as if nothing had happened rather than rattle off some platitude about relationships.
“I never got a chance to rebut your attack on my profession.”
Aggie gave Mercer a smile of thanks, a small lift of her lips that pleased him inordinately. Yet when she spoke, sarcasm edged her voice raw. “My father’s company retains four entire law firms and a whole army of public-relations experts. They make excuses faster than the rest of the company produces environmental disasters. I’m sure you can toe the party line with the rest of them.”
She paused, regarding him clinically. “Let me guess. You’ll tell me how what you do creates jobs all over the world and gives hope to starving people who are still living in the nineteenth century. Does this sound about right?”
Mercer guessed she was a typical “cause and effect” protester. If there was an effect in the world, she’d join the cause. She would no doubt belong to numerous organizations, favoring new ones as they gained popularity. Harry White derisively called these people “flavor-of-the-month liberals.” It wouldn’t matter that some of her beliefs might be diametrically opposed to others as long as they were politically correct and au courant.
He used this to his advantage when he came back at her just as hard. “Do you know how many millions of young girls are denied a useful life because they have to carry water to villages often miles away? They are reduced to the level of pack animals because they don’t have access to a well and a mechanical pump. Accessible water is such a commonplace item that you simply take it for granted, but to many in the world it is a luxury that they can only dream of.
“Those jobs that I help create, the ones you scoff at, can free those women. When a company I work for starts paying employees, it affects not only them but their families and villages. It gives people hope. Christ, to deny them that is to return to the colonial period of human exploitation. Is that what you want?”
It didn’t matter how beautiful he thought she was, he would never allow himself to be pushed around. His reputation, both good and bad, stood as his testament and he would defend it no matter what.
Her smile was patronizing and taunting. “Nice try, Dr. Mercer. To most, that would have worked. Though I believe in women’s rights and I deplore our treatment, I am an environmentalist, not a feminist. I’m not a Socialist or an anti-technologist either, so the rest of your arguments are moot. I have my beliefs and you have yours. They do not correspond.”
“Did anything I said during that class yesterday make sense to you?” Mercer was hoping for a common ground, a reason to keep her near him.
“No, not at all. It might have impressed the students, but cliches and hyperbole don’t impress someone who is truly informed. And as to your theory that humans are conforming to evolution by destroying our environment, well that’s just bullshit and you know it.”
He found her use of profanity alluring. “Mark my word, as we learn more about evolution and extinction, we’re going to find that behavior contributes as much to a species’ demise as changes in environment or any other factor. If our actions contribute to our destruction, then that’s the deal nature dealt us. Period.”
“And you see no reason to change that?” she challenged.
“I see no way to stop it. The Chinese government plans to provide refrigerators to every household in the country. The antiquated technology they use would pump out so many CFCs and other ozone-depleting gases that any counteraction in the West would be futile. We couldn’t regulate fast enough to prevent the greenhouse effect you so fear. Why isn’t the Planetary Environment Action League trying to stop them? Groups like yours are adept at stirring controversy and garnering headlines, but you don’t attempt to offer workable solutions. You don’t have enough facts behind your outcries, so you appeal to emotions to get your point across. You probably agree with the results of the Earth Summit in Rio, right?”
“I attended it,” Aggie shot back proudly.
“Do you remember Article 15 of the Rio Declaration?”
Aggie shook her head.
“I forced myself to memorize it because it made me so disgusted, I never wanted to forget it. ‘Lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ That means there doesn’t need to be proof for action to be taken. Taxpayers’ money can be spent on some problem that may not even exist. Unbelievably, the United States signed this garbage, potentially handing over billions of dollars with no way of knowing how the money is being spent.
“You think you’re trying to change the way mankind cares for the planet? Another document signed at Rio called Agenda 21 effectively states that the only way to stop environmental damage in the Northern Hemisphere is to pour tons of money into the third world nations of the Southern Hemisphere. Does that make any sense to you? I certainly don’t get it. Like I said in class yesterday, if you’re ashamed of our accomplishments, I’m sorry, but some of us are proud of them.”
Mercer turned to walk away, leaving Aggie speechless and a little slack-jawed. “Just a bit of trivia before I go. The very same scientists you rely on for proof of global warming were writing articles in the 1970s stating that pollution was actually cooling the planet, forcing us into a new ice age. When you can back up your cliches and hyperbole with facts, we’ll talk again.”
He was gone before Aggie could react.
Because Mercer had been the last to arrive at the party and was the first to leave, the valet was able to pull his Jaguar to the porte cochere only moments after he strode through the front doors. Mercer was angry at himself for getting into the conversation in the first place and wished he’d been thinking with his big head rather than his little one. He couldn’t deny an attraction, but that was as far as he’d let it go.
Mercer slid into the seat and closed the door with a slam. Just as he pulled the shifter from park, white knuckles rapped the passenger window. Startled, he pressed the power lock button and Aggie Johnston slipped into the Jag. Without a word, Mercer pulled away, the engine growling happily as he applied too much throttle.
As Mercer jinked onto the main road, Aggie pulled a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter from a small purse. She glared at him, defying a comment about her smoking as she lit up, the flame like a harsh flare in the intimate glow of the dash.
He waited out her silence, wondering where this would lead and secretly happy she’d followed him.
“I hate him almost as much as I love him.” Mercer knew she was speaking about her father. “In so many ways he’s the kindest, most thoughtful man I think I’ll ever meet, but I can’t help opposing him. He’s a health nut, so I started sneaking cigarettes from the staff when I was fourteen, hoping to get caught, but he never noticed. He still doesn’t know I smoke. Because he made all of his money in the oil business, I decided, even before I knew what it meant, that I would become an environmentalist.”
The window slid down and Aggie tossed her spent cigarette into the darkness. “I sometimes wonder if he’s noticed anything I’ve done. Lord knows he never noticed my mother’s desperation until it was too late.”
Mercer knew that she just wanted to talk, so he remained quiet.
“She killed herself when I was getting my master’s. I found out from the chauffeur Dad sent to bring me home for the funeral. You’d think that she and I would have been close, but we really weren’t. I cried at the funeral and I still cry sometimes now, but it isn’t loss that causes it. It’s pity. She was a pitiable person, really.
“My only strong memories of her are when she was drunk and one time, just before her suicide, when I nearly caught her in bed with another man. I wanted to blame my father so badly, but I can’t. She had a self- destructiveness that forced her to stay, to give her a reason to keep abusing herself with booze and affairs. She would have killed herself even if she had left him. You talked about mankind’s fate earlier. Well, the fate of Barbara Johnston was to die by her own hand, and nothing was going to stop it.”
Mercer glanced at Aggie. Her hands were trembling as she lit another cigarette, but her voice had remained steady. It didn’t take a trained psychologist to understand the emotional conflicts that made up her personality and motivated her actions. Her anger at her father had driven her to champion causes that opposed him. And that anger didn’t stem from her mother’s death but her own inability to stop it. Everything warned him to stay away from her, but he found himself drawn by her contrast of toughness and vulnerability.
“Where do you live?” he asked as they approached the nation’s capital.
“Georgetown. I have a condo on the canal.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the trip, but somehow the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. She directed him to her street with one-syllable prompts or simple nods of her head. Her condo building had once been a warehouse along the C amp;O Canal. Mercer knew that the units started at a quarter of a million dollars and rose dramatically from there.
