She sighed. 'He was staying at the ranch, and he thought I was staying there too, and , .. I didn't bother to straighten him out.'
I God, this sounds like a TV show.' .... Janine smiled. 'Yeah, The Flintstones. The one where
Fred and Barney first meet Wilma and Betty at that hotel where they're working?'
'So what happened?' 'I was off work in my street clothes, and I was standing by the bar. He was waiting to get in, and we sort of struck up a conversation. I ended up having dinner with him. He'd come to the ranch with two friends, but they were on the overnight Cowboy Campout. He hadn't wanted to go, so he'd stayed behind, you know, to swim and hang around. After dinner, he asked if he could walk me back to my room. By that time, I didn't want to admit that I worked there, so I said no. He asked if I wanted to come up to his room.' ' 'And you said yes.' 'Yes.'
'How could you?' Sue shook her head. 'What if he had AIDS? You knew nothing about this guy.'
Janine smiled. 'I knew he was cute.'
'I'm serious.'
'It's been a long time, you know? I mean, I broke up with Jim almost two years ago, and there hasn't been any one else who's even interested. That's the problem with this damn town. When you're born here, you know every one in it. I mean, do you think you're actually going to find someone here?
'No.' ........... 'Me either. And this guy... I don't know. I liked him; he liked me. We just sort of hit it off.'
'What are you going to do now?'
'I have no idea.'
Sue stared up at the sky, at the wash of stars against the moonless backdrop of night. She felt strange, adrift, disassociated from the events around her. The world she had lived in, the world she had known, had changed, moved from clearly defined black-and-white into a shifting realm of shadows. Janine was pregnant by a stranger. Yet she was not a slut or a whore, merely a frightened friend who was being unjustly punished for an understandable transgression. The supernatural, which had been merely the ticfional basis for books and movies, a conceit of popular entertainment, had suddenly moved from the periphery of make-believe to the arena of reality,
Reminded again of the cup hugirngsi, she looked be hind her, through the back window into the car. The Honda's seats were hulking black shapes in the enclosed darkness of the interior. The area in front of the vehicle was completely obscured by the night's gloom.
'Let's drive around for a while,' she said. 'And talk?'
Sue nodded. 'There's a lot to talk about.'
'I wish there weren't.' Janine moved around to driver's side, opened her door, and got in. She unlocke the passenger door for Sue.
Maybe I'll tell her about the cup hugirngsi, Sue through] as she buckled her seat belt. But then she looked at the hopelessness on her friend's face and decided that was not the time.
Janine started the car, backed out of the parking lot 'Are you sure you're pregnant?' Sue asked. 'Positive. I took an EPT.'
'Those things aren't supposed to be that reliable.' 'I'm a month late.'
'Oh.' Sue didn't know what to say to that.
They headed down the highway.
It was after midnight when Sue finally arrived Janine dropped her off in front of the house and wait until she had reached the porch before taking off. Noting had been decided, no resolutions had been made, b Sue knew that her friend felt better for having talked all out.
Everyone was asleep, and the house was silent as let herself in. She had hoped that her grandmother wouldn't be awake, but there was no sound coming from her room and no light shone from beneath the door. In her mind Sue saw her grandmother lying in bed, arms folded across her chest, bone white and drained of blood, her face that of an ancient mummy. She was tempted to knock on door just to reassure herself that the old woman was alive, but she knew that it would probably wake her up and her mother as well, and she continued down the hall to her own room.
She locked her door, checked her window to see if it was closed, and felt the half-circle lock on top of the sill to make sure it was fastened before taking off her clothes, putting on her nightgown, and crawling into bed. laundry room door was open, and the visibly escaping steam humidified the hallway outside. She quickly pushed the cart through the doorway to Ramon and backed away before she started to sweat and her makeup began to run. She was scheduled to work the desk this afternoon, and she couldn't very well take care of guests looking like the Bride of Frankenstein.
She waved to Ramon and Jose, then ducked out of the building and walked outside, around the boulder- enclosed pool, to the vending machines. She popped two quarters and a dime into the coin slot, pushed the button for Diet Coke, gave the machine a quick kick, and her can tumbled down into the cradle. She popped the tab and took a long drink.
She turned around, watched the two couples at the pool for a moment.
The two guys and one of the women were swimming, but the other woman, obviously pregnant, was lying on one of the chaise lounges in a maternity one-piece, casually reading a magazine. : One of the men said something, the pregnant woman turned, looked at Janine, and their eyes met. Janine glanced away and started walking toward the main building, moving behind the boulders so she couldn't be seen.
She walked slowly, sipping her drink, trying to finish it before she got to the lobby steps. She was still not sure how she was going to explain her pregnancy to her morn. She was not even sure how her morn would react. Her parents had gotten married when they were both seniors in high school, because they'd had to, because her morn had been pregnant with her. It was amazing toJanine how much her parents seemed to have forgotten from their younger days, how rigid and moralistic and unyielding they'd become in their attitudes toward her.
Janine felt bad about what she'd told Sue. She'd given her friend an overly romantic impression of what had occurred, and she knew she shouldn't have. But she simply had not been able to bring herself to tell the truth because the truth was so sleazy and sordid and cheap.
The truth was that she'd been filling in for Patty Pullen, cleaning one of the rooms, and Cutler, the new handyman, had seen the open door, walked in, and come on to her........ They'd done it there on the unmade bed.
She had not been sure then or afterward why she had done such a thing, why she had gone along with his crude suggestion. She wasn't a slut, at least she didn't think of herself as one, but she couldn't deny the fact that she'd agreed, with very little prompting, to have sex with a guy she barely knew, didn't really like, and whose first name she didn't even know.
And now he seemed to have disappeared.
She'd fucked up royally this time.
There'd been close calls in the past. The time after the Winter Formal in high school when she'd gotten drunk and nearly rolled her mom's car, making up an elaborate excuse about a crazy hit-and-run driver who'd forced her off the road. The time one of her mom's friends had seen her topless in the backseat of Bill Halley's Buick, and she'd had to go to the woman's house and actually burst into tears to get her to promise that she wouldn't tell her morn. But there'd been nothing like this. Those were minor in conveniences. This was a major problem.
This could affect the rest of her life. She looked down at her abdomen, which, thankfully, was still not showing. She was leaning toward getting an abortion, she thought it was probably the quickest and cleanest way out of this mess, but the idea frightened her, and she had no idea how to go about it. She needed to talk to her morn.
Janine finished her Diet Coke, wiped her wet hands on her jeans, and straightened her cowgirl vest before walking inside.
Sally Mae was working the front desk, and the older woman greeted her with a relieved smile when Janine walked through the door. 'I was afraid you weren't going to show up.'
Janine frowned. 'I'm not late.'
Sally Mae laughed. 'No, I didn't mean that. It's just that I have a big date tonight, and I had this horrible feeling that something was going to happen to ruin it for me. Let's face it, dear, my luck with men hasn't been all good.'
Janine smiled. 'Go on. Get out of here.' 'My shift isn't quite--'
