Love and Honor

(Author's Note: The TV show never explained how Bonnie carried out her seduction of Adam, and I thought it would be clever to use their common interest in art. By necessity this chapter is more sexual than most, but I think I've stayed within the bounds of the T rating.)

Chapter 4 Meditations

Mom glared at her. "Watch your language, young lady. And how dare you eavesdrop on a private conversation?"

"You're just embarrassed that I heard you guys talk dirty."

"You're grounded for the evening. Go to your room."

"But I want to hear about Bonnie."

"I don't care what you want. Go to your room."

Joan obediently started for the stairs, but she couldn't resist sounding off. "I get praised by a judge, but when I get home I'm grounded. That whore steals my boyfriend, and everybody wants to help her out. What do I have to do to get respect around here, get myself knocked up?"

"Joan!"

Joan got to her room, slammed the door, and lay on her bed crying.

Sex confused her terribly. Her upbringing had lacked religious rules as to its rightness or wrongness, and God had been curiously noncommittal on the subject. Sex had filled Lily with delight, yet having it forced on her by a rapist in college had traumatized her Mom for years. Luke had once boasted to Joan that "I intend to get rid of my virginity at soon as possible", yet now that he had found a wonderful (if eccentric) girl in Grace, he showed no tendency to rush things. And Joan herself didn't know what she wanted. She had been about to take the plunge, six months ago, but when Adam caressed her hip she panicked, realizing that she wasn't ready to surrender her body to a man, even Adam. And as a result she had lost Adam to a slut with nothing to offer except the sex.

KNOCKNOCK. "It's Lily. May I come in?"

"I'm grounded."

"I don't count; I'm family. May I come in?"

Joan wiped off her tears. "All right, if you insist. Come to gloat?"

Lily walked in, looking solemn. "Nah. Just wanted to explain some things."

"Go ahead," Joan said fatalistically.

"I'm a counselor, and even though I'm not allowed to hear confessions, people do tell me things on the assumption that I'll keep their secrets. You should be proud that the judge took an interest in you, but if you become a lawyer, people are going to expect you to keep things confidential too. So learn to respect privacy, will you?"

Joan wrenched her mind off of Adam and onto the current subject. She realized that her notion of privacy and been rather skewed for two years because of her friendship with a Being who always knew what she was doing or thinking. And yet God did respect privacy in a way. Though privy to the thoughts of everybody else in the world, he never betrayed them to Joan. That, in fact, was probably part of the frustrating secrecy of her missions; He couldn't tell her in advance what people were going to do. Joan tried to put herself in a purely human frame of mind.

"I'm sorry, Lily. I was mainly concerned to hear about Kevin and whether he could, you know -- it wasn't to be kinky. I want him to be happy."

"I understand. I'll tell Helen that you apologized and maybe she'll let you out." Lily rummaged in the pocket of her jeans and removed her hand, still empty. "Crap. I gave up smoking for Kevin's sake, but I still reach for a cigarette when I get tense."

"Nuns say 'crap'?" asked Joan, amused.

"Ex-nuns going through nicotine withdrawal do. Never mind. I've got something more positive to say. A few weeks ago I told Luke that, if something comes up and he can't talk to his parents about it, he can come to me. I'm making the same offer to you."

It occurred to Joan that Lily, who had devoted a decade of her life to an unseen God, might understand Joan's peculiar service better than any of her other acquaintances. If Luke and Grace had not been let into the secret recently, Joan might have been tempted to talk about it. But there was no urgency about it now.

"Thanks, Lily. Maybe sometime in the future---

---

While Joan was lying in bed meditating on sex, her former rival was doing the same in the Rove residence half a mile away. But while Joan was dwelling on ambivalence, Bonnie was recalling a plan of seduction that had worked, though with unforeseen consequences.

About six months ago her life had been transformed, as she found her hobby of painting merging into the grand tradition of Art. Joan Girardi had been the one to introduce her, and Mrs. G was the purveyor of information, but to Bonnie, Adam was the symbol of the brave new world. He was totally different from any other boy she knew, quiet and sensitive and devoid of machismo. But rumor said that he was sleeping with Joan, and Bonnie did not want to poach on another girl's turf.

That had changed during one lesson in which Mrs. G had shown the class computer images of famous artworks. Bonnie was intrigued by the fact that famous artists could paint pictures of woman with no clothes on, without being accused of producing pornography. Adam, however, had looked troubled at those same pictures. She asked him about it after class.

"Well, um, I've never looked at a naked woman before, except in other pictures. It's disturbing."

"You're kidding. What about your Joan?"

"Jane? We've never been intimate, and she's rather bashful about her body. There was an incident last year when some girl took her picture changing in the locker room, and she was terribly embarrassed, even though it didn't reveal much. It's complicated."

It might be complicated to Adam, but it was a liberating discovery to Bonnie. If Adam wasn't sleeping with Joan, then they weren't really lovers, and that made him fair game. And she also knew his weakness.

Just before the next art class, she took Adam aside. "Hey, Adam, have you considered painting one of those nudie things? I'm willing to model, if you like."

"Nah, it'd be awkward. Besides, abstract sculpture is more my thing." But she thought she saw a flicker of interest before he turned her down.

During class she tried to think of another approach. She was far too young to remember a film scene in which the heroine invited the hero to "come up and look at my etchings", but she arrived at a similar idea.

"Adam, I've got a lot of cool pictures I've drawn at home. Why don't you come take a look? I can't bring them to school, or Price'd have a fit." That last sentence was the clincher; Vice Principal Price was the bete noire of all Adam's friends, and even Mrs. G was said to hate him. Adam agreed to visit that Monday after school.

During the weekend Bonnie rented a special camera that could be programmed with a timer. Then, while her parents were safely away at some sports event, she took off her clothes and let it photograph her at various angles. Front, back, and side views, in unconscious imitation of an occasion when she had been taken to the police station and had her mug-shot taken. When the computer printed out the digital shots, the frontal view was too bold even for her, but she decided to pin up the other two with her paintings and sketches.

Adam, arriving after school on Monday, was irritatingly slow to notice, dwelling on her paintings first. "You've had an unhappy life, I see. I recognize the symptoms. Back after my Mom killed herself, I tried to express my grief in my art, and apparently you had the same outlet." Finally he noticed one of the pictures. "What's this?"

"Oh, I decided to try one of those nudie pictures that Mrs. G was talking about. I'll use that as a model."

"Who's the woman?"

"Me," said Bonnie with some exasperation. "You think some other girl would let me take a picture of her butt? And that's me too."

Adam looked, and it was clear that the pictures fascinated him, and not just in an artistic way. But not enough to follow up her advantage.

"Hey, why don't you take those two pictures and have a try at the nudie thing? I've got duplicates."

Adam seemed to accept the pretext, and when he left he had the two pictures in his pocket.

During the following week Adam avoided her, even sitting at a distance in art class. But she found out later that Adam had consulted a friend named Friedmann who claimed to have a very active love life. Adam had complained that he tended to deal with life in the form of striking visual images, and at the moment he was struck by images of lust. Jane would shocked if he even mentioned them. Friedmann, quoting somebody named Oscar the Wild, advised him that "The best way to get rid of a temptation is to give in to it."

That weekend, during her parents' absence, Adam paid a call on Bonnie, stammering for worse than she had ever seen. "I don't think I can resist any longer -- will you --? I've brought protection."

She would, and she did.

Now it was four months later. She had another man's child in her womb, and anxious thoughts filled her brain, and all that pursuit of pleasure seemed to be from another life. But Adam had come through, giving her shelter, with no thought of resuming their affair. Simple human decency? A hint of a bond? Love? She didn't know, but at least she had chosen the right man.

(to be continued)