“I’m against the diamond trade.”
“Well sure you are. Injustice anywhere sickens you. A person can tell that just by looking at your face. Is it okay, me holding your wrist like this?”
“It’s actually, um, it’s actually a little uncomfortable. It’s really, it kind of hurts, actually.”
The FBI agent presses her wrist tighter.
“Let me tell you a story,” he says. “It’s a sort of parable, about the importance of stability and the secret law. When I was a kid I lived for a while on a military base in Germany. These three blond Germans nihilists would always hang around one of the cafés not far from the base. They were in their late teens or early twenties, all students, you know, avoiding real life as long as possible. One of them had a mohawk and wore an extra-large safety pin in his cheek. My father, the Chief Master Sergeant Michael H. Augusto, didn’t like the looks of these guys, and he would tell them that whenever he passed them. In return for which they’d ask him all sorts of searching questions about life, which really got to him because, you know, he was a military man, he didn’t have time to be thinking about all that. They were all like, ‘Hey, how do you deal with the uncertainty of man’s position in the Welt, in which he is simultaneously master und worm?’ And he’d get so frustrated with them that he’d come home and push my mother into mirrors. We kept having to buy new mirrors, because he kept pushing my mother into them. There were mornings where there wasn’t a single mirror in the house when you needed to brush your teeth or comb your hair. It was frustrating, never knowing if you were going to have a mirror to look into when you needed to comb your hair. And I was fourteen, just getting into girls, so that was a big deal, you know, at the time.
“And so one Saturday I sat at the café several seats down from them, and waited for them to walk back to the shabby little German apartment that they shared, and I kicked in their door and beat the three of them with a sock full of pennies. One of the nihilists, I broke his jaw and his nose, and the other two I put into the hospital with concussions.”
“Jesus,” Viola says.
“Do you understand what I am trying to tell you, here?”
“This is actually getting really painful,” Viola says, blinking away tears. “This is actually, I’m worried that you might break my wrist.”
“I’m not going to break your wrist,” the FBI agent says, quiet and very close to her face. “Do you believe me? Do you believe that I’m not going to break your wrist?”
A long still moment. Viola nods.
“Good,” the FBI agent says.
~ ~ ~
Viola comes home to find Robert in his office, watching the instructional DVD on rough sex. “If I’m being one hundred percent honest, I don’t understand why you would want this,” Robert says to Viola.
“You mean, what’s wrong with me?” Viola asks.
“I didn’t say that.” Robert follows Viola out of the office and into the kitchen, where Viola starts putting away dishes a little too quietly. “Could you try to understand why this is difficult for me? People don’t naturally wish themselves harm.”
Viola keeps putting away the dishes. Robert sits at the kitchen table. He is suddenly very tired.
“There’s a difference between hurt and harm,” Viola says.
“Okay,” Robert says. “Which do you want?”
~ ~ ~
Robert goes to a Mexican restaurant with his friend Trey, who works as a drug representative for Obadiah Birch, the pharmaceutical company Robert’s firm represents. A large mariachi band is playing in one corner of the restaurant. The restaurant’s hostess, a tiny blond with noticeable acne scars, winces every time the trumpets hit a high note. “Welcome to Fiesta Friday,” she says, wincing. “Ándale to this table over here, compays.” Their table’s next to the band. The guitarist, a skinny, dark man with small, straight teeth, leers at the hostess.
“Amy, my love!”
“Antonio, shove it.” She tosses their menus on the table. “Hope you don’t mind the band. We can’t sit parties with female members anywhere near them, not since Antonio’s started his treatment for ADHD. Better than it used to be, though. At least he doesn’t change keys fifteen times a song anymore.”
The guitarist approaches Robert and Trey’s table, still strumming. “That is totally unfair. Like, sirs, I may be the slightest bit passionate, which is one-hundred percent acceptable and even encouraged in the music biz, but I have never let that interfere with my art. Oh, let me introduce myself. Yo me llamo Antonio and this is the Tijuana Six. We are here most Fridays, and we sing about love, which all of us have some experience with, however painful or ill-fated.”
“You don’t really sound Mexican, you know,” Trey observes.
“Oh we’re from Northern Cali, mostly. Except for Hugo over there. He’s Hungarian. But he is an illegal immigrant, if that makes you feel any more confidence in our authenticity as a mariachi band.”
Hugo takes the trumpet from his lips and shrugs. “I am running from the military service.”
“Do they have democracy over there yet?” asks Trey.
“Yes, as of March 1990.”
“Well good to hear it.”
They order bistec and enchiladas and Mexican beer which comes with a little sombrero-shaped bowls of limes. Robert messes with one of the extra limes, while the band plays softly nearby. “This one was the furthest along. I think that’s part of it.”
“I’m amazed by how well you’re taking all this.”
“Honestly, me too,” Robert says.
They order another round of beer.
“It’s just that it feels selfish sometimes, you know?” Robert says. “Like she wants to keep all the sadness to herself. I get that this is difficult on her, God knows. But it was my kid too. Sometimes I feel like she doesn’t even understand that. I am trying to be supportive.”
“It’s not unusual, in these sorts of traumatic situations, for conditions to manifest,” Trey says.
“I don’t think it’s a condition,” Robert says, louder than intended. “I think she’s being fucking selfish.” Robert looks down at his beer. “Sorry,” he says.
“Hey, buddy, it’s okay. I’m on your side here,” gripping one of Robert’s shoulders and giving it a squeeze. Robert exhales.
Robert has known Trey since high school, where they played football together, Robert as a center and Trey as a running back. They once pulled a counter-run in which Robert, along with the right guard and right tackle, blocked left, while Trey feinted to the left then cut to the right, grabbed the handoff, and shot through the hole created by the offensive line’s misdirection. It was a very good play.
“Love is a complex process,” Trey explains. “A chemical process. A series of chemical processes, in the brain. Basically, a Rube-Goldberg machine of chemical interactions. Ridiculously complex. In purely physical terms, it is very easy for it to go wrong. There’s a long list of ways it can go wrong, in fact, many of which we’re currently researching: Obsessive Love Disorder, Hypersexuality, Hypoactive Desire Disorder. ED, of course. Erotic paranoia. Erotomania, also known as de Clérambault’s syndrome. Sex and Love Addiction, Codependency. Erotophobia, genophobia, phallophobia. Female Sexual Arousal Disorder. Anorgasmia or Coughlan’s syndrome. Vaginismus. Sexual Aversion Disorder. Love-shyness.” Trey cocks his head to the side, clearly thinking. “I’m missing something, I’m sure. Anyhow, there are a lot. The problem is that love is so romanticized in Western culture that people don’t even realize they can get help.”