Page 74 of Antihero

“I can pay off your student loan,” Evan said.

Anca turned crisply on her heel, twisting a wadded-up dish towel inside a coffee mug. “I filled out the forms. I signed my name. I took the courses. It’s my responsibility to pay it off. Why would you? Because I was violated?”

Evan said, dumbly, “Yes.”

She shook the coffee mug at him. “You need to think through your principles.”

Women are impossible, he thought. At least the good ones.

“It’s not a sin to take care of yourself,” he said.

“Oh. That’s it then.” Tilting into a fight, her voice tremulous with outrage. “You think I’m holier than thou. ‘Saint Anca.’”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I didn’t say you said it.”

Evan looked to Candy for backup, but she gave him elevated eyebrows once more with a you’re-on-your-own head tilt and sank into the chair at the tiny table set for one.

“Anca,” he tried again, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

“You have an infuriating way of not answering questions.” She slammed the mug into the cupboard, looked around frantically for something else to clean or dry. “‘Pain insists upon being attended to,’” she said, in a cadence implying a quotation. “That’s what I am doing. Attending to my suffering. And attempting to face the worst with my best.”

“Brave,” Evan ventured. “But—”

“No.” Anca shook her head. “It’s not courage. No matter how humbled we think we are, we can always be humbled further.”

“What, then? Fear?”

“No. Not fear. Not exactly.” Anca scratched at her hairline. “Awe.”

“I don’t put much stock in awe.”

“How cute,” Anca said, breezing past him, “that you think it’s up to you.”

He reached after her to catch her by the arm, but Candy flared her fingers at him, the motion abrupt and surreptitious at the same time: Don’t touch her right now.

He got it, nodded his thanks.

Candy rose and went into the living room at Evan’s side. Now Anca was fussing in a coat closet, wrestling out a vacuum cleaner. The floor was spotless. She turned it on, began sliding it back and forth with manic abandon.

“Anca,” Evan said. “Anca.”

Candy moved over to her. Anca struck Candy’s foot with the vacuum. She looked up, blinking, her chest heaving.

She shut off the vacuum. Her lips trembled. One arm straight, the other reaching across her midsection to grip the locked elbow. “What?”

“There were cameras,” Evan said. “They had cameras.” He hated the words coming out of his mouth, hated himself for being the instrument to deliver them.

“Cameras? Cameras? What? Why?”

“They recorded you,” he said quietly. “And released it.”

She looked as though he’d struck her, and in a sense he had. She dropped the handle of the vacuum. It clattered on the floor.

Hovering a half step off his ribs, Candy exhaled a long, slow breath through clenched teeth.

Anca’s hand fluttered behind her, feeling for the wall. She caught it. Leaned. Her knees buckled but she didn’t go down. Inch by inch she drew herself erect.