Guilt

'So let me get this straight,' he said. 'Some lady…'

'Some woman, Wes.'

'Okay, some woman comes in to where you work and tells you this story…'

'It wasn't a story. It was the truth.'

He stopped. She walked a couple more steps. 'Here we go, now,' he said.

'I'm going to try to finish one sentence. Then you can have one. How about that?'

'You don't need to get snippy.'

'I'm not being snippy. I'm trying to respond in whole sentences to the topic we are trying to discuss. Now. This woman tells you that twenty-some-odd years ago, she went on a date with Mark Dooher and she took him back to her apartment and got him drunk and then he raped her.'

'And threatened to kill her.'

'Sure, why not? That, too. And because of that, if it is true…'

'It is true.'

'If it is true, I should abandon my life-long best friend, whom you now seem to believe is a murderer. That's where we are?'

'That's right.'

'He killed his wife because he allegedly raped this woman?'

'Wes, don't go all lawyer on me. He didn't allegedly rape this woman. He raped her.'

'No, wait a minute. She invited him up to her apartment, plied him with drink, started making out with him…'

'And then told him to stop, that's right. And he didn't.' She was giving him that look – eyes hard and challenging. 'That's rape.'

'Ex post facto.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means now it's considered rape. Then it wasn't considered rape. It's like people who say Lincoln was a racist, when they didn't have the same concept back then. By today's standards, everybody was a racist a hundred years ago. Same with date rape. It's all semantics.'

'It's not semantics at all. He raped her.'

'I'm not saying date rape isn't rape. I'm saying thirty years ago, a lot of girls said no and didn't really mean no.'

'I'm not going to get into how Neanderthal that sounds, Wes, but this particular woman didn't just say no. She tried to fight him off and he told her he'd kill her.'

'No, he didn't.'

'What? How can you possibly-?'

'Because I know Mark Dooher. He's not going to kill somebody in college over a piece of ass. Come on, Sam. You're a rape counsellor, for Christ sake. You know how this goes. She invites him up…'

'She asked for it, right? Don't give me that one, please.'

'I don't know if she asked for it. I wasn't there, but it sure wasn't the same thing as lurking in the bushes and assaulting her as she walked by.'

'Yes, it was, Wes. That's the point.'

They were still standing where they'd stopped, in the middle of a fogbound street in the gauzy glow of one of Church Street's lights. Wes had his hands in his pockets. He hadn't thought they were going hiking, and in his business suit, he wasn't dressed for the chill.

He forced himself to slow down, take a breath, not let this escalate. They'd work it out. It was just that right now they were both charging at one another. He thought he'd pull back a little, lower the voltage.

'Look, Sam. How about we go someplace? Sit down. Maybe have some food. Calm down a little.'

She crossed her arms. 'I am calm. And I don't need that condescending "Take the little lady someplace she can't make a scene" bullshit either.'

'I am not doing that. I thought we might be able to have a reasonable adult discussion in a more comfortable environment.'

'This environment seemed to be comfortable enough until we got on this.'

'On rape, or what you're calling rape, you mean?'

'What I'm calling rape! Goddamn it, Wes, I expected a lot more from you.'

'Well, yelling is a big help.'

'There!' Now she was yelling. 'Put me down again. Don't discuss the real subject, whatever you do. Jesus Christ!'

'I'd like to discuss the real subject, Sam, but first I can't get out a whole sentence, and then I'm getting screamed at while I'm freezing my ass off, getting all kinds of motive laid on me for the truly ominous, condescending idea of finding someplace warm to sit down. Give me a break, would you? I didn't rape anybody. I'm not the enemy here.'

'My enemy's friend is my enemy.'

He brought a hand up to his forehead. 'That's good. What's that, Kahlil Gibran or the PLO Handbook?'

'It's common sense is what it is. It's survival.'

'I didn't think we were in survival mode.'

'All women live every day in survival mode.'

'Jeez, that's good, too. What are you doing, writing a book of feminist slogans?'

'Fuck you.'

She turned and was walking off.

He followed after her, his own volume way up. 'You've been working at that center too long, you know that?'

She whirled on him. 'Yeah, that's right. I've been working, of course that's the problem. Women shouldn't work, should they, Wes? They shouldn't have their own lives.'

'Sure, that's what I'm saying, Sam. That's what I think. I wonder if you could twist it anymore.'

'I'm sure I could. I'm a woman, after all, I don't get things right.'

'I'll tell you something. You didn't get at least this one thing right. My friend Mark Dooher didn't kill his wife and I'd be Goddamned surprised if he raped this lady, either. She saw his name in the paper, she wants her twenty minutes of fame. You ever think of that?'

'Oh no, Wes, that never crossed my mind. You asshole.' She started walking away again. Stopped, turned back. 'I heard her. I saw her face. This happened, Goddamn it, whether or not you believe it.'

'What happened? She maybe said "no" thirty years ago, and just forgot about it until now? I'm sure.'

Sam said nothing.

'Did she seek counselling? Did she tell anybody? Did she report it to the police back then? Did she do a fucking thing? No.'

'It ruined her life. It changed everything in her life.'

'How sad for her. And now, damn, look at this, what a surprise! Mark Dooher's in the news and it all comes back. And – this is the great part – this means my best friend, who I've known only a hundred times longer than I've known you, this means he killed his wife he loved and raised a family with? Please. I mean it, Sam, you got to get a life here. This is ridiculous.'

This time, she started walking away and didn't turn back.

'Hey, Bart. Daddy's home.'

It was ten o'clock.

The dog got up, yawned and walked slowly over to where his master stood. Wes petted him distractedly, then schlumped into the kitchen, turning on the light, checking for dog shit. He paid a young woman who ran a small graphics business out of her apartment in the building to take Bart out two or three times a day, but sometimes that wasn't quite enough. Today it had been.

The refrigerator held a couple of six packs of Rolling Rock, and he took out two bottles and opened them both, drank one half down, pulled out the kitchen chair and sat heavily at the table.

He felt a hundred years old.

He ached to simply pick up the phone there on the wall and apologize until dawn. But he didn't move. The phone didn't, either. Eventually, he lifted the bottle of beer again, staring out at the night.

This was not supposed to happen. Everything had been going better than it ever had in his life, even better – he thought – than it ever had with Lydia when they'd been young and believed they must be in love.

In the first heady rush of physical pleasure, and then in the next weeks of growing intimacy, he'd put Sam's occasional penchant for volatility out of his mind. That first night, when she'd thrown him out after learning that he was defending Levon Copes – he'd chosen to believe that that had been an aberration born of insecurity and alcohol.

But evidently it wasn't.

It was better to find out now rather than later, he supposed, but he wasn't in the mood to put much of an optimistic spin on anything just now.