“Tom Love knows you better than that.”
“And will Tom be in his job forever? Will I always report to him? Can you promise me that?”
Robert leans back into the couch, holds me with his gaze. “Yes, I can. I can make sure Tom never has any incentive to leave his position. I can shape the world to your liking. Money and power are the only currency you need if the goal is to pull the strings of industry. I have both. Let me buy you some piece of mind.”
I want to laugh. He’s going to make it rain and like a stripper Tom is supposed to get on his knees and scoop up the falling dollar bills. I suppose Robert would expect the same of almost anyone who he threw money at. Maybe someday he’ll expect it of me.
But he can’t buy my parents’ approval. And he can’t buy the respect of my colleagues. He can just give them incentive to hide their true feelings. I’ll always know what they’ll be saying behind closed doors. And I can’t allow Robert to force Tom into a stagnant career. Eventually I’ll be reporting to someone else, another man or woman who will wonder what I’ll do to earn my next promotion. I’ll be given clients who expect to be allowed to play with me during our meetings, to show me off to boardrooms of hungry men ready to fuck the woman who’s known for whoring her way through the business world, handing out sexual favors like they’re business cards.
Robert’s far from stupid. If he allowed himself to think, he’d see how impossible it all is. But he’s not thinking; he’s feeling. He says he wants to reshape the world, and in the late hours of the night, not long after making love to me on another man’s dining room table, he’s sure that he can do it.
Tomorrow reality will rise with the sun. But probably not tonight. So I swallow my pessimism with my chocolate and gently put my hand on his knee. “I’m tired,” I say. “Take me to bed.”
Perhaps the hot chocolate imparted some innocence to the night after all, because for the first time Robert and I slip into bed together without tapping into the ocean of sexual energy that always lies between us. Instead he gives me one of his shirts to change in to and under the sheets we curl up into each other. He’s asleep now and his breathing has a steady, soothing quality that quiets my anxiety. For a brief minute I can almost believe in his false promises. It feels like I really can be safe here, in his arms, inside his palace of capitalist riches. Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted? Security, wealth, success?
Yes, but I want those things to be real, not facades. I want the success to be mine. I can’t share in Robert’s dreams if I don’t pursue my own. Reluctantly my thoughts turn to Dave. I can see now that my relationship with Dave was never right but I also see why it had so much appeal. His dreams seemed to dovetail with mine. We seemed to complement each other. He was better connected but I was arguably better educated. Yes, he was a lawyer with a degree from Notre Dame but I have a master’s from Harvard Business School—and no Harvard graduate will ever accept the idea that there might be a better education available than the one he or she got, no matter what US News & World Report says about Yale.
But what held us together for so long were our common goals. We both want respect. He wants respect within the old-money world the men in his family have always traveled in and I simply want respect within my family and in the business world. Self-discipline is the attribute I’ve tried to nurture and refine while he has tried to exercise control over the external, his home, his social circle, me. I fear failure and rejection, even my own impulses. He fears helplessness, ridicule, the reckless wantonness of the city.
I smile in the dark. It’s that last part I’m focusing on now. In that knowledge is the key to everything. Getting respect from those who frequent Dave’s elite men’s club with its prohibitive membership fees and ingrained superiority complex requires a different set of rules. I picture the darkened rooms that make up those establishments that officially allow the admittance of women but never make them feel welcome. I see the cigars held by men with manicures and pedigrees. I hear their whispered interactions. In that world there would be no shame in demanding the subservience of a woman. These are stories Dave could tell with relish. But there is shame in losing a woman to another man. There’s shame in being abandoned. Dave is asking me to humiliate myself in exchange for his silence but I haven’t yet asked him to pay for mine.
I know what Dave wants, and what he’s afraid of. I know how to hurt him.
Carefully I slip out of Robert’s firm grasp. He stirs, waking enough to see that I’m getting up but not enough to ask where I’m going. I tiptoe to my purse, pull out my cell, and read the text I know will be there.