Love Her Madly (7 page)

“It's not about the stripping. That's obviously a fresh issue.
It's everything. I think I have some major malfunction where I can only get interested in realities that aren't there and people who I'll never meet, and I'm numb to everything else. I'm stuck on the outside and I can't get interested.” She looked at me, her eyes shining in the near darkness “You don't know what I mean, do you?”

“I think I do.” I was so blindsided by the turn the night had taken that I couldn't think straight. Privately, Cyn was my model of female unflappability, and now I'd seen her completely break down twice in forty-eight hours.

She was crying quietly, a jagged, uneven weeping. She was human, just like the rest of us, so I decided to do what my mother and father had always done for me when I was disappointed after a loss. They told me what they thought I wanted to hear.

“It will happen, Cyn. Someone will enter your life that you'll be crazy about, and things will snap into focus, and all the stuff you're worried about now will seem really small. It just hasn't happened yet. But it will. I know it will.”

She groaned and shook her head in disbelief.

“I guess I just thought things would be better. I thought I'd be discovering things and growing and learning to be more empathetic, but instead I'm just pulling away and getting more lost in my head, and the more I meet people, the less I even want to be human. I just thought college would be . . . better,” she said. A second later, a tiny smile glimmered across her face.

“But,
honey
, you're in
Flooorida
,” I drawled, reviving one of our best inside jokes, an overheard phrase we'd co-opted to deal with any topical disappointment.

“I knew that was coming,” she said, rolling her head back in mock agony.

“You bet.”

Someone outside howled with laughter.

“Sorry about all this.” She gave me a quick squeeze and then
brushed her balled-up tissues onto the floor. “It wasn't about you. I love you. I didn't mean to tell you how to be.”

“It's okay. You've had a tough couple of days. And anyway, I meant what I said. I think there are good things ahead, for both of us.”

“I hope so,” she said.

The rest of the spring semester flew by. Since we didn't have the cash to do anything great for spring break, we spent the week at my parents' house and took trips to the beach almost every day. It wasn't full-on beer bong, Jell-O shot, Slip 'N Slide bacchanalia, but it was enough to make us feel young and alive. Cyn even kissed some guy, Danny, at a beach bar one night. Danny was gorgeous, but had eyes only for Cyn, so I spent a long evening discussing war movies with Danny's married serviceman pal. It was an epic shock when I glanced across the bar and discovered Cyn in a deep lip-lock with Danny. I was mesmerized and a little skeeved out, watching his Adam's apple dip up and down as they went at it. It felt like ages since I'd gotten that sort of attention. But, good pal that I was, I swallowed my jealousy and heroically managed to keep smiling at Pvt. Talksalot. We closed the bar down, me waiting impatiently in the car for her to disengage. On the drive home, she thanked me profusely for “falling on the grenade” for her, giggling drunkenly at her own dumb joke while I bit my tongue. When the hangover wore off, she had a happy glow about her, and considering her messed-up month, I couldn't begrudge her some joy. Fittingly, as soon as we got back to campus, she reverted to her prickly ways regarding all things romantic, almost as if Danny from the beach had never happened.

The last two weeks of school were ridiculous. I was drowning in notes for term papers, and Cyn was always at the library,
cramming with her science pals for their epic exams. It was nothing but coffee, classes, coffee, a few words of commiseration with equally dead-eyed friends, a small anxiety attack, followed by hours spent stringing words together on a computer screen, hoping they made sense. Lather, rinse, repeat. Just when it seemed like we would all die from sleep deprivation and stress, it was over. Our papers were turned in and tests completed. We were, strangely, free.

The party started on Friday and lasted until Sunday afternoon. Word around campus was that Silence had gotten in a nice supply of pure MDMA. Half of the student body was going to be rolling all weekend. This time, I asked Cyn if she wanted to roll with me. I'd undergone a sea change in the months since my freak-out over the weed. Now I wasn't at all nervous. My papers were in, and I wouldn't need to use my brain for a few solid months. Cyn had told me what to expect: good feelings, happiness, and the uncontrollable urge to dance. It all sounded great, and it was. I remember dancing with my arms around Cyn's and Lila's necks, all of us screaming along with the music. It seemed like there were thousands of people in the quad, every one of them having the best time, every one of them dear friends, even the ones I'd never met.

We danced and got lost trying to find the way back to the dorms, and then got un-lost and decided to walk to the bay. Tall Tim was there, and at some point I was lying with my head resting in his lap, playing with his enormous hands that seemed to block out the gently brightening sky. When it became light enough to see, we all rambled back to our room, crossing through the quad, where a handful of energetic souls were refusing to concede to the sunrise and were still dancing. We closed the blinds and collapsed, passing joints until sleep finally grabbed us.

When I awoke, everyone was gone. Cyn stood looking out
the window, smoking. Her face looked drawn and tired, as I'm sure mine did.

“Is that a cigarette?” I croaked. She had quit a few weeks after we met, with the offhand explanation that smoking wasn't doing anything for her anymore.

“Yeah, I found a pack in my bed. Who they belong to, I have no idea. You want one?”

She walked over with the pack. I shook my head and collapsed back onto the pillow.

“Did you have fun?” she asked.

“Yeah. I did. It was lots more fun than I thought it would be, even. But today is going to suck, right?”

She took a drag and nodded, then disagreed with herself and shook her head. “Depends. Your serotonin levels are fucked, so don't expect to feel happy, or much of anything. Just limit yourself to mindless tasks and try not to get emotional.”

She returned her attention to the window.

“Did you have fun?”

She smiled. “I had an amazing time. This sounds weird, but I swear, I really only feel like myself when I'm . . . altered.” She sighed and stubbed out the cigarette in an empty soda can. “But I guess last night wasn't really life, though, was it?”

“'Course it was. Just a different part of life.”

“I would do it more often, but chemically, it becomes counterproductive,” she murmured.

“I'll take your word for it.” I yawned. “It's a special-occasion type of thing.”

She smiled mirthlessly. “It should be.”

She turned away, and her form disappeared into the midmorning light pouring in through the window. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Cyn and I opted to stay on campus for the summer, which meant we'd get to keep our coveted room the following year. I picked up two jobs: one part-time gig as a lifeguard at the pool and a waitress job a few nights a week at a seafood place. Max, Lila, and Tim went back to their hometowns, so things were pretty quiet.

Cyn picked up additional shifts at the Treasure Chest, Ecstasy II's sister property across town. Evidently, there was a limit to her marketability at E Two. She still had her regulars, a concept that I didn't quite understand, but apparently many strip club patrons were novelty seekers, so it helped to split her appearances across a geographic expanse.

She quit working at the Chest by the end of the summer. We had made a pact to do nothing but have fun the last week before classes started up, and part of the grand plan was to go clubbing in Miami. Lila booked a room at a posh beachfront hotel, which for us was a serious splurge.

We dropped E and danced until sunrise. Max and Lila ended up making out on the beach, an occurrence both glaringly predictable and unnerving to behold. They'd always shared some psychosexual tension in a queasy brother/sister way, but now, in a cosmic hiccup, Lila was on the outs with her boyfriend. Max was more than solicitous of her tender feelings, and as angels wept with joy, a glorious friends-with-benefits situation was conceived.

“It's like incest, that's all I can say,” I growled, watching the palmetto scrub whiz by as we drove home the next day. I was in a rotten mood because of the E's shitty chemical afterbirth, fatigue and jealousy. I wasn't jealous because Max chose Lila; he was a veritable eunuch in my mind. I was jealous because I seemed permanently cast as “girl not being kissed on the beach.”

Cyn, well aware of my mood, made vague conciliatory noises
before pointedly turning up the radio. I knew I'd been whining all summer about wanting a love affair, so I took the hint and spared her another onslaught. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the wonderful guy who I'd meet soon enough, when the new students rolled into town. There had to be someone. There just had to be.

CHAPTER FOUR

The first day of classes was accompanied by a late-summer heat wave. By afternoon, the local power plant had suffered a transformer blowout, and the campus was without electricity. No one knew when it was coming back. Classes were canceled because the classrooms were insufferably hot, and students returned to find that their dorm room windows didn't open and their mini fridges were leaking frozen goods all over the all-weather carpeting. I was carrying around a box of quickly liquefying Popsicles, looking to give them away, when I noticed Cyn advancing toward me with a huge smile on her face.

“This is ridiculous!” she shouted, circling her arms to indicate either the heat or the generalized mayhem that had ensnared the campus. She accepted a cherry Popsicle, and I selected grape before handing the box to a threesome of freshmen, who received the gift with hyperbolic delight.

I followed Cyn to a shady courtyard near the cafeteria. There was a slight breeze, but it didn't help much. I could feel individual streams of sweat running down my back, soaking the waistband of my shorts. We raced to finish our Popsicles, the icy sweetness streaking down our palms.

“There's a seriously awesome new guy in my biochem class,” Cyn said, licking her stained fingertips.

“Oh yeah? How awesome is seriously awesome?”

Cyn blushed, a rarity. “Hard to say. Physically, he's some sort of ethnic cocktail, like Indian and something else, maybe white, maybe Latino. Tall, shiny Superman hair, fantastic smile. Think James Bond, but with a permanently deep tan.”

“Wow.”

She nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Wow, indeed. We talked a little, and he seems super smart. And funny.”

“Sounds awesome-awesome.”

“Could be. I told him about you. Turns out he's a swimmer, too. Hell, maybe we should go to the pool today.”

“You told him about me?”

“Yeah. You'll like him, too. I've already decided he should be part of our crew.”

“Oh, I see. Does he know he's been recruited to serve with the finest?”

Cyn smiled. “Not yet. A girl doesn't want to come on too strong.”

Only three days later, I met Cyn's new favorite person.

I was in the pool, swimming laps. When I was almost in the dead center of the lane, I had this impulse to stop. I wasn't tired or out of breath, I just felt a strong desire to pop my head out and look around. That was when I saw him.

He was walking out of the locker room, dark red swim trunks, toned swimmer's build, sunglasses. He stopped walking and looked at me down in the pool, treading water, staring at him. Then he smiled. His smile literally punctured something in my heart, and I felt this strange sense of relief, like
finally
,
this is happening
, though what
this
was, I had no idea. All I knew was that I was treading water midlane like a weirdo, glowing inwardly from the smile of a stranger. I pretended like I needed to empty my goggles, then I laboriously kicked back into stroke. I was moving for a few seconds before it hit me that I had forgotten to smile back, or maybe I had without realizing it.

Clearly, he was the awesome guy Cyn had gushed about. She had mentioned the lovely dark bronze cast of his skin, but had not described, or possibly had not yet fully glimpsed, his extraordinary frame. My memory captured him in 3-D Technicolor; wide, graceful shoulders that angled down to a narrow waist, buttressed by chiseled obliques that guided the eye toward his crotch as assuredly as a neon sign.
Did I really just scope out his package?
Yes. I reached the wall and flipped, the aqueous world spinning wildly around me. Before the world righted itself, I imagined tracing the contours of those obliques with my tongue, and conquering the mystery so thinly masked by those red trunks.

My rhythm, which I hadn't fully recovered after the sighting, short-circuited at the thought, and I decided to give up the charade. My mind was clearly no longer focused on my stroke. I swam to the wall and hung on to the floating lane divider, waiting for my breathing to return to normal. I didn't exactly need a periscope to locate the mystery guy, as he had settled on a bench at the end of my lane. I pulled off my goggles and rubbed my face a few times to iron out any pressure lines.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

“How is it in there?” He smiled that same smile. Beauty.

I pulled myself up out of the water and sat on the edge of the pool, not quite facing him.

“It's great. You going in?”

“That was my plan.” He paused. “I think we have a friend in common.”

I smiled. “Oh?”

“I think so. I met a girl who said her roommate was a redheaded mermaid.”

I laughed out loud. “You've met Cyn.”

“Yes. So you are Gloria. I'm Raj.”

I stood up to shake his hand. It felt warm and dry against my cool, wet fingers.

“Just Raj?”

“Oh. Rajveer Nicholas Roy III. Just kidding about the third.”

I sat down on the bench next to him, close but out of dripping distance. “Cyn told me about you, too. She said that she wanted to adopt you into our group.”

“Did she?” He smiled and looked down bashfully.

In that moment, it occurred to me that he was probably already in love with Cyn. It was an impossibly dismal thought, and sitting next to him in the sunlight, I couldn't make myself believe it. I rapidly steered the conversation in a different direction.

“So how come I haven't seen you on campus before? There's only, like, twelve of us enrolled here. Don't you eat, go to class, things like that?”

“I do. I eat almost every day, if you can believe it. And I take a lot of science classes, which is how I met Cyn. But the crappy thing is, I live in the H Quad.”

I shook my head in sympathy. “The Hubble. That explains it.”

He furrowed his brow. “The Hubble?”

I giggled. His warm brown eyes were studying me with intense inquisitiveness, like I was the most interesting person on earth. It was making me feel dizzy, so I looked down at the puddle forming around my feet.

“You really haven't heard that yet? H Quad is nicknamed the Hubble because it's so damn far away. Hubble residents are called astronauts.”

“Ah, space humor. Excellent.” He rubbed his palms against his thighs, producing a faint nylon hum. For an instant, I wondered if I might be making him nervous. Had I been gazing overlong at those surreal abs? Had I lost myself and become a total lech? I forced my gaze elsewhere, locking on to his hands. They were thin and attractive but still masculine, like surgeon
hands. “It's way the hell out there. I'm going to have to get a bike or a junker car.”

“A horse?” I suggested.

“In this heat, that would be inhumane. I'm thinking more along the lines of a jet pack.”

I laughed. “And that's why you appreciate the space humor.”

“I do.”

We locked eyes, neither of us speaking. Time seemed to blur, and in that moment, I felt myself falling, hard.

He looked away, and I felt a pang of disappointment. I stood up, trying to act casual amid the whirlpool of unexpected emotion that had suddenly seized me.

“You should show up at the dining hall tonight. That's where all the cool kids go to eat grilled cheese.”

“I love grilled cheese. I think I will,” he said, smiling up at me. I loved his voice. It was warm and smooth, like a radio announcer's.

“Good. I'll see you then. Have a good swim.”

I darted away, a blush erupting from my neck upward. I hurried into the ladies' locker room, stripped off my suit, and walked into the empty sauna. More blood rushed to the surface of my skin as I stood there, breathing deeply, unable to even feel the baking heat for the chaotic flurry of desire that was consuming me. I was in love with this guy. In love! I grinned, wrapping my arms tightly around my own humid torso, and felt a strange quiver pass through me like the taut vibration of a plucked bow. Happy as I was, there was also something undeniably frightening about this development; as if in that moment when our eyes met, he had casually reached over and swiped part of my soul, obliging me to chase him forever. It was such a melodramatic thought that I laughed out loud and promptly removed my overheated brain from the sauna. Under the shower, I made a choice. If love required this madness, this exquisite terror of
potentially unfulfillable desire, I was ready. For him, I thought, I might try anything.

Back in our room, I found Cyn on all fours, digging around under her bed.

“Hey,” she said, not looking up from her search. “I'm missing a sparkle thong. Even if I find it under here, it's gonna be gross.”

“You're working tonight,” I said, answering the question I was about to ask.

“I'm supposed to be there in half an hour. That seems unlikely.” She gave up the hunt and began to toss other stripper paraphernalia into her duffel. The silver platforms were visible inside, as well as some CDs. Cyn had started bringing her own dance mixes. She said it was good for her mental health.

“Guess who I just ran into at the pool.”

Cyn's face lit up. “You met him! What do you think?”

I ratcheted my true enthusiasm back by about 95 percent. “He's every bit as awesome as you said.”

Cyn nodded. “My god, those eyes.”

“Those shoulders.”

“That's from swimming, right? I love him already.” She stood up and went to her dresser, pulled out something small and rhinestoned, and stuffed it in the bag. Her supply of dazzling lingerie had increased dramatically over the summer. When she did her wash, it caused a sensation.

“Me too,” I said quickly, just to get it out there.

Cyn glanced at me. “Do you?” I stiffened, waiting for her to stake her claim. Instead, she smiled. “I'm glad. I think we'll be seeing a lot of him around in the near future.”

I should have asked her then and there if she liked him
that way
, too. The sooner I knew, the easier it would be for
me to get over it, if I could. But I didn't want to cede him just because she saw him first. What difference could a handful of days make?

“I invited him to eat with us tonight,” I said. “I didn't realize you'd be working.”

“Oh good.” She went to the mirror, applying mascara with quick little jabs. “I want him to meet the rest of the gang, too.”

I pictured this reception by “the rest of the gang” and chuckled.

“What's so funny?”

“Max and Tim are going to just love the competition.”

Cyn shrugged. “I think Raj might possess the kind of cool that attracts even other guys.”

She said
attract
. She was attracted to him. I felt sick.

The moment I asked if she wanted him, it would be all out in the open. Someone would either have to back off, or we might let him choose, or she could just claim firsties. It simultaneously occurred to me that she was being Cyn: falling excessively “in love” with anyone who was new and interesting and rubbed her the right way. Hell, I was case in point. But as I watched her finish her makeup, I felt a troubling tickle of dishonesty. Cyn and I had been utterly straight with one another, and that was why our friendship was so solid. Now I was holding something back. It felt weird and wrong.

“You should meet up with us after work,” I hedged, not meaning it and already hating my new talent for duplicity.

“Absolutely.”

“Hey, so, does Raj know what you do?” I asked. I might have wanted him, but outing her as a stripper to gain sway was worlds beneath me.

“The dancing? No, not yet. But I'm sure he'll find out sooner or later,” she said with a laugh, picking up her keys.

“Okay. Just wondering.”

She looked at me in the mirror as she fixed her lipstick. “It's not really a big secret anymore. But I guess, in truth, I'd rather tell him myself.” She came back and gave me a kiss on the forehead, leaving a mauve lip print. “Anyway, he'll learn soon enough how debauched we are. It's part of our charm.” Before I had time to ask what she meant by that, she was gone.