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“Nothing.” I shake off the weird realization. Of course Arthur is human. He’s just never been particularly important to me and wouldn’t be now if he hadn’t felt sorry for me and offered me this job.
“Well, something is wrong. You don’t have to tell me, but don’t lie to me.”
Once again, that surge of annoyance rises inside me. The one that’s not typical of me at all. I stick out my chin. “I can lie to you if I want.”
“Sure you can. But why would you?”
“Who said I was?”
“I said you were. You might not talk a lot, but your face is expressive. I can read what you’re feeling.”
I suck in a sharp gasp. “You cannot!”
He arches his eyebrows. The silently skeptical response is more aggravating than any words would have been.
“I’m sure you think you can, but my thoughts and feelings aren’t reduced to simple expressions. Whatever you see on my face is only part of what’s there.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Well, I don’t know. You were just now acting all smug and omnipotent about reading my expressions.”
“Only because you doubted my ability to spot a lie. I’m like you. I don’t care to be the center of attention, but that leaves me a lot of time to observe. I see a lot more than people think.”
“I’m sure you do. You just don’t care about it.”
A frown causes his forehead to crease into three little lines. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ve spent your whole life studying the world without ever actually engaging with it.” I’m genuinely surprised that he took offense at my comment. “That’s hardly new information, is it?”
“How would you know how much I engage with the world?”
“I’m sure I don’t know everything, but I know the basics. You’ve never been married. You’ve never had kids. You don’t seem to have a lot of friends. You travel sometimes, but it’s almost always alone. You don’t even really have a job.”
He’s about to object. I see it on his face.
So I hurry on. “I know you work. Managing the family money and businesses and whatever. But you don’t go into a workplace regularly or have daily interaction with other people. You watch the world from your safe, skeptical distance and assume that makes you superior.”
His eyes narrow. For the first time in all the years I’ve known him, he looks genuinely angry. Not hot and fiery. But cold and hard as steel. “I’ve never believed myself superior.”
I breathe out a soft, dubious laugh.
“You’re hardly one to judge someone else for hiding from the world,” he says, calm and dry and slightly bitter.
My spine stiffens. My jaw tightens. “My dad just died. I’m still grieving!”
“I know that. I wasn’t talking about this past month, although anyone with common sense would tell you that numbing yourself from the pain isn’t the way to get rid of it.”
I gasp indignantly, but he goes on before I can argue.
“I mean your whole life. You put on this act that’s molded around what you perceive other people want so no one hurts or rejects you. You shape yourself into an image no one can possibly object to, but it’s also inevitably an image no one can know and no one can want.”
I’m suddenly so angry my vision blurs briefly. I can’t remember ever feeling such rage in my life. “Fuck you, Arthur Worthing.”
“What a supremely lucid rejoinder.”
My hands are actually shaking. I tighten them into fists. I swear I could launch myself at him and claw lines down his cool, arrogant face.
I don’t. Of course I don’t. I stand up. “If you don’t think I’m right about you, then take a look at what you just did. You didn’t like that I had any sort of insight into who you are, so you threw up walls and shaped your intelligence into a weapon. You said what you knew would make me angry, and you did it on purpose to get me to back off. You’re not even willing to engage in a real conversation. Are you really surprised that I might assume you’ve never engaged in life?”
