“I can play the tape,” Jesse said.
“It’s not me.”
Jesse nodded. He picked up the remote from his desk and aimed it and clicked and the tape began to roll with a closeup of Katie’s face, looking straight up at the camera over a man’s shoulder. Katie dropped her head and closed her eyes. Her mother stared at the tape. The camera pulled back to show the two of them naked and copulating.
“Stop it,” Mrs. DeWolfe said. “For Christ’s sake, stop it.”
Jesse clicked the tape off.
“She’s fifteen,” Mrs. DeWolfe said.
“I know,” Jesse said.
Mrs. DeWolfe looked at Molly.
“Molly, for crissake,” she said, “what am I supposed to do?”
“If Katie cooperates,” Molly said, “we can probably work something out?”
“Cooperates?” Katie said. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
1 6 3
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“No,” Jesse said. “But he did.”
“I’m not ratting Harrison out,” she said. “No way. No way.”
Mrs. DeWolfe said, “Katie, my God.”
“Oh, like you’re so lily pure. You been oinkin’ a different guy every week since Daddy left.”
“Katie, that’s not true. And if it were, it doesn’t mean you should. I’m a grown woman, for God’s sake.”
“So am I,” Katie said.
She stuck her chest out, so that her small breasts pushed against her cotton tank top.
“You seen the movies.”
Her mother slapped her across the face. Katie slapped back at her and her mother gripped her wrists and they grap-pled there, still seated. Jesse put his head back against the back of his swivel chair and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Molly,” he said.
But Molly was already up and separating the two women.
Jesse opened his eyes.
“Who’s on the desk?” he said.
“Arthur,” Molly said.
Jesse picked up the phone and called the desk.
“Arthur,” he said. “Step into my office for a moment.”
He hung up and the door opened and Arthur Angstrom stood there.
“Take Mrs. DeWolfe out to the front,” Jesse said. “Get her seated and be sure she stays there until I holler.”
“Okay, Jesse.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. DeWolfe said.
1 6 4
S E A C H A N G E
“You are, ma’am,” Jesse said. “Easy? Or hard?”
She lingered for a minute but Jesse could tell her heart wasn’t in it and she stood.
“I’ll be right outside,” she said to her daughter.
Arthur took her arm and they went out. Molly closed the office door. Jesse leaned back in his chair and looked at Katie. She looked back at him, trying for defiance.
“So?” she said.
Jesse smiled.
“So,” he said.
“Like you never had sex?”
“I’m proud to say I did have sex, and hope to again,” Jesse said.
“So, you think I’m too young?”
“Probably,” Jesse said.
“You never had sex when you was my age?”
“No,” Jesse grinned again. “But it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
