Rust
This girl is full of surprises, I reflect as I drive her car toward her apartment building. I wanted to fuck her; I had every intention of fucking her. With any other woman, I would’ve just fucked her. But there was something about the way she was moaning when I was eating her out: something irresistible about it. The way she tilted her hips, the way she begged, the way she closed her legs around my head…Goddamn, man, but that was enough for me. For me: Rust, serial lady-killer, if Zeke’s descriptions are anything to go by. I shake my head, smile ruefully. There’s something else, too. I’m smiling. This girl has taken me from rage, to lust, to stunned contentment in less than an hour. Then I think about her revelation, the pregnancy, and the smile falters. I’ve never been much good with family talks, and I reckon that’s what’s awaiting me up in her apartment.
During the car ride, Allison takes a pocket mirror from her handbag and freshens herself up, and then as we come to a stop she steps from the car with the aspect of a professional, reserved lady. I almost laugh at the sight, when less than half an hour ago she was on her back in a side street moaning to the skies. I climb from the car. Allison tilts her head at me. “Something funny?” she asks, as we walk to the apartment building.
“Nothing,” I reply. “Just—you.”
She blushes, and opens the door. We walk up the stairs of the building and into her apartment. The first thing I notice is the coffee table, wooden and set low to the ground and covered with paperback books and notes. I scan the books and see that all of them are about hunky men: romances, then. On one of the covers a barbarian holds an axe in two hands, growling; I wonder if that’s how Allison sees me, her barbarian. The second thing I notice is how in-between messy this place is, with everything not in complete disarray, but a few things scattered here and there: a few articles of clothing strewn across the floor, a coffee mug on its side on the floor, an open book balanced precariously face down on the arm of a chair. Allison goes about the apartment, clearing things away, and then waves at the armchair. “Take a seat.”
“Alright.”
I sit down. It’s one of those stylish armchairs, which means it’s small and with little padding. I feel like a giant sitting at a kid’s playset as I wedge myself into it. Allison calls through from the kitchen: “Do you want a drink?”
“Whiskey,” I reply.
She giggles. “I don’t have whiskey. What about a smoothie?”
“A smoothie? The fuck would I want a smoothie for?”
“It’s healthy,” she says. “I can make us an apple and banana one. I had one when I was feeing sick. It helped.”
“Well, I ain’t feeling sick. Just give me whatever you’ve got that isn’t a smoothie.”
She laughs this time, then brings through two glasses of orange juice. She sits on the couch near the armchair. We both sip our orange juice in silence for a few moments, the only noise the muffled sound of somebody playing heavy metal music a few apartments over. I look at Allison almost in awe. Less than an hour ago, she was on her back, gasping, moaning, and now she looks like all respectable. The contrast between the moaning woman who begged me to call her my whore and this prim little social worker is so striking it makes my dick ache. I try to be subtle as I adjust myself.
Alright, I need to stop this scatterbrained shit. I’m trying to take myself away from the issue; we both are. We don’t meet each other’s gaze. After the closeness of what we just did, the atmosphere is awkward.
I clear my throat, and then say, “So, we need to talk about this.”
Allison nods. “We need to talk about this,” she agrees. She clasps her hands together and fidgets with her fingers.
I think about the anger I felt at her when she first confronted me outside the Englishman. I think about how I snapped at her, how blinded with rage I was. I can hardly believe it. She’s so deer-like, so fragile-looking, her hair mussy around her shoulders, her eyes huge and green; and yet there’s a strength to her to which goes against all of this. A confusing lady.
She turns to me, smiling tiredly. “Well, let’s talk, then.”
I think on it as she watches me. I haven’t really given it any thought since she told me; there hasn’t been any time. So now, as she watches me and a few minutes pass by, as the heavy metal music plays dim through the walls, as a few horns honk outside and a car backfires somewhere in the city, I think on it for real. A child—a father. I think about my own father. He was a quiet, reserved man, but he was a good man, too. He worked in a factory, twelve hour shifts, and sometimes when he came home he would give me twenty dollars to go down the store and get him some beers, telling me I could keep the change. And then the heart attack, and the revelation that Mom had been cheating on him for years…there’s the thing, isn’t it? If I agree to this family shit, will the same happen to me?
No, I tell myself. Fuck no, ’cause my father wasn’t an outlaw, an enforcer. My father didn’t have the grit to live on the perimeters of the law. And maybe, just maybe, if Allison had a kid, I could do better with them than my parents did with me. Just maybe …
And then I think about how I offered Allison my phone number and she turned me down, just point-blank told me no, and I wonder if I offer myself up now, will she do the same? I can’t be sure. I’m starting to realize that in this closeness and relationship shit, you can never be sure. It’s like waking blindly through a maze looking for the exit—at least for a man like me. How can I know if this turning is the right one, or if that turning is the right one? How can I ever know?
I can see that she’s waiting for me to talk, so I decide to play it safe, at least for now: “I think the choice is yours. Obviously the choice is yours. It’s your body; if you decide to keep it…if you decide to keep the baby, you’re the one whose body will change, all that stuff. You know—you’re the one who will have to go through the pain and the stress of it all.”
She nods understandingly and I can’t help but feel I’m not in her apartment but at her office in the library and she is interviewing me. There is something disarming about that nod, that open face, which makes a man think about unburdening his soul. I can see why she’s so effective at her job.
“So you think it’s my choice?”
“It is your choice,” I correct. “I don’t just think it. Of course it’s your choice. What sort of man would force you one way or the other?”
“Okay.” She nods. “But—what do you think? What do you want? If you had control of the situation, what would you decide?”
What would I decide? I almost laugh at the thought, because telling her what I would decide will once again leave me open to attack. Attack, because that is how I am thinking of it. If I tell her what I want, she will be ready to once again push me away…But I can’t just sit here silently. This is important; it needs to get sorted. I’ve never been one to ignore somethin’ that needs seeing to. So much for playing it safe.
“If I could decide, I’d only say that I’ve always wanted to be a father. Ever since my own father—” I cut myself off. “I’ve always wanted to be a father ’cause I’d like to see if I have what you need to take care of a kid, to make a kid feel safe, to tell a kid that he doesn’t have to be scared, to encourage him in whatever he wants to do. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be a father, and you’re pregnant, so if I had my way I’d ask you to keep him.”
“Him.” Allison smiles. It’s a faraway smile, captivating. “How do you know he’s a boy?”
I shrug. “I guess I’m biased.”
A silence stretches between us, the heavy metal music no longer playing, the apartment building almost eerie in its sudden lack of noise.
I plunge into the silence, unable to stop myself. I might as well get it all out there. I might as well play my hand. What do I have to lose, after all, except feeling?
“If you wanted to keep that kid,” I go on, looking at the ground instead of into her face ’cause I’m feeling pretty damn self-conscious right now, “I’d like to try and make a family with you. I like you—” That’s a weak word for the confusing mass of feelings I have for her, but I never claimed to be a wordsmith. “And I like the work you do in the community, and I think we could at least have a go at playing house. Maybe we’d live half here, half at my place; I have an apartment near the clubhouse, in the same building as my friend Zeke, actually. Maybe we could give it a try. I don’t know…I think it’s worth the effort, when there’s a kid involved.”
“Maybe it is.” She nods, again that understanding nod, but when I glance up from the floor I can see in her face that she is unsure. She is always unsure, it seems, always guessing and second-guessing her decisions and her feelings. She’s always fighting a war within herself, a war between what she wants to do and what she should do. I don’t know—maybe it’s got something to do with how she was raised. “But I don’t know, Rust…” She sighs, leans back, massages her temples.
I just sit there, hands folded, waiting.
After a minute or so, she says: “I need to give it some thought. Fantasizing about living with a tough biker is one thing; taking the plunge is quite another.”
“I’m not one of the characters in your books,” I say. “I’m a man; there are more sides to a man than what those books’ll tell you.”
“Maybe so.” She shrugs again, unsure. “Maybe there are. But—I just need some time to think. Can you give me that?”
I’m a fuckin’ pinball, and she’s the player, knocking me around endlessly, smacking me off the walls, bringing me close just to send me flying to the other end of the machine again. I swallow, and then nod shortly, and then rise to my feet. “Alright,” I say. “I’ll see you around, then.”
“Come visit me at the library,” she calls at my back, but I’m already out the door, walking down the stairs, grazed bloody hands stuffed into the pockets of my leather.
I won’t think about it: I won’t make the connection between Mom and Allison. It isn’t fair. I can’t do that. I can’t keep thinking like that. But as I walk down the stairs, feeling like I did when I offered her my number but amplified—there wasn’t a kid involved then—I can’t stop myself from thinking of Mom, eyes burning into me with resentment, almost as though she wished she could burn me from existence. That’s Rust, I reflect, wishing I could stop this self-pitying horseshit. That’s Rust: never really wanted unless there’s violence to be done.
I walk out into the street, reach into my pocket for my cigarettes. I find none. I must’ve dropped them in the bar. I haven’t got a bike or a car with me, so I bow my head and begin walking down the street toward the bus station. I’ll just keep walking, focus on my moving legs, try and blot out any thought of Mom and Allison, try and—
“Wait!”
I turn at the sound of her voice, pitched high, urgent. She is jogging after me, her cheeks flushed.
She stops an inch away from me, so close I can feel the heat radiating from her.
“Yeah?” I say, unwilling to let any excitement in my voice just in case.
But she says, “I want to give it a try, Rust. Just give it a try.”
I open my arms. “Alright,” I say, still struggling to believe it.
She falls into my embrace, and then she stares up at me with those big vulnerable eyes, eyes which make me rock-hard straightaway.
“Let’s get you upstairs,” I say, and then pick her up.
She squeals, giggling, as I carry her to her apartment.
I don’t know if this will work, but we’ll try. We’ll try and make it work, and that has got to count for something, hasn’t it?