Purity (44 page)

“It's fine,” he said with that smile.

“It's not that I didn't like the way you made me feel.”

“Truly, it's fine.” Without kissing her, without even looking at her, he got up and went to the door. He straightened his shirt and hitched up his pants.

“Please don't be angry with me.”

“I'm the opposite of angry,” he said, not looking at her. “I'm mad for you. Quite unexpectedly mad for you.”

“I'm sorry.”

In the Land Cruiser, to salvage some shred of dignity, she told Pedro that El Ingeniero had needed help with his
negocios
. Pedro, in reply, seemed to say that El Ingeniero's work was very complicated and beyond his understanding, but that he didn't have to understand it to be a good overseer at Los Volcanes.

When they got home, long after midnight, a light was still burning in Colleen's room. Deciding that lies were better told fresh than stale, Pip went straight up the stairs to the room. Colleen was in bed with a workbook and a pencil.

“You're up late,” Pip said.

“Studying for the Vermont bar. I've had this book for a year. Tonight seemed like a good night to finally open it. How was Santa Cruz?”

“I wasn't in Santa Cruz.”

“Right.”

“I lost a big filling at breakfast. Pedro had to take me to the dentist. And then he hit a speed bump too hard and broke an axle. I spent like six hours sitting outside a garage.”

Colleen carefully made a mark in the workbook with her pencil. “You're a terrible liar.”

“I'm not lying.”

“There isn't a
rompemuelles
within two hundred miles that Pedro doesn't know.”

“He was talking to me. He didn't see it.”

“Just get the fuck out of my room, all right?”

“Colleen.”

“It's not personal. You're not the person I'm hating. I knew this would happen sometime. I'm just sorry it was you. There was a lot to like about you.”

“I like you so much, too.”

“I said get out of here.”

“You're being crazy!”

Finally Colleen looked up from the workbook. “Really? You want to lie to me? You want to prolong this?”

Pip's eyes filled. “I'm sorry.”

Colleen turned a page in her book and made a show of reading. Pip stood for a while longer in the doorway, but Colleen was right. There was nothing else to say.

In the morning, instead of taking a hike, Pip went to breakfast with the others. Colleen wasn't there, but Pedro was. He'd already told the story of his and Pip's ill-fated trip to the dentist. If Willow and the others were suspicious, they didn't show it. Pip was sick with general dread and specific guilt about Colleen, but to everyone else it was just another day of Sunlight.

Colleen left two days later. She'd been discreet about her reasons, saying only that it was time to move on, and once she was safely gone the other girls were frankly patronizing about her depression and her lovesickness for Andreas; their consensus was that her departure was a much-needed step toward restoring her self-esteem. Which, in a way, it was. But Pip inwardly burned with loyalty to her, and with guilt.

When Andreas returned, he gave Colleen's job as business manager to the Swede, Anders. But since no one imagined that Anders was specially dear to Andreas, Colleen's position at the top of the pecking order went to the person whom everybody knew Andreas particularly liked, the person whose presence at Los Volcanes was known to be more extraordinary than their own. Now it was Pip beside whom Andreas sat down for dinner, Pip whose table filled up first. To her vast amusement, tiny Flor was suddenly eager to be her friend. Flor even asked to join her on a hike, to experience for herself the smells that Pip had raved about, and once Flor had hiked with her the other girls vied for the same privilege.

The less than healthy satisfaction Pip took in being socially central for once in her life was linked in her mind to the memory of Andreas's tongue and how explosively her body had responded to it. Even the dirtiness she'd felt afterward was agreeable in hindsight, in a wicked sort of way. She imagined an arrangement whereby she continued to receive the favor from time to time, and he could trust her, and she could have her dirty pleasure. He'd implied it himself: he was one of those cunnilingus guys. Surely some mutually satisfactory arrangement could be worked out.

But the weeks went by, August becoming September, and though Pip was now a full-fledged researcher, handling simpler assignments on her own and devoting her free time to laborious searches of databases for the name Penelope Tyler, Andreas still avoided talking to her one-on-one the way he did with Willow and many of the others. She understood that she was supposed to be spying for him, and that they should never be seen having hushed conspiratorial talks. But the spying thing seemed ridiculous to her—the only vibe she ever got off anyone was overpowering sincerity—and she began to feel that she was being punished by him; that she'd hurt him and shamed him by refusing to have sex with him. His unfailingly warm and affectionate manner with her meant nothing; she knew very well that he was a master dissembler; he'd all but said it himself, and his incessant talk of trust and honesty only proved it. Underneath, she became convinced, he was angry with her and regretted having trusted her.

And so, day by day, seduced by tongue and popularity, she formed the resolve to give him everything he wanted the next time they were alone.
Quite unexpectedly mad for you
: that still had to be operable, didn't it? She wasn't mad for him, but she was curious, sexually botherated, and increasingly resolute. She began looking for opportunities to accost him in private. Someone always seemed to follow him out of the barn to the tech building; Pedro or Teresa always seemed to be within earshot when he was alone in the main building. But one afternoon, toward the end of September, she looked out a window and saw him sitting by himself in a far corner of the goat pasture, facing the forest.

She hurried outside and crossed the pasture so briskly that the goats scattered. Andreas must have heard her coming, but he didn't turn around until she reached him and saw that he'd been crying. It reminded her of something; of Stephen crying on their front porch in Oakland.

He patted the grass. “Sit down.”

“What is it?”

“Just sit down. I got bad news.”

Mindful of their visibility, she sat down at some distance from him.

“My mother is sick,” he said. “Kidney cancer. I just found out.”

“I'm so sorry,” Pip said. “I didn't know you were even in touch with her.”

“She doesn't hear from me. But I still hear from her.”

“Should I leave you alone?”

“Was there something you wanted?”

“It's not important.”

“I'd much rather hear about you than think about her.”

“Is it bad, her cancer? What stage is it?”

He shrugged. “She wants to come and see me. Does that sound good? It's not as if I can travel to her. That's some small blessing. I'm spared that decision.”

“I feel like hugging you. But I don't want to be seen doing it.”

“That's good. You've been very good, by the way.”

“Thank you. Although … Are you mad at me?”

“Certainly not.”

She nodded, wondering whether to believe him.

“I've spent most of my life hating her,” he said. “I told you some of the reasons I hate her. But now I get this email and I remember that they weren't the real reasons, or not the whole reason. They're half the reason. The other half is that I can never stop loving her, in spite of all those other reasons. I forget about this, for years at a time. But then I get this email…”

He expelled air, either a laugh or a sob. Pip didn't dare look to see which it was. “Maybe the love is more important than the hate,” she said.

“I'm sure for you it would be.”

“Well, anyway. I'm sorry.”

“Did you need to talk to me privately? Should we make some arrangement?”

“No. Either I'm a terrible spy or you were just being paranoid.”

“Then what did you want?”

She turned to him and showed him, with the look on her face, what she wanted.

His eyes, which were bloodshot, widened. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

She looked down at the ground and spoke in a low voice. “I feel really bad about what happened the other time. I think it could be better. I mean, if that's at all interesting to you.”

“It is. Absolutely. I'd hardly dared hope.”

“I'm sorry. You asked what I wanted, but I shouldn't have answered. Not now.”

“No, it's fine.” He sprang to his feet, his grief apparently forgotten. “I have to go to town next week, to see her. I was dreading that, but now I'm not. Let me think about how to get you there with me. How does that sound?”

Pip struggled to find breath to answer. “Sounds good,” she said.

One of the insaner things about the Project was that private electronic communication was impossible. The internal network was designed so that all chats and emails were viewable by anyone on the network, because everything was viewable to the tech boys and it wasn't fair to give them an advantage. If a girl wanted to hook up with a boy (and it happened quite a bit, though the boys were physically a less prepossessing lot), she arranged it either openly on the network or in person. And so it was that Andreas pressed a handwritten note into Pip's hand when she was leaving the main building the following night.

Be happy: your spying days may be over. No plausible story is available. You're coming with me because I'm meeting potential investors and you're the intern whose judgement I most trust. But think carefully about whether you're ready for the others to see you differently. I'll accept whatever you decide. Please burn this.—A.

On the veranda, above the dark river, Pip burned the note with a lighter that Colleen had left behind. She missed Colleen and wondered if she herself was in for three years of being strung along, but she also felt victorious and capable. She'd gone deeper into the dark river than Colleen had, deeper than just her knees, and she was pretty sure she'd already gone farther with Andreas. It was all very strange and would have felt even stranger if her life hadn't been so strange to begin with. To her the strangest thought of all was that she might be extraordinarily appealing. It went against everything she believed in—or at least against everything she
wanted
to believe in; because, deep down, in her most honest heart, maybe every person considered herself extraordinarily appealing. Maybe this was just a human thing.

“Do I get to meet your mother?” she asked Andreas a week later, when Pedro was driving them up the steep road out of the valley.

“Do you want to? Annagret was the only woman of mine who ever did. My mother was very kind to her, until she wasn't.”

Pip was too disturbed by the phrase
woman of mine
to answer. Did the phrase now apply to her? It sounded like it did.

“She's very seductive,” Andreas said. “You'd probably like her. Annagret liked her a lot—until she didn't.”

Pip rolled down her window, put her face to the cool early-morning air, and whispered, “Am I your woman.” She didn't think Andreas could hear her, but it was possible he had.

“You're my confidante,” he said. “I'd be interested in what your good sense has to say about her.”

He put his hand on her upper thigh and left it there. Pretty much every thought she'd had in the last week had led back to one thing. She was experiencing stronger symptoms of being in love, a queasiness more persistent, a heart more racing, than she remembered having had with Stephen. But the symptoms were ambiguous. A condemned person walking to the gallows had many of the same ones. When Andreas's hand crept, thrillingly, to the inside of her thigh, she had neither the courage nor even the inclination to place a corresponding hand on his leg. The rightness of the phrase
preyed upon
was becoming evident. The feelings of prey in the grip of a wolf's teeth were hard to distinguish from being in love.

Her Spanish was enough improved that she followed everything Andreas said to Pedro. Pedro was to be at the Cortez at six o'clock the next morning. Andreas would probably be waiting for him, but if he wasn't, Pedro was to proceed to the airport with a sign that said
KATYA WOLF
and bring her to the hotel.

Evidently Andreas intended to spend all day and all night and possibly the next morning with Pip alone. How absurd that they first had to sit together in the back seat for three hours while Pedro braked for speed bumps. What a torture, these
rompemuelles
.

I am in love
, she decided.
I'm the least beautiful girl at Los Volcanes, but I'm funny and brave and honest and he chose me. He can break my heart later—I don't care.

At the Cortez, he instructed her to wait in the lobby for fifteen minutes before joining him in his room. She watched damp-haired, morning-faced travelers surrendering room keys. It seemed to be no time of day in no place on earth. A Latin businessman idling by the reception desk was looking intently at her chest. She rolled her eyes; he smiled. He was an insect compared to the man who was waiting for her.

She found him sitting with his tablet at the desk in his room. A tray of sandwiches and cut-up fruit was on the bed. “Have some food,” he said.

“Do I seem hungry?”

“Your stomach seems sensitive. It's important that you eat.”

She hazarded some papaya, which according to her mother was soothing to the stomach.

“What would you like to do today?” he said.

“I don't know. Is there a particular church or museum I'm supposed to see?”