Reprisal

SEVEN

Lisl had just finished addressing the last invitation to her Christmas party when the phone rang.

"How's my favorite Prime?" Rafe said.

Warmth flowed through her at the sound of his voice.

"Pretty good. Glad to be just about done with these invitations."

"Feel like doing some Christmas shopping?"

Lisl thought about that. December had barely begun. She had a small list of people to buy for and usually she waited until the last minute. Purposely. She'd found that the trials and tribulations of last-minute shopping—the crowded malls, the clogged parking lots, anxiety over the very real possibility that all the good gifts would be gone—added a certain zest to the Christmas holidays.

But this wouldn't be just shopping. This would be a day with Rafe. They were together almost every night. But daytime together was rare. He had his studies to keep him busy, and she had her classes and her Palo Alto paper.

"Sure. When?"

"I'll pick you up in half an hour."

"I'll be ready."

As she stamped the invitations, Lisl double-checked to make sure she'd addressed one to everybody on her list—she had—and then she thought of Will. He wasn't on the list because he'd be a waste of an invitation, but dammit, she wanted him at her party. So why let him get off easy by not inviting him? Quickly she addressed one last envelope, added a personal note to Will, and shoved the stack into her purse. Then she hurried to get dressed.

She thought of the Thanksgiving she and Rafe had spent together.

For the first time in her life, Lisl hadn't shared the traditional turkey dinner with her folks. She had Rafe to thank for that. One result of her combative encounters with Rafe was a deeper insight into her childhood. She was beginning to understand her parents better, to see them in a new light. And she didn't like what she saw. As a result, it had been only mildly traumatic to call her folks and make up an excuse why she wouldn't be there this year. They'd been very understanding. She'd almost wished they'd been less so.

Rafe confessed that he'd had little experience with Thanksgiving Day. His Spanish father and French mother had never celebrated the holiday. But since he considered himself a full-blooded American, he now wanted to join in the tradition. So Lisl had baked a breast of turkey with all the usual trimmings. They'd drunk two bottles of Riesling during the course of the evening and wound up in another bout of traumatic lovemaking.

Their time together had become a bit strange. Rafe would start out gentle and loving, then begin to probe her past. He knew all the weak points in her armor, all the most sensitive areas of her psyche. He'd probe and poke until he provoked her to violence. And then they'd make love. She'd be left feeling exhausted and ashamed for physically lashing out at him. But he encouraged the violence, seemed to want it, and she had to admit that afterward she felt somehow cleansed.

A strange relationship, but one she did not want to quit. Rafe said he loved her and Lisl believed him. Even amid all her nagging insecurities, despite the tiny insistent voice that kept whispering, Watch out, he's going to hurt you, she sensed his deep interest in her. She needed that. Slowly, steadily, Rafe was filling an emptiness within her, a void she only vaguely had been aware of before now. His mind challenged her, his heart warmed her, and his body pleasured her. And now that she was beginning to feel complete, she couldn't bear the thought of facing mat emptiness again.

"Where are we going?" Lisl said as she slipped into the passenger seat of Rafe's Maserati.

"Downtown," he said, leaning over and kissing her on the lips. He was wearing gray wool slacks and a pale blue shirt under a cranberry cashmere sweater; black leather driving gloves, as tight s a second skin, completed the picture. "I thought we'd try the new Nordstrom's."

"Sounds good to me."

Downtown was festooned with Christmas decorations—animated Santa mannequins in the windows, giant plastic candy canes on the corners, tinselly arches over the streets of the shopping district, all under a bright sunny sky and temperatures in the balmy mid-sixties.

"Pretty garish," Rafe said.

"And it gets more garish every year. But that's the shopkeepers' doing. That's not what Christmas is about."

"Oh? And just what is Christmas all about?"

Lisl laughed. "I can buy the fact that your family didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but Christmas?"

"Of course we celebrated Christmas. But I want to hear what you think it's all about."

"It's about all the good things in life—giving, receiving, sharing, friends gathering, good fellowship, brotherhood—"

"Peace on earth, goodwill toward men," Rafe said. "And so on and so forth."

Something in his voice made Lisl pause. "You're not some sort of Scrooge, are you?"

As they pulled to a stop at a light on Conway Street, Rafe turned toward her.

"You don't really believe all that brotherhood of man stuff, do you?"

"Of course. We're all on this planet together. Brotherhood is the only way we'll all come out of it in one piece."

Rafe shook his head and stared ahead.

"Man, oh, man, did they ever do a brainwashing number on you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Brotherhood. It's a myth. A lie. 'No man is an island'—the Big Lie."

Lisl had a 'sinking feeling.

"You don't really mean that," she said, but deep within she sensed that he did.

"Look around you, Lisl. Do you see any real brotherhood? I see only islands."

The Maserati was moving again. Lisl watched the people on the crowded sidewalks as they flowed by. She liked what she saw.

"I see people walking and talking together, smiling, laughing, hunting for gifts for their friends and loved ones. Christmastime draws people together. That's what it's all about."

"What about the children starving in Africa?"

"Oh, come on now!" Lisl said with a laugh. For a moment he reminded her of Will. "You're not going to drag out that hoary old cliche, are you? My mother used to pull that on me to make me finish my brussels sprouts."

Rafe didn't return her smile.

"I'm not your mother, Lisl, and I'm not giving you a line to make you finish your greens. I'm talking about a real country. I'm talking about real people, really dying."

Lisl felt her own smile fade. "Come on, Rafe…"

He pulled into a municipal lot just as someone was backing out of a space.

"He must have known I was coming," Rafe said. He pulled into the slot and turned to Lisl again. "What about the continuing genocide in Laos? What about the daily brutalization of the female half of the populace in any fundamentalist Moslem country?"

"Rafe, you're talking about the other side of the world".

"I didn't think brotherhood was limited by distance."

"It's not. But you simply don't dwell on those things day in and day out. They're so far away. And the numbers are so staggering they don't seem real. Like it's not happening to real people."

"Exactly. You've never seen them, never visited their lands, and what happens to them does not affect your life." He gently poked her shoulder with his index finger. "That puts you on an island, Lisl. A big island, maybe, but still an island."

"I don't accept that. I feel for them."

"Only when someone reminds you—and even then only briefly." He gripped her hand. "I'm not putting you down, Lisl. I'm the same way. And we're no different from anyone else. We all need a certain amount of insulation from what our fellow humans do to each other."

Lisl stared out the window. He was right, dammit.

"Let's go shopping," she said.

They locked up the car and headed for the new Nordstrom's. Rafe put his arm around her shoulder.

"Okay now," he said. "Let's move closer to home. Look around you at these houses, these apartment buildings. They look peaceful, but we know from statistics that there's a certain amount of violence and brutality going on behind those walls. Wives being beaten, children being sodomized."

"But I can't feel anything for statistics."

"What about that three-month-old in the paper this morning?

Scalded to death by his mother yesterday. I believe his name was Freddy Clayton. He's more than a statistic. Think how that child felt as the person he depended on for everything forced him down into that steaming water and held him there. Think of his agony as—"

"Enough, Rafe! Please! I can't! I think I'd go mad if I even tried."

His smile was slow. "The water around your little island just got wider and deeper."

Lisl was suddenly depressed.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"I'm only trying to open your eyes to the truth. There's nothing wrong with being an island. Especially if you're a Prime. We Primes can be self-sufficient on our islands, but the rest of them can't be. Thus the 'No man is an island' lie. We are the wellspring of human progress. They need us to get by. What's wrong is to allow yourself to be deceived into believing you need them."

"But I like the idea of brotherhood. There's no deception in that."

"Of course there is. You've been culturally conditioned to believe in it. The leeches, the consumers, they want everyone—especially us Primes—to swallow the brotherhood of man myth. It makes it so much easier for them to suck off our juices. Why should they bother stealing from us if we're gullible enough to let them convince us to give of ourselves willingly in the name of brotherhood?"

Lisl stared at Rafe. "Are you listening to yourself? Do you realize how you sound?"

He signed and lowered his eyes to the sidewalk as they approached Nordstrom's.

"I can imagine: paranoid. But Lisl, I'm not crazy. And I'm not saying we're the victims of an overt plot. It's not that simple. I think it's more of a subconscious thing that has developed down the centuries. It's persistent and pervasive for a very simple reason: It works. It keeps us producing so they can milk us."

"There you go again."

He held up his hands. "Okay. Maybe I'm crazy. But then again, maybe I'm not. One thing I'm sure of is that you and I aren't like them. I want my island to fuse with your island. I want an unbreakable bond between us. Look at these people, Lisl. Your so-called brothers. Is there one of them you can count on? Really count on? No. But you can count on me. No matter what, no matter where, no matter when, you can count on me."

Lisl looked at Rafe and saw the intensity in his eyes. She believed him. And that lifted her spirits. Suddenly she felt like shopping again.

They wandered the crowded aisles, finally stopping at the jewelry counter. The three saleswomen were busy with other customers. Lisl squinted at a wide twenty-inch, eighteen-karat gold necklace out of reach behind the counter. The herringbone pattern appealed to her.

"You like that?" Rafe said.

"It's beautiful."

He reached one of his long arms across and plucked it off its peg. He undid the clasp.

"Here. Try it on."

He reclasped it around her neck, then guided her to the mirror. The gold gleamed as it hung between her breasts, all but obscuring the slim chain and the cowrie.

"I love it."

"Shiny metal makes you happy, does it? Well then, let's get you some more."

He reached again and picked out a pair of gold earrings with onyx centers. Lisl pulled off the little studs she had worn today and allowed him to fasten the new ones onto her earlobes.

"Perfect," he said. "And now the final touch."

A moment later he was slipping an eighteen-karat gold filigree bracelet over her right wrist.

"There!" he said. "The picture is complete." He gripped her elbow and gently propelled her away from the jewelry department. "Let's go."

"Where are we—?"

"Out."

"But we haven't paid."

"We don't have to. We're Primes."

"Oh, God, Rafe!"

Lisl tried to turn back toward the counter but Rafe had a firm grip on her arm.

"Trust me on this, Lisl," he said in her ear. "Follow my lead. I'm the only one you can really trust."

She held her breath and let him guide her toward the exit, sure that at any minute the store detectives would leap upon them and escort them to a back office where they'd be grilled and then arrested. But no one stopped them.

Until the exit. A uniformed doorman stepped in front of them at the glass door that led to the street; his gloved hand gripped the handle.

"Find everything you need?" he said with a smile.

Lisl felt her knees begin to wobble. Shoplifting! And with what this jewelry was worth, she'd be charged with grand larceny instead of petty theft. She saw her reputation, her whole academic career heading for the sewer.

"Just looking today," Rafe said.

"Fine!" said the doorman and pulled open the door. "Come back anytime."

"We'll be sure to do that," Rafe said as he guided Lisl ahead of him.

Relief flooded through her as they joined the pedestrians outside and walked up Conway Street. When they were half a block from the store, Lisl snatched her arm away from him.

"Are you insane?" she said, keeping her voice low with an effort. She was furious. She wanted to run away, break it off, never see him again.

Rafe's expression was one of shock, but the hint of a smile played about his lips.

"What's wrong? I thought you liked gold jewelry."

"I do! But I don't steal things!"

"That wasn't stealing. That was merely getting your due."

"I have money! I can afford to buy my jewelry!"

"So can I. I could buy out that whole department in there and cover you with gold. But that's not the point. That's not why I did it."

"Then what is the point?"

"That there's Us, and there's Them. We don't have to answer to them. They deserve anything we do to them, they owe us anything we take from them. They've been dumping on you all your life. It's high time you got something back."

"But I don't want anything from anybody unless I earn it."

His smile was sad. "Don't you see? You have earned it. Just by being a Prime. We carry them on our backs. It's our minds, our dreams, our ambitions that fuel the machinery of progress and give them direction. Without us they'd still be boiling tubers over dung fires outside their miserable little huts."

Lisl reached back and unclasped the necklace from around her neck. She removed the earrings and pulled off the bracelet.

"All that may be true, but I'm taking these back. I can't wear them."

And I can't stay with you.

Rafe held out his hand. "Allow me."

Lisl hesitated, then handed him the gold jewelry. Rafe turned and gave it all to the first woman who passed by.

"Merry Christmas, ma'am," he said as he thrust it into one of her hands.

The gesture shocked Lisl. This wasn't petty thievery. Rafe was trying to make a point. When he took her hand, she didn't pull away.

They walked on and Lisl glanced back. The woman was staring after them as if they were crazy. She glanced at the jewelry in her hand, then dropped it all in a nearby litter basket.

Lisl stopped and tugged on Rafe's arm.

"That's eighteen-karat gold!"

Rafe pulled her along. "She thinks it's junk jewelry. Either way, it's shiny metal. That's all."

Lisl turned her back on the woman and the litter basket.

"This is all so crazy!"

"But exciting too."

"Not exciting—terrifying."

"Come now. Admit that there's a kind of exhilaration buzzing through you right now."

Lisl felt the adrenalized tingling of her limbs, the racing thump of her heart. As much as she hated to admit it, it had been exciting.

"But I feel guilty."

"That will pass. You're a Prime. Guilt and remorse—they have no place in your life. If you do something that causes guilt, you must do it again. And again. Ten, twenty, thirty times if need be, until the guilt and remorse are gone."

"And then what?"

"And then you go further. You crank it up a notch. You'll see."

Lisl felt a chill.

"I will?"

"Sure. You'll see that it's easier the next time."

"I don't want a next time, Rafe."

He stopped and stared at her. They were at a corner. People were streaming by but Lisl barely noticed them. The disappointment in Rafe's eyes nearly overwhelmed all other perceptions.

"This isn't for me, Lisl. This is for you. I'm trying to cut you loose, to free you to fly and reach the heights of your potential. You can't fly if you won't kick off the shackles they've used to hobble you all your life. Do you want to kick free or not?"

"Of course I do, but—"

"No buts. Are you going to stay chained down here or are you going to fly with me? The choice is yours."

Lisl saw how serious he was, and realized in that moment that she could lose this man. Yes, he was young, and yes, she had lived almost half again as many years as he had, but dammit she could not remember ever feeling this good about herself, about life in general. She felt like a complete woman, an intellectual and sexual being for whom there were no limits. She felt a certain greatness beckoning; all she had to do was follow the call.

And it was all due to Rafe. Without him she'd still be just another math nerd.

Nerd. God, she hated the word. But she'd always been a nerd. She knew it and was brave enough to admit it: She was a nerd to the bone and she was tired of it. She didn't want to be who she was, and here was Rafe offering her a chance to be somebody new. And if she didn't take that chance, what would he do? Would he turn his back and walk away? Give up on her as a lost cause?

She couldn't stand that.

But it wouldn't happen. She was through being a nerd. The new Lisl Whitman was going to take control of her life. She was going to squeeze the last drop of juice from it.

But she didn't want to steal. No matter what Rafe said about other people owing it to her, the idea of stealing stuck in her craw. And no matter how many times she did it, she knew she'd still feel guilty.

She could pretend to go along, though. Pretend that she'd overcome any guilt or remorse about it and then they could quit that and move on to quieter, saner pastimes. Rafe was so radical, so intense, but she was sure that was all due to his youth. A little time and she knew she could mellow him.

She smiled at him.

"All right. I'm ready when you are. When's the next caper?"

He laughed and hugged her. "It's now. It's right up the street. Let's go!"

"Great!" she said, reaching into her bag to hide the sinking feeling inside. She pulled out a stack of envelopes.

"What are those?"

"The Christmas party invitations. I finished addressing them this morning."

She dropped them in the mailbox and sent up a silent prayer that she wouldn't be in jail for her party.