Love Is Red (6 page)

“Ender of Life.”

“What?” you ask. “Who, me?”

“Yes. You. Evil. Spirit.” That low growl has no business coming from a human throat.

“Hey now,” you say, “settle down.” You're firm but still good-humored because you're kind and patient. The girl should understand that you don't take the old woman's mad ramblings seriously.

Slowly she raises her cane and points directly to you. “Nobody. Here. Wants. To. Play.”

A light goes on and the bus starts to slow.
Stop requested.
The
girl has pushed the button. She throws you an apologetic look. It isn't her stop but she wants to get off. She likes you but she has to get off this bus.

You think about following her out. Saying something like
I'm sorry, but what the . . .
and then waiting for her to chime in with
I know, I know!

Then you would say,
She's totally crazy. It's sad, really, but that was completely nuts
, and then again her saying,
Yeah, the way she pointed at you with her cane . . .

Then you could awkwardly, hesitatingly, say that you're kind of shaken up and though it may be weird would she mind coming with you if you had a drink somewhere, even just tea with sugar (though it won't be) to calm down, just for like ten minutes or something, of course she probably has plans but you could really use a drink.

It would be the easiest thing in the world for you, but you decide instead to stay.

This will be a rare encounter.

You wait till the nice girl gets off the bus. You give her one more smile as if to say,
I'd join you but it's too far away from my stop. Oh well, nice knowing you
, just to leave her suddenly doubting that she did the right thing, and then the bus is once more slipping slowly through the rain, leaving her lingering on the sidewalk.

You wait. It's just you and the old woman.

Then you casually take a seat next to her. She expresses no alarm or anger. Just stares ahead of her, like a twitching zombie.

“Is this your usual route?” you ask politely.

She says nothing.

“Cat got your tongue?” you try again.

Still nothing.

“Hello, is anyone in there?” Your voice is warm and welcoming to whoever might reply.

Her neck twists suddenly as if a great hand has turned it. She looks up at you with her blind, blank silver eyes. Her old mouth, her lips gone with old age, opens and the inhuman voice of pebbles says:

“Abi in malam rem fueri vitae!”

Be about your business, you Thief of Life!

Aha, you knew it. Your fellow rider, an Other.

The Others have been around since Time began, and yet, to your considerable understanding, they are as passive as sheep. They may be conduits for the billions of souls passing through the cosmos, but they make no judgment, take no action. They watch silently, as witnesses. That's why the Others often choose the Rides that they do. It's easier to hide in those from whom the world looks away. It's easy to ride in the old, the ugly, the unseen. They exist on the outskirts of awareness. Give them money but look away. Give them money but don't get too close. Give them money and then swat them from your mind. Look away from the homeless, the addicts, the mentally ill, and the ones too poor to bear the title “mentally ill” and are merely “the crazy.”

If you want to keep under the radar and not attract undue attention, to go about your business quietly and without incident, these Rides are easy to hitch, especially if you don't mind the thick and gummy filters of old age and insanity.

But you don't want to keep out of the radar. You want to enjoy yourself. You don't want the loose change, the guilty glances, the cold chill and the stink of defeat. You want the firm handshakes. You want eye contact.

You want to be in the heat and the wet and the rough and the thick of it.

You want the good stuff.

The smells and the tastes, the reds and the blues and the salt and the sweet, the smiles and the sweat, the blush and the blood.

You need their colors.

You did not know what life was but then you tasted it. For the first time you felt jealousy. You felt wonder. Each emotion, each strand of life, made you more present, inhaling and exhaling, and you rejoiced and you grieved.

Each color anchors you among the living.

“Nice Ride,” you whisper tenderly to this decrepit sagging sack of skin. “What's the mileage?”

Your fellow traveler turns its silver sockets toward you. “I have no business with you.”

You allow yourself to become a trifle stern, righteous, about to teach a needed moral lesson. “And yet your words have delayed my purpose—my color has fled.”

“While your purpose may be necessary, the suffering you bring is needless.”

You began to take pleasure in the hunting and pleasure in the cutting, and all, all too soon it ended. Everything builds up toward Her and each time the prolonging makes the taking more exquisite. The moment of completion is beyond all imagining but it began to come too quickly and then you would return to nothing, not even darkness but the absence of light and color and sound, anything, everything. The planets must be aligned, the stars must fall, for a Vessel to be born and fulfill her destiny. You come back, but never often enough.

You sigh.

The Birth brought catastrophe, brought war. One mother cried out in triumph; then a million more did so in anguish as the blood of their innocent sons and daughters stained the battletorn earth. No one Child can be allowed to destroy the beautiful brilliance of this world and all its inhabitants, no one Being can have such infinite power, and that is why the Birth brought you.

So you have a purpose, have a mission; you have a point.

An extremely sharp one, in fact.

“But it's fun,” you protest. “Shouldn't we enjoy our work?”

Again, nothing.

But you, you're a trouper. You lean over. You smile. Pleasant to the end you say, “Never mind, I forgive you.” You pause and then add, smiling, because maybe you're not so pleasant, “After all, there's plenty more out there.”

You lean over and press the black strip to request a stop. Then you kiss her mottled cheek softly as the bus grinds to a halt and you step out into the rain. She looks straight ahead.

Who knows what sights she holds within that silver gaze?

Then again, who cares? The night is young and full of possibilities.

And so I sit in this restaurant.

Sushi, French, Korean, Greek, and now, finally, Italian. One date a week, drawing it out. Taking his time. The audacity of it.

When I asked him how he got my number he told me it was easy enough if one knew where to look. He even added that I should deal with that soon. “You don't want the wrong types getting hold of your personal information.”

I could have said no. I could have said all sorts of things. I could have not replied and let my silence speak for itself.

I didn't say no. I didn't even pause. It felt inevitable. As if our encounter had ever increasing momentum, a current carrying me along.

I sit outdoors in the restaurant's private garden, and the waiter comes and fills my glass full of wine. Wrought-iron tables, white tablecloths underneath short white candles cupped in glass. I gaze at the other diners, who are happy to be outside on such a perfect evening. Outside, yet inside such an elusive, exclusive space. It's the dream of all New Yorkers to be among and yet apart. There's the faint scent of jasmine, which grows on trellises
against the brick walls, the clink of cutlery, a sudden spray of laughter from a party of four nearby. I envy these comfortable noisy double-daters. They have things to talk about. They have things they
want
to talk about. Unlike Sael and me, who sit in silence in the deepening dusk.

I think back to the first text:

 

 

The impersonal aspect of it attracted me. If no feelings were involved then no one could be blamed, no emotions would be squandered, no friendship betrayed, no hearts broken.

And Otoro is famous for being almost impossible to get into; you have to book months in advance. He had reservations at nine p.m. Of course he did.

My inner voice—murmuring
You're not thinking about it, are you?
and
You can't be serious
—had grown louder throughout the day until it was unbearably shrill. By eight o'clock it was screaming,
Don't do this! You're going to regret it!
as I pulled on my dress and applied my lipstick. In the cab it ordered me to
Text him you're not coming!
Then slyly,
Why even text? Just don't show up, and call a friend, or have dinner by yourself.

The cab pulled over, stopped. I paid the driver and got out.

You don't know anything about him.
I paused and it made one final effort.
Think! There's still time to make this into a funny story. One where you're not the bad guy.

Then I took a deep breath, opened the rusting door that marked the almost hidden entrance, and headed down two flights of stairs.

The ceilings were very low. No decorations. This was the place that fanatics dreamed about. Extremely plain, it only sat ten people at a counter. It was the food that counted.

Last chance to turn back.
And then I saw him and the voice was
silent. He was there. Waiting, reading something, he looked up, showed no surprise to see me.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” I said.

“How was your day?”

“Good, how was yours?”

“Okay, busy.”

There was a pause. We were served a single piece of gleaming Japanese snapper, with uni and osetra caviar. It was beautiful, delicate, perfect. We ate in silence; then, after a long moment, he looked at me and said, “Tell me a story.”

“Any story?”

“Any story you choose.”

And that is how it began.

I told him how once when I was twelve I visited my father in San Francisco. It was a far cry from the bland suburbs of Silver Spring, Maryland, where I was born. I hadn't seen him in almost two years. My mother and father split up when I was nine. My father was a journalist and he traveled. He did this, he said, because he cared about the issues. “And not about his family,” my mother said. I knew this wasn't true; he just didn't care about us as much. My father got by by the “skin of his teeth.” I didn't know what it meant. He had kind of crooked teeth, but a nice smile when he really smiled with his eyes.

When I got to San Francisco, my father took me to a diner in the Mission and ordered me a tuna fish sandwich and a roast beef on toasted rye for himself. They both came with toothpicks, a red tassel for him and a yellow tassel for me, but he gave me his toothpick too. I ate my sandwich even though I didn't like it; it tasted kind of funny. That day we walked the streets and I saw more homeless people than I had ever seen before. There
was one man slumped against a wall who didn't even have shoes on. I remember how grimy his feet were. He had really dirty, stained clothes and a matted beard and he smelled like old food and sweat and something else sharp and vinegary that made my eyes sting. He was singing a little bit to himself. He had a small patchy white dog that sat sadly and patiently. I felt terrible for the dog because I could see every one of its ribs as it trembled. My father gave me four dollar bills and told me to drop them into the baseball cap on the ground and the man said, “Bless you, sweetheart.”

My father said, “There but for the grace of God go I.” He laughed but he didn't sound happy. I knew in that moment that he thought he wasn't so different from the homeless man, and that scared me and made me feel a little angry because the homeless man didn't have any family but my father had me.

Later my father snuck me into a bar. And he gave me a sip of his drink, which was colorless like water but burned and didn't taste like water. Someone objected but he said, “It's cool, Lou, she's my kid.” And someone else made a joke and they laughed and I felt great. But soon afterward I felt sick—I don't know if it was the drink or the sandwich—and I threw up.

My father took me home and put a cool facecloth on my brow and said, “Tough luck, old lady.”

I felt horrible. I told my dad I was sorry.

“You didn't do anything wrong,” he told me, but I still felt like I had messed things up. It was the only time I ever came out to visit him. I don't know what happened after that, if my mom stopped it or if he didn't want me there, but I've always blamed myself.

Our next dish of yellowtail fish was as smooth and as creamy as butter.

“Your turn,” I said.

He told me how he once stole a toy car from a friend's house. He was going through a stage of pocketing things: ornaments, pens, small soaps from guest bathrooms. One day a maid had seen him taking a toy car and had told the boy's mother and she had called his mother and he had been sent home in disgrace. His parents had asked him over and over why he had done it but he didn't know what to say because he didn't know why he had done it. He only saw the disgusted way that they looked at him. He felt rage and shame, not because he had been stealing but because he had been caught. The woman who caught him was black and middle-aged and wore a blue and white uniform and he could still remember the triumph in her eyes and her grim smile. He was sent away to boarding school soon after that.

At the French restaurant amid cloudy mirrors, gilded menus, and tiled floors, we ate oysters and I told him about Lisa, this girl I was friends with in middle school. Our favorite game was called Pet Shop. We decided that when we were grown up we would open a pet shop together. We drew pictures of it and worked out names for the store and made up stories for all of the animals that lived there. A puppy saved the store from a fire, and the goldfish granted wishes. Lisa was plump and wore her mousy hair in pigtails and would suck on the end of one when she was thinking.

One day at school during break, Tiffany Rush and her friends Jessica and Kelly started taunting Lisa, calling her names like “sweaty pits,” “meat breath,” and “baby piggy.” They made snorting noises like a pig would make. They held their noses whenever they passed her and said she stunk of farts and BO. I never stuck up for her. Even though we had been to each other's houses and even though I liked her,
I didn't defend her. I didn't join in, but I didn't say anything. I would just look away and wait for break to be over. She called me that night but I told my mother I didn't want to talk to her. I didn't want Tiffany and her friends to turn on me. This went on and on and then one day Lisa started crying in class and couldn't stop. She went to the bathroom and she didn't come back. The teacher sent someone to get her but she wouldn't come back.

Next week it was announced that Lisa wouldn't be returning to school. The teacher lectured us and said we were cruel and thoughtless and cowardly. I felt she was speaking directly to me. That day I got home and called Lisa's house but her mother said she wasn't there. Lisa didn't talk to me again and she moved soon after, whether it was to a different school or a different neighborhood I never knew.

On our third date we went to a hole-in-the-wall Korean barbecue place. We drank frosted bottles of beer and watched the beef shrink and sizzle. He told me about the time when he had become homesick at sleepaway camp. He wasn't even sure what he was homesick for, not his parents, nor his sister, nor friends, and yet he was so homesick that he pretended he had appendicitis. Although the camp's nurse couldn't find anything wrong with him they sent him home anyway. Back in Manhattan a stream of doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him either, though there was talk of food allergies.

There was nothing for him to do back at his parents' Upper East Side apartment and he had watched TV for the rest of the summer. He had been lonely and he had been bored. Still, he had never regretted it.

I told him how, the summer I was nine, I swam in a public pool almost every day and there was an amputee who also came every day. I would wait until she and her friend got in the shallow
end; then I would dive into the deep end and swim as close to them as I dared. I would hold my breath and I would gaze at her stump underwater until my eyes stung. Her plastic leg remained baking on the blue deck chair, as if it was getting a tan. Staring at that woman's stump felt like the most forbidden thing I had ever done. I loved it.

These stories are delivered without drama or laughter, or horror or recrimination. They are received without judgment, without raised eyebrow or forced laugh or banal comment. It's like throwing pennies down a well and never hearing the splash.

At the Greek restaurant, not in Astoria but not bad, I told him about the thing that had happened with my stepsister. How, when my mother and I had first moved into my stepfather's large faux-Tudor mansion, my stepsister invited me into her pink and silver bedroom. She asked me if I could keep a secret. I said yes and she pointed to a silver-framed picture of a pretty, laughing woman with light brown curly hair. She told me it was her mother, who had died from ovarian cancer. She said that her father had told her and her brother that he would never love anyone again the way he had loved their mother, that their mother was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He said that love like that came only once in a lifetime. He said that their mother had made him promise on her deathbed that he would marry again and be happy. He told them that he didn't want to marry anyone else but that he had to honor his promise.

“That's why he married your mom,” she told me. “I just thought you should know.”

I remember going back to my room and sitting on my bed and thinking about how she smiled at me while she said this. She told me that if I told anyone else they would say it wasn't true, even though it was.

He told me how his older sister used to have her boyfriend come over when his parents were out. How, one night, he hid behind a couch and watched them make out. He had seen the boyfriend undo his sister's top to expose one small white breast. The boyfriend was saying, “You like this, don't you, tell me how much you like this, you slut,” and had stroked and sucked on the pink part, the puckered nipple that seemed so dark to him. His sister's eyes were closed and she was breathing fast and making little moaning noises. The boyfriend had seen him crouching behind the chair and, instead of yelling at him, had slowly winked, as if Sael was part of the joke. He had run out of the room as quietly as possible. Afterward, he was angry with his sister and also disgusted and somehow ashamed of her. He never said anything.

These are the stories we tell each other. They are not the funny stories you tell your friends. They are the private stories that you carry in your bones.

I have grown used to these stories, the giving and the receiving. Tonight, I find his silence and the tension unbearable. So I decide I will tell him my favorite story, which happened years ago when my parents were still together. My father would come into my room after the lights are out and sit at the edge of the bed. He would pretend not to see my legs under the covers and try to sit on them while I wiggled and squealed in protest. Then he would laugh and shift over and say,
“So, my Katherine of Katherines, what do you want to hear tonight?”

Sometimes he told me Grimm-like fairy tales in which the bear might gobble up the little pig, or something historical about how the pyramids were built, or about how whales nursed their newborn calves but there was always one story I wanted to hear.

“So, my Katherine of Katherines, what do you want to hear tonight?”

And I would say, “Daddy, you
know
!”

He would sigh theatrically but I knew he was teasing me. He loved telling that story too.

I was born two weeks early. My mother went into labor and they had to rush to the hospital. They arrived in the nick of time, and as the nurses were helping my mother get into bed, a doctor had come in and said—here my father would do a deep and powerful voice—

“Everything's going to be fine, Mrs. Emerson.”

Apparently, at the moment the doctor said this, the power went out. It was strange, my father said, because there wasn't any storm to knock them out. The lights didn't come back on. Nurses were running around, patients were crying out for help, the doctor was calling out instructions.