.”

She looked down at the floor. He was really very rude, she thought. She wondered why she was so glad he held her hand, but she
was
glad. It thrilled her, even though it was so little a gesture after all her greater ones. She accepted it, cherished it, knowing all the while that she gave it greater importance than she ought to.

“Close the curtain there,” he instructed. He meant the cotton blind across the wall of windows on one side of the room. The blind had a coating like a shower curtain and was made from material that did not hang like cloth. It was a flimsy covering that was meant to offer a degree of modesty to the patient or perhaps only to block the lights of the hall.

“Don't the nurses usually do that?”

He shook his head. “Go. Do it. Nobody will care.”

She rose, watching his face. He wasn't angry, not exactly, not yet. She got the feeling that the things he asked her to do were a kind of test to see if she cared about him. To see where her loyalties lay. She went to the window that faced into the corridor. Outside, a few feet away, was the nurses station: a desk, a lamp, a standing fan, a blond nurse currently on the telephone. She saw, too, that the nurse was not alone. There was an orderly, leaning on one end of the long desk, drinking coffee and watching the nurse as she spoke with the caller. Evidently the orderly had brought the nurse coffee, too, because it steamed on the ledge above the desk. Most of the ceiling lights had been switched off for the night and the desk was now lit by a lamp. June watched the nurse take a sip of coffee, then finish the phone call. She watched the orderly waiting, his face registering an attraction that the nurse, too, had taken in. June could see the way the nurse smiled at him, and the kind of composed anticipation that the orderly returned. Locked into each other, they had no interest in what was happening in Craig's room or in even glancing her way as she stood stiffly at the window, unsure of what Craig was asking of her, or why he wanted the curtain drawn.

“Go on, close it,” he said.

She pushed the curtain together. She could feel Craig's gaze on her, on her legs, on her ass. She sensed he had a plan, and that she mustn't interfere with that plan. She understood, too, that the moony persistence that the orderly displayed toward his nurse was of a different type to that of Craig, who she heard moving in the bed, adjusting his position. She wanted to turn around, to deflect whatever was starting between them, but she didn't dare.

She heard him now, the deep, slow voice, the determined instruction. “Take off your blouse,” he said.

She could not say a word, not to protest, not to agree.

She heard Craig speak again. “Undo the front,” he said. “Unbutton it.”

Her lips were dry, her palms wet. She felt a bead of perspiration run down her side. She had never before taken off a stitch of clothing in public. It wasn't the sort of thing she did.

“Nobody can see.”

“Even so—”

“Please,” he said.

She did not know why he was choosing this moment. She wondered if the crash, the near-death experience, had altered Craig's views on such matters. Maybe he needed to feel attractive. Maybe he needed confirmation that she saw him as vital and desirable. She thought about his eye. She thought about the hole drilled in his head. She undid the first few buttons of her blouse. There were things she wanted to discuss with Craig; their age difference, for one. He must be aware that she was in her mid-thirties—she had a fifteen-year-old daughter, after all. But she didn't know exactly how old he was, and surely they should talk about that before sex got started. Which was now, apparently.

The remaining buttons were now undone and the folds of her blouse hung loosely at her sides.

She heard Craig again, his voice low. “Turn around,” he said.

She glanced at her watch; it was a quarter to eleven. If anyone walked in, they would know what was going on. She looked down at her chest, at the freckled sternum, the plain white bra. If she turned now there was no going back. He would see her naked, or half naked, and this would be the new expectation every time they met. Did that matter? Did she expect they'd keep seeing each other after he was discharged from the hospital if there was no sex? Anyway, she'd wanted sex, hadn't she? But she'd wanted, at the very least, to kiss him first.

She breathed in and out slowly. She did not want to do what she was about to do. Nobody was forcing her. Nobody could make her do a thing. And yet here she was, as though her body did not belong to her, as though she had no will at all. She had watched herself do as Craig asked, unbuttoning the blouse, and now she crossed her hands in front of her and swung toward him, as he had directed.

He was sitting up, his legs apart. She could see how he stared at her breasts, his face hard with concentration. It had been a long time since she'd been with a man. She'd forgotten the energy that came with desire, the flush on the skin, the intensity in the man's eyes, the muscles, flexed and waiting. She opened her mouth and a little breath escaped, she felt a charge move up her spine.

“Move your hands,” he said.

She didn't know if she could. She pleaded with herself to do as he asked but she wished that if they had to do this—to do this right now—she could lie down and let him move over her and be somewhere private. She didn't think she should undress so close to the window. She didn't think she should be so brazen.

“Craig, I don't know if—”

“Pull up your bra.”

It was too much. She almost said so. It wouldn't be difficult to get her blouse straight, grab her handbag, and leave, would it? What could he do? If he yelled at her, he would have the nurses to contend with. Esther would set him straight.
Put that thing away
, she'd say.
And keep your hands to yourself in my hospital!
That was the kind of scolding he needed. But she was not Esther, and he would not be interested in her if she were. She looked at him, his bandaged head poking toward her, his good eye fixed on her chest. She wasn't a small-breasted woman. The breasts were certainly more impressive in their bra, shaped, blooming proudly outward instead of flopping down. If she lifted them out of the bra cups, they would dangle unnaturally unless she removed her bra altogether, which she did not want to do now, right here, just feet from the orderly and nurse on the other side of the glass, whose own lovemaking was so far confined to words and glances.

But she did not want to lose that expression on Craig's face, his longing for her, his attention. All her life she'd craved just this kind of smoldering look from a man, this raw desire. Yes, she had wanted other things, too: friendship, security, a home. But at the heart of it all, at the very center, she needed to feel as though she fulfilled this very necessary, authentic desire.

She drew the straps of her bra down her shoulders a few inches, caught in the embrace of his stare. Now he could see her full breasts. Uncaged from the bra they were strangely shaped, with nobbly areas around the nipples, and wide, dark areolas. The angle of her nipples was low, facing down; a disappointment, perhaps. It would have been so much better for him not to see her breasts like this, in the unforgiving hospital light, with the humming of machines and the silent dripping IVs and the people just outside. But here they were, and nothing could be more clear than the promise of her naked breasts, and her willingness to disrobe at his request.

“Touch yourself,” he said.

She wondered if he were only joking, that at any moment he would relax his gaze and tell her that he was sorry and had been wrong to say anything like that. Maybe he'd explain that he'd gotten carried away because he found her sexy, holding his apology up like a bouquet of roses. Button up and give me a hug, he might say. Wouldn't any decent man say that?
Button up and give me a hug, if you can find a way of doing that with all these tubes.

But that wasn't what he said, though she longed for these words, as well as for his embrace. She knew that with the arm in traction and the crack in the pelvis, and the way his head was bandaged and unmovable, there wasn't much chance she'd be able to hug him, but those facts didn't stop her wishing for it. She wanted him to stand beside her, lean and tall and fully able once again, and for her to reach up and bury her face in his neck, to feel the heat of his body against her own, to press into the architecture of his bones and muscles, and to feel him press into her. But she needed all this to take place in privacy.

“Put your fingers on your nipples,” he said.

“I don't think I can—”

“Yes, you can. Do it. Do it for me.”

She stared down at her breasts. The fluorescent light caught the blueness of the veins that crisscrossed and all the little imperfections of her skin. They were enormous, her breasts, but they'd taken on a lot of the extra calories she'd been storing and the weight caused them to hang like skirts above her stomach. Still, she imagined that was a turn-on for a man. Big breasts, that was a plus, surely? Even so, she couldn't bear to touch them, to pretend that touching herself that way gave her pleasure. She was already imagining how in the future she would remember this moment, standing on the cold linoleum tiles, exposing herself. She decided a good compromise would be to hold her breasts, covering them as she did so, but in a manner that might fool Craig into thinking she was getting some pleasure from it. She thought she could manage that much.

She cupped each one in a hand, then slowly lifted them up. She did not dare look at Craig, fearing his disapproval. There were secrets to men she had never understood. What had moved him to insist that she show her breasts in so unromantic a setting? And why would he want her to fondle herself, as though his touch was wholly unnecessary? There was the question, too, of where exactly she was meant to focus her gaze. Was she meant to look down, as though admiring her own breasts? Or watch her fingers and pretend they were another's? Was she supposed to look at Craig, as though catching him in the web of erotic play between them? It was hard to tell, so she closed her eyes. That proved quite useful and she managed to do as he wanted for several minutes before opening her eyes once again, blinking into the opaque brightness of the hospital room.

She saw at once that he was in a kind of trance, watching her, his bandaged head rolled back, his mouth open. She wasn't sure what was going on—it was difficult to work out his expression under all those bandages. She could see the look of concentration, how his mouth opened and closed in vague little gasps like a caught fish. For a second she wondered if he was in pain, wondered if he'd suffered some kind of seizure, but then she glanced south to what he was doing with his good hand, how it was moving under the bedsheets. Even with the injured arm in traction and the pelvis aligned in a rigid splint to keep him from aggravating the fracture there, even though he was using only a single eye to stare at her breasts, he was able to masturbate, sending the sheet springing up with every pump.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“Baby…”

She wanted him to stop, to stop right now. But it was too late; she saw his hand suddenly freeze, his face grimace, the muscles in his arm relax and be still. What he'd done, what he'd done right there in front of her, that
act
, reminded her of an awful trip to the monkey house at the National Zoo. Like those animals, Craig seemed untroubled by his body's demands, whatever those demands might be. Now she was going to have to say something, but she didn't know what. She waited for him to call her over but he said nothing. And so she turned to one side, lowering her shoulders in an attempt to cover herself as she placed her breasts once more into the bra, tugging her blouse around her and fastening the buttons down the front.

She had crossed a line;
they
had crossed a line. And now there was a sudden emptying of hope. It was as though the dream of a burgeoning love had been punctured by some nasty doppelgänger dream, a raw, evil version of their relationship that now substituted for what she'd been wishing for, what she'd been imagining the past many weeks.

She straightened her clothes, combed her hair behind her ears with her fingers, then wiped her palms on her skirt. She still felt exposed. She remembered with relief that she'd brought a jacket. She thought surely he would say something to her, as she was standing next to the bed, inches from him. But his head was tipped away.

She wasn't sure how to behave in such circumstances. She felt the way she did after stopping at a gas station and buying a Hershey bar and a Snickers, then eating them both all at once so quickly that she didn't even enjoy it. After such an event, she wanted to pretend nothing had happened, or that it did not count or did not matter. But such trickery was impossible with someone else involved. She thought she would say something to him now, but did not know what to say. She stared at the floor. It felt such a burden to look up. Finally she picked her handbag off the floor and whispered, “Good night.”

She thought he'd at least say good night back to her, but he did not. He said nothing. She wondered if he expected her to just shuttle out, dismissed from the room. Surely nobody could be that cold. She stared at him, and now she realized that he was not moving. The awful fear floated toward her: Perhaps because of the excitement and strain on his heart, he had died.

A little gasp sprang from her, and a sudden, overwhelming horror. She cried out. Her legs wobbled, unable to balance her. She collapsed forward onto the bed, the handbag dropping to the floor, its contents spilling. A lipstick flew across the linoleum like a hockey puck; her hands sprang to break her fall, one on the mattress, the other on the hard frame of his pelvic brace. Her mind could not hold the cascade of thoughts and feelings that flooded into her, that seemed to swirl around her. He was dead; she was falling. The awfulness of it was overwhelming until she finally felt him shudder and cry out and tell her to get the hell off him. Get the hell off him now!