“What do you mean?”
His eyes rested on the chandelier above their table; they flashed in its light. “Annie, it’s not easy to live with yourself when you sell out. When you give in, just to ‘belong,’ just to ‘keep the peace,’ ‘not make waves,’ ‘go along to get along,’ and all the other common euphemisms for cowardice. Because that’s what it is. Cowardice. And at some level, the person doing that knows that he’s a coward. And he feels guilty.”
“So, cynics are guilty cowards, then.”
“Which is why they need to rationalize. They even make virtues out of ‘humility’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘loving everybody.’ Why? Because it alleviates their guilt. It’s much nicer to pretend to yourself that your passivity makes you a saint, rather than just another gutless puke who won’t take a stand for what’s right.”
She tried to mask her discomfort. “Don’t you think some people who preach such things are sincere, though? Not cowards, but true idealists?”
“I don’t doubt it. But it’s like I said to you once before: Those types become enablers. Foolish enablers of evil, whether they intend to or not.”
“Let’s get back to you. When did justice become so important to you?”
He remained silent a moment, as if he were weighing something.
“All right. I’ve never told this to anyone. When I was about ten or eleven, I was on the playground at school. I saw this gang of kids in a circle, hollering, and I went over to see what was going on. A couple of bigger kids, bullies, were picking on this smaller boy, Joe. No teachers were around, and the others were just egging the bullies on. I liked Joe. He was nerdy, but smart and funny. Anyway, he was terrified and crying and-” He stopped. “I just couldn’t walk away.”
“You got involved?”
“At first, I just told them to stop. Then the pair turned on me. They were a lot bigger than me. One of them grabbed me, ripped the pocket of my shirt. I looked down at that, and I saw red. So I just swung at him, bashed him on the cheek. Then they started to hit back. We really started going at it. All the kids started yelling and cheering. For a minute, every time they hit me, I just got angrier.
“But then I tasted blood in my mouth. My blood. It was like somebody flipped a switch. I wasn’t enraged anymore. I just turned icy cold. I became like a machine. After that, nothing they did to me hurt at all. I didn’t feel anything.”
His gaze was fixed somewhere far away. “I just pounded them, knocked both of them down, first one, then the other. Then I jumped on them, kept pounding until they screamed for me to stop. I grabbed both of them by the hair, turned their bloody faces toward Joe, and told them to apologize. They apologized.”
He blinked, coming back to the present. “But I wasn’t done. I stood up and turned on one of the kids who’d been mocking Joe, and I demanded that he apologize, too. He looked scared to death and did. Then I faced down all the rest of them. Hell, it was a yard full of kids. I said, ‘Who wants to be next?’ There was dead silence, except for the two kids wailing on the ground. I pointed at them and said, ‘Any one of the rest of you ever bothers Joe again, that’s what will happen to you.’ And then I took him by the arm and led him away.”
She saw the imprint of the memory etched on his face as he raised his glass again.
“You went after the bullies,” she said. “And then you confronted their enablers, too.”
The glass paused at his lips.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way before,” he said. “But yes. I suppose that’s true.”
“That day changed you,” she said softly.
He placed the glass on the table and nodded slowly. “It was kind of a turning point. A moment of self-definition.” He suddenly looked at her. Smiled, breaking his reverie. “Okay. Now, it’s my turn to ask a question.”
“Oh. Well, okay, fair is fair, I suppose.”
“Trust.”
She licked her lips. “What about it?”
“What happened, Annie?”
She drew a long breath. “Actually, I had a conversation not long ago about that. Somebody close to me pointed out that I’d been betrayed twice. The first time, when my mother left my father and me to run off with another man. The second time, when I caught my ex screwing another woman.”
“I’m sorry. How long were you married?”
“Since July 2002.” She suddenly felt the need to unburden herself. “Frank was a commercial pilot. I met him at a hotel during a business trip, not long after 9-11. There was instant chemistry. And my dad liked him and insisted on throwing a big wedding in Georgetown. After the honeymoon, we resumed our careers. He traveled a lot, of course, and I was pretty wrapped up in my work, too. But we made the most of our time together. Or thought we did.”
“Until when?”
“Until last year. When I accidentally found the emails from his babe in Denver.” She paused to take a sip of wine, moisten her lips. “Ergo, my trust issues. Just so that you know, I’m officially divorced. Since January.”
“You had mentioned your mother on our first date. I didn’t know about your husband.”
“I didn’t want to bring it up, then. I figured it might scare you off.”
He covered her hand with his. “I’m still here, Annie.”
She looked at his hand on hers. “Me too.”
*
They were both a bit tipsy when they arrived back at the apartment. She could not completely relax and sensed that he could not, either. There was still a slight wariness, a dull edge of caution, in their interaction. She could not suppress her awareness of her suspicions about him; but neither could she suppress her knowledge of his motives, of the reasons that may have turned him into an outlaw.
Inside the door, he drew her into his arms again. Her mouth responding to his, she felt as if she were spinning dangerously, deliriously, deliciously out of control. She was overpowered by it, by the restored feeling of oneness with him, by the sheer power of him and how it possessed her. For a fleeting instant, she knew that the danger that he represented only added to her intoxication, and to the intensity of the passionate tension between them.
If everything would only freeze in place, right here, right now. If only it would go on forever this way…
They stumbled, laughing, toward the bedroom, toward the waiting bed. She tugged off his jacket and dumped it on the floor. Then he pulled her to the bed and sat on it, facing her. Holding her eyes, he undid the buttons at her throat, then down the front of her blouse. He slid the straps of her bra down her arms, then reached behind her to release it. As it fell, he buried his face between her breasts.
But she pushed him back, then held up her hand to stop him. With deliberate slowness, she unbuttoned his shirt. She ran her flat palms over the hair of his chest, up to his shoulders, then down his arms to free his sleeves-
– and exposed the bandage wrapping his left arm.
*
In an instant, he saw her half-closed eyes snap open, her half-parted lips widen in a gasp. Saw the shock as she gazed at his arm.
He had to cover it, give her the excuse he had prepared.
“Don’t worry about that. It’s nothing. I just had a run-in last week with a friend’s pet poodle.”
The shock didn’t vanish as her eyes turned to his. For a moment, she didn’t speak. Then: “You say a dog did this?”
He tried to keep the smile fixed in place. “A poodle. If you count them as real dogs.”
But she didn’t smile. He watched closely as something faded in her eyes.
She knows.
*
Their love-making had a frantic quality, he thought, as if both of them were trying desperately to convince themselves that what they knew could not be true.
At first, he almost felt as if he was forcing himself upon her. She seemed to be fighting him, as she had in the past, when it had been only playful; but for a few moments it seemed real as she twisted away, seeming to recoil from him, to reject him.
“No,” she gasped, flailing at his shoulders with her fists.