Love Her Madly Page 28

  “Glo—”

  “Shut up!” she shouted at me. She was as unhinged as I’d ever seen her. “You gave me such shit because I didn’t tell you she was a prostitute, and you never thought to tell me that you’d slept with her?” She stared up at the ceiling, and a fountain of delirious laughter bubbled from her throat. “It’s funny, because I don’t even care. It doesn’t matter. She hates you. He hates you. I think you’re both absolute lunatics, and maybe I am too. It’s finally the neat and tidy ending I always hoped for.”

  “Glo—”

  “No!” She pointed at Cyn. “You, solve your own fucking problems! You’re dangerous. That’s what you’ve always been, whether you mean to be or not. It follows you, and I don’t want it following me any longer.”

  She spun around to face me. “And you—”

  I braced myself, waiting for the hammer to drop. Glo’s voice broke off abruptly, and I looked up and saw her head swing toward the rear of the theater, as Cyn stood, her face ashen and mouth slack.

  “Ryan,” she said.

  I clambered to my feet and faced Ryan McMurphy in the flesh. He stood at the top of the stairs, a glowering tower of discontent. I couldn’t see his eyes underneath the shadow of his brow, but it was pretty clear that he was looking at Cyn.

  “Surprise,” he deadpanned.

  “Mr. McMurphy, you need to leave. You’re trespassing on private property.” I marveled at how quickly Glo had regained her composure. She stood straight as a rail, the flush in her cheeks spreading down across her chest. “Did you hear me?”

  “I hear you, Gloria, I just don’t care what you have to say.” He shuffled toward the center aisle and glanced at me, distaste quivering across his features. He turned his large head back toward Cyn, and his mouth bent into an odd grimace. “You had to see them. Just had to. I knew it. If you had just resisted, I might never have found you. Do you know that?”

  Cyn shifted nervously. Before she could answer, I said, “Listen, pal. This is my theater. Get the hell out of here before I throw you out.”

  He chuckled, thick and low.

  I glanced at Glo, frozen wide-eyed like a mannequin, and remembering my regrets from the previous night at the bar, found my courage. I wasn’t going to allow some beat-looking asshole to stride into my theater and menace us without taking some action. I began advancing up the stairs toward him, slowly, watching his hands, wondering what the hell I was going to do when I reached the top. The closer I came, the taller he loomed. Of course Cyn had managed to snare some deranged giant for the role of scorned paramour. I just hoped he wasn’t armed.

  I was six steps away when, in perfect movie slo-mo, I saw his right hand ease out of his pocket, and in his palm, a dull gleam of metal. Gun! my neurons screamed in unison. The full muzzle slid into view and slowly swung my way, the yawning blackness of the barrel blotting out all other thought.

  “Stop, right there.”

  I halted midstep. “Is that a gun?” I exclaimed, in case the girls hadn’t noted this very important shift in our circumstances. My body was largely blocking McMurphy’s sight lines, and I was hoping they would take the hint and get themselves to some semblance of safety. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anywhere particularly safe for them to go. A small dressing room backstage was a dead end, and the sole emergency exit was also at the top of the stairs, on the opposite wall. McMurphy had the high ground, and we were all trapped.

  “Raj!” Glo yelped.

  “Ryan, don’t.”

  “Back off, pal,” McMurphy sneered.

  I lifted my hands and took a step backward.

  I heard footsteps, and suddenly Cyn was beside me. “Go to Glo,” she murmured to me, never taking her eyes off McMurphy. “Go.” She glanced at me, and in her face, I saw something of the old Cyn; a reckless confidence that made me think that maybe she knew how to handle this.

  I stepped down to the ground floor and put Glo behind me. She reached for my hand and squeezed, hard.

  “Ryan, please, put that gun away,” Cyn said. I couldn’t see her face, but her voice sounded warm and mildly cajoling, as if the gun were just a camera and she didn’t feel especially pretty.

  “I just need one thing from you, Cyn, one honest answer. Will you leave him?” McMurphy swayed dangerously.

  “What should we do?” Glo whispered into my ear.

  “I don’t want to talk about it here, in front of my friends. You want to talk, get rid of the gun, and we’ll talk somewhere private.”

  “I want an answer. I think I’m entitled to one honest answer from you.” His voice stayed terrifyingly flat.

  “Ryan, sweetie. You’re scaring my friends.”

  Cyn began to speak again, but McMurphy interrupted her.

  “What’s his name?” he demanded.

  “Who?”

  “Your future ex-husband. I want to know his name.”

  “You know it. Lucas.”

  “No. His full name. I want you to tell me his full fucking name.”

  “Why?”

  “Because otherwise, you’ll lie. I’ve been thinking about it, since you left, and I think that’s been your plan all along. Use me, dump me. Run back to your true love. I want to know his name so I can call my people and put a trace on him. So I can end him if you screw me on this.” He was breathing heavily. I saw his enormous shoulders rise and fall.

  “End him? Drop the posturing, Ryan, please. We both know you were fired. You can’t end anyone.” Cyn’s exasperation was audible, and I watched McMurphy’s face darken dangerously. I took a step forward, but Glo’s iron grip anchored me in place.

  “You’re right. I was fired. Because of you. And will soon be divorced, because of you. And will lose my children, because of you. And what do I get? Lies and empty promises. How do you think that makes me feel? I love you and you lie to me! Just do what you said you would. Haven’t I earned that much?”

  He was shouting. I saw tiny specks of saliva fly from his mouth, sparkling briefly under the house lights. The air in the room felt absolutely spare, as if we had been transported to the highest Himalayas. Every molecule of oxygen was elusive.

  “Yes,” Cyn said.

  McMurphy stiffened, and she stepped forward, her voice honey sweet, her gestures, though she didn’t touch him, soft and nurturing. “Look at me. It’s okay. You’re right, darling. I shouldn’t have left like I did, but I was frightened and I wasn’t sure I could trust you. Surely you can understand that? It’s not personal, it’s just . . . me.” She shrugged, and her voice grew a touch playful. I watched McMurphy watching her, mesmerized. “I want to make it up to you. I will do anything you want. I know I owe you, Ry, and I know what you’ve given up for me. Will you say something? Please?”

  McMurphy hesitated. Glo and I were both holding our breath. She was squeezing my wrist so hard, I’d lost feeling in my hand.

  McMurphy exhaled with an audible moan, and the glower dropped from his face like a Halloween mask. “Cyn, angel. I know I’ve fucked up so bad. This . . .” McMurphy used the gun hand to gesture to his torso. “This really isn’t me. You know that.”

  “I know that.”

  “Look at me. I’m a goddamn mess.” He smiled, and his face lit up, a demented jack-o’-lantern. He took a step down toward her, arms spreading wide.

  “So you’ll give me another chance? You’ll come back?”

  “I will. We can go right now.”

  “Don’t—” Glo exclaimed.

  Cyn turned to face us. She looked calm and, if anything, mildly irritated. “It’s okay, Glo. Ryan and I understand each other, don’t we?”

  She took another step toward him, gradually closing the gap between them. It seemed like they might embrace, but she stopped short. “Can I have that please? You know how I feel about guns.”

  I noticed McMurphy was now staring at us. After a
moment, he looked back at Cyn, stone-faced.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I did it again. I gave in too fast. I told myself I wouldn’t cave to you and your pretty pink mouth without some proof, some real proof that your old life is done. What’s his name?”

  “Ryan. Think for a minute. I could tell you any name. How would you know?”

  I cringed. Not the time for real talk, Cyn. I felt my heart pumping as McMurphy stared down at her dumbly, like a puzzled golden retriever.

  “I don’t have any reason to lie to you, Ryan. I wanted to see my friends, one last time. I’m sorry. But I’ve done it, and I’m yours now, for as long as you want.”

  He shook his head and chuckled softly. “Very convincing. I don’t even . . . know how you do it.” He looked up toward the ceiling as if blinking back tears, his pitch rising alarmingly. “You’re so, so good at it. You hate me, despite everything. You despise me. I can see it. I’m not an idiot.”

  “Ryan,” Cyn lifted her hands, palms open, desperation creeping into her voice. “Please—”

  “No! I should turn you in myself. No, I should hold you for ransom. Get some big money for you from the motherfucking cartel. That would solve my problems, and it would serve you right.”

  “No!” Glo shouted, releasing my hand.

  Cyn raised her arm, gesturing for Glo to stay back, all the while keeping her eyes on McMurphy. Glo slipped past me, fast as the shadow of a passing jet, and I saw the dark holes that hid McMurphy’s eyes turn toward her.

  “Glo!” I yelled, my fingertips just brushing the hem of her blouse as she lurched forward into space.

  I saw Cyn’s face, white as a ghost, as she glanced over her shoulder and saw Glo rushing the stairs.

  My life is over, I thought as McMurphy’s gun hand began to pivot toward Glo. My own body had finally settled on a response, which was to jump in the air, throwing my arms wide, in an attempt to wrest McMurphy’s attention away from Glo. But it was too late.

  I was staring right at them, fifteen feet away, and I’m still not sure exactly what happened those next few milliseconds. I know that Cyn jolted toward McMurphy, her elbows lifting like a bird about to take flight. I almost expected her to rise into the air, when in a stunning reversal, her body collapsed like a doll’s, pounded earthward by a giant, unseen fist. Only then did I hear the bang, chased instantly by Glo’s piercing shrieks. Glo dropped into a tight crouch on the steps, her panicked eyes meeting mine in the instant before she rolled for cover behind a row of seats. I watched, frozen, as McMurphy stared openmouthed at Cyn’s body, crumpled at his feet.

  “Oh. No,” he murmured. He looked at the gun in his hand, and then up at me.

  Before I could even open my mouth to shout, he pressed the gun beneath his chin and pumped the trigger, hard. I saw it all in terrible detail. His crown exploded into a cloud of dark matter, and he dropped backward, collapsing at a sickening angle against the wall.

  There was a second of utter stillness before Glo clambered, sobbing, up the stairs to Cyn. Together, we turned Cyn over. I held her head. Her eyes were closed, dark blood was soaking her white dress. There was an open wound over her left breast, just where her heart must have been.

  “Oh god, no,” Glo wailed. “Cyn!”

  “Go upstairs. Call an ambulance,” I urged.

  “Cyn!” she screamed, shaking her as if she could be readily awakened.

  “Glo! Please get help. Hurry!”

  She heard me. I watched her lurch over McMurphy’s body and I heard the theater door slam behind her.

  I held Cyn’s body in my arms, and pressed my hands over her wound. I could feel her heart still pumping, faint and weak. Hot blood sluiced through my fingers at a pitiless rate, and I watched the skin around her eyes go paper white. I willed those eyes to open, and when they didn’t, I found myself speaking to her, urging her to hang on, to keep it together, to not give up. My voice grew hoarse and my clothes became soaked with her blood, and with McMurphy’s, which was dripping down the stairs in gruesome rivulets.

  It’s hard to say what I was thinking in those agonizingly long minutes before the firefighters arrived, followed in quick succession by the paramedics and then the police. Toward the end, as the color drained from Cyn’s lips, I leaned close, and whispered all the true, sweet things that were the flip side of the vitriol I’d disgorged only moments before, in what already felt like a different lifetime. I wept as I asked her forgiveness and told her that she was loved, always. Forever. I wanted her to take that with her, to enter whatever was next fully wrapped in a shroud of love, as if that could mitigate the violence that had sent her there. I was so, so far from the perfect person to send her off, but I could offer her that much. She was loved, Next World, she was. Please be kind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Glo

  She didn’t die. Not that day at least.

  As the doctor explained it to me, the nose of the gun had bucked upward when McMurphy fired, sending the bullet on an upward slant through the space just above her heart, ripping a hole just millimeters away from her pulmonary artery. She was very lucky, he said, as if this were news to me.

  She coded a few times in the ambulance. Raj told me as much. He rode with her to the hospital, bloody and stunned like the lone survivor from a horror movie, while I stayed behind to run interference with the cops. When the paramedics arrived and said she was still alive, I somehow had the wherewithal to get right on the phone with both the FBI and the State Department. It gave me something to focus on, and I also knew if her name were released, if she became a story again, her life would be over even if she survived. This time I would not fail.

  The local police weren’t exhibiting any willingness to listen to me until the FBI showed up, at which point things got a little easier. I convinced them it was worth it from an intelligence standpoint to pressure the NYPD into declaring a “Jane and John Doe situation” until Cyn’s prognosis became clearer. The State Department was also happy to oblige, considering they were facing what looked like a scandalous and shameful crime involving one of their own. I spent the next several days on the phone, stammering vague responses to questions for which I had no answers. “She’ll tell you everything when she regains consciousness,” I uttered, over and over, the knot tightening in my stomach as I wondered if it were true. I was putting my reputation on the line on the basis of Cyn’s promises of future information, and in truth, I had no idea if she really knew anything at all.

  Meanwhile, the press had descended upon the story of the mysterious attempted murder-suicide in the dramatic environs of an underground theater like horseflies to spilled blood. Raj declined all interviews and postponed the opening of his play, which, due to all the press and the new allure surrounding the “haunted” theater, had sold out well into the foreseeable future. He had been rapidly rehired as Dr. Seager in The Queen’s Keys. The producers weren’t stupid, recognizing that his newfound mystique was box office manna. His agent, too, made a robust reappearance, calling him up with auditions for principal roles in major feature films. There was a new happiness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in years. If I hadn’t been so stressed out about maybe going to jail if Cyn’s tale turned out to be fantasy, I would have been happy, too.

  It took about a week for Cyn to stabilize. They had a pair of armed guards stationed outside her door twenty-four/seven. I stopped by a few times to check up on her, but the blinds on her window were always closed, and she wasn’t conscious. No one was allowed in anyway.

  It was Sunday when I got the call that Cyn was awake. Raj was onstage, so I texted him the news.

  A new stoicism had settled over him since that afternoon at the theater. “Cyn and I weren’t good for one another,” he told me. “We never really were.”

  That he had been painfully and deliberately guided toward that conclusion was not obvious to him, but I
saw otherwise. When Cyn goaded him into the rage that culminated with his hands around her throat, she and I alone knew that it was an exorcism she was performing. By all accounts it had worked. When Raj and I talked about her now, there was no frisson of tension underlying our words. By shattering her spell over Raj, Cyn had given us both one last gift.

  I went to the hospital and was stopped, as always, at her door. There were new guards stationed outside, not the crew I had grown used to seeing.

  “Someone called and told me to come,” I explained when they summarily dismissed me. “She wants to see me.”

  “She’s not seeing anyone, ma’am,” the older guard informed me.

  “I’m the closest she has to next of kin,” I said. When that did nothing, I persisted, “Someone here called me, and I’m her de facto attorney. I’m not leaving until I speak to whoever that was. Can you please check it out?”

  With a heaving, soap opera sigh, the older guard disappeared into her room, closing the door quickly, but not before I glimpsed two suited figures seated at her bedside. Square shouldered, gray haired; they had to be the feds. My palms began to sweat as I wondered how far they had gotten in taking her statement. I prayed it would be sufficient. I waited in silence with the other guard, my nerves making me so twitchy that I forced myself to take a quick walk to the water fountain to chill out. As I returned, I noticed the horizontal blinds in the room were slowly opening. The first guard reappeared, firmly shutting the door.

  “They said you can’t go in, but you can visit through the window.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I slowly turned to the window and raised my hand to block the glare. Cyn was propped up in bed, looking pale and small in her sea-foam green hospital gown. Her arms were laced with tubes, and her bed was bookended by twin towers of monitoring equipment.

  With obvious care, she turned her head toward me and smiled. It wasn’t her typical megawatt beamer, but it was enough that I could see her spirit remained intact. She raised one arm a few inches and wiggled the fingers in greeting, then winced and rolled her eyes.