Stephen White - Critical Conditions

“The next day I caught up with him-Dr. Robilio-when he was on his walk. He had his keys with him this time. Went into this long thing about how he wasn’t allowed to park his precious motor coach at his house and that he had to take it up to his ranch where he stored it and I could come maybe and we could stop for dinner if I wanted. Madison had told me to act kind of uninterested with him, which wasn’t hard, so I did. He kept trying to convince me that it would be great-he even told me I could watch a movie on the way up if I wanted.”

Don’t go.

“The plan was that I would go with him. So I said okay, like I had nothing else to do. Maddy was ready. We figured he would drive the RV someplace and park it, like he said he would. We figured a campground or something, or maybe he wasn’t BS-ing about the ranch. She had her mom’s car and a lot of gas. Fresh battery in the camera. She was ready, figured it would be easy to follow something so big. The drive up to the mountains was fine. He wasn’t gross to me or anything on the way up. Mostly wanted me to be impressed with his stupid RV and his stupid mountain ranch and his stupid cabin and all his stupid money.

“We’re new here. I don’t know the mountains very well. I didn’t know where we were going. We were on the freeway for a while and then a smaller road and then we pulled onto a dirt road. When we turned, I could see Maddy’s car a little ways back. She had pulled over.

“He got out of the RV to open a gate and then he got back in and pulled through the gate. He stopped again-I guessed he was going to go back and lock up the gate. If he did that, Maddy couldn’t get through. To distract him, I touched him on his leg and said, ‘We can get that later, right?’ He smiled this sick smile and said, ‘Sure.’

“We went up the hill. First he showed me his ‘cabin,’ which is huge, bigger than our house. I’m like wanting to ask how many kids died so he could build this stupid cabin, but I don’t. I’m acting kind of cool and annoyed, impatient, like. It’s easy. And then we drove back down the dirt road to a barn. It’s not really a barn, he built it just to hold the RV, but it looks like a barn. I was getting worried. I didn’t know where Maddy was, I couldn’t see her car anywhere. I didn’t know whether she had made it inside the gate. I didn’t know whether to go through with it. You know.”

Don’t.

“He opened the doors to the barn and backed the RV in. I didn’t want him to shut them, the doors-Madison had to get inside, too-so I asked him to leave them open, told him that I liked the view. I asked him if I could have a Coke. He said something really stupid, like, ‘If you’ll spill it like you did yesterday, you can have a whole case.’

“Right then, I hated him. Right then, everything changed for me. All my, um, my doubt was gone. And I knew I could do it. He wasn’t going to screw me. I was going to screw him. In a sick way, I was even looking forward to it.

“‘You haven’t shown me the back. Show me the back,’ I said, and he grabbed my hand. God, his was even clammier than mine, and he showed me the shower and the toilet like they were so special, like maybe I’d never seen plumbing before, I don’t know, and he showed me…the bed. He patted the mattress, like I was a dog and he wanted me to jump up on it. Everything he was doing seemed to make it easier for me, for what I was about to do.

“This is the part that Maddy and I had planned and planned because I had told her what the inside of his precious RV was like. I even drew a diagram for her. I told him I needed a minute in the bathroom and asked him to wait for me. I did something flirty with my hair, then I said something, you know, stupid, and then I slid the door shut between the bedroom and the bathroom and started running some water real loud and then I ran toward the front of the bus and signaled for Maddy to come in. Thank God she was there. She came on board and she had the little camera and the video camera and she hid in the toilet compartment, just like we planned, and after a couple of minutes I went back into the bedroom. I closed the door behind me, leaving it open just a couple of inches so Maddy would have a way to take the pictures.

“He was more nervous than I was. His face was kind of blotchy and pink and he didn’t seem like he knew what to do. That helped me, that he was nervous.

“Maddy told me what it would be like. You know, what would happen, how it would feel. Some of it she was right about, some of it she wasn’t. I don’t think she was, anyway, but what do I know?”

Merritt’s face grew pensive, her eyes heavy. Suddenly she looked exhausted.

“I don’t remember all of this, what happened next. I’m not leaving stuff out. I just don’t remember.”

I hoped she was being honest. I didn’t want her to remember. There are times when dissociation is absolutely the best thing the psyche can muster. I said, “I know.”

“She said to make it his idea. Make him ask. Be reluctant. We needed to get it on tape, his asking. He needs to be the one, not you. You need to make it be his idea. So I went and sat against the headboard. He was still at the foot of the bed. I said, ‘Does that TV work?’ He hit the remote, showed me it did. Then he said, ‘If you’re going to be on the bed, why don’t you take your shoes off?’

“I took them off. I left my socks on, though, you know-the rubber? I was still wearing my running shorts-they’re Lycra, like tights? He liked my legs. I could tell. He stared at them long enough.

“He asked me what I wanted to do. I shrugged. I mean, what did he expect me to say: I want to screw your brains out, you disgusting jerk. Hardly. I mean, huh? He asked if he could sit next to me. I shrugged again. He sort of crawled up the bed and sat so close we were touching. He was breathing through his mouth. The noise was disgusting. After a couple of minutes, he told me I had beautiful breasts and asked if he could see them again.

“I was like, what? I asked him why should I? He said he thought I liked him. I said I like lots of people. I don’t show all of them my tits. He looked so, I don’t know, devastated. I liked it, his reaction. I took the remote control from his hand and I started flicking through the channels. It was the end of Oprah, you know, where they’re showing that hotel in Chicago where all the guests of the Oprah show stay? That part of Oprah?”

It seemed like she wanted me to say something. I didn’t know anything about the end of Oprah, but I nodded and said, “Yes.”

She shivered. The shudder moved up her body from her feet in long waves, as if a flurry of pencil-thin snakes were racing to her head.

“What he did then is he kissed my neck. And then he kissed me on my ear. With his tongue. It was really wet. It was awful. Awful.”

Merritt leaned forward, rocked back once, and stood. She turned away from me before she spoke again. Her hands were behind her back, her long fingers laced together, exposing her tender palms.

“This is when I start to not remember. It’s choppy. I remember weird things. He was like lost, he reached under my T-shirt and tried to unfasten my bra. You know, in back, but it doesn’t have a clasp and I thought it was kind of funny and I had to keep from laughing and I had to tell him it didn’t open, it just came over my head.

“Right at the beginning, I asked him, kind of annoyed, what he thought he was doing. I did it for Maddy, for the tape. He said he wanted me. I wondered if that was good enough and I remember thinking you won’t get me, but I’ll get you. Then I turned the sound up on the TV. I wanted to protect Maddy, and I didn’t want to have to listen to what was happening…to me.

“He was in a hurry, I can tell you that. Things happened fast, much faster than I thought they would but I was watching them happen like they were in slow motion…my shirt came off…and he just pushed my bra up under my arms…and then he tugged and tugged at my shorts and he was touching me all over and saying stupid things about how beautiful I was and how good I smelled and he was so heavy on top of me and I told myself I wouldn’t look down because I didn’t want to see…I didn’t look at his dick because I didn’t want to see it and I didn’t want to remember it and when I heard him open his pants I remembered about the rubber and I asked him if he had one and he said, ‘What?’ like he didn’t know what one was and I reached down and pulled the one I had out of my sock and said here’s one and I wondered how that would sound on the tape and I heard him grunting and ripping open the packet and mumbling about something and I figured the guy had never used a condom before, I mean not even on a zucchini, Jesus.”