“Come over to my place for ice cream,” Harry had said on the cold, star-ceilinged street where they’d met. Nothing had seemed so wrong with that.
“You can’t eat ice cream without a splash of liqueur,” he’d said in his sloppy apartment. And Rachel had felt her muscles contract in anticipation.
“I’ll take you home in a minute,” he’d promised. “Finish your drink.”
But then she and Harry had watched an old I Love Lucy rerun, side by side on the derelict couch, sipping from the same glass of syrupy booze, while Paul glared and muttered in a corner. Everything Rachel was doing astonished her, but she felt certain that nothing bad could happen while Paul was with her. And even when she glanced over and noticed that his chair was empty, she knew that he would not have left her there alone. The liqueur had made her drunk very quickly. She was not even aware that her head had fallen onto Harry’s shoulder. But when he turned her into his lap and began to move against her, she knew it. She felt as if she had left her body and was watching from above, shocked and amused at the sight of flesh below. Her sense of time was so confused that it could have been minutes or hours before she felt all in one piece again.
“Where’s Paul?” she finally mumbled, pushing her hair from her eyes and wondering how she’d burned her mouth. It was sticky and raw. Her breasts, she realized, had been bared. Harry was taking off her shoes. He pointed toward the kitchen.
“He’s in there,” Harry said as he placed her shoes quietly on the floor. “He can take care of himself.”
One part of Rachel knew precisely what was happening and reluctantly welcomed her impending metamorphosis. Twenty-year-old virgins were as rare as comets, and Rachel had long since decided that her virginity was too distracting. Besides, she was curious about sex and had difficulty imagining what it would be like. It was therefore with a somewhat scientific attitude that she approached the whole experience, watchfully open to possibility.
Another part of her looked at matters differently. This boy was, really, a stranger. Rachel knew only that something about the arrangement of his eyes, the grain of his hair, the contours of his hands shocked her senses into a new state: she had never before been attracted to anyone as she was to Harry Gallagher. Disarmed, she was inclined to think the best of him, to anticipate the discovery of a fine and honorable boy inside the lovely skin. What Paul had said about him, what she had heard here and there from disappointed girls, did not matter to Rachel. She felt almost virtuous as she made her decision to judge him according to what he said, what he did, and nothing else.
Sober, Rachel might have allowed her indecision to escalate and, eventually, to lead her safely home. As drunk as she was, she simply declared a stalemate, put her concerns aside for the moment, and concentrated on keeping her feet as Harry took her by the hand and led her to his bedroom.
She did not say a word as he shut the door and pushed her gently onto the mattress. When he knelt over her and began to unfasten her pants, Rachel closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift, to recall the absolutely safe and satisfying feeling of her mother’s hands putting her to bed when she was very small, perhaps drowsy with fever, removing her socks, lifting her compliant limbs, arranging the blankets over her, moving quietly about the room.
Harry removed the last of Rachel’s clothing, tugged her from the edge of the bed, all without a word. He paid her no compliments, made no inquiries, offered her no protection. He addressed himself not to her but to her flesh. Through it all, Rachel kept her silence and, with it, a degree of distance.
The weight of his body on her changed things. It yanked her into the here and now, purged her memories of home and comfort, so that she opened her eyes and suddenly felt as if she had a great deal to say. But it was as her lassitude left her that she felt herself tear. She hissed like an animal, bit right into her lip, and, through the rest of it, coached herself gently, silent and removed.
This is inevitable. It happens to everyone. I should never have waited so long. Maybe it’s like chicken pox: much worse the older you get. God, this is awful. After tonight I won’t have to worry about this anymore. I’ll be through with this part of it. I’ll know what it’s like. I won’t ever let it be like this again. They say the first time is awful. Thank God they told me. There is no pleasure in this. Not for me, anyway. Is this what men are after? They must know something. Or maybe they just set their sights lower. Or maybe they just don’t know any better. Isn’t he through yet? He’s not even looking at me. I’ll have to ask Paul about this. He’s a man. He must know something about it. There must be more to it than this, even for them.
When Harry rolled over onto his side and straight into a deep sleep, Rachel waited until her insides had slowly rocked to a standstill and then, floundering against the tangled sheet, threw up in her naked lap. She would have laughed at this whole astounding turn of events, but she was concentrating fiercely on containing her nausea and cleaning herself. When she dragged the soiled sheet into the bathroom with her—feeling vaguely like a giant snake shedding its skin—she found the cloth streaked with blood. She tried to assess her wounds, but bending over made her feel sick again, and faint. So she climbed carefully into
