A Fateful Evening

She moved into the new apartment in the morning and waited for her roommate to arrive. They had never met, and spoken only twice on the phone. Still, Tammy had hopes for the best. This was a big step for her. After three years in the city, she was taking a plunge and moving in with a total stranger.

There was something mysterious about it; it was a real adventure, and one she had always fantasized about. Her friends had warned about the potential dangers. Hell, she had seen a dozen movies that highlighted the dangers and drawbacks. But somehow she felt it was something she needed to try, even if only for a while. How could she be a real city girl without something like this under her belt?

So she sat in the kitchen with a bottle of water and waited, trying not to think about how nervous she was. After all, it was a black woman. She took a deep breath and a swallow of water.

Tammy had never been around blacks much. Growing up in her town, there had been a few, but they seemed to keep to themselves, and she had never thought much about them until she came to the city. Here they were everywhere. At first it had been kind of a shock, or at least a surprise. Tammy knew she wasn't supposed to be surprised about something like that: you weren't supposed to think anything about the color of people's skin. But she was ashamed to say, although only to herself, that she did think about it. She did not hate them, or she hadn't, anyway, but she always noticed them. So it was now a part of her experiment. It was time to get past all this. She was a big girl, and the incident, well, that was just one time, just an isolated event.

Not all black people were like that, she hoped.

The bell rang at a quarter past one. Tammy answered the door and let her new roommate in.

Her name was Rochelle, that was what she had said on the phone and in the application, and she wore a grey suit. Her face was heart-shaped, pretty, and her hair was tied back in a long, tight braid. In one arm was a beige coat and a large purse hung from her shoulder. She did not smile when Tammy opened the door.

"You Tammy?"

"Yes, it's nice to meet you, Rochelle." Tammy was afraid she sounded too friendly, like she would come across as condescending or something. Still, she offered her hand and Rochelle took it. The woman's palm was dry and warm.

"And you. Can I come in?"

"Oh, yes, of course, let me get out of your way. After all," she said with a laugh, "this is your place now."

Rochelle ignored Tammy's joviality and entered. Wordlessly, she went from room to room and took in the space and the light. It was a big apartment, and very clean. The owners had just renovated it in the spring, so the whole place had a new feeling.

"I wasn't sure which room you'd want, so I didn't unpack anything yet," Tammy said. "Isn't this place great?"

"Yes, it is," said Rochelle. Tammy followed her through the apartment.

"When are your things coming?"

"Tonight, after seven."

"Okay, um, Do you have a lot of furniture to move?"

"No, not now. I keep things light."

They went on. Rochelle kept quiet, and it made her uncomfortable. Tammy asked, "Do you have an idea which room you want?"

"Which one do you want?"

"Oh, I don't really care."

"Then I'll take this one." It was the master bedroom with a huge window that looked down at the street. It got the best light.

Tammy smiled. "Great," she said, and tried to mean it.

They went over the final signing of the lease and Tammy gave her the keys to the apartment.

"Okay," said Rochelle when they had gone over everything, "I have to get back to work. I'll be back tonight."

Tammy nodded. "You work at a bank, right?"

"That's right, I'm vault manager."

"Wow, that's great," she said. Then there was a pause. Tammy made herself smile and say, "I'll see you tonight, then."

Rochelle didn't say goodbye when she left.

***

Tammy had the day off from her own job at the Masterson and Hunt law office, and so she took her time in setting up what had become her new room. It helped her relax after meeting Rochelle. She was quite a lovely woman, but she was so distant. This was it; it was real. No more just imagining things. For good or bad, this was going to happen. Of course she did not expect them to be friends. Not at first, anyway. But over time, they would grow closer, and Tammy could start to get over her own ridiculous fear.

She was upset at how nervous she had been, so she put herself to work to burn through it. Tammy had a fair amount of furniture: a bed disassembled in a box, a sofa, a dresser and several bookcases, not to mention a whole living room and kitchen set. The movers had brought them in, but she set them up and put them together on her own. She had been worried about how much stuff Rochelle was going to bring, but it did not sound like it would be much.

Tammy was strong from the gym and took pleasure in being able to move things around. Her last boyfriend, Mark, had made sure that she kept herself in shape. He had a refined sense of discipline which he had taken great pains to instill in her. Now, even six months after they had broken up, she still kept to the exercise and diet regime that he had put together for her. Mark had been hopeless as a boyfriend in several ways, but the firm order that he brought with him had always turned her on.

Among her things was a cardboard box filled with mementos from their time together, toys and things. When she had finished the first round of unpacking in her room, she sat down on her newly made bed and found the box sitting there, taped shut. She knew it from the single letter T on the side.

Tammy cut through the tape with an exacto knife and opened it up. Inside were ropes tied in neat bundles, blindfolds, scarves and sashes, a collection of clamps, a few vibrators, a leather bit gag, a ring gag, a leather harness, and leather restraints for wrists and ankles. She took out the bit gag and examined it, feeling all the little indentations that her teeth had left in it over the year and a half she and Mark had been together. There was her old buttplug, too, a fat, beveled thing. And to think she had hated it at first.

She planned to get new stuff when she found a new lover, but that hadn't happened yet, so she was still hanging on to it. She laughed quietly to herself, remembering of those times, then put the bit on the bed and went to take care of the bathroom.

***

Tammy was sipping a glass of wine while she arranged the living room, when the doorbell rang. A quick look at the clock said it was 6:50.

She had asked that her friends not come over until she had settled in and could have a proper house-warming party, so she decided that it must be Rochelle's things. There was no sign of her new roommate, so she went to the door and peeked through the window. On the doorstep was a black woman in a purple hoodie and jeans. She was chewing gum and listening to music through earbuds. She raised her hand in greeting when she saw Tammy in the window.

Tammy opened the door.

The woman spoke at once and said, "Yo, you Tammy? How ya doing? I'm Steph, Rochelle's sister." Tammy started to reply, but Steph just went right on talking. "Yeah, well look, I brought over a trunk full of stuff for Rochelle. She ain't home, is she?"

"Uh, no, not yet." Tammy heart pounded in her chest. This was the sort of person she would normally cross the street to avoid. It was something she hated about herself, but the feeling of danger that came off this woman made her knees weak. But this was exactly what she was trying to change.

Tammy thought she should invite her in, make small talk, show her around the apartment, all the stuff she was so good at with other people. Somehow, none of these thoughts would come out as words, so instead she made herself smile, and made herself mean it.

"Well, look I'm double parked out here, so lemme get this stuff out the trunk before a cop comes along, alright? You wanna come out and help me?" Steph snapped her gum and went out to the street where her car was. After a moment Tammy put on some slippers and followed her.

The car was an older model Chrysler, in decent condition, but the left tail light was out.

"Your light's out," said Tammy.

"Oh, yeah, I know, I gotta get that fixed. Here, could ya take this bag, and this box, too? They're kinda heavy, so. . ."

"I have them," said Tammy, and she took them in both arms and brought them inside the house.

The biggest thing was the futon, a giant one rolled up, heavy and old. Both of them carried it together up the steps and into Rochelle's bedroom. "Man, oh man, this thing is heavy as fuck," Steph said as they got it inside. Then she went out one last time and parked her car in a spot that had opened up a ways down the street.

When she came back, Steph plopped down on the couch and put her feet up. With her hood down, Tammy got her first good look at her face. She was younger than Rochelle, her cheeks a little rounder, but her skin was rough and marred with two pock marks, one under her left eye, the other near her chin. She had big lips and a full nose, and her hair was all in cornrows. She was quite thin, but with wide hips. Steph let Tammy take her in and gave a knowing smile.

"Man, this is a nice place you guys have got here. Wish I could afford me a place like this. My place is a real dump. Walls like cardboard, and fuckin' cockroaches! It's terrible. Gotta listen to the neighbors fightin' and fuckin' all night, you know. Can you hear any of your neighbors in here?"

"Uh, I don't really know. It seems quiet enough, but it's still the first day, so," Tammy shrugged and smiled apologetically. "Um, could you keep your shoes off the sofa?"

"Oh, yeah, shit. Sorry 'bout that. Hey, you got anything to drink around here?"

"I have a bottle of wine. Red."

"Wine, huh? Got any beer? No? Well, I'll have some of that wine, then, if it's okay with you."

"Sure," said Tammy, and she went and got a glass.

She felt Steph's eyes follow her across the room. "You know, you're pretty fine. Strong, too. I like that." Tammy wasn't sure how to respond, so she decided just to take it as a compliment. She opened the wine bottle. "No, girl, just bring the bottle over here. I'll pour it myself."

Tammy brought her the glass and the bottle and put them on the coffee table. Steph sniffed at the bottle, then poured a generous amount and sipped at it. She frowned for a moment, then sipped again, evidently deciding that it wasn't so bad.

Steph went on. "I'm not much of wine person, myself, no. I like a beer at the end of the day. Rochelle, though, she digs this shit. She's got herself all civilized, all sophisticated, you know what I'm sayin'?" She sipped again. "But this, this ain't too bad, you know?"

Tammy looked at the clock. It said 7:30. "I wonder what's keeping Rochelle. She said she'd be back before 7:00."

"Don't you worry none about her," said Steph. "She's always stayin' late at work. You know she's vault manager down there at the bank. Ain't that the wildest thing? After some of the shit she did when she was young, they went and put her in charge of a fuckin' bank vault! That shit still cracks me up. She's good at it, though. A lot of responsibility, that job has. I'm proud of her."

"I'm just wondering what to do about dinner."

Steph sat up and leaned forward. "Just order some Chinese food. I'm pretty hungry, myself, I could go for some mu goo gai pan or whatever else they got."

With that, Tammy realized that Steph was staying for the evening, and maybe for the night. And from the look of things, she could very well end up staying over a lot. Inside, a part of her panicked at the idea. She covered it up by getting out the phone book and looking for a Chinese restaurant.

She whispered to herself, "This is going to be okay, it's going to be fine. It's going to be good for you, it's what you wanted. Remember that." Still Tammy was not convinced. She found the restaurant listing and found a nearby restaurant.

"Get some egg rolls," Steph added while she was on the phone. "And some crab-cheese wantons."

The man on the line indicated in half-broken English that it would forty-five minutes to an hour.

"It's $27.50 plus a tip for the driver," Tammy said.

"That's cool," said Steph, flipping through one of Tammy's fashion magazines.

"So let's call it $14.00."

When she realized that Tammy was asking her to pay for half, Steph said, "Hey, you buy this time and I'll buy next time. All I got's a five on me."

"That'll cover the tip, then," she said. "I'll get the tip next time." Her heart was hammering, but she managed to keep it out of her voice.

Steph stared at her. Then she smiled and laughed out loud. She slapped her knee. "All right then. If you say so." Steph dug around in her jeans and pulled out a wrinkled five dollar bill. Tammy wrote a check for the rest and put them on the shelf by the front door. "You know, you are a fine looking woman. You know that? You got a boyfriend?"

Tammy shook her head. "Not right now."

"How about a girlfriend, then?"

Tammy smiled and shook her head. She had been with a woman once, in a three-way with Mark. At the time, it had been nice, feeling the softness of another woman's lips and fingers, but she had felt ashamed the next day. The woman was Michelle, her friend, but after that, things hadn't been the same between them, and they had pretty much drifted apart. "I'm not into girls much," she said. Of course, there had been the incident, but that was something else.

"Just askin', just askin'. You never know in the city, right? There's all kinds of people in the city, people into all kinds of weird-ass shit. I seen some of it, and I heard about more, you know? Whips and chains and shit like that. Dog fucking. People stickin' rats up their asses and shit." Steph laughed and drank her wine. "You know about shit like that?"

"I've heard stories." Tammy bent down and put the phone book away in the cabinet under the phone.

"I bet you have. Man, you look fine. How'd you get muscles like that?"

Tammy stood up. "I work out, like, four times a week."

"How much you press?"

"10 reps at 110," she said.

"Damn, girl. Come here: lemme feel your arm. I never met no girl who could lift that much, except my momma. Now she was a strong-ass woman. Fat as hell, but strong. But I never seen no one looking the way you do who could lift like that." Tammy didn't move. Steph laughed. "Come on, Tammy, I don't bite."

Reluctantly, Tammy went over to her and pulled up her sleeve. She curled her arm and let Steph feel her muscle. Steph's hand was cool and a little rough, but her touch was gentle. For what seemed like the first time since she arrived, Steph was quiet. After a minute, Tammy relaxed her arm and pulled away.

"Nice," Steph said and leaned back on the sofa again, suddenly with a cocky smile, as if she'd scored a point. "What do you do, Tammy? Rochelle said you was a lawyer or something."

"I'm a paralegal and a notary. I work at Masterson and Hunt downtown."

"Damn," said Steph, giving no impression that she knew what those were. "How old are you?"

Tammy usually answered this question with a coy, "How old do I look?" but she didn't feel up to it. "26," she sighed. "How old are you? What do you do?"

"I'm 24," she said. "I don't look it, though, do I?" Indeed, she looked much older. "It's the scars," she said, pointing at her face. "And the drugs. I got clean, though. Rochelle helped me out, and I ain't touched nothing in three years. The rest of my body looks young, though." She smiled and put her hands on her thighs. "As for what I do, well, this and that. Lots of different things."

Tammy was thoroughly uncomfortable and she knew she couldn't hide it. Where the hell was Rochelle? The clock said 7:50. She sighed again. "Like what? What kinds of things?" Now she was sure Steph was a drug dealer or something.

"I done some modeling. Don't laugh, I did, down at the art school. Now though, I'm working in a club downtown. It's a decent place, with some class to it. You should come down there some time and check it out. You'd fit right in, you know what I'm sayin'." Before Tammy could answer, she said, "Hey, where's the bathroom? I gotta pee, you know?"

"It's through there," Tammy pointed.

Steph stood up and stretched for a moment. "Why don't you sit down, Tammy? It's your place, after all. I'll be right back." And she disappeared into the back of the apartment.

Without thinking much about it, Tammy sat on the edge of the sofa and put her head in her hands. "Oh, god, what am I doing? Why did I ever think this was a good idea?"

***

Three weeks after arriving in the city, when she was still a new and oblivious to the way of things, Tammy had crossed an invisible boundary between neighborhoods and wound up in a bad part of town. There she had been raped and beaten by a black girl, right in the street in the afternoon. It was still the most shocking thing that had ever happened to her.

She remembered the black girl with the faded jean skirt and the strings of dangling beads around her neck. She'd had cornrows, too. Tammy remembered the expression on her chubby-cheeked face when she approached, full of boredom and contempt. Two other girls had been with her, but Tammy didn't remember anything about them, because right away the one girl had gotten in her face.

"Whutchoo doin' here, this ain't your part'o'town, ya ain't got no business here. What are ya, lookin' for drugs, huh, lookin' to score? Or maybe you wanna get hooked up wit some big black dick? That whutchoo want, huh, you lily-ass bitch? Well, there ain't nobody gonna dirty themselves up with a skanky-ass ho like you, so gitcho ass outa here 'fore I kick the shit outa ya."

If Tammy had just turned around and left, things might have been different. Maybe not. But she had tried to talk back to the girl. Not to fight, but to be reasonable. It was a mistake.

Before a full sentence had passed her lips, the black girl had suddenly grabbed her by the right breast in a brutal twisting pinch with one hand, and then grabbed her hair with the other. Tammy's gasps and screams fell on deaf ears in that neighborhood. The girl had forced her to the ground and sat on her chest, using her legs to pin Tammy's arms. Then she had slapped her face and spit in her eyes, forced her mouth open and hawked a blob of phlegm down her throat.

"You throw up, bitch and I'll make you lick it up."

Then while her friends had held her down, the girl had stripped Tammy down to her underwear. She'd tore off her panties, wadded them up and stuffed them in her mouth. She'd pulled out her pubic hair and pinched her clitoris with her fingernails until she bled.

"Yo, check this shit out, this bitch is wet! Her cunt's all wet! Ain't that the shit. Well, cunt, mine's too. Since you's so horny, maybe you'll do somethin' about it for me."

The girl had squatted down over Tammy's face and spat in her eye. All she had seen was raw anger and contempt. "Suck it, cunt!" She'd taken off her underwear and pressed her black, hairy, urine-stinking crotch into Tammy's face and rubbed it there. When Tammy had tried to turn away, the girl slapped her and ground her face into the pavement.

"Suck it, cunt!"

She'd been paralyzed, completely helpless. The girl had taken Tammy's panties out of her mouth and pressed her vagina against her lips. Helplessly, tragically, Tammy had licked her and sucked her and done every pathetic thing she could to please her until the girl had gotten bored and let her go. She had walked naked down the street, her clothes a torn bundle in her hands. Only when she'd reached the corner did she stop and get dressed again.

She had never gone to the police, had never told anyone. For a month after she couldn't even look herself in the mirror. It had taken her a long time, but she had gotten over most of it. Mark had helped, and his discipline had helped. And over time, she had eroticized the memory of the experience. Parts of it almost always came back to her when she masturbated, in the background of her other fantasies, pushing her over the edge.