Clare and Major never bothered hiding their attachment from the others. What could the company say to disapprove? Not even Gerald could stop them, though Ildie often looked at her askance, with a scowl, as if Clare had betrayed her. Major assured her that the other woman had never held a claim on him. Clare wondered if she might have fallen in love with any of the men—Fred, Benton, or even Marco—if any of them had stood by Gerald to recruit her instead of Major. But no, she felt her fate was to be with Major. She didn’t feel small with him.
Hand in hand, careless, they’d leave the others and retreat to the closet in an unused corner of the warehouse’s second floor, where they’d built a pallet just for them. A nest, Clare thought of it. Here, she had Major all to herself, and he seemed happy enough to be hers. She’d lay across his naked chest and he’d play with her hair. Bliss.
“Why did you follow Gerald when he came for you?” she asked after the disaster with the exploded building.
“He offered adventure.”
“Not for the politics, then? Not because you believe in his party?”
“I imagine it’s all one and the same in the long run.”
The deep philosophy of this would have impressed her a few years ago. Now, it seemed like dodging the question. She propped herself on an elbow to study him. She was thinking out loud.
“Then why do you still follow him? You could find adventure without him, now that he’s shown you the way.”
He grinned sleepily and gathered her closer. “I’d wander aimlessly. His adventures are more interesting. It’s a game.”
“Oh.”
“And why do you still follow him? Why did you take my hand the day we met?”
“You were more interesting than what I left behind.”
“But I ask you the same question, now. I know you don’t believe in his politics. So why do you still follow him?”
“I don’t follow him. I follow you.”
His expression turned serious, frowning almost. His hand moved from her hair to her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw as if she were fragile glass. “We’re a silly pair, aren’t we? No belief, no faith.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Major—if neither of us is here for Gerald, we should leave. Let’s go away from this, be our own cohort.” Saying it felt like rebellion, even greater than the rebellion of leaving home in the first place.
His voice went soft, almost a whisper. “Could we really? How far would we get before we started missing this and came back?”
“I wouldn’t miss the others,” she said, jaw clenched.
“No, not them,” he said. “But the game.”
Gerald could fervently agitate for the opposite party, and Major would play the game with as much glee. She could understand and still not agree.
“You think we need Gerald, to do what we do?”
He shook his head, a questioning gesture rather than a denial. “I’m happy here. Aren’t you?”
She could nod and not lie because here, at this small moment with him, she was happy.
One could change the world by nudging chances, Clare believed. Sometimes, she went off by herself to study chances the others wouldn’t care about.
At a table in the corner of a café—the simple, homelike kind that students frequented, with worn armchairs, and chessboards and pieces stored in boxes under end tables with old lamps on them—Clare drew a pattern in a bit of tea that dripped from her saucer. Swirled the shape into two circles, forever linked. In front of the counter, a boy dropped a napkin. The girl behind him picked it up. Their hands brushed. He saw that she had a book of sonnets, which he never would have noticed if he hadn’t dropped the napkin. She saw that he had a book of philosophy. They were students, maybe, or odd enthusiasts. One asked the other, are you a student? The answer didn’t matter because the deed was done. In this world, in this moment, despite all the unhappiness, this small thing went right.
This whole thing started because Gerald saw patterns. She wondered later: Did he see the pattern, identify them because of it, and bring them together? Was that his talent? Or did he cause the pattern to happen? If not for Gerald, would she have gone on, free and ignorant, happily living her life with no knowledge of what she could do? Or was she always destined to follow this path, use this talent with or without the others? Might she have spent her time keeping kittens from running into busy streets or children from falling into rivers? And perhaps one of those children would grow up to be the leader Gerald sought, the one who would change the world.
All that had happened, all their work, and she still could not decide if she believed in destiny.
She wouldn’t change how any of it had happened because of Major. The others marveled over Gerald’s stern, Cossack determination. But she fell in love with Major, with his shining eyes.