She caught her lips between her teeth. She was ready. She was ready to know exactly what was at stake. She was ready to force the issue, to harpoon it and drag it from him, alive and growling.
“You’ve put me in exile,” she snapped. “And the entire town knows it.”
“You’re out on that porch all day by your own stubborn choice.”
“You told me not to go back there.”
“Because you’re better than that.”
“I’ll always have a scar.” She gouged at the wound as if carving it anew. “I’ll always look like this.”
“You’re right.”
She threw down her cards and instantly regretted it. It was the most anemic-possible tantrum: eight small rectangles of paper, splayed in impotent disorder. Anders, however, seemed moved by the gesture. He scooted an inch closer to her and picked up her mess. Then he returned all the cards to their tin and tapped it with his forefinger.
“There’s a reason I haven’t told you yet,” he said. “And it’s not what you think.”
“Does Mrs. Agnelli know?”
“No. I haven’t told her, either. At least not the truth.”
“Why not?”
He looked at the low, stained ceiling and then at his stocking feet.
“Because while I’m not planning on violating the letter of our contract, I’m certainly planning on violating its spirit.” Here, a jittery pause. “And there’s also some superstition involved, I’m sorry to say. I can’t quite shake the feeling that, by speaking frankly about my hopes, I’m inviting the universe to ruin them.”
She was gaping at him now, but couldn’t help it. She had never heard him speak like this. She didn’t even think he was capable of such a thing—addressing the mystical, much less using it as an excuse—and the resulting bafflement was so great that when he reached into his vest pocket, she was certain, somehow, that he would withdraw a weapon. And she was half-right. She had seen the switchbladed penknife hundreds of times before, usually when he was slashing open an envelope or severing the head from a cigar, but it had never looked as lovely or as old as it did this evening: glowing like a burnished nugget of bronze, the family name—the original, multisyllabic one—engraved on it in swirling, oversize script.
“You know what this is?” He placed it on the floor between them.
She nodded, her rage dissipating.
“It’s the only gift I’ve ever given myself.” He picked it up again and extended it in her direction. “And tonight, I’m giving it to you.”
She hesitated. The reversal in his mood had been sharp and swift, which made his affection seem more perilous than his displeasure.
“You are? Why?”
In response, he took her hand, opened her palm, and placed the knife into it. It felt infinitely heavy against her skin, infinitely useful. She reached for her satchel and tucked the knife inside, right next to the sketchbook. He sighed but didn’t smile.
“You want to return to his lab?”
She nodded.
“Then you should be properly armed.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s late,” he said briskly, standing. “You’ll have to excuse me.”
And then he was gone, the bedroom door closing noiselessly behind him.
For the next hour, she sat there, alone.
Then she returned to the horsehair sofa and unrolled herself as long as possible across it, propping up her ankles on one of the arms. Time seemed to be moving very fast now, the clock on the mantel ticking louder than ever, the seconds falling away. She imagined the world continuing to go on without her, the lights coming on inside Ricketts’s lab, Ricketts behind his desk, her sketches spread out before him. She considered her desire for him and the manner in which it seemed to be growing with almost nothing in the way of fuel: just the buckets coming up the hill, the drawings going down. She thought of every decision her father had ever made, especially the ones she didn’t understand. She thought of her mother’s legacy, disfigured by the white-hot disturbances of death and birth; and when the last noises from the bedroom had subsided, she retrieved the satchel and withdrew the knife. She opened the knife to reveal the blade. She yanked up the cuff of her trousers and drew a line of blood across the side of her calf: the fleshy part where, no matter how deep she went, she was unlikely to hit bone. Then she wiped the blade clean and put the knife in her pocket.
And when she rose to her feet, opened the door, and began to run, there was no pain or fear. There was just excitement. The excitement of a world captured and contained and under her exclusive control, the taste and texture of it filling her mouth like food.
10
CANNERY ROW AT MIDNIGHT.