Machine Dreams

keep talking?
    “… You’ve got two more years of high school. When you graduate I’ll give you a real diamond, and we’ll tell them together. I’ll be halfway through college by then.” He looked searchingly at her, trying to pinpoint her reservations. “I know you want to go to school. You can go to Lynchburg with me, or we can go here in town when I get my grades up, or to the University—”
    “It’s not that,” she said slowly. “I can’t say I’ll get married.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I can’t say so. I can’t.” She shook her head.
    He held her wrist tightly. “You don’t really love me, do you? Why don’t you tell me?”
    “I do love you, I do so.” She turned her hand to grasp his arm, pleading. “Let’s not say it’s an engagement. What if my parents find out?”
    “How would they find out?” he asked, sarcastic. “I suppose you’d tell them, so they’d keep me from seeing you.” He took the box from her angrily and put it on the dash in front of them. “Okay. To you it’s not an engagement ring. But to me it is. You just remember, when I’m at school. I’ll be away, but I’ll be thinking you’re mine.”
    Miserably, she put her face in her hands.
    He shook her gently, pulling her toward him. “You are,” he said, “you are mine. Don’t you know that yet?” He unbuttoned her blouse and put his hands inside, pushing the blouse apart and slipping her straps down over her shoulders. She arched up to move away and he put his arm around her waist, holding her tight against him.
    She felt the hard buckle of his belt on her pubic bone and then he moved so it was just against her. He slipped his arm down under her hips. She put her hands at his shoulders, pushing him away, but she’d lost her balance and his weight forced them downon the seat. They were both wordless, tense with exertion; he held her legs, flinging his thigh over them, and leaned across her upper chest, his entire weight on his arm. Danner heard herself panting. “You’re stronger than me,” she said bitingly. “Is that what you’re trying to prove?”
    “You think I’m trying to rape you, Danner? Jesus, you can be stupid and tight-assed.” He tried to quiet his breathing. “Look, I’m not trying to fuck you. I’m not going to lose control and ram it into you—like I don’t know you, like I don’t care about you.”
    Danner, so angry she was trembling, didn’t answer.
    “Now you’re not going to talk to me.” Her skirt had worked up high around her hips. He pushed it gently higher. “Fine, don’t talk.”
    “Don’t hold me down, Riley.” She had started to feel sick and weak inside, and her heart was pounding. “If you do, I won’t feel anything, I swear.”
    “No?” He touched her very lightly, with the tips of his fingers, through the thin cotton of her underpants. She stopped struggling. He stroked her and there was silence, as though they’d both begun holding their breath in the same instant. He was watching her face. “Let me,” he whispered, “just with my hand. Let me show you.”
    She couldn’t speak. Her eyes had filled with tears.
    He shifted his body and pulled her skirt back down to cover her legs, then he lay on top of her as she embraced him. He moved against her and made no sound; tonight it took a long time but he kept pushing and pushing. It seemed to Danner they’d gone on like this for hours. Under him, she was sore from his hardness and she hated herself. She held him and wondered what would ever happen in her life: nothing could be worse than this, than what was happening to him and to her. He stiffened, still silently. When he moved away from her they looked at each other, defeated, then at his pants. He had chafed himself until he bled; the wetness on his white jeans was tinged with pink.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and hugged her.

MOONSHIP
Danner

1969
    D anner waited for Billy on the stone steps of Women’s Hall. The old dormitory was situated on a hill overlooking the Student Union; she’d see his Camaro approach from the bottom of the street. Even in Labor Day weekend traffic, his car was obvious—a shiny, four-year-old soft-top, white, with an orange racing stripe down the hood. No wonder he got so many speeding tickets. Cops expected a car like his to speed. Danner wouldn’t even smoke a joint in the Camaro; she was scared they’d get stopped. She wished Billy had gotten a room in town, but almost all the