She changes the subject.
"Back in New York I work in my father's office," she says. "Or I did. I have an apartment downtown where I paint when I'm not trying to be useful to people who don't need me to be useful." She eats another piece. "I haven't figured out what comes after college. I thought I'd help my father but that's clearly not my calling."
"Why do you keep trying?" I ask. "With your father."
She is quiet for a moment.
Then she puts the container down and she turns to look at me and she says, "The same reason I keep letting you do things to me even when you have someone else in your heart." She pauses, "I just want someone to need me."
The room is quiet.
"Do you know the one time I actually felt it?" she says.
"Felt needed?" She looks at her hands. "A random night. About two years ago. I met a man and he was in trouble and I was terrified, genuinely terrified, but I helped him and for the length of that one night I felt like someone needed me to be there." She pauses. "Like if I hadn't been there, something would have gone wrong that couldn't be fixed." She looks up at me. "Nobody has needed me like that since."
I look at her face.
"I know I'm pathetic," she says.
"You're not."
She looks at me.
"You said I was."
"I wasn't thinking straight."
She holds my gaze and then she picks up her chopsticks and goes back to eating and I sit beside her. I think about a parking garage and a bullet and a woman who had not hesitated for a single second. Did she feel like I needed her? Because I did.
"When you let me go," she says, after a while, "I'll go abroad. Australia maybe. Postgrad course, get a job, find a halfway decent man who might want me around." She sips her water. "Or skip the man entirely and do a one-night stand and get a baby." She looks at me sideways and her mouth curves. "You could do me the honors. Donor-wise, we could do it naturally." Her eyes meet mine.
"You have good bone structure and the green eyes are very?—"
She stops and laughs.
I look at her laughing and I look away. I stand up. "Good night," I tell her.
She waves at me with her chopstick, focused back on the container, not watching me go.
Renzo is in the corridor. He looks at me with profound entertainment that he is making absolutely no effort to conceal.
"The whole house heard you and her fucking," he says.
"We need to get her home," I reply. "As soon as Keller reacts, we respond."
Renzo's face turns more serious. "The minute we hear from him we handle it." He pauses and then he puts his hand briefly on my shoulder. "It'll be done soon."
I nod.
He goes down the corridor and I stand there and reach into my pocket for a cigarette and come up empty. I stand there anyway and I lean against the wall.
* * *
"—The Rotterdam consignment needs to clear by Thursday or we pull the entire thing down, don't make me act rashly now."
Renzo appears in the doorway. I hold up one finger and keep the phone to my ear.
He mouths something. I look at him and he mouths it again.
