I HAD NOTHING dark, my wardrobe being limited to my canary yellow tracksuit and appropriate undergarments. Chet had whisked away my party duds following our one social gathering, but for some reason, that evening as I went to prepare and dress, I wasn’t surprised to see an outfit of dark jeans, black turtleneck and windbreaker in my wardrobe. Everything fit perfectly, of course, and inside the windbreaker was a black stocking cap. I left it in the pocket as I went outside to wait for Bonnie.
As the sun dipped far enough to put the island into dusk, the walkway lights turned on, the halogen humming as it warmed. Before the lamps even reached full strength, Bonnie appeared, dressed in black stretch pants that clung to her lower half in an undeniably alluring way, and a black sweatshirt. She had her hair up in a ponytail that was thrust through the back of a black baseball cap.
“Twins,” she said, by way of greeting, then, “We better hurry, or we’re going to be late.”
I almost had to skip to keep up with her stride as we wove our way down the paths until, with a quick glance both ways, she hopped from the path and started in a light jog.
“I didn’t know we could do that,” I whispered, but she didn’t break stride. The pace was nothing for her, I’m sure, but I had to work hard to keep up. The hikes were coming in handy. We were moving toward a line of unbroken trees, but as we approached I could see a small, single-file path open up that we plunged into. We jogged for another five or so minutes, barely enough light to illuminate the ground. I trusted my footfalls would strike true and I wouldn’t roll my bad ankle. Low-hanging branches brushed at my clothing, and I resisted the urge to ask her to slow down because I was worried that she wouldn’t. Finally, we reached a clearing and she stopped suddenly and said, “We’re here.”
The clearing was relatively small and circular. Unlike the WHC grounds the grass was long and wild with weeds and wildflowers shooting up. A little bit of light was thrown into it from our right and looking over I realized that it came from the southwest compound that couldn’t have been too far in the distance.
“What?” I said.
“Just wait,” she replied. So I waited. My eyes adjusted to the increasing dark. The lights from the southwest compound put a soft, gray cast over the darkness and that’s when they appeared, rabbits, everywhere.
“Do you see?” she said.
I did. It was like one moment, bare ground, and then hundreds of rabbits gathered together, sitting back on their haunches, eating grains gripped in their forepaws. Rabbit couples consummated their love left and right and it became apparent why their numbers were so great. Their two great needs, food and sex, were more than abundant. We sat Indian-style on the edge of the clearing. The grass was tamped down here and I imagined she’d been coming alone for some time. We watched together for probably thirty minutes before it ended as quickly as it started, the rabbits disappearing en masse into the grasses so quickly that I began to wonder if it was an illusion.
“You did see that, right?” she said.
“Yeah, it was cool.”
“I wanted someone else to see it, to make sure,” she said.
“And you chose me?”
“I did.”
She laid flat on the ground and looked up at the sky, so I joined her. The nighttime jungle sounds intensified and mingled with what sounded like music from the southwest compound just barely loud enough to reach us.
“We’re out past curfew,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she replied, “nothing happens.”
“Good to know.” I felt like I should have been frightened, but I wasn’t. I was right where I wanted to be.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell someone for awhile,” she said, “and I think I want to tell it to you now.”
“Okay.”
“It’s totally fucked-up, I mean totally. Like I can’t believe how fucked-up it is, but I can’t not talk about it anymore.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, it’s like, you’ll-never-look-at-me-the-same fucked-up.”
“I hear you,” I said.
She took a deep breath and started speaking quickly. “When I was ten, my parents decided for the sake of my tennis that I needed to go to ‘the academy.’ I was beating the crap out of all the girls my age and even older in the region, but that wasn’t good enough, so they took me to see Mr. Popov and I remember him sitting behind a desk with his hands tepeed under his chin as my mom rattled off my accomplishments and then he stood up and walked around and told me to stand. He had on those like old-school tennis shorts, stretchy and super-tight and too short, and he had a big belly, but also an outie for some reason that you could see through his shirt. He pinched and grabbed me, the backs of my arms, my knees, elsewhere, and he said, ‘Yes, I think we can work with her.’ He smelled like sausage.”
The words sounded simultaneously spontaneous and rehearsed, like they’d been rolling around in her head forever without ever getting fully polished.
“Like I said, the school was basically a joke, maybe an hour after morning practice. It was tennis and conditioning, weights, psychological games to make us mentally strong. It was boys and girls and the girls all lived together in a big dorm room with bunk beds and the wall by everyone’s bed was decorated with personal stuff. One guess what mine had.”
“Bunnies,” I replied.
“Duh. Bunnies. I didn’t like them even back then, but it was my nickname already, so like everyone gave me bunny shit for my birthday, Christmas, whatever, and I think I was probably a pretty polite kid, so I’d put up the cards or stack the stuffed animals on my bed, but I didn’t feel a damn thing toward any of it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“All the girls were friendly, but we weren’t friends, you know? There was always that rivalry thing underneath. They had these poster boards where they ranked us on everything, even like making our beds fastest and shit like that, so you could never let your guard down. I mean, at the time I didn’t realize it, this is all afterwards, more recently, if that makes sense.”
“Sure,” I said. We were lying so close that I could sense her there, and I wanted to reach and touch her somewhere, but I didn’t.
“Mr. Popov would come in at night and make a big show of tucking us in, telling us to always get good rest, and to dream of being champions and once a week, after we were all under the covers, he would take one of us from the room. He’d pull the covers back and whoever it was would stand up and he’d hold out his hand and he’d lead her from the room and it didn’t take long to figure out what he was doing.”
“Shit,” I said. “Motherfucker.” I felt something inside me start to boil. I could tell that she was crying, but her voice was steady. “But wait,” she said, “that’s not the fucked-up part. Here’s the fucked-up part. The thing that made me the most mad was that he never chose me. Holy shit, is that twisted? But it’s the goddamn truth. When some of the girls got older they would, like, brag about who was the best and they’d look at me like I deserved pity or something. I took it out on the others on the court. I beat their goddamn brains in because he never chose me.”
I had nothing to say, so I didn’t say anything.
“Pretty fucked-up, eh?”
“Yeah, no doubt about that.”
“I’m probably even attracted to you because of the age thing, quasi—father figure and all that.”
“Hey,” I said, “I’m not that old.”
She reached over and patted my leg. “I know that.”
She sat up again and brushed nonexistent debris from the front of her sweatshirt. “I thought I’d feel better after saying all of that, but I don’t.”
“We’re damaged goods,” I said, joining her in the sitting position. “The sum of our triumphs and tragedies.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I think I made it up.”
“It doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like the kind of thing someone might say.”
“I guess I’m that someone this time,” I said.
For a moment the music from the southwest compound stopped and I could hear light clapping and laughter before it started up again, someone singing a familiar song in what sounded like a familiar voice.
“So,” she said, looking at me, one side of her face partially lighted as she turned my way. “What’s your story?”
I laughed. “Oh, no,” I said. “It’s more like a novel, an epic, a saga. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Just trust that it’s long and sad and stupid.”
She patted my leg again. “Tut-tut. I’m sure it’s a good one,” she said.
“Don’t be so sure,” I replied, but I told her. You’ve heard most of it already.
“MINE’S BETTER,” SHE said.
“Yeah. I’m not that special.”
She stood upright, this time offering me a hand in help. “So,” she said. “Our little pity party is over and the night is still young. What shall we do with the rest of it?”
My legs were stiff and I tried to shake them out. The music from the southwest compound swelled and I now felt positive I recognized the voice of the singer, but of course, who I was thinking of was impossible. I thought of what Chet had said to me at the top of the island about the difference between “may” and “will.”
“Come on,” I said to her. “There’s something I have to see.”