So I just smile and say Tom’s not here anymore and he’s never coming back and I leave her in there to cry some more. Hot water was starting to run out anyway. My condo’s got one of those tankless heating systems that never runs cold.
I put on the shitty clothes Tom’s been choosing for me and head to the office. Can’t believe how much he let everything slide. Hiding, running away, apologizing, too scared to make a decision in case it’s wrong. I sign a bunch of shit that needs approval.
The concert hall in Chicago is a nice gig. Fat budget, central location, civic pride, all that pressure means they need someone to tell them what to do. Big payday. Need to block out some ideas. I glance at the specs they sent and go to my drafting table.
But not much comes. The way it’s supposed to work is I look at pictures of the site and think about buildings I’ve seen in my dreams and the basic form and scale and texture of the thing floods into me. Not this time.
Makes sense, though. Tom infected me long before he took over. Been inside my head for my whole life. His voice always whispering like an itch in a place I couldn’t reach. But now it’s gone. Maybe that means all my good ideas are gone too. Whatever, my reputation is set. I can coast off what I got from him for the rest of my life. Make more money doing less fussy versions of this shit anyway. Keep it simple, don’t push the limits, let the clients feel edgier than they are, and take them for as much as they’re dumb enough to pay. Let someone else change the way the world looks. Or better yet keep it the way it is. Only whiners like Tom think they need to make a difference. The world doesn’t care about how you think it should look. The world’s only goal is to kill you as fast as possible and use your corpse for fuel.
I did Mom a favor and hired an intern from the Architecture Department at her school and this girl has an incredible ass. Her face is fine but that ass. I should design the concert hall to look like that ass. Tom and his goddamn whorls. Other than me, she’s the only one in the office right now, doing who knows what, filing or something. Through the glass walls I can see her at the blueprint cabinet. She knows I’m here, but is she being demure? Or is she bending over at the waist sticking her ass in the air right where I can see it? Don’t tell me she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She knows.
This feels good. Feels right. Didn’t even know he’d been holding me back all these years. The doubts. The questions. The hand on my shoulder. The voice in my ear saying, no, don’t, it’s wrong, just because you want it that doesn’t mean you deserve it. That boring whisper is gone and I deserve it all. Wanting it is the same as deserving it.
It’s hilarious I thought I loved Penny just because he loved Penny. I’m young. I look great. I’m going to be rich, and even if I’m not, Greta will give me whatever I ask for, she’s so screwed up about her money. I’m sort of famous. Famous enough. I never need another good idea in my life. Like Penny could satisfy me when there are interns with perfect asses and the kind of faces that make them drop their jeans for a famous enough man who tells them they could be something one day. Who the hell wears jeans that tight to work? Someone whose main ambition in life is to give herself to me.
Everything is so clear now that he’s gone.
I don’t know why I’m bothering to write this down. Guess he got me in the habit. And anyway Tom’s story needs an ending.
The End.
95
I wake up and I’m missing a day.
Yesterday was Saturday so today is Sunday except it’s Monday. I should be waking up next to Penny at her apartment, but I’m in my condo bedroom lying next to a stranger. No, not a stranger, a young woman who interns at the architecture office. Beth. Her name is Beth. She’s nervous, embarrassed, her eyes searching my face for evidence that this wasn’t a career-damaging mistake, but there’s anger percolating there too, held in check, like she hasn’t decided if it should be directed at me or herself. She nuzzles her naked body next to mine and I recoil instinctively and I see a wall of self-recrimination slam down over her eyes because of course she sees the panic in mine.
I tell her I need some coffee and I’ll make her some too. She tries to kiss me but I act like I don’t notice as I skitter out of the bedroom.
I have no idea what happened. My mind is blank.
Something buzzy in my brain stem sends me to check the laptop and there’s an entry that I didn’t write. As I read it, my body shivers hot and cold like a bad flu.
It’s him, John—he somehow took control and did this to me.
She calls out asking about the coffee and I slap down the laptop screen. I make coffee and she pads into the kitchen wearing nothing but yesterday’s underwear, too casual, showing herself to me in the morning light. She has a small bruise on each hip. They look fresh.
I feel queasy. The neural scanners aren’t supposed to let you wake up into a nightmare. Because that’s how this feels, as cliché as I know that sounds, like a nightmare, lucid and crystalline but gummy around the edges.
She asks if I want to go get breakfast and I say I can’t, I have to go to the office, and there’s this excruciating moment where she makes a joke about workplace sexual harassment and it’s supposed to show how grown-up she is about this stuff but it only makes her seem so young, too young, except there’s also this steely wire of threat inside the joke, giving it its essential structure, and she sees me get it and she flushes pink, because she’s tasting a bit of power and she’s not sure what to do with it.
She stands there, stirring milk into her coffee, undressed, a display and a challenge. She wants something more from me, I don’t know what, I don’t even know if we slept together—I have no memory of yesterday, nothing. But there’s a jagged tension simmering in her face, like she’s waiting for me to confirm that I’ve already taken everything I wanted from her and now she’s just one awkward conversation away from me never thinking about her again.
I read what he wrote so fast, I didn’t get the full picture of what happened with Penny. But it sounds bad. Awful. The kind of awful that maybe can’t be fixed.
She asks if she should just go and I say that’s probably a good idea. I escape to the bathroom to wash my face and I still have no idea what exactly happened but there’s a used condom, thank god a condom, in the bathroom trash. I can’t make eye contact when she comes out of the bedroom wearing yesterday’s clothes, pulling on her shoes, swaying as she balances on one foot, then the other, and in sixty seconds she’ll be gone and I can move on to the next phase of this calamity.
But this is not her fault. This is my fault—his fault—and even if the last thing in the world I want right now is to prolong this mess, her name is Beth and she matters.
“Wait,” I say. “Beth . . . I’m sorry, I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t want you to feel like what happened last night didn’t . . . mean anything. It’s a lot easier for me to pretend it didn’t happen and treat you like a stranger at the office. But, I mean, if nothing else we should be able to be honest with each other. Don’t you think?”
Beth blinks at me, like she’s waiting for something snide or dismissive and when it doesn’t come she’s sweetly confused and not so sweetly sad. She crosses her arms, tight, guarded.
“You want us to be honest,” Beth says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Because, uh, I don’t totally remember what happened . . . exactly.”
“You don’t remember,” she says. “Uh-huh.”
“Did we . . . drink a lot?”
“I guess so. Yes. I sure did.”
“Okay,” I say. “I don’t know if you heard I was in the hospital?”
“Yeah,” Beth says, “I mean, everybody knows that.”
“Right. So, maybe I need to apologize if I said or did anything, you know, inappropriate last night.”
“Nothing we did last night was anywhere near appropriate.”
“Well, then I’m very sorry about that.”
“Why are you being like this?” Beth says.