His hand not holding my arm turns my bracelet until the infinity clasp is staring up at us. With painful and harsh movements, he takes the bracelet from my wrist.

“Hiding it won’t change a goddamn thing,” he says, and then to my horror he lifts my shirt. “Especially since you’ve got little burns all over your thigh and abdomen made with the infinity clasp of a Tiffany bracelet. Is that supposed to make you proletarian normal or something? Burning your flesh with the clasp of a Tiffany bracelet? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He tosses the bracelet into my lap. I look at Alan, then I see the barely contained fury in his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this,” I implore.

Alan runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

I lift my bracelet and quickly return it to my wrist. “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean that I want to talk about it with you,” I say weakly.

“You’re going to have to talk about it someday.”

Alan leans away from me and opens a vanity door. From a polished, black lacquer box, he lifts out an already rolled joint, lights it and then takes a puff.

You’ve got your own share of issues, Alan. When is it fair game to talk about those? My vision focuses on the cherry flame and I watch the smoke curl from his lips.

He holds the joint out to me. I shake my head. “It will make you feel calmer. It’s been a rough night for you.”

“I don’t do drugs.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “Oh no, Chrissie, you’re an addict. Your preferred drug is something you don’t ingest, but don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter. You’re an addict. I thought you decided to stop playacting.”

When I don’t take it from his hand, he fills his mouth with smoke and then his lips are pushing wide my lips and he’s filling me with smoke before I can stop him. Struggling and coughing, I push him away.

“Fuck you! I said I didn’t want that.”

He stands up. “Too bad. There are better ways of numbing yourself than mutilating your body. I just didn’t want to smell burning flesh.”

I stare up at him, furious, not knowing what to say or how to deal with him. That was mean, Alan. So mean. Why do you have to be so mean sometimes.

He leans over me and turns the knobs on the bathtub. He pushes in the stopper, and in between hits of weed, lights the candles along the white tile ledge.

The room has a light film of smoke in it and the tub is half full before he tosses the joint into the open commode and sinks down in front of me. He begins to unbutton my shirt without asking.

“What are you doing? I don’t want you to undress me,” I exclaim.

The shirt is jerked from my flesh and I am lifted from the ground and set into the tub. He forces me to lie back against the tile.

“Fuck, Chrissie, will you stop being such a pain. I’ve already seen you nude. It’s not like there anything new to see in the last five minutes.”

He looks both angry and amused. I still, flush, and give in to defeat. I need time alone, away from him, to think, and maybe he’ll just leave if I take the freaking bath.

Alan sinks down to sit beside the tub, waits until the water is high, and turns the knobs off.

“Close your eyes.” This time his voice is a raspy, seductive whisper.

I close my eyes. I really don’t know why I do it, except that he asked me to. I feel his arm move over me and then I hear his other hand in the water. I tense, thinking he’s going to touch me, and he does, but not in the way I think.

His hand moves slowly down my arm, foaming the lather as he washes gently. The inner tension I didn’t even know I had slowly leaves my tired limbs, as his hand crosses my breasts. He is only washing me, and there is care in the way he touches my flesh, so gentle in his tending that I melt into the sensations. He doesn’t linger long in any one place, but his rough-tipped fingers glide everywhere.

He leans into me, a hand on my shoulder and a hand washing between my thighs. His lips touch my neck, my breathing increases, my head tilts back as my heart accelerates.

“Your body is beautiful, Chrissie,” Alan whispers in my ear. “You were afraid to let anyone see you nude. That’s why you’re beautiful and eighteen and still a virgin. That’s why you playact to keep the world away. You think your body is repulsive and you’d rather hide and playact than let anyone see your pain. But I’m not repulsed, and I find you so beautiful, Chrissie.”

He pulls away and I open my eyes. My breath catches in my throat. He is standing above me, at ease in his maleness, his eyes a burning black seduction.

He lifts me from the water, doesn’t dry me, and carries me to the bed. The room is mercifully dark, though the darkness between us now is really an unnecessary thing. Without a word, he is in me hard and quick. He kisses me hard, pushing his tongue into me with the same powerful thrusts.

He cradles my head and holds me with his body in a tight cocoon beneath him, relentless in his taking, harsh and fast and consuming. My heated blood moves through my body and I begin to groan, fighting awkwardly the restraints of his flesh. But this time he doesn’t slow, he isn’t gentle, and a part of me glories in this brutal take. I writhe. I release the air from my lungs into him, and then I am lost and there is nothing but Alan. The world dips and disappears from view, and it is rightly so.

* * *

When I open my eyes, I’m trapped in a room filled with cruel morning light. I can feel Alan beside me and I feel drained. I must have fallen asleep.

I hear a funny sound. The sound of a Polaroid? My eyes fly open and I try to jerk up the sheets.

Alan laughs. “Too late.”

He is balanced on an elbow, staring down at me, with a camera in the other hand. How long has he been awake? How long has he been watching me sleep? Why is he taking a picture of me?

“Give me that.”

I try to get the square of film from him as he waves it in the air. He turns on his back, holding it above his head and I’m on top of him and I can’t reach it.

“No. I want to preserve how you look at this moment,” he whispers, and his voice is so damn seductive and the feel of him is all around me, and the flesh beneath me feels happy. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt Happy Alan before. He feels happy.

I stop fighting him for the picture. I sink down on his chest. I peek up at him. “Why? Why do you want that?”

He takes another picture. It’s of both of us. He drops it on the bed. He turns me in his arms until I’m curled beside him, my head and arm on his chest.

“When we are old,” he whispers, and I know the voice now, the silky ribbons of theatrics, “and you don’t want to forgive me, I will show you these pictures, so you will remember us now and perhaps forgive me later. I don’t need a picture. I will remember you always at this moment.”

I feel his words in my center, but my calm inside suddenly vanishes and I am messy again. Will I know him when we are old, or is this all there is? A brief fling that only I will remember always? This has been so much more for me than it could ever be for him, and I hate the suspicion that his theatrics mean he is only toying with me.

I kiss his chest and turn in his arms. I link my fingers through his, lifting them up above, studying our differences.

“Are you like this with all your girls?” I ask. “Do you have a drawer somewhere full of Polaroids with moments to remember?”

The body beside me tenses, and I shift my gaze from our fingers to his face. Jeez, he looks pissed. My mouth goes dry.

“They’re over there in that cabinet. Why don’t you burn them?” he snaps harshly.

I pull away from him, taking the sheets with me

“And burn the sheets while you’re at it,” he continues. “Who knows what I will do with the sheets since you’re the first virgin I’ve ever popped.”

Popped? Really, Alan? I drop my gaze from his and see my blood there on the sheets. I flush, embarrassed.