The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (17 page)

She looked away, once, toward the door to the tent. Was she looking for me? Was she wondering if I would come? If I would stop her? Was she wondering if she would stop, if I did come? She lifted another brush to her eyelids and shadowed them over. There was no spark behind them now. And if I did nothing? Would she and Avinash settle down here, in the desert, while he chipped away at pebbles? Would his parents buy them a Frank Lloyd Wright manse in Los Angeles, where she and I would pass the time as always, no change but for a ring she’d remove beforehand? What if he finished his work and they returned to India? How far would I follow?

She set down the eye shadow and lifted another brush to her lashes. They were long and dark, and her hands were now sienna with the dye. Only that single circle was still exposed. I wanted to press my thumbs to it and push, down and outward. Wipe away the
mehndi
in all directions. Perhaps tonight—if we took the Shelby Cobra we would be at the coast in five hours—we could wade into the salted waters of the Pacific and let the colors wash away. We could head south into Mexico, where no one would ever find us. We could return east, and hope the scandal blew over with the seasons. In the vineyards in the north we could drink until we forgot who we’d ever been. West seemed the only proper way to go, and yet there was only a little more west left. On the other side of the ocean was just the world again, and eventually we’d come back to where we’d begun, and still nothing would have changed.

Evelyn turned away from the mirror and bent down to lift something from her bag, a small painting in a golden frame. I wanted to see it more closely, but suddenly a car horn honked, somewhere off on the side of the canyon. I lifted my head from the flap and looked out at the chasm. There was a faint echo as the blaring sound kissed the edge and bounced back. And then nothing. The noise was swallowed up and gone. The source of the noise was a silver Bentley that had nearly rear-ended a Rolls-Royce. The Rolls honked back, and this time the sound was like a whisper, as it journeyed the other way, into miles of desert. The two cars stayed, squared off there, in the middle of the small sea of limousines and Town Cars. Each refused to let the other by, and the Beamers and Benzes began to pile up behind them, all honking their horns in time, like seconds ticking in a snarled clock, and vanishing into the empty canyon. Red-vested valets started scrambling over, their hands clamped to their ears protectively. There, in the heart of the lot, the sound of all those pricey cars making their urgent demands must have been deafening, but it was barely audible from where I stood, just a hundred yards away.

All around me, the wedding preparations spun on, last-minute affairs being quickly settled. Florists hung heart-shaped slipper orchids from the tent poles; caterers sailed about with silver trays of curried prawns. A harpist and three accompanying sitar players argued over some detail in the sheet music. Two of the bridesmaids rushed by, carrying an industrial sewing machine. Looks of desperation were written on their faces. Something had to be hemmed, or mended. Everything had to be perfect.

How many millions had it all cost? The white silk tents? The single-malt Scotch and the imported flowers and the jet fuel and the fucking
elephant
?

It was at this moment that Julian’s fist suddenly connected with my jaw. The entire Grand Canyon at once swerved upward into a right angle as my body crumpled to the ground.

Julian’s other fist connected with my neck, and the first again with my shoulder blade. What he lacked in aim he more than made up for in enthusiasm.

“What the
fuck
are you doing?” he seethed.

“What the fuck are
you
doing?” I managed to gasp. Julian’s eyes were as dark and impenetrable as ever. Was he seriously trying to stop me?

“You slept with my
wife
!” He began dragging me away from the tent so that Evelyn would not hear.

“Your—. She’s a fucking
escort
, Julian!”

But he didn’t seem to hear me. Was this it? Had his nominal ties to reality finally been severed? Had the pharmaceuticals chewed through? Or was it whatever else was wrong—whatever had always been wrong—in the wormy folds of his brain? I managed to shove him off me. I tasted blood in my mouth.

“No, I’m saying you
just
slept with her. An
hour
ago. And now you’re going to go in there and ask Evelyn to run off with you?”

Suddenly I felt deeply ashamed. I had hardly thought about the escort. She’d barely seemed real. Regardless, I charged at Julian and threw a punch that connected up around his eye and sent him staggering backward.

“You’re out of your mind!” I spat, releasing a thin stream of blood that disappeared into the dry earth. “You’re
completely
insane! You know that, right?”

He flinched but agreed. “Definitely,” he said, brushing himself off. “Definitely I am. But at least I
try
to make a point of only ruining my
own
life.”

His eye was swelling, and I imagined that by morning it would be a lovely shade of eggplant. I didn’t even want to think about what my own face would look like.

“You really think you love her,” he said, surprised.

“Of course I
love
her, you idiot. I’ve loved her since the moment we met. Since the moment you sent her off to roam the college with me because
you
were too caught up in your damn story to spend any time with her.”

“God,” he said, rolling his eyes in desperation.

“What, you think she doesn’t love me?” I challenged, ready to remind him about six of the past seven nights.

“I don’t know if she loves you or not, you solipsistic son of a bitch, but I hope to hell she doesn’t! Because what I do know is that you don’t love
her
at all.” Julian shook his head. “You’ve gotten
just
good enough to fool yourself, haven’t you?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped.

“It’s
fiction
!” he shouted. “She’s just this character to you. Both of us are! And we always have been. You don’t know what goes on in our heads. You don’t know where we come from or who we
are
. . . Can you even tell the difference anymore between what you’ve written about her and who she really, truly is?”

I didn’t understand
what
he was talking about. Clearly he was losing it.

“But how could you?” he continued. “You’ve made
everything
up—even yourself, for God’s sake. Well, here’s the truth. Let me remind you—
The Biography of You
: Son of a man who had a layover in Newark and the flight attendant who brought him peanuts with a smile that afternoon. Recipient of a Vacheron Constantin watch that your mother found wedged between two first-class seats and
stole
for you, so you’d be able to count the hours she’d abandoned you. Onetime escort—
paid
escort—to a debutante ball and introduced to high society as a character from a
Wilkie Collins
novel. You project these
fantasies
onto us. It’s fun playing the people you think we are, but this is where it stops. This isn’t some story anymore; this is her
life
. And you don’t get to do this.
You
don’t get to.”

And for once I thought I knew exactly what was running through Julian’s mind. He was out of his mind, of course. But underneath that was something else. Something I’d never seen before, but that had always been there, whenever he’d looked at me, from the very first day: he pitied me. Not in the same snobby way that he pitied everyone and everything, but because I had no idea who I really was. He’d seen me all along, like a moth fluttering repeatedly against a windowpane. He’d grown attached to me, gotten to know the pattern of my wings against the glass. I’d always been on the other side of it, though. I’d been circling out there for so long that I’d forgotten.

I thought he would hit me again, or drag me away, but instead he let me go. He just began walking off the other way, toward the blazing, open sands and the red distant hills. Perhaps he wanted some space, or just to lick his wounds. Perhaps something had finally snapped inside him that would not be mended. I didn’t understand exactly. And I didn’t know then that I wouldn’t see or speak to Julian again for ten long years.

I hurried back to Evelyn’s wedding tent.

When I slipped my head back through the rear flap, I saw that she was not alone anymore. Avinash stood a few feet from her, dressed in magenta silks that leant him no aura of impressiveness at all. A shirtless man, whom I took to be the priest, was chanting and pressing a golden coin onto the untattooed void on Evelyn’s hand. There were no other people in the tent—no relatives or bridesmaids or elephants of any kind. This was the real wedding ceremony; everything that would happen out on the
mandap
in front of the others was technically just for show.

Evelyn could not see me. The little picture frame that she had taken from her bag earlier lay beside her makeup tray. I watched as the priest clasped her hand to Avinash’s and began to bind them together, with the gold coin pressed between them. I opened my mouth to speak, but only dry desert air came out.

There she stood, only a few feet away from me, but she looked like she looked on stage—completely real and yet entirely someone else. I’d never been so close to her while she was in character. When Julian or Avinash or any of the other men—and there had been many—came to see her, they sat in the front row, center. Only my eyes had the capacity to unravel her.

She gazed into Avinash’s heavily lashed eyes with a serene confidence. It was a gaze of expectations being firmly met. Of plans having at last come to fruition.

The priest’s voice reached a higher pitch as he knotted their hands together and reached for the fringe of her sari. I watched as he wove these tiny threads to Avinash’s
dhoti
. She breathed a little deeper, but she wasn’t really nervous. She was only playing the part.

I said nothing. I did nothing.

When the priest’s fingers parted from the knot, he concluded his prayer and it was done. Evelyn and Avinash were wed.

She never saw me. And when she moved away from Avinash, her face did not change at all. This character was permanent now. Evelyn had become someone new. In a few minutes they would go out to the
mandap
and revolve around the
Agni
, and they would make their traditional promises to each other in full view of their families and assembled international guests, but it was already done, so I took off to find the car. I couldn’t stand to stay and watch the rest. I knew how it all would go down.

Up on the
mandap
, Evelyn and Avinash would place strings of flowers around each other’s necks. They would circle the holy fire seven times and make their seven vows to each other. And as they stared into each other’s eyes, they would come to what was really my favorite part of the whole ceremony, when it came right down to it.

We are word and meaning, united.

You are thought and I am sound.

May the night be honey-sweet for us.

May the morning be honey-sweet for us.

May the earth be honey-sweet for us.

May the heavens be honey-sweet for us.

May the plants be honey-sweet for us.

May the sun be all honey for us.

May the cows yield us honey-sweet milk.

As the heavens are stable,

as the earth is stable,

as the mountains are stable,

as the whole universe is stable,

so may our union be permanently settled.

Whenever I made it back to the hotel, I would throw these details together and finish this article and get very drunk and catch the first flight out in the morning. Most of these holes could be patched together. Everything else was just the Grand Canyon.

As I drove off along the rim in the Shelby Cobra, I found it easier and easier to remind myself of how incredibly small I was, and how incredibly small everything about me, and my life, and my love, and my world, was, too.

What Was Found

6

A Plagiarist in Dubai

It is good to know the truth, but it is better to speak of palm trees.

—ARAB PROVERB

Even with the full moon, it’s terribly dark out there tonight, isn’t it? That’s the desert for you. You should try the 51 cocktail here. It’s quite good. Are you in Dubai on business? Honeymooning? Oh, wonderful! I should leave you two alone then. You’re sure? Well, if you insist, then, of course, I’ll join you. Just for one drink—on me. Three 51’s,
min fadlik.
There we go. So, you two just arrived from—? Oh, lovely. I’m from New York, myself. Pleasure meeting you both. Call me Timothy Wallace.
Professor
Timothy Wallace, actually.

How did
I
wind up in Dubai? Well, it’s certainly an interesting story—one of my better ones. Unless, of course, you want the truth. The truth is only
slightly
less interesting than the story. But, then again, it’s the truth—so it has that unique quality. Of all the possible stories out there, from the fantastic to the mundane, only
one
of them qualifies as the truth. It’s OK! You can laugh. I won’t take any offense. Perhaps I’ve had one too many. It’s just, you see, I don’t usually tell the truth, as a rule. But every rule has exceptions. Maybe mine is that I can tell the truth only in strange bars to lovely couples, when the moon is full behind the Burj Al Arab and the night is especially dark. Fortunately for you both, tonight is just such a night. Ah! Here come our drinks.