After college Jake Richter worked at a succession of banks, first as a teller and eventually graduating to branch manager, before deciding to go back to school for his MBA at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. After graduation, most of his fellow students went to New York City or Boston to look for jobs, but Jake stayed in Rochester, accepting a job as an investment manager at a local bank. He stayed there ten years, buying a brand-new town house and working out at least five days a week at one of the new gyms that had cropped up downtown. He was in his midforties but looked younger, slim but muscled, and with a full head of hair. He left the greying temples alone because he thought they made him look even more handsome.
Some of the women who worked at the bank, mostly married bank tellers, would interrogate Jake on why he wasn’t married yet. “Still having too much fun,” he would answer, winking. It was essentially true. But the twentysomething girls from the gym that he dated were becoming less and less interesting to him. They were as experienced as he was, already cynical of the dating realm in which they existed. Jake was most attracted to the high school girls who traipsed through downtown after school let out, fantasizing about introducing them to sex.
Sometimes a group of teens, led by Joan Wilkes, the daughter of one of those married tellers, would come into the bank to get lollipops from the dish that sat on the lacquered table in the waiting room. Joan had flawless skin and natural blond hair, and she was always pestering her mother to take one of her fifteen-minute breaks to give her a ride home. On a cold and rainy November day Jake came out of his glassed-off office while Joan was lingering around, waiting for her mother’s break. He said, loud enough so everyone could hear, that he had a few errands to do, and did anyone need anything.
“Ooh, Mr. Richter, can you drive me home?”
Emily Wilkes, currently unoccupied at her station, said, “Joan! That’s not appropriate.”
Jake laughed. “That’s fine. I don’t mind her asking. And I don’t mind taking her, but that’s up to you, Emily.”
“Please, Mom.”
Jake watched Emily think about it. He knew that what she really liked to do on her fifteen-minute breaks was go to the beat-up couch in the employee break room, put her feet up, and read her latest romance novel.
“I guess if Mr. Richter doesn’t mind . . .”
After that first time driving Joan home, Jake knew that seducing her would not be a problem. It was clear from her flushed cheeks and stammered answers that she already had a crush on Jake. It was just a matter of figuring out how to begin an affair without getting caught. The answer came around the third or fourth time Jake, always claiming errands, drove Joan home from the bank. She told him how much she liked going to see old movies at the local university’s campus theater, how her friends thought it was lame, and she always had to go alone. Jake knew enough to not suggest a date, but he did start haunting the theater, finally running into Joan during a screening of Shadow of a Doubt on a wet spring evening. She’d taken the bus to the theater, so Jake gave her a ride home, but only after bringing her to his town house, parking in the first-floor garage, and taking her virginity in the back seat of his Quattro.
They managed to see each other occasionally during the remainder of that school year, and much more frequently during the summer between Joan’s junior and senior years of high school. Sometimes they’d meet at the town house, but more often than not Jake would take her to a roadside motel three towns away, occasionally bringing her to a nearby Chinese restaurant that had low lighting and high booths, and would serve Joan mai tais despite her obvious age.
Jake figured that it was at the Chinese restaurant where they were spotted.
In September, the president of the bank, a jowly man named Charles Fitch, called Jake into his office and gave him a terse ultimatum. Jake would leave immediately, not just the bank, but the city of Rochester. Preferably, even, the state of New York. If he did that, and if he did that right away, then the bank would supply a letter of recommendation. If it became clear that Jake had any more contact with Joan Wilkes, then the authorities would be alerted.
“Does Emily know?” Jake asked.
“If Emily knew it would be Mr. Wilkes talking to you, or the police. I’m cutting you a huge break and I suggest you take it.”
Jake did as he was told, selling the town house quickly, and at a loss, then relocating to Kennewick, Maine, a town that reminded him of all the good things about Menasset, but with none of the squalor. Charles Fitch made good on his promise, and the bank supplied a reference that allowed Jake to get a job at a bank two towns over, about a third of the size of the bank he’d worked at in Rochester. He slowly rebuilt his life, telling himself that he should find some nice girl, not too young, and settle down. He briefly dated the events manager from a nearby hotel, a lusty divorcée on the wrong side of forty. It was a mostly unpleasant affair, except that Karen Johnson knew everyone in town, and helped him build his client list at the bank. Not that the year-round residents of southern Maine had much money to invest. But some did, and after a year, he got a raise at the bank and was able to move out of the basement apartment he was renting. He bought a condo, much smaller than his previous town house but with a view of the ocean.
All was going well until the first hot day of Maine’s brief summer, when he took a walk on Kennewick Beach and spotted Alice Moss in a green one-piece coming out of the frothing surf. Looking at her body, he thought she was probably sixteen, but her face—its blank inwardness, the wide-set eyes that reminded him of Emma Codd—made her look younger. He pivoted, checking his watch as though he had just remembered an appointment, and followed her to where she flopped onto a beach towel on her stomach. He walked past, trying hard not to look at the way her bathing suit had ridden up along the firm buttocks, and sat on one of the rocks that separated the beach from the road. He lit a cigarette, watching her, aware that she didn’t know she was being watched. Did she have any idea what her body was doing to all the men in her vicinity? He finished the cigarette, crushing it out on the rock he was sitting on, and watched her flip onto her back, rustle through her beach bag for a book. She was clearly going to stay for a while, and Jake knew he couldn’t linger around too long. He wasn’t dressed for the beach, didn’t have a towel or a beach bag with him. He took a chance and left. It was a Saturday, and the weather was supposed to be hot the following day as well. She’d be back, he told himself.
That night he barely slept, the image of the pale girl in the green bathing suit whipping through his mind like film through a projector. If she wasn’t at the beach the next day, then it was a sign that it wasn’t meant to be. But if she was there, then it would also be a sign.