The Kissing Game (14 page)

Robert’s eyes travel down to my legs to my feet.
Suddenly I realize what I’m wearing. A sweater over a pencil skirt and flats—a
choice that suddenly feels like a mistake. Robert hated when I wore skirts. He
strictly forbade it. Why? I have no idea. Because he’s Robert.

“Could we sit down and talk a minute?”

His lips start to move, but then he doesn’t
answer my question. He just walks over toward the couch and points for me to
sit down. I assume this action amounts to a silent request for me to join him,
so I take the few terrifying paces to the couch and sit. He sits, too.

“I came here to talk to you about … everything,”
I say, putting my bag on the floor next to me, instantly feeling as though I’m trying
to outrun a cheetah even though I’m not moving. Robert gives the same
expression one would give a tax auditor while the lamplight from the small end
table shines on his cheek, on his long eyelashes. I twist internally.

“I just don’t know how to start,” I confess.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning.” He’s so
logical that it’s really annoying.

“It was all a big mistake. I tried to fix it,”
I blurt and then wait for him to speak. Why hadn’t I planned this better? Why
did I just show up at his door like an imbecile without a plan? 

“You mean
destroying my life
was a big
mistake?” he clarifies. “Because that’s what you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For ruining my life?” His voice is cool, the
smell of alcohol more pronounced. “There’s nothing your apology can fix, so no
need to apologize. Actually, what you can do is tell me whether you came up
with it all on your own, or whether your friends schemed with you?” He glares
fiery eyes at me. “Was it Henry? Cory? Your little tie-dyed buddy in I.T. Did
he get hold of the elevator’s security tape?”

I don’t answer. No need to implicate my
friends.

Then Robert stands and cups the back of his
neck while pacing across the tiled floor, first away from me, and then back, like
a caged cheetah in the zoo. Whatever he might want to do to me, I’m sure I
deserve it. He points at me, his head shaking slightly. “I just can’t figure
out how you could have done this. In the Chairman’s office, it crossed my mind,
briefly, but I dismissed it. There’s no way Caroline could do that, I told
myself. Her little friends, maybe, but not Caroline… No, no, I said. She must
realize how hard it was for me to get that job, how hard I had to work to make
partner at such a young age. Do you? Do you realize?”

I shake my head.

 “Let me elucidate for you then. Let’s start
with undergraduate school.” He wobbles a little while he talks, his voice calm.
“I graduated cumma sum laude. Scored near perfect on the LSAT. Worked like a
dog as a summer intern, cradling idiotic clients who would have just as well
shot me as soon as they were done with me. Umm, let’s see. Oh yes, I lived
without a personal life for many years. All to become partner so a little evil redhead
could ruin it in one second in an elevator.” He zigzags, trips over the edge of
the Persian rug, and nearly falls.

“I’m sorry,” I say, watching him with concern.

“And that’s what you came here for? To
apologize?” His bloodshot blue eyes look disgustedly at me.

“Sort of.”

He takes two paces to me and reaches out his
hand like a claw, which he then uses to clutch the top of my head, as if I were
in an electric chair and his hand could shoot jolts of electricity. “I’d really
like to know what goes on in there.” He squeezes. “We worked together for two
years. I counted on you. I knew you. And here you’re just a massive question
mark!” He roughly removes his hand from the top of my head as if he were
removing an invisible hat.   

“Have you been drink--?”

In the middle of my question, he swings around
and wags his finger at me, his face muscles tightening. “Don’t you dare come to
my house, uninvited, mind you, and have the gall, the sheer audacity, the
limitless nerve, to ask me such a question, after, after ruining my life!”

While he fumes over me, my mind conjures up
what I want to say to him. That I came here to tell him that I’m going to help
him get his job back. That I’m sorry I acted foolishly. That I thought he hated
me. That it seemed his sole purpose in life was to make me miserable. That I
was tired of his cruelty, fed up with his constant scowling, his dictator
attitude, the ludicrous dress code, the nitpicking about perfume smells and
timesheets. That I was tired of feeling like a peasant holding my hand out for
the crumb of his kindness every day. That I had acted rashly, unforgivably, and
before I had the chance to think about my rashness, I’d already dropped the
tape into the mailbox. That I risked life and limb to get it back but failed. He
should know how hard I tried, right? Instead, my mouth is barren, a fruitless
plane. I just watch as he scowls at me, looking like a devil ready to erupt in
angry flames. Even in his anger, in his inebriated state, I find looking at him
a visceral experience. From my sitting position, his tall, wild haired,
flush-faced beauty is akin to standing over the abyss and feeling the wind
whipping up at you and still wanting to jump.

 “You know how much money I made before you got
me fired?” He doesn’t wait for me to shake my head. “Four hundred fifty
thousand a year … plus bonuses.”

I wince.

“You know how much it costs to keep my father
in that home?”

I shake my head.

“You wouldn’t, would you?” he snaps. “You do
things without thinking!” The absence of light on his face makes his blue eyes
look as though they could manufacture bullets. Just then, a heavy truck rumbles
angrily outside. Its brakes screech and then it roars to life again.

“Coming here to apologize is about the smartest
thing you’ve done,” he laughs. “Brilliant, because that solves everything,
doesn’t it?”  

“Look,” I interject, “I’m trying to help get
your job back.  I mean, I think I might be able to.”

“Get my job back?” He sours. “You know how much
some of those partners hate me? They couldn’t wait to get me out of there. You
think you can get my job back? With what? With your little friends?”

“Well,” I sputter. “I think I might have a way
to fix the problem.”

 “You can’t
fix
anything! There’s
nothing in the world you can do. You should’ve realized the consequences of
your actions beforehand. What kind of idiot ruins a man’s life without thinking
about it beforehand?”

He strides over to the couch and sits down at
the edge, the anger rippling across his glorious face in shadows. Briefly he
withdraws his eyes from me and turns them toward the wall, and I wonder if I
should reach for my bag and leave. Now would be a good time to get out. Before
he kills me. What a mistake it was to come here. What did I expect? I should’ve
come when I already had his job back. I should’ve come when I knew what to say.

Robert chuckles to himself, and I have an urge
to ask him “What’s funny?” but I don’t. We sit there silently for several
seconds that feel like minutes. Then he loosely wags his finger at me.

“But there
is
something,” he suggests.
“Remedies do exist.” He looks like a crazed fiend.

“Remedies?”  

His movement alters the light on his cheek,
covering his face with shadows.

“Injured party, punitive damages. You know,
tort law?” he slurs, and I wonder how much he’s been drinking. I dare not ask,
however.

“When the damages are extensive, irreparable.” He
speaks as though he’s adrift in his own mind.

Is he asking me for monetary compensation?
Briefly I consider how much money I have in my bank account. Enough to buy him
some socks. While I contemplate the quarters at the bottom of my purse, the
leather couch screeches as Robert shifts toward me. I have a prickly feeling in
my veins that he wants to hurt me, but then again, I always feel that way. His
hand travels over me as though he plans to reach for something on the other
side of me, but then he clutches my leg and pulls my feet toward him. At the coldness
of his touch, I’m sixty percent shock and forty percent concerned. Finding my
feet already in his lap, I lean away from him on one elbow. The leather couch
beneath my elbows screeches.

He looks at my shoes as if they’re worthy of
destruction. Perhaps he plans to sell my shoes as compensation for ruining his
life. Used, they can’t be worth more than ten dollars. One by one, he tugs them
off and tosses them far across the room. They slap against the floor and lie
there contorted. We both stare at them for several seconds before looking at
each other.

“There are the two basic types of damages,” he
explains angrily to my bare feet. “One type involves payment for money lost,
like wages, medical costs. Then there are emotional damages for pain and
suffering.”

He turns to look at my face and with both
horror and shock I watch as he slides his hand up my leg. His fingers feel like
static. Panic flapping in my throat, I grab his hand and squeeze it.

“What’re you doing?” I ask urgently.

“Of course, there’re also speculative damages, for
all the losses I haven’t yet, but will no doubt incur in the future.” The ropelike
muscles in his neck stand. What is he doing?

 “You’re scaring me,” I say calmly, feeling the
tremendous heat of his hand on my bare leg.

“Am I? Hmm. Good.” His hot hand forces itself out
of my grip and returns to rising up my leg. Beneath me, the leather couch
smells carnal.  He leans toward me, his eyes looking thoroughly intoxicated
close up. He’s close enough to reveal a small bead of sweat on his forehead.
For a moment I think that there’s something wicked about his face. It’s just as
beautiful as always, only he looks as though he’s pulled the pin out of the
grenade inside his brain.

“Then we mustn’t forget psychological damages
for reckless conduct, the resulting distress, humiliation, and disappointment.”
He clutches my calf with his other hand while his hot hand pushes my skirt up
to my thighs. His eyes are busy evaluating my legs and then my face. And I’m
frozen, trying to reconcile what he expects me to give him as compensation. I
look back at the front door. Fifteen paces away from where I sit on the couch.
I could just leave my shoes and make a run for it.

“Robert, I—”

“Damages have been extensive, but I’m much more
interested in remedying the psychological torment.” He plucks a bit of lint off
my skirt, which is so high that I’m sure he can see my underwear. The gesture
is terrifying.

“You’re being ridiculous… you’re not serious.”

“Tort law is always serious. You’ve ruined my
life. I just want payment. Nothing personal.” His hand feels larger as it rises
slowly until it stops underneath my skirt. He’s still talking about tort law
and damages and other crap I’m not listening to. Instead I grab his wrist with
both hands but he’s like a drunken ox, but he moves it so effortlessly that he
soon clutches the hip of my underwear. The look in his eyes as he does so reminds
me of a duel, when two cowboys stand twenty feet away from each other, hands
hovering over their holsters. This close up, the smell of alcohol is startling
but mixes with his smell and hits my senses like a sledge-hammer of lust.  

“Robert!”

I look at the bulge his arm makes under the
fabric of my skirt. The dim lamplight bounces off his black-brown hair.

“You can’t possibly think…?” I manage.
Underneath my grip, his muscles are iron. He could pull off my underwear completely
if he wants.

“You’re a clever girl. It’s not complicated.
What I want involves the fulfillment of a promise, albeit a deceitful one.”

Suddenly I’m at that strange intersection, the
same one I faced when I put the Xanax in the pina colada, when I put the tape
of our kiss in the mailbox, when I broke in to the Chairman’s house. That now
familiar crossroads. It’s no longer an exciting place but has become dreaded,
like walking into a dark tunnel alone. My wrongs have piled up so high that now
I must confront remedying those mistakes with sex? … … I can’t even formulate
the thought. My mind can’t formulate what he’s asking of me. I wonder if
Robert’s intoxicated state has pushed him beyond reason. I wonder if he’s
intoxicated often. I wonder if he has a drinking problem. I wonder if I’ve
given him a drinking problem. I wonder if sex will solve his drinking problem. Without
giving me a chance to think further, he rises and tears off his t-shirt and
throws it onto the floor. His skin is pale, muscled, his face emotionless.

 “You’re not being rational,” I manage. “What
you’re asking for is ridiculous. It’s—”

“Utterly rational. Makes perfect sense. Now
take off your clothes,” he demands, pointing at my clothes. He scowls as he
towers over me. Under different circumstances, if I didn’t know he was drunk,
if he hadn’t been the mean boss who made me cry and ruined my life, the sight
of him would have pummeled all defenses. Truly magnificent in that painfully
glorious kind of way. In the present situation, the sight is like looking a
beautiful dragon in the eye and saying, Okay, sure.  

“I will not take off anything.”