Dory

I have always been the biggest idiot. You know what that means: I'm smart but the world is a little too fast, a bit too cruel for me, so I often end up with the short end of the stick. It's not that I'm too nice. I'm just not cut out for the cut-throat stuff it takes to get ahead.

I also like being alone and being alone can become a habit. Whenever I hear that word, I think of the line from Madeleine, "a crack with the habit of looking like a rabbit." My mind works funny.

I'd rented a car for a driving vacation. Fly out from the City, pick up a car and drive back on side roads, stopping in small towns, reading up on the history, seeing the country. If only the food were better. It amazes me that so few restaurants make even a decent hamburger.

My right knee was sore from being held in the same driving position for too long. I hung around a little country store letting it loosen. Pretty country, but the store made me realize why 7-11 is so popular.

A girl dressed in a pile of unshapely, grey clothes started to speak to me but ducked her head and turned away. I walked outside, testing my knee. When I turned around the girl was in front of me, looking down. She started to speak again, "Sir . . . would you . . ." and trailed off. She never looked up.

It crossed my mind that she was part of this cult I'd read about which kept themselves isolated from the world. Then again, maybe she was a crank head looking to blow me for her next jolt.

"Do you need help? Because if you do, I might be able to help you." She nodded in a tiny motion and then with more emphasis.

"I want to get away."

Moments like these are called inflection points. I can never see them coming.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"I am eighteen years and three months." She still hadn't looked up.

"If you're not eighteen, I can only take you to the sheriff or somebody like that." Why was I saying this? "If you're not lying, I'll help you get out of here."

"I'm not lying."

You can see my problem. Girl walks up to me and I help her run away based solely on her word she's old enough that I won't be charged with kidnapping a minor. She could be lying. She could change her mind, change her story and I could end up on death row. I am a moron.

We were ten miles away, making good time, before we spoke. She sat turned away from me, looking out the window, as far to the other side of the car as possible. Her name was Jehovannah Dorinda for short. Not an attractive name. I told her mine, which is Jack.

It's natural to jump to conclusions. I assumed she was illiterate, exposed only to the Bible and her group's preaching. I keep a map lying open next to me. When Dorinda picked it up and asked where we were, I treated her in my worst patronizing manner. Turned out she knew Milton and Spenser, John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, indeed a wide variety of poetry, together with prose that I gathered was selected for its lack of sexuality.

"I'm sorry. I just . . . I assumed you couldn't read." She ignored me. "Well, now you can read more. If you want."

"That's what I want."

Silence descended.

"Dory, let's talk about something. Anything. You know you can look at me. I'm not going to touch you or do anything. We need to decide what happens next."

"I like learning. I want to learn more." Her hands twitched. "I'm of age to be wed."

"You don't want that?"

"I don't like him. He was picked for me, but I don't like him. I've never liked him." I was dying to ask why. The idea that she was running toward learning fascinated me. That she was running away from a man bothered me. "He thinks I know too much. He thinks I should be quiet."

"If you were any quieter, you wouldn't speak at all."

She'd been raised in the cult since she was five or six years old, when her mother had joined. Maybe her childhood memories were the force driving her to run. She knew very little about the world. Their children were raised in extreme modesty, always covered, always averting their eyes from any male and any older female. I figured that she would get a look at the world outside and then go back.

I told her about my vacation. It was difficult to coax much out of her, so I suggested we treat this as an adventure. At the end of the ride, she could go back or continue - and I explained I had no idea what that meant, maybe finding some government agency to help her. With no apparent enthusiasm, but with evident determination, she agreed.

The first step was obvious. She needed the basics: clothes from the proper century, a toothbrush. I was then reminded why people love Wal-Mart.

Being in Wal-Mart with Dory was probably comparable to taking a villager from Borneo to Disney World. I set ground rules. She had to walk next to me, not some modest distance behind. She had to lift her head and act like she wasn't afraid she'd be clubbed for peeking. "We're trying to look like everyone else. I don't want to get arrested because people think I'm dragging a runaway girl around."

She didn't know her size. In anything. And Wal-Mart doesn't overflow with sales help in women's underwear. She was lost. I evaluated the bulk of her clothing and picked out a few choices in pants. These were rejected. I tried again, going larger. Rejected.

"Come on, Dory. You know how large you are but I don't. You're going to have to pick out clothes."

"I can't pay for anything." She apparently hadn't realized that getting clothes required money. At least she knew about money.

"I can. I am. That's part of my helping you." She was hesitating. "This isn't going to cost me much. Really. It's not a big deal. I'm not taking you to Prada . . . and that's a joke because I can buy you everything here for less than one pair of pants at an expensive store like Prada. But you have to do it; I can't."

She bit her lip, a habit I'd already noticed - and it did remind me of a rabbit. She picked out some jeans and a few shirts to start.

"How are they supposed to fit?"

"Look around, kid. Dress like other people."

As I spoke an enormous woman walked by, belly hanging over her elastic waist band, a short tight shirt, with one of those angel wing tattoos on her backside. "Just use your head. OK?"

I stopped a sales associate with the name tag "Ellen" and asked if my girlfriend could wear clothes out or if we had to pay for them first. I didn't want to be stopped for shoplifting. Ellen offered to write up a slip that we could take to the cashier with the tags from the clothes. Then, in her infinite kindness, she went into the dressing room to help Dory.

Ellen emerged twice, each time scooting through the racks and returning with armfuls of shirts, "ladies undergarments", shorts, and so on. Truth be told, if I hadn't seen Dory walk in, I wouldn't have recognized her when she came out. My first thought was embarrassment that I'd chosen big clothes when she obviously weighed maybe 100 pounds. My second thought was that she was probably lying about being eighteen.

I am a jerk. After tossing the bag full of new clothes into the shopping cart and taking firm hold of the slip I hoped would keep us out of trouble, I immediately brought up the age issue. She looked down.

"I do not lie."

Walking around Wal-Mart with Dory. That should be a chapter heading. I walked in with an oddball and walked out with a pretty, petite blonde dressed in slightly over-sized jeans. As we neared the cash registers, Dory became slightly agitated. I assured her cost wasn't a problem.

"Relax. I'm enjoying the transformation. It's fun watching you."

"It's not that." She indicated a young mother pushing a cart. "I want to make my hair like that."

"You've never had a ponytail?" No, she shook her head.

"Do you want lipstick and make-up too?" That hit a nerve. She'd been looking at the women in the store, some made-up, some without.

"Lipstick."

I was really enjoying this. Like playing dress-up with a real live doll. I never played with dolls so this was definitely a kick.

Our next big decision came near dinner. I was getting hungry and I needed a place for us to stay. I offered a separate room but she said she'd feel safer with me.

"You don't have to worry about me doing anything to you. You understand that, don't you?" She nodded.

Nodding and not talking can be annoying. Here we were, two strangers from different universes, me helping her run away from a boy and toward learning, possibly facing life in prison, and she nods or shakes her head.

I brought up my problem over dinner when I realized that she'd never been to a restaurant and had no idea what to eat. She'd never had soda or candy, which explained her teeth. She'd never been to a doctor. She'd never had caffeine. I did a lot of head shaking myself. She made an effort to talk, and she raised her head more though she never looked directly into my eyes.

We traveled. I decided to keep to my normal vacation thing, driving side roads, visiting old house museums, trying to find decent food. We slept in separate beds. She dressed and undressed in the bathroom. Modesty was preserved.

The last days were approaching. No police in the rear view. No "Have you seen this girl" headlines on CNN. Dory told me her group was so removed from the world they could never go to the police. I started to believe her. I also started to worry about what was going to happen to her.

Dory was, as they say, a mere slip of thing. A few inches over 5 feet, blonde hair, pointy nose, narrow face, very pretty, no curves I could see and no way of fending for herself except maybe as a reader of epic poetry. Perhaps I could get her a job reciting poetry to retired english teachers.

What would become of her? Prostitute? Porn star? Junkie? Where would she go?

We were staying at a Marriott, the last night before my longish drive into the City. I was sitting at the little round table.

She was in the bathroom. When she came out, I said, "We have to talk about what comes next." She drew up her shoulders. "Maybe you should sit with me."

I started to speak, but she raised her hand as a stop sign. That surprised me. She'd never interrupted me before but now she'd actually raised her hand.

"Don't you want me?"

Have you ever been flummoxed? If you have, then you know what that word means and what it feels like.

"You don't belong to me." I thought that's what she meant. Ownership goes with possession.

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh." Now I was beginning to see a light. Why can't I say what I think to this girl? Why can't I ask her what she means? "Oh," I said again.

"Do you know what I mean?"

Bless you. "No . . . ah . . . maybe . . . ah. God, Dory just tell me."

"You always call me Dory. You always have, from the first time you said my name. In the car when you asked me to talk, you called me Dory."

When you don't have a thought in your head, your eyes look around as if the movement will shake something loose. I never thought about her name. I called her what I thought she should be called. That was Dory.

"You didn't look like a Jehovannah or a Dorinda." I paused. "I'm not exactly sure what a Dorinda looks like, but you looked like a Dory."

"That's what I want. I want to be Dory."

Now I smiled. This was easier. "How can I help you be Dory?"

I never see these things coming. I don't get how life works. Dory got up, took my hand and pulled me gently to my feet. She backed toward the bed and, as the back of her leg bumped into it, she started to fall back and reached for me. I found myself in her arms and she in mine. She looked me in the eyes. For the first time. Then her eyes closed, her mouth opened and our lips met.

Dory had never been kissed but she'd seen enough on television over the past days that she knew the general idea. A minor tooth bump, followed by her habit of biting her lip. A genuine unsureness about what to do with the tongue. And then total surrender. Kissing like it was God's method for drawing out your soul.

Time disappeared. Our tongues transmitted our thoughts. I felt the roof of her mouth, the insides of her teeth. Suction increased, passion swelled and ebbed in gentle waves.

My hands explored her, at first through her shirt then she twisted so I could pull it up. Along her back, feeling her shoulder blades, the ends of her ribs. I found the curve of her waist that had been hidden by her loose fitting clothes. We paused, not really seeing each other, and my shirt was off. Her bra disappeared and my hand cupped her soft breast, tracing circles around her hard nipple. Our breaths came heavier. I ran my tongue past her collar bones and she arched her back and pushed her left nipple into my mouth, then pulled away and brushed her right nipple across my cheek.

I was besotted. Words cannot describe how completely absorbed I was in her.

Drawing together my last vestige of decency, as her protector, as her rescuer, I asked, "Do you really want to do this?" She nodded. I had learned to hate nodding. That brought me back to reality.

One of Dory's hands was around my shoulder, while the other was lightly touching my neck. "Do you understand what comes next?" She started to nod, but saw my flash of annoyance.

"I want to fuck."

That was blunt.

"I won't get pregnant. My period is regular and I'm due in a few days."

I should know better than to talk when I should be fucking. As I started to speak, Dory interrupted me, "Stop talking. I want you." The hand on my shoulder moved to my waist and began to rub my crotch.

I kissed her more deeply than before. My pants came off. Her hand felt for and took hold of my cock. Our mouths separated and she gasped "oh" in my ear. I started to undo her pants. She helped and they were off, together with her panties. I rubbed my hand over the curve of her hip, my favorite part of a woman. I reached for her, my fingers kneading and stroking her clit, feeling around the opening of her pussy, brushing against the soft skin of her inner thighs.

We couldn't hold back. Her legs spread. I got between them and held my cock to her opening. "Tell me if this hurts too much." I pushed in. She grabbed me, "oh" she said. I pushed a little more. Oh she feels so wet, so juicy, so tight, so good. I pushed more and Dory's legs went further apart.

I was now most of the way in. I lifted my head from hers. "Yes?" I asked.

"Uh-huh."

"Tell me if . . . " I started to say, but Dory pulled me toward her, pushing her hips up. We were off. I started to fuck her, stroking in and out, getting a rhythm going and then breaking it up with a harder stroke or a pause. She worked with me. She shuddered as I pounded her harder. She moaned when I'd rock her hips from side to side, pressing my pubic bone against her clit. Her hands lightly held my shoulders as I pumped into her.

"Dory. Dory," I whispered.

"Yes," she panted.

"I'm coming inside you." I pumped harder, faster, faster, longer strokes, the urge built inside me, inside my cock now, grinding into her, holding out for one last hard pump and then another and I came, spurting inside her, again and again.

She breathed. She held me. We were covered in sweat. I rolled off her. She lay next to me, lifted a hand to her face and then rolled her legs across my middle. She curled against my shoulder.

We cooled down. I listened to the hum of the air conditioning. The sun was going down, the room turning gray.

Dory swung her legs off me and sat up on the edge of the bed. She shook herself, stood and went to the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush and the water run in the sink. She came back and turned on the desk lamp. She stood next to the bed, looking down at me. I looked up at her. She sat down, and with her right hand pushed the hair back from my forehead. She looked into my eyes and bit her lip. It reminded me of a rabbit.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Dory."