now, it’s tough to imagine Jet deciding to sleep with him to get pregnant. But that was thirteen years ago, and Max has probably changed a lot since then. A lot of friends I grew up with have begun to become their parents as they age: Gen X slackers morphing into racist xenophobes they would have hated in their twenties.
“It was that easy, huh?” Paul says, avoiding the third rail of this conversation. “One roll in the hay, and you did what I couldn’t do in four years?”
Max struggles to portray an emotion he’s never actually felt: compassion. “There’s no fault to that kind of thing, Paulie. It’s just medical. Like who gets cancer and who doesn’t. There’s no reason to it.”
Paul knows as well as I that Max doesn’t believe that. More than once I’ve heard him tell a father of only daughters: “Lemme know if you need some help getting a son over at your place.” Usually on the sideline at football practice.
“You’ve all been lying to me,” Paul says. “For years. I want out of this goddamn nightmare. I want straight answers.” He turns to Jet. “Did he force you? Or did you give yourself to him?”
“He raped me,” Jet says with conviction.
Paul turns to me. “You believe her?”
“I saw him try to rape her again last night, on Parnassus Hill.” This, I realized earlier today, is not strictly true. I saw Max attack Jet, and I later saw her ripped blouse. But I can’t be sure he was trying to rape her. He may have been trying to kill her. But the truth will not save us now.
As Paul turns back to his father, Max restates his basic argument. “I’ve been with a lot of women in my day, Paul. You know that. But I’ve never forced one yet. Not once. I damn sure never raped your wife. And I can prove it.”
How the hell can he prove that?
“You shouldn’t have lied about me,” Max says to Jet, who suddenly looks afraid again.
“How can you prove it?” Paul demands.
Max lowers his head like a priest preparing to deliver last rites. Then he looks up, his eyes hard. “How do you think? I can tell you what she likes between the sheets.”
The room temperature drops ten degrees.
“All right, I’ll bite,” Paul says. “Let’s hear it.”
Max looks directly at Jet while he answers. “When you go down on her . . . she likes to open the hood herself, so your fingers are free to work up her tailpipe.”
A shudder of recognition goes through me, leaving nausea in its wake. As Paul and I stare at each other, white-faced, Max nods with triumph. “She comes harder that way. Right? Would I know that if I raped her?”
Jet’s face has lost all color.
As crudely as Max spoke, he told the truth. In the first moment our eyes met, Paul and I shared the certainty that we’ve both serviced Jet in this way, and at her request. Apparently, Max has, too. What Paul feels I can only guess. But what’s devouring me from the inside is the knowledge that less than an hour ago, Jet lied to me when she “confessed” how Kevin had been conceived. The “pragmatic” transaction she described as undertaken solely to produce an heir has turned out to be something else entirely—as Tallulah intimated to me this morning.
“My automotive analogy confuse you boys?” Max asks with a fraternal smile. “She likes to part the curtains herself so you can work on her backyard plumbing.”
“Shut up!” Paul yells, but he’s looking at Jet, who is crumbling before our eyes. Red blotches have appeared on her face and neck, and tears are pouring down her cheeks. It’s a reaction to what she sees in our faces, I realize, a reflection of shame and revulsion.
“He’s lying,” she says in a tiny voice. “I mean . . . not about that. You’ve both been with me. But I’ve never done that with him. Never. How can he know that?”
“How indeed,” Paul says in a dead voice.
“Please,” she beseeches us. “Please believe me! He must have watched us with cameras or something. He’s been stalking me. You can’t believe him.”
Paul looks back at her with something akin to pity. “I wouldn’t have. But there’s no other way he could know that.”
“There has to be! This is sick. Please—”
“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Max says in a mocking voice. “At least now we know where we stand. All that matters now is Kevin. And I know