Trust Exercise(83)
“Is Sofie joining us?”
“Sofie? Sofie has gone home for the evening. Did you think Sofie was my wife?” He seemed very surprised that she might have thought this. “Sofie is my sainted housekeeper. I owe a great deal to Sofie, but even if she would have me, which I doubt very much, marriage isn’t an experience I plan to repeat.”
“You used to be married?”
“My most recent wife and I called it off as soon as our boys were grown. Now our boys are both married and seem to like it much better than we did. Perhaps the inclination skips generations.”
This allusion to genetic heritage was Claire’s best opening, yet somehow he kept her from taking it. First with stern attention to her trying the food, as if he expected her not to like it, and would scold her if this was the case. Then the food itself, sitting tentatively in her mouth. She’d never tasted ceviche and until he explained, between his own rapid mouthfuls, she could never have guessed it was raw fish somehow cooked with lime juice. Once enlightened her stomach and tongue seemed to turn cold and stiff as if being heatlessly cooked with juice, too. All her concentration was required to eat with a show of enjoyment. Undeterred by her silence he was now talking animatedly about Caribbean traditional festivals, at the same time as zealously eating. “Carnivaaaal,” he kept saying, leaning hard on the last syllable. “You’ve turned pale,” he said, dropping his fork with a clank in his now empty bowl. “Are you all right?”
“Maybe the wine,” Claire admitted. She’d barely drunk from the new glass he’d poured when they’d sat at the table. She’d kept lifting it to her lips from politeness but when her tongue touched the tart liquid her mouth flooded with warning saliva.
“Some fresh air? I thought you might like the view from the roof. I have a private roof terrace.”
This did seem like something she would have enjoyed at some previous time. “Okay,” she said and swaying to her feet followed him again, up a short staircase of tight bends, out a door into the warm wet night air which was always so much more of a shock than the opposite plunge into clean sharp-edged climate control. That always felt like a falling away of exterior weight and returning, refreshed, to oneself, where stepping outside felt like being absorbed by some massive esophagus. The door closed at her back and he turned and in one step had plastered her full length against it, his unseasonal black knit turtleneck scraping the bare triangle of her neckline when he knocked her head back with his, stuffing his tongue in her mouth. He was strong, for a man she would have guessed was older than her father; as she gagged against the taste of masticated ceviche mixed in his saliva he seized her right hand and pushed it inside the front of his pants, past the belt and the underwear waistband. “There,” he rasped, “there.” He scrubbed her hand roughly against the damp noodle of flesh which secreted warm goo but did not come to life. In her panic Claire wished that it would, was conscious of a failure and possible worse consequence if it didn’t. She twisted and broke away, gulping mouthfuls of air as if stuffing her stomach with air would prevent it from hurling its contents. And it worked, she willed down her own vomit, the prospective shame of which was so great that it didn’t cross her mind that her vomit might serve as a weapon. “Oh dear,” he was tutting, with her wedged against the door again while swarming his hands like flesh spiders. “It’s all right … sweet Claire … it’s all right…” Finally getting her footing she kneed him. She missed but he lurched back and then stood glaring stormclouds of scorn.
“We seem to have had a misunderstanding,” he said with admonitory coldness as she heaved, leaning on the door handle as if she’d just come up from swimming a race. “You’ve embarrassed me,” he added as she yanked the door open.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. Shrugging through the door she rushed back down the stairs. She could barely find the front door again and almost left without her purse; riding the elevator she tried to fix her blouse and skirt and hair with her left hand while looking for something to wipe off her right. She’d only brought a little bag, not her usual tote, and didn’t have any Kleenex. As the elevator counter came to G, she scrubbed her right hand against whatever the fibrous surface was that made the elevator’s interior walls.
In the lobby the attendant did not look up, seemed in fact to make a point of looking down, as she rushed past. She had to pee, so much so she thought she might wet herself there on the street. That was all she thought about, driving back home. How much she needed to pee, how the need stuck like a spear through her brain and her crotch and drove out every other sensation. The next day, she spent close to four hours and two hundred dollars in “talking” it out with a Listener and forming a Plan—several Plans—but the Plans contradicted each other, as did the desires and emotions each meant to process and fulfill. How to talk to her father and how never to talk to her father. How to confront Robert Lord and how to forget Robert Lord. How to demand her answer and how to stop asking or wanting to ask. Obsessed, Claire spent far too much money and earned too many Loyalty Stars. Attempting to wean herself from that habit, she then formed the less costly but in certain ways equally costly habit of constantly checking the school’s Facebook page. In Robert Lord’s frequent appearances there, she sought clues as to what she should do. None of these were decisive and so she did nothing. Three years passed. Many school milestones were posted. One was the death of the school’s longest-serving staff member, secretary Velva Wilson. One was the death of the school’s longest-serving faculty member, Theatre Program founder Robert Lord. Claire went to his tribute and learned nothing new. When a subsequent Facebook announcement explained that the decision to rename the school the Robert Lord School for the Arts had been reversed due to “a credible allegation of sexual abuse from a former student,” Claire finally unfollowed the school’s social media pages.