He pulls a six pack from the fridge, grabs an opener from a drawer which sticks momentarily, causing him a flash of anger and sets him to cursing the house and everything in it. It's sexy. "Where to, my lady? Your magic carriage awaits."
He drives an old truck, big tires, running boards, the entire rear covered in bumper stickers for various political causes, rock bands, an indie record store and a popular marijuana-themed sandwich shop. It's his baby. The Blah wants him to sell it because the three of them can't fit on the bench seat together, not with the kid's car seat, but he won't even entertain the thought. Good for him. He shoves a stack of papers off the seat and onto the floor, where they meet another pile already waiting there. He opens a beer for her. She practically faces him on the seat, her legs folded under her, staring at his arms and neck and face. Staring at his eyebrows and lips and small nose and what she can see of his ears underneath that mop of hair, the exact color of a worn penny.
"Your mother's in the hospital," he says. "She getting any better? She sure is a nice looking lady. I sometimes wonder if you kids realize how hot some of your moms are. Easy to see who you take after, kitten. I miss looking at her. Your mom."
"I'm sure you do," she says. "A lot of men do." She pictures her mother as she is now, as she sees her every other week, in a paper gown, sitting across a table, hair shorn and gone almost white, plum-like bruising at the temples, confessing to her daughter that which she refuses to share with the doctors or her very own husband. "She might come home soon," she lies, preferring that over the truth. People lie not because they're dishonest, is her theory, but just because it makes everything so much easier. People should lie more, not less.
"You getting along with your father? Open up that glove box and light me a cigarette," he says, pushing in the lighter. "Help yourself. You're a big girl."
"He's an asshole," she says.
"I figured as much, just by looking at him. Bald-man syndrome combined with a Napoleon complex. Lethal. I wondered how he landed someone as hot as your mother. Your little brother's kind of a shit, too. Looks like one anyway. I feel for you, kitten."
"Why did you say I should never get married?" she says, trying not to choke on the cigarette, which is unfiltered. "My mother told me the same thing before she got sick. Actually, she said don't marry anyone like my dad but the upshot was, eventually all guys turn into my dad so don't marry anyone."
"I'll never be like your old man," he says. "That's one thing you can count on. It's what my Missus would prefer, that I be more like that. More grown up. Industrious. Less imagination. Boring as all fuck. But she's right about the not getting married part. You shouldn't have the arrogance to think you know in your twenties what your thirty year old self might want. It's not fair to your older self. Give it a fighting chance. At least when you battle with your dad you can go to your room and lock the door. When you're married, your room is her room; his room. Nothing is yours anymore. Even something as basic as a bed. Your own bed. Nope. You don't have your own bed anymore. Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news but you're too smart for me to bullshit. You're one of the good ones, kitten."
She likes how he talks to her; he doesn't treat her like she's an idiot. She can't help but smile when he calls her kitten. She sees him checking her reaction the first couple of times he says it. He's not that much different than boys her age, really. Just a little older looking and a lot more mature. Though there is still something of the little boy about him, but in a charming way. Mischievous. Maybe it's the freckles.
They're almost there but she wishes the ride would last longer. She likes this truck. Other than the stereo the dashboard is all dials, no digital numbers or gauges and outside of the turn signal, no flashing lights. "I need to use a bathroom," she says. "I don't want to pee in the woods."
"I thought you just went at the house. You must have a bladder the size of a walnut. What is it with you women and your bladders?" He pulls the truck over, the tires crunching on the shoulder, and turns around. They passed a convenience mart a few miles back. They should have a bathroom. He called her a woman. Not a girl.
By the time they get there, the six-pack is empty and while inside grabbing cigarettes he takes a look into the beer cooler, bending way over to check a price. She's holding a big paddle from which hangs the bathroom key. When she sees what he's doing she cracks him across the ass with it. The noise is so loud the cashier looks over. "More beer?" she says. "Haven't you had enough? You're bad."
"Worse than you can ever imagine. You're a good little kitten, Jade," he says. "And good little kittens always tell the truth. Tell me, what were you really doing in my bedroom? You weren't in the bathroom, were you? You were in the bedroom."
She threatens him with the paddle again, and then sets it on a hook before striding out the door and climbing back into the truck, waiting impatiently for him.
They're back to climbing the mountain toward the forest. "I should be asking you for gas money," he says. "Then again, I think we owe you some money. She handles that end of the house. You'll eventually get paid. She'll make sure."
She looks at her watch and wonders if her father is searching the streets yet. Knowing him, he's already called the cops. As if reading her mind, he says, "Tell me about what's going on at the homestead. You can trust me, kitten." He reaches over and gives her thigh a gentle squeeze. "Right now we're friends. Not teacher and student. Friends. You should talk about it."
It takes her a few seconds to get going but then it all comes out. She tells him. Almost every last drop. First it was episodic with her mother and then it became clinical. Jade saw it happening, saw it unraveling as if on a loop of film right before her eyes, but her father refused to see. She finds herself crying.
Josh's eyes look watery, as if the story touched him. Either that or it's the cigarette smoke filling the cab. "Life sucks, kitten. Grab what fun you can before you can't. There's a girl a lot like you in my novel."
"Yeah?" she says, dabbing at her face with a lacy black sleeve.
"Not as pretty but the same kind of spunk. You get to a certain kind of pretty and as a writer you can't describe it anymore. That's where you're at, kid. Nobody will ever be able to write anything about you, or at least someone who looks like you. You're way past that line. It'd be impossible. Beyond my meager abilities anyway. There are only a few ways to describe skin like yours. Alabaster. Porcelain. Milky. You are my song, my poem, the blood in my veins. Don't get me started on how round your eyes are."
"My dad and brother say I look ghostly," she says. "Because I'm so pale."
"Your dad is an asshole. You're brother's a little prick. He'll be bald too someday. Remind him of it whenever you can. It'll speed the process along. We've already established these facts. Just because they share your blood means nothing."
Drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, flush with his compliments, she dares to ask. "So, what'd you guys fight about, you and her?"
"We fought about you, kitten. We fought about you. Or at least people like you. My students. She freaked out that I answered the door in my boxers. She disapproved. Told me so. It's no different than answering a door in a bathing suit, a pair of shorts. Says I'm too familiar with my students. That I don't understand lines, that I keep crossing them no matter what the warning signs. Not enough she's a cunt to the people she works with, she wants to be a cunt to me at my job too."
His use of that word excites her. It's like the slash of a knife. She hopes he tells her more. "I didn't mind you in your underwear," she says. "You should teach like that some time."
"Not underwear," he says. "I answered the door in my shorts. It's the same thing but one sounds way worse. Remember that. I was in my shorts. Always tell people stuff in a way to make it seem less bad than it actually is. That there is a life lesson. Follow that and the bricks will be paved with gold."
The road off the highway leading straight up to what is commonly referred to as the forest is dirt and heavily rutted and he pulls onto it, the truck's shock absorbers treating them to a spasm of bouncing, thin strips of rust flaking off the undercarriage. She's not sure what he has pumping through the speakers but she likes it. He has good taste in music.
"You sure you want to do this, kitten? You call your friends and make sure they're going to be here?"
She shakes her head no, feeling dizzy.
"No cell reception up here," he says. "Not a single bar. I can drive you up but it's going to be a mighty bumpy ride. You ready for that?"
"I'd rather just sit here," she says. "Just pull over."
"You're the boss, kitten. I'm going to miss you. Most of them I couldn't give a damn about but you I'll miss. Your imprint is permanent. We end up on the same subway car years from now I'll spot you right off. We'll realize then something that we should have already realized by now. You're impending marriage will be called off. Music will play. Roll the credits."
"You're going to miss me? I'm here for two more years." Does he think she's a senior? Is he under the impression she is older and now will regret feeding her beer and talking the way he's been talking?
"You must not have heard the news. You must be the last to hear it. I'm gone. They fired me. Got my walking papers. This is my last marking period and then I'm redundant." He turns on the dome light and stares right at her, gauging her reaction.
She suddenly feels very alone, as if she'd been under the impression that she had been in a crowd of people and has now suddenly discovered she is actually by herself. "Really? What did they say you did?"
"Don't worry yourself with the details, kitten. It's some administrative issue. You think I'd normally drink beer with a student if I hadn't been fired? I'd have driven your sweet little ass straight home. I get caught drinking with a hot little piece of jailbait in my truck parked out on a county road, there goes my job. Oh sure, they'd take one look at you and understand the desire that keeps me up an extra twelve minutes every night, including clean-up time. Sorry about that. I shouldn't have been so graphic. But my job already went, it's gone, where I don't know, so fuck it. It's as good as gone. She, the Missus, blames me for my situation when all I did was give you kids my best. Too friendly with my students." His eyes are small and tired. It isn't fair what they are doing to him, what his wife, she keeps hoping he calls her a cunt again, and the school are doing to him, have done to him, and what might be done to him in the future.
Remembering the stolen bud, she says, "I have pot."
"That would be a godsend, child. Manna from heaven. I was in such a huff I forgot my stash at home."
She digs around in her purse for the tin and a bowl she always carries. She pulls out the panties and tosses them on the seat, along with lip gloss, loose sticks of gum, nail clippers, vitamin C lozenges, an oversized wallet, sunglasses, cell phone, a loose tampon wrapped in yellow paper, like a gift-wrapped cigar, an iPod and some crumpled up receipts.
He picks up the thong between two fingers, delicately, and holds it to the light, as if preparing to embark on a detailed inspection. It's black and not much more than a string. "I didn't think girls your age carried around a spare," he says. "Amazing that something so small could cover something so sacred. It's like guarding Fort Knox with a water pistol. I can't even tell which end goes in your ass crack, lucky bastard, and which covers your pussy, even luckier bastard. There I go crossing a line again. I meant, your vagina."
"They aren't a spare," she says, filling the bowl and lighting it, taking in a deep breath and holding it in until her eardrums pop. Her pussy. That's what it is. Her very own pussy. Warm and furry.
"You aren't wearing panties right now?" he says. "These are the panties you were wearing? Right here in my hand?" He brandishes them. "Or the ones you were planning to wear? So, your ass is completely bare under that dress. Sorry. Mentioning your possibly unsheathed ass is beyond the scope of our relationship. Just tell me if I go too far. If I say anything that offends you just tell me and I'll stop."
"Don't worry," she says. "I'll tell you."
"You took them off because they were so damp from when you saw me in my boxers. Shit, sorry to cross that line again, kitten. This weed isn't helping me to control my tongue. Refill that puppy."
"I think it's funny," she says, and she does. He's funny. The way he keeps flirting with her and immediately apologizing afterward. "I did take them off at your house." The glare from the dome light hurts her eyes. "I must look ghastly."
"You look many things, kitten, and ghastly is not one of them. Took them off at my house. Hmm. I think my wet panties theory was correct, though they don't seem damp at all right now. Now I've said enough. Have another beer. This is nice, being with you. Being with you away from school, where we can talk. Where we can get to know each other. The teacher/student thing puts artificial restraints on what we can say and do. None of it's real. Look at you. Now you are real. At school I have to treat you like I treat all the others, as just another disinterested client."
"I'm interested."
"I know you are. In third period English class I have to act as if you are just one out of thirty. I have to keep from freezing and just standing there staring at you. I can't tell everyone else to shut their mouths when you're trying to speak, even though I know what you have to say is more on the mark than what that pack of jackals could come up with together. If I had my way I'd dismiss every last one of them and just keep you there. I'm sorry if I said too much. Again. I can't control my tongue. Except when I have too," he adds.
Being that she hardly ever participates in class, rarely doing the assigned reading, she recognizes this for what it is, but it still sounds nice to hear. He has a way of making her believe it.
