Mad Love (22 page)

“Thank you very much,” Mr. Lee said.

“And here are your glasses,” I said to Tony, handing them over.

“You gave us all quite a scare, young man. How are you?” the reverend asked, looming over Tony’s table.

“Fine.” Tony scratched his neck. “They said the hives and the swelling should be gone by morning, but they want me to spend the night for observation.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have given you that clam juice.” I’d tossed the can into one of the hospital’s garbage bins on my way in.

“
You
gave him the clam juice?” Mr. Lee’s eyes flashed behind the thick lenses of his glasses. But his scorn was not directed at me. “You know better than to drink clam juice. Why didn’t you read the label?”

Tony hung his head. Neither of us wanted to talk about the events that had led to the drinking of the clam juice. So I did what I did best. “He choked on something from lunch. He was coughing like crazy so I grabbed the first thing I could find,” I explained. “He didn’t have time to read the label.”

Reverend Ruttles cleared his throat. “Well, it’s all worked out, hasn’t it? Alice saved Tony and almost killed him at the same time. God certainly works in mysterious ways.” He glanced at his watch. “And speaking of God, I’ve got to write my sermon for tomorrow. Alice, do you mind if we get going?”

Tony had barely looked at me. Whether it was anger, or embarrassment, or both, I didn’t know, but I wanted to make things right. “I think I’ll stay for a little bit, if that’s okay?”

Reverend Ruttles cleared his throat. “Oh, of course if you want to stay and visit with your friend that’s fine with me.” He made sure I had enough money for the bus ride home, then he shook Mr. Lee’s hand again. “Good-bye.” As his cane echoed down the hall, his final baritone note popped like a bubble, leaving the shiny hospital room silent once again.

Mr. Lee removed his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. I went back to chewing on my lower lip. “So, Alice, how do you know my son?” he asked stiffly.

Tony lay back on the table. “She came into the shop, Dad. She’s the one who found our package on the sidewalk with the little Cupid figurine. Her mom’s that famous romance writer, Belinda Amorous.”

My mouth fell open. “How did you know that?”

“I figured it out. I mean, how many people have Amorous as a last name?”

The nurse came in. She asked us to leave so she could do some stuff. Mr. Lee and I stepped into the hallway. “Mr. Lee? Tony said you teach mythology at the university. Do you know very much about Cupid? I’m … helping my mom with some research.”

This question softened Mr. Lee’s expression and he relaxed his rigid posture. “Well, he’s the Roman god of love. More precisely, of passionate love. The earlier Greek version is Eros. Translated, eros is the irresistible attraction between two people.”

“Did you say
passionate
love?”

“Yes, as opposed to other forms of love such as romantic or familial or platonic. In the classic stories, being struck by Cupid’s arrow meant that you were suddenly overcome with desire. Uncontrollable desire.”

“Suddenly overcome,” I murmured. “Mr. Lee? What does Cupid look like? I mean, on all the valentine cards he’s a fat baby.”

Mr. Lee returned his glasses to his face. “That has much to do with his antics. He was playful and endlessly mischievous, destroying marriages, ruining reputations left and right. He ignored social restraint and often lacked empathy for his victims, that’s why artists began to depict him as a child. Is Cupid a character in your mother’s story?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m sure your mother has familiarized herself with the story of his true love, Psyche.”

“What happens in that story?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, Psyche was a princess and so beautiful that men traveled from all over the world to gaze upon her and lay offerings at her feet. Venus, the goddess of love, became overwrought with jealousy because no one was paying any attention to her or to her temples. She was not about to share the spotlight with a mere mortal. So she ordered Cupid to shoot his arrow and make Psyche fall in love with the most hideous, most vile creature that lived. But instead of shooting Psyche, Cupid accidentally shot himself. Consumed with passion, Cupid then shot Psyche so she’d love him in return, then he moved her to a secret palace so he could marry her without Venus knowing.” Mr. Lee folded his hands behind his back. “He visited her each night but only in darkness because Cupid knew that if Psyche recognized him, it would put them in great danger. He forbade her to light any lamps. But when Psyche became pregnant, she began to worry that maybe her husband, whose face she had never seen, might be some hideous monster and thus her child would also be a monster. So, encouraged by her sisters, she waited for Cupid to fall asleep, then held a lamp over his face and gazed upon his beauty. But a drop of oil fell from the lamp and woke him. He was furious at her disobedience and left her.”

Errol hadn’t gotten to that part of the story yet. I leaned closer as Mr. Lee continued.

“Psyche was heartbroken and she set out to find Cupid. She took this very long journey and finally ended up at Venus’s temple where she begged the goddess to tell her where Cupid was hiding. Venus agreed, but only if Psyche could complete three tasks. Psyche failed the last task so Venus cursed her and put her into an eternal slumber.”

The nurse came out into the hallway. “His vital signs are fine. But he’s hungry. It’ll take a while to get a meal up here. We’re short of staff today. There’s a cafeteria downstairs if you’d like to get something right away.”

“I’ll go get him something,” Mr. Lee said.

He was about to walk away when I asked, “Mr. Lee? Is that how it ends?”

“No. Cupid came to the rescue. He woke Psyche from her slumber and they lived together forever. Happily ever after.” He adjusted his glasses, then pressed the elevator button.

But that was the wrong version, according to Errol.

“Your dad probably hates me,” I told Tony when I’d gone back into his room. “He should. I almost killed you.”

Tony was sitting up again. He rubbed his reddened eyes. “He doesn’t hate you. This just freaked him out. I haven’t had an allergic reaction since I was eight. If that lifeguard hadn’t had an EpiPen in his kit …”

I sank into the plastic chair. “I’m so sorry.” I was, with all my heart. But I was also confused. There I sat, after nearly killing a guy I’d met just a few days before. A nice guy. A guy who’d done nothing wrong but step into Errol’s and my craziness.

“Do you believe me now?” Errol had asked. He’d knocked both me and Tony off our feet and had turned us into lovesick idiots. How could I deny that?

Tony scratched his neck and turned his eyes to the floor. “I don’t know why I said all those things. It was like I couldn’t stop talking.”

“You don’t have to explain,” I told him.

“But I want to explain. That’s never happened to me. I don’t mean the falling part. I fall all the time. I’m a skateboarder.”

“Tony, don’t worry.”

He groaned. “You must think I’m a freak, saying those things. I like you, Alice, I really do. And I liked kissing you.”

“I liked kissing you too.”

He finally looked at me. And as we looked into each other’s eyes, the embarrassment faded away and we held the gaze until the last drops of embarrassment evaporated. I climbed onto the examination table and sat next to him. He took my hand and despite the room’s coldness, I felt warm all over. “I’m so glad you’re going to be okay,” I said, laying my head on his shoulder.

“I can’t believe you gave me clam juice,” he said with a little laugh. “Of all the things to give me.”

“I know. Weird, huh?”

“Where’d you get it?”

My thoughts flew back to Errol. I slid off the bed and walked over to the window. A few floors down, a glass catwalk connected one building with another, and across the street Errol still sat on the bus bench. He pushed his hood from his head and looked up at me, his white hair radiant with sunlight.

Do you believe me now?

My focus moved to my own reflection, staring back from the hospital window. My hair hadn’t been combed since the swim in the lake and I still had a patch of sunblock on my nose. But just above my head was an orange glow. I moved. The glow moved with me. I ran my hand through it.

You’ve changed, Alice. I can see that you’ve changed
.

And I could see it too.

I almost knocked Mr. Lee off his feet as I ran down the hall.

“What
is this?” I asked, pointing to the top of my head.

Errol’s upper lip glistened with sweat. An awning covered the bus bench but the shade added little relief in the heat. “What’s what?”

“This glow. I know you can see it. You were looking at it when we were at the lake.”

“Sure, I can see it. But I didn’t know you could.”

Frustrated tears filled my eyes. It was official. Errol and I shared the same hallucinations. We were destined to while away the years in a mental hospital, comrades in crazy. Mornings would be spent playing bingo with some guy who wore underpants on his head or with a serial killer wrapped in a straitjacket. Errol and I would take turns telling stories to the other patients during utensil-free dinners—stories of how he’d shot me with an invisible arrow and how I glowed with a light no one else could see.

I stood at the edge of the sidewalk in a patch that had once been grass, but thanks to the heat wave had turned brown and then disintegrated. I looked into the eyes of the guy who’d been in my life since the book signing at Elliott Bay Books, only five days ago. Like Tony’s postallergic eyes, Errol’s eyes were laced with red lines. But there was nothing puffy or swollen about his face. Quite the opposite—the hollows of his cheeks had deepened dramatically, as if he’d lost a substantial amount of weight during the drive from the lake to the hospital.

“Why am I glowing?”

“That’s a very good question,” he said as a bus pulled up. “Get in and I’ll explain.”

In a Belinda Amorous novel, one of the main characters always surrenders to the other. It might be an emotional surrender as in
Love’s Desperate Days
, a physical surrender as in
Kidnapped by Love
, or an intellectual surrender as in
I’m in Love with My Professor
. So I followed Errol onto that bus. We found two seats near the back.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE DEGREES,
a bank’s sign announced.
THE HOTTEST DAY EVER IN SEATTLE!

“Why didn’t you tell me you could see love?” Errol asked.

I gripped the seat in front of me. “See love?”

“That glow around your head. It’s love. Love is more than a feeling, it’s a form of energy. It can manifest itself in an aura. You know what an aura is, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

“It reflects a person’s emotional state. Everyone has an aura. It’s the atmosphere around each person. Love is the emotion that colors an aura.”

I’d seen that red haze around the moving man’s head. Had that been his aura?

“Lots of people have clear auras because they shut themselves off from love. That girl in your building … what’s her name?”

“Realm?” I asked.

“Yeah, Realm. Her aura’s clear. Yours was clear too, except for the time outside the library, and today at the lake.”

I’d shut myself off?

Errol pointed out the window. “Do you see that man?” A businessman stood on the corner, his shirt collar unbuttoned, his tie hanging from his pocket. “He has a contented aura, a nice blue glow. He’s probably happily married, well fed. Can you see it?”

“No,” I answered honestly.

Errol frowned. “That’s because you don’t want to see it. You’re holding back.”

“I’m not holding back. I don’t see it.”

“Let’s try another one,” Errol said, pointing. “See that woman over there, coming out of the store, pushing the stroller? She has a mother’s aura. That’s the most beautiful aura of all. It sparkles like fairy dust. Can you see it?”

“Fairy dust?”

“Can you see it?”

I shook my head, then looked away.

“Your mother may be the Queen of Romance, but you, Alice Amorous, are the Queen of Denial.”

The bus stopped on our block. I hurried down the aisle and out the door. Errol didn’t call after me as I ran up the front steps. Oscar the cat meowed from one of the geranium pots.
Fairy dust
, I thought.
Sparkles like fairy dust
.

Once inside my apartment, I bolted the door. Then I grabbed the photo box from my mother’s room and poured its contents onto the carpet. Searching frantically through the pile, I found a photo taken three years ago when I was thirteen and home for spring break. It was a book signing at an annual romance convention near the airport. My mother sat at a table, pen in hand. I stood next to her, a tight smile stuck on my face. I’d had to wake Mom that morning and help her get dressed. I’d been the one to make the coffee and to call the taxi. We’d arrived late but the readers hadn’t cared. My mother had forced herself to focus during the signing, as she always did. She’d put on a great show as the beautiful, confident, successful writer. No one had suspected that just the night before, she’d stumbled in after disappearing for three days.