All That's Left to Tell(59)
Genevieve was still turned away from Claire, propped up on an elbow, the top of her head silhouetted against the pale night sky. Claire couldn’t see her face.
“Maybe. I’ll let you know when you tell me what happened next.”
“Well, like I said, I’ll tell you one story. We were both really drunk. I mean way over the line. He was lying on top of me and had his face pressed hard to mine, and I could feel how his whiskers were chafing my face, but that felt good, too. I was staring at the spinning ceiling, that lone bulb turning in its socket, and I was trying not to feel sick.
“And that’s when he started talking to me, though it was almost like he didn’t care if I was listening. He told me we were downtown, late at night, walking hand in hand. We’d seen a movie, and we were going back to the car, and I was wearing tights and a short black skirt. And that the whole time we were watching the movie he’d been sliding his hand up the tights and under the skirt and fondling me, so the cloth between my legs was already damp. And as we were walking, he was holding my hand, only he was also using his fingernail to lightly scratch the skin on my palm, which is something he knew I liked. And we wanted each other, he said. So badly that even though we were only a few blocks from the car, we slipped into an alley between buildings that had a closed end. He told me how he pinned me against a wall, pushing me hard, first, so my head hit the bricks, and then he’d yanked my tights off of me, and lifted me up and then I’d wrapped my legs around him while he flattened me against the wall. He was pulling my underwear to the side so he could enter me, he said. And just as he was about to do that three other men turned into the alley and caught us there.”
She stopped and found herself listening again. She imagined she heard footsteps, but it was only the story. Something like a soft pellet struck the asphalt outside the truck where they were parked.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah,” Genevieve said. “I think it’s a raindrop.”
“Did you feel any yet?”
“A couple.”
“Do you think we should go inside before the skies open up?”
“I don’t think they’re going to open up.”
Just then a raindrop hit the roof of the cab.
“You sure about that?”
“No, but I think we can wait. Keep telling your story.”
Claire lay flat on her back and waited to feel the rain on her face, and continued. “So Seth kept talking to me as he was pushing inside me. He told me that the men were drunk, just like we were. And he told me they were laughing when they came into the alley, but as soon as they saw how he had me pinned against the wall they went completely silent. They stood there watching me, he said, and that I was still breathing hard because I couldn’t help myself, and he said he was frozen there with his body against mine, and he told me how the three men were standing there, and how you could see the veins in their arms, the same way that I liked to trace the veins in his arms with my fingertip, and even from where he was standing he could see in their veins their pulses quickening. And then he said he slowly let me down, let my back slide against the wall until I was on my feet, and he turned to face the men, but they were already on him, and one had slammed his head with a broken piece of brick, and almost knocked him out, and he was slumped down at the base of the wall opposite me, his head bleeding, and barely conscious, and the other two men were already on me. They’d forced me to the pavement between the alley walls, and they were holding me down on my hands and knees, and when I struggled to get away, one had slapped me open-handed hard against my face, and this had made me go still, and one of the men was holding my hair tight to the base of my scalp, and the other was tearing at my skirt and panties, and he told me, Seth told me, that they both entered me at the same time, one of them in my mouth, and one of them from behind, and that the man who had knocked him almost unconscious with the brick had taken hold of Seth’s bloody hair and was forcing him to watch as the men did this to me. He told me how the men were getting more and more excited, how the stones and broken glass in the alley were cutting my knees as they thrust against me, and when he started to tell me how they were coming inside me, Seth himself came so hard that he knocked me off the edge of the mattress and onto the wood floor, and it was ten seconds before he could say, ‘Sorry! Sorry! Sorry if I hurt you.’”
Genevieve was lying still with her head turned away. She could hear her breath moving in and out of her nostrils.
“I admit, I thought part of it was exciting. I don’t remember if I came myself; we’d been drinking so much, and I don’t know if I was excited because of what he was telling me or excited because it excited him. But it was only a minute later that we were back on the mattress with my head on his bare chest, and he was stroking my backbone with his fingers as gently as if he were sorting pearls. And a few minutes later he was asleep, and I could feel my head rising and falling with his deep breathing, and in a half dream I was seeing him as a boy kneeling at the edge of the water along a lake with a pebbled beach, and turning over small stones and holding them up to the sun, and I was wondering what it was inside of him that would want to be bleeding and half-unconscious while his love was raped in front of him.”
For a full minute neither of them spoke. Finally, Genevieve said, “I wish I knew how to answer that, Claire.”
“He was only twenty. A boy. In my memory, I can see him as a boy. And when we woke the next morning, our heads hurt. We’d drunk more than we ever had. And it was late February, but it was one of those winter-into-spring days, where somehow the temperature had risen overnight, and when I walked from the bedroom to the front window, I could see the mounds of snow melting into rivers that ran down the street, and there were people outside in the sun walking without their coats on. Seth came up from behind me and was holding me while we looked out the window. A boy was out on the sidewalk kicking a soccer ball. I remember it surprised me because I didn’t think there were any families living in the neighborhood. He kept kicking it toward the front porch steps of his house, and it would careen off in different directions, and he tried to keep saving it from going into the street. I watched him for a while and then turned my head to look back at Seth. ‘What?’ he asked, but I didn’t say anything. Then I told him I wanted to take a walk.