Selena

 

I walk through the city at night, hands in my pockets, wondering what to do. I could go home where my armchair and Far From the Madding Crowd awaits me, and I suppose I might be able to sink into the world of the novel and forget my problems. But seeing Mom always shakes me up, and tonight it’s done more than that. An earthquake tears through my chest repeatedly. I keep hearing her hollow coughs, her body sounding like it could cave in on itself at any moment.

 

I share the house with Mom—or perhaps I should say shared the house with Mom, since now she’s living under white fluorescent lights. The idea of returning there after our conversation doesn’t thrill me. Instead I find myself walking toward the nearest bar, a dive-type place with a flashing pink neon lady fixed above the door. It’s the first time I’ve even considered drinking in months. Clint was a drinker and I’ve seen what work it can do on a person. But I’ve always been able to hold my drink, perhaps because Clint would sometimes force it on me and I needed to be careful about what I said and did.

 

The bar is quiet tonight with a few people dotted around the place. The floor is sticky and the jukebox plays Johnny Cash. I go to the bar and wait for the barman to finish serving a customer. He wears a red bandana with a mullet sticking down his back, a denim jacket, and denim jeans.

 

“Howdy, purty lady,” he says.

 

I sigh. Maybe I shouldn’t take my frustration out on him but I can’t help myself. “What do you think is going to happen now?” I ask. “You’re going to come over here and call me purty lady and I’m going to crumble in your arms and—what? Why are you staring at me like that?” My voice has risen to a volume I didn’t intend.

 

“You’re speaking very loudly, ma’am,” the barman says. “I promise you I didn’t mean no offense. What would you like to drink?”

 

“Vodka and coke.”

 

“Double?”

 

“Sure.”

 

I take the drink to the corner and sip it slowly, going over what Mom said. She struck a chord she probably wasn’t even trying to strike. There’s no way she can know that I’ve been going over baby names in my free time, scrolling endlessly on my phone through the entire alphabet. Zachary is a name I keep coming back to, and so is Georgina. Isaac and Zane. Elizabeth and Jodie. I can’t explain this urge to myself, no matter how hard I try. I tell myself it’s just biological and I need to stop being so weak, and yet every time I see a baby I feel like melting. Mom isn’t wrong about college; I was a feminist, a member of several activist groups. I should be above this sort of thing. But then, surely feminism and activism mean I get to choose what I want, even if what I want is traditionally feminine?

 

I rub my head. My drink is empty. I’m not sure when that happened. I go to the bar and get another double vodka and Coke.

 

“You really hitting the booze tonight?” a man to my right says.

 

He’s wearing a business suit, is clean-shaven, and relatively handsome. But when I look at him all I see is a man in a jewelry shop trying on watches. He looks like the sort of man to pen a date into his weekly planner alongside “coffee with the boss.” “I’m having some alone time,” I say, turning away.

 

“Jeez.” The man slides up the bar. “What’s with the attitude?”

 

“What attitude?” I sigh, wishing my drink would hurry up.

 

“I’m just being friendly,” the man says. He sticks his hand in my face. He’s wearing a gold pinkie ring. “Don’t you know how to accept when a man’s being friendly? My name’s Craig. Nice to meet you.”

 

I turn on him, ignoring his outstretched hand. “I think you come to this bar to pick up the type of women who come to this bar.” He takes a step back, stunned. I step forward, speaking right into his face. “You seem like the sort of man who thinks he can whisk into a place like this and choose any woman he wants because your daddy got you a job on the big account. Are you slumming it tonight? Is that it?”

 

“You’re crazy,” he says, his lips trembling. “I ought to—”

 

“Ought to what?” I laugh madly. Maybe he’s right about me being crazy. “Did I hit a little too close to home?”

 

He turns on his heels and paces away, shaking his head. The barman looks at me sideways. “Was that really necessary, ma’am? I’m sure he was just making conversation.”

 

“You all think that, don’t you? And my mom is desperate for me to sit on one of you people.” I walk toward my table, and then go back to the bar. “Sorry. I know you’re just doing your job. I’m having a bad …I’m sorry.”

 

I return to the corner and sit down, nursing my drink. The first one is hitting me now. Not hard, not so that I can’t think straight, but hitting me all the same. What I said to the barman was harsh and sharp, but it was somewhat true. To have a baby, you need a man, and Mom knows how my last relationship ended. She remembers the drama and the terror of it all. She was there at the last big battle. She was at my side, my front-line infantry.

 

I remember it all clearly as I sit here with country music playing on the jukebox, the man in the business suit talking to two ladies in miniskirts and tank tops.

 

Clint had beaten me bloody again, as he had many times before. With Clint it got so that I rarely felt the pain in the moment. As the beatings happened I would feel nothing but numb and distant, as if somebody else was being beaten and I was just watching. I remember looking up at him through blood-streaked eyes and wondering if life was ever going to be good, if I was ever going to break out of this prison and become a person. Because when a man hits you like that, owns you like that, you start to believe that you’re not a person anymore. I’m not a human being, I would think. I’m just whatever he wants me to be. My self-esteem was so low, I didn’t even like the sound of my own breathing. I detested myself. I was a mouse, and I didn’t want to be a mouse.

 

It wasn’t bravery that made me stand up and go into the bedroom as Clint watched football on the TV. It was fear. He’d struck me across the eye and something felt loose, like my skin had torn. And I knew if I told Clint he’d just yell at me or throw a bottle, or some other horrible Clint-like thing. I once broke my wrist. He told me to make a fist, staring at me with bloodshot, drunken eyes. When I was able to make a fist after lots of crying and wincing, he said it couldn’t be broken. When I went in the next day, the doctor was horrified by how long I’d left it. He didn’t care if I was in pain; his whole existence was based upon inflicting pain.

 

I picked up the landline in the bedroom and dialed Mom, hands shaking in fear. If Clint found out I was dialing my mother …Clint had never liked my mom ever since she first went crazy at him when she saw the state of my face one blistering August afternoon, stomping up and down in front of the house and screaming at him so that all the neighbors could hear. It’s strange to think of the bird in the bed as a tigress who once prowled in my defense.

 

I had just dialed the number when Clint appeared at the door. “What are you doing, Selena?” he said, taking a slow step forward. “Do you think you’re something special, is that it? Little special Selena can use my phone whenever she wants. My goddamn phone. A phone I pay for. I’m out there working every damn day of my life and what do I get for it? The phone company screaming down my ear every month!”

 

“I never use the phone,” I muttered, keeping the receiver to my ear, waiting.

 

“What did you just say?” he said, dead quiet. It was the calm before the storm. It sickened me when I thought about it, but I’d learned how to read Clint’s face for signs of violence. When his eyebrow twitched like it was twitching now, that meant that soon fists would start flying.

 

“Nothing,” I said, the phone ringing in my ear.

 

“Put that phone down,” he said. “Why are you trying to make me angry?”

 

It was the scariest rebellion I’d ever been a part of: I put the phone down, but not on the handset. I put it down beside the handset, facedown. And he didn’t notice! He clenched his fists and clicked his neck to side to side, looking like a boxer warming up for a fight. “Don’t I give you everything?” he said. “Every little thing you’ve ever wanted? Don’t I make you happy? Well, don’t I? And what do I get in return? What do I get for my trouble? This, this …Look at you.” He waved at my body. This was something he’d done since I’d put on twenty pounds. What he didn’t understand was that I wouldn’t have to find my solace in cookies and ice-cream if I had somebody who actually cared. “You’re a hog. A fucking pig.”

 

I didn’t want to cry. Crying was like admitting that he had power over me. But even so, the tears stung my cheeks, sliding down and dripping onto the floor. I couldn’t stop. They came unbidden and then streamed freely.

 

“Oh, come on.” He moved closer. I panicked. He’d see the phone! I darted forward and threw my arms around his shoulders, hating every second of it, hating that I ever had to touch this man.

 

“Am I really a pig?” I pouted, looking up at him. I wondered if Mom had answered the phone yet and how I was going to get to it without Clint knowing.

 

“Maybe that was a little harsh,” he said. “But you have to meet me halfway sometimes. You can’t just disobey me and then expect me not to get angry. Don’t you think I get enough of that shit at work?”

 

Clint worked in a call center and liked to soliloquize about how difficult it was. I often heard him grumbling in the mornings or evenings when he thought I couldn’t hear. He stroked my hair away from my ear. I remembered once upon a time when he’d do that and I’d get tingles all over my body. I remembered how I’d once thought me and this man had chemistry, clicked.

 

“Why don’t you let me make you feel better?”

 

He started kissing my neck, making slopping sounds as I cautiously prodded at my eye, being careful to move slowly lest he felt that I wasn’t fully into the kiss. Not that I was ever fully into our kisses, and not that he ever noticed. My eye tugged. It was still bleeding.

 

I’m shocked out of the memory when the man with the gunshot wound swaggers into the bar. Tall, muscular, red-headed, wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans with army-style boots.

 

Instinctively I take out my pocket mirror and touch up my makeup. My face has an elfin quality, I’ve been told, and I highlight it by curling my hair to frame it. Otherwise my hair falls halfway down my back, long and blonde. I’m not skinny, but I lost those twenty Clint pounds a few months ago. I guess I’m what’s called curvy.

 

I watch him as he approaches the bar. He’s got dark brown eyes, I see when he gets closer. And a wicked grin. He’s got the sort of smile which makes my mind go to dark places. I tell myself it’s the just the vodka, but I’ve only had a couple. I’m tipsy, but not drunk. I’m nowhere near close to the point of not knowing what I’m doing. I lay my chin in my hand and watch as he leans across the bar and hails the barman.

 

“Hello, sir,” he says, smiling. The way he says “sir” is like he knows that he’s really the boss, almost as if he’s subtly making fun of the barman. He doesn’t seem affected by his gunshot wound except for wincing slightly as he points to the drink he wants. “But you see, the problem is I haven’t got any money. I’m short on funds, so to speak.”

 

The barman squints at him. “Then I can’t get you a drink,” he says. “What’d you think was gonna happen, mister, if you walk up to a bar with no money?”

 

I don’t think. I have spent so much of my life up until this point just thinking, pondering, going over and over and over …So as I walk to the bar, I blot my mind. “I’ll pay for his drink,” I say.

 

A thrill runs over me when he looks at me with those dark brown eyes. “Well, thank you, miss.”

 

The barman starts pouring the drink.

 

“Aren’t you the man I saw bleeding on a stretcher?”

 

He nods shortly. “Quite possibly, ma’am. I’ve done my fair share of bleedin’ tonight.”

 

“And now you’re here.”

 

“I can tell you’re the observing type.” I suppose my accent is thick, but this man’s is thicker, a real Texan twang that makes me think of long, dusty plains. “What do I take as the reason for this kindness?” he asks as the barman hands him his drink.

 

I pay and we go to my table. He sits down and sips his drink, closing his eyes and savoring it. “Nothing like a good ice-cold beer after being hit with lead.”

 

“You seem pretty calm for a man who was just shot.”

 

“And you seem pretty calm for a lady who just finished her drink in one sip.”

 

He nods at my glass. He’s right. I didn’t even realize. I go to the bar and get another vodka and Coke, and then return to the table.

 

“So, what do you do for a living?” he asks.

 

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

 

“Just making conversation, ma’am, and believe me, it ain’t something I’m partial to normally. But seeing as you were kind enough to purchase this here beer for me, I figured I’d play the dainty damsel.” He winks at me, and then takes a sip.

 

I can’t help but laugh. Once the laughter has passed, I say, “I mean I’d rather not talk about myself at all. You can have my name but nothing else.”

 

“How blessed I am. And your name is?”

 

I tell him.

 

“Well how’d you do, Selena? I’m Dante.”

 

“Dante?” I giggle. “Is that seriously your name?”

 

“Last time I checked. Why?” He says “why” with the “h” emphasized like an old southern man, though he can’t be older than thirty.

 

“Because Dante is an unusual name and I read Inferno not that long ago.”

 

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with it.”

 

“It’s a book,” I say. “It’s a nice name. I like it.”

 

He tips an imaginary hat. “You have my gratitude.”

 

“Do you talk like that on purpose?” I ask.

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like what,” I mimic.

 

“Are you making fun of the way I say the letter ‘h’, brave girl?”

 

“I am. I am, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” I slap his hand. I feel wild with vodka and lust, and lust is the stronger of the two. This man has my thoughts going wild, and yet I still can’t get Mom out of my head. The two slam together, whirring. A plan formulates. It’s crazy. It makes no sense. But there’s an urge inside of me I can’t fight. Suddenly, poring over the baby books and Mom’s speech and meeting this man all seems connected.

 

“I talk like this because my mother talked like this,” Dante says. “She had an accent so thick folks sometimes thought it was an old radio recording they were hearing at the bank and not a lady.” He smiles, looking at the table but not seeing it. He’s so handsome with that faraway look on his face. “And what about you—”

 

I take his hand in mine. My heart hammers, my knee won’t stop bumping up and down under the table, and suddenly my tongue feels unwieldy. But I want this. For the first time in my life, I’m going to wildly take something I want.

 

“I have a proposition for you,” I say.

 

“What kind of proposition?” he asks, smoothing his thumb over my knuckles, his dark brown eyes full of meaning.

 

“I want you to take me back to your place and use me however you want until you get me pregnant. I want you to fuck me for however long it takes until your baby’s growing inside of me. I don’t care if it takes weeks, but we’ll start tonight. Okay? How does that sound?”

 

Dante tilts his head at me. “Is this serious?”

 

“This is serious,” I say, voice firm.

 

“Then I say I don’t know why we’re still sitting here. Come on. Let’s get going.”