I drove north to meet her at a bar in Hoboken. But she was
still in the office, so I had to meet here there instead, then walk to the bar afterwards.
She was playful, but vague. I was confused. She’d made up
her mind we didn’t have a future, then changed her mind when I agreed, leaving
me floating in limbo, uncertain as to what I should do next.
During our last encounter, she’d felt so cold, I dreaded
this one.
I let her talk, nodding a lot at the appropriate places,
taking in the details of her past life as if I was a sponge, cringing over her
mention of the rape that caused her to quit teaching and take up life as a
musician. She said she had slept with the man once, prior to the incident, the
boyfriend of her girlfriend, who had kept hitting on her. She said she hadn’t
been aware of the rape until she woke up the next morning groggy with the girlfriend
to the boy who had done it telling her he had done things like this before.
Around us, other patrons of the bar caught bits of this,
looking oddly at us, especially the women, perhaps they had had similar
experiences with similar men, and in the dim of that noisy bar, they formed a
cconspiracy of rage against all me who would do this, and perhaps looked in my
direction and wondered about me.
I just let her tal, oblivious to the time, and then when it
got very late, we strolled back to our cars. I drove home in a fog. She went to
a bar in Union City where she met a 27-year-old Latino man who said he was a
rapper who had been falsely accused of rape. She took him home, made love to
him, and texted me the details the next morning.
I still don’t know why, though it became clear we had
ventured into a dark landscape – much as we had a previous night when she masturbated
while texting me.
Who is this person? Where is all this going?
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