Heather Lewis - Notice

It was her voice, the bite in it that made me sit up a little. Cross my legs one way, then put them back the way they’d been all along. I looked at my watch, trying not to make it obvious. The crowd I usually caught would be starting out of the bar about now.

“You have someplace you’d rather be?” she asked.

This seemed an odd way to put it, plainer than she’d been lately. It made it easier. “I’ve got a night job,” I said as if she might not know what I meant. As if she was dumb.

She didn’t say anything right away. Looked unsurprised but maybe deflated. This led me to fill space.

“It’s not like before,” I said. “It’s nothing dicey.”

“Do you want to get arrested? Is that it?”

“I never would’ve if he hadn’t set me up. They don’t care what goes on there.”

We didn’t take it much farther than this. She let me leave a little bit later but I didn’t go to the station. I told myself it was too late to catch enough action.

Instead I drove around. I drove until I found myself cruising back and forth past Ingrid’s driveway. I even drove a little way up toward the house. I was looking for lights, but I knew I wouldn’t go in. I wasn’t sure whose house it was now. I couldn’t tell just by looking because nothing had changed. This was the idea I went home with.

Two nights later I was back hitting the parking lot. I’d just done a guy, just gotten out of his car, when I saw her car – Beth’s – stopped at a light that had already turned green. She was looking my way, but looking at me? I couldn’t tell. I could practically convince myself it wasn’t her. That I couldn’t be sure.

The next afternoon I was sure. She didn’t say anything about it but she looked at me differently. Like what she hadn’t believed before, not entirely, was suddenly true and made her mad. That’s what I thought at first, until she said, “Let’s go for a drive.”

We’d never done this before and so I got into her car wondering what she expected of me. Was I supposed to put my head in her lap? Was that what she wanted? Or was this simply her way of keeping me out of other people’s cars?

She drove us around for a while and then up a long driveway, one that started out paved and then turned to dirt. When we got a certain way up, there was a bend. From there if we went any further someone would see us so she turned off on to the grass. She parked there and I knew she wanted something but she wasn’t saying what it was. She took my hands in hers and then began talking about how I worried her and what was I doing, why was I doing it?

I couldn’t answer her. Not just because I didn’t know how to, but because of how she was. Because of the force of her hands on mine and the look in her eyes and the sound of her voice, which was desperate. I wanted out of her grasp, out of her car, but that’d leave me standing in the middle of somebody’s field and then too I didn’t think it would solve anything.

I knew Beth wouldn’t just leave. I tried to remember if there’d ever been a time I’d wanted to get away from her. If it’d happened before, this feeling I mean, exactly this one.

What I did, because nothing else seemed possible, I just sat there. I hoped that if I could just manage to stay in the car we’d keep things contained.

I waited it out, saying nothing. This bothered her, got her more rattled. And we might’ve sat there for ever except this guy came across the field. He looked every part the hillbilly protecting his land except he had no gun in his arms. It took me a moment to be sure of this.

He told us to get off his land. Beth went beyond flustered trying to explain who she was and what we were doing except it seemed she didn’t know either and he absolutely didn’t want to hear it. He said he knew exactly what she was and what we were doing and that he didn’t want us doing it on his land.

I smiled. I couldn’t help it because what he was driving at was so obvious and it was a relief to have it spoken. And then too I was angry at her and felt some power in watching her scramble, in hearing this total stranger say out loud what she and I had been playing with for months.

What could she do then besides start the car? She didn’t say anything driving back and I sure didn’t and so this became a thing we never mentioned – something that had happened between us but that we’d never speak of. And not the first of its kind.

This didn’t put her off taking me driving, it only made her choose more carefully where to go. Since public places and someone else’s backyard or field or driveway were out, what she did was take me to her house. I don’t remember how it happened we went there, what her reason was, though I think it had to do with her picking up something to take back to the office.

I went in with her. Edged around the corners of her rooms, not sure where to put myself, whether to follow her or not. This wasn’t conventional, even for us, and so I wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Still, when she went upstairs I went with her, and from there we went into the bedroom.

I wandered around in there. Picked up stuff from the bureau. Looked at the pictures. Just being in there but not quite invited, I felt like the one in charge.

Pretty soon, though, she was saying we should go. I don’t know what she’d been doing or pretending to do. I mean, it wasn’t like she’d found what she came for and so wanted to leave. She seemed hurried and off like the day before – addled – and this made me bolder. It made her easier to get at. So I was the one who lingered. The one who wanted to stay. Or at least acted like it.

I was standing near the bureau and she came up behind me and then was standing beside me. All she did was take my hand, which she’d done enough times before. I was the one who kissed her. Finally kissed her mouth, and the way she gave to this, to me, the way her mouth softened and opened, and the way doing this seemed to calm her, all of this took me aback.

I guess I’d expected her to stop me. I think somewhere I had convinced myself of this – that that’s what she would do. But she didn’t. I mean, look where we were.

Her not stopping me was what I’d been wanting desperately and disorientingly for months. I’d been sure of this – certain that I’d been dreading her refusal, however she’d do it – that this was the fear that kept stopping me.

Now, her letting me – I’m not sure what it did to me. The clear thing was she’d taken over. Whatever had flustered her an instant ago was gone and now I was the one giving way.

I let my mouth go slack and felt her tongue in me instead of the other way around. That started something building in the hollow between my ribs, something unsettled and trembling that took all my wits. And then her hand was there too, first outside my shirt and then underneath it. This stroking did nothing to soothe me.

I wanted just to be kissing her, to stay doing that a lot longer, but with her hand in my shirt, being able to want something that simple was already over.

She kept her hand on my chest, between my breasts, but not really on them. I think I still believed it was there to push me away. But then I felt her other hand on my stomach and it got hard to breathe. I had to take my mouth away from hers, though I could still feel it; I felt things a beat behind her and was unable to catch up.

I rested against her, put my face where I couldn’t see hers. She was unbuttoning my shirt, still with her one hand underneath it. Then she got it open, was kissing my shoulders and then my breasts. She ducked down some to do this, and with nothing to lean on I felt marooned.

She had her hand in my pants. I felt the back of it against me, her fingers in my underwear, her mouth on my stomach. She was on her knees before me and I was faltering and shuddering and holding on to her shoulders.