Night Passage

Chapter 52

Michelle sat and talked with Jesse on the wall. A couple of other burnout kids sat farther down the wall pretending that they weren’t listening, and were too cool to pay any attention to the police chief if he chose to sit on the wall with them.

“You got a cigarette?” Michelle asked.

“No.”

“You don’t smoke?”

“No.”

“You ever?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“I was a jock,” Jesse said. “I thought it would cut my wind.”

“That’s weird,” Michelle said.

Jesse stared at the leaves on the common, crimson now in places, and maroon, and yellow, the yellow tinged along the edges with green. It was something he’d never seen except on calendars, growing up in Arizona and California.

“I live next to your girlfriend,” Michelle said. “Abby Taylor.”

“That so?”

“Yes. Sometimes I see you come home real late with her and go in.”

“Un huh.”

“You have sex with her?”

“Why do you want to know?” Jesse said.

“I don’t, I don’t care. I just think if you’re going to be telling people what to do you shouldn’t be having sex with people.”

“Why not?” Jesse asked.

“Why not?”

“Yeah, why shouldn’t I be chief of police and have sex with people?”

“I don’t care what you do, but it’s gross to do that and then be telling other people not to.”

“Have I ever told you not to?”

“You think I should?”

“There’s no should to it,” Jesse said.

“Well, that’s not what most adults think.”

“I’d be willing to bet,” Jesse said, “that you don’t know what most adults think. You know what a few of them think and you assume everyone thinks that.”

“Well, do you think it’s okay?”

“Sex? You bet.”

“For me?”

“For anyone,” Jesse said, “that knows what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, and is smart enough not to get pregnant when they don’t want to, or get AIDS, or get a reputation.”

“I’ve had sex,” Michelle said.

Jesse nodded soberly.

“I figured you had,” Jesse said.

“I don’t think it’s such a big deal.”

“Sometimes it is,” Jesse said. “Depends, I guess, on who you have sex with and when and how you feel about them.”

Jesse paused and smiled.

“Though I gotta tell you,” he said. “I’ve never not liked it.”

Michelle glanced down at the two ratty-looking boys at the end of the wall and lowered her voice.

“If a guy, you know, shoots off, and you get some on you, can you get pregnant?”

“He needs to shoot off in you,” Jesse said.

“In... down there?”

“In your vagina,” Jesse said. “There may be someone who’s gotten pregnant by getting it on her thigh, but it’s not something I’d worry about.”

Michelle was silent, her feet dangling, looking at the ground between her feet.

Jesse looked across the common some more at the fall foliage. What made the leaves of the hardwoods so bright, he realized, was the undertone of evergreens behind and between them. The turning trees were made more brilliant by the trees that didn’t turn. Must be a philosophic point in there somewhere, Jesse thought. But none occurred.

“So are you?” Michelle asked.

She was still looking at the ground, and as she talked she pointed her toes in and then back out.

“None of your business,” Jesse said.

“Embarrassed to say?”

“No,” Jesse said. “But you don’t go out with someone and then tell everybody what you did.”

“I’ll bet you talk about it with the other cops.”

“No,” Jesse said.

“That’s weird. You ever been married?”

“Yes.”

“You divorced now?

“Yes.”

“Is it because you didn’t love each other?”

“No. I think we love each other.”

“So what is it?”

“None of your business,” Jesse said.

“Jeez, another thing you won’t talk about.”

“I don’t talk about you and me, either,” Jesse said.

Michelle was startled.

“We’re not doing nothing,” she said.

Jesse grinned at her.

“That makes it easier,” he said.

Michelle tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. She giggled.

“Jesse, you are really crazy,” she said. “You are really fucking-A crazy.”

“Thank you for noticing,” Jesse said.

And Michelle giggled some more and looked at the harlequin leaf bed beneath her dangling feet.