Broken Read online

  “That was better than just getting it over with,” I say.

  I tip my head up to see his reaction. Though his eyes are still shut, he smiles.

  “I’m glad.”

  I wish he’d say more. With passion fading, I feel the need for some reassurance. That I did all right, for my first time. I wish he’d at least look at me.

  I don’t expect a declaration of love, or anything, but…something…more. I just gave him my virginity, after all. Even if I’d intended just to get rid of it, it was still a gift. Wasn’t it?

  Maybe Joe doesn’t think so. Maybe he’s counting the minutes until he can get dressed and head out. Maybe I should leave before he can.

  I get up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The carpet feels matted under my feet. Dirty. I don’t want to think of who else has walked on it, or for that matter, how many couples have fucked on the bed I’m sitting on. My skin crawls suddenly and I shudder. I pick up my bra, then look for my panties. The white lace has vanished against the white tangle of the sheets, and I paw through the hills and mountains of fabric we made with our fucking.

  Joe opens a sleepy eye and rolls on his side to watch me. I find my panties and snatch them up triumphantly. I want to wash, rid myself of the stickiness. There’s no blood, at least, and I send up a prayer to the real Virgin Mary, though, of course, she’d hardly have approved of this night’s adventure.

  I go to the bathroom, grab a washcloth, and run it under hot water. Joe enters behind me, and I keep my gaze focused on the water running in the sink. He strips off the condom and tosses it in the trash, then lifts the lid on the toilet and urinates, a long, hard stream. I’m mortified. He reaches into the shower and turns it on. Steam wreathes the air.

  “Want to join me?”

  “No!” My answer blurts out louder than I’d meant it to.

  I step into my panties and hook my bra, then grab my blouse and skirt from the hook on the back of the door. I put my clothes on faster than I’d taken them off, even though my fingers are shaking and I have to redo the buttons.

  He’s staring. He’s naked. I smooth my hair and catch sight of my face in the mirror, blurred by steam. Eyes a dark smear, mouth a red slash. I’ve become faceless, which is good because I don’t need to see myself right now.

  I can’t read his expression. I’m not sure I want to. A few minutes ago I was desperate for connection. Now I can’t wait to get away.

  “What’s the matter?” he asks.

  “Nothing. I have to go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I’m torn between gratitude that he’s being so calm, and despair he’s not more solicitous. “I’m sure.”

  “All right,” he says and turns to step into the shower. “Drive carefully.”

  My breath squeaks out of me and I snatch up my purse from the bathroom counter. He looks at me over a shoulder marked by my fingers. His brow raises.

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes!” I shout, though I’m not. My voice has gone high and wavery, as if I’m holding back tears. I clutch my purse to my chest. “Thanks for the favor!”

  He turns all the way around, hands on his hips, and I wish he’d at least wrap a towel around his waist.

  “Look, I’m not sure what the problem is—”

  “Of course you don’t!” I won’t insult myself by explaining, either.

  “Mary.” Joe’s voice is calm. “Did I misunderstand you back at the Slaughtered Lamb when you put your hand on my ass and whispered, ‘I’ve got at condom with your name on it?’”

  That had been my friend Bett’s idea. Not mine. It had worked, yes, but—

  “Hey.” He pulls a towel from the rack and covers himself before stepping toward me. He reaches to push my hair over my shoulder. “I thought it was what you wanted. It’s what you said you wanted.”

  I can’t argue with that. I’d like to put the blame on him, make it his fault, but the truth is clear. The burden of my virginity had been lifted from me in a pretty spectacular fashion. I was only being a fool if I expected more.

  “I did.” My voice still sounds thick, as if I might cry. But I know I won’t.

  “You knew what you wanted and you went out and got it,” Joe said. “What’s so wrong about that?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Sure I can’t convince you to join me?” Joe backs toward the shower as he drops the towel. His grin is quite tempting, but I shake my head. “Okay. You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I think it’s only half a lie. “I have to go.”

  “Drive carefully,” he says again.

  When the shower curtain rattles closed, I almost change my mind. Instead, I finish dressing and flee the hotel room, leaving behind the stranger who made me into a woman.

  “That’s a nice story,” I said. “I like the part about how you made her a woman.”

  Joe reached for his paper cup of soda and took a long drink, as though talking had made him thirsty. “Didn’t I?”

  “What I find interesting is the idea that a woman has to have sex to become a woman.”

  He shrugged and tore open the paper wrapped around his sandwich. He always waits until after he’s told me the month’s tale before he eats, then falls to with gusto as though the telling has given him an appetite. He has turkey on wheat, the usual, but this time with tomatoes. I watch him pick them off, one by one. Joe hates tomatoes.

  “Doesn’t it?”

  I say nothing, content to sit and watch him eat. I needed time for my body to ease back to the real world, for my heartbeat to slow and my breath to follow. I pulled my sweater around me, feigning a chill, to hide the fact my nipples had gone stiff. Later, at home, I would recall his story, the small details of it, and I’d touch myself until I came. For now, I played the cool observer, the same as I did every month when we met on this bench in the atrium or the one outside in the garden.

  “I don’t know what her problem was.” Joe chewed and swallowed. A pearl of mayonnaise clung to the corner of his mouth, and I pushed a napkin toward him.

  “She’d just lost her virginity to a stranger. Maybe she felt awkward.”

  Of course, I had no idea what Mary felt, any more than I knew what any of Joe’s women thought or felt. My imagination filled in the details of their coupling, taking what he told me and painting a picture from the feminine point of view.

  “She was on me like butter on a biscuit. How was I supposed to know she was a virgin? She didn’t act like one.”

  “How’s a virgin supposed to act?”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know. But she acted like she knew exactly what she wanted. So why was she so upset when she got it?”

  I didn’t answer for a moment, thinking. “Maybe she was disappointed.”

  He gave me the grin, the bad boy smile. “Sadie, I did not disappoint her.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You made her a woman.”

  Joe frowned. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No. Losing my virginity didn’t make me a woman. Did it make you a man?”

  His one-eyed squint shouldn’t have been as enchanting as it was. “I lost my virginity to Marcia Adams, my mother’s best friend. It made me a man pretty fast. I wouldn’t have survived it, otherwise.”

  This is a story I’d never heard and my face must have shown it. Joe laughed, one eye still squinted, face tipped up toward the atrium’s glass ceiling.

  “Are you going to tell me about it?”

  He looked, for one strange moment, shy. I hadn’t thought him capable of it. He shifted on the bench, and I was sure he was for once not going to tell me.

  “I was seventeen. She asked me to take care of her garden. Money for college. She told me I could use her pool every day, when I was done mowing the lawn.”

  “Sounds like you did more than mow her lawn.”

  He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

  “And you really think that’s what made you