Love Her Madly (20 page)

Pretty fucked up, Glo.

CHAPTER NINE

Raj

At some point in life, every human being inevitably suffers one horrible incident. The Horrible Thing is ineluctable, buried deep in the contract of existence. Our parents blithely clicked the “Accept” button for us, agreeing to terms and waiving certain rights while bringing us into the world. We can't blame them. No one reads the fine print. The unluckiest among us experience multiple horrors, which is truly a raw deal, an error for which the universe, or God, or whatever crafted this adventure, has some explaining to do. There are other variations, too: one man's Horrible Thing(s) might be tame in comparison to another's, but everyone can point to their own and say,
That was it
, perhaps with a shiver of gratitude that they're still around to do the pointing.

I thought I knew what mine was. Now I'm not so sure.

Recent events have forcefully schooled me that some things can't be sorted out, that some truths remain elusive. When there is no truth to set you free, no clear-eyed vantage point from which to look back on the horrible thing, or forward to the future, the entire world distorts. It's not subtle. Facts take on a wavery, fun-house quality, and history smudges as easily as chalk on a sidewalk. The only thing that is unquestionable is how we feel, and as my feelings have been changing by the hour, even that can't be trusted completely.

The new truth is, everything is different, but nothing much has changed. I hate a paradox even more than ambiguity, and ever since I saw her in the theater, I've found a lot not to like.

The wind is blowing hard outside the dark windows of our apartment. Glo is passed out in our bedroom, but I know I won't rest tonight. I have a near-full bottle of Scotch and a cut-glass tumbler through which to alternately admire and drink the Scotch. I'm in several ounces deep when I pass my glass before the lamp. The color, I realize, perfectly mimics the hair of a strawberry blonde standing below the setting sun on an autumn day. I flash back to fall, to hysterical tumbles in dry leaves, to Glo in her Greek goddess Halloween costume, and rapidly forward again to just this afternoon when Cyn reappeared under her own reddish-gold halo. There was no brash crispness about her then, though, no ruddy-apple cheeks or ruby-red lips. She was pure winter, gazing up at me from the dark, motionless as a wax figure in row D, seat 6.

The expression on her face defied classification. The surface emotion was melancholy. But in our fleeting eye contact, I sensed something else at work underneath, something calculated, like curiosity on a bad day. Glo says that I'm being ridiculous. That, if in fact, our dearest, deadest friend has returned, a possibility she roundly refuses to entertain, we would know. She would come to us. To that I say, maybe she has.

It was the shape of her face that drew my attention. Even in the near dark, my eye sought the heart-shaped gleam of ivory, rising from the unmistakable curve of neck. I was on stage, three-quarters through the production, the end in sight. We were getting laughs. The matinee crowd is great for laughs; everyone a little buzzed from brunch, but not tipsy enough to nod off.

I glanced at her, hazy in the backwash of the footlights.

Cyn
, I thought, for the millionth time.

You look for your dead, especially in a place like New York City, where there are thousands upon thousands of doppelgängers to process. For years, I habitually scanned every female of her approximate height and proportion. A familiar gait could make me trail a woman down the block until I inevitably confirmed a false positive. Glo searched, too. Sometimes both of our heads would snap to follow the same golden-haired girl who fit the profile. We never talked about it, but we both knew we did it. So when I thought I'd spotted her, it didn't rattle me. I would deliver my line, and in the buffer of laughter that always followed, steal a second look and confirm my mistake.

Only this time, I didn't think I was mistaken. We had locked eyes. I knew what I'd seen, but for the next twenty minutes, I managed to back-burner all thoughts of her. I didn't steal another look until curtain call, and by then, she was out of her seat, trying to edge past her row mates before they could block the aisle. I watched, grinning helplessly as the audience continued to applaud and her milk-colored coat disappeared out the exit. It took all I had not to leap off the stage and race after her. My thought was, I
have
to touch her. Physically touch her. Don't ask me why. Maybe it was some misplaced idea about ghosts that I ingested along with my Froot Loops while watching
­Scooby-Doo.
If I caught this impostor, I could unmask her as a phony, and life would go back to normal.

Before the hem of the curtain hit the floor, I was out the stage door. In the flinty twilight, I spotted the coat, a white speck among a sea of black, and the surprisingly copper-colored hair. She was getting into a cab. I shouted her name. She heard me—the entire block heard me—but she pretended not to, slamming the door closed without even a glance in my direction. Maybe that's why I feel so strange and sick right now. If you can't look a man in the eye, how can he possibly trust that your intentions are good?

In hindsight, I shouldn't have dropped the C-bomb on Glo so cavalierly. There she was, sitting at the bar near my theater, waiting for me with a martini glass lifted to her lips, clairvoyantly prepared for a slapstick spit take. I at least had the good sense to wait for her to swallow before I blurted it out.

“I saw Cyn at my show.”

She blinked. “April Fools' is next Sunday.”

I pulled my stool close to hers, signaling to the bartender for a dirty martini of my own. My excitement must have read like exhilaration, or worse, elation. It wasn't, but this was colossal news, and who else on the planet would find it as extraordinary as Glo? It had taken all my self-control to not call her and tell her about it immediately, but now that I saw her face, I was glad that I'd resisted.

“I'm not kidding. I really saw her.”

Glo didn't say anything for a minute. “She's just on your mind because of my stupid bus ‘sighting.' Insanity must be an STD.”

“Glo, it was her.”

“She's dead,” Glo said flatly, all playfulness gone.

We sat in silence as the bartender stood before us, shaking my drink. He set it before me, and I took a hearty swallow, its crisp, salty coolness instantly calming my nerves. I ran my hand up and down Glo's back in a way that I hoped was soothing. Beneath her soft sweater, she was coiled stiff as a carved rattlesnake.

“So, how did this alleged Cyn look?” she asked, forcing a casual tone.

“Smokin' hot,” I blurted, trying to lighten the mood. Then I almost bit my tongue, worried that my dumb joke might have stoked Glo's dormant Cyn-related insecurities. She'd been
touchy lately, and I really wanted us to have a good night. Glo just rolled her eyes, a good sign.

I took another sip, recalling the moment in the street as I swished the gin between my teeth. Doubt was pouring in, as it always did, drowning my certainty. I didn't get the best look at the woman in the cab; it was dark and there was a reflection from the marquee on the window. I was also notoriously bad with faces, to the point where Glo would have to repeatedly help me identify characters when we watched movies together. “She looked rich. The Cyn I saw looked rich.”

“How do you mean?” Glo leaned back in her seat, forcing me to move my arm. But she turned toward me, and the toe of her boot touched my calf. Though I had inadvertently sent our date night careening toward the shoals, she was signaling we weren't wrecked yet.

“Nice coat. White,” I emphasized, raising my eyebrows.

“White, in this city? She must have an excellent dry cleaner,” Glo said, feigning wonder.

I nodded in solemn agreement. “She was very put-together-looking. Her purse was big and expensive, you know, leather, shiny buckles. She looked like she belonged on the Upper East.” I took a sip of my drink and dropped the routine. “This woman's hair was sort of reddish, like yours, but lighter. I ran after her, out into the street just to see, you know, to confirm.”

Glo gulped a mouthful of her cocktail, then another, draining it down to the olives. “And when she saw you, she said, ‘
Raj
? Rajveer
Roy
? I've been totally meaning to get in touch!' ”

I laughed. “She literally ran into traffic to avoid me. I mean, if you're going to come back from the goddamn dead, why not hang around for a second and say hello?”

“She was probably in a hurry. Had to get back to the crypt before sundown or something.”

“So you're going reverse vampire on this one?”

Glo shrugged. “Sure. Except reverse vampires are bullshit. A body-replicating alien I might have believed.”

“You always go with alien. Mix it up a little. You want another drink?”

She nodded and I hailed the bartender. As if by mutual agreement, we didn't talk about our sightings any more that night. Yet when we walked out of the bar to the restaurant, I had the feeling that we were both looking over our shoulders. During dinner, I saw worry dulling the usual brightness in Glo's face. She said she was just exhausted, which was probably true. She hadn't been sleeping much the past few nights.

I had been coming home late, around two or three in the morning. My business partner Tony and I were six months into a five-year lease on a basement black box theater in Hell's Kitchen. Our theater company, the Clockwork Owl, had a new show opening in a week,
The Narcan Journals
. It was by far our strongest production yet, and the one we hoped would get us out of the red. Just as we began tech week, our set decorator abruptly quit, leaving us scrambling to fill a bare stage. Tony had kids, and his wife worked nights as a sommelier, so it fell to me, as artistic director, to labor into the wee hours gluing shitty wallpaper onto plywood and distressing thrift store furniture. The only bright spot was that the play was set in an addict's pad, so my glaring lack of interior design skills didn't hurt the verisimilitude.

Tony and I had made fast friends with the owner and the bartenders of the bar located directly above us, the Copper Dragon. We were there so often, it might as well have been the theater's unofficial office. I sometimes stopped in after working, and the nightcap that Steve, the bartender, offered me magically blossomed into several. This happened more often than was healthy.

The past two nights I had come home expecting to find Glo
in bed, but she was up, staring at the television. She didn't ask me about the show, or work, or why I was swaying like a sailor on dry land. I instantly felt bad, seeing her like that, alone again on a Saturday night, like some hopeless spinster. But she wasn't mad. She let me lead her to bed, and wrap my arms around her, exhaling whiskey vapors into her apple-scented hair. As drunk as I was, I could tell that something was on her mind. It could have been any number of things: our not spending time together, my spending too much time with the company, my drinking a bit too much, my unwillingness to get her pregnant, plunging our already dicey financial status into potential ruin . . .

The thing was, the Clockwork Owl was deeply in debt. Glo didn't know. I wanted to tell her early on, but Tony had me convinced that it wasn't that bad, and by the time it was that bad, I didn't want to worry her. Tony was our finance guy, having already opened a few successful restaurants in Jersey. I hoped beyond logic that he was right; that one successful show could turn everything around, but it wasn't like I'd suddenly lost my ability to do math. We'd spent thousands to renovate the space, and we weren't getting the audiences we needed to keep it afloat. If
The Narcan Journals
was anything less than a runaway success, we'd have to declare bankruptcy and give it all up. Unlike myself, Tony could be sanguine about losing the theater. It was a business to him, but it was everything to me.

In only six months as a theater director, I had already experienced so much more satisfaction than I had in my seven years as an actor. As a director, I wasn't limited by the color of my skin, or my last name, or a million other factors that not-so-subtly tipped the scales in the purportedly “color-blind” casting in New York City. I was relishing my first-ever principal role on Broadway, and the significant paycheck that came with it, but once we closed, there was no guarantee I'd ever win another job
like it. Case in point: for the last three years, my ability to pay my rent was largely owed to Bucky Beaver, the cartoon animal I voiced for
The Foresteers!
Sure, Bucky was a lead character who happened to be brown, but he was also a beaver. Having the Owl meant I could put on the shows I cared about, and cast actors who didn't fit the shiny white Broadway mold. When our first two shows, both premieres of new works, came out to positive reviews, I was ecstatic. I thought that I'd found my niche and that the audiences would follow. Of course it wasn't that easy, but I learned from my many mistakes, taught myself Professional Marketing 101 on the fly, and miraculously, our last week of shows played to sold-out houses. Success seemed just a hairbreadth away. If I could keep it up, it seemed like we just might squeak by. With so much at stake, I couldn't not give it my all.