Oh. Shit. I had hated her over asbestos.
“You never gave me the chance to explain,” she concluded. “If you had, you would’ve known that.”
I didn’t say anything, so of course she decided it was a good idea to continue.
“What is it with you men, anyway? All I’ve learned from being around you that no matter how well educated and worldly, you are still jealous, possessive and love to fight. You jump to conclusions at a moment’s notice and never stop to think about it-”
“Maybe you’re right,” I cut her off. It was too painful to hear that she had such a low opinion of me. Hell, I had a low opinion of myself.
“And then, after dumping me unceremoniously without so much as an explanation, you leave. And a few weeks later, you show up again with a file full of…” The words choked in her throat. “Full of ugly things I’d rather not have known, thank you.” She paused. “You came by just to hurt me even more. Just to prove you were right. And then you left, again, without allowing me to explain.”
Somehow, Veronica had managed to make herself really angry at me all over again. And I just stood there and let her.
She pushed past me and climbed aboard the jet. We didn’t speak all the way back to Cedar Rapids.
Chapter Thirty-four
“Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.”
– HENRY KISSINGER
The first thing I did was put an unconscious Dekker on the family plane. He awoke on the tarmac in Amsterdam without knowing how he got there. I left him a letter in his pocket and hoped I would never see him again.
The next few weeks were a blur. I helped my cousins dismantle the Bombay Corporation. Our other cousins seemed relieved that we had done this without them. Paris and I managed to liquidate our assets and divide them equally among the living Bombays. We kept the island and the jet. We’re not complete fools.
Missi got married to the guy she met on the reality show. I gave her a felted bag I knitted from the cashmere I got in Mongolia. For some reason, Missi and Lex spent their honeymoon in Ulaanbaatar before settling on Santa Muerta.
Life was slowly getting back to normal. Sartre grew fat as I spoiled her rotten with an extra ration of fruits and vegetables. I could tell she missed Ronnie. She actually seemed a little depressed.
I missed Ronnie. But I’d messed that woman up. Because of me, she’d eaten testicle soup, been kidnapped by a Dutch mercenary, saw her hero crucified and had a lover who treated her like a grand inquisitor. Maybe I was never meant to have a relationship. So why did I still believe that I could have had that with her? But what kind of relationship had areas that you could never, ever discuss? I’d lied to her about Dekker-letting her wonder what happened to him. And there was so much more about me she could never, ever know. Love couldn’t last in a vacuum.
Somehow I managed to get in on the last few carnivals of the season. The work was steady. Some of the bloom was off the rose. I’d be forty in a year and a half. The injuries I’d suffered on the steppes of Mongolia still haunted me. And for the first time in my life, it seemed important that I had a plan for the next forty years.
That disturbed me the most. After all, I had taken so much joy from the idea that I was completely and utterly free. You know what started to get to me first? Eating alone. No, eating alone in a trailer, night after night. Suddenly the things I loved about my life had become the things I hated about my life.
Oh, sure, I toyed with the idea of settling down in some obscure university town. It wouldn’t be too hard for me to land an academic job. But the thought of that made me feel sick inside. Was that insane or what?
As if I could settle down somewhere. And there it was. Whenever that possibility crossed my mind, I thought of Veronica. And when I thought of Veronica, I wondered what she was doing. Probably thinking evil thoughts about me. She probably was afraid I would show up on her doorstep again someday and kick her puppy.
With a sigh as rusty as the metal safety bar on the Ferris wheel, I snapped the two riders into place. It was a young couple, probably in their early twenties. I gave them a smile as I pulled the lever and sent them up to the moon.
“Poor thing,” I heard as they came around the first time. I was bored or I wouldn’t have been eavesdropping.
“He’ll never amount to much,” they said on their second rotation. Were they talking about me? No. It was stupid of me to even think that. They could be referring to anyone here.
“I love you,” the woman said to the man on their third rotation, and I watched as they kissed, disappearing into the stars. Just for fun, I let them ride twice as long.
“Coney!” I turned to find Chudruk standing directly behind me.
I threw my arms around him in a big bear hug. “When did you get back to the States?”
Chudruk grinned. “I came with Zerleg. He starts college this semester!”
“That’s great! He’s going to Yale, right?” I ignored the fact that the Ferris wheel was still turning. I didn’t hear anything anymore as the lovers went by.
“No. He decided on Iowa. Got a poetry scholarship.”
I wasn’t upset. Zerleg should go to the school he wanted to. I was just happy he got away from home to do what he loved.
We chatted for a while. Yalta was coaching Zolbin for next year’s competition. Sansar-Huu and Odgerel had moved their family into town for the winter. It was comforting. Like mail from home.
Funny. I’d never thought of anyplace as home before. The mere sensation of thinking of Mongolia as home was electric. Man, I had it bad. The events of the summer meant that life was never going to be the same.
“So what happened to Ronnie?” Chudruk asked.
“Oh. We kind of went our separate ways.”
Chud smiled. “Zerleg and I stopped to see her. She’s going to help him get acclimated.”
That got my attention. “Really? How is she?”
“She said you are a dick.”
“Great.” My enthusiasm waned a bit. So she still hated me. At least I inspired passion in her for something. Granted, it wasn’t what I’d hoped, but at least it was something.
I had a break coming up, so we continued our conversation in the beer tent.
“How did you find me?” I said as I cracked open a bottle.
He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I knew your patterns. I think you’ve ended every season at this fair.”
“So are you coming back to work?” I asked him.
Chudruk shook his head. “No. I’m too old for this kind of crap.”
A stab of pain in my shoulder made me think the same thing. “What are you going to do?”
“Oh,” he said as he peeled the label off his bottle. “I’ve got a girlfriend in Paris. She’s a surgeon. I figured we’d settle down. Have a couple of kids.”
“Seriously? When did you get a French doctor girlfriend?” Seriously! When did that happen?
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” Chud said with a wink. “You really shouldn’t compartmentalize people. It’s demeaning.”
I stared at my friend and his sudden command of the English language.
“You’ve been holding out on me.”
He shook his head. “No. You only saw what you wanted to see and didn’t ask any more than that.”
The news hit me like a one-ton weight. That was what Ronnie had said. Was I really like that?
I spent the evening in my trailer, completely freaked out. Oh, my God. I’d been doing what I accused others of doing. I was a hypocrite, an asshole and possibly a pseudointellectual. What was wrong with me?
“Sartre,” I said as I strapped the seat belt over her cage at midnight. “This isn’t going to work out.”