Barry Eisler - Fault line

He rolled off her onto his back and turned his head to look into her eyes. He wanted to say, You're beautiful, but he didn't. Instead he said, “I'm sorry.”

She laughed. “I'm not.”

“No, I meant-”

“I know what you meant.”

He sighed. “I've had a bad week.”

She turned on her side to face him, her elbow on the floor, her head propped against her hand. “I get the feeling it's been going on longer than a week,” she said gently.

“What do you mean?”

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “You have a daughter, an ex-wife, and a brother, and you never see any of them, never even talk to them. That's more than a bad week.”

“It's complicated.”

“You know what they say: ‘Take heart. The common denominator in all your dysfunctional relationships “ ‘Is you.’ Yeah, I've heard that.”

Christ, she was tough. He imagined what it would be like to be in some kind of relationship with her. He wouldn't win many arguments, that was for sure.

“Look,” he said, “you were right in the bar. I can't… I can't have them depend on me. I mean, what's worse, popping in on my daughter a few times a year, or just being gone entirely? All the first would do is make her aware of my absence, make her aware of some loss. With the second, there's no one to miss. So no loss.”

“I don't get it. If no one depends on you, you can't let anyone down, is that it?”

“That's not what I'm saying.”

“Want to know what I think?”

“Alex always asks me that. I always tell him no.”

“Does he tell you anyway?”

“Of course.”

“Then I will, too. What you're describing? It's like stealing. Stealing an inheritance the person doesn't even know she has. Will she miss the money? Will she even know it's gone, or feel diminished by its absence? No. But just because the person isn't aware of the theft doesn't make you any less a thief.”

“They teach you that in law school?”

“What happened with you and Alex, anyway?”

“We drifted.”

“Come on, no one drifts like that. He doesn't even know you were married, or that he has a niece.”

He looked away from her for a moment, trying to decide what, or whether, to tell her. He didn't know where to begin. “We had a sister,” is what came out. And he went on from there. He didn't mean to say much. But once he started talking, he found it hard to stop.

“Your poor family,” she said, when he was done. “I thought mine had problems.”

He laughed harshly. “What family? There's no one left.”

“There's you and Alex.”

“Alex blames me for the whole thing.”

“He told you that?”

“Not in those words. But he does.”

They were quiet for a moment. She said, “Did you enlist to get away from what happened with your sister?”

“No. I had decided before the accident. My parents didn't want me to. They put a lot of pressure on me, but this is what I wanted. Since I was a kid.”

“I think it's good you enlisted.”

He looked at her, surprised. “Are you serious? I thought you thought I'm a sadistic, torturing baby killer.”

“I don't think that. I was just trying to get under your skin. Anyway, that's not what I meant. I think it's good you enlisted because it's what you wanted. I wish I had your attitude about standing up to my parents. But… you were right in the bar, too. I don't know what I want.”

He didn't respond.

She said, “Why are you helping Alex?”

He looked at her. “This is helping him?”

She laughed. “He doesn't have to know about this.”

“Yeah, I think that's best.”

“Why, though? I mean, you're so estranged and everything. And yet, here you are.”

He thought about it for a moment. The bottom line was, he wasn't sure himself.

“He needs my help,” is all he could think to say.

He wanted her to ask more. Maybe it would help him figure it out.

Instead she said, “You really think he's… interested in me?”

“Come on, look at you.”

“That's all you're going on?”

“Believe me, that's a lot. But no. Like I said, I can tell. What about you? You were never interested in him?”

There was a pause. She said, “He's a good-looking guy, and there's a lot to like. But… I don't know, he reminds me of the guys I went out with in college and law school. I don't want to keep repeating myself.”

“What do I remind you of?”

She looked at him. “You don't remind me of anything. But at the same time, you do.”

He shook his head. “I don't follow you.”

She smiled. “You don't have to.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Shhh. Why don't you just apologize to me again?”

“I'm sorry.”

She eased a leg over his body, then moved astride him, her hands on the floor on either side of his head. She leaned in close, her hair cascading down past his face, enveloping him, and looked into his eyes.

“That's not much of an apology,” she said.

He put his hands on her waist.

“Let me rephrase it,” he said.

After they'd made love again, Ben told Sarah he had to sleep for a while or he wouldn't be any good the next day. They'd crawled up onto the bed and he was gone almost instantly. Now she was watching him, exhausted herself, but too wired to sleep.

She ‘d never come like that before. Never. And now twice in one night. With her two previous boyfriends she had thought of intercourse as a pleasant option, but nothing indispensable. Now she finally understood what all the fuss was about. She ached in a delicious way, a physical reminder of how much pleasure she'd just had, and thinking about him inside her made her want to wake him and do it again. They hadn't used any protection, and she knew that was incredibly stupid. She knew she should be upset with herself about that, at least, and yet she wasn't. Maybe later she would worry about it, but for now she just couldn't.

She wondered what would happen between them when this was all over. Her two boyfriends were the only other men she'd been intimate with. She'd known them before anything happened, and there was structure and context for everything that happened after. The man lying naked beside her now… she didn't know him at all, and the little she did know was unnerving at best. He was a killer. He stood for-in fact, personified-things she abhorred. He was damaged, he was violent, he was the antithesis of everything she had previously conceived as suitable. So why? What was it?

She smiled. Why think so much? When he woke up, she would seduce him again. That would be enough for now, and after that, they could play it by ear.

She had wanted to ask more about his relationship with Alex. But he'd been reticent, and she didn't want to push.

She wondered, though. She didn't understand how Alex could blame Ben. First, because none of it seemed like Ben's fault to her, not really. And even if there was what lawyers called “but for causation,” certainly there was no “proximate cause,” the kind of cause that's legally blameworthy. And even if there were, how could someone hold a grudge like that? Against his own brother? She reminded herself she had only one side of the story. And Ben didn't exhibit a whole lot of brotherly love for Alex, either.

But why was he here, then? If Alex blamed him for what had happened to their family, was Ben's presence now a kind of… apology? Expiation? And if so, why couldn't Alex accept it?

She watched the rise and fall of his chest. Initially, she had thought he was a Neanderthal and nothing more, but now she realized he'd been feeding her that image, and that she had been all too ready to swallow it. He was actually extremely smart. The stuff he'd said about her in the bar… yes, he was trying to be hurtful, but he'd seen a lot.