With the looming possibility of running into the Dog Boys, Hatchet avoided the coffee shop. Old friends bought him shots and beers in the dark sepulchral cores of the bars and saloons. Hatchet found himself buzzed and annoyed by swarming reminiscence. So he took to sitting in bookstores, reading sections of Robert Paul Wolff, Tolstoy and Camus until the overheated air forced him outside into the biting wind. It was on one of these occasions as he stepped through the doors of a particularly stuffy franchise that he met Malorie, almost throwing a door into her as she reached for the handle. They smiled at one another in recognition that each of them had been nurturing a reciprocal concern for the other and now, standing face-to-face, both felt a glimmer of fear that they had expected too much from their considerations.
He bought her a chocolate and whipped cream concoction from the coffee bar inside and struggled to improvise his trip to Alaska by embellishing elusive details of a three week vacation he had taken there as a teenager. Her inquisitive mind pushed his inventions to the precipitous edge where he thought at any moment it might give way, revealing his charade. Nevertheless, he held to the story, succeeding in fooling and dazzling her with tales of majestic fjords and silvery evenings in the tundra. Malorie's beauty proved the hardest aspect to overcome. It's difficult to lie to a beautiful face.
Soon he discovered that only her guilt could rival the scope of her beauty. Raised in a strict Church of Christ family by a cocaine addicted father and a submissive mother, raped at the age of eleven by a close family friend, independent from the age of seventeen, living with and caring for her autistic younger brother until the State of Texas swooped in and shuttled him away to a home, she carried the weight of two lifetimes worth of missteps and hardships. I'm sorry, were her favorite words, a habit from which he tried to break her during their short tryst. When she uttered those words, her sincerity rode them as any faithful passenger on any doomed train over any faulty span across any harrowing chasm. As much as he tried to relieve her of it, the guilt beguiled him. She had the physique of a golden age actress, a trait she recognized as an asset worth exploiting but it drove Hatchet to unbearable lust and over the next few weeks, with the aid of alcohol and humor, he bedded her again and again.
Unfortunately, the sex always proceeded in the same disenchanting sequence. She would start at the height of lasciviousness and vulgarity designed to both anger and arouse as he stripped her and jostled her wet parts. Fuck me, faggot, she would whisper amidst the sweat and heated breath. Then upon entering her, this fantasy of a body lost all intention as if penetration snuffed her desire. She failed to look into his eyes until he had finished and she would stare back at him in tears. This anvil of flesh beaten to hell by remorse lay beneath him as he hovered in dumbfounded exasperation as to what he should do to console her. I'm sorry, she would say.
I know how you see her, Poole told him, but when I look at her, all I see is a frightened little girl, beautiful for sure but frightened. But she can't go on with her life this way. What are you trying to do, Hatchet? buying her alcohol and fucking her can't be the best therapy for the kind of trouble this poor thing has been through. Therapy? Well, tell me what you're trying to accomplish here. Accomplish? Your echolalia is kicking in again. Poole, I just can't keep my hands off of her. Then don't. But she's screwed up, man. I hear that. I'm involved with a borderline alcoholic twenty-year-old youth minister studying politics; I don't know what I'm doing. Well, whatever you do, don't fall for this kid; you'll fuck her up… or even worse. Worse how? She'll fuck you up.
He bought her a chocolate and whipped cream concoction from the coffee bar inside and struggled to improvise his trip to Alaska by embellishing elusive details of a three week vacation he had taken there as a teenager. Her inquisitive mind pushed his inventions to the precipitous edge where he thought at any moment it might give way, revealing his charade. Nevertheless, he held to the story, succeeding in fooling and dazzling her with tales of majestic fjords and silvery evenings in the tundra. Malorie's beauty proved the hardest aspect to overcome. It's difficult to lie to a beautiful face.
Soon he discovered that only her guilt could rival the scope of her beauty. Raised in a strict Church of Christ family by a cocaine addicted father and a submissive mother, raped at the age of eleven by a close family friend, independent from the age of seventeen, living with and caring for her autistic younger brother until the State of Texas swooped in and shuttled him away to a home, she carried the weight of two lifetimes worth of missteps and hardships. I'm sorry, were her favorite words, a habit from which he tried to break her during their short tryst. When she uttered those words, her sincerity rode them as any faithful passenger on any doomed train over any faulty span across any harrowing chasm. As much as he tried to relieve her of it, the guilt beguiled him. She had the physique of a golden age actress, a trait she recognized as an asset worth exploiting but it drove Hatchet to unbearable lust and over the next few weeks, with the aid of alcohol and humor, he bedded her again and again.
Unfortunately, the sex always proceeded in the same disenchanting sequence. She would start at the height of lasciviousness and vulgarity designed to both anger and arouse as he stripped her and jostled her wet parts. Fuck me, faggot, she would whisper amidst the sweat and heated breath. Then upon entering her, this fantasy of a body lost all intention as if penetration snuffed her desire. She failed to look into his eyes until he had finished and she would stare back at him in tears. This anvil of flesh beaten to hell by remorse lay beneath him as he hovered in dumbfounded exasperation as to what he should do to console her. I'm sorry, she would say.
I know how you see her, Poole told him, but when I look at her, all I see is a frightened little girl, beautiful for sure but frightened. But she can't go on with her life this way. What are you trying to do, Hatchet? buying her alcohol and fucking her can't be the best therapy for the kind of trouble this poor thing has been through. Therapy? Well, tell me what you're trying to accomplish here. Accomplish? Your echolalia is kicking in again. Poole, I just can't keep my hands off of her. Then don't. But she's screwed up, man. I hear that. I'm involved with a borderline alcoholic twenty-year-old youth minister studying politics; I don't know what I'm doing. Well, whatever you do, don't fall for this kid; you'll fuck her up… or even worse. Worse how? She'll fuck you up.
Edit 12.23.2018