Love Her Madly (28 page)

“You want to talk about happy endings? You have no fucking idea what happened to me after all that. The guilt that I went through, and not, as you state, because I threw you to the wolves. I did everything I could to save you.”

“But you didn't. I paid the price. You got away.”

“You could have come with me.”

“You know that's not true. Fucked-up as I was, I could barely tell the air from the water.”

“Is that my fault, too? The whole thing was your idea.”

“Was it, Glo? Does it matter? You wanted some adventure, too, if I recall correctly. You were dying for it, just like I was. Don't pretend like I dragged you there kicking and screaming. Raj might buy that version of events, but I sure as hell don't. Neither one of us went out to that island as a victim, but one of us sure as hell became one. And here's a news flash, sister: it wasn't you.” Her eyes flashed in the dim light and she pulled a tin can off the set, dashing a fiery cylinder of ash into its center.

“What happened to you?”

She laughed drily. “How long have you got?”

I was about to speak, but she interrupted me. “Those men on the beach were drug traffickers. Submariners. The captain thought I would make a fun toy.”

She stared at me until I looked away.

“It was terrible in all the ways that you can imagine. They threatened my life, I barely escaped being raped, and because of that small twist in my destiny, of staying so that you could be free, I've seen things that I will never be able to forget. The worst possible things. Beyond nightmares.”

I focused my attention on the gold toe of her ballet slipper, unwilling to look at her face.

“The experience inside the sub separated me from myself, from a person who wanted this and that to an animal that just wanted to live. And then, when we got to the United States, I saw the news stories about me. Who would want to be that girl, the one on the screen? Only a madwoman would walk back into that.
Cynty
was dead, and I realized I wanted her that way. Better for me. Better for you and Raj. Better for my poor, sainted parents. It was so natural, that I hardly had to think about it at all.

“I see on your face what you're thinking. If I was so tough and really gave no shits about what anybody said, why didn't I just come back? But ask yourself, would you really have wanted that? Imagine the press at my rescue. I would have become the first slut saint, brought back to grace by a long submersion in the healing waters of the Pacific Ocean.” She chuckled, one manicured hand resting on her stomach. “Raj might have taken it as a sign to become a priest, and where would you be then? My staying dead is the best thing that happened to you and Raj both.”

“But here you are, Cyn. Why?”

“McMurphy. I chose badly, but I was desperate.”

“Desperate for what?”

She leaned back in her chair and sighed.

“There was a man on the sub, Lucas. He was barely a man at the time, only nineteen to my twenty-two. He was an engineering prodigy, the son of a dirt-poor gardener who worked on the estate of a man called El Santo, a man who happened to head a billion-dollar drug cartel. El Santo got wind of how smart Lucas was and paid for his accelerated education. His first job was a redesign of a small submersible. Lucas was there on the island, taking part in the maiden voyage of his creation. He's the only reason that I'm still alive. He looked out for me on the sub and protected me.”

“You mean, he kidnapped you?”

“He saved me. The captain, this trigger-happy, coke-addled whack job named Hugo, wanted to shoot me on the spot just for seeing their faces. Lucas wasn't a killer. For him, moving the drugs was just a science project. Then Hugo killed Marco and Hector, and everything went to hell.”

I must have flinched, because Cyn paused. “Lucas told me it was very quick. I don't think they suffered.”

I nodded, grateful for that added bit of information, even as I doubted whether it was true. A couple of tears fought their way out of me as I remembered the brothers wrestling in the sand, bursting with life. Cyn watched as I wiped them away, and sat silently for a moment before pressing on.

“While Hugo led the raid on our cove, Lucas was wrapping the brothers, kids his own age, in a weighted tarp and dragging them out into the ocean. It messed him up. So when they showed up with me, and Hugo wanted to repeat the process, Lucas told him that if they didn't let me go, he would sink the sub. Hugo argued that it was too dangerous to let me live; I would talk and compromise the two-hundred-million-dollar shipment. Lucas said, fine, we'll take her with us. I wanted to live, so I didn't have much choice in the matter.

“For the rest of the long journey north, Lucas protected me from Hugo, but it was still a nightmare. The inside of the sub was putrid, hot, dark, and claustrophobic. Everyone was stressed to the breaking point. Hugo had cracked through part of the flooring to get at the coke in the hold and was constantly high. The other two crew members were freaked out that Hugo's theft was going to get everyone killed, and of course there was the constant threat of being caught by the Coast Guard. The one bright spot was Lucas. It sounds crazy, but on the sub, we fell in love.”

“It doesn't sound crazy. It sounds like Stockholm syndrome.”

“I know. But it wasn't. All those hours in the darkness, we lay together on a tiny canvas cot, not knowing if we were going
to live or die. He'd taken a huge risk for me, and no one knew how it would play out once we reached the States and El Santo learned what had happened. It may have been an intimacy born of desperation, but the result was real. We told each other everything. By the end, I knew his whole life, I knew his soul, and he knew mine. I told him things that I've never told anyone. No one has ever made me feel so safe, or so loved. Once you find something like that, no matter how it starts, you can't just let it go. I've been with him ever since. I married him, Glo.”

“You married the drug trafficker who kidnapped you.” I somehow managed to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“When we arrived in San Diego, I saw the news and weighed my options. He saw it all, too, the photos, everything, and he didn't judge me. When I told him that I couldn't go back to my old life, he asked me to come with him to Colombia. It turned out that El Santo didn't care about what happened on the island. He was just elated that Lucas's sub had gotten there two days faster than the previous incarnation. Lucas told me he didn't know where his life was headed, or if he'd ever be able to offer me a stable home, but he promised that if I went with him, he would upend his life to make me happy.”

The cigarette rested between her fingers, forgotten and burned down to the filter.

“I already understood the rational arguments against his proposal: we were basically strangers, he was entangled with dangerous, casually lethal people, and I was probably not yet in my right mind. But on the other hand, I figured if partnering with Lucas was a mistake, then it was just one more for my collection. I'd made so many mistakes, and whether I agonized over the choices or dove in on a whim, the outcomes seemed equally random. So I made the decision to stop always worrying about the worst possible result and just live my life.”

“And have you avoided the worst possible outcome?”

She shrugged and tossed the butt into the can. “Everything is relative. I had four good years, two bad, and one truly terrible. If I can't change my circumstances quickly, I won't have the luxury of any more years to evaluate.”

“Why not? McMurphy?” A heavy truck passed by on the street outside, rattling the metal theater door in its frame. I felt a shock of adrenaline, and began to rise, wondering if Cyn had thought to lock the door behind her on her way in.

“I locked it,” she said with a wry smile. I knew better than to be surprised at her ability to read my mind. “What did you do with the bug?”

“I left it in a taxi.”

She laughed drily. “Good thinking.” She pulled out another cigarette. “McMurphy is more a disappointment than a real threat. He reminds me a little of your Tim. Remember Tall Tim, with the alcohol intolerance?”

I allowed myself a small smile. “I can see some similarities. Height, for one. What's his deal?”

She lifted an ankle and slowly rolled her foot, studying the golden tip of her shoe. “I would have given him so many things, but not the one thing he wants. Turns out his marriage has been in the shitter, and now she's gone and he's all in when it comes to me. That wasn't the plan, and now it's gotten . . .” She sighed, her clear blue eyes meeting mine. “Difficult. Very fucking difficult.”

“I see. Do the police need to get involved?”

She looked at me and laughed, loudly. “Police. Good one, Glo.”

I blushed, against my own wishes. It was a stupid thing to suggest.

“I met McMurphy early on, when Lucas and I still thought we had a chance of getting out of the business. I was still an American citizen, and I wanted to find out if I could bring
Lucas back with me once he had completed his contract. After that first run, Lucas told El Santo that he didn't want to be part of the cartel. El Santo agreed, feeding him some line that drug running was a terrible business, not fit for dogs. But each time Lucas would ask to leave, we were always told, after the next project. It's been seven years now. I'm here to do whatever it takes to get free from that life. Our time is running out.”

“You said Lucas was designing subs?”

She looked away. I sensed the wheels turn a couple of clicks as she decided how much to share.

“Yes, at first. Then he moved on to more complex projects. Making improvements on existing systems.”

“Systems?” I waited, but she didn't elaborate. I guess she didn't need to. I got the picture. Lucas was too valuable to just be allowed to wander off into the American sunset. In gumshoe terms, he knew too much.

“I haven't asked about Raj,” she said, in a blatant change of subject. “Thank you for not bringing him, by the way. I didn't think he'd appreciate hearing me wax on about me falling in love with some other guy. How is he?”

“He's great. He's an actor now, as you know. Also a director.”

She nodded, sphinxlike. At that moment, I realized what about her had changed, or maybe what about me: other than the revealing way she talked about Lucas, I no longer had the slightest clue what she was thinking. Her outward expression was simultaneously completely amiable and totally guarded. If I hadn't known her at a more sensitive time, I may not have noticed it. It was a finely honed mask. I felt a sluice of adrenaline flow into my blood, wondering if I was somehow being played.

“You went to see his play. Why?”

“I just wanted to see him, Glo. One last time. I fell in love with someone else, but I did love Raj, in my own way.”

“How did you think that would make me feel? Or Raj feel?”

“I'm sure it freaked you out. Both of you. I'm sorry, Glo. I really am. I bungled that one, big-time. I bought the ticket on impulse, not really checking where the seat was. It was idiotic, but I didn't think about the fact that, duh, it's not television. Stage actors can sometimes see you, too.”

She looked genuinely contrite, and I felt my pulse begin to slow. Until she added, “One of the delights of my strange life has been that you and Raj made it. I followed you, on the Internet, as much as I could. It makes me think that on some weird level, all of this was supposed to happen.”

“You seem to think it was easy for us. It wasn't.”

“But you guys pulled through. It was fated.”

A dark, dry laugh escaped me. “Fated? That's a fun way of putting it.”

“How do you figure, Glo?” She leaned toward me, exhibiting signs of authentic interest.

“You do realize that your actions were the catalyst for what happened, right? Not all of it was bad, and not all of it was your fault, but it's hard for me to hear you describe it as some random chain of events that just happened to have a happy ending. We went through some terrible shit.”

“I didn't mean it to come across—”

“You decided when to leave,” I continued over her, swept up in my own prosecutorial spiel. She blinked at me through a plume of smoke, and I corrected my misstatement. “You at least decided not to return, and now you've changed your mind. That's not fate. That's the cause and effect of your choices, many of which continue to affect my life. That's not fate. Let's get it straight.”

She waited for me to finish before pinning me with those cool blue eyes. “Question: Would you rather not have known what you know now?”

“Well, I already know it, so that's not really an option.”

“Okay, then, thought experiment. Remember we used to say that about random hypotheticals? If you hadn't heard from me, and some man on the street came up and handed you an envelope that told you what happened to me, would you not have opened it?”

“I'd have opened it, yes. Because I'm a human being and a very curious one at that. That's largely the reason why I'm here. I had to see for my own eyes if it was true. And just so you know, I'm happy that you found love and your life has been mostly great. I'm really glad to hear it.”

She released a tight, joyless laugh. “It's not mostly great, Glo,” she managed, her neck tightening as if garroted by an invisible scarf. “In fact, it's not great at all. I'm really sorry for showing up like this, but after things fell apart with McMurphy and the money I brought in ran out, I didn't know what else to do.” She smoothed away fresh tears, inhaling deeply. “I'm fucking scared and I'm desperate and if I don't figure something out, everything that makes my life worth living is going to be destroyed. I thought I was smart enough to do this on my own, but my plans keep falling to pieces and I'm running out of time. I know you probably think I'm a piece of shit because I'm both fucking up your life and asking for help, but you are honestly the last good person I know who I can trust.”