White Ivy(88)

“Go.”

“Fuck you.”

“Go.”

She reached down, pulled off one shoe, and flung it with all her might at his head. The heel struck the wall near his left shoulder, leaving a black smudge the size of a quarter.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “You’re more honest when you’re angry.”

She flew at him but he was ready. He practically tossed her into the hallway, barring her way back inside with his steely arms. Dignity abandoned, Ivy called him all manner of names, insulted his mother, his lowly birth, called him corrupt, berated his corrupt mind, his disgusting habits, his cowardly nature, his lack of integrity. At her last insult, Roux pulled out his wallet and showered her with a fistful of crumpled bills. “There’s your integrity,” he said, and slammed the door.



* * *




SEX WAS A kind of sickness, Ivy realized, and that sickness began and ended with Roux. Maybe there was a kind of logic to Tom’s father’s fanaticism with God, worshipping an honest and righteous deity who would never betray you. She wondered if such devotion stemmed from willpower or from something else, a deeper secret to life she had never known. All her life she had had secrets. They had held her up like stilts on quicksand, without which she would have sank long ago, just another one of Sylvia’s sheep waiting to be led to slaughter. She felt she had to take control of her life. But how? I am the one controlling my life, am I not? she asked herself.

These thoughts ran through her head, without beginning or end. She told Gideon to stay away so he wouldn’t catch her cold before his big meeting. Then she threw all pride out the window and called Roux. Begging was also a form of taking control. She pleaded with him to see the futility of his demand. This will change nothing, she said, you’re only hurting innocent people. “Are you referring to Gideon or yourself,” said Roux, “because neither of you are what I’d call innocent.” Just listen to me, Ivy had shouted, just listen! He stopped answering her calls after that. In the stifling afternoon silence of her bedroom, her eyes strayed to a different day now on the calendar—the deadline Roux had given her to expose their affair to Gideon, unmarked on the page but permanently emblazoned in her mind with a large black X. Twelve days… eleven… ten…

She received an email from a law school consultant, one of Liana’s friends. For an affordable rate of eight thousand dollars, she could provide services such as essay and interview preparation and weekly online study sessions for the LSAT. Ivy half-heartedly agreed to think about it but then she lost the consultant’s phone number. Studying, in the midst of such a crisis, felt as absurd as trying to toast bread as the house was burning down. She took to stalking Astor Towers, pounding on Roux’s door—“Goddamn it, I know you’re in there!”—but he never answered. No matter how long she waited or how hard she pressed her ear to the door, she heard nothing from the other side. Reckless plans flew through her mind in lieu of sleep. She and Gideon could go off the grid and live without computers or phones so Roux would never be able to find them. She could fake their deaths. She could go to the FBI and enroll in the Witness Protection Program in exchange for giving them information on Roux and the Morettis. But Roux could still make calls and send letters from prison, couldn’t he? When she realized that there was no way to prevent two people from making contact in this day and age, her hope of changing Roux’s mind turned into fantasies of how to punish him afterward. Tarring and feathering. Chinese water torture. Taking a machete to his precious cars—but no, he could just buy more. Afterward. What a terrible word. She couldn’t stop herself from looking down the fissure that would soon divide the before and afterward, the Confession itself. In how many ways could Gideon leave her? In one version, he was angry, he called her a slut, a whore, an immoral woman, he shouted that he hated her, that he never wanted to see her again. In another version, he was heartbroken—he hadn’t thought she was capable of causing him such pain, he would never forgive her, he wished they’d never met. The last scenario—the one that kept her tossing into the night—was the one where he was indifferent. I never really loved you. You’re not the girl I thought you were.

One evening, the thought came to her that if she quit smoking, she would be able to regain control of her life. Since she’d lit her first cigarette in Roux’s bedroom at fourteen, she’d never gone longer than a week without smoking. She decided to quit cold turkey. Impose her will upon her weak body. She took to walking the streets. Every corner she turned, every back alley, in front of every bar and club and café, she saw people smoking in their warm circle of companionship and commiseration, a commiseration she was now excluded from. Without even thinking, she drifted up to an old man with a tattoo sleeve and a chef’s apron and asked if she could bum one off him. He stuck his cigarette in his mouth and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes from his back pocket. The decisive way he clicked his lighter and shielded her flame from the wind felt like the greatest kindness she’d ever been shown. The minute she threw the stub into the sewer, she hurried into a pharmacy and bought her own pack of Lucky Strikes, practically salivating, her hands shaking, pupils dilating. She smoked half the pack walking back home, one cigarette after the other, overcome with a wonderful oblivion. When she finished, she called Roux. He didn’t answer. This was expected. She had, after all, failed to quit smoking. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I can quit.