Love Her Madly (13 page)

It turned out that Cyn would not have the cash. Lance called Cyn about another shoot. This one would be a longer session and would pay one thousand dollars. Was she interested? She was.

When she arrived at the shoot, it was business as usual. Nothing seemed amiss until she went into the studio and saw a platform dressed like a bed and a male model sitting on a stool, wearing a robe.

“What is this?” Cyn asked.

“The set,” Lance snapped.

“Who's the guy?” The model smiled and said hello.

“He's your partner,” Lance said, pointedly ignoring Cyn's distress.

“Excuse me,” she said to the male model and headed straight for the front door. Having another guy present, especially a big muscular one like the model, was a deal breaker for Cyn. When she started working at E Two, she crafted contingency plans for what to do if she felt endangered. Her approach to modeling was no different. Dealing with two strange men instead of one tipped the scales. It was too easy for things to go awry. She pushed at the front door, but it was locked, and there was no latch to unlock it. She remembered the key ring Lance always carried, the one he would jingle impatiently while she changed costumes. She heard the keys clinking on his belt as he approached.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“Can you unlock this, please?”

“Why? Are you going to run out on me?” Lance said lightly, as if he was joking.

“I left something in my car,” she lied.

“You don't need it,” he said. Any hint of friendliness was now gone.

“Unlock the door.”

He moved in closer. Cyn uselessly scanned the empty parking lot for anyone who might hear her if she screamed.

“And who is going to pay my session fees? I've promised this other model work. Are you going to cover his fees or rent for the studio space this evening?”

“That's bullshit. You didn't say anything about partner work. If you had, I would have told you I don't do it. Your fees are your problem. Now open the door, or I'll call the cops,” Cyn said, her voice rising.

“What's going on here?” The male model had emerged from the studio, frowning handsomely.

“Dickface here is creating a hostage situation.”

“I'll handle this, Enrique,” Lance snapped. “You renege on this job, bitch, and you owe me five hundred dollars.”

“No. I don't owe you anything.”

Lance nodded his head, then lashed out, explosively slamming his palm against the door, inches from Cyn's face. The glass boomed and wobbled from the impact. Cyn was frozen in shock. She told me that she saw a blur of white cotton, and then Enrique had Lance pinned against the wall, one forearm forcing his head back in a way that looked sublimely painful.

“Why don't you give her the keys?” Enrique suggested.

Lance's hand squirmed into his pocket and fished out the key ring. Enrique nodded at Cyn, and she snatched it from him and unlocked the door. She picked up her bag and fled, leaving Enrique with Lance still squirming and pinioned under his arm.

It was her second close call with danger via the adult entertainment industry, and in my opinion, two times too many. I was surprised when she showed up at the room an hour after she'd left. Unlike the pickup truck incident, the tale of her rescue via male model seemed to delight her. She sat me down and breathlessly recounted the entire scenario.

“I'm only disappointed that I didn't think to thank Enrique. If I had known he was such a
caballero
, I might have stayed for the shoot and taken the one thousand dollars,” she said with a laugh. “Anyway, let's not tell Raj about this. He'll probably feel some obligation to go punch the guy out.”

“Yeah. I won't say anything. But we're now in violation of the ‘no secrets' rule.”

She snorted. “Good one, Glo. No secrets rule. As I see it, it's for his own protection. He might look like an action star, but I don't think he's ever been in a fight in his life. Besides, even if he doesn't go all Rambo, it'll still make him angsty.”

“You mean,
more
angsty?”

“Definitely.”

Raj was in a pissy mood fairly often those days. He was
stressed about fall semester finals, like we all were, but he was also unhappy that Cyn and I would soon be gone for four weeks, leaving him all alone. Confounding us further was that he'd recently started talking about quitting the sciences altogether to become an actor. A professor complimented his performance during an in-class staging of
Titus Andronicus
, and he'd had a revelation: he wanted a life on the stage. He signed up for acting intensives at the local conservatory that same afternoon.

He would come back from these night classes either elated and convinced that he was going to go all the way as an actor or utterly defeated. I never knew which it was going to be before he walked through the door: comedy Raj or tragedy Raj. We were his test audience for whatever new monologue he'd found and de facto scene partners when he needed to run lines. In my eyes, he came to life when performing, and I loved to help him practice. I'd make time to read the plays he was studying, and when we were alone, we'd geek out together about all the different interpretations he could do. Once I got over the shock, and saw how much he cared about acting, I was behind him all the way. Cyn, however, had a different take on it.

“He's a decent enough actor, but this whole thing is just a phase. It's like his college midlife crisis. He's never going to go through with it.”

“What makes you so sure?” I asked, my tone rising defensively. I wanted to support Raj's dream. At least he had one.

Cyn rolled her eyes. “For one thing, Mommy and Daddy. And second of all, he doesn't really want it.” Seeing that I was about to object, she held up a silencing finger. “He wants it because he thinks it'll be easy since everything in life has been easy for Raj. But acting won't be easy. There's no ladder for him to race to the top of his field, and failure, even perceived failure, would kill him.”

She had a point. Raj was used to things going his way and
being the smartest guy in the room. Smarts would only get him so far as a performer.

“So you think it's a rebellion thing?”

“He told me that he likes the ‘being someone else' part of it. I think that has a lot to do with it. It's an escape.”

“An escape from us?” I joked.

Cyn didn't laugh. “Maybe. Titus Andronicus had it easy compared to Raj and his two harpies.”

We sat there in silence.

“I think I'm making him nuts,” she said. Her eyes were serious, and I knew with queasy certainty what she was talking about. The non-secret. She still hadn't slept with him.

Give him to me
, I thought for the millionth time.
Give him to me.

My problem was that my initial feeling about Raj—that he was my destined love and the one I'd never let go of—was solidifying into an unshakable truth. My brain advised caution, but my heart would have none of it. His foray into acting seemed like something, in a parallel universe, I might have gone after, and it endeared him to me all the more. I wanted to help him figure his life out. I thought he could do anything and be anything, and I could see myself as the woman standing behind him, giving him strength. We would lie in his bed, wound tightly together, and he'd talk about the future. How we'd move out to Hollywood, how he'd take me to all his movie premieres, how I would be free to lounge about our sunny mansion doing . . . whatever I eventually wanted. I loved this scenario because he never mentioned Cyn.

Hollywood was perhaps just a fantasy for me, but for Raj, it was very real. As he was trying to grow as this actor person, everything was suddenly
Serious
. Every mood needed to be explored and examined. His approach to studying human emotions was, in classic Raj style, systematic to the point of being
overly scientific. Sometimes it went off the rails. He started to give in to these dark moods that he would wallow in all day long, taking notes. Then he'd get philosophical and expound on the many ways that nothing we ever did as people mattered, and determine that (ta-da!) life was ultimately pointless. He would gravely inform me of his findings as if they were news, and I'd remind him I'd already walked that primrose path right into the student funny farm. That would shut him up.

Fact was, the future was weighing heavily on all of us. Cyn's only way to stay in school would be to pick up some heavy debt. She began to talk about possibly transferring somewhere less expensive. The first time she brought it up to us together, Raj's eyes went glassy, but then he smiled and said he'd been having similar thoughts. He'd looked into transferring to a school with a theater program, or just ditching school and moving to New York or LA. He didn't look at me when he said it, only at her, making me feel like they were making plans to ditch me, right in front of my face. I abruptly fled our cafeteria table, abandoning my lunch.

Cyn found me in the ladies' room some minutes later, crying.

“Don't worry, it's all just talk.” She sighed. “Probably nothing will happen. Everything will probably just stay the same.”

Instead of comforting me, that last part made me break down all over again.

Finals and post-finals parties came and went. Cyn and I dropped ecstasy at the big winter bash. Raj, in actor-scientist mode, abstained. He wanted to observe, he said, as if a bunch of trashed kids dancing was something to behold anew with the fresh eyes of Art. As night fell and the music got louder, I lost myself in the pulsing mass of students who had gathered in the plaza. The flashing colored lights and the shimmering strobe gave the night a sense of magnitude, like we were all on the verge of something epic. I felt like I was a flaming top, swirling madly in the dead center of my youth. I would never have as much
energy or joy or promise as I had that night, my heart surging along with the dance beat under the graceful palms.

The feeling did not last long. I felt a cool hand on my sweaty arm, and I looked up into the unsmiling face of Raj. Behind him was Mello, the always cheerful RA, a deep bow of concern darkening her brow. I couldn't hear what Raj was saying because of the music, but I had my suspicions. I followed them through the gyrating horde back to Mello's room on the first floor, directly underneath ours.

Cyn was sitting on the floor of Mello's closet, her legs tucked tightly beneath her crossed arms, hugging herself. When I said her name and she saw me kneeling before her, she let out a small howl and clutched on to me. Her cheeks were laced with glittery tear-trails of party makeup.

“Mello found her under the stairs, crying,” Raj informed me, a churlish edge to his voice. “I thought you guys were going to stay together.”

I gazed into Cyn's eyes, looking for some trace of the girl I knew. She stared out beyond me with the eyes of a spooked fawn. “Hey, babe . . .” I cooed, failing in my efforts to remember how I'd seen her help people out of their bad trips in the past.

Cyn's eyes flipped up to me and back down again.

“I'm worried about her overheating,” Mello said. She was a senior, but she had the steady gravitas of someone much older. She lowered her stocky frame to squat next to me, with the calm air of an emergency room nurse who's seen much worse. “Was she mixing?”

“No. I don't think so. I think it's just E, but maybe a lot of it,” I said shakily. Cyn's skin was very hot, even through her T-shirt. I was getting scared.

“How much is a lot?”

“She wouldn't have taken a dangerous amount. She's done it plenty of times.”

Mello's mouth tightened.

“She's been stressed. Really stressed. That's why she's flipping out.”

Mello sighed and seemed to relax. “I'm not seeing signs of overdose here. If it's just a bad trip, it'll pass. Let's get her up to your room and cool her down.”

“Hey, Cyn?” I said lightly, helping her to her feet. She looked at me with wide, terrified eyes, and she clung to my wrists so tightly, I immediately began to lose sensation in my fingertips. “It's really hot, don't ya think? I think we should cool off in the shower.”

Mello nodded approvingly, and Raj nervously backed up toward the door. He wouldn't meet my eyes, and I wondered if he felt this was somehow my fault. Cyn and I edged slowly up the stairs, Raj following.

“Hey, Raj,” Mello called out. “You should go to the store and get some sports drink. Or orange juice. Orange juice always helps.”

Raj nodded. I opened our door and shepherded Cyn inside. “I've got her,” I told him.

“If you need anything, Gloria, I'm wearing my pager,” Mello said.

I sat Cyn on the edge of the tub and turned on the shower. I checked her pockets to make sure they were empty and removed my skirt. I took Cyn by the hand and backed her up until she was underneath the stream. She gasped when the cool water hit, and I held on to her elbows in case she fainted, but she didn't. She just stood there passively, letting the water run down over her face.

“Feels good, doesn't it?” I asked cheerfully, as if showers were a totally cool new thing. She looked up at me, and I was startled by how dilated her eyes were, her irises little more than a thin glaze of sky blue around a center of impenetrable dark.

“Do you love me, Glo?” she asked.

“Of course I do.” I gave her a hug, leaning into the drenching flow of water. The water felt good on my skin, too. We stood there like that, in a comfortable embrace, for what must have been a long time. Cyn had dropped her head onto my shoulder, and I could smell the remnants of her fruity hair spray.

“What's going to happen to us?” she murmured.

The water continued to flow over us, mitigating my silence. Eventually, I came up with an answer with no disturbing connotations. “We're going to go to Costa Rica, and climb a volcano, and see lots of monkeys, and put a lime in the coconut every day.”