“Yes.”
Philipe glanced around. “How about her?” He pointed down the sidewalk to where an Asian woman was stepping out of a lingerie shop, carrying a small bag. The woman was gorgeous: model-tall, with finely sculpted features, dark almond-shaped eyes offset by luscious red lipstick, long straight black hair that hung almost to her waist. Her thin shiny pants were purple and skintight, and I could clearly see the outline of French-cut panties beneath.
Philipe saw the look on my face. “Take her down, bud.”
“But…”
“If you don’t, we will.”
The others nodded enthusiastically.
“It’s broad daylight.”
“No one will see you.”
He was right, I knew. I would be as ignored raping a woman as I was at everything else. The woman began walking away from us, past the Baskin-Robbins, toward an alley in the center of the block.
But that didn’t make it okay.
“That woman’s going to be raped,” Philipe said. “Either you do it or we do it. The decision’s yours.”
I fell for the argument, believing in my arrogance that being raped by me was somehow preferable to being raped by Philipe or Steve or John. I was a nice person, I rationalized, a good person performing a bad act. It was less horrible to be raped by me than one of the others.
John giggled. “Pork her. And throw her a hump for me.”
I took a deep breath and walked casually down the sidewalk toward the woman. She did not see me until I was upon her, did not react until I had grabbed her arm and pulled her into the alley, my hand held over her mouth. She dropped her bag. Black lace panties and a red silk teddy spilled out.
I felt horrible. I suppose somewhere deep down in the dark, unexplored recesses of my macho heart of hearts I’d thought she might enjoy it just a little bit, that even if the experience was emotionally wrenching, it might still somehow be physically pleasurable. But she was crying and terrified and obviously in anguish, and I knew even as I pressed against her that she would hate it and hate me.
I stopped.
I couldn’t go through with it.
I let the woman go, and she fell onto the asphalt, sobbing, sucking in air with great gasps. I moved away from her, stood, and leaned back against the alley wall. I felt like shit, like the criminal I was. My stomach was churning, and I felt like throwing up. What in the hell was wrong with me? How could I have ever consented to something like this? How could I be so morally weak, so pitifully unable to stand up for my beliefs?
I was not the person I’d thought I was.
In my mind, I saw Jane, yanked into an alley, raped by some stranger.
Did this woman have a boyfriend? A husband? Did she have children? She had parents.
“You had your chance,” Philipe said. He was running into the alley, unbuckling his pants.
I lurched toward him, felt dizzy, felt like throwing up, had to lean against the wall again for support. “No!”
He looked at me. “You knew the rules of the game.”
He grabbed the front of her pants, pulled, and a snap flew off.
The other terrorists were laughing. The woman was whimpering pitifully, struggling on the ground, trying desperately to keep her pants from being pulled down, trying to reclaim some of her stolen dignity, but Philipe dropped to his knees and roughly shoved her legs apart. I heard the sound of material ripping. She was screaming, crying, tears streaming down her reddened face, and she looked for all the world like a frightened little girl. There was terror in her eyes. Pure, abject terror.
“Let her go!” I said.
“No.”
“I’m next!” Steve said.
“Me,” Bill said.
I staggered out of the alley. Behind me, I heard their laughter, heard her screams.
I couldn’t fight them. There was nothing I could do.
I walked down the sidewalk to the left, sat down on the narrow ledge beneath the Baskin-Robbins window. The glass felt cool against my back. I realized that my hands were shaking. I could still hear the woman’s screams, but they were muffled by city sounds, by traffic, by people. The door to the ice cream parlor opened, and Bill walked out, a huge chocolate sugar cone in his hand.
“Done?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
He frowned. “No?”
“I couldn’t do it,” I said, sickened.
“Where is everybody?”
“There.”
“Oh.” He licked his ice cream, then headed toward the alley.
I closed my eyes, tried to concentrate on the noise of the traffic. Was Philipe evil? Were we all evil? I didn’t know. I’d been taught my entire life that evil was banal. It was the Nazis and their institutionalized horror that had given rise to such a theory, and during my life I’d heard ad nauseum that evil was not brilliant and spectacular and grandiose, but small and mundane and ordinary.
We were small and mundane and ordinary.
Were we evil?
Philipe thought we were good, believed we could do anything that we wanted and that it was all right. There was no moral authority to which we had to answer, no system of ethics to which we were obliged to adhere. We were above all that. We decided what was right for us, what was wrong.
I had decided that this was wrong.
Why didn’t we all agree on this? Why were our beliefs different? In almost everything else, we thought, we felt, as one. But at this moment, I felt as estranged from my fellow Ignored as I ever had from normal men and women.
Philipe would say that I was still holding on to the mores and conventions of the society that I had left behind.
Maybe he was right.
They emerged from the alley a few minutes later. I wanted to go back there, check on the woman, make sure she was all right, but I stayed where I was, leaned my head back against the Baskin-Robbins window.
“Their movie’s probably out by now,” Philipe said, adjusting his belt. “We’d better get back to the theater.”
I nodded, stood, and we started walking back down the street the way we’d come. I peeked into the alley as we walked past but saw nothing. She must have run out the other end.
“You’re one of us,” Philipe said. “You were part of it, too.”
“Did I say anything?”
“No, but you’re thinking it.” He looked at me. “I need you with us.”
I did not respond.
“You’ll murder but you won’t rape?”
“That was different. That was personal.”
“It’s all personal! We’re not fighting individuals, we’re fighting an entire system. We have to strike where and when we can.”
“That’s not how I see it,” I told him.
He stopped walking. “You’re against us, then.”
I shook my head. “I’m not against you.”
“Then you’re with us.”
I said nothing.
“You’re with us,” he repeated.
