“What dilemma was that?”
“My feelings,” he reminded her, poking her in the ribs. “My heart.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “Oh, yeah. Those. But didn’t you say they wouldn’t make any difference in what you end up doing? So what’s the big deal?”
“I was opening up to you.”
“And I’m opening up to you.”
“And as usual, between two people, no real connection.”
“Really?” she said. “Because I think there is one. I’m saying that I want you to succeed.”
“You’ve said that before. But you don’t mean it.”
“I don’t know. I think I do.”
“But you say that I can’t.”
“Yeah. That’s the problem.”
“Poor you.”
“Poor you,” she echoed.
“We’re getting so deep here.”
“Deep?”
“You really do act like you’re above this,” he noted. “What I’m doing. It doesn’t interfere with your fundamental existential crises.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. It’s another tactic.”
“Can’t it be that,
and
the truth?” she asked him.
“The truth. Sure. Let’s go with that.”
He shifted positions suddenly, fast the way he always moved. She breathed in sharply. He climbed on top of her and sat on her pelvis.
“What was it like?” he asked. “To lose your son?”
“You think this will do the trick?” she said as calmly as she could, fighting off the panic.
“Just answer.”
She threw her head back and then brought it forward again, to look at him. “It was bad. It made me sad.”
“How, exactly?”
“Were you ever a
Buffy
fan?”
“Uh. No.”
“She said it better than I could, even if it’s not exactly the same situation.”
“Really?
Buffy
?”
“I take my insights where I find them. I’m not proud.”
He smiled. “Go on.”
“I’ve never forgotten it. She said: ‘I sacrificed Angel to save the world. I loved him so much. But I knew ... what was right. I don’t have that anymore. I don’t understand. I don’t know how to live in this world if these are the choices. If everything just gets stripped away. I don’t see the point.’”
There were tears in her eyes.
“It was just a TV show.”
“Funny.”
“Who was Angel?”
“Angel is anything you loved that you gave up because you thought there was a reason, a purpose, that it was worthwhile. You see? The funny thing here is that neither one of us has any purpose really. We’re both nihilists. You’re doing this because you personally enjoy it, and I’m just mindlessly surviving. But there is no point.”
“Can’t destruction be a purpose?”
“No.”
“Wait. In that TV show. Even though she says that. There was a point, wasn’t there?”
She thought for a moment.
“Yes. There was. The same point there ever was. Fighting evil and sacrificing for the ones you loved.”
“And that’s why you stayed alive,” he concluded.
She flashed him a grim smile. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“You are really something,” he said. “You use emotional honesty as a weapon.”
“I have to use what I have.”
“Everything you’ve said is true, but it’s all about influencing me.”
“Isn’t that the name of the game? It’s never about us, is it, your victims? It’s only ever about you,” she said.
And she looked at him then with something like complicity. Their eyes met and held, and she had a half-smile on her face. And he knew that, as he had suspected at the beginning, and then, strangely, found himself hoping: finally, he was understood. And there is nothing so seductive as that.
And strangely, after their drunken
tête-à-tête
, he had let her rest.
And when she woke up this time, close to sober, her world had shifted slightly but definitively yet again.
There was something different about the way he looked at her, the way he talked to her. For a few moments, she could tell, he wasn’t playing the game. She had succeeded beyond her intentions. She had actually gotten under his skin. He liked her. She disregarded the full horror of that, of this monster believing that they were even the same species, let alone that his affection would be welcomed.
And yet she felt for him.
Even though he was right about her attempting to turn this to her advantage. Even though she knew that she would have to be the one to break the truce because he would never believe in it anyway. He was always right. She
was
being careful, even if she was being honest, too. Because they had now reached the mind-bending point where the question was not whether she could trust him, but whether he could trust her. And of course he couldn’t, and he knew that. But part of him wanted to. Part of him wanted there to be hope. She knew something about that.
And she saw already how this was going to go. Because he knew he couldn’t trust her or his own feelings about her, he was going to be very much worse to her very soon. In disappointment, in anger, in grief for what could never be. She’d be on the receiving end of all that.
She needed to let all that happen without letting him know that she knew that it would.
What did Sarah Connor say in
The Terminator
? “God, you can go crazy thinking about all this.”
She wondered if she already had.
He ran his finger down the side of her face. She expressed neither disgust nor pleasure. His penis was inside her again, as he lay on top of her, but he wasn’t moving it at the moment, just looking at her.
“What do you want me to say now?” she asked finally.
“I’m waiting to see,” he said.
She tilted her head back and gazed at the ceiling.
“You know. Anybody can do what you do,” she said.
“Really? I thought I was special.”
“Everybody is vulnerable at some time or other to those closest to them. Husbands to wives, children to parents, siblings to siblings, roommates to roommates. Almost everyone could do this to one another, but most of us don’t. We don’t feel the need. We’re not that cruel. People like you are special.”
“See?”
“I mean, I’m sure that you’ve constructed a whole philosophy around doing what you’re doing, and why it makes you superior to the rest of us, but you know, deep down, that’s bullshit. You’re not better; you’re just more desperate somehow.”
“No one has ever talked to me this way. Most people wouldn’t even know that they should.”
“You mean they’ve been too busy to focus on you, while you’re torturing them.”
“Exactly.”
“People are so self-absorbed,” she noted.
“Aren’t they?”
“Yes. Of course, some people are terribly cruel,” she added musingly. “Or crazy. And they can do awful, awful things. Because most people don’t expect it. Can’t imagine it.”
“Are you talking about me?’
“No. Just horrible stories that pop up now and then. About people who do terrible things to other people.”
“What’s your point?”
She shrugged with her eyebrows. “I’m not sure. Just that when it happens, it’s shocking. Cruelty beyond even you.”
“You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“No. I mean really psycho stuff. Ted Bundy, Ed Gein stuff. Don’t feel miffed because you’re not that kind of crazy-horrible. ‘You’ll do,’ as Jimmy Stewart says in
The Philadelphia Story
.”
He smiled. Then he moved his face closer to hers and kissed her on the mouth. He kissed her for some time. Then moved back and forth inside her.
She exhaled in relief when he stopped. But he stayed in position, on top of her.
“For some people,” he said, “the ability to do anything you want makes you want to do anything you want. Whether it’s a father to his child or me to you.”
“Whether you mean it to be or not, this is just another test. And whatever I do, I will lose. Because I believe you. I don’t think you’re going to change your life for me, however much you may be tempted or think you may be tempted.”
“What did you want to see happen in that book?”
“Book?” she asked.
“About the serial killers.”
“Oh. That. Well. That’s the problem. I never figured that out. I’m not a writer. I know that’s what the writer should have figured out. I only know that their meeting each other should have had an effect. Should have changed them.”
“Stopped them from killing?”
“Maybe. Why should they need to kill, once they had found understanding, once they had found love? But then that pits a brand-new feeling against long-time habits, habits that, for their psychological needs, had served them well. Which gives way under those circumstances?”
“You’re talking about me?”
“Am I?”
He smiled. “Of course. The question would be, can I change? Can I be anything but what I am? Especially if I know that there really is no future with you? That whatever I do, you’re not going to change? Should I change anyway? Simply because of the way I may feel?”
“I’m uncomfortable with this conversation,” she said.
“I’ll bet you are. Your life may depend on it.”
“Ok,” she said. “Then I have an idea. I’ll argue against, play devil’s advocate. You argue for.”
“Nice. I like it. An elegant solution to your predicament.”
“Thank you.”
“More evidence of why I am tempted.”
“Well, first, I’m not sure I believe that you really are tempted. Not really. I think you’re enjoying just playing with the notion in your head, the idea that, given the right motivation, you could be anything else but what you are.”
He couldn’t stop smiling. “You may have a point. Since I never have felt or done anything like this before, it could be just a notion, a fantasy. But you really do something to me. I’ve loved every minute of this in a way I never have before. I feel something I’ve never felt before.”
“Merely that you’re facing what you consider a worthy opponent. My particular constellation of personality traits happens to be the perfect set for dealing with someone like you. Most people are too innocent, too optimistic.”
“But if one faces the perfect opponent,” he said, “then doesn’t that mean the fight should go on forever? And that means it becomes a relationship. I guess one very important piece of data would be whether there is even the slightest chance that you could want to be with me. Voluntarily.”
“No. The answer is absolutely no. And even if it was yes, you wouldn’t believe me. So I’ll just stick with no.”