Blackout Read Online Free Page B

sounded
charitable. And bashful was a gross understatement of how she must
have felt. I told him the whole story of Kelsey getting drunk. And
Evan. And the Internet.
     

 
    Chapter
Three
     
    Ben set down his coffee cup. “That sort of
thing happens a lot. Why are girls so stupid?”
    There we go again, blaming the victim. I
snapped, “Why are guys such pigs?”
    He had an answer, the smartass. “Because
girls are stupid. It makes it look as if they’re asking to be taken
advantage of.”
    I banged on the table. “That’s bullshit!
Nobody asks to be taken advantage of. It’s just an excuse for guys
to be pigs. How come they can get drunk and pass out and the worst
that happens is somebody steals their Rolex? If they had any
decency, they’d leave the girl to sleep it off. But no, they think
they’re entitled to be pigs.”
    “That’s an insult to pigs,” he said.
    Touché. I must have made some sort of point.
I knew there were decent guys in the world and Ben was one of them,
in spite of what Kelsey thought. But too many guys had shit for
brains. Didn’t their parents teach them anything? Or did the
parents also have shit for brains?
    How did their fathers treat their mothers?
That would make an interesting study. I was sure somebody’d already
done it.
    “You know what?” I said.
    Ben was halfway up from the table. He sat
back down and gave me a wary look.
    “Men,” I said, “think so well of themselves,
there’s no room left for having any decent thoughts about
women.”
    “Huh!” he snorted. “Where’d you get that
from?”
    “I’m not saying it applies to all men, but an
awful lot of them. They have no regard for women as actual human
beings. We’re only playthings, not real people. Where does that
attitude come from, I wonder. It must be a cultural thing, that
women are inferior beings, or maybe just objects.”
    Rhoda stood in the kitchen doorway. She must
have heard everything. “Would you like more coffee, Ben?”
    She would make another pot just for him. I
didn’t hear her asking me. She was an intelligent woman with a
doctoral degree in psychology and still she catered to men. I’m
telling you, it’s an ingrained cultural attitude.
    Or maybe because he was going away.
    When he muttered no thanks and got up from
the table, she turned to me. “What are you ranting about,
Maddie?”
    “Men,” I said. “Evan has struck again, but
this time it wasn’t me.”
    She tightened her lips and sat down in Ben’s
chair. “Tell me about it.”
    Not, did I want to talk about it. Just, tell
me about it.
    “It’s not Ben,” I assured her. “It’s males in
general. They don’t have any respect for women.”
    “What do you mean by respect?”
    “They don’t consider us real people the way
they consider themselves. I know, it’s not all men, but it’s in
almost every culture that women are considered second rate. It’s
even in the Bible. And who wrote the Bible? Men. ”
    “I’d be interested to know what brought this
on,” she said.
    “You make it sound like a disease. It didn’t
get ‘brought on.’ I always noticed it but I never thought about it
all that much. But you’re right. Something did happen.”
    One piece of coffeecake remained on the
plate. I broke it in half, not because I was hungry, but I needed
fortification as I told her what Glyn told me.
    “Kelsey Fritz?” she said.
    “Yes, that Kelsey Fritz. She was so scared of
Ben for no reason. I kept thinking she should get a dose of Evan.
Now she has. But I wouldn’t have wished that on her.”
    Rhoda looked past me, seeming thoughtful.
    To break the silence, I said, “I was
surprised she even went to the party. It was her class, but she’s
not the partying type.”
    “She’s been in therapy,” Rhoda said.
    “How come you know that?”
    “The therapist is a friend of mine, Barbara
Schiff. I shouldn’t be telling you that, but I know you won’t
talk.”
    “I knew she was in therapy,” I said. “I
didn’t