Age of Consent (9 page)

She was up on her knees, balancing on the bench seat, leaning toward him. With her voice as loud as she could make it, her face close to his ear, she shouted, “You don't know
shit
about Doris Day!”

A silence. For a moment nothing, then Craig said, “Who cares? Who the hell cares?”

Bobbie dropped back into the seat and said, “She just happens to be my mother's favorite, okay?”

He looked like he halfway heard this and that in some other universe somebody could understand why this fact mattered, but what he said was, “Find that pipe that fell on the floor before we light the car on fire.”

“It
is
her birthday.”

“Okay, fine. Happy birthday, Doris. Now get the pipe. I can smell it burning a hole.”

But she didn't get the pipe. She thought how she was going to listen to the rest of that song now—why not? She'd half convinced herself that it
was
Doris Day's birthday and that this was enough reason to insist she get her way. She put her bare foot on the dashboard, trying to look confident, then reached to switch the radio back on.

“Don't fucking touch that!” he bellowed.

“Don't whack my hand!”

“I'm warning you.”

“Back off! That's my favorite song!”

“It is not.”

“Yes it is! And you wouldn't know. My favorite song is
what then
? If you are so sure it isn't that one?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said, “do what you want.”

She got the radio on and back to the right channel, but it was too late for “It's Magic.” There was only the last lingering sad note, and the rising and falling of the dying violins and the DJ's voice coming on to say, “That was the incredible Doris Day!” before Craig slapped the dial once more.

“There!” he said, sending it back to his own station where the Village People sang “Macho Man”: “Macho, macho man…!”

“Oh, yes, this is much better,” said Bobbie. As loudly as she could, she sang along: “Macho, macho man…I want to be a macho man—!”

“Shut up!” he shouted. He made a grunting sound like someone was standing on his foot, then said, “What is that little turdball playing?” He punched the dash so hard the tuner button spun off like a saucer. He swore and writhed in his seat and shouted at her. “Why on earth are
you
singing!”

He was truly insane now, shifting in his seat, hitting his car, screaming at the radio, the seat bouncing with his weight, the car drifting into another lane, so she stopped singing. She was sorry that she'd argued with him, sorry about wanting to go home, about the radio station, about everything. They were going to crash. He twisted in his seat, the cords of his neck showing like ribs; he was facing her now and howling, “
Fix this fucking thing!
”

She realized the problem. The tuner button, having flown off, was now missing. He couldn't escape the Village People. She scrambled to find the button on the floor, then brought it up and aligned it with the little stick of metal on the radio to get it working again. She let him find a station he wanted and didn't flinch when he yelled, directly into her ear, “Get! The! God! Damned! Pipe!” His voice was huge, even with the tearing sound of the wind through the car and the tires rumbling over the road and all the other cars' engines, and the pumped-up speakers that shot the music in four directions all at once. Nothing was bigger than his voice. It was massive, like a weather cloud. She did what she was told.

“Light the fucking thing!” he barked at her, and she tried. If he smoked enough, he'd get mellow. He might even get sleepy. God, she wished he'd smoke himself into a stupor.

They turned off the highway and moved down a long, near-deserted stretch of road, heading toward the station at a speed that would land them in prison. She no longer dared look at the speedometer but focused on keeping the pot flowing. The pot would calm him down. She took the bowl and dumped the charred contents out the window, her hair flying in sheets around her head. She lit a new match to start the bowl, kneeling in the passenger's seat and leaning low toward the floor, trying to keep the wind out of the bowl, trying not to light her hair on fire.

“Oh for fucksake!” he said, pissed off by how incompetent she was, not being able to light a bowl, and how he was going to have to roll up his window, what a pain in the ass.

She thought she should roll up the window on her side, too. Normally, she didn't dare touch the windows, the seat position, the radio. These things belonged to him. But she cranked the lever from her bent position, angled on the floor, her elbow taking the strain. With the windows up, she could get a bit of a spark and then slowly, after a few short sucks, some embers kindled. She passed the bowl carefully across to him and he drew in the smoke and held it.

“Finally,” he croaked, holding his breath. He exhaled and said, “There's countries where it's legal to hit a wife who won't obey.”

“I'm not your wife,” she said. But she shouldn't have said anything and knew it.

He said, “You're spoiled because you're pretty and people do things for pretty girls.”

She didn't know what he meant. First, about being pretty. Her legs were pink and white like a plucked chicken. Her eyes were invisible behind blond lashes. The only good feature she could identify was her hair, which right now felt like dried-out cotton and was so snarled and ruined that she thought she'd have to cut the tangles out.

“But one day you won't be so pretty,” he continued, “and then you'll be very truly fucked, just so you know.” He took a toke from the bowl, but it went dark. He sucked the pipe and got nothing. “Jesus Christ, it's out again! What a rip-off fucking no-smoke goddamned pipe! This is
not
my reefer's fault.”

She wasn't so sure. The draw on the pipe was weak, but the grass was young and it made a lot of smoke and wouldn't keep a light anyway. She took the bowl once again, added some fresh leaves, and relit it, handing it to him like medicine. But it was out in ten seconds and he groaned in frustration and shoved it back in her direction, saying, “Fix this fucking thing.”

“How?”

He leaned forward and took one of the antennae off the dash and said, “Break this up and poke it down there and get out all the shit.”

Remarkably, she knew what he meant. The pipe was bunged up with resin that needed clearing. But she didn't want to touch the antennae, which seemed to her as lethal as a gun. Anyway, she could not easily break them in two. He suddenly swerved the car to the left, passing a driver who wasn't traveling at a hundred the way they were, and she felt a sloshing inside her guts as they moved sideways all at once like that. The antennae dropped to the floor and landed, sharp side up, bent in her direction as though pointing.

“God, Craig,” she said.

“Give it to me,” he said.

“What?”

“The TV thing,
that
, what's next to you, on the floor. Jesus, Barbara.”

She thought of the motel manager all over again. She wished Craig hadn't brought the antennae. “What happened with that guy in the room. Is he all right?” she said.

“He's five hundred of my dollars richer, is what he is.”

And then she remembered: the money.

It was rolled into a log in her back pocket. She almost reached into her pocket to make sure it was still there but stopped herself. Instead, she put some weight onto her right buttock, trying to feel if there was a lump there. Slowly, secretly, she moved just enough to tell if there was some tiny resistance from the roll of bills. If he found out she had the money, he'd go wild. She could not risk that he'd find it. Could not risk it.

“But you
have
the money,” she said weakly.

“I have
this
!” he said, and pulled out a flattened stack of bills, wadding it into the ashtray next to the grass like it was an oil rag. “But my
other
five hundred is fucking disappeared.”

“But the guy—”

“What about him?”

“He's not—” She didn't know how to say it, how to ask if the guy was dead.

“He's a fucking fairy!”

“But…alive, right?”

Now he laughed. He laughed and told her he was hungry and to watch out for the golden arches because he needed a drive-through. Then he picked up the antennae in his non-driving hand and broke them against his knee, which made the car jerk to the shoulder. She held the dash and watched him as he poked around the pipe and pointed the car toward a turnoff that led to a stretch of road where the radio station would eventually be found. It was already midnight and she did not understand why he wasn't tearing his hair out, then heard the DJ on the radio say he was playing an album, which meant Craig had another half hour or so before he'd have to be sitting in the studio.

“He's playing an album, Craig, did you hear that?”

“So what?”

“So you can relax,” she said, meaning he could go a little slower.

“That only gives me so much time.” He pinched the air to show her how little time. “And I'm hungry.”

HE PULLED INTO
a McDonald's, circled into the drive-through, and leaned toward the microphoned clown. He said he'd need two Big Macs, large fries, and a Coke, plus a milk shake. That was for her, the milk shake.

“I'm not hungry,” she said.

“Yes, you are.”

They drove around to the window and a young guy in eyeglasses and a brown nylon uniform stood waiting for the money, the paper bags beside him and the cardboard drink-holder, too, plus all the napkins and straws and plastic pouches of ketchup and slim packets of salt, assembled in a messy pile like a salad.

The guy told Craig it would be three dollars and something and he said, “Fuck that's a lot for a couple of burgers,” and then looked at Bobbie for the money.

“What?” she said.

He held out a hand. “We need four bucks.”

“Three seventy-five,” the McDonald's guy said. He had a tag on his lapel that read Dan and curly hair that spiraled around the cap on his head.

“I don't have enough money,” she told Craig. These words seemed dangerous to her. She wondered if this was a trick, that he knew she had the other five hundred and this was his way of showing her he knew she had it. One of his little tests.

“You left the house with
nothing
?” He didn't move. He didn't look in his own pockets or in the glove compartment, only at her. His eyes were slits of pink and his mouth hung open like he was caught mid-chew.

She said, “Not four dollars.”

He shook his head slowly, like he was at the end. At the very end. He had no time for this. “Give me some money, Barbara, so we can
eat
! People need to
eat
, you know.”

Again, she wondered if this was a trick, like she was supposed to hand over the five hundred now. Why else would he have stopped at a McDonald's when he was already supposed to be on the air? Why else would he demand that she pay for his food? She didn't even understand how he'd lucked into having the DJ before him play a whole album as his last record. Craig must have called him from the motel and told him he was going to be late. It was the only explanation, and suddenly the whole thing felt like it had been staged. He must know she had the five hundred. On the other hand, she'd had a few tokes while lighting his pipe and maybe she was paranoid. She always got paranoid when she smoked pot. It was one of the reasons she didn't like getting high.

“I don't have any—”

“Bullshit!” He was furious now. It was over. She would give the money to him, give him all the money. She didn't want it anymore. She couldn't remember why she had taken it in the first place. It had rolled its way up to her, right up to her face, that was why.

A story came to mind, one Craig had once told her about the Hope Diamond. He'd said everyone who had the large and beautiful gem came to a terrible end. It was cursed. She concluded now that the money she'd found in the motel was cursed, like the diamond. He could have the cursed money, every last dollar. She reached into her pocket to get it. She couldn't wait to hand it over and have this done with. She wished that after she gave him the money she could get out of the car. All at once, this seemed a fair exchange. He got the money, and she walked free. Free from him not just now but always. It was a bargain. She felt the roll, a sense of immense relief filling her heart. But just as she took it in her hand, everything changed. Craig pulled up the emergency brake, gave a great groan of impatience, and now she watched in confusion as he pushed his body toward her, then over the back of her seat. She pressed the money toward him but he knocked into her again, reaching his arm to the seat behind where her handbag rested. He grabbed the handbag and threw it at her, threw it at her face, so the buckle slapped her teeth, the strap stung her eye.

“Get some money!” he shouted.

“Sir, we can take a check if that helps,” the McDonald's guy said. But nobody was listening to him.

Craig's eyes were fully on her now. “You think I'm so stupid I don't know your mother will not let you out of the house without cash?”

“My mother wasn't home—”

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up.”

She still had the fist of bills, but he didn't notice. He grabbed the steering wheel with both hands as though steadying himself on the ropes of a boxing ring, then he said, “You're a trial, Barbara. Do you know that? It makes no difference what I do with you! You have to make everything difficult.”

She closed her fingers over the five hundred, hid it deep into her palm, then dug into her purse and found some change, mostly dimes. In her lipstick case she kept an emergency dollar. But she couldn't make it four dollars without handing over one of the fifties.