Skygods (Hydraulic #2) (22 page)

When will you ask me, Caulfield? I’ve loved you my whole life.

When can I have you, Aspen?

When you ask me. I want to know it’s for my whole life.

But you already know I belong to you.

I want to be your wife, you said. My fingers pushed the denim off your hips and crawled like those sine waves over your skin until they found the places that made you sing. I’ll marry you in April, you cried. April is a good month, I whispered. It’s your month, snowless and green, waxy leaves and roots and life. I’ll make you my wife in April. Now tie me to the dirt, Firecracker, before I slip from this throne of yours.

I took you on an old bed.

I kissed your diamond ring and swore I belong. I belong. I belong. I belong to you. You braided your hair so I could unbraid it. I buried myself in the cape of your body and your blood stained the white sheets red as the rubies you scattered over my thighs. Then you placed me on your throne and made me a king.

And still, I slipped.

Sleep came fitfully that night, followed by a barrage of dreams. Samuel’s greedy hands pawed at the brunette in New York. Wild eyes. Harsh words. Bits of notepaper fluttered over my shoulders, through my fingers amid fine dustings of white powder. Nicodemus, walking ten steps ahead, his back forever in front of me, plowing through snowdrifts. Yet I followed with my keyhole eyes. And then I was face-to-face with the last Other. I was so close, I only saw its leathery pores and crackled skin, smelled its putrid breath. But if I took a step back.

And another step.

And another.

A sob tore through my throat and I awoke. My entire body trembled, clammy with sweat as I clutched at my pillow, a frightened child in the throes of a nightmare. I
saw
the last Other. Not just the beast’s teeth, or clawed fingers, or porous skin. I saw the thing in its entirety, and it made me gasp at how I’d been so detrimentally blind.

Oh my God. I knew what was happening to Samuel.

My hand fumbled for the lamp switch. Light poured into the hotel room and drove back the last shadows of my dream. The red glow of the alarm clock said it was five fifteen: two hours before we had to leave for Burbank to tape the
Helen Boudreaux Show
. Wrapping myself in a hotel robe, I grabbed my phone from its charging dock. My brain raced. Before I could forget, I typed my observations through blurred eyes:

History of drug use. Memory loss. Tragic past. Rigid schedule. Trouble sleeping. Anxiety. Sadness. Loneliness. Perfectionist. Creative genius. Secrets. Fear of being like his mother. Mentally ill parents.

And now:

Excessive sexual energy. Wild eyes. Uncharacteristically rash.

My fingers brushed over the stark words etched on the screen. I’d been too close to him. As I gingerly backed away from those demons, I realized they made up a single, snarling creature. The same being that nearly killed Nicodemus. The same creature that plagued the man I loved. The last Other.

At the end of my list I typed a single phrase:

Bipolar disorder?

The green room behind the soundstage was fragrant with coffee and muffins early Saturday morning.
The Helen Boudreaux Show
was filming multiple episodes to air the following week while Helen recorded the voice for a mouse or bug or toy—I wasn’t sure which—in an animated flick. Samuel and Helen were shooting the breeze about it while a studio audience roared with laughter. I watched him on the mounted TV, my fists clenched, just waiting for his next cringe-inducing comment. To my right, Justin chatted up a familiar, thirty-something character actor while he browsed on his phone. To my left, Caroline was also on the edge of her seat while Samuel switched from topic to topic so quickly that neither of us had time to process before the next “but I don’t want to talk about blah blah blah” spiel began. If Samuel bashed the
Water Sirens
movie one more time, Caroline would fly onto the stage, rip the wireless microphone from his collar, and say something like, “What Mr. Cabral means by ‘schizo scene jumps’ is the movie is a piece of film-making art and you should all see it in November.”

“He’s all over the place,” Caroline grumbled. “We should have canceled.”

“You think?” I snipped. I’d suggested as much to her after Samuel gave us a grunted greeting in the Roosevelt’s lobby then prattled away while a bewildered Justin nodded, trying to keep up with his frenetic stories. “What did you think would happen when you overloaded his schedule, Caroline? He warned you he was stressed out.”

She froze, then gave me an odd look. A chill ran through me, and I wondered if this was exactly what she thought would happen.

To someone who wasn’t looking, Samuel Cabral was playful, witty, even a touch arrogant. He seemed to be perfectly at home giving an interview in front of a studio audience. But I was looking. I saw the way he bounced his knee and tugged his hair, brimming with nervous energy. The way his eyes flicked from Helen, to the camera operators, to the audience, then back to Helen. The way he impatiently twisted the arms of his chair.

“So you had a reader who actually named their daughter Cinsere?” Helen asked.

“Yes. I even asked her to spell it, because I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. So she said proudly, ‘
C–
I
–
N
–S–
E
–
R
–
E.’”
Bounce bounce bounce. Hair tug.
“She asked me to sign the front cover ‘To Cinsere. Sincerely, Samuel Cabral.’ I ended up writing something like ‘May this bring you hours of happy reading,’ because I couldn’t make myself torment the poor child any further. The mother was utterly clueless.”

Caroline’s posh head dropped into her hand. “Cardinal rule: never bash fans, especially on national talk shows.”

“We can still cancel the book signing.” I sighed.

“No. We’ll need it now for damage control. Make sure you get a shot of Samuel kissing a baby and float it on the Internet. See if anyone bites.”

“Speaking of the Internet,” Justin cut in, “check it out.” He held out his smartphone so we could see the screen. Just as I’d feared, it was one of the photog’s pictures from the airport last night. Samuel’s hand rested on my rear, and from the camera angle, it looked like he was leering down my blouse. Or maybe he actually was leering down my blouse. Above the picture was a blurb:
Siren Writer Lures Back Neelie
. Seriously, even Juicy the Labrador could write a better headline.

“The picture and story is also on
Hollywood Days
,” Justin continued, “and they confirmed the rumors. You two hottie patotties kinda went guns-a-blazing at the ol’ kiss-and-greet. Very
sincere
ly, of course.”

Caroline’s head sank even further into her hands, and for a moment I thought she was blubbering, but she was only muttering, “I hate this job,” over and over. I actually felt bad for her until I realized that, after Labor Day weekend, Caroline would be with her new author and it’d be my mess.

Samuel’s eccentric behavior continued through the afternoon. At the massive two-story bookstore in Santa Ana, the three of us hustled to prep for the signing. Caroline walked me through protocol, everything from the positioning of
The Last Other
cardboard cutouts to handling chatty fans. Samuel paced aisle after aisle of books, lost in his mind, oblivious to the stares and pointed fingers. I couldn’t tell if he was calming down or psyching up for a grueling five hours of signing his name ad infinitum.

“What do we do now?” I asked when lunch was eaten and Samuel settled behind a narrow table, stacks of
The Last Other
encroaching on his elbows. Already, a line of a hundred readers had queued, wrapping up the stairs and around the second-story railing.

“We multitask. Keep one eye on the signing table and one eye on your tablet. Try not to hover—it makes fans nervous and you don’t need anyone upchucking on Samuel. But don’t be so busy you fail to intervene when some crazed reader with thirty books and a blond wig asks Samuel to sign her breasts. It’s happened more than once. Word to the wise—the crazies will be up front. This isn’t Colorado—this is LA.”

I actually gulped. Samuel peered at me over his shoulder and hit me with a charming smile, which only made me more nervous. “You’ll be fine,” he mouthed. Then he turned that panty-dropping smile on a busty young thing in a blond wig and rock-climbing gear who’d camped outside the Barnes & Noble doors since three a.m., just to be first in line.

“Hey, Samuel, I’m Neelie,” she crooned.

Mother cliff-hucker, I was in a parallel universe.

Caroline was right. For the first hour, nixie after squealing nixie presented themselves in elaborate costumes. One person even dressed up like an Other, though he resembled Swamp Thing more than a demon. Still, it was pretty darned impressive. After the more enthusiastic crowd filed through, the line calmed down and we fell into a routine. Eventually, I was able to do some crash-course browsing about mental illness.

I thought Samuel was in a sort of elevated mood related to bipolar disorder, but I had to be sure. So I found a list of mental disorders and swapped my girlfriend eye for a clinical eye. One by one, I checked them against Samuel’s symptoms. I narrowed my list to: clinical depression, anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and bipolar disorder.

Clinical depression: this would have been the obvious answer, if not for Samuel’s recent agitation and impulsiveness. I clicked on a blog that caught my eye. Seven pages of comments popped up and I read through them, each convincing me that Samuel had, at some point, suffered from clinical depression—especially during college and our brief marriage.

“I didn’t think anything of it at first, it was so gradual. I noticed that smiling felt wooden. It was harder to enjoy little stuff, like taking walks or going to a movie with my boyfriend.” ~psy22kris

“After a while, the stress started. I worried all the time. I was uncomfortable in my own skin, like I’d mess up at any second. Everything—work, relationships—what was the point?” ~tacoLibre

“My body was heavy. I was tired. It was an effort to get up and go to work. Then it was an effort to come home. Then it was even harder to go to the grocery store or even fix food for the kids. I was drowning, suffocating under it all. And the worst part was, no one seemed to really notice or care.” ~impossible_crumpets

Samuel himself told me how his sadness would come and go. What if he hadn’t wanted to label the sadness? Naming it meant acknowledging it, and no one wants to admit they have a mental illness.

I bookmarked the forum, then moved on to the next: anxiety disorder
.
Apparently sixty percent of people with anxiety disorders also suffer from depression, which kind of shocked me. Stress, nervous ticks, insomnia. And panic attacks—definitely what happened at the wedding. He even had them as a child, before he grew out of his fear of heights. Which led to my next search item:

Post-traumatic stress disorder: well, young Samuel had certainly witnessed a traumatic event—his mother’s suicide. Even with therapy, the effects of something so shocking could endure for years and years. Flashbacks, nightmares, guilt, insomnia, depression. But PTSD also brought out a lot of anger, and Samuel was rarely angry.