Love Her Madly (25 page)

My mind insisted that sex was the way forward, since that was the only road we hadn't taken. If she just gave me a chance, maybe we could find each other that way, and even if we failed, even if her secret core remained intact, surely we would be closer without the mutual resentment that perpetually fed the great, horrible storm cloud. If we made love, so many questions and frustrations would be resolved. I would no longer lie awake asking myself
Why, why, why?
Why do this? Why dream up this mad experiment of a three-way relationship, if it could never be balanced?

So I sought that balance, persistently.

“You aren't happy with this anymore, are you?” she murmured a few days after Christmas. She was sitting cross-legged on my floor, silhouetted against the sliding glass door, idly stroking a red felt Santa hat that Glo had given to her. The lights from the airport made the edges of her hair appear gilded as she fluffed the white polyester fur with her fingertips.

I turned off the video game I'd been playing, thinking,
Good, we'll finally have this out.
I turned around to face her. “Now, why wouldn't I be happy with this anymore?”

She stared at me coolly, noting, no doubt, the thinly veiled sarcasm.

“You aren't happy because you aren't getting everything you want.”

“That's right. Because you won't let me have it.”

“That's right,” she echoed. She looked away from me and out at the world beyond the glass door.

We sat there in silence. I'd been expecting more of a reaction. I was at least hoping to learn why she was consciously torturing me, since she'd just admitted she knew what I wanted. But she just sat there, gazing at the airport.

Exasperated to the point of rage, I got to my feet. I suddenly felt like I couldn't even be in the same room with her. I had my hand on the doorknob when Cyn stopped me with a whisper.

“If you really want an answer, my biggest fear is what might happen if I do sleep with you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I'm terrified that it'll mess everything up. But everything is already so messed up. You're going to start hating me, if you don't already. I don't know what to do. I wish I did, but I don't.”

She was crying. I stood there stupidly, my anger fading as my confusion rose to a new high water mark. I had no idea what she was talking about. But at the same time, I loved her even more for finally acknowledging what was happening between us.

“You can't wreck this,” I told her. “You just can't.”

She looked up at me and smiled, tears rolling down her face. “Yes, I can. But I really don't want to.”

I pulled her into my arms on the futon, and she pressed her damp face into my neck. My head was spinning questions and theories, uselessly. So uselessly.

“Did something bad happen to you? Something bad, with sex?” It seemed the only explanation.

“No.”

“Oh. Okay, good.”

“That's not it. It's not.” She sighed, her body shuddering against mine. “It's not anything I can explain in a way that makes sense. It's not about you. It's not about Glo. It's me. I'm just kind of fucked.”

“I think you're wonderful.”

“I know. It terrifies me.”

“It terrifies you that I love you?”

I'd never said it; to her, or to Glo. It was a dangerous word, and it had escaped before I could stop it. I meant it, and I regretted it, simultaneously.

Her eyes became softer than I'd ever seen them, and she kissed me. We kissed for a long time, and to my wonder, she began to undress me. Then she lifted my hands and placed them on the buttons of her blouse, smiling coyly. I undid each button, slowly. Then, one by one, removed the rest of her clothes, expecting to be stopped, but hoping not to disturb the spell that was drawing us closer. I swear, that night held a magic that seemed tangible, like some mystic energy was carrying us over the barriers that had risen between us, where we could finally, fully meet.

She didn't stop me. She was quiet throughout, and in the darkness of my room, I couldn't tell whether she was looking at me or her eyes were closed. I kept it simple, standard missionary position, because I was afraid that if I moved, if I did anything unusual, it might upset the balance that had made the moment possible, and everything might abruptly stop. When it was over, we splayed out naked, side by side. I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

“I need a smoke,” her voice said in the darkness.

I bounded out of bed to fulfill my queen's wishes. As I flicked on the light and opened my stash box, the world felt full of fresh promise. I caught her looking at me as I rolled the joint.

“You're so happy now,” she observed.

“Guilty as charged.” I leaned down to kiss her mouth, and she turned her head, offering me her cheek. “Was it okay for you?”

“Uh-huh.” She closed her eyes.

We smoked the joint without saying much, and she went right to sleep. It was early, only ten o'clock. I read a book and watched her as she slept. I had no idea that anything was wrong, and by the time I figured it out, it was too late.

The next day she went out before work and didn't come back to my place. When she got home that evening, she came to my room. We had been talking about going out to see a movie, but I
think she saw pretty clearly that in light of the previous evening, I had other entertainments in mind.

She tossed her stuff on the floor and lit the joint that I had prepared for her. Since classes had ended she was getting high at noon and staying that way until she passed out.

“You want to fuck, huh? Fine, let's fuck.”

Things got really strange from that point. It was thrilling, but also more than a little scary. Cyn became like another person. The girl who wouldn't go all the way was suddenly this sexual mastermind. Nothing about it was normal, but I didn't question it at the time. We did all kinds of things together; things I'd never even thought to do. Some of the things she wanted to do, the games she enacted, weren't even fun, but I did them anyway, because demurring would have felt like cowardice. We got high, and it would begin. We got into some heavy role play where she became this fierce domme, calling me her little bitch, making me do things and doing things to me that I'd never thought I'd enjoy. She terrified me. It was like sex recast as the Olympic ski jump, scary at almost every point in the action, with a safe landing never certain. Sometimes in the midst of it, with the adrenaline surging and all the blood gone from my head, I would crack a joke, or try to catch some hint of the Cyn I knew beneath whatever role she was playing. I never found her. By the end of the week, things were just weird between us. She was high all the time, and if I tried to mention what had passed between us at night, she would look at me blankly, or worse, coldly. The more she shut me out, the more I wanted to talk. That's when she would start taking her clothes off.

As a diversionary tactic, it was brilliant. On the second to last night before Glo was set to return, stoned and drunk, we had sex in Glo's bed. We crossed some lines, a lot of lines. At one point, we pretended she was Glo. I don't remember much of it clearly, but I said something that upset Cyn, and before I
knew it, she had stormed out. I followed her, trying to get her to calm down. She was headed to her car, and I was freaking out because she was in no state to be driving. I remember banging on her window, pleading with her not to go. I could barely see straight and was terrified that she would get herself killed or hurt someone else. But she took off anyway, the tires squealing as she tore out of the parking lot. I went back to her room to wait, but she didn't come back that night. In the morning, after zero hours of sleep, I went back to my place and washed up. I cleaned up the mess we'd created over our days of debauchery and called her repeatedly.

I rode Glo's bike back to campus that afternoon and found Cyn's car. I was amazed and relieved to see that it wasn't totaled. I went to her room and found it locked. The lights were on. She was in there. I knocked and waited outside for an hour, trying to cajole her into responding. I delivered apologies in many forms, which eventually turned to un-apologies and then to petulant taunts as her silence continued. I just wanted her to talk to me, but she stone-walled me entirely. Defeated, I left.

She avoided me until Glo returned, and even then, she wasn't the same Cyn. She acted as though everything was normal in front of Glo and stayed glued to her side. I tried to speak to her alone, to clear the air between us, but she wanted nothing to do with me. It was gut-wrenching to have to pretend like nothing was wrong, but seeing as that was what Cyn appeared to want, I played along.

It was obvious that I'd hurt her, but if she wouldn't speak to me, I was powerless to make it better. I also sensed that she was somehow satisfied with how things had turned out, comfortable with seeing me suffer. I rarely ceased wondering exactly what I'd done wrong. I'd lost one of my best friends, even as she sat with me in the same room, smiling through me like a secretly enraged Mona Lisa.

I retreated to my room and listened to a lot of Joy Division. I couldn't stand to be around them as they packed for their trip, twittering happily back and forth like a pair of songbirds. The night before they left, I cornered Cyn by the salad bar.

“Are we not going to talk about this?”

Her icy blue eyes roved over me, unfazed. “There's nothing to talk about.”

She lifted the tongs and piled on some romaine, while I stared at her, trying to match her faultless sangfroid.

“Really? Because you seem to hate me, and I'd like to know why.”

She dumped the salad back into the bin and tossed her plate aside. “I don't hate you, Raj. Please don't think that.”

Before I could respond she had turned and left me alone, holding a plate filled with spaghetti and meatballs that I no longer had any desire to eat.

The lights on the train dimmed, and another announcement buzzed through the intercom.
Please be patient
. We hope to be moving shortly
. In other words, we were going nowhere. I felt my blood pressure surge as each passing minute potentially robbed me of the chance to finally get some answers. I balled my hands into a giant fist, lowered my head, and focused solely on the moment that the train doors would release me. Fate wouldn't screw me like this, I tried to assure myself, but even as I thought it, I knew it was a lie. Fate was a real bitch, and I was her plaything.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Glo

I sat in my office for twenty minutes after McMurphy left. I needed to gather my thoughts, and I didn't want to risk running into him on the street or on the subway platform. Something was off about him, that was obvious. What I couldn't decide was whether he was that way before Cyn entered his life or she had literally driven him crazy.

Even though our conversation left me unsettled, there was an undeniable flutter of happiness deep in my solar plexus. I suddenly hoped McMurphy was right, that Cyn really was trying to get in touch with me. Imagining that she was out there, still thinking of me with affection, made the torch that I had long carried for her flare up brightly. If it truly was me that she wanted to see, and not Raj, I was more than willing to reconnect. I had so many things to ask her.

I picked up my phone to call Raj, but set it down again, realizing that his curtain call wasn't for another hour. I didn't want to leave him a message about McMurphy; that was a face-to-face revelation, for sure. I now felt a little embarrassed about being pissed off at him all week. I could even forgive him his pathetic Craigslist trolling.

It all made sense now
, I thought as I gathered up my bag and my laptop, now locked and loaded with McMurphy's video files.
Cyn was looking for me the whole time, and she kept finding Raj, or finding me with Raj, when she just wanted me alone. I would have to break it to him delicately. I knew all too well how he felt himself to be the one in our threesome who gave far more than he received. This would be salt in the wounds, but I couldn't spare him the sting forever.

I headed up to Woody's, my favorite diner in Hell's Kitchen, to grab a burger and wait for Raj. I called him twice around the time he usually finished up, but he didn't pick up. To kill time and justify keeping the table, I ordered coffee and an enormous black-and-white cookie, which I picked at while gazing at the rain-swept street outside. I called again. No answer. I asked for the check.

I was growing annoyed. I knew he was planning to head to his theater, so I could just find him there, but why hadn't he called me, like usual? I paid, and called again. This time it went directly to his voice mail, which sometimes happened when he was working underground in the theater. The bad weather had probably killed the weak signal altogether.

I decided that sharing my news was worth battling the elements. It couldn't wait until he got home. I shouldered my gear, grabbed my umbrella, and headed west.

I elbowed past a tight cluster of the Dragon's customers who were using the theater's small awning as a shelter from the rain. A woman stepped aside for me, and I saw, on the door, Raj's signature scrawl:

Seeking the Ruby Princess. Please meet me. Anytime. Anyplace.

Below, in a different hand, were the remnants of a response written in red chalk, most of it rubbed away by the smokers' coats and the rain. Still visible was
“midnight. Come.”

I reeled, feeling like I'd been punched in the gut. The door certainly explained why he hadn't called. He was on his way to meet her and didn't want me to know about his secret rendezvous.

I took a step back, and reread the message. A bitter laugh croaked from my throat as the pain washed over me. One message in chalk, and I was transformed back into the desperate college student, heartsick and trembling, terrified of losing what I loved best.

They were meeting, secretly.
Why?
In an instant, the entire way I'd been thinking about Cyn shifted. She wasn't a friendly force, hoping to find me. She was obviously back for Raj. McMurphy didn't see it because Cyn had him just as snowed as Raj had me fooled. We were a pair of suckers, McMurphy and I.

The hurt and fury that swept through me made my vision go narrow. The next thing I knew, I was pushing my way through the smokers, striding blindly away from the theater. I couldn't focus on anything beyond the radius of my umbrella. I heard people curse angrily as I bumped past them, my trajectory flatly indifferent to the needs of others.

With each soaked step, I wished horrible things upon them both. I wanted them to meet, romantically, in the middle of the rain-polished street, embrace, and get flattened by a speeding dump truck. No. First Cyn dies, while Raj watches in disbelief, a scene that will haunt him for the five seconds he has left to live. He'll see her squashed and mangled corpse and think, briefly,
Well, there's always still Glo
, just as the double bus arrives to pancake him against the asphalt. I laughed out loud through my tears, startled by own my vitriol. A door appeared in my peripheral vision, propped open by a chalkboard. I entered, not caring where it led.

I found myself in the back booth of a dingy bar. Hockey was playing somewhere on a television screen that I couldn't locate. I had a half-empty whiskey on the rocks resting by my wrist. It wasn't my first. My laptop sat open, fifteen of McMurphy's CynX files cued up and ready for view.

I skipped past the initial video that I had previewed at the
office. I didn't want to hear the bullshit sob story of the woman who was at that exact moment very likely pity-fucking my extremely grateful husband.

I drank the mental image away and pulled up video number six. I put in my earphones and tilted the screen away from any curious dudes on their way to the bathroom.

She appeared in that same shadowy room, glowing like a ghost. Instead of the prim pink blouse, she wore what looked like a black silk robe. McMurphy, appearing in a small screen at the bottom corner, was wearing a pajama shirt, unbuttoned and wide open.

It was apparent from the look on their faces what was about to happen. I took out the earbuds. I didn't need to hear it. After some conversation, Cyn began to slip off the robe, one sultry shoulder at a time. She revealed a lacy black bra and began to run her hands over her body, pursing her lips like a supermodel.

I paused the video and got up to grab another drink. I clicked “Play,” and it continued as expected. McMurphy's face grew sweaty, his arm working furiously. Cyn reached up to adjust the camera, and stepped out of the chair, giving a full view of her body in bra and lace panties. Her white skin appeared luminous in the surrounding darkness. I watched her as she floated in the empty void, mesmerizing, like a seldom-seen deep-sea fish. She pivoted slowly and peeked over her shoulder, offering the rear view. Her hands sought her bra clasp and I sensed someone looming behind me. I clicked off.

I nursed my drink and surfed the weather channel, waiting for the man behind me to be on his way. My eyes drooped toward the little digital clock. It was after midnight. I refused to return home, believing that if I did, I would trash the place like some soap opera diva: ripping our wedding album to shreds, smashing lamps, breaking mirrors, wilding out in a way that was entirely unlike me. At some point, the space behind me
emptied. Across the room, the bartender seemed to waver to and fro before my eyes like tall grass in the wind.

I pulled up another video and fast-forwarded to the midway point. It was more of the same. Lingerie, choreographed fondling, McMurphy's embarrassing sex faces. I clicked away, feeling that I had learned all there was to know about McMurphy and Cyn.

As my home page returned,
Moon and
Half Dome
, courtesy of Ansel Adams, the rage dissipated. Staring at that mountain, cleaved clean in half, I suddenly felt profoundly sad and completely alone.

As fate would have it, that's when the stranger joined me in my booth. He was on the right side of attractive. Blond. All smiles. Not exactly my type. He was asking me something about the videos. I reached over and closed the laptop, ignoring his questions. He handed me a fresh drink. Even through the murkiness of my drunken haze, I knew that I should not accept it. It could be drugged. If I drank it, the lights would go out for, me and three months later, a vagrant would discover my head in a bowling bag by the river.

His eyes were greenish, and they crinkled when he smiled. He smelled like freshly laundered clothes and Old Spice. When he kissed me, I tasted gin. It must have been a decent kiss, because I didn't shove him off. He pulled me closer, gathering the soft parts of my sides in his large hands. I found myself thinking of Coach Mike, wondering if he'd aged well. Stayed fit. Kept his hair . . .

I squirmed. The sanctity of my drunken reverie was threatened by the rapidly increasing ardor of my bench mate. He was kissing me so fervently that I could barely breathe. I broke away and took a sip of the drink he'd brought. I hadn't forgotten about the potentiality for dismemberment, I just no longer cared very much about my future self. I wanted the kissing to
return to how it was at the onset: pleasurably distracting. A moment later his mouth was back on top of mine, but gentler, just as I'd wished. I closed my eyes, and a million thoughts drifted through my head, light as gossamer. Of course, I knew I shouldn't be making out with a random stranger. I had, in fact, only strayed, if you could call it that, once before, with a guy from law school. I couldn't even remember what I liked about him, other than that he passionately professed his absolute love for me. One very late night after too many drinks, I'd made out with him at a bar similar to this one. We didn't go past second base. It had been fun in the moment, and bolstered my ego at a time when I needed it, but I knew it wasn't anything. I loved Raj. When I said I had to go, the guy started to cry. On the way home, I threw up on the train, more sick from the guilt and self-loathing than from the alcohol.

His hands were climbing up my sides. He cupped my breasts and I shifted away. A distant alarm began to sound. His whiskers began to chafe my lips. I felt a hand at the back of my neck, forcing my mouth open wider. I couldn't breathe through my nose, and this strange man was halfway down my throat, as if spelunking for gold. I began to see stars and imagined myself floating on the dark water of the channel, seven years ago. The stars had told me then that it did not matter to them if I lived or died. They would remain whether I sank deep into the salty brine of eternal oblivion or whether I fought my way to shore. It was entirely up to me.

I pushed my paramour away and gasped for breath. He watched me for a moment, blinking. When I did nothing further, he moved back in, his mouth a determined wet suction cup.

“Stop now,” I said. I tried to move away from him, but my back hit the wall. His hands found me and latched on tight. I looked at his face and saw that he was blind drunk. He didn't hear me. “Stop it!”

He smiled. He had heard me. I elbowed him and managed to break away for long enough to half stand in the booth. The bar was empty. The bartender was not at his post.

He pulled me back, and I stumbled, cracking my head against the wooden booth.

“You okay?” he murmured, not pausing for an answer before he plastered his mouth to my lips. I elbowed him, hard. His eyes widened with new understanding, and he cast a look around the bar, noticing as I had that we were alone. He resumed, his hands now endeavoring to prevent counterattacks by my elbows. “Be nice,” he murmured.

I prepared to bite his lip, my clouded mind suddenly aware enough to inform me that such an act would certainly release blood and reward me with herpes, or AIDS.

I wiggled away, dipping my face toward the table, and knocked over his empty beer bottle with my cheek. His hands squeezed my elbows against my sides as he attempted to reach for my crotch. Suddenly he released me. I looked up and saw the guy being lifted from the booth and flung sideways toward a row of stools. I jolted to my feet and thrashed out of the booth as the jostled bar stools toppled to the floor, along with my assailant. My rescuer turned, and I barely recognized my husband, his face pale and livid.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

The man righted himself and looked Raj over, and then looked at me, calculating whether it was worth the fight.

“Get up, you piece of shit,” Raj said. His hands were balled into fists, and his chest was heaving. The man on the ground scooted away, putting some floor between them before he got to his feet.

Raj took a step forward.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the bartender bellowed as he trudged
up the stairs from a hatch behind the bar, carrying a box of bottles. “No fighting in my bar. Take it outside, motherfuckers.”

“This shithead was attacking my wife!” Raj was shaking with rage.

“Your wife?” The guy laughed, rising from all fours. “Pretty sure she's a dyke, man. She's one kinky bitch.” He turned and limped toward the door.

Raj seemed to be on some sort of broadcast delay. It took him a few seconds to shout, “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Fuck off.” The man slipped out the door, just as the bartender appeared in front of Raj.

“You want me to call the police, lady?” he asked. Whether it was an old-school bartender distraction technique or a genuine offer, I couldn't say, but Raj's focus gradually shifted from the door back to me.

I shook my head.

“No. That's okay.”

“What the fuck were you doing? Who was that guy?” Raj asked, his cold rage thawing, on its way toward a more personalized boil.

I laughed in his face. “Me? You have the balls to ask me what I've been doing? I know where you've been. Reuniting with your beloved after all these long fucking years with me. How was it? Did she finally let you fuck her?”

With perverse satisfaction, I noticed that he paled.

The bartender said, “You both need to get out of here. Now.”

Raj spun on his heel and left. I gathered my laptop, shaking off the beer that had spilled on top of it, and shoved it in my bag. I staggered toward the door under the critical gaze of the bartender, trying and failing to muster some dignity.

Raj was lurking under a streetlight. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, just to be an asshole.