Why Rose 36 Cried (MF rom slow)

She turned 36 and, that very day, Rose cried. We were
sitting in a bar drinking slow J&B, talking and sharing
frustrations, and all of a sudden she looked at me
directly and said it was her birthday.

"Really?" Maybe I should have known but I didn't. "Remind
me. How old are you now?"

"I'm 36," she said, and her blue-grey eyes filled with
tears so big and heavy they overflowed instantly down both
cheeks. She dashed them aside with the flat of her hand,
one side then the other, embarrassed near to the point of
panic.

Astonishing. "Rose?" I queried. Like, is that you?

She jumped from the bar stool and threaded the tables in a
rush, her face twisted and crumpled and tears flowing
copiously. She swept out the door and people turned to look
at me.

"It's her birthday," I shrugged. "She turned 36."

There was a general nodding of heads. Right.
Understandable.

I'll say this straight about Rose. I am possessed and
hopelessly besotted. I can never love a woman other than
her. She knows this but only if she remembers. It barely
impinges on her. Rose can and does fall in love with all
sorts of appalling men at various times but she can never
love me. But she adores me because I am her best friend.
Her accomplice. Her confidante. The last buddy on earth.

I could cry about it myself if I let my guard down. Which
I won't, because I'm not here to be me. Around her I'm not
me. I'm Jack. Just Rose's pal, Jack.

I remember the first time when I tried to be more than
that. We were work colleagues, kindred spirits and friends
developing from casual to close. I met her for lunch with a
careful plan, ready to lay down my case with beautiful
logic and my life with devoted abandon. As usual she
disarmed me when I had barely started and I was left
breathless and witless.

"I'm crazy about you," I said to her across the table. I
sat back in surprise, amazed I had said such a thing. "I'm
amazed I said that," I said.

"I knew this would happen," she said, not looking at all
flattered.

"I can't help it."

She dismissed my cause with an impatient gesture.
"Nothing's going to come of it. It's hopeless."

"Gee, that was quick," I said, impressed despite the crush
of disappointment. "My whole life flashed in front of your
eyes."

"Sorry," she said far too quickly, looking restlessly
around the room.

"Rose, give me a chance."

"Stop it," she said. "I like you well enough, Jack. But you
can't do this."

"Yes I can, because I'm crazy about you. You're the one who
can't do it."

She sat there, looking at me with her hands folded on the
table, her face failing to register emotion or express
opinion. Somewhere big hands and little hands moved on
clock faces but on Rose no movement showed.

"Rose," I said. "Say something. Give me a signal, for
pity's sake."

"No, Jack. There's nothing I can do for you." And as though
she'd just remembered something important, she rattled
around in her handbag and extracted a plastic container.
With her hands below the level of the table, she unscrewed
the cap and shook out a tablet that she popped in her
mouth.

"What's that?" I asked, curious about anything that was
part of her.

"A Christmas goose," she said, "with all the trimmings."

"I didn't know you took pills."

"Everybody takes pills," she said.

"I don't."

"You wouldn't."

I pressed. "What sort of pills?"

"My sort of pills. Now leave it, please. What else do you
want to know about me? Shall I turn out my bag on the
table?"

"Well yes, that would be most interesting."

She regarded me steadily. "What did I do to deserve this? I
haven't encouraged you one bit. You're not my type, Jack.
I make it a rule not to fuck my friends because I don't
have enough of them. So back off. I don't like being
scrutinised. You're like an X-ray machine. You think I'm
strong and tough but I'm not. I go to pieces. I fall apart.
Please, Jack. Don't do this to me."

And I could see she meant it. "So it's back to being pals,"
I said.

"That's all it can ever be," she said.

In the two years I'd known her, Rose had crashed her way
through several relationships and been screwed by a lot of
men, none of them worthy. Mind you, all of them looked
good, but in the most obvious and insincere quasi-
rebellious way, like lead singers in rock bands. Pretty
guys who wouldn't waste a smile on man, woman or beast if
there wasn't something to be had from it. Barely a handful
were even halfway reasonable people. Her taste in men was
simply awful. And I was always there to clean up
afterwards.

One guy I remember more than others. If ever the chance
falls my way I will do him harm. Rose called me and I went
around to her place. The guy, tall, thin and good-looking
in a dangerous fuck-you-too way he cultivated and made the
most of, was just leaving with two suitcases. He'd been
around for a month or so.

"She fucks like a dead cat," he said to me with smooth
malice at the front door. "I hope for your sake that's not
why you're here."

"Wouldn't know about that," I said. "But I'm smart enough
to recognise class in a woman when I see it."

He turned back and studied me for a second. "Poor bastard,"
he said with frank amusement. "She's got you by the balls."

 From early days I belonged to Rose who did not belong to
me. In our own way we had a relationship. I knew a lot
about her. I knew she'd left home far too early, of her own
accord, leaving behind a desperately-ill mother and a
father who could not be talked about. Ice-cold anger on
that subject. I tried to find out the reason but she
dismissed me with naked and forbidding hostility. The
doors were locked and bolted on the matter.

Since the age of 17 she'd been making her own way in the
world and she gave every appearance of being leaner and
meaner than most. She was not easy or quick to please, a
no-shit woman with a tongue like a blade of spear grass who
gave no quarter. Except for the selfish and shallow pretty
boys, that is. I often berated her for it and she accepted
the criticism with good grace. No man was a good enough
package, she would explain with bitter humour, so she might
as well waste her time with empty vessels who at least
looked and smelled good in the morning.

The pretty boys seemed to serve a purpose of sorts, because
when she didn't have one she could fall into black moods.
She would retreat from the world, poison herself with
alcohol for days at a time and speak to nobody. Not even
me. I tried once. She treated me so harshly I learned not
to do it again.

Rose could be intoxicating to be around. She was sharp and
sassy, vibrant and vivacious. Time would fly past at
bewildering speed. But she had a dark side and too often
a need to hurt people around her when it seemed neither
justified nor necessary. Before I came to know her she
spent time in clinical treatment for depression. She told
me about it one day by way of apology for a bad spot of
behaviour. Maybe that was why she took pills.

I certainly knew Rose well enough to stay low the day she
cried on her 36th birthday. It would not have made her
happy to have been seen as vulnerable, as so fragile that
she would cry simply because she might be old and past her
best. She would tough it out and deal with it in her own
way. Or so I thought.

I got home late that night and found a message from her
on the answering machine. She was sullen. I had failed her
in some way. I should have been available and I wasn't and
it was about time I showed up. Of course I rang and said I
would be around to see her immediately. She merely grunted
and disconnected.

Rose was, in a word, irrational. She looked awful. She was
wearing an old grey bathrobe and her eyes were dull and
bruised-looking. Her face looked as though she'd suddenly
lost a lot of weight. She stood in the doorway and plainly
ached, looking at me without greeting and as though I had
caused a lot of bad things. She left the door open, turned
her back on me and went inside.

In help mode I followed her. "You're ill," I said. "What's
wrong?"

"Wrong? You are, as usual," she said, openly hostile. She
slumped in a chair and I saw the close-to-empty bottle of
J&B beside her on a table.

"You're drunk," I said, with that hint of ecclesiastical
accusation I find hard to avoid.

"Wrong again," she snarled. "But I'm gonna be."

"I don't know why you need to be like this," I said. "So
you turned 36. No big deal, Rose. You don't look a day
older than yesterday."

"You don't know shit, old buddy. You think you do but you
don't. All the studies say a woman is in her prime at age
35." She laughed bitterly. "But nothing happened. Looks
like I just blew it away."

I sat down opposite her. She lifted a glass and drank from
it, looking at me challengingly over the rim.

"So you showed up at last," she said acidly. "Where have
you been? Slipping it to that pallid little Barbie doll, I
suppose."

Barbara was a girl I took out occasionally. She was a nice
ordinary girl who did not deserve scorn from anybody, but
for some reason Rose disliked her intensely. "I haven't
been fucking anybody," I said, which was true.

She splashed more whisky into the glass and held it in
front of her, continuing to look at me in accusatory
fashion. "How come you fuck Barbie doll and you don't fuck
me?"

I shook my head at her slowly. "You can't be serious," I
said gently.

But she was spoiling for a fight. "Tell me the truth," she
said. "Why don't you want to fuck me?"

"I do. I have always wanted to, from the moment I saw you."

"You never said so," she said, sneering aggressively. "You
never even asked."

"You never offered."

"What do I have to do, Jack?" she asked mockingly. "Beg?
Are you that useless?"

"Why are you doing this to me?"

She glowered at me. "Because you'll sit there and take it.
You're so pathetic."

I sat there and took it, now acutely aware this was a
matter beyond mere alcoholic aggression.

"I can do anything to you," she said nastily. "You'll just
sit there and wobble your head at me like a golliwog."

She flung the contents of her glass at me and the spirit
soaked into my trousers. "You'll take that," she said. "No
problem. Like water off a duck's back."

I sat there and took it, wobbling my head and hoping to
make her laugh. Instead she became enraged. She jumped to
her feet and cracked me hard with her hand across the left
side of my head.

"You bastard!" she screamed at me. "You prick!" She hit me
again, and again, and a few more times after that. She
rained blows at my head and face but they became weaker and
lost force as she sobbed and cried. I sat there and took
it.

She snatched up the glass from the floor and lifted it
high, ready to crash it against my face. Instead she paused
and then threw it aside. She slumped to the floor, sitting
loosely cross-legged and bending her head over into her
body, shielding her face with her arms.

I sat there for some time, my ears tender and my left
cheekbone aching dully, watching her in her desolation as
the crying subsided. Eventually she lifted her head. Her
eyes were red and rimmed with tears. Her nose was running
and she wiped it carelessly with the sleeve of her
bathrobe.

"I'm sorry," she said raggedly. "I asked you here tonight
because I was going to fuck you. Then I was going to tell
you to fuck off." She smiled at me wanly, like a little
girl. "I'm full to bursting with anger. I hate myself when
I get like this and I need to take it out on somebody. And,
Jack, you're always close by."

"You're a bit of a mess, all right," I agreed. "But I'm
crazy about you, remember? I was crazy about you yesterday
when you were 35 and I'm still crazy about you today when
you're 36." I shrugged. "There's no accounting for taste."

She put her head down on the arm of the chair and began to
sob again. I didn't know why; for herself, most likely.
Because she'd turned 36.

She stayed way-down-low unhappy. I could see there was no
quick and easy path out of it. She also got badly drunk and
I didn't try to restrain her. For several hours she swung
rapidly between bouts of reckless animation and mute
melancholy.

I sat in the chair and tried to come to terms with the real
Rose. I didn't know enough to know the extent of her
problem. She'd said herself she was clinical and I thought
it likely she was manic-depressive. Whatever the condition,
she sure didn't make a happy drunk.

At times she taunted me mercilessly. She stripped and
danced naked before me in exaggerated lewdness, mocking me
with extravagant invitations. She questioned my virility
and then my sexuality. She told highly improbable stories
about her experiences with mysterious and shadowy lovers.

Then, with apologies, she would fall limply to the floor
and mutter to herself for a time. I waited for her to sleep
but, even after extended periods of silence, I found her
awake.

Eventually she vomited, her flat stomach heaving
convulsively long after anything in it had been expelled.
She became rubber-legged and incoherent, and at last I was
able to take over.

I cleaned up and tidied everything, Rose included, then
sat back in the chair and waited for something to happen.
Morning arrived and I remained sitting there, unasleep. I
don't remember giving any consideration to anything. I made
myself bitter coffee and waited for the next event.

Rose emerged in the late morning, wearing the bathrobe,
holding on to the doorway and looking at me sitting in the
chair. "You're still here," she said, and she shuffled into
the kitchen and drank a long glass of water and then
another. She went back to her bedroom. "Go home," she said.

Two hours or so later I heard the toilet flush and she
wandered out again. "Still here," she said. "Why don't you
go home?"

Half an hour later she came out more purposefully. "I can't
sleep because I know you're sitting there," she said. "I
feel like an invalid."

"You are an invalid," I said.

She stood with her hands on the back of a chair, across
from me. Her mouth turned down, very Rose-like. "At least
you're not full of care and concern," she said. "I hate
that."

"I remember. You hate being scrutinised."

"With justification. Why are you still here? I don't need
you. Wait, I need you to pour me a drink."

I got up from the chair and walked to the sideboard where
I'd put the bottle.

"You'd get me a drink?" she asked.

"Sure, if you want."

"Then I don't want one." She trudged back to her bedroom.
"I feel like shit," she said. "You can stay if you want."

At nightfall I put the lights on and made more bitter
coffee. When I returned to the chair she was sitting in her
usual place.

"I feel better," she said. She made a face. "I mean, the
hangover's gone away."

I gave her my coffee and she sipped at it. "You don't say
much, do you," she said. "What happened to the wisecracks?"

"You beat me up last time I tried to be funny. I must be
learning at last."

She drank more coffee. "I don't know how long I'm going to
be like this," she said. "It's been a while since it last
happened. I feel so tired."

"So sleep. I'll hang about. I've got nowhere else to go and
nothing better to do."

She looked like an abandoned lover. "Sometimes you can be
funny," she said. "Come on, Jack, make me smile."

I thought about a few gags but they died. "I can't," I
said.

"Then I'll just have another drink or two," she said.

I let her do it. There was no point in stopping her, even
if I could. I had no ownership rights. In any case, one of
life's more futile exercises is trying to stop people who
want to drink from drinking.

She drank and she relaxed; she was friendly and talkative.
She drank and she laughed as she recounted experiences. She
drank and she talked about her disappointments. She drank
and told me she had no friends. She drank and she cried
over her lost opportunities. She drank and grew angry with
me because I wouldn't drink with her. So I did.

We drank together, drink for drink, for three more hours or
so and she got big drunk and I got little drunk. She got
big depressed and I got little depressed. Then she got
angry and I thought about getting angry too, but in the end
I just stayed depressed.

I'm definitely no fun when I get like that. I don't know
whether I'm much fun when I'm not but I'm definitely no fun
when I am. I sat there drinking morosely, staring at the
floor, while she performed solo angry scenes. I barely
listened to her in my lost and wandering mood. I sat there
drinking, replaying my life and wondering why I went on
with it.

It was a brilliant ploy, or it would have been if it had
been a ploy, because she stopped drinking and went to bed.
I didn't know she had until I reached out to pour another
drink and found she was gone. I looked in on her and
she was asleep, so I threw off my clothes and went to bed
myself in her spare room.

I didn't sleep because I often don't, and I particularly
don't when I've been drinking, which is one of the reasons
I almost never drink. On my back, I looked at nothing and
felt bad about it as the night edged onwards. At some point
Rose got into bed, muttering drunkenly and incoherently. I
didn't understand what she said and couldn't muster the
concentration to query it. She threw an arm loosely across
my chest, placed her body in its bathrobe against me,
pushed her head against my shoulder and instantly fell
asleep. Eyes open, I looked at the dark near the ceiling.

As it turned out I did sleep. I must have done so because I
was having an erotic dream and Rose woke me out of it. It
was near four in the morning. I remember turning my head
and looking at the clock. Rose was moving her body up and
down against me. The bathrobe was loose and open, her
pelvis was scraping against my hipbone and her hand was
fluttering on my stiff penis.

I lay still, collecting my thoughts. I was awake and it was
not a dream. I turned my head towards her and it looked
like her eyes were closed. She seemed to be asleep. I put
my arm across her and down her back, nudging her gently
across her buttocks. "Hey," I said softly. "Hey, Rose."

She moaned and spoke indistinctly. I could see her eyes
were still closed. Then she said it again, this time more
clearly. "It's all right," she said, slurring her words and
running them together.

I nudged her once more. "Rose, are you awake?"

Her eyes snapped open. "It's all right," she said fiercely.
"I want you to do it." Her eyes closed again and she kept
moving her body and her hands.

I was confused. The message was unequivocal but instinct
told me all was not well. I nudged her again. "Rose, let's
talk about this."

Immediately she rolled on top of me and thrust herself on
the erect penis she held. It was done in an instant and I
was enclosed by her, warm and wet.

"No talk," she said, gliding smoothly. "I hate talking.
Don't talk. Let's just do it."

Oh shit, I thought. I did not know whether she was awake,
asleep, half-awake or half-asleep, or just plain dead
drunk, and I did not know what to do. So I did nothing as
she rode her way onwards. I lay flat on my back, hands by
my sides and watched her. She had her hands planted on the
bed beside my chest for balance, her head was thrown back
and her breasts were bobbing and swaying. She powered on
with athletic intensity, thrusting efficiently with her
long and lean thighs.

I was not even close to letting myself go when she
quickened her pace in short, sharp movements. She
shuddered from side to side, clenched her hands around
my ribcage and sank her head slowly to my chest. My penis
remained hard and firmly enclosed.

"Oh daddy," she whispered. "That was a really good one."

My heart jumped mightily in my chest and I was seized with
desire. I rolled her over, still strong inside her, and
began to pump furiously.

"Yes, daddy, do it again," she said savagely. "Do it
again." She appeared to reach orgasm swiftly and then again
before I found release.

I sighed and held myself above her with my arms
outstretched, shrinking within her, and my eyes found her
eyes.

"Jack," she said in a clear and different voice. "What have
you done?" I could feel the weight of a great accusation.

I was still affected by alcohol and still shrouded with the
melancholy it had brought to me. I was not in shape to
accommodate the question.

"You did it, Rose," I replied. "I didn't do it. You did."

"Bullshit," she snapped, ejecting me with a quick pull and
twist of her hips and throwing me off.

"No," I said, lying on my side and looking into her face.
"You did it. I tried to stop you."

"Liar!" She rolled away and off the bed, closing the
bathrobe and belting it tight with angry hands. She strode
out of the room and flicked on lights in the living room
and the kitchen. I heard the clink of glasses and the tap
running.

The problem was growing and taking shape like a rampant
virus. I was lacking mental agility and I knew I would soon
be needing it. In the meantime my only choice was to go
with the truth.

"You woke me," I insisted, sitting up in the bed and
calling to her. "You were all over me. You were on fire."

"Liar!" she said again, shouting.

"I wouldn't lie to you, Rose. Think about it. Maybe you
were half-asleep. Maybe you thought you were dreaming.
Maybe you were so drunk you didn't know who I was. I don't
know. But I'm telling you what happened."

She returned to stand in the doorway, a dark figure
against the light behind. "You treacherous bastard," she
said bitterly. "What happened is that I woke up and you
were inside me." She pressed the bathrobe against her
thigh. "Ugh," she said unpleasantly. "Your stuff is running
down my leg."

"No," I said. "You came into my bed, remember? What
happened is that I woke up with you crawling all over me.
What happened is that you coaxed me out of my sleep and
climbed on top of me and fucked me. That's what happened.
You only want to remember the end of the story, not the
beginning and the middle."

"I didn't do anything like that," she said. "I couldn't
have. You're inventing it."

I tried a different tack. "What were you dreaming about
before you woke? Can you remember?"

"No." But she turned her head away suddenly.

"Maybe you were dreaming about your father."

"Filthy bastard."

"Who? Him or me?"

"You. That's a vile thing to say."

I sighed heavily. "Rose, do you want to go on with this?
Perhaps we should call it a night and be done with it.
Perhaps it's better for you to believe you were drunk and I
took advantage of you. I'll play it your way."

She came into the room and sat on the bed. On the very
edge, at the bottom corner, as far away as she could get.
"No, Jack," she said. "Let's have it out. Then I can decide
if I'm ever going to talk you again."

My heart sank. "I don't think this is a good idea," I said
warily.

"As it stands now, you're out of my life," she said.
"You've got nothing to lose, so tell me the truth. You
never know, I might just forgive you."

It was tempting because I knew she might. I could tell her
she was a victim of my drunken lust and she would accept
it. But I feared it would alter our circumstances
irretrievably. I feared losing her trust so I went the way
of the truth.

"For me to come clean you have to come clean," I said. "You
told me once you don't have orgasms from fucking."

"I don't."

"You just did," I said. "More than one, I'm pretty sure."

"Bullshit."

"Are you telling me you've never had an orgasm?"

"I told you, I don't."

"But have you never?"

"What is this? An inquisition? I'm telling you, I don't."

"Let's leave that for the moment," I said. "Now you have
to concede you were dreaming about your father."

"I'm not sure. I might have been having some sort of
nightmare. Why?"

"You called me daddy."

She twisted and rolled towards me, close enough to look
directly into my eyes. "What?"

"A couple of times. You called me daddy."

"I called you daddy in my sleep?"

"Rose, you called me daddy when you straddled me. You
called me daddy when you reached orgasm. I didn't imagine
it. It was very clear what you were doing and saying, and
it was very clear who you thought you were doing and saying
it to. It certainly wasn't Jack Blake."

She put her hands to her face. "I didn't," she said. "I
couldn't have."

"You did."

"Tell me what happened," she said softly, putting her head
back to the pillow and drawing the blanket tightly around
her. "Leave nothing out. Tell me everything."

I told her, simply and plainly. She was silent for a long
time.

"You must despise me," she said finally, hollow with dread
and despair.

"Why should I despise you?"

"Because you know the truth. You know what I did all those
years ago. And it's true, God help me. That's what I did.
Jesus, that's exactly what I did."

"Tell me, what did you do?"

"He called me his baby wife. I was 15. Mother was sick for
a long time. I had to do it and I tried to tell her but she
didn't say anything, and she didn't say it in such a way
that I knew I had to do it. At first I hated it. I was
miserable and scared. Then after a time I learned the power
of it. I took control, I stopped being scared and I learned
to like it. I knew it was bad but it was exciting. Christ,
I got right off on it. But I shocked myself as well, and
after a time I finished it. I left and ran away. You know
that. I told you."

"Jesus, Rose. Is that the truth?"

"Why would I lie about it? Everything I told you is true."

"Except about the orgasms," I said.

"I don't have orgasms," she said. "I did back then but I
don't now."

"It seems you do," I said. "I was there."

"That's so disgusting."

"Don't be absurd."

"Jesus, it doesn't bear thinking about. If it only happens
when I'm fucking my father or I think I'm fucking my
father, that's not only disgusting, it's obscene."

"You're blaming yourself for something that wasn't your
fault. You were just a 15-year-old kid. Give yourself a
break. Your father took advantage of your first sexual
awakenings. No blame can be attached to you. You're clean,
Rose. You've been badly fucked up, but you're clean."

"I don't feel clean. I've never felt clean and I never
will."

"Well, you're clean with me," I said. "I'll make you an
undying pledge."

"Jack, I can't handle anything emotional at the moment. I'm
humiliated and terrified. I feel like dying."

"Rose, I love you."

She placed a finger vertically across my lips. "Never say
that," she said. "Never say I love you. It brings bad
luck." She rolled away. "I feel wretched and tired and I
don't want to talk about it any more."

"What did your father do?" I asked her. "For a job, I
mean."

"Why? What does that have to do with anything?"

"I was just curious."

"He was a minister of the church," she said quietly.

"Jesus."

"Hardly."

She had silenced me. She snuggled a little closer and threw
an arm over me. "I'll go to sleep now," she said. And she
did. I looked at the side wall for a few hours, cramped and
unable to turn or move.