They sat together in silence, next to a large open window. For now, it was a comfortable silence. They had shared it as he stared placidly at things beyond, and behind the window, while she smoked. Outside, clouds rolled ontop of one another in fat grey clumps, like curling pins in his mother's hair. And it was probably going to rain.

“Why did you fuck me?” Jake stared at his folded hands.

He said it less out of malice, and more out of curiosity. He had no intentions of accusing Julie of anything. But Jake knew he was young for what they had done. She was not. He didn't think it absurd to want to know why a 14-year-old had been bedded by her, a twenty-year-old.

“ I don't know...” she said.

Smoke escaped from between her curled lips, which were shaped like two jellybeans pressed together. She put her cigarette down and crossed her legs on the windowsill.

“You're cute…” she said, inhaling “And you remind me of my little brother.”

Jake’s inquisitive smile drooped fast into a frown. His brows furrowed into an unhappy V. He looked at her for a moment, her head leaned back to the wall, her body perched on the window, cigarette held daintly with the tips of two fingers, and he could see all of the muscles underneath her neck stretched out like a tight harp string. She looked exactly like the practiced frenchwoman she was. But he couldn't help but feel deceived by Julie.

“That's so disgusting…”  he held his hands together tighter, the dark room seemed to blend together, blue-grey colors and shadows merged into a blindness. He slouched on the opposite corner of the window, yet he felt farther away from her than he had ever felt from another person.

“You’ve really got problems.”

He tried to look at her but she did not notice. He had been exiled from the conversation, just as she had exiled herself from herself. I guess French people have that effect he thought.

She gazed out at the city, and looked entirely, completely calm. It's hard to describe the total completeness of her stillness. The tiny disturbances that are always happening all around us did nothing to sway her like a ship in the harbor. Instead, she was the lifeless anchor, not a muscle twitch or facial reflex came her way to prove life. She had in some ways become inorganic.  

“Well, you seemed to enjoy it.” Julie stared at him then, long and hard. She smiled.

“You know what?” she puffed out a small coin purse sized cloud of smoke and stood up from the window.

“What?”

She walked over to the bed, still ruffled and messy from their prepubescent lovemaking. When she came back she had his clothes, and within seconds they were no longer ensnared in her fingers. The clothes that had adorned him and protected him before he lay bare beneath her were now on the roof just below the window.

“ Now Scat,” she said.

She returned to her cigarette and perch. Jake stared at his clothes, scattered across the roof tiles. He would have to climb out to get them and then down the poles to the ground beneath where millions of people would be walking, not knowing him, not knowing what he had done, and that was a relief at least.

“ You know it's actually scram, not scat, right?”

He said, still staring at his clothes. They were getting wet with rain.

“That's the problem with Americans. They think they know everything.” She stood next to him, looming ahead with her sweaty bra and short shorts.

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

    Julie put out her cigarette on the window and burrowed into her room like a pebble dropping and sinking into the depths of a dark lake. He couldn't see her anymore.

“Well, I do know English.”

Jake stepped a slow and cautious foot out of the window and made his way towards his clothes. Julie didn't say anything more. She may have stuck out her tongue, given her appreciation of childlike behavior, but whos to say?