Crossroads

As soon as she had the thought, she knew what she wanted. She wanted to fall, and by falling to deepen her relationship with Tanner and Jesus. And she knew exactly how it would happen.

Her fervor for Crossroads had cooled when her father returned to the group, and she’d been too busy with Tanner to earn the “hours” she needed to be eligible for Arizona. Kim Perkins and David Goya had pressured her to do some marathon last-minute hours-earning, so she could join them in Kitsillie, but when the trip roster for Kitsillie was posted she saw the name not only of her father but of Frances Cottrell. Kim and David still expected Becky to come along with them, but now she had a better plan for Easter vacation. She wouldn’t give herself to Tanner in his van. She would do it with proper ceremony, in the privacy of her otherwise empty house.

Her only misgivings were related to her family. She was disgusted with her father, because she had reason to believe that he was trespassing against her mother, committing adultery with Mrs. Cottrell. Although Becky wouldn’t trespass against anyone by giving herself to Tanner, she would still, in a sense, be sinking to her father’s level. Worse yet, she’d be sinking to Clem’s, and she was very sorry to give him that satisfaction.

She hadn’t missed Clem at Christmas, not one bit. His insult of Tanner, his uttering of the word passive, continued to rankle in her heart, and she was sure he would ridicule her discovery of God as well. The mere sight of his empty bedroom, the reminder of the many late nights when she’d lain down on his bed and confided in him, was upsetting to her, vaguely sickening. Her aversion was so strong that it extended to Tanner’s room at his parents’ house. When Tanner showed it to her, during Christmas vacation, she gave it a once-over from the doorway without going in. The room reeked of Laura, who’d been a kind of foster sister to him, a sister he had sex with, and Becky wanted nothing to do with it.

When her parents, at Christmas dinner, in a rare moment of unity, lamented Clem’s betrayal of the family’s pacifism, she didn’t say a word in his defense. When Tanner, to her surprise, declared that he was blown away by the courage of Clem’s moral convictions, she insisted that Clem was just being an asshole. When Clem proceeded to send her a letter, apologizing for missing the holidays and laying out his rationale for quitting school, she crumpled it and tossed it in her wastebasket, because he hadn’t apologized for insulting Tanner, and when he began to leave phone messages with her mother, asking Becky to call him at such-and-such time on such-and-such day, she ignored them.

The night before he caught up with her, in February, she’d accompanied the Bleu Notes to a cocktail lounge surprisingly more crowded than it had been in January. Parties of older women had claimed the tables nearest the band, and they were obviously there—drinking away, spending money—because of Tanner. Halfway through the second set, Gig Benedetti himself showed up and joined her at a table in the rear. Gig did the booking for a great many bands, and it pleased her to think that by letting him admire her looks and touch her elbow, by letting him believe they had a private understanding, she’d increased his attention to Tanner. “It hurts me to say it,” Gig said, “but you were right. He’s better off without what’s-her-name. He’s packing in the ladies, and that’s dynamite.” To be complimented on her intelligence, and to see the adoring expressions of Tanner’s fans, to hear their tipsy hooting when he strapped on his twelve-string and played a solo number, and to know that she was the girl who got to be alone with him: she was almost too happy with her life to breathe.