The Lesson (9 page)

For a while they ate in awkward silence, other than the droning in the background of some Latin lover, singing a long, sad, stupid song accompanied by a mandolin. The music started to bother her. The radio seemed loud now, and it only accentuated the fact that the conversation had stalled. And the spaghetti, her favorite dish, was not as good as she hoped. It was slightly undercooked and her mother’s sauce was better. She glanced across the table to see that Rolando had stopped eating and was staring at her intently, or, more particularly, it appeared he was staring at her chest.

Could she have misinterpreted?
Don’t be ridiculou
s. Even with the pink sweater she didn’t have enough on top to attract a guy’s attention.

Suddenly she felt keenly uncomfortable and was sorry she had come. Something was wrong, no, everything was wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what was out of place. She wasn’t having fun like she thought she would, and conversation wasn’t flowing with Rolando in the smooth way it used to when Michael was there. Rolando seemed intent, not as casual and easy as she remembered him. She wanted to leave, but polite guests didn’t just eat and leave. She made up her mind that she would stay a respectable period after the meal and then get away as soon as possible.

When they were finished eating, Rolando announced that he was happy to do the dishes later, and shouldn’t they move to the living room for a little TV? That sounded good to Gina. It would relieve her of the burden of conversation. She would stay, she decided, only for the duration of a half-hour sitcom and then make an early exit. Then he offered her another glass of wine. She declined. Already she was feeling the all-too-familiar and delightful sense of being dangerously relaxed. He urged her again to have another glass, and again she said no, she had had enough.

They left their dishes on the kitchen table and moved to the living room where Rolando turned on the TV. As they took their places, Gina was dismayed to remember that the couch, which was as old as her parents and just as firm, offered all the support of a marshmallow. Anyone who dared to sit on it instantly rolled downward toward the sunken center and was left, drowning, to flail and clamber
his or her way out because their bottoms were so low to the floor. At one time with a very special law student the sinking couch had been fun, but now she felt only embarrassment as she found herself uncomfortably rolling toward the center, Rolando practically on top of her. She scooted herself to the edge of the couch, gripped the arm rest, and pushed her feet solidly to the floor to keep from sliding to the center. Rigid and uncomfortable, she looked forward to the moment when she could thank Rolando for dinner and make an exit. She paid no attention to the TV.

Her death grip on the armrest and leg-numbing pushing against the floor should have left her wakeful. Perhaps it was the wine, but sometime after she had determined to endure a thirty-minute sitcom, she fell asleep. She woke drowsily to find that she had slid to the center of the couch. Her first wakeful thought was that Rolando was very near.

The proximity of his hips to hers was discomfiting to Gina, who was poised to discreetly scoot back to the safety of her bunker at the end of the couch. But the sensual moment that made her feel uncomfortable made Rolando come alive. Without warning he turned his body toward hers and was on top of her, pressing his mouth on hers, running his hands down her body toward her hips. She was in such shock that all she could do was react, pushing and shoving and trying to free herself. She was overwhelmed with the sensation of his bulk pressing down on her body.

“Stop it!” she said, trying to break away. “Stop it I said!”

He held her down briefly, his eyes fixed on hers. From what she saw Gina knew, in one terrorizing moment, that he got some twisted pleasure from dominating her. After a few seconds of intentional delay, he let her go, pushing her in disgust.

“What is it you want?” he groused. “You call me to spend an evening with me!” He stood up and threw both hands in the air. “What do you want?”

“I want to go home!”

She bolted upright from the couch. She didn’t hesitate long enough to even look him in the eye. She raced toward the kitchen counter where she had stashed her purse. If he followed her or said anything more, she was braced to start swinging it, so frantic was she to escape the apartment to the safety of the outside.

In a moment her hand was on the doorknob and she was out the door, racing down the long staircase to the street. The sun had set long ago and the streetlight was too far away to help her see inside her purse or find the lock on her car door, and even if there had been plenty of light, she was too traumatized to perform any of this routine calmly.

Finally, using her sense of touch she found her keys and opened the lock. She jumped into the driver’s seat and immediately turned to lock the door. The seat was cold but she hardly noticed. In the blackness of the car’s interior, once again she fumbled with her keys, hurriedly trying to put the
right one into the ignition. When she sensed the key was in place she turned it while madly and repeatedly pumping the gas pedal.

She heard a click and then a whiny RR-rr-RR-rr-RR. She turned the key again. A few seconds more of RR-rr-RR-rr-R, but slower and quieter, as the engine strained to turn over. One more time she turned the key.

A click. Then no sound at all.

The Apartment, Lincoln Street

I will never wear four-inch heels again!
Gina rubbed her feet to dull the pain. Nothing is longer than a short walk on high heels over unforgiving cement.

She had awakened Sunday morning tired, disoriented, and rumpled, still in Levis and her shell pink sweater. Her first conscious thought was that her feet ached mercilessly, which led to her second, equally painful thought: her Austin was sitting, immovable, on Scott Boulevard. Surely it had breathed its last. She would spend the remainder of her time at Santa Clara University on foot. She hoped the tow to the junk yard wouldn’t take up more than half her paycheck.

She must get to church, but she had no way to get there other than to ride with Bonnie and the kids, or perhaps she could catch a ride with Dory and Jenny Pieters, unmarried, middle-aged sisters who lived with a few other single women at the House of Joy, the large historic house on Bellomy Street owned by the church. But the Pieters sisters left very early for service because they were involved in so many preservice activities, and Gina didn’t feel like hurrying this morning. That left Bonnie and the kids, who were always late for service and couldn’t get out the door without a messy mishap that involved something unspeakable deposited into a burp cloth or diaper. Gina procrastinated. She’d call Bonnie a little bit later.

By eight o’clock Gina was dressed, had drank a cup of coffee, and had, somberly, finished off the last bit of food she had in the apartment, one precious bowl of Cream of Wheat. Dolefully she held the empty cardboard cereal box over the garbage can, considering what this meant. She was ashamed at the fear that crept up inside her. She’d been low on groceries many times, but she’d never before completely run out of food and cash on the same day. It was humbling. Scary too.

“Lord,
You’ve always provided at least something to eat. I won’t be able to get a meal at the restaurant today. Please provide an evening meal so that I don’t have to call anyone and ask for help. In the name of Jesus. Thank you.”

Half an hour later she had resolved to call Bonnie for a ride. After last night’s debacle in Rolando’s apartment, she felt an urgent need to be in church. She was about to dial Bonnie’s number when she heard
brrrring
coming from the living room. That was odd. No one ever called this early on Sunday morning, not even her parents. She picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Good morning.”

Kevin sounded unusually chirpy for a guy who’d been unceremoniously dumped at the curb the night before. Gina flushed with embarrassment when she remembered how they had parted.

“I thought you might like a ride to church,” he said.

How did he know that she didn’t have a ride this morning? Had he been following her again? “Kevin, is there any particular reason you’re calling me this morning?”

“Yes.”

Aha! He
had
been following her. He had seen her car break down. She was mortified to think he may have also seen her race out of Rolando’s apartment in a panic. “Well?”

“I was hoping if I drove you to church that after service I could talk you into lunch too, at El Zarape. It’s right near the church. After all, I have to get a bite to eat before I drive back to the ship, and you have to eat lunch somewhere. Why not eat out with me?”

Oh Kevin, you don’t know how easy it would be to talk me into a restaurant lunch today.
Three lousy choices: 1) She could ride to church with Kevin for all the wrong reasons and get lunch; or 2) ride with Bonnie, a crying preschooler, and a drooling baby, and come home to an empty refrigerator and an afternoon of homework in a lonely apartment. Then there was the consolation prize: 3) she could drop by her parents’ house for Sunday afternoon dinner. But that was risky. Gina was barely talking to her parents, and when they did they ended up shouting.

She was mortified even to be debating such things. Would she actually go out with Kevin for a free meal? What kind of a person was she? Yet the timing of her prayer and his phone call did not escape her notice. If she turned down his invitation for a ride and lunch, would she be rejecting the answer to her prayer?
Would there be another answer?

It wasn’t right to accept an invitation to lunch from a guy she wasn’t the least bit attracted to. What’s more, she had cowardly allowed this charade to go on for some time. But she mollified her troubled conscience by telling herself that spending time with Kevin was not a real date any more than meeting Michael’s old roommate for dinner had been a real date. They couldn’t be dates. Real dates involved a lot of heart fluttering or obsessing about the right thing to say or obsessing even more about the right thing to wear, followed by pleasant little electrical charges that showed up in parts of one’s body one never knew existed until about age thirteen.

Lunch with a friend was fine anytime no matter who paid, but Kevin would think of it as a date. That much she was sure of. But the imbalance in the relationship was something she’d deal with later. Right now she needed a ride to church, and it was a fact that heretofore she had enjoyed his company when they went out. It wasn’t as though she didn’t like him. If she truly disliked him, she reasoned, it would be
very
wrong to accept a ride to church and an invitation to lunch, no matter what one called it. And it wasn’t as though he had asked her to marry him. She couldn’t be accused of leading him on because, as all of Heaven would attest, there was nothing of any substance to this weird relationship. He hadn’t even (really) tried to kiss her. Yet eventually, likely soon, she would have to explain to Kevin how it was with her. Until then she would leave things as they were while she figured out what to do. Good grief: it was church and lunch and that’s all. There was no harm in it, was there? And she
had
prayed for a meal.

An hour later Kevin knocked on her apartment door. When she opened it her eyes went to his face and then traveled, as was her new habit, to his clothes. He wore a tweed suit that fit him well, or at least, it accentuated his exceedingly slender frame. But the pattern was a strange mix of olive green accented by flecks of mustard, which together created a sickly mélange. It reminded Gina of the varied hue of a particular type of mold that frequently grows along the surface of a very damp,
very forgotten food item at the back of the refrigerator, say boiled beans or soup. His earthy, molding suit was complemented by other nature-inspired attire: a bright blue tie with quite real-looking cumulus clouds floating across it. He carried a large black leather Bible, larger than all the others carried to church by people she knew.

He stood there proudly. It was evident he had taken pains to look nice. Politeness demanded she say something complimentary. She paused, too long she thought, trying to think of something positive. Finally,

“That’s some suit.”

“You like it? My dad helped me pick it out.”

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The green in it gives it a sort of a … living aspect. Like something that grows … You look nice in a suit,” she added quickly. Now that was true. Surely he would look nice in a suit. Just not that suit.

“Where’s your car?” he asked, while he helped her squeeze herself into the Volkswagen.

“On Scott Boulevard. It broke down.” Without realizing it she pressed her lips together tightly. She didn’t want to talk about it.

“Last night?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Around midnight.”

“Did your date drive you home?”

So he hadn’t followed her. She was relieved to realize that he knew nothing, but she didn’t like the direction this conversation was going.

“No, he didn’t drive me home,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

“Well, you didn’t take a taxi. You don’t have any money for a taxi.”

He was awfully quick this morning. She turned to him with her mouth partly open and then shut it without saying anything. He was right. She never
had money for luxuries like taxis. What could she say?