He was very calm, and he had fantastic smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and unruly blond hair, and a little bit of gray in his mustache. Melody thought he was the most interesting man she'd ever seen. When she talked to him, at the parties, she found out he'd been a surfer, and a climbing bum, and that he'd crewed on a private yacht across the Atlantic. He'd wandered around the Far East. He'd worked on an oil rig. He'd been in Peace Corps for a year but had gotten so ill they'd sent him home.

He came to all the parties. Melody thought he was best friends with her Daddy, until she found out her Daddy could barely tolerate him. Gary liked to sit at the far end of the table and listen to everyone, and drink. He didn't get loud or obnoxious, he simply drank himself into insensibility. One morning, after a party, she found him in the yard, by the hedge, next to a pool of vomit. She shook him awake.

"Gary?"

He looked up at her and blinked. "Too bright. Less light," he said.

"Come on," she said. "I'll help you home." She tried to lift him up, but couldn't. He was too big.

He pulled his knees under him, all fours, his hands under his shoulders, and then sat back on his heels for a minute. He covered his face with his hands.

"I'll help you," she said.

He looked up at her from under his bushy blond eyebrows. His hair was a mess. She felt sorry for him.

"Just a minute." He looked down at the ground for a while, then stood. His motion was strong and smooth, the way it always was. He didn't look hung over. "I'll go home now."

"I'll come with you."

"No."

"It's okay. I just want to help."

He sighed and touched his forehead and set off on the little path through the bushes at the corner of the yard. She walked behind him, then, when they crossed 15th, beside him. They went down New York street, and crossed 13th. He rented a little house that sat on cinder blocks. On the outside one or two of the white asbestos shingles had fallen off, and green paint showed underneath.

He opened the front door. It wasn't locked. "Thanks," he said. "Go home."

"I'll make you some tea."

"I don't have any tea."

She followed him in. The front door led right into the living room. The only things were a couch, an armchair, and a television set. On the left was a fireplace, with a large photograph of a mountain above it.

"What's that?" she asked.

"The Diamond. Long's Peak. In Colorado."

There was a brown cliff in the middle. It looked steep. "Have you climbed that?"

"Yes."

She walked over, to look at it more closely. "Show me where."

He sat in the armchair. "It doesn't matter."

There were two doors at the back of the room. The left one led to the bedroom, the right to the kitchen. She looked through the cabinets -- cans of creamed corn, cans of beans, a big bag of rice, some spaghetti. Cooking oil, salt and pepper, tobasco sauce, chili pepper and vinegar. No tea. She opened the refrigerator. Nothing but a dozen eggs, butter, and beer. Back in the front room Gary had tilted back his recliner and fallen asleep.

She closed the door quietly behind her and went home. She took a few tea bags, a pound of hamburger, three potatoes, a tomato, lettuce and onions, and a loaf of bread. With all these in a mesh bag she headed back.

The door was still unlocked and Gary was asleep. She unloaded the food on the kitchen table. He had an iron skillet and a big pot, and she started water boiling while she cooked hamburgers. The meat had browned on one side when he came in the kitchen. A skinny cat followed him and rubbed against Melody's leg.

"What are you doing?" Gary asked.

"Cooking."

"Are you nuts? You shouldn't be here."

"I thought you'd be hungry when you woke up."

"I can't eat that. I'm hung over."

She looked down at the meat. "I hate to waste it." She expected -- hoped -- to see a tear drop into the pan and sizzle. Maybe that would change his mind. She rubbed her wrist across her eyes.

"Get out of here. Go home. You could get me in a lot of trouble."

"I'm just cooking!" she shouted. "I didn't do anything!"

"Baby, you don't have to do anything to get me in trouble. I've been through this before. This is the last thing I need."

"What do you mean?"

He reached past her and turned off the stove. "I did a year in jail. I was 22. She was 17."

She looked at his shoes. Scuffed desert boots. She looked up at his face. God he was big. A big sexy teddy bear. She wanted to snuggle up with him.

"You're a freshman, right?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Fifteen?" he asked. She didn't answer. "Baby, I'm almost forty." He waited. "Look, every so often some girl thinks I'm really cool, for some reason. I'm not. I drift. That's it. You understand? I'm not cool. I just look like I am. 'Cuz I'm not connected. Get it?"

"No. What about all that interesting stuff you did?"

"Like climbing the Diamond? It doesn't mean anything. I was looking for something. That connection. I gave up."

"I don't understand."

"You will. Give it twenty years. You will."

He took her by the arm and pushed her out the door.

"Don't come back," was all he said.

She knocked, but he wouldn't answer. "My bag!" she yelled. "I need my bag. The bag in the kitchen."

He handed it to her and shut the door.

Why wouldn't he respond to her? Men almost always did. She couldn't remember when she noticed that men didn't look at her the way they looked at other girls. It started young. They looked longer, and they looked hungry, and they smiled at her. They weren't just looking and smiling -- they wanted something she didn't understand yet. She liked that. She didn't figure out until later what it was they wanted. They thought she was sexy, although she didn't know the word. What she knew was that she could get what she wanted from them, if she gave them what they wanted. And later she decided she could get anyone she wanted, if she was persistent. She liked men, too. She liked everything about them. She was glad they liked her in return.

She knew that Gary managed the Juicery downtown, so she started going there after school and on weekends. He'd see her coming and make the other person wait on her, except when he was the only one there. Then he'd stare over her head until she said what she wanted, make her drink, and give her the change without saying anything, or even looking at her. Then she'd sit in the tiny front area, unless it was full and she had to sit at one of the tables out front. She'd watch him. She did this for a week or two and one day they were the only two there. She'd been sitting at the table long enough and finished her drink and got up to put it in the trash. He was looking at her but his face wasn't moving. At least he was recognizing her presence, although the way he was looking into her was creepy.

" 'Bye," she said.

He just went on staring.

He did that the next day, too -- staring instead of ignoring her. She decided to give up, because the staring was too unnerving, but he crooked a finger at her as she was leaving. She wasn't sure what to do. There was no one else in the shop.

"Come here," he said. When she didn't move, he repeated, "Come here."

She went. He leaned on the counter. His face was so close that she felt his breath. He had a bump on one eyelid, and big ropy veins in his arms and hands. The stubble on his face looked like sandpaper; she wondered what it would feel like against her own face.

"What do you want?" he asked.

She hadn't really thought it through. What did she want? She said, "Just to be around you."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just like you a lot."

"Why?"

She didn't want to say he was like a big fuzzy teddy bear and she wanted him to hold her.

"You want to fuck me?" he asked.

She stared at his hands. They looked huge.

"Are you a virgin?"

She shook her head no. She'd started having sex at age twelve.

"I'm too big for you," he said. "You couldn't take it." He stepped back a foot and unzipped his pants and fished inside and pulled out his penis. Even with some of it in his pants, it was huge, way bigger than the boys she knew. "See?" he said. "Think you could handle it?"

She looked up at his face and nodded yes.

He sighed and pushed it back inside his boxers, squirming a bit to get it in. "You've got guts, anyway. Now get out of here. And don't come back."

She cried herself to sleep that night. She thought about him all the time, the way he looked, the slow way he moved, his big body and muscles and his hair. And his penis. She wondered if he was right. She wondered if he could get it in her. She wondered if it would hurt. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. Her feelings were more than sexual, although there was that. She wasn't exactly sure what she felt.

She stopped going to the Juicery, and started spying on his house at night. Usually he came home around eight and cooked whatever he brought home in a grocery sack -- a frozen pizza or a TV dinner or something like that. Then he'd go in the front room and drink beer and watch the tube. The picture was good, and he had a black wire running into the back, so he had cable. Mostly he watched action movies, but sometimes he watched the History Channel, if the program was about World War II. He'd drink five or six beers, or more, and get up a couple of times to go to the bathroom, which was in back, off the bedroom. Then he'd sit down and drink more beer. He led a boring life. She wondered why he never went anywhere or had any friends over. Two or three nights a week he'd get dumbbells and other weights out of the closet and exercise before he ate and drank. His arms were huge. He was ripped on his chest and back, too. He had a rubber thing he attached to the bedroom door frame, and he'd use that after he'd finished with the weights. He did crunches and stretching exercises on the floor. Then he'd put everything away and eat dinner and watch the tube until he either fell asleep in his recliner or turned off the TV and went to bed.

He usually slept soundly. She knew because she threw sticks at his windows and he rarely stirred. Since he didn't lock the door before he went to bed, one night when he turned out the lights and went to sleep she waited and threw sticks again. She didn't hear any movement, so she went in the front door. She thought it was safe, because he'd drunk a six-pack. He would be fast asleep. She was just outside his bedroom door and a board creaked. He stopped snoring, then rolled over on his side and a minute later was breathing deeply again. She wasn't sure she could take her foot off the board without it creaking. It might wake him. She stood there so long her legs started to tingle, until she decided to lift her foot. The floor creaked. He shot out of bed and grabbed her wrists.

"That hurts," she whined.

"There's more," he said.

She tried to fight. He was taking off her clothes and it was what she'd wanted, but he was too rough and she didn't want to be taken that way. She wanted to be the one to take off her own clothes, or encourage him to. But what was happening felt like rape. Everything she did was futile. He held one of her hands, and ignored the other one pounding on his shoulder and hitting his face. He was at least twice her weight, and whatever she did, he ignored. She twisted, she tried to free her hand, she kicked, but nothing helped. In later years she would learn how to stick a finger in an eye with just enough pressure to almost pop it out. That always sent a man howling in the other direction. But this was her first attempted rape, and she didn't know anything, and she was in a panic. She flailed.

When he had her naked, he held both her wrists above her head while he pulled down his boxers with the other hand.

His penis was limp. He dropped her on the bed and spread her legs and rubbed his penis against her crotch, but his cock didn't rise.

"Too much beer," he muttered. His breath stank of it. He was crushing her with his weight. She hit his chest.

"Off," she said. "Can't breathe."

He rolled off and lay next to her. She took a great sobbing breath and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Are you okay?" he said.

She only wanted to get away as fast as she could, to be in her own room, snuggled up under the covers and clutching the old brown bear her mother had given her, all soft and shapeless with the black nose rubbed white. She wanted to creep down the hall and listen at her parents' door for Daddy snoring. She wanted to crawl in with Gabe and snuggle up until she fell asleep and he woke her and sent her back to her own room.

" 'Okay?' " she echoed.

"Yeah. Are you okay?"

She wanted to kill this creep. He was stupid enough to ask whether she was okay?

"What's wrong?" He rubbed the flat of his hand on her back.

She jumped out of bed and started gathering her clothes.

"Where are you going?"

She shook her head. She didn't want to say anything. It might get him started again.

"Come on," he pleaded. "Talk to me."

"I want to go home."

"Wait." He rolled out of bed and she ran but he was quicker. He wrapped his arms around her waist and picked her up and carried her back to the bed, where he sat with her on his lap. He had his arms around her, and he was being gentle, but no matter that he was gentle she couldn't get free. He crooned and held her like a baby. He kept on like that until she was too tired to fight.

"Now talk to me," he said. He pushed her head up with his thumb under her chin. "What's wrong? Are you disappointed? Sometimes it's like that when a man has too much to drink."

The idea that she'd be disappointed was so ludicrous she started to laugh.

"That's better." He smiled. "Not so bad, is it?"

"No," she said, "but I have to go home. What if my parents notice? It's past my curfew." She didn't have a curfew, but he wouldn't know that.

He pushed her down on the bed. "I'll do this first. You'll like it." He kissed her between the legs.

No one had ever done this to her before. She tried to get up, but she could only sit up part way because he had his hands around her waist. She lay back, hating this, and hating him, but unable to escape. She was at his mercy again, and at the mercy of the things he was doing to her with his lips and tongue, until finally she gave up struggling and lay back, filled with the hot swelling until she came, hating him for it.

He let her go then, and she dressed. He smiled and kissed her, but she turned her head at the last second so he kissed her cheek instead. He looked puzzled.

She crept home, and quietly up the stairs and into her room, where she curled up in a ball under the sheet and clutched her old brown bear. She wanted to talk to Gabe, but she was afraid to tell him what had happened. That would start a lot of bad things. She wanted to keep this secret, even from him, her best friend.

Gary came to the party the next weekend and she stayed upstairs in her room. There was a knock on her door and she didn't answer until her Daddy said her name and knocked again. She went to the door and grabbed him and held herself to him.

"Why aren't you downstairs?" he asked. "You're the party girl, even when you have a cold. You're acting like Clover, keeping to yourself."

Usually she wouldn't have cared one way or another if someone likened her to Clover. They were so different she would have thought any comparison was silly. She snapped at him, "I'm not like her! That stuck-up bitch."

"Don't talk about your sister that way. What's bothering you?"

"Nothing."

"It's better if you let it out."

"I can't. Please, Daddy, I can't."

"What can I do, if I don't know anything?"

"Nothing."

He hugged her again, for a long time. A song ended downstairs and she heard a whoop; it sounded like Buzz's voice. She wanted to be there, dancing and enjoying the party, but she couldn't, not with Gary there.

She wrote a letter that night and sealed it in an envelope:

Stay away. If you come near me I'll tell my father what you did. I'm serious. Don't come to the parties.

Monday, after school, when she knew he'd be at work, she put it in his mailbox and ran home.

A month went by. Her mother said, "You got a letter today."

"Me?"

"It's on the table." She waved at it and went down the basement stairs.

The postmark said Chicago. No return address. The family had been to Chicago on vacation the year before and Melody had made a friend during the trip, a girl they'd met at the Field Museum who spent several days with the family, showing them the city. Melody had written her, but Frieda had never written back until now. She read the letter in her room.

I tried to tell you it was a mistake but you wouldn't listen. You had to keep going. You had to keep teasing. How many times do you think you can do that before a man gives up and does it with you? I mean, have you looked at yourself lately? How long do you think a man can resist that? I'm just a man. I'm sorry you got scared. I'm sorry you changed your mind. But how was I supposed to know? God damn you. I don't trust you. Now I had to leave Lawrence. I liked Lawrence. But I couldn't take the chance. You could turn me in and they'd put me back in the pen. Fuck you. I hope you get what's coming to you. Somebody should rape you good. A whole bunch of guys. I'd like to see that.

She tore up the letter and flushed the pieces down the toilet. At dinner her mother asked who the letter was from and what was in it, and Melody pretended it was from her friend: "Oh, you know. Stuff about her parents and her brother. School. Nothing special," and her mother nodded and the dinner conversation switched to Gabe's baseball practice. Melody was glad she wouldn't have to hide anything now; she could go back to telling smaller lies, about things like the letter.

She stopped going the long way to avoid his block. A boy and a girl, grad students from the University, rented the house, and one day they were carrying in groceries, and their toddler, and Melody stopped to talked to them. She helped them carry the grocery bags, and stayed to play with the baby, and became friends with them. Sometimes after that she babysat the child.