American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,42

sounds like flutes, when he’s coming. And the doors to my balcony opened, and he came in and sat in the corner and talked to me. We just talked, Joseph. He’s very troubled.”

Joseph, of course, now realizes she was right: he did not need to hear this. He wants to rip his hand free and maybe even push her down. Yet he also wants to pull her close and hold her. It does not feel right, to have her telling him this. It is not right to have to share her. He takes another swig of champagne.

“Everyone in town is upset,” she says. “You can feel it, can’t you? Even you can. Everything is stiff and cold… no one is sure what’s going on, though they won’t admit it. No one is telling anyone anything.”

“But Mr. First tells you.”

“Yes.”

“Is that all he ever does when he visits?” Joseph asks. “Does he just talk to you?”

“Sometimes he just looks. But mostly we talk, yes.”

“About what?”

She is silent for a while. “I won’t give you that, Joseph. I give you a lot of things, but I won’t give you that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t mine to give.”

“Then what is yours to give?” he asks, and he stops her.

“Jesus,” she says. “I don’t know why I meet you here. You just keep getting angrier and angrier.” She pulls her hand free and begins to walk toward the edge of the trees without him.

Joseph watches for a moment, then runs to catch up. “You keep looking paler. Every month. It’s something he’s doing to you, isn’t it?”

She stops with her back to him. He can tell he has wounded her with this remark, and he half-wishes he could take it back. But he also feels he has a right to be angry. She deserves to hurt just as he does.

“There are some things that are just not for us to know, Joseph,” she says. Her voice trembles. “For me, for you, for everyone. You just have to accept that, okay?”

Joseph swallows hard. Perhaps it is the champagne, but he suddenly feels very ill, his mouth and throat suffused with a putrid sweetness. The world blurs, and he realizes he is tearing up.

To his shame, Gracie sees his tears. “Here,” she says. “Come here.” She takes one of his arms and pulls him into an embrace. Silently they hold each other on the edge of the woods. Beyond them a small, curiously treeless canyon winds through the rocks. To the north the dark swell of the mesa blocks out the clouds. “I wish you’d just stop coming here,” she says softly. “It’s tearing you up.”

“It’d be worse if I didn’t.”

“When you first started coming, I thought it was just for the fun. The play. Nothing more.” Again, skirting the issue at hand.

“It was at first. But it isn’t, anymore.”

“I know. It’s worse that way.” One delicate hand probes along the waistband of his pants until it finds the button. Her fingers deftly open it; she has gotten much better at this as the weeks have gone by.

Joseph pulls away a little. “I don’t want to.”

“But I do,” she says. She looks up at him. “Let me give you that at least. Okay?”

As she works at another button, Joseph fills with self-loathing and rage. He has been coming to these woods to see her for over two months now, and though he knows he has it better than most other boys at school, not once has he had sex with her. She will not even allow his fingers to enter her. That last, most precious privilege is held only by what is waiting in the canyon below, and he hates it and he hates himself for being drawn back here again and again.

She stops as a voice rings out through the woods: “Gracie?”

They both jump. Joseph whirls about, and his heart nearly stops when he sees who is standing across the clearing: it is Mr. Macey, from the general store. Yet he is not at all his normal flirty self: he stands stone-still with his white shirt glowing in the pink moonlight. His face is cold and inscrutable, his eyes lost behind his glasses. He is clearly quite displeased.

“Ah,” he says, “and it’s… Joseph, isn’t it?”

Joseph almost feels sick. If there is one person he would never, ever have wanted to find them here, it would be Mr. Macey.

“You’re not supposed to be here, Joseph,” Macey says in a very soft, calm voice, and though he is