The Last Network - Chapter 20
A Bottom
It was their first time in the wooden hut since the Travel Together pitch. Em sat on a toadstool watching the projected stream at her feet. Rabbit had his back to her. He was inspecting the pile of stuffies, looking for flies, mildew or some excuse to pitch them in the trash. The pile had grown since he lay Yosemite’s head down. At some point a company tradition would become a health hazard, but today was not that day. He turned and sat. Em spoke.
“Rabbit, I’ve been doing some digging and I finally got to the bottom of the press blacklist. It wasn’t Frank, it wasn’t Ka$ia—it was you, Rabbit.”
“Me? Why would I spike my launch PR?”
“Because you held out on me. Now we are going to talk about Nadia Camiso.”
The name punched him in the gut. His jaw slackened, and his face went to the floor. While his eyes fixated on the stream, they were not there. He was traveling within himself, backwards to a terrible place. Em patiently waited him out, her grey eyes never wavering. After a long silence, he began pinching his pant leg, pulling his fingers down the crease line over and over. Finally, Em had enough. If he was going to talk, now was it.
“Rabbit.”
“I can’t talk about her,” He squeezed his leg, fingers digging into his thigh.
Em held firm. “We have no future unless you do.”
“We met once before the affair. It was a fundraiser at Hank Simpson’s place in Bel Air. That was the first time Diana met Jason as well. Of course, they would meet plenty more times.”
“When did you start texting?”
“One night Jason left the inside security cameras on. Diana came over to their house. I’m not sure where Nadia was, but she was watching. She started sending me screencaps, calling my wife a whore, a homewrecker.”
“What did you do?”
“I started in on Nadia. I called her a pervert, a voyeur, said she was getting off on it. I said their bedroom kink was ruining my marriage and how fucking dare she send pics.”
“And?”
“Em, I can’t. If I say anymore, I’m opening myself up to all sorts of sexual harassment exposure here. We can’t be talking about this.”
“We can, and we will.” Em pushed him. “I already know the story Rabbit. I just want to hear your side of it.”
“She said I was probably hard and itching for her to send the next one. I wasn’t. I was revolted. Sick to my stomach.”
“Why were you attacking Nadia?”
“She was in my line of sight.” Rabbit squirmed in his seat. “The others weren’t.”
“So, what happened next?”
“Nadia had a way with words. She pushed buttons. What I learned was that there was a hole inside of her that could never be filled. She gave it right back to me and we were off to the races. Just like that, our texts turned toxic. We were using the drama we created as some sick way to cope with what was really happening. Cathartic flagellation. It got deep. We went way over the line. Mutually abusive. We dropped some heavy psych bombs on each other. She didn’t come back.”
“People asked you to stop.”
“They did.” Rabbit stood unable to sit still any longer. He wanted to pace, but the small hut had him penned in. He faced Em, holding his hands, unsure what to do with them. “Friends of hers sat us down. We promised to, but I couldn’t control myself. Neither could she.”
“Then after the divorce, you dropped her cold.”
“I didn’t need her anymore. Our...our thing was a byproduct of their affair. When that ended, our thing died.” He turned away from Em, hand on a beam.
“She didn’t see it that way.”
“I tried. I sat down with her and tried to explain. I didn’t run from her. I closed it the right way. Em, you have to understand that relationship was so ugly, so bare and brutal, that there was no other direction it could take. We were monsters.”
“Did you kill her?”
“That’s a loaded question. I wasn’t the person I should have been, but this would have never happened if her husband and my wife hadn’t cheated on us. This would have never happened with anyone other than Nadia. That was not something I went looking for.”
“Her friends blame you Rabbit. They think that your words are dangerous and that you need to be silenced.”
“I don’t know what the fuck happened with Nadia. It was like two people just gave in to their worst. And it was two people Em. I have screenshots. If this ever comes out, I’m playing victim. She put a mind fuck on me you wouldn’t believe.”
Knowing that Rabbit may never open himself like this again, Em went deeper, searching for a moral absolute at the center of this man. “Yet you’re still standing. In fact, you are the sole owner of a company that controls people. She committed suicide. Are you in therapy?”
“I was.”
“Was?”
“It stopped being helpful.”
“I don’t know if I can stay on Rabbit. What else is inside of you?”
“There’s nothing else. Frank and Nadia are all the skeletons that you’ll find.”
“I don’t mean your past. I mean what’s inside of you?”
“I wish I knew Em.”
He got up and left the hut. Em watched him walk away. Rabbit wasn’t amoral—the incident clearly hurt him—but he wasn’t contrite either. He had tried to put out fire with gasoline. In hindsight, he knew that was a mistake, but Em thought he was just as likely to do it again. His past was a liability, but his inability to manage rejection was the real ticking time bomb. Would he ever be capable of asking for help, or would he continue to turn his back after every bad move?
She could start filling her calendar and never look back. He had opened up to her though. His story matched what she was told. She didn’t think he was holding back. The real challenge here was not marketing Peared, it was managing Rabbit. The question was, did she want it?
Probably not. She never enjoyed masochism.