All flirtatiousness had left her. She was all business now, her brow furrowed. Once again Matthew considered going no further.
Instead, he said, “I could do that. Where would I get one at this hour?”
“In the square. There’s a kiosk. That’s the only place open.”
Later on, in England, during the months of recriminations and regrets, Matthew admitted to himself that he’d had time to reconsider. He’d left his hotel wearing only a jacket. The temperature outside had dropped. As he walked to the square, the cold cleared his head, but not enough, in the end, to keep him from entering the kiosk when he found it.
Once inside, he had another chance to reconsider. The condoms weren’t on display but had to be requested from the clerk behind the counter. This turned out to be a middle-aged South Asian man, so that the crazy thought assailed Matthew that he was buying condoms from the girl’s own father.
He paid with cash, not meeting the man’s eyes, and hurried out.
The room was dark when he returned. He thought the girl had left. He was disappointed and relieved. But then her voice came from the bed. “Don’t turn on the lights.”
In darkness, Matthew undressed. Once in bed, finding the girl naked as well, he had no more reservations.
He fumblingly put on the condom. The girl spread her legs as he climbed on top of her, but he had hardly got anywhere before she stiffened, and sat up.
“Did it go in?”
Matthew thought she was worried about birth control. “It’s on,” he reassured her. “I’ve got a condom on.”
The girl had placed a hand on his chest and become very still, as though listening to her body.
“I can’t do this,” she said, finally. “I changed my mind.”
A minute later, without another word, she was gone.
*
Matthew awoke the next morning a half hour before his Q and A. Jumping out of bed, he took a shower, rinsed his mouth with hotel mouthwash, and dressed. Within fifteen minutes he was on his way back to campus.
He wasn’t hungover so much as still a little drunk. As he walked beneath the leafless trees, his head felt light. There was a curious insubstantiality to things—the wet leaves on the pathways, the ragged clouds drifting across the sky—as though he were viewing them through a mesh screen.
Nothing had happened. Not really. He had so much less to be guilty about than might have been the case that it was almost as if he had done nothing at all.
Halfway through the morning session, his headache kicked in. By then Matthew was at the Physics Department. When he’d arrived, he was worried that the girl might be among the students gathered in the brightly lit classroom; but then he remembered that she couldn’t come. He relaxed, and answered the students’ questions on autopilot. He barely had to think.
By noon, with his honorarium check in his jacket pocket, Matthew was on his way back to New York.
Just past Edison, he’d nearly fallen asleep in his seat when a text came through to his phone.
Matthew wrote back, “I’ll send you a copy of my book to paste it in.” Then, deciding this sounded too open-ended, he deleted it and replaced it with, “Nice to meet you, too. Good luck with your studies.” After pressing SEND, he deleted the entire conversation.
*
She had waited too long to go to the police. That was the problem. That was why they didn’t believe her.
The town prosecutor, with whom Prakrti had met once before, was a barrel-chested man with a kind, open face and wispy blond hair. He was gruff in his manners, and frequently used profanity, but he treated Prakrti with delicacy when it came to the details of the case.
“There’s no question who’s at fault here,” the prosecutor said. “But I’ve got to bring charges against this reprobate, and his lawyer is going to try and impugn your testimony. So I have to go over with you the things he might say so that we’re prepared. Do you understand? I’m not happy to be doing this, let me tell you.”
He asked Prakrti to tell her story again, from the beginning. He asked if she’d been drinking on the night in question. He asked about the sexual acts in detail. What exactly had they done? What was permitted and what was not? Whose idea was it to buy the condoms? Had she been sexually active before? Did she have a boyfriend her parents didn’t know about?
Prakrti answered as best she could, but she felt unprepared. The whole reason she’d slept with an older man was to avoid questions like this. Questions having to do with her willingness, her blood alcohol level, and whether she had acted provocatively. She’d heard enough stories, she’d streamed enough episodes of Law & Order on her phone, to know how these cases worked out for women. They didn’t. The legal system favored the rapist, always.
She needed the sex itself to be a crime. Only then could she be its victim. Blameless. Blameless and yet—by definition—no longer a virgin. No longer a suitable Hindu bride.
This was how Prakrti had worked it out in her head.
An older man was preferable because, with an older man, it didn’t matter if she’d sent flirtatious texts, or had come willingly to his hotel room. The age of consent in Delaware was seventeen. Prakrti had looked the statute up. Legally, she wasn’t capable of consent. Therefore, there was no need to prove rape.
An older, married man wouldn’t want to talk about what had happened, either. He’d want to keep it out of the papers. No one at school would ever know. No college admissions officer, googling her name, would find an electronic trail.
Finally, an older, married man would deserve what he had coming to him. She wouldn’t feel so bad involving a guy like that as she would some clueless boy at school.
But then she’d met the man, the physicist from England, and followed through with her plan, and felt regretful afterward. He was nicer than she expected. He seemed sad more than anything. Maybe he was a creep—he definitely was—but she couldn’t help liking him a little, and feeling sorry for tricking him.
For this reason, as the next months passed, Prakrti held off going to the police. She hoped she wouldn’t have to put the last part of her plan into action, that something would alter the situation.
The school year ended. Prakrti got a summer job at an ice cream parlor in town. She had to wear a candy-striped apron and a white paper hat.
One day at the end of July, when Prakrti came home from work, her mother handed her a letter. An actual letter, written on paper, and sent in the mail. The stamps on the envelope showed the face of a smiling cricket star.