Mad Love by Suzanne Selfors
“Get that away from me.”
“Is the voice gone?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He tossed the can into the sink. “You may think it’s disgusting, but it’s the only known antidote. The only time it doesn’t work is if you have shellfish allergies. Well, even then, it stops the voice, but then it kills you.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Crap. I forgot to ask you if you had allergies.”
Two moving men stomped in. “Where do you want the television?”
“I don’t care,” Errol said over his shoulder. “I don’t need any of that stuff. It’s not mine.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve been paid to deliver it, so where do you want it?”
“I said I don’t care!”
As the moving men set the television in the living room, everything I’d done during my unfortunate lapse into crazy shot right to the surface. “You moved here on purpose,” I said to Errol. “That girl with the red hair thinks we planned this. Mrs. Bobot thinks I wanted you to move here. How did you know I lived here? Have you been watching me or something?”
He looked away. “We need to talk about my story. You promised to write it.”
“Your story?” Oh right, his story. That envelope filled with notes. The reason I’d met him in the first place. And that’s when the absurdity of the situation hit me. I needed a story and he had one. Except he was some kind of stalking lunatic.
“How much will you pay me to write it?” It was a bluff. I wasn’t going to write it, no matter how much he offered.
“I don’t have any money.”
“Oh gee, what a surprise. Well, sorry, but I can’t work unless I get paid.”
“Let’s go back to my room,” he said.
“Your room? No way.” Only a few minutes ago I would have married the guy. Now I was seriously questioning whether either one of us was sane. How could one person put a voice into another person’s head? Not possible. He was delusional and so was I. I needed to forget the last twenty-four hours—forget that I’d heard a voice, that I’d made a fool of myself. But I could still feel that kiss, warm and hungry.
“I don’t want to write your book. Okay? Are you listening? I don’t want to write it.” I hurried into the living room. “Stop what you’re doing,” I told the moving men. “This is a huge mistake. He’s not moving in. Take all this stuff back to the van.”
“What do you mean, this is a mistake?” one of the men asked. “We ain’t lugging all this stuff back downstairs. That girl at the beauty parlor paid a move-in fee, not a move-out fee.”
“I’ll pay the move-out fee,” I offered desperately.
The guy scratched his beard. “That ain’t right. I can’t do that without her signature. I could get sued.” He pushed his empty cart toward the door.
Crud!
I stood as stiff as a tree as Errol’s gaze brushed across my back. It would be a nightmare having him in the building, bugging me every day to write his story. I looked out the fourth unit’s living room window, onto the building next door. Oscar the cat was perched on its fire escape, cleaning his front paw. He glanced up and looked at me. What are you going to do? his green eyes asked.
I didn’t want to think about the fact that Errol had invaded my life. I wanted to shut myself away and work on Untitled Work in Progress, not simply because I needed to, but because it would take me away from the past twenty-four hours and all the embarrassing things I’d done and said. Is that why my mother wrote? To distract herself from the reality of her life? “I’ve got to go.”
“What about your promise?” Errol asked.
“I’ve got to go.” I headed toward the door.
With a groan, he kicked a cupboard door. Then he kicked it again. I’d almost made my escape when he cried, “Go ahead! Run back to your apartment, hide from the truth!” He grabbed the can of clam juice from the sink, crumpled it, then threw it across the room. It bounced off a wall. My legs tensed. Was he going to attack me?
But he drew a long breath then ran a hand over his white hair. “Look, Alice,” he said, forcing calm into his voice. “You can go back to your apartment and never truly know what happened. You can live with the fear that everything you felt was some kind of prelude to madness. Or you can let me explain.”
Curiosity held me in that doorway, a threshhold between realities. Waiting downstairs was my unraveled but familiar life. I knew how to hide in that world. But Errol wanted to pull me into his world. His words threatened to suck me in like a black hole.
“I’m sorry I shot you,” he said quietly.
Surely I hadn’t heard correctly. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m sorry I shot you. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. But I needed to get your attention.”
“You … shot me?”
“I don’t usually knock people off their feet but I’ve been shaky lately.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Your wound should be gone. It goes away as soon as the spell wears off.”
My hand reached under my pajama top and I slid a finger under the Band-Aid. The spider bite was gone. No welt, no itch, just smooth skin. “Huh?” My mouth fell open. There’d been no spider. No lightning. “What did you …? How did you …?” I blabbered. “Why would you …?” His words from the bagel shop came back to me.
I am Cupid. The original, one and only Cupid.
I clenched my hands into fists. “YOU SHOT ME WITH AN ARROW?”
I pressed against the door frame as the moving men squeezed by. Errol had ignored my question and was walking to the back bedroom.
Fine. Go away. Leave me alone. I have things to do.
Who was I kidding? If I went downstairs and tried to write Untitled Work in Progress, I wouldn’t get an ounce of work done. Call it lovesickness, call it insanity, but I’d lost control of my emotions and thoughts, and nothing terrified me more than that. If there was a chance that something other than the mutated gene of mental illness had brought on the voice and those feelings, then I wanted to know.
I followed Errol across the newly polished floor. Mrs. Bobot and I had worked hard last week, getting the apartment ready so people could come and look at it without sucking in a lungful of dust. My mother had never rented the fourth unit. Her mania was impossible to hide from anyone living in the building and she didn’t want to share her secret with any more people. So for as long as we’d lived there, only dust balls and mice had traveled across that floor. But since her hospitalization, she needed money. So Mrs. Bobot and I had cleaned the unit without Mom’s approval. It had to be done.
I stood in the doorway to the back bedroom. A striped mattress sat on the floor. The manila envelope lay on a rolltop desk. Errol motioned to a stool.
“I’ll stand,” I said, thinking it best to stay in the doorway, in case I needed to escape.
Errol sat on the mattress’s edge. “Excuse me for not standing,” he said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “I’m … tired.” He rested his arms on his knees and cast his gaze at the floor, where his pale bare feet looked dead against the dark wood. “Life’s been crappy lately.”
That was the first thing he’d said that I could relate to.
I tucked my uncombed hair behind my ears. “I want to know if you shot an arrow at me.”
“I did.”
“But the doctor said a spider bit me.”
“Doctors see what they want to see. You can tell them the truth again and again but they never listen.” The sentence was spiked with bitterness. My gaze darted to the windowsill where three brown pill bottles sat, the white labels too far away to read. Errol took a long breath. “I’m sorry I knocked you off your feet. You fell pretty hard. That’s not supposed to happen but, like I said, I’ve been shaky so my aim’s been off.”
I pointed an angry finger. “If you shot me with an arrow then that’s assault. I could call the police. You could be arrested. Do you realize that? You can’t go around shooting people with arrows. You could have killed me!”
“
“Wait a minute.” I dropped my arm. “If you shot me with an arrow, how come we didn’t find it? Tony and I looked all over the sidewalk.”
“Is that his name? Tony?” He still looked at the floor.
I hesitated. He’d sounded … I’m not sure … jealous? “Yeah, his name’s Tony. And we didn’t see an arrow.”
“They’re invisible,” he said.
“Right. Invisible.”
“Yes. Invisible. The arrow infused you with lovesickness so you’d do whatever I wanted. You forced me, Alice.”
“You infused me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He slowly rose to his feet and our eyes locked. I could still feel the pressure of his lips against mine. “Look, if you’d accept what I’m saying, then we can bypass all this useless small talk and get to the real issue.”
“Useless small talk?” I almost laughed. “I’m trying to figure out why I acted like a total freak, and you call that useless small talk? You had no right to shoot me.”
“Excellent.” He folded his hands behind his back. “At last you believe me.”
“I didn’t say that. I …” My thoughts collided like bumper cars. What was going on? “Cupid’s not real. He’s a mythological god.”
“Don’t I look real?” he asked, holding out his arms. “I’m as real as you, but I’m no god. I’ve never been a god. I was a regular sixteen-year-old until I signed that damn contract. And I’ve been sixteen ever since.”
I immediately felt bad for anyone who’d signed a contract. The word “contract” was one of my least favorite words, right behind “genetic” and “predisposition.” “What contract?”
“Their contract. The gods. In exchange for one life of pure bliss I agreed to be their servant. There’s nothing like pure bliss. It’s indescribable.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
He winced, as if in pain. Then he walked to the window and opened one of the pill bottles, popped a pill into his mouth, and swallowed. “You know, even if I’d read the contract’s fine print, I wouldn’t have understood. Eternal life sounds great at first. But once you’ve lost all the people you love, eternal life is a total nightmare.” He closed the pill bottle and leaned against the sill. “As it turns out, I didn’t fully understand the contract. I wasn’t given eternal life. The gods simply extended my life. The fine print stated that the contract would end when the gods saw fit. So you see, I’m not a god. I’m a mortal. The end of my contract means the end of my life.”
I really wanted to read the labels on those pill bottles. Velvet had said Errol was sick. What kind of illness? If it was mental illness I’d probably recognize the names of the drugs. But I was starting to think there might be something more going on besides his delusions.
“Look, I don’t go around telling people I’m Cupid, because it usually gets me into trouble. You tell someone you’re a mythological being and they’ll try to burn you at the stake. Or shove you into an ice bath or fry your brains with electricity.” He clenched his teeth and made a sizzling sound.
In an odd way I suddenly felt better, because of the two of us standing in that bedroom, Errol was clearly the crazier. He thought he was the Roman god Cupid. Sure, I might have heard a voice in my head; sure, I might have gone a bit wacko for a few hours, but I had no delusions about my identity. I wasn’t Isis, or Supergirl, or Bella Swan. I was Alice Amorous, daughter of a semifamous, mentally ill romance writer, who would soon be getting food stamps if her mother didn’t turn in another book. Which I was supposed to be writing. “I gotta go.”
“Wait.” Errol sank onto the stool. “Look, here’s the deal. What’s done is done. You promised to write my story—the story of Cupid and Psyche. One of the greatest love stories of all time. I’ve included all the details in my notes. I’ll tell you anything else you need to know about the story so you can write it, then get it published. You promised.”
I was about to take back my promise, about to point out that it had been made under duress. “It’s a love story?”
“Yes.”
I took a long breath. “Would you say it’s a … romance?”
“Definitely.”
Across the room, in a manila envelope, a story waited to be written. I’d seen the notes, the work he’d put into it, the details. All I’d have to do is piece it together. It sounded so tempting, but it wouldn’t solve my problem because in the end it would be his story, not my mother’s.
Errol tapped his foot. “I know you’re trying to come up with another excuse but there’s no time for excuses. My story must be written soon. In the next few days.”
“The next few days? Are you crazy?” I cringed at my choice of words. “I mean, I’m really busy and—”
“Busy with what?”
“It’s … private.”
Odd shadows fell across Errol’s face as morning sunlight seeped into the room. He suddenly looked very old, as if an ancient face had been projected over his young face, giving me a glimpse of eternity. “If my story isn’t written, then it will be lost. Do you understand? If the story about my only love is lost, then what is the value of my life?” His voice was hushed but fiery, his eyelids trembling. Then he grabbed the manila envelope off the desk. “You must write the story before time runs out. You promised.”
How many promises does a person make over the course of a lifetime? How many of those are kept, how many forgotten or outright broken? With all the ranting about time running out and arrows being shot, I knew that Errol wouldn’t care about my own predicament—that I didn’t have one second to waste on his book or on Realm’s book, or anyone’s book unless it was called Untitled Work in Progress. “I’m sorry but I—”
“Why are you so stubborn? You’re just like her!” he cried.
Her?
He pressed a finger to his temple and closed his eyes. Silence filled the room, interrupted only by the sounds of the moving men. When Errol opened his eyes, he spoke with focused control. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you remind me of someone. Look, I know a few days is not much time. I would have come here sooner but I was … overseas.”
I said nothing. We stared at one another.
“Why are you fighting the truth?” he asked.
The conversation was going nowhere. I folded my pink pajama–clad arms. “Here’s the truth. You threw something at me because you were mad at me or maybe you just wanted to get my attention and it knocked me off my feet. And maybe you’re sorry for doing that, but maybe you’re not. And then a brown recluse spider bit me, just like the doctor said, which is why I couldn’t think straight. But now I’m all better and I don’t have time to write your story. I’ve got my own life and it’s very stressful. You have no idea. NO idea.”
“You kissed me. I suppose you’re going to blame that on the spider.”
The longing might have disappeared, but I remembered the tingle in my stomach when we’d kissed, the warmth of his lips, the strength in his arms around my waist. “It didn’t mean anything,” I said. “I made a huge mistake. It didn’t mean anything.”
Errol’s shoulders fell and he looked away. There he sat in his dingy hoodie, the manila envelope on his lap. At first I couldn’t read his expression, his eyes unmoving, his mouth downturned. But then I recognized the look. It was the same look my mother had worn so many times when I’d visited her at Harmony Hospital.
It was defeat.
In the end, I didn’t want to torment him. Why question his delusions? He was sick. He just wanted someone to pay attention to his story. What difference would it make in my life to pretend to keep my promise?
So I walked into the room and gently took the envelope from his lap.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
As I headed toward the open doorway that would lead me out of the fourth unit and back into my real life, Errol called after me.
“I need to get some rest. Then we’ll start on chapter one.”
THAT wasn’t going to
Outside unit four, I bumped into Mrs. Bobot, who had come upstairs to see what was going on. Having spent the night on my couch, she still wore her bedazzled shirt from yesterday. Her long gray braid had come undone. “Alice, what are you doing up here? Were you in that boy’s bedroom?” she asked, her eyes widening with each word. “In your pajamas?”
“We were just talking.”
“Uh-huh.” She looked me up and down. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. I feel fine. The spider bite is gone.”
“Really? I’m so happy to hear that. You do seem better.” Then she pointed to my hand. “What’s that?”
I hid the envelope behind my back. “It’s just some stuff. Errol wants to be a writer. He was hoping Mom would look at his work.”
“Oh dear. You didn’t tell him, did you? About your mother?”
“Of course not,” I said, my stomach growling. Had I eaten anything since yesterday’s chow mein lunch? “I’d never tell anyone. Never.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Mrs. Bobot tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “I just wanted to make sure. Sometimes we tell our boyfriends things.”
“Errol is not my boyfriend.”
“He’s not your boyfriend?”
“No.” I gripped the envelope. “God, no. I don’t even know him. Not really. I didn’t want him to move here. That Velvet person has it all wrong.”
Mrs. Bobot clasped her hands together and smiled. “What a relief! I’m so glad to hear that. There’s nothing wrong with having a boyfriend, but …” She looked over her shoulder, then stepped closer to me. “But he doesn’t sound like the right boy for you. Velvet said he’s had lots of girlfriends. And I started to worry that you were sneaking around. Do you want him to leave? I think we can get the rental contract nullified.”