Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

“They’re holding their cards pretty tight. They’ll need to address the water use first before they tip their hand on the properties they want.”

“What do you know about them?” Almost offhand, but the question caught him in the face. “I mean, how many are there? How deep are their pockets?”

“It seems to be three different outfits. Two from Kearney and one from Grand Island. Whatever they’re up to, it’s on a big scale.”

“Big enough to be a problem?”

“They’re looking at riverfront. And whatever they build will increase usage. Every cup that comes out of that river reduces flow and encourages vegetative encroachment. The birds—”

“Yes,” she preempted. She couldn’t bear the whole story again, just then. “So how will the Refuge counter?”

“We have to prepare a strategy, more or less in the dark.” He gauged her, and for an awful moment, she felt him calculate her trustworthiness. As close to an accusation as he could make, without accusing. “We’re forming a loose consortium of our own: the Environmental Defense Fund, the Refuge, and the Sanctuary. If we can build up a shared war chest, we can grab strategic bits of land and try to block any large acquisitions by the other side. We’d never beat them in any open auction, of course. But if we secure a couple of keystones, a little strip in the most probable areas, before the bidding wars begin. It has to be Farview. Somewhere around Farview. The best undeveloped land outside of Kearney.”

The name of Mark’s town jerked her back from her reverie.

“As usual, it’s the birds who suffer,” Daniel declared. “In myths, gods are always screwing birds. Why stop now?”

The waitress came by, too soon. “How’s everything here?”

“Everything’s just fine,” Karin intoned.

“How are your vegetables?” the waitress quizzed Daniel.

“Terrific,” he answered. “Fresh.”

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything else? Something a little more…?”

Daniel smiled. “Thanks. I’m good.”

His eyes followed the waitress as she left. When the server came to refill their waters, Daniel said sorry for thank you .

A great dam of humiliation broke, and waves of old current washed over Karin. Her spine became a willow. Her fists sat in her lap like stones. “Which do you like better?” she asked.

“Which who?”

“You know. The server or the waitress?”

He smiled at her and shook his head, the model of evasive innocence.

She stared off in the middle distance, her face a copper to match her hair. “Would you rather be somewhere else?”

He tried to keep smiling, even now. “What do you mean?”

She admired his nerve, however transparent the denial. She smiled back, full wattage. “You can do better out there, can’t you?”

The words crushed him. He looked down at his plate, the strewn slices. “Karin. Please, let’s not…I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore.”

“I thought so, too.” Until he’d doubted.

“K. I don’t know what…what you think you saw…”

“Think? Think I saw?”

“I swear to you, the thought never crossed my mind.”

“What thought?”

He bowed his head again, like one of those fairy creatures who gathered more life force from simply cowering and taking the hits. “Any thought.”

She might still do anything: laugh it off, grow up. Get over herself. Or plunge them back into their worst nightmare. A dizzy thrill coursed through her. “She’s a cute little cucumber herself. ‘Fresh.’ And the water-pourer, too. Both delicious. Your lucky night. Two-for-one sale.”

“I wasn’t shopping.” He tried to hold her eye, but the sick spark of it got to him, too. All their history.

She matched his calm. “Just window gazing?”

He raised his palms in the air. “I wasn’t looking. What did I do? Did I do something wrong? Say something to hurt you? If so, I am sincerely—”

“It’s okay, Danny. I can accept the fact that males are genetically programmed for variety. Every man has to inspect the wares, out in the marketplace. That doesn’t bother me. I just wish — don’t! please, just don’t ! — wish you would come to terms with it.”

He pushed his plate forward and folded his hands in front of his face, a guidance counselor or a priest. He rested his forehead on the steeple of his fingers. “Listen. I’m sorry. Whatever I did to upset you just now, I’m sorry for it.”

“Just now? You can’t say it, can you? You can’t say that you were simply enjoying her. Both of them. I don’t even want you to be sorry about it. It would just be nice if you could admit for once that you were simply imagining…”

His head snapped back. Old words came out of him, as old as the ones she struck him with. “I would say that, if that’s what I was doing. I didn’t even see her. I can’t even tell you what she looks like.”

Pointlessness flooded her, the futility of all exchange. Nobody really cared how the world looked to anyone else. She felt a deep need to break everything that pretended to connection. To live in this hollowness, where loyalty always led. Love was not the antidote to Capgras. Love was a form of it, making and denying others, at random. “Forgotten already? Have another look!”

His words came through his teeth. “I am not that kind of man. I told you as much eight years ago. I told you that five years ago. You didn’t believe me then. But I was waiting for you when you came back. I’m with you . I’ve always been, and I always will be. With you, and no one else. Not looking. Found already.”

He reached out across the table to take her hand. She flinched, flipping her fork and scattering tofu. “With me ? With your eyes still everywhere? Which ‘me’ do you mean?” She looked around, embarrassed by herself. The whole restaurant was avoiding looking at them. She turned back to him and chirped, “It’s okay, Daniel. I’m not judging you. You are who you are. If you would just agree to tell me…”

He withdrew his hand. “We should never have come out to eat. We should have remembered what always…” She arched her eyebrows at the admission. He inhaled, trying to regain his scattered possession. “Someday you’ll know what I’m looking at. Always. Trust me, K….”

He sounded so scared it stung her. At that moment she felt the deep appeal of Robert Karsh, a man without a tenth of Daniel’s idealism. Karsh, of all the men she’d ever been with, at least had the decency to say which women he was looking at. No illusions. At least Karsh never once deceived himself about being all hers. Karsh, always on the lookout. Karsh, the relentless developer.

They sat and stirred their plates, hot with shame. More words would only clarify. People at nearby tables wolfed their food, paid, and left. She ached to change the subject, to pretend she’d said nothing. Doubt formed a little scab over the wound, which she picked at. She wanted only to tear down everything, clear the landscape, escape somewhere empty and true. But no true place existed; only brief mirage, followed by long, humiliating self-justification. She would return with this man to his monk’s cell tonight. He was her lover, her mate. This year’s current, eternal promise. She had no other bed, no other place to go back to, and still be near her brother, the brother she probably shouldn’t be near. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I’m losing it.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

Everything mattered. The waitress came back around, still smiling, but wary. Everyone knew them, now. “Can I get this out of your way, or are you still working…?”