Invisible(31)

    She drove home after work, showered, and changed quickly. She wore a turquoise sundress and gold sandals Lara had bought for her at Bergdorf in New York, and she looked clean and pretty when she drove to Jeff’s address. There were hookers walking up and down the street in front of his hotel and for a good distance on either side of it. It was exactly the kind of place her father hadn’t wanted her to live, but Jeff was in less danger than she would have been. He looked tired and rumpled when he walked out of the hotel and got in her car.

“You like my neighborhood?” he asked her, as a hooker walked by and offered them a threesome, and referred to Antonia as Little Bo Peep, because she seemed so young and innocent. She drove away and made a face. “The hooker who has the room next to me is pretty nice. She gives me leftover Chinese food once in a while, since we don’t have fridges and can’t keep it. The place is full of cockroaches and rats. And the other night, she offered me a free blow job. She’s new and said she needs the practice.” He said it as a matter of course, and Antonia was shocked. No man had referred to that with her before, as though it was an ordinary subject, and she didn’t comment. She looked upset for a few minutes, but by the time they got to the restaurant, she had recovered. Maybe he thought he was being funny, although she was not amused by the comment.

    The food was even better than she’d realized, and they both ate a full meal, despite the heat of the day, and the hours he had spent unloading a truck full of furniture into a warehouse. The restaurant wasn’t air-conditioned, but there was a slight breeze that night, as they sat at a garden table and talked about their respective colleges and early lives. Jeff had two brothers and a sister older than he was, his parents were divorced, and he’d grown up in Ohio, and liked Northwestern a lot. His father worked for an insurance company and his mother was a high school chemistry teacher. He said he wanted to go to New York after he graduated, be an actor and make a lot of money. He was quick to pick up the check, which she thought was generous of him. She had thought him cocky when they first met, and a little smug about his good looks. His hair was longer than it should be, but it was sexy on him, and there was no denying he was a handsome kid, and he knew it. But he seemed nicer as they sat at dinner that night, and a little more modest than he had before. The grueling conditions of their boring job had taken a little of the starch out of him. He showed her the blisters on his hands from what he’d done that day.

“You know, maybe in a way, we’re lucky,” she said, after she thanked him for dinner and they left the restaurant. “They only hire two college interns every summer from all over the country, and we’re it. It’s kind of an honor.”

“To drag boxes around, and unload truckloads of furniture?” He looked disgusted. “More like slave labor. We’re working for free. I could have stayed in Chicago and gotten a job that paid me decently. We’re not learning anything here.”

    “Humility maybe,” she said softly. “Whatever we do after we graduate, we’ll have to start from the bottom.” They were driving past her apartment as she said it, and she pointed the building out to him. “That’s where I live.”

“That’s good news,” he said hurriedly. “I’m desperate to go to the bathroom. I needed to go all through dinner, but I hate scuzzy public bathrooms. Would it be too rude to ask you to let me use yours for a minute? I’ll never make it home.”

Faced with what he said, she didn’t feel like she had much choice. She couldn’t let him pee on the front seat of her car. She thought for an instant if she felt safe letting him use her apartment for a pit stop, and she decided that she did. He was a decent kid and they had known each other for several weeks now. He had never done or said anything out of line, other than the blow job comment when she picked him up at his hotel.

“Okay,” she agreed, slowed the car, and parked on the street, as she always did. She hopped out of the car, and he followed her. He acted like it was urgent, so she hurried to get her keys, and ran up the stairs to her apartment, unlocked the door, and pointed to the bathroom. He rushed in and slammed the door. He was out a few minutes later with a big grin on his face.

“Thanks, Antonia. That was a real emergency.” He sat down on the couch then without being invited, and patted the spot next to him. “Why don’t we hang out here for a while. I’m in no rush to get home. I don’t have AC, you do.”

“I need to get to bed, or I’ll be dead in the morning,” she said apologetically, and he reached out with a long well-toned arm and pulled her down next to him.

    “I’m not stopping you from going to bed.” He grinned at her, and she didn’t like the look on his face suddenly. “That actually sounds like a good idea to me.” She stood up again and looked down at him sternly.

“Come on, Jeff. Let’s go.” She left no doubt in his mind that she wasn’t interested, or playing with him, which made no difference to him. He grabbed her hard then, pushed her onto the small couch, dropped his full body weight on top of her, and pinned her down. He was crushing her, and he was a big man. He was six feet three or four with broad shoulders and strong arms. She couldn’t move an inch as he held her down and pulled up the skirt of her sundress, got to her underwear effortlessly, and started to pull it down.