Driving on the Rim Read Online Free Page A

cradle robber.
    I recall feeling breathless and completely without direction as I allowed Tessa to take charge of our stroll home. She stopped momentarily, between two old commercial buildings, not far from the railroad yard, looked straight at me, and said, “Boo. Hiss.” We went on. “I’m lucky you didn’t request Mannheim Steamroller,” she added. I was defeated. “Now don’t be offended, and more importantly, don’t walk in front of that car,” she said. “I realize you aren’t attracted to me, are you?”
    “That’s not the real story,” I replied. “I just need a little encouragement.” At these two sentences, uttered with such sincerity, Tessa responded with visible pleasure.
    “Then let me tell you my own fears. Why? Because you’re adorable. Of course you’re a complete idiot, but within that, there is a certainappeal. But I have fears, too. Isn’t that real friendship, to tell someone your fears? You could have been extremely disagreeable about those phone calls.”
    “What good would it have done?”
    “None, but how many would recognize that? I sense that you have a good heart, a good heart trapped in a self that is a hop, skip, and jump from kiddie day care. Obscene phone calls from a stranger are intolerable. But when they come from someone you know, particularly a deluded old walrus like Hoxey, well, they don’t arouse quite the same wrath. The right to revenge belonged to you, and you declined to take it. Mr. Hoxey and I are in your debt.”
    I had a clear glimpse here of the sensible side of Tessa, and a hunch that she would end up a friend, which rather worried me because she was the sort who might anchor me and teach me to accept reality, such as it was then emerging.
    “How about you just walk me home?” she said finally. “That work for you?”
    “Sure,” I said, my voice rising.
    We paused at the railroad tracks to watch a big northern express rip through. She peered intently, and I positioned myself behind her so that it looked like the train was pouring into one of her ears and out the other. I knew then that I would kiss her. I suppose it took ten minutes for us to get back to the house, during which time Tessa did her level best to spill out her hopes and dreams, which were honest and simple: ride old man Hoxey into the ground and clean out his estate. This wasn’t how she put it, naturally. Her concern was expressed as a passion for aesthetic rarities. “No one knows the inventory as I do. No one cares as I do, and no one knows the importance of getting it into strong and caring hands as much as I do.” I didn’t say anything, and I suppose she took my silence as censorious. We entered her apartment. Before pushing the door shut behind her, she said, “At the end of the day, it is what it is.” I wondered what that meant. Of course, it is what it is, and it didn’t even have to be the end of the day to be what it was. I couldn’t understand this sort of thing at all, and in a way kissing someone who said things like that was even more confusing.
    When I did it, it was with the kind of apprehension one feels on placinga cocked mousetrap in a promising corner. She held me at arm’s length, giving me what one of my professors had called the pre-copulatory gaze. Tessa seemed ominous. I thought of the Big Bang Theory, wherein a tiny speck of matter mysteriously expanded to fill the universe.
    I said, “What do you think?” My heart pounded.
    She said, “Let’s give it a whirl.”
    We made love on the couch. I performed in a state of amazement at all that skin, Tessa egging me on with smutty cries. She asked, “My God, who taught you to do it like this?” and I said, “My aunt.” And she said, “Oh God, no, please not your aunt. No details, thank you very much!” Skin everywhere! She said, “I wonder if you could change your expression. I can barely do this.” When I reached that point to which all our nature aspires and where the future of the species is