“How’s your car better? The top is down.”
“Yes, and that’s insurmountable. Come, Jules.”
Julian was sweating. His clothes were wet, his face. His cell phone had overheated just like the Volvo. It needed cool air before it would function again. At the moment, it was nothing but a paperweight.
After the top was up in the convertible and the AC was humming, Julian told Ashton about Mia. As Ashton listened, his shoulders turned in.
“I told you to talk to her,” Ashton said.
“Talk to her about what? And when? She was working, you and I were getting your tux, and last night she stayed with Z. I didn’t see her. I did talk to her. On the phone. She sounded fine. What was I going to do?”
Ashton shook his head.
Oh God.
“Chin up, Jules,” Ashton said. “Mothers don’t know everything. Even I don’t know everything. Clearly.”
“Is that a dig at me?”
“No.”
“I told you all I knew,” Julian said. “I didn’t keep anything from you.” He hung his head. I kept it for myself. So I could have this bubble of love, unburst.
“Don’t get bent out of shape,” Ashton said. “Calm down and talk to your girl. Who’s the guy, by the way?”
“What does it matter?”
“Is it that gorilla who was in the play with her, remember him, the dude who played Moses Jackson?”
“I don’t know, Ashton.”
“You didn’t ask? You’re right, who cares. She was engaged to some asshole, so what? Obviously they broke it off.”
“Is it obvious?” Julian said.
“Yes, because she can’t marry you and marry him. That would be fraud”—Ashton’s falling face took on an expression of shame and dawning realization—“and I don’t know anything about him, but I know that you and she are booked at the Brentwood Country Club this Friday night, where a chef from Waikiki is making you a lilikoi cake, whatever the hell that is. Bro, eyes on me.” Ashton’s teal-ringed gaze was intense, beseeching, comforting. “It’ll be fine. Mothers don’t know everything. Friends are idiots.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“One hundred percent,” Ashton said, flashing his killer smile. “Because I’m an idiot.”
“Why didn’t she tell me her mother was coming?”
“She forgot. She’s busy. It slipped her mind. The way it slips your mind to open the store or meet me at Fox. You know—like that.”
“Is that a dig at me?”
“Yes, Jules,” Ashton said. “That actually was a dig at you.”
“Why didn’t she tell her mother we were getting married?”
“You don’t know she didn’t,” Ashton said. “They may’ve had a blow-out precisely because she’d told her mother. I don’t know much about it, but I hear mothers can do that, make you crazy, make you forget things.”
“Not mothers,” Julian said. “Love. Love does that.”
“Like I said. As for why she didn’t call you, maybe she has no signal.”
“Give me a break. She’s right there.” Julian pointed behind him to the amphitheatre.
“Like yours, her phone may’ve overheated,” Ashton said. “The sun beats down on all phones equally, Jules, the just and the unjust.”
Julian was losing his power of speech.
“The phone is not a bullhorn to the rest of the world,” said Ashton. “It’s barely a whistle. Sometimes people don’t answer the call.”
“Yes,” said Julian, “or she could’ve left her mother to deal with me because she couldn’t face me.”
“I know that’s how it looks . . .”
“Why would she not tell me her real name?”
“Because,” Ashton said, “she wants to be this person, not that person. The person she wants to be is not an Irish broad named Mia McKenzie from the old neighborhood but a duchess named Josephine Collins.”
“You wouldn’t tell this to the man you’re marrying?”
“I don’t know, Julian,” Ashton said. “Have you told everything to the woman you’re marrying?”
“Whatever.”
“Exactly.”
Julian flared up. “What does Topanga have to do with anything? How does me getting lost make me less able to marry her?”
“It’s not the getting lost,” Ashton said. “It’s the almost dying.”
“I didn’t die, though. You said so yourself. Case in point—I’m in hell right here.”
“Did you tell her who you were before Topanga?” Ashton said. “Who you wanted to be? I see by your pissed-off face that you didn’t. So you didn’t tell her everything. Why not? Don’t flip me off. I’ll tell you why not. Because now you’re this person. Like she is that person. We all want to reinvent ourselves, be the new thing, not the old thing.” Ashton looked into his hands. “Have I told Riley about my mother? No. She barely knows I have a dad who’s still alive. That part I understand, bro. She wants you to marry her as Josephine, not Mia.”
“Is she marrying Moses Jackson as Mia?”
“I thought you didn’t know who it was?”
“I’m guessing,” Julian said in disgust.
“Look, as far as you know, your girl has never said no to a proposal,” Ashton said, “but clearly she can’t marry more than one guy at a time.”
“Because one of those marriages would be fake, right?” Julian shivered. Sweat was dripping off him, yet he was so cold.
“Not fake,” Ashton said. “Invalid in the eyes of the law.” The way Ashton said it—so carefully—made it sound as though he thought there was at least an equal chance that the invalid union would be hers and Julian’s, not hers and some overbuilt asswipe’s.
“Why are you using that tone of voice?” Julian said. “You just told me it was going to be all right.”
“It is.”
“And five minutes before that, you told me she was going to be the death of me.” Julian hit the wheel. “Pick a side.”
“I didn’t say she was going to be the death of you.” Ashton took a breath. “I said she was going to be the death of me.”
Julian turned his head and stared at his friend. “I was joking,” Ashton said, his smile non-existent. “Great. So she’s made you lose your sense of humor, too, along with everything else. Incredible.”
Paradise was over. People started spilling out of the theatre. “If you need me,” Ashton said before he drove away, “I’m just down the road at HomeState, eating a plateful of breakfast burritos.”
Julian waited for her, propped against the trunk of his car, his head curved to the pavement.
***
She didn’t speak his name when she walked across the parking lot and stood in front of him, her long face striped black and red like a grotesque clown’s, the stage makeup poorly removed, the beret on her head askew, her hands knotted into her abdomen.
Julian didn’t speak her name either.
“Did you get my text?” she asked quietly.
“Do you mean the text telling me not to come because you were getting a ride to the Greek,” Julian said, “or the text warning me your mother was going to ambush me?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “She’s awful, isn’t she?”
“She?”
“It was a shock this morning, her coming unannounced like that. We had a horrible fight. She is always butting in where she doesn’t belong. I ran out and forgot to text you. I texted you later. I guess you didn’t get it. I told you she makes me crazy.”
“How did you get to the Greek?”
She paused before answering. “Poppa W gave me a ride. I was stuck, Julian. Otherwise I would’ve been late.”
“Poppa W gave you a ride,” Julian repeated dully.
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “I wrote to you. I sent you an email just before curtain. It’s very important. Did you read it?”
“My phone overheated.” It was a hundred degrees out. His soaked shirt clung to his back.
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said. “But I can explain.”
Did he mishear? Can or can’t? “Do you know what your mother told me?” he said.
“Julian, wait, let me go first.”
He didn’t wait. He went first. “She told me a few things. One thing she told me is that your fiancé is flying in later today to take you back to New York with him.”
She dropped her bag to the ground. Her hands flew up to cover her mouth. “Oh, no,” she said. “That can’t be true. She said nothing about that this morning, nothing!”
“Which part can’t be true?” Julian asked. “That you have a fiancé other than me? It is just one other fiancé, isn’t it? Or that he’s coming to take you home?”
“God! Why would she tell him anything? She knows how upset he gets. What was she thinking?”
“Ah,” said Julian. “That part.”
She fumbled with her fallen bag. The beret slipped off her head and fell. She picked it up. Her hands were shaking. “That’s my mom. Always manages to make things worse. As if it’s not bad enough. Jules, can you please drive me home? I’ll explain everything later, but right now I really have to go.”
“Explain now,” he said.
“I have to go.”
“Tell me.”
“No!”
He sucked in his breath. “You’re shouting at me?”
“Julian . . .” she said, wringing her hands. “You don’t understand. I have to handle it my way. Not your way. My way.” Her open face, streaked with black mascara, didn’t seem so open anymore. It looked shadowed with secrets.
“I didn’t know there was a your way,” he said, his burning hands on the car, hot and getting hotter. “I thought there was just a way.”
“Okay, I know, it doesn’t—look, what do you want me to say?”
Julian said nothing.
“I told you we were moving too fast,” she said. “You just broke up with that Gwen or whoever. I thought I was your rebound girl.”
“Rebound girl?” he repeated. “What are you talking about? You’re not my rebound girl. You’re the girl.”
She wouldn’t look at him.
“Or so I thought.”
“Please, Julian.”
“What’s your name?”
She wouldn’t answer him.
“What’s your name?” Julian repeated, louder. “Because you went with me to City Hall and signed a piece of paper that contracted your name to mine. What name did you put on this legally binding document?”
“Mia McKenzie,” she barely whispered.
Julian was speechless.
“Don’t yell at me!” she cried.
“Did I say a word.”
“You’re raving like the possessed!”
“Did I say a word.”
“I’m in the process of legally changing it to Josephine, okay. It takes time. I was going to tell you, but it had gone on for so long, I didn’t know how to.”
“What had gone on for so long?” said Julian.
“The fake name thing.”
“Ah.”
Her lip trembled. “I have to fix a lot. I know that. Don’t you think I know that? Don’t make everything harder. It’s hard enough.”
“What about our marriage?”
“What about it?” She didn’t look at him.
“What about . . . you and me?”
“What about it?”
He could only take human bites out of this abomination.
And yet the abomination was taking troglodyte bites out of him. “Are you”—Julian didn’t know how he got the words out—“are you going to marry someone else?”
Her shoulders were hunched. “I meant to break up with him before I left for L.A.,” she said, “but he got the flu and lost a job he really wanted. He’s an artist. He’s very sensitive. He takes bad news poorly. I didn’t want to upset him by kicking him when he was down. It didn’t seem kind. I thought I’d come here, work for a bit, give us some space, figure things out, and after I returned to New York, I’d know what to do, but then I met you, Julian! I met you, and everything changed.”
“Oh my God.”
“Why are you saying oh my God like that? Don’t you understand? Everything changed because I met you.”
“So not only did you not tell him about me, you never even told him you weren’t going to marry him?” Julian was dizzy. He was losing his ability to comprehend language. “He still thinks you’re getting married. The man you’ve been with for four years is flying to L.A. because he thinks the two of you are still together?”
“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” Josephine said in a small voice. “I didn’t know how to tell him.”
This is how the world ends. In the middle of the day, in the middle of your life, in the middle of a parking lot filled with people and ice cream trucks.
“I thought you loved me,” she said, her voice shaking. “How can you be so mad at me? I was going to tell him . . .”
“That’s why you kept me away from Zakiyyah,” Julian said. “Because she knew all about you.” Be careful who you pretend to be.
“No.” She said it without conviction.
“Is that why you haven’t worn my ring? So you wouldn’t have to explain anything to Z?”
“I haven’t worn your ring because it’s too big.”
“It’s not too big anymore, and yet there’s nothing on your finger,” Julian said. “You didn’t tell your mother about me. You didn’t tell me who you were. You didn’t tell your boyfriend you had agreed to marry someone else. Who are you?” Julian’s voice fractured as he was fracturing. “Or do I have it completely backward? Am I the fool here? Is it me you haven’t told you’re going to marry someone else?”
“It’s not like that, Julian.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Answer my question!”
“You were so insistent!” she cried. “Marry me, marry me. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I wasn’t insistent!” Julian yelled. “I asked you to marry me, and you said yes. You could’ve said, let me think about it, and made things right and come back to me. You could’ve told me about him. You could’ve told him about me. You could’ve talked to Zakiyyah, asked her what to do. You could’ve even said you couldn’t marry me because it was impossible. You could’ve done any number of things other than what you did do, which is say yes to me. I wasn’t insistent!”
Tears and mascara ran down her face, raccoon tears.
“You are going to marry someone else!” It was a scythe to Julian’s heart. His voice failed him to speak the things he wanted to say, to yell the things he wanted to yell. He pressed his hot hands into his burning temples, wanting to cave them in.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I wanted to tell you, I just didn’t know how to. You were so sweet to me, so kind. No one in my life has been as good to me as you. I didn’t want to break your heart.”
She didn’t want to break his heart.
“But eventually, what was your plan?” he said. He stopped himself from groaning. “To break it?”
“I was trying to find the right time . . .”
Julian put his hands up. “Stop speaking. Stop everything. Stop.”
They stood in the tawdry strip lot at the Greek Theatre, the ancient mountains behind them, the food truck in the corner selling tacos and ices to mothers with kids.
He wanted to shake her, to hurt her, to embrace her, and with his embrace to crush her, to suffocate himself. He didn’t trust himself to go near her. “It was all a fucking sham, wasn’t it, the thing between us,” he said. His fists were clenched. There were tears in his eyes. “A pantomime of Venus and Mars.”
“No!” She took a step to him. “No . . .”
He put up his hands in a blocking stance. “It was. Just a sleight of hand, an illusion. Like the light on your mountain. Nothing is real. Not you, not me, not you and me.” His face pulsed
hot blood just under the skin. “Ashton is right. Everything you do is a fraud. That’s how you can treat me like this. To you I’m nothing but a set from a cancelled show. I’m about to be dismantled for trash. You’re not just acting on empty. You’re living on empty. Because to you I’m not real.”
“You are, Julian, please!” she whispered.
He turned his body sideways. When she rushed up to him, he shoved her away. “Don’t come near me,” he said. “Get away from me. I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are. My God, I don’t even know what to call you. Get away from me.”
“Julian, wait, please—I need to—how am I going to get home?”
“Ask Poppa W.” Julian flung open the driver door. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to give you a ride, JoJo.”
She was sobbing, standing in the empty parking lot, her arms around herself. “What about your ring?”
“Keep the fucking thing. I hate you. I never want to see you again.”
He drove away, his last words to her pounding into the scar on his head.
19
Mystique
AFTER JULIAN GOT HOME, HE COOLED DOWN HIS PHONE AND read her email, read it over and over until it was engraved on his heart. Hours later he fell asleep on the couch but only after putting on the sports channel and watching old Wimbledon tennis matches with the sound turned all the way up so the only thing he could hear was the ball in its rhythmic accelerating pattern thwacking against the grass, like gunshots through a silencer.
***
Julian, my love,
I’m so sorry. By the time you read this, you’ll probably know what a mess I’ve made. I feel horrible. I hadn’t found what I was looking for, so my poor life was littered with the leftovers of my fruitless search. It’s not my fault you came along just as I was losing hope. What took you so long, Mr. Cruz. I’m sorry I couldn’t tidy up the chaos of my life fast enough. Everything is spinning out of control, I know, but I didn’t think I would actually find someone like you. Who’d ever think they’d meet him not in the kings of dirt at the Gotham Girls Roller Derby but in the best of men like I once hoped. I dreamed of you when I was young, but it’s been a long time since then. You and I were in the ocean together in all our clothes, even our coats. When I see you, I’ll tell you all about it. But then when I finally found you, I wasn’t ready. I dropped the ball. I made mistakes. Despite what you think, I’m not perfect. I’m going to try my best to fix it and hope that when I’m done, you’ll be waiting. Please don’t give up on me.
The Tiger Catcher Page 13
