3 out of 5

At a party, 18 year old Rhoda bemusedly dances with the 27 year old Tony.  He’s not a catch, necessarily, but something of an intriguing mystery.

A week later, this intrigue has blossomed and they date, Rhoda taken with those most mundane activities of older, single living – bowling, drinking beer – that come across as mature and considered in comparison to the gropey hands and boasts of the boys her age.  Tony the butcher; Tony with the unspoken past, save a story about the uncle who gave him a keepsake coin necklace.  Rhoda calls her single mom Maryann; Rhoda’s a bit self-conscious about Tony’s age but still vibing on the thrill of the unknowns.

And at another party, the magic perhaps wearing off, she shrugs and skinny dips, leading to being trotted out by her boyfriend and asked, sternly, the question put forth in the title.

There’s no violence in Danny Lorberbaum’s short; no direct threat.  But it is a tale of subdued menace.  We flip to Tony’s side of the equation intermittently and hear a monologue both recognizable and frightening; average dude concerns that, in a certain light, can become frightening thoughts that encourage frightening actions.

Things might be a bit too subdued, however.  I wrote a story many years back for which I outlined the characters and dialogue to heck, coding in all these behaviors and hints that would suggest an underlying ominousness.  And I think people got that from the way the story was told, but I had pushed everything too far into the background to generate much actual interest.  There was no reason to consider those coded behaviors; they just existed in the world of the story.

And that’s sort of where I’m left with this.  It was wise to give us Rhoda as a narrative anchor, and wiser still to make her a fully fleshed out young adult and not a simple-minded innocent, but she’s also not particularly compelling as a character – she’s just the avenue by which we meet Toby.  And Tony is too buried to provoke much contemplation.

Danny’s writing absolutely radiates the right mood: we are anxiously waiting for a shoe to drop in this relationship.  But the character work that tip toes in via Tony’s inner monologue, though finely tuned, keeps the reader at enough of a distance to prevent the story from having a lasting effect.