Purity (45 page)

“I don't love being seen in public. But, yes, the old town center is worth seeing.”

“You could wear sunglasses and a funny hat.”

“Is that what you want?”

The papaya made her burp. She felt that she had to stop being prey, to somehow take the initiative. She was still disinclined to touch him, but she walked over behind him and forced herself to put her hands on his shoulders. She ran them down onto his chest. It had to be done.

He took hold of her wrists so she couldn't get away.

“I thought you never laid a hand on interns,” she said. “I thought it was bad press.”

“Serially bedding them would be bad press,” he said. “Falling in love with one of them is a very different story.”

Her knees quaked. “Did you actually just say that?”

“I did.”

The wooden spoon, the wooden spoon.

“OK, then,” she said, sinking to the floor.

He let go of her wrists, extricated himself from the desk, and kneeled in front of her.

“Pip,” he said. “I know I'm old. Probably as old as your father. But I have a young heart—I don't have much experience with real love. Probably not much more than you do. This is new and frightening for me, too.”

The wooden spoon. Her brain was churning. It was more a father than a lover to whom she now pressed herself in her fear; more a father whom she clutched for safety. And yet, the night before, she'd trimmed her personal hair for him with a razor. She was massively confused. He held her tightly, stroking her head.

“Do you like me at all?” he said.

She nodded because she knew he wanted her to.

“A lot?” he said. “Or just a little?”

“Quite a lot,” she said for the same reason.

“I like you, too.”

She nodded again. But even though he'd made her do it, she felt bad about lying to him. If he truly was falling in love with her, it was a mean thing to do. To make up for it, she tried to say something both honest and nice. “I really liked the way you made me feel the other time. I can't stop thinking about it. I'm fairly obsessed with it. I want you to do it again.”

His body tensed at this. She worried that she'd said the wrong thing—that he'd seen through her attempt to turn their talk away from love, and was hurt. And so she kissed him. Urgently, forwardly, offering him her tongue, opening herself to him, and he responded in kind. But the sensible side of her was still semi-functioning. A laugh came out of her before she could stifle it.

“What?” he said, smiling.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I'm just wondering if we're both trying to do what neither of us actually wants.”

He seemed alarmed. “What do you mean?”

“No, just the kissing part,” she hastened to say. “You didn't seem so into the smooching last time. You were honest about that. And, honestly, it's fine with me too if we skip it.”

It happened again. Again, for a second, for less than a second, before he could turn his face away, she saw a wholly different person, a crazy person.

“You're a remarkable woman,” he said, face averted.

“Thank you.”

He stood up and walked away from her. “I mean it,” he said. “I've never felt so off balance in my life. You make me feel smaller, in a good way. I'm supposed to be the great teller of truth, and you keep cutting me down. I hate it, but I love it. I love you.” He turned back to her and said it again. “I love you.”

She blushed. “Thank you.”

“That's it?” he said wildly. “
Thank you?
Who made you this way? Where did you come from?”

“The San Lorenzo Valley. It's quite the humble, democratic place.”

He strode back over to her and yanked her to her feet. “You're driving me crazy!”

“All is not so well inside my own head, either.”

“So what are we? How do we do this? What is the way we're going to be together?”

“I don't know.”

“
Take off your fucking clothes
—does that work?”

“It has some promise.”

“So do it. Slowly. I want to watch you. Take your panties off last.”

“OK. I can do that.”

She liked taking orders from him. Liked it more than anything else about him. But as she did as she'd been told, unbuttoning one button of her shirt, and then a second button, she wasn't sure that she liked that she liked it. She wished she could unhear what Stephen had said to her, in his bedroom, about needing a father. A dread began to build in her as she undid a fourth button, and then the last. She beheld an emotional vista in which she was angry at her missing father, at all older men, and provoked and punished this father-aged man, drove him wild, induced him to offer himself as the person missing from her life; and her body responded to the offer; but it was icky to respond to him that way. She let her bra fall to the floor.

“My God you're beautiful,” he said, staring.

“I think you mean I'm young.”

“No. The inside of you is even more beautiful than the outside.”

“Keep talking,” she said. “It's helping.”

When she was finally fully naked, he dropped to his knees and pressed his face to her crotch. “You shaved for me,” he murmured gratefully.

“Who said it was for you?” she said with a faltering laugh. Being so liked by him, she was liking herself quite a lot, but it deepened her sense of dread to hear herself continuing to provoke him, and to feel the effect her provocation had. His hands were trembling on her butt. He was kissing her, inhaling her, and she could feel how it would all happen again, the same as last time, except that this time she would have to submit to the whole deal; there would be no going back on her word.

All at once, at the prospect of being fucked by him, she experienced a different kind of climax. The lack of friction with which she'd arrived at this moment, the speed and directness with which he'd arranged an assignation with her, the ease with which he'd got her standing naked in a hotel room, combined with a complex of misgivings—
father, killer, spoon-wielder, fugitive, crazy person
—to produce a simple thought: she didn't want to be his woman.

In the sober light of this thought, what they were doing seemed ridiculous.

“Um,” she said, stepping away from him. “I think I need a small time-out.”

He slumped. “Now what.”

“No, seriously, I've been looking forward to this for a month and a half. I've been touching myself every night, thinking about it. Imagining I'm you. But now—I don't know. I'm wondering if touching myself might be enough.”

He slumped further. She picked up her bra and put it on. She put on her jeans, not bothering with the underpants, which were still right in front of him.

“I'm really sorry,” she said. “I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“So what would you like to do instead?” His voice was strained with self-control. “Visit the picturesque town center?”

“Honestly I hadn't thought past going to bed with you.”

“It's still an option.”

“Maybe if you order me to. I like it when you give orders. I think I may have a slave personality.”

“That's not an order I can give. I don't want it if you don't want it. You said you wanted it.”

“I know.”

He sighed heavily. “What changed your mind?”

“It just suddenly didn't feel right to me.”

“Am I too old for you?”

“God, no. I like your age. If anything, maybe a little too much. Plus you've got that ageless German male thing going. You've got those blue eyes.”

He bowed his head. “So you just don't like who I am.”

She felt terribly sorry. She kneeled by him and petted his shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Everybody likes you,” she said. “Millions of people like you.”

“They like a lie. You're the person I showed my true self to.”

“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.” She hugged his head to her chest and rocked him a little. Her heart was reengaging with him, and she wondered if a mercy fuck was in the offing. She'd never done one, but she now saw how it happened. An ulterior part of her was further considering that, at some later date, she might take retrospective satisfaction in having fucked the famous outlaw hero, and that this was her chance to do it, and that, conversely, this future self of hers would writhe with remorse if all she'd done was lead him on and chicken out. Chicken out
twice
.

He had his face between her breasts, his hands down the back of her jeans. The fact that she'd chickened out
twice
seemed significant. She thought of what her mother had said before she left Felton with her suitcase. “I know you're very angry with me, pussycat, and you have a right to be. I worry about you in the jungle, on a different continent. I worry about you with Andreas Wolf. But the one thing I never worry about is your good moral sense. You've always been a loving person, with a clear sense of right and wrong. I know you better than you know yourself. And that's what I know about you.” Pip, who could see nothing but the mess her bad behavior made of every relationship in her life, had felt quite sure, in the moment, that her mother knew nothing at all about her. But to have recoiled from Andreas
twice
, when everything argued for submitting—didn't this mean something? Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she did have a clear moral sense. She could remember having loved Ramón and even Dreyfuss pureheartedly. What had ruined things in Oakland was her lust for Stephen, her anger at an older man.

She kissed the curly top of Andreas's head and untangled herself from him. “It's just not going to happen,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

She put on her shirt and went down to the lobby. Her decision seemed irrevocable, not even in her power, and she was prepared to sit in the lobby all day and all night if she had to. But Pedro was back with the Land Cruiser in less than an hour. She couldn't face sitting in the front with him; her body felt prickly and contaminating. She lay down in the back and waited to be overwhelmed with shame and guilt and second-guessing.

When the feelings came, they were even worse than she'd foreseen. For two days she did little but lie in bed, unresponsive to her roommates' comings and goings. She'd been flying high, liking herself, as long as she'd been liked by Andreas, but now, having incurred his displeasure, she fell into a pit of displeasure with herself. Even though she'd been the rejecter, not the rejected, the scene in the hotel room had been as bad as the one in Stephen's bedroom. It played over and over in her head, particularly the moment when she'd been naked and he'd been on his knees.

On the third day, when she managed to drag herself to dinner, she found herself unpopular again. She ate with her head down and went back to bed. Nobody was honest with her now. She couldn't tell if she was being ostracized because she was believed to have seduced Andreas or because he was known to be unhappy with her. Either way, she felt she deserved it. She composed an email epistle to Colleen, a full confession, before she realized that Colleen would only hate her more for it. She cut all but a few sentences:

You did the right thing, leaving. He really is a weird dude. All I did with him was talk, and that's all it's ever going to be. I'm not long for this place myself.

When Andreas returned, three days later, he was the same as before with her, cordial but distant, which made her feel all the guiltier. She believed that he really had told her a secret he'd told no one else at Los Volcanes—that he really had specially wanted her—and that, behind his smile, he had to be feeling hurt and ashamed. Unable to relive the moment of her decision, she fell to thinking that she'd made a ghastly mistake. What if she'd gone ahead and been his lover? What if she'd learned to be deliriously happy with him? Now his desire was bottled up inside him and she couldn't enjoy it. She thought of begging him for a third chance, but she was afraid she'd chicken out a third time. She walked around for a week with a lump of near-clinical depression in her throat. She pretended to go for hikes but sat down after the first bend in the trail and wept.

He discovered her on one of these crying jags. It was late afternoon and getting dark; rain was falling from the outskirts of a thunderhead. He came around the bend in a yellow slicker and rubber boots and saw her with her back against a tree, her arms around her knees, getting soaked.

“I came looking for you.” He crouched down by her. “I didn't realize you were so close.”

“I don't hike anymore,” she said. “I just come here and cry.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, I'm the one who's sorry. I ruined everything.”

“Don't blame yourself. I'm a grown man. I can take care of myself.”

“I'm never going to betray you,” she blubbered. “You can trust me.”

“I won't pretend that I don't love you. I do love you.”

“I'm sorry,” she blubbered.

“But here, enough of that.” He took off his slicker, draped it over her, and sat down. “Let's think about what you want to do now.”

She wiped her nose with her hand. “Just send me home,” she said. “I had one big opportunity here, and I blew it.”

“Willow tells me the search for your missing parent isn't going well.”

“Sorry, two opportunities. Two things I failed at.”

“I'm afraid that Annagret and I did you a disservice, telling you we could help. What you're looking for is pre–digital era, which makes it very hard. I spoke with Chen about you.” Chen was the chief hacker. “I asked if we could do a facial-recognition search with an older picture of your mother. It would take a lot of pirated computing power, and I'm willing to do it for you. But Chen thinks it would be a waste of time.”