Mark got the ticket for skinny-dipping the second-to-last time he ever saw Bethany. Since the Fourth of July picnic, Mark had seen her only twice – each time at the Bee's Knees and each time she had given him the cold shoulder. She never returned his phone calls; she had no phone and he had to rely on the kindness of whoever picked up the payphone on the dorm floor to get the message to her. He wondered if she had a new boyfriend, but there was no one with her, at least on those two occasions. She had simply stuck close to her friends from the summer program and avoided Mark.
It all happened at Drive-Thru. After helping Bryce move to a new apartment, they were sweaty and grimy, and a quick swim sounded just right. When they arrived, it was crowded, with about three dozen people, most of them in the buff, lounging on the many levels and rocks of the waterfall.
No sooner had Mark lowered himself into a shallow pool, scattering the minnows, Bethany loomed before him, blocking out the sun.
"I need to talk to you."
"Okay."
She turned and climbed down the waterfall, disappearing out of sight. By the time Mark caught up with her, she had pulled on a halter-top and was adjusting her skirt. Naked, he wished he'd brought his shorts, which were back near the top.
Bethany, maybe sensing his discomfort, tossed over her towel.
He covered himself and sat down. They were at the very bottom of the falls, on a flat rock the size of a large mattress and the blue-gray of slate. They were far from any other bathers.
Bethany remained standing, her arms crossed. "I'm pregnant."
"Hmmm. Okay." Mark hadn't expected this. "From that one time?"
"That's all it takes." Her mouth was tight and her brow knit.
"So, um, what do you want to do?" Mark wondered the same thing about himself.
The thought occurred to him that he should marry Bethany and the moment he thought it, a certain lightness filled him. He saw himself with Bethany, arm in arm pushing a stroller through pleasant, small town Corinth. He saw himself holding the baby boy, whose hair was dark like Bethany's. He could almost smell that baby smell, fresh baked bread and talcum powder.
The vision was strong and real, more like something remembered than something simply imagined.
"Don't worry, it's not like I'm not going to ask you to marry me. Like I'd even consider it." She looked ready to spit at him. Instead, she took a deep breath and softened. She bit her lip, shaking her head and looking away from Mark. "I have everything all arranged. I just want two things from you: you pay half and you be there with me. And don't tell anyone either, I don't want anyone else knowing about this. I don't want this getting back to my parents. Okay?"
Mark was still half-lost in his daydream. "Pay half of what?"
Bethany continued. "There is a clinic downtown, they do abortions Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays." She looked down at him. "Is Wednesday good for you?"
After deciding everything – Wednesday, three o'clock, meet at the bagel shop – Bethany took her towel back and climbed away, leaving Mark naked and alone on the flat rock.
Mark was trying to recapture the vision of them together, pushing the stroller, when he heard the short whoop of the police siren and the megaphone voice ordering the swimmers to stay put. Of course, everybody who could – Bryce included – just grabbed their clothes and ran off into the woods. Mark and three others were, as Bryce would later joke repeatedly, caught with their pants down.
Mark was never comfortable with how things happened at the picnic, but the idea of date rape – rape! – did not occur to him until years later, when Carli was about two and they were still living in the city.
He was sitting in a café leafing through one of those free tabloid-size weekly papers found on every corner in San Francisco. Carole was not there; she was doing an open house near the zoo. Carli was snoozing in her stroller, her cap on crooked with the earflaps tilting off at odd angles, her head tucked into the quilted corner of the seat. They had just come from the playground in Golden Gate Park; coarse sand clung to her plump calves like pretzel salt.
Over a decaf latte, Mark began reading one woman's account of confronting her date rapist many years after the fact in a final bid for closure. The summer before college, she had gone on a group river-rafting trip, the kind that lasted several days. She described the evening cookouts on sandbars, campfire scenes under brilliant stars, and her burgeoning crush on one of the river guides, a rugged outdoorsman type in his mid-twenties. (Mark imagined a variation on the Marlboro man.) It was all very dreamy and romantic for her. Over the course of the trip, flirtation quickly evolved into increasingly passionate making out. The last night of the trip was, of course, a big party with lots of alcohol. This time the making out went further than she'd have liked and by the time she was saying no, it was all but too late.
The author explained how she felt terrible and spent years blaming herself. Her relationships with men always ran aground and she never understood why. After years of therapy, she finally decided to track the guy down and confront him. By then he was married with a family. He remembered her, of course, but not the actual incident. He had been pretty drunk, but he didn't make any excuses. He was apologetic and recognized that he had hurt her; he felt terrible about it. But because he could not remember it, the incident had no reality for him. He could feel only so terrible.
The author, the woman, did achieve her release however. Like the event itself, the river guide had over the years assumed the gigantic proportions of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. When she saw him again – now a balding roughneck with a paunch – he instantly shrunk back down to normal. He was nothing worth the energy this trauma had been sucking out of her life. And with this diminishing of the man, came a diminishing of the rape itself. She realized how far she had come from being that naïve girl, how much she had grown not only as a person but as a woman. Et cetera, et cetera.
Mark put the paper down and sipped his latte, now gone cold. He didn't notice.
Change the raft trip for the Fourth of July picnic, adjust the ages a little and it could have been Bethany telling the tale.
I'm a rapist. That's what I did to Bethany. No means no. He wondered what he would say if he ever had the chance.
At the thought of Bethany, the usual stabbing began in his lower belly, but now with an added sharpness. He rubbed it softly. The woman in the story was luckier than Bethany: at least she hadn't conceived a child.
Mark looked at his sleeping daughter and calculated the age of his neverborn child. It would not be the first time. He imagined a dark-haired little boy, almost eleven, sitting at the table with them, sipping apple juice from a bottle shaped like an apple, and making mock serious faces to crack up his little sister.
Flossing his teeth, Mark turns on the late news. The breaking stories are the capture of the killer and the subsequent discovery of Susie Leigh's body in a marsh off Highway 37.
Utility workers maintaining a nearby electrical tower saw the minivan pulling out from a dirt road and called the Highway Patrol. Stopping and searching the vehicle, the CHP found articles of clothing matching what Susie was wearing when she was taken. Aided by the linemen's observations and using search dogs, the police recovered the body shortly after sundown. The video shows police officers with flashlights and dogs straining at their leashes going down a dirt road. The last clip is a body bag, shiny like black leather in the camera lights, being hustled past the camera on an ambulance gurney.
The suspected killer is an itinerant flooring installer from Pinole, a small city across the bay. There are the usual clips of neighbors saying how he kept to himself and never bothered anyone. The same police lieutenant who threatened Mark makes a cameo; he speculates that the killer spotted Susie Leigh while working a job near her home. The flooring contractor who employed him cannot be reached for comment.
The next segment focuses on the fact that the killer had previous arrests for attempted kidnapping and attempted sexual assault of a minor, although he had never been convicted. Random person-on-the-street interviews reveal citizen outrage.
How could a monster like this be allowed to walk freely among us? What are we paying the police for?
Sure they have rights, but what about my rights to protect my children?
These guys should be locked up on the first offense. When are we gonna learn that these animals can't be trusted in human society?
Experts appear briefly in split screen to discuss the pros and cons of an open-access national sex offender database, as well as the constitutionality of various political initiatives that would require the authorities to notify residents when a known sex offender moves into their community.
As the segment ends and they move to the war news, the telephone handset, resting on the coffee table, rings. Mark picks it up and looks at the illuminated caller-ID screen: PRIVATE.
"Hello?" Mark moves across the room and slips into the study. He closes the door behind him. The room is dark except for the light from the driveway lamps coming through the windows. The bushes cast tangled shadows against the wall.
"Looks like you're off the hook this time, Baylor."
"They caught the guy. Why don't you leave me alone?"
"It's not just this time, Baylor. Guys like you never stop." The voice remains even and slow, almost soothing. "You get a taste for it. You had nothing to do with Susie Leigh, but we know there were others. We know, Baylor."
"If this is about my police record from Corinth, it's not what you think!" Mark struggles to keep his voice low. "It was just skinny-dipping, for crissake! It was nothing!"
"What about that girl, Baylor?"
"What girl?"
"Don't fuck with us, Baylor. We know everything about you."
Mark struggles for words. How could they know? "You… you mean Bethany?"
"So there were others, huh?" The voice chuckles. "I hope you don't play poker, Baylor."
"No, it wasn't like that. It's not what you think. She was… special. We had this energy between us, but… I don't know what happened. We got carried away. Things went too far. I was drunk and I… I… I…" Mark wants to tell the voice everything, but he cannot put the words together.
"Jesus, Baylor, I don't want to hear it! How could you?" Then, softer: "How many others are there?"
"No, that's not what happened! You need to understand…" Mark rubs his eyes. "I need you to understand."
"I'll tell you what you need, Baylor. You know what you need? You need a priest, that's what. And you'd better hurry." He hangs up.
"Hello? Hello?" Mark stares at the dead phone in his hand, urging it to ring again. He keeps staring until his wife calls him to bed.
The morning air is cool and tinged with eucalyptus and the ocean. Like every morning.
Carole and Carli are already waiting in the minivan, engine running, while Mark scrambles to close and lock the front door. As he opens the passenger side door and slides his computer bag inside, he realizes he has forgotten his cell phone.
"Sorry!"
Carole chuckles while Carli makes an impatient face and rolls her eyes as if her father were the biggest doofus in the whole world.
Stepping away from the van, Mark senses movement from the corner of his eye. Even as he catches sight of the black SUV rolling past the driveway, an invisible sledgehammer pounds into him and spins him around. He slams into the ground like a bag of wet sand, his cheek grating against the asphalt. His nose fills with the twin smells of old oil and tar.
He tries to lift himself but can't. His left shoulder is all blood and wet fabric. He assumes the jacket is ruined.
Carli and Carole are screaming, bursting out of the van. He quickly looks at the street and is relieved to see that the SUV is gone.
How many shots? Three or four? One in the front door, one through the window of the study, one in him. Three shots.
He wonders if he'll be able to get a glass guy out to the house today or if he'll need to tape cardboard or a tarp over the window for the night.
Carli is talking to 911 on her cell phone; Carole is checking the wound. Her father was a vet. "You're gonna be okay, honey, you're gonna be okay."
Carli is kneeling by his side. "They're coming, Dad. They're coming. Just hang in there." Her voice shifts. "Mom, is he gonna be okay?"
Mark feels as if a great weight were pressing him into the ground. He remembers a movie in which a man, a Pilgrim convicted of some grievous sin, is crushed to death by the community, each black-frocked man, woman, and child placing a stone on top of him.
Carole is calm, but Mark suspects this is for Carli's sake. "He's going to be just fine. See? He isn't bleeding a lot and it didn't hit any internal organs. Look, it caught him right in the top of the shoulder and went right back out."
"Yuck!"
Carole says, "What a way to start a day, huh, sweetie?"
Mark can't tell if she is talking to him or to Carli. Her voice is very far away, and besides, he is busy worrying about the damage to the front door. The bullet has shattered the wood and a busted out section is hanging loose, the exposed splinters blonde against the red paint. Mark wonders if it will ever close right again.
"Mom, what's this?"
He feels someone lifting the back of his jacket, feels the sudden chill of the morning air against his wet shirt. He hears Carole gasp and say, "Oh dear."
Mark corrects himself: Four shots. One in the door, one in the window, and two in me. He likes the way two-in-me rhymes with Beth-an-y.
A Midwesterner by birth, an East Coaster by upbringing, and a West Coaster by choice, Andrew Dugas once spent four years in Brazil by accident. He currently lives in the hills north of San Francisco. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in edifice WRECKED, Loafer's magazine, Bear Creek Haiku, Cokefish, Minotaur, Misnomer, Enterzone and various places online.