Page 9 of Mr. North
“So you’re too busy for love.”
“I’m sorry? That’s a really strange way of putting it.”
He shrugs. Looks to his right, out of the window, over the city, his eyes seemingly unfocused. “But true. You’ve prioritized the foundations of your career and your ability to care for yourself over romantic connections.”
“I suppose so, then.”
“You don’t want children,” he says. Not a question. A fact.
There are people I’ve known for years who have never asked me these questions. It’s confronting that Raphael is asking me them now. They trip off the end of his tongue like he has every right to know the answers. I find myself responding without giving it a second thought, despite my discomfort. “I haven’t even thought about it.”
He looks at me, hands resting on his legs, index finger tapping absentmindedly against the outside of his knee. “That’s not true,” he says, shaking his head a little. “I’m betting you’ve thought about it a lot. I’m betting you feel bad about wanting a career more than you want a family. Sons join the military, like their fathers. They take over the family business. They become doctors like the men who came before them. Women aren’t meant to just be mothers and homemakers anymore, Ms. Dreymon. You don’t have to feel bad about the choices generations of women have made in the past. They weren’t choices, after all. They were the only avenues open to them at the time.”
A fierce prickling sensation travels over my skin; it starts on my scalp and travels down over my cheeks, around the back of my neck, behind my ears, down my spine, over my shoulder blades. It feels like individual pinpricks of fire singeing my nerve endings. I grind my teeth together, my nostrils flaring.
“Why are you angry?” he asks.
“I’m not.”
“The look in your eyes says otherwise. Am I totally wrong? Do you want children?”
I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him know he’s right. Not only right, but precisely on the money. Over the years, I’ve seen high school friends online get married, buy houses and start families. I’ve watched their lives evolve into something completely unrecognizable from my own and I haven’t observed this evolution with jealousy. I’ve witnessed it with fear. Fear that it might happen to me, too, before I’ve accomplished all of my goals, before I’ve realized my dreams, before I’ve had chance to travel the world, see new countries, experience new cultures. I’ve feared it, because the people in the pictures on Facebook have all looked so deliriously happy. Content with their lot. The things they held dear, the goals they strived toward so hard and for so long, are now secondary to something else—to the men and women they love, to their children and their dogs. I do not know who I am without my goals. If I abandon them, I abandon the very root and core of myself.
Raphael sighs down his nose. Takes my pawn with his second knight. I take his knight, and so it begins. We go to war. The board is our battlefield, and we are both wrestling for supremacy. No more feeling each other out. No more dancing around, waiting for the other to strike. Both queens come out. My bishop. I take his knight. His queen takes my bishop. My queen then takes his queen. This is a ruthless, bloody game, and neither one of us backs down. Rook takes rook. Raphael guards his king fiercely, as do I.
“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” he asks casually.
“What ?”
“I’m guessing you were young. And that you immediately regretted it.”
“Why the hell are you trying to psychoanalyze me?”
“I’m just figuring out who you are, Ms. Dreymon.” He sounds so reasonable, not defensive at all, which makes me feel like I’m flying off the handle. I’m not, though. People don’t just ask strangers when they lost their virginity. It’s not polite. It’s really fucking rude .
“How does knowing when I lost my virginity help you figure out who I am?”
“It’s the small, unexpected details that often give me the most insight into a person,” he replies.
“When I lost my virginity is not a small detail to me. It’s private. Personal.”
“I lost my virginity when I was sixteen to a girl in a graveyard. She was five years older than me. I lasted about three seconds before I lost it and came. She was seriously unimpressed.” He cracks his thumb knuckle, looking me dead in the eye. “See? It’s that easy. You could have just said, I didn’t lose my virginity until I was twenty-one. Or fifteen. Or twenty-eight. You could have said the brutal rape my mother suffered through when I was a small child made me wary of forming physical connections with people. You could have said—”
My cheeks start to burn. What. The. Fuck. Did. He. Just. Say? He’s still talking, I can see his lips moving, but all I can hear are those words playing on repeat. He knows about my mother’s attack? How ? My father never even knew about what happened that day. My brother. Mom made me promise I would never tell a soul, and I kept that promise. So…how the fuck does Raphael North know about it? My eyes must have glazed over. Raphael’s stopped talking, and he’s gone back to cracking his knuckles.
“I’m sorry. Perhaps that was tactless of me,” he says.
“Tactless? Bringing up my mother’s rape during our very first conversation was tactless ? God, I can’t fucking…” I shake my head, about to get up out of my chair. Raphael holds out a hand, leaning forward in his chair, though.
“I haven’t had a proper conversation with a normal human being in a very long time, Elizabeth. I’m afraid my social skills leave a lot to be desired. I’m very sorry if I’ve offended you. Just...don’t get angry. Please.”
This guy…this guy is something else altogether. I’m boiling mad, but I don’t want him to see that. I slam his pawn I’ve just taken down next to all the other pieces I’ve claimed. Six thousand dollars, Beth. Six thousand dollars. I keep the number in my mind, focusing on everything I’ll be losing if I walk out of the apartment now. Grinding my teeth together, I say, “Okay. How about this? I won’t completely lose my temper and storm out of here, but I’m going to take a leaf out of your book and tell you that what happened to my mother is none of your fucking business . I don’t know how you even found out about that, and I don’t want to know. I never want to speak with you about it again.”
Raphael sits back in his chair, very still for a moment. His body is relaxed, though, at ease. His breathing is steady and even, unlike mine. I’m holding my breath.
A long, terrible minute stretches out before us. A rhythmic thumping, pounding sound breaks the silence. Raphael turns to watch as a helicopter rises beside the building, maybe only a hundred feet away, hovering in place for a second before it peels off to the left, lifting higher into the sky. When he turns back to me, he’s smiling sadly.
“Fair call, Ms. Dreymon,” he says. “I deserve that. I’ll never bring it up again. You have my word. And congratulations.”
