Jonathan Franzen - Purity

She fell on her side with a whimper and pulled the comforter over her head. She couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong — she’d said she wasn’t interested in Tom. Why was Andreas punishing her now? She writhed under the comforter, trying and failing to make sense of what he’d written, until the comforter became a tormentor. Sweating all over, she threw it off and went downstairs to the dining room, where Leila was working.

“You’re still awake?” Leila said.

Her smile was troubled but not phony. Pip sat down across the table from her. “Can’t sleep.”

“Do you want an Ambien? I have a veritable cornucopia.”

“Will you tell me what you found out in Washington?”

“Let me get you an Ambien.”

“No. Just let me sit here while you work.”

Leila smiled at her again. “I like that you can be honest about what you want. It’s something I still struggle with.”

Her smiles were taking some of the sting off Andreas’s brutal words.

“But let me try it,” Leila said. “I want you to not sit here while I work.”

“Oh,” Pip said, very hurt.

“It makes me self-conscious. If you really don’t mind?”

“No, I’ll leave. It’s just—” Outburst Alert. Outburst Alert. “I don’t know why you’re being so weird to me. I didn’t do anything to you. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

Leila was still smiling, but something was glittering in her eyes, something awfully similar to hatred. “I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me work.”

“Do you think I’m a home-wrecker? Do you think I’d ever in a million years do that to you?”

“Not intentionally.”

“Then why are you being this way, if it’s not my fault?”

“Do you know who your father is?”

“My father ?” Pip made an insultingly baffled face and gesture.

“Are you ever curious?”

“What does any of this have to do with my father?”

“I’m just asking.”

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t. I already feel like I walk around in life with this sign hanging from my neck, BEWARE OF DOG, DIDN’T HAVE FATHER. It doesn’t mean I want to have sex with every older man who comes my way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can pack my things and move out tomorrow. I’ll quit my job, too, if that would help.”

“I don’t want you to do either of those things.”

“Then what? Wear a burka?”

“I’m going to be spending more time with Charles. You and Tom can have the house to yourselves to work out whatever you have to work out.”

“ There is nothing to work out .”

“The point is simply—”

“I thought you guys were sane and normal. That’s part of what I love about you. And now it’s like I’m a lab rat you’re leaving alone in a cage with another rat to see what happens.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Sure feels like it.”

“Tom and I are having some trouble. That’s all it is. Can I get you an Ambien?”

Pip took the Ambien and woke up alone in the house. In the windows was a pale gray Colorado morning sky of the sort from which she’d learned not to predict the afternoon weather — it could snow or turn shockingly warm — but she was grateful for the bright overcast; it matched her spirits. She’d been terminated by Andreas but also released; she felt both bruised and cleaner. After reheating and eating some frozen waffles, she went out walking toward downtown Denver.

The air smelled like spring, and the Rockies, behind her, all snowy, were there to remind her that she still had many things to do in life, such as going up to Estes Park and experiencing the mountains from close range. She could do this after she made her confession to Tom and before she returned to California. In the crisp air, she saw clearly that the time to confess had come. As long as she’d had her late-night textings and touchings, she’d had some reason to have planted the spyware and to avoid the awfulness of telling Tom about it: she was bewitched and enslaved by Andreas. Now there was no reason, nor any sense in trying to preserve the life she had going in Denver, however eagerly she’d taken to it. The whole thing was built on lies, and she wanted to come clean.

Her resolve was firm until she arrived at DI and was reminded that she loved the place. The overhead lights were off in the main space, but two journalists were in the conference room and Pip could hear Leila’s pretty telephone voice in her task-lighted work space. Pip hesitated in the corridor, wondering if she could still avoid confessing. Maybe if the spyware disappeared? But whatever was upsetting Leila wasn’t going away. If she was upset about Tom liking Pip too much, a full confession would certainly put an end to that. Pip took the long way around to his office, avoiding Leila.

His door was standing open. As soon as he saw Pip, he reached quickly for his computer mouse.

“Sorry,” she said. “Are you in the middle of something?”

For a moment, he seemed totally guilty. He opened his mouth without saying anything. Then, collecting himself, he told her to come in and shut the door. “We’re in battle mode,” he said. “Or Leila’s in battle mode. I’m in Leila-care mode. Her engine runs hot when she’s afraid of being scooped.”

Pip shut the door and sat down. “I gather she got something big yesterday.”

“Ghastly thing. Major story. Bad for everyone except us. It’s very good for us, assuming we’re the ones to break it. She’ll fill you in — she’s going to need your help.”

“An actual weapon went missing?”

“Yes and no. It never left Kirtland. Armageddon was averted.” Tom leaned back in his chair, catching the fluorescent light on his terrible glasses. “This was probably before your time, but there used to be a countdown-to-Armageddon clock. Union of Concerned Scientists, I believe. It would be four minutes to midnight, and then there’d be a new round of arms-control talks, and the clock would go back to five minutes before midnight. It all seems vaguely cheesy and ridiculous now, like everything else from those years. What kind of clock runs backward?”

He seemed to be free-associating to conceal something.

“They still have that clock,” Pip said.

“Really.”

“But you’re right, it feels dated. People are more advertising-literate these days.”

He laughed. “Plus it turns out that it wasn’t actually five minutes to midnight in 1975, otherwise we’d all be dead now. It was nine fifteen or something.”

Pip’s own countdown-to-confession clock was stuck at one second before midnight.

“Anyway, Leila’s on the ragged edge,” Tom said. “She comes across as so unthreatening that people don’t realize how competitive she is.”

“I’m realizing it, a little bit.”

“A couple of years ago, she was way out in front on the Toyota recall story, or she thought she was. She thought she had time to nail it down tight and break it complete. And then suddenly she starts hearing from her contacts in the agencies. They’re calling her to tell her they just heard an amazing story from the Journal ’s guy. These were people who hadn’t known anything, hadn’t told her anything, and now they had the whole story! She’s hearing that the Journal ’s guy was up all night drafting. She’s hearing that the Journal is already lawyering it. And there’s no worse feeling. No worse thing to write than a story where you have to credit the guy you were way ahead of until two days ago. Apparently the WaPo ’s on the Kirtland story — Leila found that out yesterday. We’re still ahead, but probably not by much.”

“Is she drafting?”