Purity (41 page)

Andreas took her hands in his and looked into her eyes. She didn't dare do anything with her hands except leave them completely limp. His eyes were beautifully blue. Even subtracting the vision-distorting effects of his charisma, he was a good-looking man.

“Do you want some more truth?” he said.

She looked aside. “I don't know.”

“The truth is that Willow will be extremely nice to you if I tell her to be. Not fake nice. Genuinely nice. All I have to do is press a button.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Pip said, pulling her hands away.

“What am I supposed to do? Pretend it's not true? Deny my own power? She projects like crazy onto me. There's nothing I can do about it.”

“Whoa.”

“You came here for truth, didn't you? I think you're strong enough to hear it undiluted.”

“Whoa.”

“Anyway,” he said, standing up. “I'll see you at lunch.”

The sun had turned fierce. Pip fell over onto her side as if pushed by the force of its heat, her head swimming. She felt as if, for a moment, she'd had her skull opened up and her brains given a vigorous stir with a wooden spoon. She was still a long way from submitting to him, a long way from being his for the taking, but for a moment he'd been deep enough inside her head that she could feel how it could happen—how Willow might change her feelings like an octopus changing color, just because he told her to, and how Colleen could be trapped in a scene she hated by a wish for a thing she knew she'd never get from a person she thought was an asshole. For a moment, an appalling divide had opened up in Pip. On one side was her good sense and skepticism. On the other was a whole-body susceptibility different in category from any she'd experienced. Even at the height of her preoccupation with Stephen, she hadn't wanted to be his
object
; hadn't fantasized about
submitting
and
obeying
. But these were the terms of the susceptibility that Andreas, his fame and confidence, had revealed in her. She understood better why Annagret had been so contemptuous of Stephen's weakness.

She forced herself to sit up and open her eyes. Every color around her was both itself and blazing white. In the forest beyond the river, the chainsaw was moaning. How could she have imagined that she had any idea where she was? She had no idea. The place was a cult the more diabolical for pretending not to be one.

She stood up and returned to the barn, appropriated the nearest free tablet, and took it down into the riverside shade. Every second day since her arrival, she'd sent a cheerful email to her mother at her neighbor Linda's address. Linda had written back a few times, reporting that her mother was “kinda low” but “hangin' in there.” Pip had concocted the fiction that it was impossible to make phone calls from Los Volcanes—what was the point of being here if she had to call her mother every day?—and she hesitated now before activating TSP's equivalent of Skype. To break down and call her mother was almost to admit that she couldn't survive here, that she was already on her way out. But the situation seemed to qualify as urgent. She didn't like having her brains stirred with a wooden spoon.

“Pussycat? Is everything all right?”

“Everything's fine,” Pip said. “Pedro had to go into town for supplies. I'm calling from a pay phone there. Here, I mean. Here in town.”

“Oh, I can't believe I'm hearing your dear voice. I thought it could be months and months before I did.”

“No, well, here it is.”

“Dearheart, how are you? Are you really all right?”

“I'm great. You can't imagine how beautiful everything is, I made a friend, Colleen, I told you about her, she's really smart and funny—she has a law degree from Yale. Everyone here is well educated. Everyone has parents they're in touch with.”

“Do you know when you're coming home yet?”

“Mom, I just got here.”

There ensued a silence in which she imagined her mother remembering her purpose in coming to Bolivia, the angry things she'd said before leaving with her suitcase.

“So anyway,” Pip said, “Andreas came back last night. Andreas Wolf. I finally got to meet him. He's actually really nice.”

Her mother said nothing, and so Pip chattered on about the movie in Buenos Aires, about Toni Field and other Wolf women, hoping to imply that he wasn't preying on the interns. That she wanted to imply this, when the whole reason she'd called her mother was that she was afraid of being preyed on, was a good illustration of their relationship.

“So anyway,” she said.

“Purity,” her mother said. “He's a lawbreaker. Linda printed out an article for me to read. He's in very serious trouble with the law. His fans don't seem to care about that—they think he's a hero. But if you break the law, just by helping him, you might never be able to come home. You need to think about this.”

“I haven't seen any reports of interns returning in handcuffs.”

“Violating federal law is not a joke.”

“Mom, everyone here is seriously rich and well educated. I really don't think—”

“Maybe their families can afford expensive lawyers. I'm not going to have a good night's sleep until you're safely back home.”

“Well, at least now you've got some
reason
for not sleeping.”

This was a moderately cruel thing to say, but Pip could now see, as she should have seen before she made the mistake of calling, that her mother had nothing helpful to offer.

“Whoops,” she said. “Pedro's waving to me—gotta go.”

She was heading up to the barn when Willow came out of it. She was wearing a polka-dot jumper in which she looked oppressively fantastic.

“Hey Willow how's it going.”

“Pip, I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, Christ, let me guess. You want to apologize.”

Willow frowned. “For what?”

“I don't know—for being mean to me last night?”

“I wasn't being mean. I was being honest.”

“Jesus. Fuck me.”

“Seriously,” Willow said. “What did I say to you that wasn't honest?”

Pip sighed. “I don't even remember. I'm sure you're right.”

“Andreas just told me that he wants us to work together. I think it's a great idea.”

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told you to like me, and now you like me. How am I not supposed to find that creepy?”

“I already wanted to like you,” Willow said. “We all did. It's just that your hostility is kind of hard to take.”

“It's who I am. It's what I live and breathe.”

“Well, then, explain it to me. If I understand better where it's coming from, it won't bother me anymore. Do you want to go for a walk now and tell me about it?”

“Willow.” Pip waved a hand in front of her eyes. “Hello? You're totally creeping me out. You're fucking with my head. You were mean to me last night—my senses did not deceive me. And now you want to be my friend? Because Andreas told you to?”

Willow laughed. “He told me to remember that you're funny—that that's the way your mind works. And he's right. You're really funny.”

Pip broke away and marched up toward the barn. Willow ran after her and grabbed her by the arm.

“Let go of me,” Pip said. “You're worse than Annagret.”

“No,” Willow said. “We're going to be spending a lot of time together. We have to find a way to like each other.”

“I'm never going to like you.”

“Why not?”

“You don't want to know.”

“I do want to know. I want you to be honest. That's the only way this works. Come sit with me and tell me everything you hate about me. I already told you I don't like your hostility.”

To Pip there seemed to be only two choices, either pack her bag or do what Willow asked. If she hadn't called her mother, she might have imagined there was something to go home to. But she'd come here hoping to get information, she hadn't got it yet, and according to both Colleen and Andreas she had courage. So she sat down with Willow in the shade of a flowering tree.

“I hate that you're way prettier than I am,” she said. “I hate that there were always these alpha girls and you're one of them and I'm not. I hate that you went to Stanford. I hate that you don't have to worry about money. I hate that you'll never really get how privileged you are. I hate that you love the Project and aren't bothered by how weird this place is. I hate that you don't have to be snarky. I hate that you can't imagine what it's like to be poor and owe money, and have a depressive single parent, and be so angry and weird that you can't even have a boyfriend—oh, never mind.” Pip shook her head with disgust. “This is obviously all just my own self-pity.”

But Willow's face had become a purplish-red prune of hurt. “No,” she said. “No. You're only saying what I've always known people think about me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and began to cry. Pip was horrified.

“I didn't
ask
to be pretty,” Willow snuffled. “I didn't
ask
to be privileged.”

“No, I know,” Pip said consolingly. “Of course not.”

“What can I do to make up for it? What can I possibly ever do?”

“Well. Actually. Do you happen to have a hundred and thirty thousand dollars you can spare?”

Willow smiled while continuing to cry. “That's funny. You really are funny.”

“I take it that's a no.”

“I suffer, too, you know. Believe me, I suffer.” Willow took Pip's hands and rubbed her palms with her thumbs. It seemed to be a Sunlight Project thing, this invasive grabbing of hands. “But can I be really honest with you?”

“Seems only fair.”

“There's another reason I sort of hate you. It's because he likes you.”

“He seems to like you, too.”

Willow shook her head. “The way he talked to me about you—I could tell. Even before that, I could tell. You obviously didn't care about the Project. And then, when we heard he writes you emails … It's going to be a little hard to work with you, knowing how much he likes you.”

A complex fear was stealing over Pip, the fear that Andreas really did specially like her, along with the fear of being disliked for it; of having to apologize for it, especially to Colleen. “OK,” she said. “Now
I'm
starting to feel guilty.”

“It's no fun, is it?”

Willow smiled and leaned forward and gave her a sisterly hug. Pip had the corrupt sensation of being bought off with the prospect of the friendship of an alpha girl, the promise of social acceptance. But she was no longer
distrusting
Willow. This seemed like a step forward.

In the evening, on the veranda, Pip told Colleen almost everything the day had brought.

“Willow's by no means the worst,” Colleen said. “Did she tell you one of her brothers was killed three years ago?”

“God, no.”

“Snowboarding accident. She's still on major meds. And of course this is known to the Wolf. The Wolf can always spot the weak lamb in the flock.”

Pip was impressed, almost confounded, that Willow hadn't played the dead-brother card with her. Had simply sat there under the tree and taken her punishment. It spoke to the intensity of whatever Andreas had said to her.

“I'm understanding a little better how you're stuck here,” she said.

“Yeah, well. From what you're telling me, I suspect my days have been numbered since you got here.”

“Colleen. You know I'd rather be your friend than his.”

“You say that now. But he's only been back for one day.”

“I don't want to be here if you're not here.”

“Really? If what you need is time away from your mother, you should try to hold out longer than two weeks.”

“I don't have to go back to California. Maybe we could both go somewhere else.”

“I thought you had a missing parent to find.”

“Maybe Flor can give me a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, and then I won't have to.”

“You've got a lot to learn about rich people,” Colleen said. “Flor won't even share her dental floss.”

When Pip went to the barn the next morning, after her early hike, Willow was outwardly unchanged and yet seemed like a different person, a fragile person on antidepressants, a guilty survivor of her little brother's death. This time it was Pip who initiated the hug. She couldn't tell whether it was good that she'd overcome some of her hostility or sordid that she was now on hugging terms with a member of the in crowd; whether she was evolving or being corrupted. But Willow's research chops were awesome. She typed and moused and clicked so rapidly, bouncing among so many windows at once—Australian property transfers, rosters of Australian corporate directorships, Australian business-news archives, dark-Web Australian government databases—that Pip could see it would be weeks before she could follow what Willow was doing in real time.

Andreas didn't speak to her privately that day, nor the next day, nor for ten days after that. He was constantly conducting hushed powwows with the other girls, coming and going between the barn and the tech building, and having long informational conversations with Willow while Pip sat beginnerishly in a chair beside her. That he ignored only her, as if to emphasize that she was the only intern not contributing materially to the Project, was obviously deliberate. He was obviously trying to sharpen her appetite for further personal contact, further moments of intoxicating honesty. But she couldn't bring herself either to confront him or to resent him. He'd got inside her head with a wooden spoon. She wanted more of what he was withholding. Not a whole lot more, she told herself. Just another taste, to be reminded of how it felt—to see if he could have that effect on her a second time.