If you have noticed an uncharacteristic absence of Mave pushing to be the center of attention since Robert’s dramatic entrance, there’s a reason for that, and the potential siting of a chemical plant on Amos’ farm has nothing to do with it.
How can I put this?
What Robert experienced when DJ came out of Roger’s bedroom in nothing but a towel is what Mave experienced when Robert burst through Roger’s front door, eyes on fire and chest heaving: Cupid’s arrow punching through her ribcage. No one noticed at the time, of course, but her face turned a high pink and if you had put your hand to her cheek in that moment, you would have scalded it. Her breath began to come in shallow gasps and she stared at him in much the manner that you might stare if an Abominable Snowman walked into your living room and changed the channel on the tv because he didn’t want to miss Jeopardy.
These things are hard to chart and even harder to explain. It isn’t as if Mave had never seen or been with or been wooed by men twice as handsome and easily three times as intelligent. She had. In truth, Robert had nothing she hadn’t seen – and rejected – plenty often before. So why this time, she wondered, did the mere sight of a rube with whom she had nothing in common send shock waves down her spine and lubricate her until she dripped?
- He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, although he was very good-looking by anyone’s standards;
- he wasn’t rich;
- he worked with his hands, which she could see were pretty rough (think of those rough hands on you, tearing your clothes off, squeezing your breasts, mauling your thighs – no, on second thought, don’t think of that – don’t, I said!);
- and he lived in the middle of nowhere. He wouldn’t know a designer dress from a fourth-rate Nicaraguan knock-off if it jumped up and down on his – (stop that!)
From the protected charm of a safe distance – a luxury Mave did not enjoy – we can afford to speculate, and we find that there are two possible explanations. The first is very scientific but the second may be closer to the truth.
1. Pheromones.
Those wacky little olfactory molecules that assault Jacobson’s Organ without our knowledge, after which J’s O sends signals to the deepest part of our subconscious that wake it up and yell, “You’re in love, idiot. Move it or lose it.” Scientists know how this happens, they just have no idea why.
2. Who knows?
Pheromones may be part of the answer but it’s hard to believe it’s as simple as all that. It’s more likely a complex of reactions – neurological, visual, experiential, and instinctual – that for whatever reason wind up focusing on the same person. Other forms of “love” – infatuation, for instance – might involve one or a combination of these factors but only “love at first sight” seems to involve them all. Maybe pheromones are the kicker, the push that sends it over the top. In other words: The Closer.
If so, they closed Mave down like a jail door slamming shut. For a full five minutes, she forgot about Roger’s money entirely and focused like a laser on the hunk in the chair. She loved the way his neck muscles rippled when he spoke and the way his hands fluttered when he couldn’t think of the right word. She adored the way his cluelessness meshed with his intensity and the way his buns tightened when he concentrated what there was of his mind. She savored the sound of his voice, the curve of his earlobes, and the deep brown of his eyes. When he took a breath and his chest stretched against the fabric of his shirt, she nearly fainted.
In short, she was gone.
Now, you have to remember that Mave had had no experience whatever with actual love. From her girlhood in the white-trash slums of Montgomery, Alabama, she had always judged potential boyfriends by their bank accounts and/or social connections – in other words, by their ability (or lack of it) to get her the hell out of where she was and feed her diamonds and mink coats while they were doing it.
She’d never kidded herself that she “loved” Roger. She was fond of him – he was a nice guy – but she knew quite clearly why that ring on her finger was his: the sky-high pile of Old Money that tacked all those zeroes onto the end of his bank statements.
She didn’t believe – or hadn’t up to now – that there was any such thing as “love”. She believed, based on her upbringing and her surroundings, that men bought women like they bought cars and that the woman’s job was to look good and make sure she got the highest possible price for her powerful engine and plush leather interior. The concept that emotion might be involved with what she essentially saw as a business transaction was as foreign to her nature as the idea of a long life would be to a mayfly.
Consequently, her reaction to Robert marked the very first time in her life that she had seen a male as something other than her own personal ATM. Robert couldn’t afford to buy her the silk stockings on her legs, never mind the pearls around her neck, yet she didn’t care. All she could think about was having those huge arms wrapped around her and folding herself into him until it was impossible to tell where she stopped and he began.
This, she realized when the five minutes were up, was going to be a problem.
