By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham Page A

idiot, I knew what sex sounded like, and if I’d thought I heard Julie having sex with some boy in the garden room, I’d have left her alone.”
    “But somebody was stomping a foot in there.”
    “I couldn’t tell what it was. I didn’t know Julie was even home . I think if I hadn’t just had this huge fight with Joe, I might have been scared. But I was so furious. I sort of thought, All right, if you’re an escaped lunatic and you’ve got an axe and you’re sitting in my house stomping your foot, you have no idea who you’re messing with.”
    “You investigated.”
    “I did.”
    “And found?”
    “Julie with Beau Baxter, who she’d been dating, and Beau’s best friend, Tom Reeves.”
    “What were they doing?”
    “They were having sex.”
    “All three of them?”
    “More like, the two boys with Julie.”
    “Details.”
    “Are you touching yourself?”
    “Maybe.”
    “This is so wrong.”
    “That’s part of what’s sexy about it.”
    “I feel like I’m betraying her.”
    “This is making me love Julie, if that makes any difference.”
    “If you put a move on my sister . . .”
    “Oh, for God’s sake. Just tell me what you saw when you walked into the room.”
    “This was a mistake.”
    “Okay. Tell me what the thumping was.”
    “Hm? Oh. Beau was kicking the floor.”
    “Why?”
    “He just was.”
    “Come on.”
    “Okay. Because he was . . . screwing her. From behind. And, I don’t know, I guess when he got excited he was a foot-thumper.”
    “Where was the other guy?”
    “Guess.”
    “Julie was sucking his dick. Right?”
    “I’m not saying another word.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I left.”
    “Do you want to make up a version where you stayed?”
    “Not for all the money in the world.”
    “Were you upset?”
    “Yes.”
    “Because you saw your sister having group sex.”
    “Not just that.”
    “What, then?”
    “It all seemed so . . . ugly. Joe had been an asshole to me and here was my sister just sort of servicing these two idiots . . .”
    “You don’t think they were servicing her?”
    “She and I talked about that, after.”
    “And?”
    “She said it had been her idea.”
    “Did you believe her?”
    “I wanted to. I mean, it was her senior year, she’d made the national finals and she was going to Barnard. She seemed sort of . . . heroic, to me.”
    “So?”
    “I still didn’t buy it. She was the most competitive person I’d ever known. And really, I figured out how it must have gone. Even dumb old Beau Baxter was capable of understanding that after a few drinks, she wouldn’t turn down a dare. I knew she’d have to think of it afterward as having been her idea. She’d have to tell herself she’d been the one in power. Which sort of made it worse.”
    “You were a nice girl.”
    “I was not .”
    “Nicer than Julie.”
    “Not really.”
    “You don’t think so?”
    “I had sex with Beau two days later. Correction. I fucked Beau two days later.”
    “You’re joking.”
    “He came up to me at a party to apologize, supposedly embarrassed but actually so damned pleased with himself.”
    “And you . . .”
    “I told him to follow me.”
    “Where’d you take him?”
    “Into the garden. It was this big house where they had a lot of parties, and there was a garden.”
    “And . . .”
    “I told him to fuck me. Right there, on the wet grass.”
    “No way.”
    “I’d had it. I’d had it with my asshole boyfriend and I’d had it with my slutty sister who thought she had to win every single contest and I’d had it with being the innocent younger sister who got hysterical when she saw people fucking in the garden room. That night I still thought I’d left my boyfriend forever, plus I’d drunk almost a full pint of cheap vodka and I just wanted to straddle the dick of that big stupid boy who’d humiliated my sister. I didn’t like him, but at that moment I wanted to fuck him more than I’d ever wanted to do anything in