Asher levels Hayley with a flat look. “You’re kind of intense, you know that?”
Hayley stares at him, not quite understanding his point. Asher makes a face and gestures for her to follow. “Let’s go. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance, and we’ve got phones to program.”
3
GAMMA-HYDROXYBUTYRIC ACID
She wakes up well before dawn lying in bed next to Scott. He has been awake for almost thirty minutes now, simply watching her.
“What?” she asks him.
“Trying to come up with a label for this. You and me.”
“Cardio?” Hayley suggests. He reacts with a hurt expression, and she regrets her glibness. But it’s only been a week. What’s the rush to give it a name? Scott opens his mouth to make his case, but she stops him with a gesture.
“Don’t. Your words for it might be different than mine, and then where will we be?”
“Okay,” he concedes, but it’s obvious he won’t let it go. Hayley has seen this look before, with her other lovers. The clock starts ticking down, only a matter of time now before she’ll end it with him. This need men have to own a thing rather than simply experience it. They convince themselves it’s love they’re feeling, but Hayley knows better. What they actually have is property lust, craving something around which they can build a wall. Following the death of her father, Hayley had had a front-row seat to her mother’s exploitation and abuse by a series of ever-worsening boyfriends, witness to a lifetime’s accumulation of lies, harangue, and deception. Even before she was twelve years old, Hayley had promised herself never to cede control of her life to any man. How refreshing would it be to reveal these thoughts to Scott without his defensiveness or recrimination? Hayley has yet to meet the man capable of handling who she really is and the limitation of her needs. Without further conversation, Scott gets out of bed and leaves the room to make coffee.
Scott’s kitchen is brightly lit, the windows like black mirrors in the predawn hours. Hayley sits at the Ikea dining table as Scott serves the breakfast he has prepared for them and takes the opposite chair. Hayley seems taciturn, even for her.
“You okay?” he asks her.
“I’m fine. Why?” Hayley could’ve scripted this scene before it unfolded, a replay of prior encounters.
“You seem a little preoccupied,” Scott tells Hayley.
She regrets their brief but significant exchange in bed. Up to that moment Hayley had sufficiently enjoyed Scott’s company and the physical release of sex. Though they have little in common besides a physical compatibility and mutual respect, she had hoped they might maintain a relationship parked somewhere between committed and casual. It would have been nice to rest at this place with Scott awhile and pursue a less solitary life. What would it be like to have just that level of companionship? But after their awkward talk only minutes before, all of that seems impossible. She feels Scott’s gaze on her. He expects a response.
“My boss died. I found his body. It was unsettling.”
“Of course. Right.” Scott starts eating. Hayley watches him for a brief moment.
“So are you married or anything?” she asks, already knowing the answer. Hayley had clocked the indisputable evidence in the two visits to Scott’s home. A lamp no man would purchase and therefore inherited in the separation. Same with the food processor gathering dust on the counter. The entire place smacked of hodgepodge, the grim and depressing vibe of man-child recently and involuntarily set adrift. Someone as observant as Hayley would not miss the artifacts of a failed marriage.
Scott’s fork freezes in midair, just below his chin. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yes, it’s that obvious.”
“Separated two years,” he concedes.
“Why not divorced?” Hayley presses.
“Losing a three-year-old to leukemia wasn’t punishment enough?”
Hayley bites her lower lip. One of her younger siblings had had asthma that nearly killed her. Inhaled nedocromil managed the problem. Poor Harper deals with the effects of that awful disease to this day.
“I’m sorry,” Hayley tells Scott.
“I know.”
Scott grabs his tablet. The device sports a Rolling Stones “tongue and lips” decal. So Scott. Such a bro. He inputs the device password and accesses a photo of an adorable toddler. Offers the tablet to Hayley for closer inspection. “Max,” he tells her.
“Beautiful,” Hayley acknowledges.
Scott says nothing. Outside the window, the sky has gone from ink black to the most cobalt of blues. Another day is just beginning. What wasn’t said continues to weigh between them.
Later, driving into the city with Scott, Hayley performs familiar calculations in her head. Barely a fling, their affair has run its course. When is the best time to break it off with him? Now? They have plans for dinner after work this evening. Would it be more humane to do it then? The interior of the black BMW 335i is over-the-top messy, like the bedrooms of the least reputable frat on campus. There are scuff marks on the dash, and garbage is thick on the floor. The clutter is almost childish, suggestive of Scott’s vulnerability. Hayley’s conviction fails her. Dinner. She’ll have the talk with him then.
The silence that developed between them in the house persists in the car. Hayley strives to alleviate that unease with mild banter. She indicates the confusion of empty coffee cups and fast-food packaging at her feet. “My brother hunts out of his car and manages to keep it cleaner than this.”
“What about the city bus? Clean or less clean?” Scott asks her, grinning widely.
He has no idea it’s over between them. He thinks this is only the beginning. Recognizing these facts makes Hayley increasingly uncomfortable, and she suffers the self-recrimination that accompanies any failure of willpower. Why had she let herself be pulled into this mess? It occurs to her she might have some personality disorder, a terror of real intimacy, but just as quickly banishes the thought. There’s no time now for therapeutic response, if in fact she has a problem. Looking out her passenger-side window, she sees a crowd of protestors in Lafayette Square. The group is much larger than she has seen there before and more demonstrative. DC Metro and US Park Police confront the protestors, who carry signs decrying Russia’s interference in Estonia.
Leaving the car parked in the White House lot and walking toward the West Wing ground-floor entrance, Scott discreetly takes Hayley’s hand and gives it a squeeze before releasing it. “Eight o’clock?” he asks her. Hayley nods. They diverge then and continue in opposite directions.
When Hayley arrives at White House Operations, she joins Asher and Karen Rey watching CNN on one of the office computers. Senator Taylor Cox is being interviewed in the marble corridor outside his senate office. Cox, the minority leader and ranking member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, appears genuinely agitated and not merely grandstanding.
“There’s a difference between disruption and destruction. What the president proposes in creation of a new European alliance, a kind of NATO-lite, is nothing short of a gold-plated invitation to Russia to do as it pleases, whether meddling in democratic elections around the world or military invasion of its neighbors, like Estonia,” the senator tells the CNN reporter.