Freedom полностью

“But the thing he has is what the world wants,” Walter said. “You’ve read all the Nexis stuff on him, you know what I’m talking about. The world doesn’t reward ideas or emotions, it rewards integrity and coolness. And that’s why I don’t trust him. He’s got the game set up so he’s always going to win. In private, he may think he admires what we’re doing, but he’s never going to admit it in public, because he has to maintain his attitude, because that’s what the world wants, and he knows it.”

“Yes, but that’s why it’s so great that he’ll be working with us. I don’t want you to be cool, I don’t like a cool man. I like a man like you. But Richard can help us communicate.”

Walter was relieved when their waitress came to take their orders and terminated the pleasure of hearing why Lalitha liked him. But the danger only deepened as she drank her second martini.

“Can I ask a personal question?” she said.

“Ah—sure.”

“The question is: do you think I should get my tubes tied?”

She’d spoken loudly enough for other tables to have heard, and Walter reflexively put a finger to his lips. He felt conspicuous enough already, felt glaringly urban, sitting with a girl of a different race amid the two varieties of rural West Virginians, the overweight kind and the really skinny kind.

“It just seems logical,” she said more quietly, “since I know I don’t want children.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t . . . I don’t . . .” He wanted to say that, since Lalitha so seldom saw Jairam, her longtime boyfriend, pregnancy hardly seemed like a pressing worry, and that, if she ever did get pregnant accidentally, she could always have an abortion. But it seemed fantastically inappropriate to be discussing his assistant’s tubes. She was smiling at him with a kind of woozy shyness, as if seeking his permission or fearing his disapproval. “I guess basically,” he said, “I think Richard was right, if you remember what he said. He said people change their minds about these things. It’s probably best to leave your options open.”

“But what if I know that I’m right now, and my future self is the one I don’t trust?”

“Well, you’re not going to be your old self anymore, in the future. You’re going to be your new self. And your new self might want different things.”

“Then fuck my future self,” Lalitha said, leaning forward. “If it wants to reproduce, I already have no respect for it.”

Walter willed himself not to glance at the other diners. “Why is this even coming up now? You hardly even see Jairam anymore.”

“Because Jairam wants children, that’s why. He doesn’t believe how serious I am about not wanting them. I need to show him, so he’ll stop bothering me. I don’t want to be his girlfriend anymore.”

“I’m really not sure we should be discussing this kind of thing.”

“OK, but who else can I talk to, then? You’re the only one who understands me.”

“Oh, God, Lalitha.” Walter’s head was swimming with beer. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I feel like I’ve led you into something I never meant to lead you into. You still have your whole life ahead of you, and I . . . I feel like I’ve led you into something.”

This sounded all wrong. In trying to say something narrow, something specific to the problem of world population, he’d managed to sound like he was saying something broad about the two of them. Had seemed to be foreclosing a larger possibility that he wasn’t ready to foreclose yet, even though he knew it wasn’t actually a possibility.

“These are my own thoughts, not yours,” Lalitha said. “You didn’t put them in my head. I was just asking your advice.”

“Well, and I guess my advice is don’t do it.”

“OK. Then I’m going to have another drink. Or do you advise me not to?”

“I do advise you not to.”

“Please order me one anyway.”

A chasm was opening in front of Walter, available for immediate jumping into. He was shocked by how quickly such a thing could open up in front of him. The only other time—or, no, no, no, the only time—he’d fallen in love, he’d taken the better part of a year before acting on it, and even then Patty had ended up doing most of the heavy lifting for him. Now it appeared that these things could be managed in a matter of minutes. Just a few more heedless words, another slug of beer, and God only knew . . .

“I just meant,” he said, “that I might have led you too much into overpopulation. Into being crazy about it. With my own stupid anger, my own issues. I wasn’t trying to say anything larger than that.”

She nodded. Tiny pearls of tear were clinging to her eyelashes.

“I feel very fatherly toward you,” he babbled.

“I understand.”

But fatherly was also wrong—too foreclosing of the kind of love that it was still too painful to admit he was never going to allow himself.