Page 63 of The Circle

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I’ve been standingin front of Eliza’s door debating whether or not to ring the buzzer for at least the last ten minutes. I have found myself looking up and down the corridor to see if anyone is watching me. The butler or that Nigel oke. Maybe Danny and Christine out to look for me. But there’s no one there. It’s just me, alone, apparently too much of a doos to do what I stepped out here to do.

But then I reflect upon the reality that we all must face our fears alone; and even though my fear isn’t death or judgment or any of the things inside of which most human beings find their anxieties embedded, it is no less palpable for me. My greatest fear—if I am to be honest, and at this stage, why the fok not?—is myself. Having a confrontation with me. Because I can be a sneaky fokker and you never know what I might do.

So, my hesitation in ringing Eliza’s doorbell isn’t that I’ll be face to face with her. And it’s not that she’ll say things to me that might be unpleasant to hear. It’s that facing her will force me to also face myself. The me I was. The me I am. The me I’m considering trying to evict from his home so that he no longer has a place to dwell in the future.

Another way I have heard people refer to this phenomenon is: Being accountable.

Fok it, man.

Ring. Ring.

It has that old-school tone to it. That thin, tinny, high-pitched bell sound that one might find on a child’s bicycle. It would be interesting to know who will be meeting us when we arrive. Who has orchestrated an affair so elaborate and, quite clearly, costly, just for the purpose of… I’ve no idea. But we’ll find out soon enough, I reckon.

Eliza is on the phone when she opens the door. She sees me standing there and takes on an expression somewhere between agitation and expectation. Not as in “expectant,” but as in “she appears to have been expecting me.”

“Russell,” she says into her mobile, “I’ll call you back.” She tabs end on the call. “Yes?” she says to me.

“Everything all right with the brus? They return the Lynch laaities home yet?”

“What do you need?”

Such an exacting question. “What do you need” and “what do you want” are not, precisely, interchangeable. They do not mean the same thing. A want is, of course, a desire. A need is… I’m not sure, actually. I don’t know if I have felt “need” terribly often in my life. All my needs have always been more than met. My wants know no end, on the other hand.

But in this case, she may be right. I may need something. At the very minimum, I feel a need. Whether that makes it legitimately necessary or not is a different matter.

“I’m off to the dining car. May I ask you to join me?”

“You may ask anything you like.”

Constants in life are comforting. Even when they’re uncomfortable. Eliza being exactly who she is, always, at all times, is one of those constants.

“Will you join me?”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, Alec. Why? What the fuck are you up to?”

It’s a more than understandable question. “Honestly?” I ask.

“Is that even a possibility?”

“Honestly, I’d just like to talk with you before we arrive.”

“About what?”

“About everything. I have an instinct that this is the… Just, will you join me in the dining car? Please.”

Yet again, it’s the “please” that makes her pay attention. The surprise turns immediately to skepticism, as I would expect, and so I hold my ground. I attempt to look neither pleading nor charming, kind nor cruel, like myself or like whoever it is I’m attempting to become. I try to make my face as tabula rasa as I possibly can and let her decide on her own.

“They’d better have decent fucking gin,” she says as she walks past me.

We’ve exited the Chunnel. It’s still dark out, but now it’s the dark of the French countryside as opposed to the artificially lit blackness of a man-made carve-out inside the strata of the earth. There’s no moon. It’s overcast outside the windows and the terrain I can see is an amorphous mass of shadow.

We sit across from one another, lit by the amber glow of the dining table lamp. There is a world in which this could possibly be seen as romantic, but in this case it takes on much more the feel of a Bond villain having a tête-à-tête with the famed secret agent. In this case though, I suppose we might both be the villain. One of us by choice and action, the other by having had the grave misfortune of knowing the first.