The Safekeep(22)

If he tries to kiss me, she thought during the car ride back, I will let him.

The windows down helped, but the rocking didn’t. He put the radio on again. Said again, “Oh, I really like that song.” And then, putting a hand on her knee, eyes on the dark road ahead: “How lucky am I? Every time I turn on the radio there’s a song I like.”

She closed her eyes at the cool night air. It smelled like grass, like water. Crickets sang into the air. It was the third week of June. Johan pushed his hand up, pushed up the hem of her dress with it. His big fingers dug into the flesh of her inner thigh. He said, “Are you lucky, Isabel?”

Isabel stopped his hand: her grip over his. She opened her eyes. He glanced at her, licked his lips, and she took his hand from her leg—held it, awkwardly, in hers, fingers laced. He squeezed, smiled. Her stomach turned. Hendrik said it was a good thing.

At the house he got out of the car with her and walked up the path. She veered off unsteadily and he caught her with a hand to the small of her back, kept it there. At the door he said: “You had a good time, didn’t you?”

There was one dim light on inside the house. It looked quiet, unmoving; it looked as though the house had gone to sleep, and the light had been left on by accident. Isabel held herself up against the doorway and had forgot what Johan had just asked, and he seemed to recognize, in that moment, how the drink had got to her: laughed quietly, shook his head. Stepped up, closer. He was only just a little taller than Isabel, but he seemed taller now. He ran a knuckle under her eye, her cheek. She smelled the wine on his breath, knew it was on her breath, too. She was shaking all over, couldn’t stop it. The doorpost pressed into her back. She could only see the blond sweep of his lashes, the way his nose pulled his Cupid’s bow up, kept his mouth open. He breathed into her mouth, and she turned her face from him with a small sound. He kissed her cheek instead. Her jaw, her neck.

She put a hand to his chest—pushed. He pulled away a little, looked at her with cloudy eyes. Pupils blown. He tried to kiss her again. Her hand kept him at bay this time, and she said, “Good night, Johan.” She sounded croaky and small. He still could not focus on her face.

“Good night,” he said, and tried to kiss her again. She replied with something like a no, something like a laugh. She pushed him farther away.

“Isabel,” he said.

“Thank you for dinner.” She pulled her purse to her. Checked in it, just for something to do. Checked her pins, her hair. Moved a step inside. Johan swayed back, put his hands in his pockets, and then laughed: first a wondering chuckle, and then, as if understanding something, a louder laugh, nodding, saying:

“All right, Isabel. All right.”

“Goodbye,” she said, and made to close the door.

“Soon? Again?” he called out.

She gave him a vague affirmative, listened to the click of the door. She waited there in the dark, looking through the mottled glass panels in the door: as he walked back to his car, as the headlights swooped over the driveway, as the tires crunched on the gravel, taking Johan away. The house fell still again. The glass was cool against Isabel’s forehead. She swallowed several times: her mouth was dry, wine and dust.

She went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Her heels sounded loud against the hardwood floors; a familiar sound, a foreign one. Her mother had heels like these. Isabel took them off as she walked, took off her hat, left her purse in the dining room, and paused on the steps to the kitchen: Eva, at the table, illuminated only by the orange stove light. She was reading the same pulpy paperback she had been reading all these weeks, was still only just a few pages in. Her face was clear and shiny. She hadn’t done her hair: it was curly, frizzed, pushed off her face by a ribbon-wrapped band.

Eva looked up—froze. Said, “Forgot I was here?”

“No.” Isabel went to the sink. She fumbled with a glass, with the tap.

“Bet you wish you could,” Eva said. She left the book on the table, came to linger back against the counter, watching Isabel fill her glass. Drink it. “So. Fun evening?”

“Have you—” Isabel swallowed a breath, a hiccup. “Taken to lurking in corners now?”

Eva shrugged. She was quiet a moment, eyeing Isabel. Then: “He sounded handsome. I could only see his back from the window. What’s his name?”

Isabel drank more water. And then, all at once, felt too hot: unbuttoned the top button of her dress, took out a few pins. Eva asked, “So are you two…?”

“I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“Oh, come on, Isabel, don’t be boring now. Finally something exciting happened in this tomb of a house, surely you—”

“Hardly exciting,” Isabel said. There was a low scratch in her voice. Her neck felt damp when she touched at it. Eva hadn’t talked to her in days. She was talking to her now.

“He kissed you,” is what Eva said next, said it as if she wasn’t sure Isabel herself understood this.

“He didn’t.” Isabel turned. The rim of the sink dug into her back, a cool discomfort. She said, “He tried.” And then, to Eva’s silence: “I’m not a schoolgirl.”

Eva took a long moment to respond. The length of the pause was filled with the croak of a frog outside. With the electric hum of the stove light.

“Do you… not like him?”