that. You know, Johnny, everybody gets ruined by the past one way or another. You aren’t the only one.”
“Well, you’re not doing it tonight.”
“I am.”
“What are you talking about? I’ll see Gareth tomorrow and tell him to fuck off.”
“No, you won’t. If I don’t do it he’ll call the council, and I am
“Don’t give me that shit. There aren’t too many other places you can be when you’re flat on your back with some guy on top of you.”
Her tone changed abruptly and she pulled away. “You might want to consider that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you’d shown some fucking spine and hadn’t run away to London. Do you think I would ever have started doing it then? Ever?”
We’d entered the town by then and the darkness of the forest had been replaced by the orange glow of streetlights. There were people walking around in the warm night and through the windows of restaurants and bars life gently ticked away the minutes and the hours. And suddenly my anger faded and I wanted the dirt of this night to be gone. I wanted to stop the pickup and park and take Marla into a bar and forget everything that had ever happened in her past and in mine and just have a drink and some food and be alive in the present. For once. For one goddamned moment.
And I wanted Marla not to be right. But I knew what she said about me and what I’d done to her was true. And I knew I didn’t have the right to force her to lose something she held dear. I’d taken too much away from her already.
So, on the other side of Back Town I didn’t take the road up to my house, but turned instead onto the long dark grade of the forest road that led up to the Slopes.
“What’s the address?”
Marla gripped my arm tightly and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Johnny.”
She passed me a scrap of paper. I recognized the street name, but it wasn’t until I turned into it ten minutes later that it finally dawned on me what our destination was.
Lights buried in the ground threw columns of gold against the white front of Jeremy Tripp’s house. The plants in the garden and beside the driveway caught the light on the edges of their leaves so that they looked like ornaments placed for effect.
I should have stayed in the pickup, I should have let Marla climb out and go to the house by herself and do what she had to do. I should have waited for her out there on the dark street and tried not to think, or maybe gone driving in some attempt to distract myself until it was time to pick her up again. But I didn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to let go of her. So I walked with her to the front door and stood close as she rang the bell and waited.
Tripp opened the door holding his longbow. He was wearing knee-length shorts and an NYU T-shirt. When he saw me he looked a little surprised.
“John. This
“I’m the driver.”
His face changed nastily. “Not tonight, you’re not.” His eyes moved to Marla. They narrowed slightly as though the way she looked meant something to him.
I turned to her and nodded toward the pickup. “I guess I’ll just wait, then.”
Marla put her hand on my arm and leaned forward to kiss me quickly on the cheek. For a second her eyes held mine and I felt her hand tighten. I turned to go, but Jeremy Tripp stopped me.
“Oh, no, John. Now that you’re here you’re coming inside too.”
Marla started to protest, but Tripp stopped her.
“Without John here I call your boss and tell him you wouldn’t cooperate. He said all I had to do was pick up the phone if you gave me any trouble. Plus it might be safer. I could quite easily forget myself and become violent. It’s up to you, though.”
He looked blandly at Marla until she dropped her gaze. I saw her shoulders sag. I saw her press her hands against her thighs to stop them shaking. Then, after a long moment in which no one moved or spoke, she stepped forward and the three of us went into the house.
Out back the wooden deck was brightly lit by harsh white floodlights that hurt my eyes. The long lawn shimmered in their light. The archery target had several arrows in it and behind it the forest made a smoky backdrop. At one end of the deck the jets of the Jacuzzi churned water and threw a halo of mist into the air.
Jeremy Tripp walked to the edge of the deck, took an arrow from a quiver, and set it in his bow. He drew the string and held it for several seconds before he loosed it. The arrow hit the target near its center.
He turned and leaned against the railing and pointed to a bench against the wall of the house. “You sit over there and don’t move until we’re finished.” And then, to Marla, “Take your clothes off.”
Marla looked uncertainly at me and then at Tripp. “Can’t he wait in the house?”
“No, he can’t.”
The bench was fifteen feet from where Marla stood and I saw her sigh and as the air left her she seemed to break, to be no longer something with free will but an object, resigned to whatever battering life had decided to dish out.
She dropped the purse she was carrying on the wooden planking and pulled the pieces of clothing from her body-her shirt, her sandals, her short skirt and her underwear.
Jeremy Tripp watched every second of it with an angry intensity. He told Marla to lie on her back, then took off his own clothes and peeled on a condom. He stepped over her and crouched and leaned forward and forced himself into her mouth.
I started to rise from my chair, desperate to leave, feeling sure that I would soon be physically sick, but Jeremy Tripp heard me move and called across to me: “Stay where you are, John. It’ll be far safer for her.”
Something moved out on the lawn. Several yards in front of the archery target a large brown rabbit took a few slow hops and then stopped to nibble grass. Jeremy Tripp saw it. He pulled himself out of Marla’s mouth and retrieved his bow. He set an arrow and drew the string back. For a moment he was frozen in the hard light, then the arrow streaked across the lawn and into the rabbit’s stomach, skewering the animal to the ground. It lay on its side with its legs running and blood darkening its fur and screamed like a child burning.
Jeremy Tripp went back to Marla and climbed on top and started to grind himself into her. Out on the lawn the rabbit kept on screaming and I covered my ears and closed my eyes and tried not to feel the world tearing itself open around me.
In the truck on the way down from the Slopes afterwards Marla smoked one cigarette after another. We didn’t speak. What could we say to each other? By that point recriminations were as pointless as apologies.
I drove to my place. Stan was asleep on the couch in the living room. The TV was still on, tuned to Nickelodeon. There was a Coke can and an empty packet of potato chips on the floor. I woke him and walked him up the stairs to his bedroom. While I was getting him settled Marla showered, then she and I sat in the kitchen and drank bourbon until the alcohol blurred the images of the night enough for us to risk the darkness of the bedroom.
As Marla undressed she said, “You know Gareth hates both of us, don’t you?”
“Well, he must hate you, that’s for sure.”
“And you. He loved it that he could involve you. You could have picked me up from my place. Instead he drove me up to the lake and made you come out there. Why? Because he wanted to be there when you found out. He wanted to see how much it hurt you.”
Later, as we lingered at the edge of an alcohol-hazed sleep, she pressed her face against the base of my neck and whispered for me to tell her that nothing had changed between us. And I did, because although the horror of that night had been almost insupportable I knew that being without her, being unable to somehow make up for abandoning her, would be something I was far less able to bear.
CHAPTER 16
