Just One Night, Part 3_ Binding Agreement(32)

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Not everything can be measured in terms of war. We’re not fighting a battle.”

He smiles ruefully, takes off his coat. “Don’t kid yourself. Everybody’s always fighting one battle or another. The battlefield changes—the enemies, the allies, even the weapons—but the war wages on.”

“I’m not going to live that way.”

“You don’t have a choice.” He sits down on the ottoman, takes my hand. “None of us do. Your only choice is to decide whether you’re going to be a victor or a casualty. A foot solider or a commander. These are the choices. I’ve made mine; I thought you made yours, too.”

“Very well, have it your way. Dave and I had a cease-fire, a peace treaty even. We didn’t need to be allies. We just needed to leave each other alone. Why did you have to mess with that?” Each one of my words comes out a little faster, a little louder; I feel that I’m close to being hysterical but I suppress it. I have to stay calm.

“Don’t tell me you’re sentimental about Dave,” he says, his tone dangerously close to patronizing.

Robert has never been patronizing. I don’t stop to think about what this shift means. All I know is that it pisses me off.

“Sentimentality will get you nowhere in this world,” Robert reminds me.

“Right,” I say, dragging the word out so my sarcasm shapes it into a different meaning. “You don’t like sentimentality. We shouldn’t be sentimental about anything. We should just all be vehicles of our own ambitions. We should never lay down our arms, never compromise, never look back.”

“It’s not a bad way to live,” he says softly. “You know that. You’ve been living by those rules for the last—”

“Paradise Lost.”

And there it is. That glimpse of emotion that Robert doesn’t like to show. It flies by so fast, I can’t read exactly what the emotion is but it was there, and it was something other than ambition.

“I don’t understand you,” he says slowly. “What does a book have to do with any of this?”

“Not just a book,” I correct. “Your mother’s book. It’s there, on your bookshelf. Why do you have it?”

His jaw tightens; he drops my hand. “I see no reason to throw it out.”

“Really?” I stand up, pull the book off the shelf. “It’s just a book, Robert. No need to be sentimental about it.” I walk to the fireplace. “Shall we burn it?”

Another flash of emotion, but this one I recognize. It doesn’t take long to identify anger. “I don’t burn books.”

“Paper and cardboard. That’s all it is. And it’s not like we’re burning every copy. Just this one, your mother’s copy. Come now, Robert. Be a fighter. We’re at war after all. In war there is fire, things are destroyed, books burn.” I hold the book inside the grate, over a heap of ash.

“Give me the damn book.”

“Your mother was a casualty. She and your father, they lost to more capable opponents. They lost to men like you. You learned so much from those men, those men who set fire to the life your parents had built for themselves, a life they built for you. And your takeaway from all of it was to learn to justify evil.”

His movements are so quick I barely see him before he’s by my side, pulling me away from the fireplace, throwing the book across the room, pulling me to him roughly, his grip so tight it’s suffocating. With one hand still around my back he grabs the collar of my blouse, stretching it toward him; the top button pops off, flies across the room.

For the first time ever he reminds me of Dave.

“It’s all right,” I say. “I understand. This is war. In war women get raped.”

Immediately he lets go of me, takes three steps back. “You think I would do that? You think I would hurt you?”

“Oh Robert, you’ve done so much more than hurt me. You’ve destroyed Kasie Fitzgerald. My parents’ daughter, she’s gone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I helped you discover your true nature!”

I shake my head. “My whole life I’ve been afraid of the kind of rejection that makes a person become invisible. I thought you were protecting me from that,” I say, my voice faltering ever so slightly. “But now when I look in the mirror I don’t see a woman at all. I see something powerful, merciless, dangerous; something whose moods and actions are determined by the winds, the vibrations of the earth, and the pull of the moon. I see something that has no mind of its own! So I guess . . . I guess there’s more than one way to be erased.”