I took Eleanor to the place that Alice was supposed to take me—Cold Spring Tavern, a former stagecoach stop, up in San Marcos Pass.
We drove until we found an ivy-covered wooden house on a main road set in the woods. Dark smoke rose from the chimney through the tall trees. You couldn’t see the sky. There were old wooden picnic tables and a bearded man flipping big red steaks on a charcoal grill. Motorcycles were parked in diagonal formation as far as the eye could see.
It was so romantic inside the place that I wanted to kill myself. Red-checked tablecloths, oppressive candles, dusty Tiffany lamps, mounted deer busts. The first thought I had was how I wished to be there with Big Sky, how I wished to dance with him in the middle of the afternoon, to fuck in the woods behind the bar or in the charming, slightly scummy inn down the street.
I felt crazy, I have to tell you, the craziest I have ever felt. I had to stifle my laughter. Eleanor would say something serious and I’d laugh and laugh. The kind of laugh where the whole body moves like a rung bell. She looked at me oddly but then she would smile, too. Everybody just wants to be happy.
We sat inside and ordered a couple of lagers and the tri-tip steak sandwiches. When the bartender dropped off the beer, I smelled expensive marijuana on his breath. Eleanor was wearing a t-shirt with a palm tree on it and a pair of khaki shorts that fit too tight around her thighs.
—This is the coolest place I’ve been, she said. She was given to saying things like that without the corresponding expression of happiness on her face.
I agreed that it was.
—Thank you for bringing me here.
—Well, I think we both were having some cabin fever.
—Do you like that guy who lives in the yurt?
—We had sex a couple of times. He’s good in bed.
Those words looked like they’d hurt her.
—Can you do that? she asked.
—What do you mean? I asked, laughing but annoyed.
—Like, when you’re pregnant.
Sometimes I would forget I was pregnant, and anyhow I couldn’t believe a child would linger in there. I was sure that at any moment my body would dispel it.
I told her of course you can.
—The penis doesn’t, like, poke the baby?
—No, Eleanor. Anyway, he didn’t put it in that hole.
Predictably, this shocked her. She tried not to show it. She tried to pretend she was mature.
—So you like him?
—Do you like being a virgin?
She shrugged, taking a sip of her beer. The sandwiches arrived, sloppy and beautiful, with apple horseradish on the side. We ate them without speaking. She wiped up steak blood with the crust of the bread. I never finished all my food. My mother told me to always leave a little bit on the plate.
Once we were done, we walked outside with fresh beers and sat on the logs and the motorcycle men stared at me. The kind of staring that never stopped. I had the deplorable thought that I wanted one of them, the largest one, to fuck the baby out of me.
—I’m worried about sex, Eleanor said.
—Honestly it’s nothing.
—I mean that I don’t know who I am.
—In what way?
Very quietly she told me that sometimes she felt like a girl who liked women and other times she felt like a boy who liked women and still other times she felt like something in between who just wanted to be loved. That it was a painful feeling. That she walked around with it all the time, hanging from her neck.
I asked her if her mother knew and she laughed and I asked her if her father had suspected it; he had mentioned to me once or twice that he was safe for the time being since Eleanor did not seem interested in boys, so he did not need a shotgun for date nights. He was always acting the part of the insanely protective father. Because that was what I missed about mine. I had to confront what protective meant—whether I had, in fact, been protected. Physically protective was one thing. Any father could own a shotgun.
Before she could answer, one of the motorcycle men came over and leaned down between us, his hands on the log table, his arms too close to us both.
—What’s cookin, ladies?
I saw the rape in his eyes. I was wearing my white dress and laughed to myself, thinking how anyone would say I kept asking for it. I’d opined often with other women and with men that every man has a degree of rape in him. Women didn’t understand what I meant. They were alternately disgusted and confused. They thought I was stupid. But the men didn’t. I think they were impressed that I understood.
—Nothing cooking, I said, remembering the impeccable way in which Alice had turned away those Ray-Bans at the farmers’ market.
He moved his face frighteningly close to mine. His beard had the stink of meat.
—Yeah? he said.
—We’re having a conversation.
He bit his lower lip.
—You want me to get you some more beers so you can continue your conversation?
—No, thank you. We’re leaving soon.
He rested his hand on Eleanor’s thigh to better balance himself as he squared his leather chest to me.
I used the side of my palm to karate-chop his arm off her leg, and even though he was big, he toppled.
—What the fuck!
He rose quickly, embarrassedly, ragefully.
—Fuckin bitch, he said.
I felt protective of Eleanor, of the secret she’d been telling me, and of the baby inside of me. I grabbed her hand and we began to walk away. He was about to follow, but there were so many men out there, some with their burly women, mullets and studs and dust. Half of them were witnesses. The other half would have egged him on if he’d bent me over and tried to fuck me.
We drove off through the mountains, under the trees that
