Theodore Wheeler - Bad Faith

Amy stops to look at him, her body twisted in the doorway, confused as to why anyone would take her picture just then.

“Who are you?”

“I noticed you walking across the street,” the man explains, circling as he moves closer. “My name’s Aaron Kleinhardt. I’m staying at the motel over there.” He points to a brown motor lodge down the block.

“I wanted to take your picture,” he says. “You’re pretty.”

“What are you? Crazy?”

“No,” Aaron says. “Why would you say that? We don’t know each other.”

Amy lets the door bang shut behind her, squaring her body to this man. He’s a little older than she is, Amy figures, but he dresses like he’s trying to look young, in a yellow Wyoming Cowboys tee shirt and tight jeans, his feet bare. His hair is stringy and needs trimming. The bangs hang over his eyes and, in order to see, he has to flip them to the side of his forehead. He’s friendly, has blue eyes, a big smile that projects his straight rows of teeth.

“Listen,” Amy says. She turns away. “I have a call to make.”

But she stops, nudges at her scalp where the wool cap makes her hair itch, and stares at him again, this man who’s still smiling at her, holding the camera at his side.

“If you don’t mind my nerve,” Aaron says. He moves gingerly, with pantomime steps over the gravel on the sidewalk. His feet must be freezing.

“I wonder if you’d tell me what you’re running from.”

“Excuse me?”

“You betrayed yourself.” That’s how he puts it. “It’s the smell, your clothes,” he explains. “I’ve learned a few things about being on the run, believe me, and you have the look of it.”

“I have — really?” Amy flusters, turns back to this stranger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I see what’s going on.” He slips the camera into the back pocket of his jeans and takes Amy by the arm, trying to shepherd her across the street.

“Don’t touch me,” she says, pulling her arm away.

“I’m sorry.” He takes an exaggerated step back, palms raised.

“What I wanted to tell you,” he continues, “is that you can use my shower if you need to. That’s all I wanted to say. If you don’t have the money for your own room, you can use mine.”

Amy turns and walks away from him as he speaks to her, but again she stops to look back. He’s kind of pitiful, the crummy clothes, his scrawny limbs. She laughs to herself at the very image of Aaron Kleinhardt, this pathetic man luring her back to his room.

“How stupid do you think I am?”

“You don’t get what I mean,” he says, pleased that she’s listening. “I’ll leave while you’re there and wait outside while you shower. If that’s what you want.”

She can’t believe how this man’s approached her on the street, in Valentine, or the way his voice fluctuates, like he’s constantly defending himself. Amy knows it’s a bad idea to stick around, to associate with a man who acts like Aaron acts, but she can’t help herself.

Aaron has her cornered in the room but Amy knows how to handle him. She guides him to the bed and goes to her knees in order to diffuse the situation. She won’t lie in the bed with him, not that, but she unzips his jeans and touches the cold damp tip of his prick with her tongue, then takes him into her mouth relentlessly so that it’s over quickly and she can get in the shower. He tries to thumb at her crotch after coming but she pushes him away. He won’t insist if he’s already had his. Amy understands these diversions.

When she emerges from the shower, a long white towel wrapped around her body, Aaron is still on the bed. He’s stripped down to his boxers.

“How was it?” he asks, grinning, brushing away the stringy hair that hangs over his eyes.

“Mediocre,” she says. “But nice, still, after the night I had.”

“Are we talking about the shower?”

It’s the way Aaron asks this, a huckster’s smirk on his face, and that he’d even ask if giving head was good, that makes Amy feel again that she’s made a mistake. She knew this already, when he followed her into the room and wouldn’t leave her alone, and then in the moment she capitulated, Amy felt like what she was doing was wrong. But she’s been in situations like this before and understands it’s a zero-sum game. What can it hurt, that’s what she thought. Who will know the difference? If she gets a good shower, it would be worth it.

And she did try calling her father before Aaron convinced her to come to his room, but the call went unanswered. It wasn’t her fault if events conspired against her. Standing there on the street, Aaron watching while it became clear that whoever she was calling wasn’t going to answer. She couldn’t think of another excuse for why she wouldn’t use his shower. That is, besides the most obvious, that she didn’t like him, that she knew what would happen once they were in his room, that she didn’t want to have sex with him.

Amy didn’t feel like she could tell Aaron in plain words that she wasn’t interested. From the first moment they met she recognized the way he wanted her; she understood it would be easier to satisfy his desires than it would be to avoid them; she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Listen,” she says, freshly resolved to shake him. “Thanks for the shower and everything, but I need to get going.”

“Sure.” His eyebrows drop. “If you got to leave, I understand.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

“Of course.”

“It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it.” They both cringe as she says this, because words like those can only mean their opposite. “You’re on your own journey somewhere, I suppose, and I’m on mine. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Sitting on the bed, hands in his lap, Aaron drops the smile and squints at Amy, as if he’s searching for something specific. It creeps her out, standing in a towel while he examines her, even though he isn’t looking at her body exactly, her bare shoulders or legs. It’s her face he’s watching, her hair made curly by the shower steam, the furious glare she feels overtaking her eyes, the way her chin inches back into itself because she’s nervous.

It’s Aaron who breaks away first, his gaze darting to the door that leads to the street, to her puffy black coat that’s hung over the knob.

“You were on a train, weren’t you?” The full dopey smile reemerges as his gaze returns to her body. “Not a passenger train, that’s not what I mean. They don’t run here. I can smell it, the oil, the ozone of dynamos. You hopped a freight.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” he says. “It’s okay to admit it. I know about the kinds of things that set folks off into this country up here. I even rode a train like that before. It’s a secret, that kind of thing. It’s free.”

“Okay,” Amy says. She leans down to snatch her clothes off the carpet. “I’m leaving.”

With the bathroom door locked behind her, Amy dresses quickly. She slips on her jeans as she sits at the edge of the bathtub, then refastens her bra, its wires bent out of shape after sleeping on the railcar. It’s when she’s holding her shirt that she hears Aaron move, noticing the sound of him walking across the old motel shag, his pressing a hand against the bathroom door. It’s dead quiet in the morning. Amy stands stock-still in the bathroom, listening. The door seems to hum, as if Aaron is sliding his fingertips over its surface, his nails imperceptibly scraping the veneer. She jumps when he speaks because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

“Amy,” he says, his voice still earnest and unashamed, a hint of begging in it. “If you’re going to hop another train, I’d like to come.” She stands with her back to the door, a cold shiver running along her spine. She wishes her father had answered when she called him.