Alissa Nutting - Tampa

“Well like in some redneck states adults can marry minors with the parents’ consent and stuff,” Gash said.

“Yes.” I smiled. Never had I imagined my later years unfolding in a holler of West Virginia, paying the families of young men reverse dowries to marry me for their fourteenth year of life and then divorce on their next birthday. Perhaps, if I managed to stick with Ford long enough, past when his father died and he received the bulk of his inheritance, I could gain the type of alimony settlement that would make this arrangement possible. It might not be so bad: the shirtless overalls, the Mountain Dew–fueled sex marathons. It could be a far smarter route than staring at an empty seat in a classroom wondering if litigation was brewing.

Suddenly I realized I’d been looking out the window with a grin on my face. “So the point being,” I continued, “where legal, an adult and minor can take on the roles of husband and wife and have the consensual sex implied in that relationship. We mentioned religious officials. What are other social roles where sexual impropriety is taboo?”

“Politicians,” one student yelled. Then, from the front row in a very quiet voice, Frank Pachenko called out, “Teachers.”

“But, like, that’s exactly what we expect now,” Danny said. The bass and enthusiasm of his voice gratefully drowned out Frank’s comment, which I pretended not to hear. “I mean, like, look at past presidents. JFK was a player. Clinton got it sucked in office.” The room exploded with shrieks of laughter that made my ears ring; the vocal chaos in the aftermath of the comment made the twenty-five students sound like a full auditorium.

“Okay, okay,” I called out. “Let’s settle down. If we want to talk about grown-up subjects we have to act like grown-ups.”

“Mrs. Price,” Marissa chided, her acne-riddled face suddenly full of ancient knowledge. “We are so not grown-ups.”

“But can’t you act it?” I said encouragingly. “Can’t you pretend?”

They were a room full of reality TV hopefuls; in that moment, they swore that they could.

I waited all weekend for the hammer to drop: the summons to be served, the call to come in. But Friday night passed uneventfully—I rented a movie about a thirteen-year-old who had to learn how to operate a motor vehicle when his intoxicated older brother needed to be picked up from jail: the two of them then ran a series of errands around shady parts of town to figure out where his brother had left a bag of drugs. To make sure I’d be asleep by the time Ford got home, and for most of Saturday as well, I bought a box of wine, removed its bladderlike sack from the cardboard shell and took it with me to watch the video in bed. Several hours later I woke to Ford holding the emptied container up in front of the night-table lamp. Next to the light, with its amorphous shape and merlot-dyed plastic, it vaguely resembled a placenta.

“Jesus, Celeste.” Ford let out a whistle that wasn’t void of admiration. “Those little brats stress you out today or what?”

My mouth felt taped shut with the sleepy film of the wine. “Can you turn off the light?” I suggested.

“It reeks in here. Did you know this bedroom smells like a hobo, Celeste?” I sat up and Ford immediately began laughing. “Oh my god, look at your face. I think you need to brush your teeth before they fall out.”

It was true; my smile had taken on a darkened sheen of purple. Around my mouth, where pigmented drool had journeyed and dried, there was a reddish stain that recalled clown paint. Stumbling from bed, I was at least able to tuck the vibrator beneath the pillow so that the portrait of my solitary hedonism wouldn’t appear to be quite so complete. “We had a 10-31 that some wino was breaking into the bathroom of the convenience mart tonight,” Ford called as I rummaged through the medicine cabinet, downing a small handful of what I hoped were Tylenol PM. “But the perp got away. That wasn’t you, was it?”

By the time I was up and showered on Saturday afternoon, I had little energy to do anything but sit at the kitchen table and stare at the phone, hoping not to receive a call from AP Rosen or the legal team of Jack’s parents. When it finally did ring, I jumped in my seat. I was suddenly paralyzed; it felt self-proclaimed—if I hadn’t been watching it, it would not have rung—and I cursed myself and let the machine pick up. But it was just Ford doing a sobriety check on me.

“Hello, dear,” I said, picking up to the loud beep of the machine recording stopping. My voice had the gravelly sound of someone wearing a bathrobe well into the day. “I have not touched a single bottle and I’ve prayed to the Lord for strength.”

“Ha,” he muttered. I heard a car horn.

“Isn’t it against the law to be on your phone while you drive?”

“Not when you’re driving the cop car, sweets.” He then entered into a long story about a domestic dispute he’d interrupted that had the following punch line: the chosen weapon of assault was a fly-swatter.

“I’ll catch you later, hero,” I said. When I was hungover, the sound of Ford’s voice made me unbearably nauseous.

Unable to go back to sleep for a nap, I decided I’d wait until dusk settled, then drive by Jack’s house again. Surely, if the family was in pandemonium from a revelation Jack had made, I’d be able to detect something from the exterior: the dining room aglow long after dinnertime, the family seated around the table in a strategy meeting, Jack’s head held between his hands at an angle suggesting emotional anguish while his parents bickered about how best to proceed.

There was nothing to do but wait. Baking myself seemed like the ideal activity; the feeling of sun on skin would serve as a fitting distraction. Slathering myself with SPF and wearing nothing but a wide-brimmed straw hat, I lay nude in our pool’s floating chaise lounge for the better part of the afternoon and evening, bobbing and staring at the clarified sky through polarized sunglass lenses. I thought about Jack there with me, the scent of chlorine and coconut on his skin, his balls tightening in my hand as he eased into the cool water. How great it would feel to be lying on the warm concrete and have him leap from the water, taut and dripping, and lie on top of me, outlining each of my limbs with his own cold counterpart.

I kept hope as well that instead of the worst possible outcome—seeing his parents interrogating him on the couch, large yellow legal pads in both of their hands—I might plausibly encounter the best: Jack mowing the lawn at dusk for his weekly allowance money, freckles of blown dirt sticking to the sweat of his shirtless torso, his mesh basketball shorts slung down below the boxers on his hips. No one else home. In that case, I might be able to park the car and gradually happen upon him, feigning surprise: I’d just made a wrong turn looking for a friend’s house, and then I thought I recognized him out cutting the grass and decided to say hello. Would he mind taking a break, letting me in to have a glass of water? I’d been running around all day; I was parched and he likely was too.

Should this happen, I wanted to be dressed accordingly. When I got out of the pool, I towel-dried my hair and added sea salt spray for messy curls. The sunblock had left a soft beachy fragrance on my skin. Shirking underwear, I put on a pair of terry-cloth lounge pants that sat below my belly button, a push-up bra and a T-shirt that would show just enough midriff. My hangover was causing me to crave starch, so I stopped at a drive-through on the way to his house and got a large order of French fries. I had a certain method of eating them. I liked to clamp down my lips on each one, pulling it through like a straw to get all the salt off, then rub the grains between my lips to make them raw and redden them. By the time I arrived at Jack’s house, my lips stung badly enough to feel poisonous. I parked and the sound of my car’s engine dying was immediately replaced with the harried drone of crickets everywhere.