“Tell me your name,” Mason said again.
“My name’s Jennifer.” From the front page of the newspaper, Leeta’s eyes were fixed on me. Mason had no reaction. “I’m Jennifer,” I said again, but there was no alarm in his eyes. Jennifers are our daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers.
“You seem nervous,” he said, sipping his beer. “Just relax, babe.”
I didn’t know his game, but I decided to play along. I wanted to see what he planned to do. He launched into casual conversation, as if we were old friends, as if I had wanted to talk to him, as if he were fascinating. He spoke about random things, like his love of baseball and his studies at law school. A chunk of his peanut-colored hair fell over his eyes regularly, requiring him to brush it away. It seemed like an inconvenient haircut, but I imagined it had its uses, allowing him to appear shy and cute around girls.
“So who’s this friend you were waiting for?” he said, finishing his beer and sliding the bottle to the middle of the table.
“She dumped me. She must have met a guy. Men find her irresistible.”
“I think you’re irresistible.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said, coquettishly. I wanted to maintain my pleasant demeanor, but I was growing angrier inside. I had left home that night in my brown and violet dress feeling confident and happy in my appearance, but Mason and his friends seemed to think I was a joke. This is how it’s going to be, I thought. I had changed so much in the past few months, but the world hadn’t changed along with me. Plum would always be a target. Giving up the hope of Alicia meant giving up the hope of ever blending in.
“I live not too far from here,” Mason said. “My roommates are out. Maybe we could go back to my place and, I don’t know, hang out?” He put his hand beneath the table and gently touched my knee, trying to signal something, perhaps that he was harmless, like a dog rolling over onto his back. When I didn’t answer, he used his other hand to brush his finger along my arm at the border of bare skin and sleeve. He leaned across the table and whispered: “I like you.”
There were murderous women about, slayings, kidnappings, castrations, but he wasn’t deterred from his deviant plan, whatever it was. His was the face of a boy you’d see smiling back at you from a framed photograph on the desk of a doctor or insurance executive—the nonthreatening son, as bland as a vanilla cupcake.
Mason was waiting for an answer, and I wondered how hard he would work to win me over. He didn’t expect me to be hard work. I was supposed to be grateful for his attention—that’s what he was expecting: a round-faced girl desperate for male attention, brightening under the beam of his unexpected lust. Such a girl would do anything he wanted. He looked at me expectantly and I pretended for a moment that I was a generic woman. This is how it was, I thought. This is what people did. They went to bars and chatted with strangers and then went home and had sex with them. All those nights when I locked myself in my apartment, watching television and eating my Waist Watchers dinners, this is what people my age were doing.
“Come on, baby,” he said. The lock of hair moved down into place. From the sound of his voice and the way he said baby, I didn’t think he was from New York. Virginia, maybe, or a point farther south. Wherever he was from, it wasn’t these parts. They didn’t grow boys like him around here.
I finished my glass of wine in two gulps. “All right,” I said. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. You can tell your friends we’re leaving.” I picked up my satchel and the newspaper and brushed past him, moving toward the stairs that led down to the bathroom. Several people turned to look, more than usual. Were they all in on the joke? A feeling I used to know well but hadn’t experienced for a while crept up on me: humiliation.
I didn’t need to use the bathroom, but I needed a few moments to myself. When I went back upstairs, Mason and his friends might reveal the joke and laugh at me. I needed to be prepared for that. But there were other possibilities. Perhaps Mason would continue the charade, thinking he could take me back to his place for a free blowjob. After all, I was supposed to be desperate. Or perhaps he was attracted to fat women and used the joke as a cover so his friends wouldn’t laugh at him. Picking up fat women for an ulterior purpose was a fairly common phenomenon, Rubí had told me. It was called hogging, which was a sport. Mason had decided to play, but he was going to lose.