Before she went on more about herself, Beverly asked Bill about what the end of the story was. Bill told her how Jenny had showed up at his and Pam’s apartment one afternoon and forced him to have spite-sex, vengeance sex.
He told Beverly how Jenny told him she would tell Pam he’d made a move on her if he didn’t give her what she wanted, how she told him she’d tell Pam it was all her if he complied and Pam found out. In fact, she said she would tell Pam exactly what they did and how she’d gotten him to do it, this so there were no secrets between them. Jenny said she was sure she could make Pam understand, and she also said she would enlist Nina to help too.
Well…Beverly wanted to know all the details. Of the sex.
Bill didn’t want to tell it, but she implored him and so he did. And after he did, that’s where he left it. The only other thing he said was that he didn’t have any women until he was at Suburban where he was quite a commodity because he was young, white and in a position of power. The black girls wanted him, not so much jungle fever as much as forbidden fruit or just to say they did.
Goddamn life, Beverly commented.
She told about how she dropped out of school, swore she’d go back after the child was born and they could work it out. But that never happened. The child never happened.
In her eighth month, she told Bill, she woke up one morning with such pain she couldn’t move. She was bleeding profusely and pretty much near dead so she thought. He rushed her to the hospital. They took her right into intensive care and put her on IV’s.
The baby died. It was a girl, Beverly told Bill, a fully-developed pretty little girl whose mother had miscarried—they didn’t know why—and she was never born, or she was taken from the womb already dead.
Talk about fucked up, Beverly told Bill. Talk about depression. Talk about ways to kill a marriage, maybe, especially one that was built upon an accidental pregnancy and the decision to have the baby.
Beverly told Bill what a mess she was, what a drain on his economy and a burden for him to carry for the duration of her recovery. Then there he was, going to school and working full time while she wasn’t doing anything because she’d dropped out of school and had nothing to do.
Wasn’t my fault.
Wasn’t his fault.
Just was.
He worked in an office and they were going to hire him after he graduated and give him a promotion and a title and work him into their company. It was an all-set thing. It was all good too. Until her.
Her, she was a secretary, and so if Bill thought messing around only happened in kitchens and restaurants, forget that. Turns out, she said, everyone in that office was fucking everyone and no one seemed to care that they were all married.
Beverly stayed looking intently at her feet. Her guy, now graduated and moving up in that company was one of the everybody. But he was actually having an affair, or he and his secretary were much more than just having sex. They went out together, went to hotels together and were maybe, she couldn’t say for sure, in love with each other.
Damn was all Bill would comment. But then he asked how she knew and she said she wasn’t stupid and that she’d found condoms, receipts and even a credit card slip from a hotel. But she hadn’t confronted him because, well, because she didn’t exactly know why yet and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen yet.
So there it was. Maybe a good Jenny-dose for him would be a good thing she added on when she was done with what she was saying.
