Age of Consent (8 page)

There was the open door leading out to the dark inviting night, and all she could think was to run, but her legs were shaky. She'd left behind the stupid wooden sandals and her naked feet did not feel sturdy or even under her command. She didn't dare run, but instead crawled on her hands and knees, down on the floor where she hoped she would not be seen. She kept hearing the manager's cries; imagined the sting of the antennae against his neck and shoulders, heard his garbled answers that he did not know where the money was, that he didn't know about
any
money.

She watched as the mattress suddenly fell onto the night table, which itself tipped over, sending the drawer flying out toward her head. She rolled into a ball, squeezing her eyes shut as it missed her by inches and hit the floor. She forced herself to stay still, to think clearly. She needed to get out the door and run. The men were still in battle; nobody would see her. She needed to keep moving. She opened her eyes, crawled forward once more. She only had to make another twelve feet or so, but the men were there, legs flailing, the long sweep of the metal rods stinging the air. She crouched forward and suddenly in front of her—she felt dizzy seeing it—
there was the money
.

The bills were in a roll just as she'd left them. They had been stuck or pinned or behind something—she could not imagine how the money ended up beside her, but there it was. She could hear the beating continue. She thought maybe she should call out,
The money is here, goddamn it, leave the guy alone!
But Craig would kill her if she let anybody know she was in the room. Being underage was another of her many faults. Her job was to stay hidden. People weren't allowed to see her. And certainly not in a motel room.

She heard the man yell out, then form a sentence. This comforted her, that he wasn't so hurt that he couldn't talk. He said he did not know about money but if it meant so much, why not go to the office and rob the cash register?

“There's tons of money in there!” the guy told Craig. “If you want money, go
take it
!”

“I'm not a fucking thief!” shouted Craig. “I'm not some lowly criminal who robs a fucking cash register, you cunt!” He kept hitting the manager as he spoke, punctuating his words with swipes from the antennae. “I'm only after what's
mine
!”

She closed her fingers over the wad of bills. She measured the distance between herself and the open door that led into the night. And then, in a moment she thought she might regret, she held tight to the five hundred in her closed fist, and she ran.

It was not that easy to get away. She didn't have any shoes. She didn't have any idea where to run now that she was out of the room. The security light flicked on as she passed, but she did not stop. The men in the room did notice, of course. The light meant someone was coming and this paused them.

She ran down the path, skirted the turn, crossing the parking lot with its rough surface and sharp pebbles. She moved in high leaping steps as her feet stung, climbed a bank of grass, cool and lumpy on her naked soles. Now she was beside a road that paralleled the bank of highway that rumbled above. She stopped, bending forward and resting her hands on her knees, looking out at the motel as she tried to regulate her breathing. She wanted water. Water and a bicycle, or at least a pair of shoes.

She was ready to give up. If there had been a phone booth, she would have called her mother and explained what happened. Or not explained but said,
Please help me. Please,
I need you.
And her mother would get that serious tone in her voice and say,
Bobbie, where are you? Can you see a road sign? Can you see the name of a store or a restaurant or anything near you?
Her mother would tell her to stay put and that she'd come. But her mother was not at home. She wasn't sure where she was. Bobbie didn't even have a number to call because by now her mother would be driving home, arriving sometime in the middle of the night, exhausted from the road.

So there was no one. She would walk, she decided. How far could it be? Ten miles, twelve? She'd won a National Fitness Award last year in school. She was a good walker. But it was the shoes. That was her problem. And she wasn't too sure about directions.

Even so, the night was pleasant and dry, the temperature comfortable. She thought about finding a place to lie down here on the bank between roads, here in the grass. How bad could that be? Hadn't people slept outside hundreds of years ago? Or if not hundreds, then thousands of years ago? In the summer, no less? With darkness to cloak them and the serenity of the stars? Hadn't she read a poem like that in school? And who could see her out here? She dropped to her knees, then curled her legs under her. Her mind was cluttered with images of Craig and the manager and those awful metal antennae. She pushed them from her thoughts. She was so tired. Surely it was all right to lie down now? She lowered herself into the tall grass; if she stayed on her back nobody would see her. She closed her eyes and let her mind swim toward sleep. She told herself she was surely hidden. Not even the moon could find her shadow.

CAR HEADLIGHTS SPRAYED
light on her face, and she was tossed from sleep into the night she now detested and wished away. She was blind and chilly and footsore, and she was scared. Even so, her first thought was that somehow her mother had figured out where she was and had come for her. The stopped car meant she was safe now. Rescued. She realized that this was what she'd longed for all night, to be rescued. Though it was impossible, and part of her knew it was impossible, in her dreamlike state and the suddenness of her awakening she believed that the greatness of her need had defied all physics and made itself known across miles and time to her mother.

The night air was pricked with dampness, as though the rain that gathered did so from beneath the ground. She sat up, hugging herself, wet from the grass. The sudden waking had jarred a place inside her stomach where she now felt a sour pinching. She shielded her eyes with one hand as someone threw open the car door. She could not see properly—the headlights were too bright—but she could see it was not her mother; it was a man. She could tell it was a man by the force of the door and how he left it open, and his outline in the beam of headlights, large and wide and tall. She thought perhaps it was the police, but then she saw exactly who it was, still wearing his ball cap, and engulfed even now—oh, she could hardly believe this—in the same fierce anger that had possessed him back at the motel.

On the car radio, turned up loud, A Taste of Honey was singing “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” a harmless teen song that seemed directly at odds with the glaring lights. The force of headlights had temporarily jarred her vision. Everything in front of her was halos and drifting clouds of color and great gobs of blackness through which she could see nothing, even after she pushed her palms into her eyes and blinked. She got to her knees. She felt weak and heavy, held down by the light, as though it was a weight that pinned her.

“Barbara!” His voice was booming and deep and full. “Where do you think you are going!”

She would have loved to have an answer. Instead, she sat down on the grass once more.

“Get up,” he snapped.

She stood. She thought about running and would have done so, but for the no shoes.

“Well, come on! What do I have to do? Pull you up off the ground and carry you to the car? I have a job to get to, you know.”

Her sleep, which had lasted less than twenty minutes, seemed to have been much longer. And now her mind filled with images of the snapped-off antennae and that man on the floor with his hands in front of him, trying to ward off Craig. She wondered how Craig had found her but then she saw the obvious trail she'd made through the wet grass. She might as well have put out signs.

Suddenly the headlights were off. She could hear the DJ on the car radio talking over the long exit of a record, and when she turned around she saw Craig peeing on a spot of ground just in front of the car.

“Let's move!” he said, doing up his fly.

She got back into the car and Steely Dan started playing, and Craig said “Finally!,” though she didn't know if he meant finally she was in the car or finally there was a decent song on the playlist.

He put his pipe between his teeth and wheeled the car around getaway-style, his head bent over one shoulder.

He said, “I'm going to be late and it's your fault. That money—how the fuck did you leave it behind? I mean that is just stupid. Don't tell me you're sorry because—”

“I'm not sorry,” she interrupted.

“Good God, do you do
nothing
but argue?” he said. He drew his hand up as though to hit her but didn't. “One day, Barbara, someone is going to kick the shit out of you, acting like you do.”

And now, into her vision came the antennae from the motel TV. He'd taken them with him. There they were, lying across the top of the dash like the stems of headless flowers. She thought,
If he touches me with them I'll…
But she had no idea what she'd do. She couldn't think clearly with the wind blowing through the windows and the cloud of traffic noise. It felt like being out on an airport runway or fixed into the engine of a helicopter. Her brain couldn't work with all the noise.

“If I had my pipe instead of this Mickey Mouse toy shit of a pipe, I'd be a lot happier,” he said, then tossed the pipe in her direction. “Fix me up a bowl.”

The sandwich bag of pot was lodged in the ashtray. She took a pinch of grass, rolling her fingers to feel for the seeds and separate them out, letting them drop. She bent down, avoiding the ceaseless wind driving through the car's open windows, and tamped the leaves so they would catch when she brought a match to them, which she did now. Lighting the bowl was the next thing he was going to ask of her so she might as well.

“Thank Christ for reefer,” he said, and turned up the volume button on the radio. He took the pipe from her and drew in a long toke. “I wouldn't need to smoke so much if things were less fucked up in this world, but you can see how it is, can't you?”

“Are you taking me home?” she said, her voice raised in order to be heard over the wind.

“No time. You can sleep in the car at the station,” Craig said.

“I don't want to sleep in the car. I want to go home and take a shower.”

“You should have thought about that before you
made us so damned late
!”

This was the end. She wasn't going to get home tonight. Her mother would arrive to an empty house and go crazy. And even if her mother didn't check the bedroom to see that she was there, the fact was that Bobbie would miss her morning shower. There would be no time to wash her hair. She'd have to go to school in these clothes and without her books. She'd arrive for a chemistry test without her calculator, fail the test, get detention. Worse yet, she didn't have any shoes.

“I have to go home before school starts,” she said. “I don't have any shoes.”

“You left your goddamned shoes? How could you have done that!”

“I couldn't walk in them—”

“People walk in
shoes,
Barbara. All the fucking time.”

“I couldn't run, I mean.”

“You think you're so smart—who leaves their shoes behind?”

“I don't think I'm so smart—”

“Yes you do! You think because you get good grades that makes you smart. Well, it doesn't mean anything, Barbara. You got that? It doesn't mean dick.”

All at once she felt a fury course through her. She wanted to kick out, or break up the car. Instead, she did the one thing that she knew would get to him. She reached forward and punched a button on the radio, changing the station. That did it.

“Hey! Jesus CHRIST!” It was as though she'd done something awful to him, actual physical damage, changing the radio like that. His music suddenly gone, his station gone. That station was
his
, the songs on it were the soundtrack to his
life
. But coming through the car's immensely overpowered speakers now was Doris Day. Doris Day singing “It's Magic,” her voice clear and slow and melodic. It sent Craig into a fit of pain. He started thwacking at the radio, trying to stop the ballad, but Doris played on: “How else can I explain those rainbows when there is no rain? It's magic!”

He looked pissed, like someone was trying to harm him—out of nothing, for no good reason—injecting this “music” into his ears. The pipe fell from his lips, dropping onto the floor as he lurched as though in pain, thumping the radio dial again. It went off this time and now there was silence, except for the rushing wind, and she could no longer hear Doris Day's voice moving skyward, nor the violins creating that celestial air. “
Sonovabitch!
Why in HELL did you do that!”

She said nothing at first. She didn't really know. Every once in a while she got brave. Every so often, a well of defiance rose up inside her. It had been building for months now and if she tapped into it, she was capable of anything.

“It's her birthday,” Bobbie said quietly.

“
Whose
birthday?”

“Doris Day's.”

“No it isn't!”

“Yes it is. It's her birthday and that was her greatest song. Put it back on.”

“It isn't her fucking birthday. Jesus, how did you get to be such a…” His voice trailed off as though it was hardly worth finishing the thought.

There was a beat of silence and then Bobbie said, “It
is
her birthday! I'm a member of Doris Day's fan club and I got a card in the mail—”

“You didn't get any card,” he said.

“You don't know that!” She was following a stream of anger that led to a river that led to an ocean. She was sailing now.

“I know it isn't Doris fucking Day's birthday.”