Never Have I Ever(50)
“You’re still worried I’m going to try to record you?” It occurred to me that she could be recording, and I should have thought of that already. Trying to think like her—like a criminal—was new. I needed to learn faster. I couldn’t stay the fox in this hunt, let her have all the dogs and guns and horses. I gave her a tight smile. “What if I am? There could be a carful of FBI men a mile away with a directional mike pointed right at you.”
She dismissed that with a wave. “Please. No way feds stepped in on this small-time BS that fast. It would be the local yokels. I know what they use here, and you’re not wearing it. Not in those pants. I think you came to seal our deal, and I’m glad. It’s the best choice. For you as well as me.”
“For me?” I asked, and a little outrage leaked into my voice. I couldn’t help it.
She nodded, serious, and this was her again. Roux. Not playing. Talking to me as if I were an equal. “I’ve seen your financial records, Amy. You blew half your wad setting up a foundation to pay off that poor schmo who went to prison for you. But it didn’t fix you, did it?” She looked me right in the eye, speaking with conviction. “People think they can buy absolution at their leisure, or on someone else’s dime. It doesn’t work like that. You have to pay the universe.”
My eyes narrowed. “You aren’t the universe.”
“I’m what the universe sent,” she said, almost offhand, but I had the feeling it was the most honest thing she’d ever said to me. She twisted the cap off her water.
Was this how she justified herself? But she had no idea how I’d felt or what I’d done, trying to pay for my mistakes. This was crap, and I told her so. “I paid off Tig’s mortgage because I owed him. I don’t owe you.”
“No. You gave him exactly what you felt comfortable giving, anonymously, in the way that suited you best,” she said, and there was an edge of sorrow to it. It was as if she felt bad for me, but it didn’t change what she had to do. She took a sip of water and then set the bottle down. “You enjoyed paying off his mortgage. It made you feel good. But this? This hurts. This feels unfair and random. That’s the kind of paying the universe demands.”
I had to ask. “And what’s the universe going to do to you?”
She chuckled, and her walls came up. “Let’s stay on topic.”
“I’m not that obedient,” I said. It felt good, to dig at her, trying to keep her real face in the room. “Seriously, I want to know. What do you think the universe will do to you for all the bad you’re doing to me right now?”
She stopped smiling then, taking it seriously. Her eyes on me were very cool. “I’ve prepaid, bitch,” she said, and then she brushed her hands together briskly, done with honesty and metaphysics both. I could tell that she believed it, though, that she had prepaid. Good. It hinted at a darkness in her own past. That darkness, her own worst thing, was what I had to find. “Sit. Let’s get down to it.”
A puff of mildewed air escaped as I took the sagging chair catty-corner to her. I set my unopened water down on the low table so I could cross my arms. I needed to curl my body into a smaller shape, to feel my own warmth.
“How do I know you won’t come back? What’s to stop you from bleeding me forever?”
Roux scoffed, and now she was insouciant book-club Roux again. “What would I come back for? Your signature necklaces from Chico’s? Your copper-bottom pans? Pay me and what you’ll have left is plain old middle-class equity. That shit won’t call me or attract anyone else like me. Once you pay me, something magic happens. You become a regular lady, with no secret money, no secret plans. You’ll even have bought the right to keep pretending you have no secrets.” Her tone was light, condescending, even. Like she was explaining to a toddler how to use a spoon. Even so, her words felt as invasive as her hands had felt last time, when they’d gone rummaging around my body and my baby. She was watching my face, closely, and now she gave a sly little smile. “Speaking of secrets? Mine aren’t on that computer.”
“What computer?” I said, to cover my blush.
“Luca’s. You were ogling it inside,” Roux said. I hadn’t even realized how hard I’d been staring at the computer, and, sweet God, she didn’t miss a trick. “It’s strictly his. We homeschool, I told you. If you don’t believe me, stick your head in the door, ask if you can borrow it. You can read his civics paper. Maybe do some algebra.”
“Or play shooters during school time?” I said, tilting my chin up, but I could feel heat flood my cheeks. I had to be better at this. I had to get better, fast. But how? Most of my lies, my whole life long, had been lies of omission, keeping silent when I should have spoken. I needed to learn to lie like Roux did, with my words and my body language, maybe even my thoughts. Yesterday had gone better, when I’d been running on instinct and adrenaline. Now I was overthinking it. I made myself look her right in the eye, and I said a thing I hoped I didn’t mean. “I don’t care about the computer. I thought everything through, and I don’t see an alternative. I can’t go to jail. I can’t leave my baby. I’ll give you the money.”
It came out so plain, so resigned, that even I believed me. I wanted to keep Roux focused on her legal threat, as if that were the thing that scared me most. I had to keep her believing she had read me right, that she truly owned the worst I’d ever done. So I gave her this partial truth, and something in my demeanor must have telegraphed as honesty, because she leaned back, smiling.