“You remember what. But who cares?”
“Just leave. You know? Just say goodbye to Duncan, if you have to, then leave. You’re here to mess with people. For some of us, this is our actual life.”
Emerson appeared again. “Is she telling Duncan, or do I get to?”
“Since when are you concerned with Duncan’s welfare?”
“Hey,” he shot back, “I don’t appreciate some high-school dropout like you questioning my intelligence behind my back.”
Tooly looked at Noeline, who looked away.
“This is a moral issue,” he continued. “Possibly even criminal.”
“What are you talking about? What crime?”
“Entry by false trespassing,” he improvised, making his way out. “I’ll be raising this with Duncan in the next twenty-four hours unless you do. You’d better start thinking up excuses.”
Tooly looked at Noeline, and her anger drained away. “You’re one of the most interesting people I’ve met in this city. One of the most interesting in years. I don’t know what I did to make you mad. And I’m not trying to change your opinion. I’m just — I don’t know — just so sorry this is happening.”
Blushing, Noeline rushed into the bathroom, slammed the door after herself, and turned on the faucet, which ran for several minutes.
Tooly looked down the corridor toward the bedroom where Duncan was studying. But she found herself knocking on Xavi’s door. “Emerson has gone nuts,” she said. “I need your help.”
“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?