with brown leather buttons, and his resemblance to my beloved grandfather was so strong that I nearly turned around to go home. But I didn’t. I got on the bus, sat alone in a seat by the window, feeling as though I were being pulled somewhere by an uncaring hand. Feeling also that although I had chosen this, I had not really had a choice. There was a mother sitting across from me with twins, toddlers, and I stared at them the whole time, wanting the mother to pull me into her watchful circle, to say, “Oh, honey. Don’t do that. Come with us.” I thought of how everyone else at school was going swimming, how later they’d have a big picnic, and there would be no gap left anywhere for me.
The bus got to the stop where Joey and I had agreed to meet, somewhere near the motel, and I saw his car, the engine running, his hand out the window holding a cigarette. I got off the bus and he opened his car door, stepped out, waved at me. I waved back with one hand, pressed the other hard into my own middle. I was thinking, well, his real name is Joseph. And he was on time, he likes me. When I got in the car, he told me to lie down on the floor until he said it was all right to get up. He said no one should see me or we’d get in a lot of trouble. I lay on the floor trying to keep my sweater from getting dirty—it was a light pink, angora; and I was wearing a gray straight skirt with it, new nylons, and my black flats that I’d polished the night before. I had a barrette with pearls on it anchored to one side of my hair. When I put it in, I had imagined him taking it out, my hair falling to my shoulders in a way I thought he might admire. I thought he might touch my curls, gently, hold one strand of hair up to the light to see better the reddish color it could take on. I’d thought he might kiss my hair, then my neck, and then my lips. Now I could only see his shoes, his foot working the gas pedal and the brake with some impatience. I thought, I don’t know those shoes at all. I could hear his keys in the ignition jingling softly against one another and I wondered why he had so many keys. It seemed dangerous to me, that he would have so many keys. He stopped the car, told me he was going into the office to get a room, and not to move. “Okay,” I said, and my voice was so high and strange. And I remember I looked at each of my fingernails when I waited for him, because I wanted him to think every part of me was pretty. I’d painted my nails pearl pink the night before. I’d put perfume in places I’d never put it before.
Well, I am just shaking! Perhaps there is no point in remembering this. I don’t think there is any reason. It was a very bad experience, over now. I am fifty. It is over, now.
All right. I will say the worst part. Let me do that. Then it will be over.
There was a point at which he was straddling me, we were both naked, my God, I had never been naked with anyone before, not even partially, except for the ancient doctor I went to, and he had the sensitivity to look at the wall when he put his hands to me under the paper gown. But Joey looked directly at me and he put his penis on my chest and pushed my breasts together hard. Then he rubbed himself between them. “Doesn’t this feel nice?” he said, his voice hoarse, close to cruel. He was so far above me. If I looked up, I could see the inside of his nose, which seemed too intimate, and which seemed rude for me to do. Anyway, I didn’t want to look at him, it embarrassed me to do that. I’d caught a glimpse of his penis and the fleshy sight of it made me feel like vomiting. I didn’t know where to look. The wallpaper was peeling, the lamp buzzed, the door to the bathroom was cracked open, and I could hear the drip of the faucet. I closed