Boy Toy (42 page)

From within: "Hold on!"

My throat catches at the sound of her voice.

The door opens and...

And...

Ah. Ah, Jesus.

"Josh?"

I start shaking. I can't help it. She's still gorgeous and I realize how lucky I am—it's like I get to see her for the first time ... a
second
time. Only this time I'm old enough and wise enough to appreciate it, unlike when I was a kid. She looks no older, no more worn, no worse for the wear of prison. Her hair is shorter, but those eyes are still eternal and luminous and endless.

She takes a step back. "Josh please no Josh don't please—"

The bat, I realize. I step into the apartment with her and she takes another tentative step backwards, fear radiating from every pore. I'm tight and hyperalert, my nostrils flared, my eyes darting everywhere. "Is George here?" I ask.

She stares at me.

"Is George here?" I'm close to shouting now. Not quite there, but knocking on its door and stomping on its welcome mat.

She's unable to stop staring at the bat. She shakes her head in tiny jerky motions.

It's like I've been wearing one of those heavy lead aprons you wear at the dentist's office when you get x-rays ... and suddenly someone comes in and whisks it off. My breathing returns to normal—and I hadn't even realized how erratic it was until just now.

I lean the bat against the wall. Eve gulps loudly.

"Is it OK if I come in?" I ask.

***

"It's been a long time," she says, sitting down on the sofa across from me.

I recognize most of the furniture. The room, though, is smaller and dingier than in the old apartment. There are videogame machines hooked up to the TV, so I guess they're still married. I sit in the easy chair and have a brief, potent flicker of Eve and me in this chair together, the chair rocking back and forth, back and forth ... Did she ever tell George? Does he sit in this chair, unknowing, unaware that he's sharing it with the ghost of his wife and her lover's lust? Does he know that I've made lo
—fucked
his wife on almost every piece of furniture I can see?

"Yes, it has," I say after too long a pause. She's gazing at me expectantly. He who brings the bat to the party gets to dictate the discussion, I guess.

But it's like going to Dr. Kennedy's. I suddenly have nothing to say.

We sit in silence for a few moments. She's wearing jeans and a lemon-colored tank top. I can see the outline of her bra. She looks hurried and distracted. She looks beautiful. The pull—the
lust
—that I feel at this moment is
destroying
me. It's more powerful and more potent and more
real
than anything I've ever felt around Rachel. And I know now, in this moment, that Eve has ruined me for any other woman. I'll never be able to be with anyone else.

"Josh, I don't want to upset you..."

Exactly
like being with Dr. Kennedy.

"...but there's a restraining order in place." She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. "I'm not supposed to be this close to you."

"You were
never
supposed to be this close to me," I say, and I have no idea why.

But it's like I've hit her with a Taser; she jerks and sits up straight, a wounded look on her face, in her eyes.

And then she bites her lip and looks up at the ceiling, and I realize what she's doing. She's counting to ten. Or reciting a poem in her head. Or doing calculus. Dr. Kennedy prescribed the same "medicine" for me: some sort of mental distraction that's supposed to calm me down when I get angry or hurt or upset. Looks like therapists all use the same bag of tricks.

She looks over at me. "I've had five years to think about what happened. About what I did. Five long—"

"What was it like? Prison."

She sighs and drags her palms along the tops of her thighs. I don't want her to sigh anymore. I can't stop staring at her and when her body heaves like that...

"It was prison, Josh. I don't know what you want to know. I worked. I taught women who never learned how to read or write. I get thank-you cards from them sometimes, now that they're on the outside. That's very ... It's very rewarding for me." Her bottom lip quivers and she looks at me like I just called her a liar, even though I haven't said a word. "I like that, OK? I loved being a teacher. I really did. I love to teach people, to help people, and now..." Her breath hitches and she looks up at the ceiling again and she's got tears glimmering in the corners of her eyes.

I give her her moment to go through her mantra, whatever it is. I force myself to stare at her face, not at the hint of cleavage revealed by the tank top. I force myself to be good.

She wipes at the tears when she looks at me again. "What do you want to hear, Josh? I had to fight sometimes, OK? Is that what you want to hear?"

"Did anyone hurt you?" I mean to ask it like I care, with compassion, but it comes out flat and disinterested.

"Someone tried to stab me once. She was insane. They ended up putting her in a mental hospital. A fight broke out in the laundry room my second year there. I wasn't involved, but I got caught up in it and when the guards broke it up, they broke my left arm. I spent two days in the infirmary. I was—I was terrified until it healed. I was weak, see? I was defenseless without both arms. I thought someone..." She leans forward: more distracting cleavage, more distracting words. "I went to therapy every day for the first two years. Then three times a week, then twice a week ... I still go every week." She gestures at the door. "I have to go today. That's why I'm not at work."

"Where do you work?"

"I do some proofreading for a law firm here. They have an arrangement with my parole officer. And I'm trying to get a position at the community college, teaching adult education courses." She waits, as if expecting me to say something. "Do you have any other questions, Josh?"

"You're still married." Not a question. But maybe just the hint of one.

"He was humiliated. He was—"

"He beat the hell out of me in my own backyard," I tell her, my voice tight.

She lowers her eyes. "I know. I'm so sorry. And he was, too. He really was. He told me ... If it weren't for the restraining order, he would have ... He wanted to tell you himself."

She shivers suddenly and I think it's an act, but I see goose bumps on her bare arms, as if the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. "Josh, I've had five years to think about this. I've waited all that time. And I thought I'd have to wait forever. I didn't think I'd ever be able to talk to you, not with your parents—"

"I'm eighteen now."

"I know. Please, let me tell you—"

"Why did you do it, Eve?"

She shivers some more and hugs herself, looking like Rachel for just the slightest moment. She rubs her arms, warming herself.

"Josh..." She can't look at me.

"Why, Eve?" My voice trembles. I try to force it steady, but I can't. My cheeks are wet and I wonder where the hell those tears came from. "Why, Eve? Why did you do it? Why?"

She's crying, too, great wracking sobs that shake her entire body and send streams down her face.

"Why, Eve? Goddamn it, I've been waiting forever to know. Why did you do it?
Why did you let me seduce you?
"

And time goes still.

For a little while.

My question hangs in the air between us, floats like some gossamer, luminescent cloud, drifting over the coffee table, obscuring and illuminating all at once.

I sniff and wipe my cheeks with the palm of my hand. Eve's choking sobs stop with a single snuffle as she jerks upright and stares at me. "What?"

And now I can't stop the waterworks no matter how hard I try. The tears just explode out of me. "Why?" I practically scream it. "I ruined your marriage. I ruined your
life!
"

"I don't—I don't understand, Josh. That's not—"

And I tell her. About watching her as she slept, about those first steps taken toward her. About the wedding photo. About staring at her toes, her cleavage, her legs, her hips. About devouring her with my eyes a thousand times and a thousand ways. Everything I never told her before. Everything that was so critical, so important.

"You used to drink," I tell her. "Every day, we'd come to the apartment and you would drink and I took advantage of you..."

She stands up from her chair and comes halfway around the coffee table and I'm crying and willing her to come closer, yes, come closer even though it's all my fault, even though it shouldn't happen. She stops and just stands there, watching me with something like horror as I try to stop myself from crying, but I can't; it's hopeless. And here's your answer, Dr. Kennedy—here it is: me. I'm angry at me. But you had the
question
wrong—it's not what Eve did to me, it's what
I
did to
her
.

"Is that what you thought?" she whispers, still a few paces away. "Is that what you've been ... Have you been carrying that around all these years? Oh, God, Josh, I'm so sorry..."

Hug me!
I want to scream to her.
Come hold me, goddamn it! It's the only time I ever felt safe. The only time I ever felt loved, and even though it destroyed you, I want it again—I need it again now more than I need anything else in the world.

"Josh, how could you think ... You were a child! You were twelve years old! How can you possibly ... Oh. Oh, my God." And she stumbles to her knees in front of me, and I burn with pain and lust at the familiar position juxtaposed to the unfamiliar emotions. "All these years you thought ... you thought that it was
your
... your idea. Your fault ... Oh, God."

I fumble in my pocket for the newspaper clipping. It's one I've read over and over. I have it memorized. "Then what about this?" I hold it out to her. She takes it. The headline reads:

Defense: Sherman Molestation
"Sin of Opportunity
"

The defense attorney for teacher Evelyn Sherman today told reporters in a press conference that her client acted on impulse when presented with an opportunity to act in a "sexually charged atmosphere.
"

"You see?" I tell her. "See what it says? The opportunity presented itself and you couldn't resist. That's what it—"

"No, Josh. No, no, no." As if she can change the world—can change
history,
can change
fact
—just by denying it. "This was ... this was early in the trial. You hadn't testified yet. My lawyer did this. She was trying ... I didn't want her to, but she was trying to lay the groundwork for a plea. This isn't real."

She looks up at me. I swoon, remembering her doing this years ago, looking up at me from her

—Watch me—

knees.

—my hands and put them on her head—

"...was all
my
fault," she's saying as I blink back into the present. "I'm so sorry. It was wrong. I abused you. I'm so sorry. It wasn't your fault at all. It was all mine."

And I can only manage to say, "It was?"

"Didn't anyone ever tell you?" she yells, her frustration exploding from her. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that it
wasn't your fault?
"

I'm almost afraid to answer. But I have to. In a voice small and weak. "I didn't believe them."

"Oh, God," she moans, and puts her forehead on my knee and bawls like a newborn baby.

I want to touch her. Her forehead is like coals on my knee, burning me, like she's always burned me. Fire. She's a flame and she's always been a flame.

I hold out my hand over her hair and stop, pause an inch or so away and watch in fascination as my hand quakes in the air. I can't make it move down any farther. It won't obey me. It won't let me touch her.

"Then ... then when?" I whisper.

She doesn't hear me. She keeps crying, shaking.

"Eve." Louder. "Eve, when?"

She lifts her head up and sits back on her heels. Her face is red, her eyes puffy and distorted and bloodshot. "When?" she asks.

"When did you
decide?
How far along did things get before you decided you were going to have sex with me, Eve?"

There's a thousand years before her answer:

"The day we met, Josh. The first time I laid eyes on you."

The first time...? In class? In
history
class?

"There was no grad school project," she says. She won't look me in the eyes now—she looks down at her lap, where her hands are entwined. "I made it up—I made the whole thing up so I would have an excuse to bring you to my apartment and keep you there."

Oh, my God. What? She ... Oh, God.

"I gave you wine. I treated you like an adult so that..." She sobs. "So that you would like me and want to stay..."

No. It's impossible. She didn't ... She couldn't have...

She nods, as if she's heard something I can't hear. Meets my eyes again. "I think ... I think you should go now. I don't think it's good for us to be together. I think it's bad for us to be together like this."