BO
BY THE LOOK ON HER face, my last statement caught AnnMarie by surprise. I was frustrated that she wouldn’t let me in, but someone—maybe it was Clay, maybe it was someone else—had hurt her, and she was scared.
I didn’t know how to break through to her. Maybe if I could eradicate this one problem on campus, she’d be ready to trust me.
“I don’t think violence is the answer to everything,” AnnMarie muttered finally.
Aggravated, I barked, “You threatened to stab me in the eye with a pen and skewer me with your fork.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Like you said, it’s not like I was going to be able to actually carry it out.”
I slid back in my chair, the tension easing out. I was in combat for years, and I had learned to sniff out weaknesses. AM was grasping at straws, throwing up every barrier she could, because she was thisclose to not only admitting she wanted me but actually taking me up on the offer I’d laid on the table earlier. Patience, I counseled myself. For AM, I needed more patience. “Do you want to have a philosophical discussion on violence and civilization?”
“No, no—” She shook her head but I interrupted her.
“Because I’m perfectly fine with that. I’ll even go first. Fighting in some form has been a mainstay of every society, even in some of the most civilized, like the gladiators in Rome or dueling in the refined historical England. It’s a natural event seen in most predatory species, many times around mating. Ancient texts include references to physical brutality, including the Bible and the epic poem Gilgamesh.”
“Wow, you’ve given some thought to this.” She looked surprised once again.
What was with these girls thinking I had less than two stones rubbing together in my head? Did I look like a caveman? “I go to college, just like you.”
She grimaced, then said, “Whatever our historical relationship to violence is, I don’t think beating up any of the lacrosse club members results in anything positive for me. I’m just here to get my degree and get out.” There was a tone of finality to her voice.
AnnMarie suddenly displayed a fascination with the placement of the kidney beans in her chili, scooping each bean individually and placing them on top of each other. A girl had never expressed so much disinterest in our conversation and me with so little volume. Her obviousness made me want to grin. I was really getting to her.
When I realized that AnnMarie was going to continue to act as if her food were more interesting than anything, I broached the most important question she’d left unanswered.
“Why not leave, AM?” I asked gently. The insistence on staying seemed masochistic, like she enjoyed the notoriety. But she didn’t come off as someone who got her rocks off on being a hot campus topic. None of it fit for me.
“Why should I be the one to leave?” she shot back fiercely. “Like you said, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But at a new school—” I began, but AnnMarie leaned toward me with a glint in her eye. She looked so militant that I was afraid I’d pegged her wrong. Maybe she could stab me in the eye with a pen.
“I did nothing wrong.” Every word was said slowly, a puff of breath emphasizing the pauses between each one, as if the spices from the chili had impaired my mental acuity.
“Okay,” I said in reply. “But I think there’s more to the story than that.”
Her non-reply was answer enough.
“You know that the only guys who brag are the ones who aren’t getting any,” I told her.
Rattled, she said, “I don’t disagree, but why?”
“Because then you aren’t talking about actual exploits, you’re playing telephone, trying to gain social power by being in the know. And then it becomes one person trying to top the other. It isn’t even about the subject of that gossip anymore. It’s a power play.”
I knew all about power plays. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I understood that half of my father’s actions were because he was a small man, not physically, but mentally and emotionally. His father was an overpowering figure, and to compensate, my old man was mean.
In boot camp, the sergeants enjoyed fucking with the newbies or “grunts” by waking us up at two in the morning to run with our rucksacks in the muddiest, dirtiest, most uneven ground on the base. It was their way of asserting their power over us. If they could have teabagged us every morning, I was convinced they’d have done that too. So I understood the why that led to what. I’d never been able to figure out how to terminate the action other than to walk away. That’s what I’d done.