Mad Love

  While Mrs. Bobot had long watched over me, she now did so like a mother lion. She bought vitamins and made sure there was always fresh fruit on the counter. She trimmed my hair, took me to the movies, and even sat me down for a very detailed, very honest, very embarrassing sex talk. My real grandparents were long gone, victims of a chartered airplane crash. There were some second cousins, somewhere, but since my biological father had disappeared off the face of the earth, I had no other family. Mrs. Bobot became the grandmother upstairs.

  “While you were gone, I managed to wash all my floors and I made two dozen raisin cookies for William. He loves my cookies. And I found a renter for the fourth unit. She owns a beauty parlor and has offered to give us free makeovers. Won’t that be fun? And now your mom will have more rent money coming in. Isn’t that good news?”

  I smiled. In light of the latest letter from Heartstrings Publishers that was good news. But additional rent money still wouldn’t be enough to cover the hospital bills.

  “Taste this and tell me what you think.” She held out a wooden spoon.

  “Taste this” was an alarming request when it came from Mrs. Bobot. She thought of her meals as craft projects unto themselves, where color was more important than flavor, texture more important than digestibility. She’d been known to melt milk chocolate in her chili, put celery seed in her waffles, and concoct one-pot meals from whatever needed to be used up in the refrigerator. Mr. Bobot had always enjoyed his wife’s cooking, but only because smoking had killed all his taste buds.

  “What is it?” I asked, taking a step back.

  “It’s a sort of stew.”

  Realm leaned against the windowsill. “Something’s burning,” she said.

  “Not again!” Heat blew across the kitchen as Mrs. Bobot opened the stove. Then, donning a pair of oven mitts, she lifted out a tray of singed rolls. “I’ll just scrape off the burned bits.”

  Realm and I sat on opposite sides of the Formica table. Mrs. Bobot shook salt and pepper into the stew pot, then turned away and sneezed. “Oh, too much pepper,” she said with a little laugh. She filled our bowls with the mysterious stew, then sat down. I recognized most of the vegetables and it turned out it wasn’t half-bad. Realm picked at her meal, then went into the other room to watch TV.

  “I’m worried about her,” Mrs. Bobot whispered. “She barely eats anything. Don’t you think she looks too skinny?”

  “Well,” I said, “she’s definitely lost weight.” Which was true. In the days when Realm had been called Lily, she’d been chubby. Okay, she’d been fat. Real fat.

  Mrs. Bobot dabbed her mouth with an embroidered napkin. “How are you feeling, Alice? I know you’re missing your mother terribly.”

  I swallowed and looked away. That loving tone could coax tears from a rock. My tears, however, didn’t need any coaxing lately. They waited eagerly, like convicts, for any opportunity to escape.

  Mrs. Bobot put her hand over mine. “I know it’s taking a long time, but she’s got the best doctor there is. We just have to be patient. She’ll come out of it. She always does. Before you know it she’ll be sitting right here, eating dinner, talking about her next book.”

  The gentle squeeze, the kind smile, the hopeful words—gestures appreciated but it was getting harder and harder to gift wrap the truth.

  Mrs. Bobot pushed back her chair. “After we do the dishes, we’ll try my new deck of tarot cards. Maybe it will make us feel better.”

  I cleared the table and wiped down the counters while Mrs. Bobot loaded the dishwasher. Then we went out to the living room where Realm sat sideways in Mr. Bobot’s La-Z-Boy, channel surfing. I sat on the couch behind a stenciled coffee table. “I should have opened the deck before you came,” Mrs. Bobot said, peeling off the plastic wrapper. “It’s important to give tarot cards time to breathe.”

  “Card reading is bull—”

  “Lily!” Mrs. Bobot interrupted, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t approve of such language.”

  “For the millionth time, the name is Realm.” Realm punched the remote. “And tarot cards are a joke. Why don’t you tell Alice’s fortune from the bumps on her head, which is also total bull—”

  “REALM!”

  It was the rare occasion when I agreed with Realm. I didn’t believe that tarot cards needed to breathe, or that they could predict a person’s future. But it was something to do, something that didn’t involve sitting in my apartment worrying about the book deadline.

  Mrs. Bobot reached out and turned off the television. “Watching everything is exactly the same as watching nothing. Why don’t you join us?”

  “As if.” Realm wrapped her skinny arms around her legs and curled between the chair’s armrests like a cat.

  Once she’d settled on the couch, Mrs. Bobot shuffled the cards. “Remember that the cards represent the hero’s journey—the hero, in this case, being you.” She smiled at me. “Are you ready?”

  I nodded. Realm snorted.

  “I assume you want to know if …” Mrs. Bobot lowered her voice. “If everything will turn out all right? With your mother?”

  I nodded again.

  “What’s wrong with Alice’s mother?” Realm asked.

  “It’s none of your concern,” Mrs. Bobot said.

  Realm sat up. “Where is she anyway?”

  “Overseas,” Mrs. Bobot and I answered. Then Mrs. Bobot swept a hand through the air. “Now close your eyes and focus on the question you’d like the cards to answer.”

  I closed my eyes. Because I had no faith in this card-reading thing, I didn’t focus on my mother’s situation. Instead, I thought about Skateboard Guy. Tomorrow morning he’d skate past. Maybe I’d take a shower extra early and get dressed. Maybe I’d go out to the porch and pretend to be reading the newspaper. I could act like it was a surprise to run into him. But why would I do that? After all, I’d turned him down, told him things were complicated.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Mrs. Bobot said.

  I opened my eyes. Realm leaned over the La-Z-Boy’s armrest. Mrs. Bobot had laid the cards in a line. She flipped over the first card. The card’s illustration was a naked man hanging by his foot.

  “Hmmm.” Mrs. Bobot opened the instruction pamphlet that had come with the cards. “It’s the hanged man,” she explained. “The first card in the formation represents you, Alice, and the hanged man represents a person facing a crisis.”

  “Give me a break,” Realm said. “Her mom’s totally famous and rich. That doesn’t sound like a crisis to me.”

  Mrs. Bobot tapped a finger on the coffee table. “Shall we continue?”

  I stared at the next card lying facedown on the table, its message waiting to be revealed. Suddenly the reading felt creepy, like a ghost story around a campfire or a séance in an old house.

  “What’s the matter, dear? You’ve gone pale.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you’re uncertain, I could take a peek at the last card,” Mrs. Bobot suggested. “To see how your journey will end. How about I do that? If it’s good, and I’m sure it will be good, then we’ll look at the other cards.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?” Realm asked.

  “Shhhh.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Mrs. Bobot peeked at the tenth card. Then, after referring to the instruction pamphlet, she smiled. “The end of your journey is very good.” She turned the card over. “It’s Apollo, the Sun God.” A young, bronzed man held a shield and wore a wreath on his head.

  “How come all these guys are naked?” Realm asked.

  “Because these are Classical illustrations, dear. The Greeks and Romans appreciated the human body.” Then Mrs. Bobot read from the pamphlet. “Apollo, the Sun God, represents a rosy dawn, which is rebirth.” She looked up. “While you start in crisis, you end in rebirth. That’s very good. I don’t think you could end a journey in a better way. Let’s turn over the rest of the cards to see
about the journey itself.”

  One by one, she turned the eight remaining cards faceup. Each was identically illustrated with a naked guy holding a bow and arrow. “Curiouser and curiouser,” Mrs. Bobot said, referring to the pamphlet again. “There’s only supposed to be one Cupid in the deck.”

  “Weird,” I said, remembering the little floating cupid and the cupid figurine. “I’ve been seeing cupids all day.”

  Mrs. Bobot picked up one of the Cupid cards and examined it. “I wonder what all these cupids could mean?”

  “I’m no expert,” Realm said, turning the television back on. “But I’d say that Alice has some love coming her way.”

  The sun woke me. Its rays pierced the curtains and my eyelids, announcing another hot day in the Emerald City.

  I’d been sleeping on the living room couch lately because my bedroom had started to feel small. As I stretched my legs, a bus drove past, a car honked, a man shouted. Some might find the city’s sounds annoying, but I’d gotten so used to them it would be weird to wake up to silence. That’s another reason why I’d started sleeping in the living room. The sounds outside the window reminded me that I was part of something bigger—that there was more to the world than my messed-up speck of space.

  It was Tuesday, which meant our weekly trip to Harmony Hospital. Mrs. Bobot liked to do housework in the morning so we usually left for the hospital around ten. The manila envelope from yesterday’s visit to the bookstore still lay on the kitchen table. I pushed the envelope aside, then grabbed a bowl, spoon, quart of milk, and a box of Cap’n Crunch.

  The Sweet Sixteen reality show was on TV. That day’s sweet sixteen was a brat from Austin, Texas, who wanted her friends flown in a private plane to Paris, where they’d rent the Eiffel Tower for a night of partying. She seemed blissfully naive that a problem-plagued world existed beyond her speck of space. As I watched her try on party dresses and scream at her stylist, I stuffed my face with Cap’n Crunch.

  During a commercial break, I turned the manila envelope upside down and dumped its contents onto the table, still hoping to find a name and return address. Fortunately, the clam scent was gone. I unfolded a piece of notepaper that was covered in bold handwriting. It described an old man who was the father of the girl with the long, honey-colored hair. He had a deeply lined face, one missing eye, and a missing front tooth. I skipped to the bottom of the page where the description continued. Apparently the old man didn’t bathe very often and he spent most nights at his neighbor’s house, drinking himself into a stupor. I searched through the other pieces of paper, all covered in the same handwriting.

  No name or return address anywhere. How could I get the envelope back to the guy from the bookstore?

  After I showered and dressed, the clock read 8:35. Should I wait around for Skateboard Guy? He wasn’t a fantasy anymore. He was a real flesh-and-blood person who worked in his father’s antiquities shop, and I’d made it perfectly clear that my life was complicated and that I couldn’t go out with him. But still, I really wanted to see him. Some people get up and crave that first cup of coffee. I’d come to crave the moment when he’d glide past. Tuesdays were tricky, though, because I usually brought bagels to the hospital because my mother loved them. If I left now, there’d be time for me to walk the two blocks to Neighborhood Bagels and get back to see Skateboard Guy.

  The morning air was already sweltering—another day of record heat. The scent of freshly toasted bagels floated past. Good luck to anyone in my neighborhood who was trying to diet, because that scent will put you into a kind of trance and pull you down the sidewalk like the Pied Piper.

  Inside Neighborhood Bagels I ordered Mom’s favorite, blueberry. Then I sat at the window counter and sipped an iced mocha. There was still plenty of time before I needed to get back to my window perch at home. Sweat dampened my lower back just from the short walk. It would be terrible to live in a place that’s always hot. Maybe that’s why the sweet sixteen girl from Austin, Texas, was such a raving freak. But who was I to judge? One girl throws temper tantrums, another girl forges signatures.

  One of the rules when I visited my mother at Harmony Hospital was that I wasn’t supposed to mention anything stressful. Dr. Diesel had set this no-stress rule, and it made sense. So I’d never told her that I was forging her signatures. I hadn’t mentioned all the letters from Heartstrings, the letters asking when she’d finish her next book. I kept thinking that she’d get well.

  But this latest letter was too much for me to deal with. Mom needed to know that the publisher was going to stop sending royalty checks. She had to know. She’d have to pull herself together and start writing again, because we didn’t have one hundred thousand dollars to return. Maybe, just maybe, this little piece of news would wake her up and bring her back to reality.

  Bring her back to me.

  “Hello.” The guy from yesterday’s romance writers’ event took a seat at the counter, leaving an empty stool between us. Was he wearing the same black hoodie? And who wears a hood in the middle of a heat wave? “Did you read my notes yet?” he asked.

  Paranoia crept up the back of my neck. If this had been a chance encounter he would have said something like, “Hey, how great to run into you.” Had he followed me? I remembered that serial killer who’d easily convinced girls to get into his car because he was Greek-god handsome. I chose my words carefully. “Your notes are very nice,” I said. “But you need to find someone else to help you. I’m not a writer.”

  He raised his eyebrows and they disappeared behind the rim of his hood. It’s hard to get a clear impression of someone who’s wearing a hood, but his gaze was as intense and hypnotic as it had been at the bookstore. The bright sunlight streaming through the window highlighted the slight reddish tint in his eyes. And his hand, which fiddled with a newspaper that was lying on the counter, was ghostly white. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something was wrong with him.

  I took a pen and notepad from my purse and set them on the counter. “If you’ll write down your address, I’ll mail your notes back to you.”

  “I knew this wouldn’t be easy,” he mumbled. Then he turned away. Sliding his knees beneath the counter, he folded his hands and stared out the window.

  I pushed the notepad closer. “I need to get somewhere, so if you’ll—”

  “Alice, I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you. Don’t ask questions until I’ve finished.”

  I scowled. He sounded like a parent talking to a child. Who did he think he was talking to me like that? I wanted nothing to do with this guy.

  “My name is Errol, but I used to be called Eros. Most know me as Cupid.” He continued to stare out the window. “I wasn’t named after Cupid. I am Cupid. The original, one and only Cupid.”

  Music and customer chatter competed with his statement, so no one turned to gawk or snicker. But I’d heard him. A pained smile spread across my face as I pretended to be interested. My suspicions were proven. Something was wrong with him and the last thing I needed was to be on his radar.

  “There’s only one thing I want,” he continued. “And that is to tell my love story to the world. Not the version you find in mythology books, but the real story. The true story. I’m the only person who can tell it and I want you to write it.” He sat perfectly still, his gaze focused on the other side of the street. Or maybe he was staring at his reflection in the window.

  “I’m not a writer,” I said slowly, calmly, hoping he’d actually listen this time.

  He shook his head. “You say you’re not a writer. But I believe that it’s your destiny to write my story. We’ll each benefit from this arrangement.”

  Arrangement? A prickly feeling covered my arms.

  Then it suddenly made sense—he’d gone to a romance writers’ event not because he’d been dragged there by his girlfriend or because he was a fan of the genre, he’d gone there because of the Cupid thing. If anyone could relate to Cupid it would be a romance writer, right?
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  There were plenty of people in Neighborhood Bagels so I wasn’t worried that Errol might try to hurt me. But how could I get away without pissing him off?

  One of the things you learn when you live with someone whose moods are unstable is the art of being agreeable. And that is why I smiled sweetly and nodded, as if I believed everything he was telling me. As if Cupid himself, in a black hoodie and jeans, sat next to me in a bagel shop.

  He turned toward me and folded his arms. “You don’t believe me. You think I’m insane.”

  “I don’t think you’re insane.” I tucked the notepad and pen into my purse. Apparently, he wasn’t going to give me a mailing address. “I’m sorry but I need to get going.”

  “You think I look nothing like Cupid.”

  “No. I don’t think that.” I swung my purse onto my back.

  “I suppose you’re just like everyone else in this century. You think Cupid is a child. A fat, pasty white cherub with wings.”

  That’s exactly how I imagined Cupid, but I didn’t tell him that. “Um, Errol, why don’t I go and get your notes? I’ll bring them here.” Problem solved. I’d bring the notes to the bagel shop and then they wouldn’t be my responsibility anymore. I could even give him the name of some local writing organizations. Maybe he’d find a writer willing to help. Wait, that wouldn’t be a good idea. I’d simply be making his craziness someone else’s problem. He narrowed his eyes as I slid off my stool. “You stay here. I’ll be right back. Ten minutes.”

  Grabbing my iced mocha and the bag of blueberry bagels, I raced home, checking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t following. Just my luck that the one guy who’d noticed me that summer had turned out to be delusional. What would it be like to date a guy who thought he was Cupid? Cupid was a god, right? So I’d be dating a guy who thought he was a god.

  Maybe that’s not so unusual.

  Once I was safely in my kitchen I thought about ditching Errol, but that would only be a temporary fix. He’d find me, I sensed it. So, leaving my stuff on the table, I grabbed the manila envelope and hurried down our building’s front steps. That’s when my phone’s alarm buzzed. Nine thirty. I spun around. Skateboard Guy came straight at me, a blur of white T-shirt and black hair. “Hey,” he said, jumping off his board. “You’re the girl who found our figurine.”