“Just thinking?” Ava asked him. She smiled as we headed for the restaurant. “Or did you fantasize?”
“Guilty,” he said.
She laughed and gave me another knowing look. What was it she was trying to tell me? She further surprised me by inviting him to join us at our table in the restaurant. After we ordered, she once again did most of the talking. Buddy tried to start a conversation only with me, but Ava interrupted frequently, finding out more about him and his family. He finally reacted.
“This is beginning to feel like a job interview for the CIA,” he told her, and looked to me.
“It’s been our experience more often than not that men lie to us,” I said. I saw how much that pleased Ava.
“Well… I’m Buddy Gilroy. I’m not all men,” he said with a little indignation. He looked from Ava to me. “Fact is, I’m getting vibes from you two that tell me you’re the ones speaking with forked tongues.”
Ava laughed, but I was sure he saw the truth in my face.
“Except for your name and that you are auditing a class or two here with your blood relation, I don’t know anything about you.”
“You know we like pepperoni on our pizza,” Ava said. “Don’t be in such a rush.”
He laughed and looked around.
“None of your friends show up?” Ava asked him.
“No.”
“Little white lie, Mr. Gilroy?”
“Huh?”
“When you said you were heading here,” Ava practically sang.
He looked from her to me and then back to her and laughed. “Am I that obvious?”
“Hopefully,” Ava said.
He shook his head, ate some pizza, and smiled warmly at me. I had a strong urge to tell him the truth, to tell him that my name wasn’t Diane, but with Ava right beside me, I kept my feelings under lock and key.
Ava excused herself, took her purse, and went to the ladies’ room.
“C’mon,” Buddy begged. “Who are you? Where do you live? When can I see you again? You and I had a great time that night. Don’t say you didn’t.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“So?”
Something in me wanted me to be reckless, to be a little rebellious, and it wasn’t only his good looks and sweet personality.
“My name isn’t really Diane,” I admitted.
“Oh. What is it?”
“Lorelei.”
“Why did you tell me it was Diane?”
“Caution,” I said. “We’ve been stalked.”
“Oh. Well, I won’t stalk you if you don’t want me to, but boy, I want to very much.”
I smiled. Surely, he was too sweet and innocent to be dangerous. He didn’t have Mark Daniels’s cocky attitude, either.
“Why don’t you give me your phone number, and maybe I’ll call you?” I told him.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said, and he wrote it out quickly on a slip of paper and handed it to me.
“So, are you coming back here tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Why did you come today?”
“Maybe I’ll go here someday,” I said.
“So you’re not in college? You’re in high school?”
I realized I had already said too much, but as Mrs. Fennel said many times, you can’t unring a bell. Before I had to reply, however, Ava returned.
“Let’s get the check and go,” she said. “We don’t want me to be late for my next class.”
“Hey, let me take care of the check,” Buddy said. “That’s the least I can do for telling a white lie.”
“Yes, redeem yourself,” Ava said.
I stood up. “Thank you,” I said.
“My pleasure.”
We started out.
“He’s telling the truth,” Ava whispered. “I checked him out on my BlackBerry. His father is a dentist in Long Beach. No renegade there.”
“Good.”
“I’ll speak to Daddy, but I don’t think he’ll want him.”
“What? Want him? What do you mean?”
“You know,” she said, smiling.
I looked back at Buddy, and then I tried to get my heart to stop thumping loud enough for everyone to hear.
11
Love
I sat in my room and stared at Buddy’s phone number. What Ava had said frightened me for a while, but then I comforted myself in the knowledge that Daddy forbade Ava from involving herself with any young men from her college because of the obvious greater possibility of being discovered. Nothing was more important to him than her being careful about this. I recalled how angry he had been when Brianna had brought home the married man. He had almost moved us away from where we lived in New York immediately. No one, not even the best and most intelligent fugitives, could disappear as quickly or as well as Daddy and his family could. As I had nearly very painfully learned, the only ones who had any chance of finding us were the renegades.
Why was I so concerned about Buddy, anyway? I had never thought much about any of the young men either Brianna or Ava had brought home to Daddy. Maybe I just never wanted to think about them. I didn’t want to know their names or anything else about them. As long as they remained vague, I didn’t have to think of them as actual people. Except for the time with the man Brianna had brought home and the time with the stoned man Ava had brought home, I had never witnessed Daddy with anyone else all these years. Those occasions plus the way he had attacked Mark Daniels were the only violent incidents I had witnessed in my life. For someone else, that might sound like enough, but considering what we daughters were responsible for, it wasn’t very much. After all, it went on at least once a month for all our young lives.
But recurring and troubling visions in which I saw Buddy Gilroy on that stairway were beginning to haunt me all times of the day and night. There were other boys in school and young men I had seen who were attractive, Mark Daniels being the most attractive, perhaps, but there was something special about Buddy, something different. He wasn’t simply handsome and sexually interesting. There was something gentle, soft, caring in his eyes. As trite as it certainly would sound to Ava, he struck me as sincere in a very human sort of way. To put it simply, I didn’t feel he was only eager to get into my pants. I thought he really and truly wanted to know me, to spend time with me, and might very well be satisfied spending a day just walking and talking with me.
Oh, we’d want to kiss, to touch, even to go farther and be completely intimate, I was sure, but there wasn’t that frenzy about him, that rush to score and then move on to another female target that I had seen in other young men. Maybe that was why I had singled him out at Dante’s Inferno. Maybe he saw something sincere in me as well, and that was why he was so attracted to me. Surely, Ava wasn’t right. Not every single young man out there was out for one thing only and couldn’t care less about you as a person. I was convinced that she thought that way to justify what she had to do. It helped insulate her conscience, if she had a conscience. I couldn’t recall either Ava or Brianna demonstrating even the slightest regret or guilt.
I put the slip of paper with Buddy’s phone number on it back into my purse and tried to forget about it. I succeeded in keeping all the ugly visions out of my mind and thought maybe I was past it. He would soon drift out of my life as quickly as he had drifted into it. But when I returned from school the following day, Ava was waiting for me in my room. I almost jumped out of my skin when I opened the door and saw her sitting on my bed, wearing one of her angriest looks.
“What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
“Just close the door and lock it,” she said, speaking through clenched teeth. “Do it quickly, before Marla decides to burst in on us.”
I did as she asked. “What is it?”
“How could you be so stupid? After all the time I’ve spent with you, the things we’ve discussed, the confidences I took you into, and what’s happened here recently, you do this?”
“Do what, Ava?
” I asked, trying to appear undaunted. “Or am I supposed to guess?”
“You don’t have to guess. You know. You went and told that Buddy blue-eyes your real name?”
“Oh,” I said, and put my books on my desk.
“Why, Lorelei? Tell me why you did that.”
I sat at my desk. “I just…”
“Just what? What?” she screamed.
“I just felt like having one normal relationship. A real friendship,” I quickly corrected, avoiding her eyes. “And the only way to do that was to be honest.”
“Honest? What does that mean, Lorelei? Honest about what? Everything?”
“No, not everything. It’s not important to tell someone everything, is it?”
“I’ll tell you what’s important. What’s important is to tell someone outside of this family, someone who is not our kind of people, nothing. How could you not know that? You’ve grown up following the rules, being careful. What is more astounding is that you do this after what almost happened to you, almost happened to all of us here.” She leaped to her feet.
“I know all that, but you told me that you were positive he wasn’t a renegade,” I said.
“So? What does that mean? That gives you permission to get involved with anyone else? You’ll bring him around, maybe? Invite him to dinner, to spend time with your family?” she asked, wagging her head.
“Daddy brings women here who aren’t one of us,” I said.
“That’s Daddy. You’re comparing yourself to Daddy now? You and your seventeen years compare to his decades, centuries, of experience?”
“I’m not saying that, Ava.”
“Then what are you saying, Lorelei?”
“Didn’t you ever just want…” The words were stuck in my throat. It was as if my whole body was rebelling against my tongue.
Ava sighed deeply and shook her head. “Want what, Lorelei? Spit it out or swallow it.”
“Want to have a real relationship with a man, maybe fall in love? I see the way you look at couples on the street or in the mall when they’re holding hands or embracing. I see the look in your eyes. I know that look, because I see it in myself when I look in the mirror.”
She stared at me for a few moments, her eyes softening. “I thought we had this conversation once,” she said in a calmer tone.
“I know, but I liked him. He was different, Ava. Maybe he’s someone I could love and who could love me.”
“Never.”
“Is that really impossible, Ava?”
“Of course it is. I told you that love was poison for us,” she said.
“I remember, but I didn’t think you meant it. Or at least meant that it was true forever.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve never been in love, never had that feeling?”
“Been in love?” Ava said, laughing. Then she grew serious, even angry. “Of course not. Think, think, Lorelei,” she said, poking her temple with her right forefinger so hard I thought she’d drill a hole. “How can we fall in love? What, do you dream of Daddy giving you away at a big, beautiful wedding? Damn your stupidity. I hate that you make me think of this now.”
“Why? Why can’t you at least think of it?”
“Why? Why? What is it I do?” she asked, more of herself than of me. She rose and went to my bedroom window to look out for a moment. I thought she wasn’t going to say anything else. “I’ll tell you what I do and what you will do,” she said with her back still to me. “I make Daddy happy.
“I keep Daddy alive.
“I ensure my own survival and my own happiness and pleasure.
“I participate and will continue to participate in the most exciting adventures and travel and see things few young women my age see and always in the most luxurious style.
“I serve lustful, arrogant men a platter of just deserts.
“I grow more beautiful every day, and that beauty gives me more power.
“What is it I don’t do?” she continued, now turning to me. “You may have noticed, Lorelei. I don’t have or make any lasting friendships.
“I don’t think of a career for myself or think about the future much beyond tomorrow.
“And yes, Lorelei,” she added, “I don’t fall in love with anyone. And all this is and will be true for you as well.”
“But shouldn’t we be sad about that?” I asked softly. Even during these past few weeks, I had never heard her sound so intense, so revealing about her own thoughts and feelings.
“Sad about it? Ha,” she said. “You make me laugh. Like we have the privilege of being sad, ever.”
“How can sadness be a privilege?”
“It leads to other things, things that will be very destructive.”
“I thought Daddy was in love once.”
“Yes, and what did it bring him?” She thought a moment and shrugged. “Actually, I thought about these things, too. I once asked Mrs. Fennel about love.”
“What did she say?”
“‘Love,’ she said, ‘is an unnatural attachment to another living thing. It’s the root cause of most personal problems people have. From this egg is hatched jealousy, which you will learn is the green-eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds upon.
“‘Also hatched from this egg are unrelenting passion and a drive toward possession. Men and women of high intelligence will do the most foolish things in pursuit of passion. Because their passion is so all-consuming, they will want to possess the object of that passion. It will drive them to sell out their own family, their own children, in fact, and it will motivate them to steal and to kill, to lie and deceive, to connive and reject their other basic needs.
“‘Love, in short, is the most dangerous emotion humans can experience. But,’ our Mrs. Fennel added, offering me one of her infrequent slight smiles, ‘you will use it as a fisherman uses his bait.’ That’s exactly what she said, and as you can see, I not only never forgot it, I memorized every word.”
“How did that make you feel?” I asked, and held my breath. Would she keep talking, keep telling me these most intimate things about herself?
“I remember I didn’t understand most of it at the time, but I did understand enough of it to feel sad. It did sound as if the world was a treacherous and unmerciful place. Flowers, blue skies, lakes, and mountains, as well as beautiful birds, were then all deceptions. To survive in such a place, one had to be good at being false.”
“Be good at lying?”
“Exactly. I asked Mrs. Fennel about that, too, and she said truth was quicksand. Once you step into it, you have to stay with it, and it will bring you down. ‘If you’re honest, you’re naked,’ she added, and laughed. Yes, our Mrs. Fennel actually laughed.
“As you can imagine, as you know from your own experiences out there, this wasn’t exactly what everything and everyone else would preach to me.
“Maybe I thought I was being cute or smart, but I asked her about all those romantic greeting cards lovers sent each other. ‘Postcards from Satan,’ Mrs. Fennel said. ‘Touch them. They’re still hot.’
“The next day, I went to a greeting-card store and felt them. They did feel hot. Power of suggestion or some truth only our kind could know? That wasn’t hard to believe. After all, what was the primary thing I had been taught about myself and the primary thing you’re being taught about yourself?”
“What?”
“What? That you’re special, of course. There are only a few selected to be what we are, Lorelei.”
I didn’t feel special, not in the way she was thinking, but I didn’t tell her that. I looked down for a moment and then slowly raised my head. She was staring at me but staring as if she were in pain. “Daddy loves us, doesn’t he, Ava?”
“That’s a different kind of love, Lorelei. That’s love to survive.”
“But you love Daddy, too.”
“For the same reason, and you’ll see, that’s true for you as well. It will always be true for you. Love to survive, nothing else, no sweet music
, no glorious summer days, no moonlit nights to embed in your brain forever and ever. In short, no poetry, just survival. We’ve been chosen for it.”
She made it sound more like a tragedy than a blessing. I looked away so she wouldn’t see the tears coming into my eyes. I knew she would mock them. “How did you know I told him my real name?” I asked her after a moment.
“How did I know?” She laughed. “He’s become my shadow over there now. It was like he was lying in wait for me. I didn’t even realize it. Suddenly, there he was walking beside me, but only to talk about you. He practically fell to his knees to get me to tell him where you live. The only way for me to get rid of him was to come on to him.”
“Come on to him? What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you know what that means, Lorelei. I started to flirt with him in order to get him to forget about you. I think I’m capable of doing that, getting him to forget you. It worked, of course, so shake him out of your head. He’s just like any other man who stands when he pees,” she said, rising. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“What about your engagement ring?” I asked, challenging her story.
“I took it off. It does come off, Lorelei.”
“What exactly happened?”
“What exactly happened? I had him eating out of my palm. I kissed him, and I mean really kissed him like he’d never been kissed. He practically had an orgasm on the campus grounds. If someone mentioned Lorelei to him now, he would say, ‘Who? Lorelei? Who’s that?’”
I didn’t believe her, but I wasn’t sure if that was because I didn’t want to believe her.
“Fortunately for you, I have him dangling on a string out there. I don’t think it’s necessary to tell Daddy about this, but you can’t return to the campus with me ever again,” she said, moving to the door.
“What are you going to do with him now?” I asked.
She opened the door but stood there thinking. “Nothing. What can I do with him? You know the rules we must follow. I won’t think about him any more, and I advise you to do the same. We have other things to think about now. Daddy is moving closer to a decision.”
“What decision?”
“A decision about how much longer he wants the family living here. I overheard him talking about it with Mrs. Fennel. I have the feeling it’s in the works.”