It Wasnt Right

She told me her name was Kortney.

She was a friend of Ron's wife, and maybe that should have been a warning sign—-a bright red flag to keep my distance.

I met her that first time at Ron's house. There was a knock on the door, and then a face in the doorway. "Hello," she called. "Anybody home?"

Ron and I had been playing Halo in his front room when she walked in. Ron made the introductions. I shook her hand. Ron's wife wasn't home at the time, so Kortney didn't stay long. But still, it was long enough to make an impression. I think Ron noticed me noticing her, though he didn't say anything. Not that first night.

She was a few years younger than me, maybe twenty-five, with dark hair and pale, freckled skin. It was the freckles that caught me, I think. Kortney was cute, but more than that, she was cute in an unusual way—-all those freckles marking her face like paint. I imagine other guys not liking it, dark brown freckles like that, so unusual, but I've never been attracted to women who fit the typical mold. Standard beauty means almost nothing to me. For this reason, Ron and I had never competed for the same girls growing up. We had opposite tastes. We'd both grown up white middle-class, and Ron had internalized all those subtle ideals to the point where it had become a type for him. A type he liked—-all his girlfriends so much the same that they could have been interchangeable. Women so bland that my eyes would slide off them. I'd always liked girls who looked different, who acted different, who came from different backgrounds.

I waited two days to ask about her.

"Yeah," Ron said. "I figured you were interested. She called my wife to ask about you, too."

"What did your wife say?"

"Lots of stuff. All bad."

I looked at him.

He smiled. "Just the basics. That you just got divorced, so you're single now. She specifically asked if you had a job."

I nodded, understanding something about her. When a girl asked if a guy had a job, it meant she'd dealt with a guy or two who hadn't.

"How well do you know her?" I asked.

"Well enough."

"What do you think of her?"

"Honestly?"

"Yeah."

"She's a mess."

I thought about this for a moment. "I like messes," I said. "What can you tell me about her?"

"Man, where do I begin?"

***

She called me a few days later. Ron had given her my number. We talked, and I found that talking to her was easy. She invited me over to her apartment to watch a movie, so I got in my car and drove to her place, following the directions I'd scrawled on a scrap piece of paper.

She didn't live in the best neighborhood, but I'd been familiar with the area from when I was a kid.

She met me at the door with a smile. She was a white girl, brown-eyed, freckled, with a strong chin and big, full lips. The kind of up-turned lips you don't see on white girls very often.

The evening passed in a haze. Somewhere along the line, we forgot about the movie and just told each other stories in the dark. Stories about our lives. And she had such interesting stories to tell.

She was interesting and she laughed a lot, and she complained a lot about her ex-boyfriend—-but in a laughing, self-deprecating way so that you didn't get too sick of hearing about it. Still, listening to it, you got the impression that the guy had caused her some grief. And she talked about drugs, too, about doing them before she got pregnant.

"My daughter saved my life," she told me. "I probably never would have stopped if I hadn't gotten pregnant."

I nodded while she told me this. I'd never taken drugs before. I'd stayed away from them. I'd seen too many people lose themselves that way, and nothing about the drug scene didn't end in hell.

She talked about her daughter, now asleep in the second bedroom. And she talked about her car which needed a fuel pump and didn't run; and she talked about being so broke she couldn't afford cable-TV anymore, so she just watched the same DVD's over and over until she had them memorized. She didn't have a job. "It's hard to find daycare for the baby," she explained.

She said lots of things I didn't like, but she was cute and bright and laughed a lot—-those gorgeous, unlikely lips pulling back from teeth not quite straight, but very white; and even her not-quite-straight teeth were interesting to me. And then she leaned forward, and we were suddenly kissing. She pulled away and told me she wasn't going to sleep with me on the first date.

"That's a relief," I said. "Because I don't find you attractive in any way."

Then we laughed about that, too, and kissed more; and she opened her shirt. "Not in the least little bit?" she asked, and then her tits were big and soft in my hands.

There is the moment when I first see a girl naked...when I feel this sense of solemnity come over me. I imagine it is what some people feel when they go to church. It is serious and sad and sweet all at the same time. The female body, in all its many forms, is such an amazing work of art. It is a gift to see it, to be shown it, to be trusted with it.

"No, not the smallest bit," I said, caressing her.

And she opened her legs and put my hand up her skirt. "Are you sure?"

"Well, maybe not."

"Lauren told me a lot about you," she said.

"She doesn't know a lot about me."

"She knows what people say." She ran her hand upward along my thigh. "She made me promise to tell if the rumors were true."

"What rumors are those?"

"I can't tell you that. Some stuff has to stay just between girls."

***

I laid her back on the couch, and I opened her shirt the rest of the way. Her body was curvy and pale and seemed to glow in the dim light. I opened her legs, and ran my tongue across her wet slit, but she wanted no part of that. She pulled me upward into a kiss, fumbling at the buttons of my pants.

I sat up and pulled my clothes off, then fished a condom from the front pocket of my jeans.

"You don't need that," she said. "Just pull out."

"No," I said. "We should." I stood naked in front of her, and we made a little game of putting the condom on, and she helped me unroll it down the shaft of my penis. "Jesus," she said at one point. Then she looked up at me, her brown eyes connecting with my blues. "Seriously."

I moved onto her. Then into her. Kissing her deeply, thrusting slowly at first, working myself inside her a few inches at a time, then backing out again—-taking it easy, opening her up. The condom made it difficult at first, but after about a minute I was buried completely inside of her and I stopped, hoping to give her time to adjust. I grabbed her hands and pulled them upward over her head, pinning her down. She wrapped her legs around me, pulling me deep. I lost myself in her mouth and her kisses, in the wrap of her legs, in the gentle rocking of her bed—-then harder, the bang of headboard on wall, and her soft sounds grew louder, and she hissed fuck me, while I hammered myself into her.

I fucked her hard for several minutes and when she told me to cum, I hooked one of her legs over my shoulder and slammed into her as deep as I could go, feeling the back wall of her pussy stretch—-and then I came, balls convulsing, pumping the condom full.

I collapsed on top of her, breathing hard. Then I rolled off, feeling my cock slide out of her. I pulled the condom off and dropped it on the floor next to the bed.

I lay in her bed and stared at her ceiling, listening to her breathe. I could like her, I decided. I could really, really like this girl. Even though she was a mess. She was unlucky and made bad choices, but underneath it all, I could tell she was smart. And that was the thing I valued most. Well, that and an adventurous nature. I felt sorry for her bad luck with guys, and her bad luck with money. Maybe I could help her in life. A solid boyfriend would be good for her, and she would be good for me. It would be good to care for somebody again. All these thoughts went through me head while I lay there.

The next morning she made me breakfast. "So you work in a lab?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"That sounds interesting."

"Some days."

"You go to college for that?"

"Yeah."

"I always wanted to go, but never did. Maybe someday."

I sat eating eggs, and I still liked her. And I sat liking how that felt, liking the feeling of really being interested in somebody after so long.

A few minutes later, her baby started crying, so she went back into the bedroom and brought the child out. She walked into the kitchen holding the baby, and I glanced up. And it wasn't right. Her baby.

She held the baby and rocked the baby. "Shhhhhhh," she whispered.

And the baby quieted. With a face like pinched dough, ears small and wrinkled. And a dark mark across one eye. Not monstrous. Nothing like that. Just skewed, stunted. Subtle. Like a baby whose mother only did coke a few times during her pregnancy, a characteristic facia—like maybe before she even knew she was pregnant.

My daughter saved my life, she'd said. But women are pregnant for weeks before they find out.

I was suddenly sick. I'd seen babies like this many times. I looked at Kortney and wondered if she even realized. It was subtle after all, and it would be easy to pretend it wasn't there. I knew all about the lies we tell ourselves. The ones we tell ourselves to get by.

I watched her sitting across from me at the kitchen table. This girl who I'd felt sorry for, because of her bad times with guys, and money, and cars—-this girl who I'd felt sorry for up until the instant after which I only felt sorry for her daughter.

And I stayed another night with the girl, and we talked, and when she tried to get me to do it again, I couldn't get it up. And I tried to like her. I tried to feel the same, but I didn't; and I don't judge people because I've seen so much fucked-up shit in my life, and life can be hard, and I'd never judge anyone—-but that didn't change me not liking her anymore. I looked at her, and all I saw was what she'd done to her daughter.

"What's wrong," she asked.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm just tired."

And I was tired. Something inside me was tired. And it was too much. And thirty years old felt suddenly ancient and world-weary. And I knew I'd never call her again, and I knew she'd take it the wrong way. And hated myself a little for that. Another hate thrown on the pile with all the others.