Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

The force of it amazed and bewildered her. He was very strong. She kicked twice more at him, gagging, coughing, and when she reached for his eyes, he took her wrists and forced her over and held her, so that once more the sand was in her mouth. She had to use her hands to keep her head out of it, to breathe, and now he was pulling at her jeans, the sand choking her. She lost consciousness, her mind buckling. She was elsewhere, her hurting body separate from her, something not hers, and his hands were at her hips, pulling her up and toward him. “You know you — want this,” he breathed. “Come on.” She was sick, coughing deep, spitting, trying to scream and gagging, crying. He was ramming himself at her, thrusting at her and then into her with what felt like a tearing. He held her there, by her hips, rigid, pressing tightly and then moving, murmuring something about fate, their fate. It went on, hurting, wounding, until she lost consciousness for another moment, drifting off in a terrible asphyxiating fog, her face down in the sand. Everything was blank, gone, nowhere, and suddenly she was awake, him pushing in and pulling out and pushing in, gripping her at her hips. “Oh,” he said. “God.” Then there were the little spasms. He held her even tighter to himself, shuddering, moaning.

Finally he moved away from her, lying once more on his back, making the crying sound of before, arms flung out, looking like someone who had been knocked down.

Struggling to her feet, she kicked him in the side of his chest. It hurt her foot, and she shouted in pain and rage and then couldn’t get sound out anymore, still choking on sand and blood where she had bitten her tongue and her lip. She kicked at his groin and fell back. He did not seem conscious. But then he was up and upon her. “You should not have done that,” he said, holding her down with one hand on her chest and with the other taking hold of her jaw. She flailed, and gagged, and his knee came down on her middle, both hands at her head. He took a fist full of sand and thrust it down in her face, then took more and held her jaw tight, squeezing, jamming the sand at her mouth, packing it in, and pressing it, and grabbing more and pushing it at her, while she tried to bite at the fingers and coughed and the knee was pressing her chest, the one hand pulling her jaw down, the sand going in. He rolled with her, was back on top, ranged across her lower spine, his palms on the base of her skull, forcing her face down into the wet sand. Her vision blurred and ended, was all black. She was gone and nothing, no sound and no sensation but the choking and no air at all, and the heaviness on her chest, and this was death. This was the last of life.

But she rose from the dark, awake, still choking. He had fallen from her. She got to her knees, gouged at his eyes, spitting, the sand coming up in a clod with the contents of her stomach. He pushed her aside and stood up, taller than she could believe, as if he had undergone some elemental transformation and had become more than human, taller than anything. He would surely kill her now, and now all she wanted was to keep breathing, to be alive, away, and quiet. She watched him stagger away with his long shadow in the moonlight, on down the beach, crying that he was sorry and that it was something meant to be. Apologizing. Apologizing! She tried to scream but was too woozy and sick. The sickness kept coming and coming, mixed awfully with the sand. “Oh, God!” she screamed, choking. “Help me.”

She managed to get briefly to her feet, sought to bring forth another scream, nothing coming but more heaving. She was on her knees again and then on all fours, head down, sputtering, gagging. The sand burned in her eyes, the grains of it scraping the iris, stinging, and she couldn’t get it out of her nose and mouth. It came rushing out of her with the whiskey she had drunk. She could not breathe in, kept trying to, hearing the whooping sound that came from her.

At last, slowly, with great difficulty, as if having to break through something heavy and solid in the air around her, she rose and moved to the shore, tottering into the surf, falling to her knees, the waves crashing over her. She put her face down in the water and ran her hands over the grit of sand in her hair and along her hairline. The water seemed colder than it had been earlier. There was so much moonlight now. She got down, so that the water was just below her shoulders. It jostled her, but she remained crouched there, shoved by the motion of the waves, looking at the clean white moon surrounded by shadowy clouds.

The moon of any night on earth.

She kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, sobbing, coughing, hacking. The tide seemed to be rising, the waves growing stronger. She let the waves come over her. The beach was empty, and she could see her clothes lying there — the jeans, with the panties tangled in them.

She did not know how long she stayed there, afraid that he might return. The moon went away and then came back again. She could not stop the crying or the gasping for air. A few hundred yards up the beach, a couple walked to the water’s edge and in. She knew the tide would carry them this way. And she felt fear of them. Gathering all her strength, she rose and left the water and made her way to the little sad pile of clothes. She managed to get into her jeans, still feeling where he had pushed into her, the pain there and across her lower back and along her jaw. She kept looking down the beach where he had gone, but there were only the looming palms.

Faltering in the loose sand, she walked, tottering, back to the resort, and in, toward the elevators. A few people still lingered in the bar. At the elevators, she pressed the button and waited. Smoothing her hair, she kept back a scream, looking to one side and then the other, fearing the sight of anyone, wanting more than she had ever wanted anything to get to her room and be quiet there, safe, door locked, all the lights on. She heard a man shouting in one of the first-floor rooms. The words were not distinguishable, but the tone could not be mistaken: someone was being mocked and belittled. She thought of men beating up their wives.

The elevator door opened, and she stepped in, and as it began to close, the fingers of a brown hand grasped the door and pulled it back. Nicholas Duego got on, looking soiled and ill, his shirt open, his hair wild and full of sand. He simply looked at her, where she had backed to the corner away from him, arms crossed over her chest. He would kill her here. Yet she wanted to fly at him, too, wanted to find the force within herself to obliterate him. She was crying. “Please,” she said. “Don’t. Don’t.”

“I am a nice man,” he said. “You will know that about me.”

“I’ll scream. I swear I’ll fucking scream.”

“I have never—” He stopped. There were actually tears in his eyes.

Suddenly she felt power, unreasoning strength. Some part of her knew that it was the last thing she would do or say. “Keep away from me, you fuck .”

“My unhappiness and anger made me cruel.” He lifted one hand.

She pressed against the railing, turning from him. “No.”

“I am not unkind. I would not take what was not given.”

The elevator door opened. He had pushed no button. “Keep away,” she managed, backing out. “I swear to God I’ll scream.”

He followed. There was an aluminum trash can with an ashtray full of sand by the elevator door. She picked it up — it was surprisingly light — and backed away from him, down the hall. He kept coming, but he was holding his hands out in a pleading way. When she got to her door she held the thing up level with her shoulders, as if to throw it. “I’ll hit you with this,” she said. “Get the fuck away from me. God damn you.”