But after it was over, the sensation of not liking him returned. She felt embarrassed and dirty. He was kissing her cheeks and her neck, thanking her. She knew what the polite thing to do was, and she could tell, from his unabated urgency, that he wanted it. Not to deliver would be selfish and perverse of her. But she couldn’t help it: she didn’t feel like fucking what she didn’t like.
“I’m sorry,” she said, gently pushing him away.
“Don’t be sorry.” He pursued her and climbed onto her, moving his clothed legs between her bare ones. “You’re remarkable. You’re everything I could have hoped for.”
“No, that was definitely great. That felt really nice. I don’t think I’ve ever come so fast or so hard. It was like, wowee-zowee.”
“Oh God,” he said, shutting his eyes. He took her head in his hands and humped her a little with the hardness in his pants. “God, Pip. God.”
“But, um.” Again she tried to push him away. “Maybe I should go back now. You said I could go back after you did that.”
“Pedro and I worked out a story about a broken truck axle. We have hours if you want them.”
“I’m trying to be honest. Isn’t that the point here?”
He must have tried to hide the look that appeared on his face then, because it was gone again immediately, replaced by that smile of his. For a moment, though, she’d seen that he was crazy. As if in a bad dream, a dream in which some guilty fact is forgotten and then suddenly remembered, it occurred to her that he had actually once murdered someone; that this was real.
“It’s fine,” he said with that smile.
“It’s not that I didn’t like the way you made me feel.”
“Truly, it’s fine.” Without kissing her, without even looking at her, he got up and went to the door. He straightened his shirt and hitched up his pants.
“Please don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m the opposite of angry,” he said, not looking at her. “I’m mad for you. Quite unexpectedly mad for you.”
“I’m sorry.”
In the Land Cruiser, to salvage some shred of dignity, she told Pedro that El Ingeniero had needed help with his negocios. Pedro, in reply, seemed to say that El Ingeniero’s work was very complicated and beyond his understanding, but that he didn’t have to understand it to be a good overseer at Los Volcanes.
When they got home, long after midnight, a light was still burning in Colleen’s room. Deciding that lies were better told fresh than stale, Pip went straight up the stairs to the room. Colleen was in bed with a workbook and a pencil.
“You’re up late,” Pip said.
“Studying for the Vermont bar. I’ve had this book for a year. Tonight seemed like a good night to finally open it. How was Santa Cruz?”
“I wasn’t in Santa Cruz.”
“Right.”
“I lost a big filling at breakfast. Pedro had to take me to the dentist. And then he hit a speed bump too hard and broke an axle. I spent like six hours sitting outside a garage.”
Colleen carefully made a mark in the workbook with her pencil. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m not lying.”
“There isn’t a rompemuelles within two hundred miles that Pedro doesn’t know.”
“He was talking to me. He didn’t see it.”
“Just get the fuck out of my room, all right?”
“Colleen.”
“It’s not personal. You’re not the person I’m hating. I knew this would happen sometime. I’m just sorry it was you. There was a lot to like about you.”
“I like you so much, too.”
“I said get out of here.”
“You’re being crazy!”
Finally Colleen looked up from the workbook. “Really? You want to lie to me? You want to prolong this?”
Pip’s eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”
Colleen turned a page in her book and made a show of reading. Pip stood for a while longer in the doorway, but Colleen was right. There was nothing else to say.
In the morning, instead of taking a hike, Pip went to breakfast with the others. Colleen wasn’t there, but Pedro was. He’d already told the story of his and Pip’s ill-fated trip to the dentist. If Willow and the others were suspicious, they didn’t show it. Pip was sick with general dread and specific guilt about Colleen, but to everyone else it was just another day of Sunlight.
Colleen left two days later. She’d been discreet about her reasons, saying only that it was time to move on, and once she was safely gone the other girls were frankly patronizing about her depression and her lovesickness for Andreas; their consensus was that her departure was a much-needed step toward restoring her self-esteem. Which, in a way, it was. But Pip inwardly burned with loyalty to her, and with guilt.
When Andreas returned, he gave Colleen’s job as business manager to the Swede, Anders. But since no one imagined that Anders was specially dear to Andreas, Colleen’s position at the top of the pecking order went to the person whom everybody knew Andreas particularly liked, the person whose presence at Los Volcanes was known to be more extraordinary than their own. Now it was Pip beside whom Andreas sat down for dinner, Pip whose table filled up first. To her vast amusement, tiny Flor was suddenly eager to be her friend. Flor even asked to join her on a hike, to experience for herself the smells that Pip had raved about, and once Flor had hiked with her the other girls vied for the same privilege.
The less than healthy satisfaction Pip took in being socially central for once in her life was linked in her mind to the memory of Andreas’s tongue and how explosively her body had responded to it. Even the dirtiness she’d felt afterward was agreeable in hindsight, in a wicked sort of way. She imagined an arrangement whereby she continued to receive the favor from time to time, and he could trust her, and she could have her dirty pleasure. He’d implied it himself: he was one of those cunnilingus guys. Surely some mutually satisfactory arrangement could be worked out.
But the weeks went by, August becoming September, and though Pip was now a full-fledged researcher, handling simpler assignments on her own and devoting her free time to laborious searches of databases for the name Penelope Tyler, Andreas still avoided talking to her one-on-one the way he did with Willow and many of the others. She understood that she was supposed to be spying for him, and that they should never be seen having hushed conspiratorial talks. But the spying thing seemed ridiculous to her — the only vibe she ever got off anyone was overpowering sincerity — and she began to feel that she was being punished by him; that she’d hurt him and shamed him by refusing to have sex with him. His unfailingly warm and affectionate manner with her meant nothing; she knew very well that he was a master dissembler; he’d all but said it himself, and his incessant talk of trust and honesty only proved it. Underneath, she became convinced, he was angry with her and regretted having trusted her.
And so, day by day, seduced by tongue and popularity, she formed the resolve to give him everything he wanted the next time they were alone. Quite unexpectedly mad for you: that still had to be operable, didn’t it? She wasn’t mad for him, but she was curious, sexually botherated, and increasingly resolute. She began looking for opportunities to accost him in private. Someone always seemed to follow him out of the barn to the tech building; Pedro or Teresa always seemed to be within earshot when he was alone in the main building. But one afternoon, toward the end of September, she looked out a window and saw him sitting by himself in a far corner of the goat pasture, facing the forest.
She hurried outside and crossed the pasture so briskly that the goats scattered. Andreas must have heard her coming, but he didn’t turn around until she reached him and saw that he’d been crying. It reminded her of something; of Stephen crying on their front porch in Oakland.