Stephen White - Critical Conditions

“I don’t know if I should tell you this part, because I don’t even know if it’s true. Madison used to, she used to lie sometimes. But Madison…anyway, you would need to know her to understand. She was…I don’t know. Madison says she-don’t think of her this way, okay?-she says she hooked a little bit, you know-she did it for money. With some rich guys. They would buy her stuff if she slept with them. That’s what she said. She showed me the stuff-jewelry, a watch, and shoes, God, she loved shoes. She says the men bought it all for her just for doing it with them. She said I could do it, too, if I wanted. She would introduce me to this lady who sets it all up. Said it was easy.”

Merritt waited for a reaction. I eased back into statue mode. There wasn’t a way of knowing what a correct response might be. No response would have to do. I’d heard about middle-class girls hooking for spending money. I’d never run into it up close, though.

“Maddy told me to be shy with him, you know, like coy. She said they liked that better. She said to kind of accidentally let them see something, then not act bothered, and then wait.” She shrugged, shook her head. “So that’s what I did. You ever been inside this thing, this motor home of his?”

I was grateful for the non sequitur. “No.”

“The bedroom’s in back. The door was open; I could see in. There was this big bed with this gold bedspread on it. It looked like my mom and Trent’s room, but, I don’t know, tackier. I didn’t want to go in there, I really didn’t. Oh, I almost forgot, Maddy had given me a rubber. I had it in my sock. The night before, she made me practice putting them on a zucchini. This is all so weird.” She covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head. “I didn’t know how I was going to explain that to him, I mean, having a condom in my sock. I was about to seduce an old, ugly man, and I was worrying about the strangest stuff. You know how I kept going?”

I could have guessed.

“I thought about Chaney. I mean, how strange is this? I’m about to screw somebody for the first time in my life. Somebody I hate. And in order to make myself go through with it, I’m thinking about my baby sister.

“Anyway, he sits back on one of these leather sofas near the front and I start fumbling around in the kitchen. I mean, I’m so nervous and I ask if he has anything to drink. He tells me to look in the fridge. There’s a Coke. I grab a can and go to take a drink and when I do, I pour some down my front, you know, like an accident, but on purpose.

“I kind of squeal and pull off my T-shirt.” She closed her eyes and I felt three thumps of my pulse before she continued. “I know what I’m doing, okay. When I crossed my arms to pull up my shirt, I hooked my fingers under…” she lowers her head, her eyes still shut, “under…my bra, you know, it’s a running bra, and I pull everything over my head together, all at once. The T-shirt and my bra and everything.

“And I said, ‘Oops,’ and I laugh. And I let him look.” She opened her eyes and looked past me into someplace I would never visit and crossed her arms over her chest. “I let him look. I kept asking myself what would Madison do, and I knew she would laugh, so I just laughed some more and then I said, ‘Well, do you have anything dry?’”

I had the same useless urge I’d had when Merritt was telling me about her decision to go into Dead Ed’s house. I wanted to tell her not to. I wanted to tell her to run.

“He didn’t move. He just sat there with his hands in his lap and he, and he…he, um, stared at my chest, you know, at my breasts. And I…I, I let him. I didn’t do anything to cover up. I kept saying to myself, I’m Madison, I’m Madison. It wasn’t that hard to be there, you know, naked. I thought it would be harder than it was. I don’t know how long I stood there. Time sort of disappeared, kind of like I wasn’t really there at all. Finally, I put my hands on my hips and I said, ‘Well?’ and he mumbled something and pulled off his stupid sweater and he gave it to me. He was really fat.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But this is all really, really gross.”

“It’s okay,” I said, just to say something. That she thought Ed Robilio was fat was the least vile thing I had heard since she began her monologue. The truth was that nothing about any of this was less than vile.

Her voice lowered and the speed of her words increased. “My parents can’t know any of this. They just can’t. You promised, right? You’re not going to tell them, right?”

“I promised.”

The irony stunned me like a blow to the chin. This girl was willing to let her parents think she killed a man to save her sister. But she wasn’t willing to let them think she sacrificed her virtue for the same goal.

Her shoulders sagged. “Nothing else really happened. Madison drove up in her car and honked her horn and honked her horn until he got up and looked out the windshield and said, ‘What the hell is that all about?’ I could see her car on the street and while his back was turned, I dropped his sweater and pulled on my T-shirt and said, ‘That’s my friend, she must be looking for me. I have to go.’

“He stood between me and the door. The motor home or whatever it is only has one door, so I had to go past him. He says, ‘Maybe you would like to go for a drive sometime? See how it handles.’ I’m scared again now, my heart’s pounding like crazy, and Madison’s horn is honking. I don’t know what to do. I say something like, ‘I run every day.’

“He says, ‘Good. Same time tomorrow? I’ll wait for you. We’ll go somewhere.’

“I say, ‘Sure. Tomorrow.’ And I ran out the door.”

As I listened to Merritt’s young voice my own heart was breaking. I wanted this terrible story to be over. But an important piece was missing; Merritt hadn’t lost her earring, yet. She hadn’t been in the back of the RV, in the bedroom, yet.

So I knew there was more to come.

“I jumped in Maddy’s car. She said she couldn’t get any pictures. There was no way she could see what was happening inside the stupid RV. That’s why she was honking the horn. She didn’t want me to waste it-doing it with him. Without the video it would be a waste. That’s what she said. We needed a plan so that she could make sure she could get some pictures while he and I, you know…did it.

“She wanted to know what happened. I told her. I told her what happened on the sidewalk and inside the motor home, what I did, what I said. Pulling off my shirt and everything. She said, ‘No! You didn’t! No! What did he do? Did he grab you? Did he like have a heart attack?’

“I said, ‘No, he just looked. He said he wants to take me for a ride tomorrow.’

“She said, ‘I bet he does. What a prick. We’re gonna get him, Merritt, we’re gonna get him. All we need now is a little plan on how to get me inside that bus with the camera. Because none of this does any good without some video.’”

It seemed like a good place to stop. My watch told me it was ten minutes after one. My joints ached and my brain seemed starved for sleep. I asked, “Would you like to stop for tonight? Finish this up tomorrow?”

“No,” she said, her voice so sweet. “I don’t want to think about it all night. It’s better that I finish this now, I think. Anyway,” she smiled that intriguing flat smile I’d come to know, “tomorrow is reserved for good news. Tomorrow is for Chaney. We’ll bury everything ugly tonight. Promise?”

“Your call,” I said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She didn’t hesitate. “That night, we made a plan, Maddy and me. Anew plan. I thought it was a pretty good plan, we’d thought of more things, were more careful. We were going to use two cameras, one for some pictures, you know, photographs, and one for the video. I was more confident, I told myself I could go through with it. That time would stop again, that I would disappear again. And when I came back, that Chaney would get her procedure. That’s all that mattered.