“It’s serious, I think,” Olga said now. She was not joking.
Heat rose in his neck; he was unsure if it was anger or humiliation.
“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” he asked.
“I … I shouldn’t have suggested dinner, I realize … I’m sorry if you—”
“You aren’t fucking sorry, Olga,” he said. It was anger. He could feel it. “You’re a manipulative cunt and you knew what I would think you wanted when you reached out to me.”
He saw the words hit her like a slap and he liked it. He had forgotten how tricky she was. How many times had she done this to him? He had lost count. She always twisted his actions and desires into a version that best suited her, until finally he would forget what he had wanted in the first place. She had done this when he left his wife. She had done this to him in the Hamptons. He could see it very clearly now. Somehow always pulling each situation out of his hands and assuming control of it all.
“How long have you been fucking this other guy?” he asked. He was very close to her now, but she didn’t move away. “Have you been fucking this other guy the whole time?”
She was leaning away from him now and he could see a touch of fear in her eyes.
“Richard,” she said flatly, “does it really matter?”
Of course it fucking mattered. He leered at her in silence. Everything had a different cast: the casual attire, the lack of makeup. She wasn’t comfortable with him, she was indifferent. He was filled with such rage when he realized he had slapped her. He had not hit a woman in years. She stepped back from him in shock, but only backed herself against the counter.
“Richard, you’re right. I knew what you might think when I texted you. And I even thought I might be able to go through the motions—”
“Go through the fucking motions?”
“I just meant, I didn’t intend to come across as a tease. But when I got here—”
“When you got here, what? I disgusted you? You changed your mind?”
“No!” she said, and he could see now that she was scared. She realized she had lost control of the situation and this gave him a strange pleasure.
“So, what? You were going to come here and ‘go through the motions’ with me, like some kind of whore, and then what? You thought I’d just sell your friend whatever they wanted because of you and your magic pussy? And then what? You were going to go back to fuck this other guy?”
He was screaming now, he realized. He wanted to lower his voice, but he couldn’t.
“I don’t know!” she said. “I’m sorry! I’ll go! I’ll just go!”
She was always making him chase her. Always.
He grabbed her and spun her around, pinning her face down against the counter. Now, she would see what it felt like to be the one without control.
* * *
LATER, AFTER SHE had gone, he still found himself boiling. He picked up his phone.
“Nick? Dick Eikenborn here. I’ve thought about it. Count me in on the Puerto Rico deal.… I’ll stay out of the market until you give me the green light. At the terms discussed, of course.… But, and this could be nothing, there’s someone trying to bulk purchase solar for down there.… I don’t know who. But I heard about it through the Acevedo girl.… Yes. Of course, that one. Anyway, do with that information what you will. I don’t fucking care.”
TRUTH AND A SLICE
After seeing his mother, Prieto was left to grapple with the reality of who she was and not the versions that had lived in his mind for the past twenty-seven years. She was not a hero nor an impotent kook. She was some sort of mad genius—for that compound had surely required genius. And she had felt herself meant for a different life. Stuck in too-small skin. So she freed herself. Shed her old life. For Prieto, this truth blew through him like a bullet. Fast and clear. Not a fatal wound, but the kind that forces a reappraisal of life. He, too, knew the sensation of too-small skin. Knew what it felt like to experience thousands of tiny deaths, year in and out, as he watched the life he wanted escape him while feeling trapped in the life he had. But instead of empathy or sympathy for his mother, he felt regret. And rage. And despair. Despair that a large part of what had kept him here—inside his own too-small skin—was to please the woman who had left him behind in order to shed her own. Yes, it hurt to know his mother had never wanted to be a mother at all, but an equal weight of his sadness came from the deprivation of life he’d inflicted upon himself in this futile quest for her love.