Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“What now?”

“Seriously. He’s lost it. Can we strategize?”

“Wrecking Emerson’s plans is my favorite pastime. What’s he up to, that stupid man?”

She gave a summary of Noeline’s accusations.

“Well,” he responded, unconcerned, “there’s no swindle. Wildfire is my idea, you’ve offered good suggestions, and the project is progressing. I don’t care what Emerson says. Don’t care where you came from or how you ended up here.”

“Thank you, Xavi. Thanks. Really.”

He told her about incorporating the company, which he’d researched, and that it looked possible that Duncan’s father might contribute money for them to set up at the Brain Trust. “But, before that, I do want to check something with you. Something I’ve been wondering for a few weeks now,” he said. “No, wait. I’m embarrassed.” He shook his head, raising his hand to hide the smile.

“Come on. Tell me.”

“I just was wondering. I just wanted to know,” he said, looking directly at her, “just want to know before we go any further. If I walked over to you right now and kissed you, would you be okay with that? We wouldn’t have to do more if you didn’t want,” he said. “Or we could.”

Tooly — who lacked much of a figure, who eschewed sexy outfits, who crossed her legs in a manly way because it was more comfortable — believed that any guy who expressed sexual hunger for her was either unselective or a compulsive womanizer. Perhaps Xavi was the broad-minded type, and didn’t care if a lover had already hopped into bed with his best friend. But Duncan would mind — he’d mind painfully — and he was next door.

She needed Xavi, though. He’d advocate on her behalf, puncture Emerson’s claims when they came. If she spurned him, she risked losing that support. If it was just a question of allowing her body to be used, she didn’t care — she had indulged a few men over the years, when it had been useful to learn more about them. She had just let it happen, and joked about it afterward with Venn. This would be no different. Plus, Xavi was handsome. Though far less attractive now than he’d ever seemed.

“Right this second?” she said.

He smirked. “I just want to know if we could . After you answer me, we do whatever we want, or maybe nothing.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay what? What does that mean?”

“Okay means yes.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding, looking at his dress shoes. “What a disappointment.”

“What is?”

“You know,” he said. “You know.”

“I was only joking, Xavi.”

“You were not.”

“I was.”

“I noticed all this little flirting you’ve been doing with me for a while now,” he said. “But you must understand: Duncan is my brother.”

“Wait, wait,” she said. “You misunderstood. We’ll keep things businesslike now. Seriously.”

“No more business between me and you.”

“Come on.”

Xavi shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said, meaning no.

“I didn’t even …” It wasn’t worth finishing the sentence. She left, stood there in the corridor, looking at the front door.

Gathering her courage, she entered Duncan’s room. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Will you come outside with me? I need to take Ham for a walk.”

“Got tons more work. Is later okay?”

“Can it be now, Duncan?”

“You just called me ‘Duncan’ instead of ‘horrendous blob.’ You’ve got me worried,” he kidded.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your work. You know I normally never do. Just need to talk.”

“Wildfire stuff?”

“Something else. Would you mind?”

Duncan — pleased to be needed, an emotion she so rarely exhibited toward him — closed his textbook. He wanted someone to rely on him; it was what he sought most. In a way, she had, taking refuge in his bedroom, finding status at his side and food in his refrigerator, making his place a home of her own in Manhattan. And, by mistake, she had grown so fond of this boy.

She tugged Ham’s leash to hurry him outside, wanting to escape the building, as if Emerson might leap out and ruin everything.

“What,” she asked, to establish an easy tone before the tense explanations to follow, “what would you do if you could do absolutely anything with your life?”

“You always ask me that.”

“I do not.”

“Well, versions of that question.”

“Because you never answer to my satisfaction.”

“How about you tell me what you think I should do,” he suggested, “and then I’ll say for you.”

“If it was up to me, I’d say you should be involved in music. That’s what you love most.”

“Music? Never.”

“What, then? And I want a proper answer, not this I-don’t-really-know-but-law-school-isn’t-so-bad stuff.”

He pondered. “Okay, here’s my honest answer: architecture. That’s what I always wanted to do, what I thought I’d do.”

“Then you should. Why can’t you?”

“I’m twenty-four. Too late in the game.”

Before Duncan could guess at her ideal future, she interrupted to inform him that Emerson was making all sorts of claims about her as a result of things she’d said to Noeline. Tooly readied herself for the obvious next question: If those two are twisting your words, what did you say?

But he sought no details. She handed him the leash. They walked in silence through Riverside Park. “Don’t really know what you’d want to do, if you could do anything,” he said belatedly, the pig yanking him around the other side of a tree trunk.

“Will I do well?”

“At what?”

“In my life.”

“You could. Why not.”

“I never thought so either.”

He looked at her, studied her. “Tooly,” he said, “I don’t care what you said or didn’t say to Noeline. I don’t care about their opinions. I’m not listening, even if they try to tell me something.”

She looked down. To lose ascendancy in this relationship made her want to hide till he left. But what was so terrible? Did she consider Duncan so beneath her that to be vulnerable before him was intolerable? After all, wasn’t vulnerability the point of a love affair?

But she lacked the courage to tolerate it. She reminded herself that she and Duncan owed each other no debt; that it was kinder to conclude this now than to keep implying, as she often had in small, subtle ways that he wasn’t quite for her, that his choices — law, for example — were somehow less meritorious than her chosen lifestyle, which consisted of avoiding choice altogether.

Removing herself from this relationship, as in mind she was trying to do, provided a sharper view of its elements, including a suspicion she’d long harbored that, while Duncan had love for her, was intrigued by her, amused by her, cared deeply for her, he lacked the sexual passion that fused two strangers. He found her body of interest, but little more, and she hadn’t wished to know this before. As they strolled, she almost told Duncan her explanation for why this was, to ease his mind by articulating what might have been a dreadful secret for him: that he was in love with someone else and seemed to have been for many years, someone whom he had followed from high school to college, whom he had joined back in New York under the pretext of attending law school, allowing them to share quarters again — a best friend residing in the next room, who, Tooly felt certain, had no idea of Duncan’s attachment, nor would ever have accepted it. She wondered if Duncan himself did. She suspected that, had she dared cite this now, he’d be furious, and their final moment of companionship would be ugly. She put her mittens onto his icy hands, though he protested. At the corner of 115th Street, when he turned toward his building, expecting her to follow, she kissed him at length. “Be sweet to the pig,” she joked, winking at him, and continued alone, hastening as she went, pinching herself in punishment at such sentimentality.