Crazy Love You (6 page)

I could tell by the silence that followed us from the organic produce to the artisan soap stand that she was still thinking about the whole Priss thing. I had already figured out a few things about Megan in the month we'd been together. One was that she didn't talk until she had
really
thought about what she wanted to say. Any long silence was pregnant with her analysis of the situation, her meticulous choosing of the right words to express herself precisely. She was a thoughtful person. Really, she couldn't have been more different from Priss, who was subject to the most terrible rages. Priss exploded, top blowing, her anger like lava spilling over, burning and melting and destroying everything in its path. Once it cooled and hardened, she might be sorry. But it was always too late. The damage she did often couldn't be undone.

“Well,” said Megan, inspecting a handmade bar of lavender soap. “I'll just put it out there that I'd like to meet her. But, you know, it's totally up to you.”

“Okay,” I said. I lifted a bar of lemon sage to my nose and felt my sinuses tingle. “Yeah. I'll think about it.”

Wrong answer. She got quiet and was still quiet after a stroll downtown, through Washington Square Park. It's not like she was
mad
; she wasn't freezing me out. She just seemed introspective, not chatty.

But she perked up a bit as we wandered through some galleries and shops in SoHo. Eventually, we looped back uptown and got a table at Miss Lily's, a Jamaican place on Houston with some unbelievably hot supermodel waitresses and spicy beef patties that make you weep with delight. (I know. Didn't we just eat? So what.)

Even though the conversation moved on as we took our seats and we were talking about everything else, I could tell by the way Megan looked at me in the silences that she was still wondering about me, about the variety of reasons I might not want her to meet Priss. I pretended not to notice her slightly distant energy. Note to self: When a woman says, “It's totally up to you,” she doesn't mean it. Not at all.

“How's Toby doing?” I asked, just to get her talking. We took a table by the window. There was a guy in the corner playing a steel drum, singing a reggae song I didn't recognize. I wondered how long it would be before he started with the Bob Marley tunes—the only reggae music even remotely familiar to rich white Manhattanites.

I was gratified to see Meg brighten up considerably. She loved that kid—even though I didn't see what was so great about him or why she seemed to like her job so much. She could be doing a lot more with her time. And I wondered if her attachment to him was a way of avoiding what she really wanted to do, which was to write.

She was working on a novel that she hadn't let me read. She said it was about a couple that loses a child, and how the loss impacts their lives and the life of the child that's left. Megan's older brother had died in childhood—a drowning accident. She said her book wasn't about that precisely, but that it was the seed, the inspiration.

We had that weird thing in common, the loss of a sibling in childhood—both of them drowned, her brother by accident, Ella on purpose. So—very different events. But still, grief scars us. We carry its mark. I had thought about it a little bit, wondered if that was the sadness I'd seen in her that first day—if I had connected to it in some deeply subconscious way. When I lost Ella I was older than Megan had been when she lost her brother. I still thought of Ella every time I heard a baby cry—which thankfully wasn't that often. How much did Megan think about her brother?

“Oh, he's good,” she said. “Toby's such a smart kid. You know, he read to me last night? It might have just been that he memorized stuff I have read to him, but it was cool.”

She'd been Toby's nanny for two years. She never intended to work for the family for so long, she'd told me. It was supposed to have been a placeholder job while she looked for something in publishing. But her job hunt hadn't gone well, even though her father was a pretty well-known nonfiction writer. And she got attached to Toby and his parents, so she was still there. She said the job gave her time to write, but I didn't think she was doing much of that.

“He's a good kid,” I said. “I mean that he seems like it. Not bratty. It seems like you really love him.”

She had a strange expression on her face, like she might cry, but she didn't.

“It's funny,” she said. “I never told anyone this before.”

“What?” I reached over for her hand and laced my fingers through hers. She had the softest skin. Just touching it made me want her. Ladies, men are like this. We are always thinking about sex and how to get it, even when you think we're sharing a deep, emotional moment with you. We
are
—but we're still thinking about sex.

“Sometimes when I'm with Toby, I wonder if he's like Josh would have been at that age. You know, my brother who died.”

It was one of the first things she'd told me about herself. How he'd died before she ever knew him; she had been just a baby. There were only a few pictures of him around, and she said her parents rarely discussed him. She'd had a hunger to know more about him but was always afraid to ask. I had the sense that somehow the loss of him had defined her in certain ways, though she hadn't talked about it after her initial mentioning of it until now. We were connected like that. I'd be thinking about something and it would come up suddenly in conversation—like now.

“Do you think that's why you're so attached to him?” I asked.

It seemed like a natural conclusion to draw, one I thought she'd already come to herself. But I could tell the question surprised her. She pulled her hand back and I regretted asking it. I had struck a nerve without meaning to.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean anything by that.

She looked down at her cuticles, then ran a hand through her thick, dark hair. She wasn't wearing a lick of makeup, and even in the bright light washing in from outside, the skin on her face was peaches-and-cream flawless. There was a wet sparkle to her eyes. How could I get that on the page—that look of raw, surprised emotion?

“My parents think that working for Toby's family is holding me back,” she said. She took a sip of the strong black coffee she'd ordered. “They think I should be spending more time on the book, or looking for another kind of job.”

The waitress came and set some water glasses on the table. The air was heavy with the smell of roasting meat and jerk spices—cinnamon, thyme, allspice, garlic.

“I have all these things I say to them, like Toby's family needs me, and it pays the bills without taking up every second of my time, or it's not a career but a job that I leave at the end of the day. That's all true without being the whole truth. You're right. I've grown really attached to Toby.” She paused. “But I never thought that it might have something to do with Josh.”

I wanted to say something, to make her feel better.

“There's nothing wrong with taking care of Toby, if you're happy doing it,” I said. I could have left it there. But I added, “As long as you're not letting it keep you from doing what you really want to do.”

She nodded but didn't say anything. I could tell she was thinking about it. I touched her leg under the table.

“I wish I'd had a hot nanny when I was a kid,” I said.

She laughed then, and the heavy moment grew lighter. We ordered lunch—jerk pork belly hash and Jamaican rancheros, plantains, and beef patties. And just like that we were back to where we were before our conversation about Priss. It was early days, but looking back, I see that we both hauled a lot of baggage into our new relationship.

•  •  •

After lunch, we parted ways. My deadline was drawing closer—and I'd been so wrapped up in Megan that I hadn't been working much. We made out on the corner of Seventeenth and Broadway for a couple of minutes, like our bodies couldn't stand to be apart. As I moved away from her, I thought I saw a familiar flash of red in the crowd at the market and I felt a little twinge of fear—the bad boy getting caught.

“What's wrong?” asked Megan.

“Nothing,” I said. I had literally broken a sweat.

She put a hand on my cheek, her brow wrinkled with concern. “You look—scared.”

“No,” I said. I put on a smile. “Sorry. Just thinking about work.”

“That deadline getting close?” she said. She gave me an apologetic smile. “I'd better stop distracting you.”

“Please don't,” I said. And I kissed her again.

“I'll see you later,” she said, pulling away. “Maybe I'll use the thought of your working hard to spur me to work on
my
novel.”

“Good idea,” I said. “When do I get to read?”

She laughed a little, and didn't answer. “I'll probably just take a nap.”

I let her drift away into the crowd. “See you later?” I called after her.

“Call me when you're done.”

And then she was gone. I wanted to go after her. But instead, I forced myself to walk home, thinking about Fatboy.

•  •  •

Fatboy is a loser. He's a towering, slovenly, acne-riddled, stuttering fool. He is an object of ridicule and bullying. His mother is locked away in a mental hospital. His father is an emotionally absent, razor-tongued asshole. But Fatboy does have a few things going for him. He's smart, with nearly a genius-level IQ. And he's an artist of exceptional talent. With a charcoal pencil in his hand, he is a master, a virtuoso, a superhero. And he has one friend, a girl named Priss.

Priss is everything Fatboy isn't. She's gorgeous; she's powerful; she's wild. She doesn't take crap from anyone. There's only one problem with her. She's batshit crazy. She's vindictive, vengeful, and full of rage on Fatboy's behalf. She likes to get even with the people who wrong him. And no one can see her but Fatboy.

So that's why when Priss does things that are out of control, even criminal, Fatboy often takes the rap. No one believes that Priss exists. They think Fatboy is crazy, just like his nut-job mother.

And that's basically the premise for my graphic novels. They're about poor Fatboy, just trying to get along, bullied and abused by everyone around him. And about how Priss gets even on his behalf. But then Fatboy has to get himself out of the trouble that Priss gets him into. The series has evolved over the years. Fatboy starts out as a middle schooler. Then it's high school, then the Cooper Union art school. Then he goes to work for Marvel Comics. Then he strikes out on his own as an indie. Yeah, he's a comic book creator and artist—meaning he conceives the story and creates the art—pencil, ink, and color, and he can (wants to) write all the dialogue and text, except he has a partner who does that part.

And all the while Priss is fighting Fatboy's battles. She hurts people who hurt him. And over the years her violence has escalated. In the last book, she kills someone. So now Fatboy is trying to put some distance between himself and Priss. Because at heart, he's a nice guy. He didn't want his writing partner to die just because the guy was trying to screw Fatboy out of his rightful percentage of the money.

Fatboy never wanted to hurt him; they were friends. His partner thought there should be a sixty-forty split in his favor.
After all
, his partner reasoned,
I am doing all the writing. The writing is the story.
But no, the art is the story. Without it, there's nothing. Not in comics. The battle was heated, and nasty words were exchanged. His partner, who Fatboy always thought was his best friend, called him ugly names and insulted his art.

And a week later, Fatboy's partner was dead. Hit by a car. It was an accident, a tragic accident; a hit and run. Only Fatboy knows that Priss had something to do with it—though she denies it—and so he's trying to spend less time with her.

He's stronger now, older. He has lost weight; he's looking good. His skin has cleared up, and his cool goatee and fashionable stubble cover the acne scars. He's not a beaten-up little boy anymore who misses his mother. He is coming of age. He is wiser, more secure. He is respected. Basically, he doesn't need Priss to fight his battles anymore. He's met someone, a nice girl whom he thinks he might love.

He still loves Priss. Of course he does. But things have been taking a turn—her rages are darker and more violent. She's not always nice to him anymore. She seems angry a lot of the time. Yes, Fatboy still loves Priss. But he's a little afraid of her now. Maybe he always has been.

•  •  •

Priss was in my apartment when I got home. (Which really annoyed me. The super has a thing for her, and all she has to do is ring his bell and he lets her in. And she does  . . . ring his bell, that is.) She was lying on my couch, holding a recent drawing of Megan in her hand. I came in and let the door shut behind me, went to the refrigerator for a coconut water. I really love that stuff.

“Who's this?” she asked, not looking at me.

“A friend,” I said easily. “A girl I met.”

“Pretty,” she said. She let the paper drift down to the floor. I could see that it was a sketch of Megan sleeping, one I'd done quickly before she woke up this very morning. “In a common way.”

“She's all right,” I said. Better to downplay it. Priss was the jealous type, jealous of anyone or anything that interested me too much. She used to just get mad at the people who hurt me. But somewhere along the line that changed. She was mad at more things, more often, and I couldn't predict what would set her off.

“Are you going to put her in the book?” she said. She was looking at me now. “A new character in your story?”

I blew out a breath. “Nah,” I said. “Nothing like that.”

She didn't say anything, but that silence swelled, took up some air in the room.