“I know exactly what I’m saying.” He grabbed me around the waist and pressed his lips to my ears. “Alice,” he whispered. “We were meant to be together. We must be together.”
The whisper sent a shiver down my arms. I might have enjoyed the attention except that he was seriously freaking me out. This transformation wasn’t natural. He’d been instantly changed. He took my hand and pressed it against his chest. “Can you feel my heart beating, Alice? It’s beating only for you. I love you. I love you with all my heart.”
When he paused to scratch his chest again, I twisted out of his grip. He grimaced, fighting against the onslaught of emotion, the way one fights against nausea as it builds. Tony Lee was sick—lovesick—and he needed help. “Errol!” I hollered.
A whizzing sound broke through my panic. I reached out my left hand and caught the can as it soared overhead. Craig’s Clam Juice. Processed from 100 percent organic clams and organic brine. Sixteen ounces of mouthwatering goodness. Best served over ice.
“Alice.” Tony clutched my arm. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. I don’t know why this is happening but I can’t breathe without you. Tell me you love me or I’ll die.” He squeezed my arm harder. I popped open the clam juice.
“Drink this,” I said. “Don’t ask me why. Just do it.”
I held the can to his lips. His gaze never leaving my face, he took a drink. He swallowed. His face relaxed. He took a long, deep breath. Then he looked around, as disoriented as a sleepwalker waking in the middle of an outing.
“How do you feel?”
He didn’t need to answer because I knew exactly how he felt. He would remember every embarrassing thing he’d said and done, just as I remembered. “I don’t know why I said those things,” he muttered.
“Don’t worry about it.” Perhaps if I started laughing I could pretend that it had all been a funny joke. And then he could pretend it had been a joke. I tried to force a laugh but it came out more like a grunt—because when it came right down to it, there wasn’t anything funny about the situation. I couldn’t close my eyes and make this go away. “I know you didn’t mean any of those things,” I said gently.
“I feel so confused.” He ran a hand over his hair, which was once again static free.
Errol didn’t offer an apology or explanation. He leaned against a willow tree.
A long, agonizing silence swirled around Tony and me. What does someone say after confessing passionate, all-consuming love? A bright blush broke out on Tony’s cheeks and traveled down his neck. He’d stopped scratching his chest, a very good sign—until his upper lip began to swell.
“Uh, Tony?” I pointed. “Your upper lip is swelling.”
“Wha?” He touched it. “Wha is ma whip swebbing?” Then a welt broke out on his neck. Another on his cheek. He pointed to the can in my hand and his eyes widened with fear. “Wha dib I dwink?”
“Craig’s Clam Juice,” I replied. “It’s organic.” As if that mattered in the least. “Oh my God, Tony, you’re turning purple.”
And that wasn’t the worst of it. The swelling had branched out to his cheeks and ears. Right before my eyes, he was turning into some sort of Asian version of the Elephant Man. “Tony?”
And then I remembered what Errol had asked, right after curing me of my own lovesickness. I grabbed Tony by the shoulders. “You’re not allergic to shellfish, are you?”
So that’s how I ended up at Swedish Hospital for the second time in as many days. After an ambulance took Tony, I threw some clothes over my bathing suit and climbed into Tony’s car, an old Jeep. Reverend Ruttles drove, Errol sat in the backseat. Mrs. Bobot and Realm stayed behind to clean up the picnic.
We were mostly quiet during the drive. I chewed on my lower lip until I tasted blood. To my left sat Reverend Ruttles, who said we should have faith that God would look after Tony, but in the next breath he told us we should pray, just in case. Behind me sat Errol. He said nothing. No apology. Nothing. Gripped in my hand was the deadly weapon—Craig’s friggin’ Clam Juice. And with every mile covered I imagined that I’d killed Tony, or worse—that I’d permanently mangled his handsome face and he’d be doomed to a life hiding in the back room at the antiquities store or working for a freak show.
Errol refused to enter the hospital. He said he’d never step foot inside one again. He said he’d wait across the street, on a bus bench. The hospital lobby was quiet and gleaming. We had to wait for an hour. I replayed the lake scene a million times in my head, trying desperately to come up with an explanation that didn’t involve an invisible arrow.
Finally a nurse said we could visit. I tiptoed past a mosaic wall mural and into a white room. Tony, dressed in a cotton hospital gown, lay on an examination table. An IV hung on a metal stand, steadily dripping clear liquid into his right arm. His eyes were closed. A man sat next to the bed, Coke-bottle glasses perched on his nose, which was stuck in a Woman’s Day magazine, the only choice in the room. A slight man with long black hair, he was an older version of Tony in his jeans and short-sleeved shirt.
I wrung my hands nervously. “Mr. Lee?” I whispered. “I’m Alice. Is Tony okay?”
Startled, Mr. Lee bolted to his feet. Tony opened his eyes and sat up.
“Hello, Mr. Lee.” Reverend Ruttles hobbled into the room, his voice filling the sterile space with its rich baritone notes. “We’ve come to check on your son.”
Tony’s facial swelling had lessened somewhat, though his still over-plumped lips looked like bad plastic surgery. “Dad, this is Alice. And this is her neighbor …”
“Reverend William Ruttles,” the reverend said, enthusiastically shaking Mr. Lee’s hand. Then he handed over the car keys. “Tony’s Jeep is parked in the hospital lot, section A. His beach bag and towel are on the backseat.”
“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 Cu
pid 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 Beli
nda 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.
Mad Love Page 18
