Bethany: Part X

I realized then that among the many things I didn’t know about Bethany was exactly where she lived. Last year, I’d roamed the amoeba shaped maze that was Fox Chapel with Heather many nights in many states of consciousness, but back then we were just cruising, letting chance set our agenda, and most of it was a blur now – except the locations of the houses and hangouts of a few of the most notable trust fund druggies. Not surprisingly, however, Bethany was a very competent guide, able, unlike Heather, to tell me to turn before we’d passed an intersection. We pulled onto one of the streets that uncoils into a hydra’s head of roundabouts and dead ends and slowly wended our way left and right until we reached the driveway of her showcase home.

Heather lived in what was an authentic Fox Chapel mansion, a decaying relic of the old days, but Bethany’s house was something different, not the old Fox Chapel, but an incredible simulation, a modern pastiche that suggested old money and a huge lot while actually being fabricated with new materials and sitting within a few hundred yards of the neighbors. The driveway was short but seemed long, with an unnecessary dogleg and a line of short, bushy trees.

"Go all the way over," Bethany said. "By the garage." It seemed unnecessarily far from the front door I was ostensibly delivering her to, but I’d grown used to following her directions and pulled over.

At the end of a first date there’s always a moment of truth, a rapidly approaching finish line, a deadline really, and I approached it apprehensively, especially since I’d so carefully framed our encounter as an exploratory meeting between two new friends without any romantic overtones, and yet was feeling, almost despite myself, the first strong stirrings of desire.

"Come on," she said as I sat there numbly, still working things out. "You can walk me to the door."

"Sure, sure," I said, getting out, then actually having the presence of mind to open her door for her when I noticed she wasn’t following.

"Thanks." When we reached the corner of the garage she stopped and touched my arm. "Hold on." I realized later that this was the last place where we still couldn’t be seen from the house.

You don’t have to be enlightened to know when a woman wants to kiss you, and there’s something there, in that pregnant moment of silence when your eyes meet and that magnetic pull grows, that seems to contain in embryo everything, everything the two of you will know or have together. I wasn’t surprised when she came to me enthusiastically, but I was somewhat taken aback when she immediately thrust her tongue into my mouth and even more so when she firmly grabbed my wrists and took the hands I’d tentatively laid on her hips and lifted them to her breasts.

Obligingly, I squeezed and she made no demur. I was truly shocked at the turn of events, but, fortunately, my body seemed to know what to do, and returned her eager but awkward caresses, until, abruptly, she broke away.

"Wow…" I said. "Bethany, I didn’t…"

"Let’s go," she said. "They’ll be wondering what happened to us."

We walked up to the door again. "So, I take it we can go out again."

"I don’t know," she said, smiling. "What do you think?"

"I think yes."

"Me too. Good night." She leaned forward for a conventionally chaste kiss and went quickly through the door.

I stood there numbly until I noticed a small blond child staring at me from the picture window, and then made my way back to the car, not thinking about anything but the mechanics of starting the car, turning it around, and getting it rolling back down the driveway. I slowed to a stop at the end, though, overwhelmed, holding my hands out in front of me, the warm press of her still weighing on my palms.

What had just happened?