Ch. 13 — Diary Entry #13: Hunger with Two Faces
Plum returned the key at six.
Not to the office. The office was closed by then, or closing. Len had gone to a networking event. The junior agents had scattered. The lights were half off, the phones dark, the day reduced to the hum of the copier in sleep mode.
She texted: I’m outside.
I should have told her to use the drop box.
I went down instead.
Her car was parked illegally near the entrance. The engine was running. The window was down an inch. Rain had begun again, fine and cold, the kind that does not look like rain until you are already wet.
I got into the passenger seat before I decided to.
That is the truth.
I did not lean down and speak through the window. I did not hold out my hand and wait for the key. I opened the door and sat beside her, as if I had been summoned, as if the car were a room I had already agreed to enter.
Plum looked at me.
“You’re wet,” she said.
“It’s raining.”
“You should have brought a coat.”
“I thought I’d be quick.”
“Were you?”
I held out my hand.
She did not give me the key immediately.
She looked at my wrist.
The red thread was there.
It had darkened slightly from water, or sweat, or the oils of my skin. The knot sat against the blue vein. The strand of hair woven through it was almost invisible unless you knew to look.
“You still wear it,” Plum said.
“You told me not to cut it.”
“I told you not to cut it. I didn’t tell you to keep it.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Every instruction has a door,” she said. “Some people walk through. Some people stand in the frame.”
I pulled my sleeve down.
“The key, Plum.”
She opened her hand.
The white envelope was there. It looked exactly as it had that morning, except that it was softer now, worn at one corner, as if it had been carried somewhere close to the body.
I took it.
Our fingers touched.
I know how that sounds. I know how many times I have written about touch in this diary as if it were a small thing. It is not. Touch is how contracts begin. Touch is how people test whether a boundary is real.
Her fingers were warm.
Mine were cold.
She did not pull away.
“You’re tense,” she said.
“I had a long week.”
“You had a lucky week.”
“Is that the same thing?”
“No. Luck requires maintenance.”
I looked at the envelope in my hand. The key made a small shape against the paper. I should have checked it. I should have made sure it was the right key. I should have asked whether she had found the earring.
I asked none of those things.
Instead, I said, “Did you find it?”
“Find what?”
“The earring.”
Plum smiled.
It was not a comforting smile. It was the smile of a woman who has just heard someone say exactly what she hoped they would say, though I do not know why.
“Yes,” she said. “I found it.”
“Good.”
“Are you curious?”
“About the earring?”
“About anything.”
The rain tapped on the roof of the car.
The streetlights made pale stripes across her face. I could see the fine line of her collarbone above her coat. I could see the dark lashes, the still mouth, the way she held herself as if she had never once in her life been uncertain of whether she belonged where she stood.
I wanted to ask her how she did it.
Not the earring.
Everything.
How she walked into rooms and made them rearrange themselves around her. How she bought houses without seeing them. How she made favors sound like gifts. How she made me feel both chosen and appraised.
But I could not ask that.
So I asked the wrong question.
“Why me?”
Plum turned toward me.
The car felt smaller.
“What?” she said.
“Why do you keep asking me for things?”
“Because you’re good at your job.”
“That’s not the reason.”
“No.”
“Then what is?”
She looked at me for a long moment.
The air between us changed.
I need to write this carefully because I have spent hours trying to understand what I felt in that car, and I still cannot separate the hunger from the fear.
There are two kinds of wanting.
One is wanting to have.
The other is wanting to become.
I looked at Plum and felt both at once.
I wanted to be near her. I wanted her to look at me the way she was looking at me then, with that dark, patient attention, as if I were a house she had already decided to buy. I wanted her hand on my wrist again. I wanted her to say my name in that low voice and make the ordinary world feel thin.
And I wanted to be her.
I wanted her calm. Her certainty. Her power. The way people leaned toward her without knowing why. The way she moved through offices and houses and streets as if every lock had already been oiled for her. I wanted to stop being the woman who smiled and waited and hoped and calculated. I wanted to be the woman who simply took.
I do not know which hunger she saw.
I think she saw both.
I think she liked that I could not tell them apart.
She leaned closer.
Not enough to kiss me.
Enough to make me aware of my mouth.
“Patricia,” she said.
My name sounded like a clause.
“Yes?”
“You’re trying to figure me out.”
“I’m trying to do my job.”
“Your job is to open doors.”
“And yours?”
Her gaze dropped to my lips.
Then to my wrist.
Then back to my eyes.
“My job,” she said, “is to know which doors should stay open.”
I stopped breathing.
She reached out and touched the red thread over my sleeve.
The heat of it came through the fabric.
“You should go inside,” she said.
“You’re the one who called me down here.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you sending me away?”
Her smile was small.
“Because you’re not ready to stay.”
I hated her for that sentence.
I hated her more because it was true.
I got out of the car.
The rain touched my face. The key was in my hand. The envelope was damp. I did not look back until I reached the lobby, and when I did, her car was still there, headlights off, engine running, a dark shape in the wet street.
I went upstairs.
I put the key back in the cabinet.
I signed the log.
Then I sat at my desk and wrote this entry with the red thread burning quietly against my wrist.
I still do not know whether I wanted her to kiss me.
I think she knew.
I think that was the point.