I shuddered to think of the heat in the house and the candles on top of it and this poor wife of his, spreading her legs for this insolent asshole. Once again I’d trusted a man. Once again I’d felt sympathy for a man who was not good.
—I don’t know what kind of woman you are, Joan. Some women are not built for babies. I don’t think that’s bad. Biology is enigmatic but deliberate, it selects some for procreation and others it marks for a different path. Women like you are necessary to let off the steam. To depressurize the cabin.
—Women like me are good for men to fuck when they’re not ready for babymaking with good Midwestern girls like Lenore.
—That’s not how I meant it.
—Fuck you.
—I deserve that, old girl.
—So you and Lenore, the mother of all mothers, fucked in a temple of love. And lit all the magic candles to usher the insemination along. And then?
—And then nothing. Her cycle came. It was a terrible day. You know about the coyotes and the cycles?
I nodded and Lenny did, too, solemnly.
—The coyotes circled the house. They howled before she even started to bleed. They could smell the blood traveling down her tubes. I heard her upstairs, the whimper. My blessed bride. A good man would have gone and comforted her. But I only felt rage. Rage at myself, but also at her—like a real damned dog, I was angry at my bride for showing me the extent of my futility. Then further down it went, the boiling anger, down my hips and into my shaft. I wonder if you know how rage can stiffen the shaft. It’s like a war cry. I left the house, engorged. I drove up the canyon to Sandstone. I didn’t check in at the main house but sneaked to the yard at the back where the trampoline was. There was a tall American Indian girl laughing and jumping up and down, her tits like turkey wattles, shaking. Two men were watching, and two other women, a couple of pale whore blondes. All of them naked and slim as snakes. Nothing looked human to me. I was the stiffest I’d ever been. I climbed the trampoline and tackled the American Indian girl like a wolf. I stripped down and knelt her on all fours and got behind her like an animal. Look at me, I’m built like a rich man, not like a beast, but that day I was a beast, and none of them stopped me. After all, they’d built that place to act like animals and here was a man dispensing with the formality. I was full of rage because I was being denied the one right of all humans. The one reason we are on this earth. To procreate. So I fucked the American Indian girl with my rage and then the two blondes as the two men looked on. They stroked their cocks and watched me take what I was owed.
I shook my head in revulsion. I thought I’d expended all my disgust on hearing from men about what they were owed.
—You are shocked, Joan. I’m an old man now. The evils we have done would be pointless if they didn’t get passed down so that others might not make the same mistake. Wouldn’t you say, Joan? I know you have secrets, too. Nobody comes to the canyon unless they do.
I bit my lip. I tried to keep my hands in my lap, away from his throat.
—My point was that Lenore was only for children. She wanted only to be a wife and a mother. But a mother first. A mother always. Joan, that isn’t you, I don’t know you too well, but I hope you’ll allow me that. I love a woman like you. A part of me always wished to have that, a woman I could do battle with. Perhaps it would have suited me better. Perhaps my story would have turned out differently.
—I don’t care how your story would have turned out, Lenny. You wanted to gag a woman with your cock.
—That’s not the bad part, I’m afraid. I’m still getting there. You see, I want to come clean!
I pushed him to the door and then outside the threshold.
—Please, Joan, I’m an old man. I don’t expect you to feel sorry, I only—
—I only feel sorry for your wife, Lenny. This stupid woman who wanted a child that you were too empty to give her.
I spat, and watched a bubble of my saliva land on the bridge of his nose. I don’t know where the impulse came from, but it made me feel more powerful than I had ever felt before. I slammed the door in his face.
Then I walked up the spiral staircase and took off my white dress to go to sleep. When you’ve been raped in a dress, you might think you want to burn it but I didn’t.
IN THE MORNING THERE WAS a knock on my door. Alice was early. I hadn’t pulled myself together as much as I’d wanted to. I checked my face in the hallway mirror. I smoothed down my hair and opened the door. I’d completely forgotten about the little girl.
She had Vic’s face. That was the most remarkable thing—his face staring back at me, his probing eyebrows, the shining balls of his pale cheeks. The way she held herself in my doorway was all her father. An uneven confidence.
Then I realized we’d met before. She’d come to visit her father in the first few months of my employment. I was enjoying the early days
