Greta closed her eyes, drew a few deep breaths. The room was silent except for the subtle hiss of the air filter. Stress made her aller-gies worse; she carried her air filters around like handbags now. “So, at the end, this is all about you and me.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No it isn’t. Let me tell you all about you and me. When I first saw you, I was totally skeptical. I wasn’t looking for any trouble. But you just kept making these little passes at me. And I thought: what is he doing? He’s a political operative. I have nothing this guy wants. I’m just wasting my life on this board, trying to get proper equipment. I wasn’t even managing to accomplish that. But then it occurred to me, this remote speculation: this guy is actually hot for me. He thinks I’m sexy. He wants to sleep with me. It really is that simple.”
She took a breath. “And I thought: that is really a bad idea. But what’s the worst that can happen to me? They find me in bed with this character, and I’ll get a scolding and they’ll throw me off the board. Wonderful! Then I can go back to my lab! And besides: look at him! He’s young, he’s handsome, he writes funny notes, he sends big bouquets. And there’s something so different about him.”
She looked at him. Oscar was not missing a word. He felt he’d been waiting for this all his life.
“I fell in love with you, Oscar. I know that’s true, because you’re the only man that I ever felt jealous about. I never had that kind of emotional luxury before. I love you, and I marvel at you as my favor-ite specimen. I really love you for what you truly are, all the way down, all the way through. And we had a lovely fling. I took the plunge and I wasn’t afraid to do it, because when it’s all said and done, you have one huge, final, saving grace. Because you’re temporary. You’re not my destiny. You’re not my prince. You’re just a visitor in my life, a traveling salesman.”
Oscar nodded. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Really?”
“It’s totally true. I’ve always been temporary. I can give advice, I can run campaigns, I can come and go. I can have brief affairs, but I can’t make anything stick! My foster dad picked me up on an impulse. Dad had four wives and a zillion girlfriends: every woman in my childhood rushed by me on fast forward. I have a permanent fever. I have to reinvent myself every morning. I built a business, but I sold it. I built a house, but it’s empty. I built a hotel, but I can’t run it. I built a coalition here, I built a whole new society, I built a city to house it in with a lighthouse beacon, and loudspeakers blaring and pennants waving, but I still don’t get to stay. I’m its founding father, I’m the prince, but I still don’t belong. I just don’t get to stay.”
“Oh, good Lord.”
“Am I making sense to you here?”
“Oscar, how can I stay? I can’t go on like this, I’m all burned out. I did what I had to do, I can’t say that you used me. But something used me. History used me, and it’s using me all up. Even our affair is used up now.”
“We should do the right thing, Greta, we should declare our-selves. Let’s take a stand together. I want you to marry me.”
She put her head in her hands.
“Look, don’t do that. Listen to me. This can be made to work. It’s doable. In fact, it’s a genius move.”
“Oscar, you don’t love me.”
“I love you as much as I will ever love anyone.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “What a brilliant evasion.”
“You’ll never find another man who’s more attentive to your interests. If you find some other man that you want to marry, leave me for him! I’m not afraid of that happening. It’ll never happen.”
“God, you’re such a beautiful talker.”
“It’s not dishonest. I’m being very honest. I’m making an honest woman of you. I’m finally taking a stand, I’m committing myself. Marriage is a great institution. Marriages are great symbolic theater. Especially a state marriage. It was a war romance, and now it’s a peace marriage, and it’s all very normal and sensible. We’ll make it a festival, we’ll invite the whole world. We’ll exchange rings, we’ll throw rice. We’ll put down roots.”
“We don’t have roots. We’re network people. We have aerials.”
“It’s the right and proper thing to do. It’s necessary. In fact, it’s the only real way that the two of us can move on from here.”
“Oscar, we can’t move on. My marrying you can’t stick a whole community together. Making two people legitimate, that doesn’t make their society legitimate. It’s not a legitimate thing. I’m a war leader, and a strike leader — I was Joan of Arc. Nobody ever elected me. I rule by force and clever propaganda. The real powers here are you and your friend Kevin. And Kevin is like any outlaw who takes power: he’s a scary little brute. He brings me big dossiers, he bullies people and spies on them. I’m sick of all that. It’s turning me into a monster. It can’t go on, it’s not right. There’s no future in it.”
“You’ve been thinking a lot about this, haven’t you?”
“You taught me how to think about it. You taught me how to think politically. You’re a good tactician, Oscar, you’re really clever, you know all about people’s kinks and weaknesses, but you don’t know about their integrity and their strength. You’re not a great strat-egist. You know all the dirty tricks with go-stones in the corner, but you don’t comprehend the whole board.”
“And you do?”
“Some of it. I know the world well enough that I know that my lab is the best place for me.”
“So you’re giving up?”
“No … I’m just quitting while I’m ahead. Something is going to work here. Something of it will last. But it’s not a whole new world. It’s just a new political system. We can’t close it off in an airtight nest, with me as the Termite Queen. I have to quit, I have to leave. Then maybe this thing will shake down, and pack down, and build something solid, from the bottom up.”
“Maybe we’ll do better than that. Maybe I am a great strategist.”
“Sweetheart, you’re not! You’re streetwise, but you’re young, and you’re not very wise. You can’t become King by marrying your pasteboard Queen, someone you created by marching a pawn down the board. You shouldn’t even want to be King. It’s a lousy job. A situation like this doesn’t need another stupid tyrant with a golden crown, it needs… it needs the founder of a civilization, a saint and a prophet, somebody impossibly wise and selfless and generous. Some-body who can make laws out of chaos, and order out of chaos, and justice out of noise, and meaning out of total distraction.”
“My God, Greta. I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”
She blinked. “I don’t think I ever even thought like this before.”
“What you’re saying is completely true. It’s the hard cold truth, and it’s bad, it’s impossibly bad, it’s worse than I ever imagined, but you know, I’m glad that I know it now. I always like to know what I’m facing. I refuse to admit defeat here. I refuse to pack up my tent. I don’t want to leave you, I can’t bear it. You’re the only woman who ever really understood me.”
“I’m sorry that I understand you well enough to tell you what you just can’t do.”
“Greta, don’t give up on me. Don’t dump me. I’m having a genu-ine breakthrough here, I’m on the edge of something really huge. You’re right about the dictatorship problem, it’s a dirt-real, basic, po-litical challenge. We’ve worked ourselves to the bone now, we’re all burned out, we’re all bogged down in the little things. Daily tactics won’t do it for us anymore, but abandoning it to its own devices is a cop-out. We need to create something that is huge and permanent, we need a higher truth. No, not higher, deeper, we need a floor of granite. No more sand castles, no more improvising. We need genius. And you’re a genius.”