Cult Classic(71)

Then I pushed.

The reality of an image both expands and narrows the imagination. It breathes, inhaling the new understanding and exhaling the old one.

The meditation room was two floors high and divided into the women’s entrance hall and the room for Torah study. Moorish arches delineated the space. They were the first things I noticed, the only shapes I could make out, adumbrated by the meager light coming in through a little row of stained glass windows. Beneath them was a wall lined with black binders. I could see the contrast of white strips on them. Labels from a label maker. Probably with the names of men on them. Or Golconda packages. I felt for a light switch, pawing at the wall, but the lights came on before I pressed anything.

I froze, unsure of what I’d done to trigger this flood of electricity. Had I tripped a silent alarm? I squinted. The lights in here were halogen, far less hospitable than the chandeliers. These ones also buzzed.

Then I heard my name.

“Lola.”

I was hallucinating.

“Lola.”

I was not hallucinating.

“Lola!”

How can I describe the speed with which I turned around? Did I whip or did I send my eyes sideways as they do in horror movies? My only memory is of a man who appeared in the middle of the room. A man with a size and shape as familiar to me as my own.

“Max?” I whispered.

Boots gave me a single wave, like he was brushing an image off a screen.





17




I used to have a recurring daydream about the night I met Max. I was the one making it recur, which made its frequency less compelling. Still, it had that same vivid remove from reality that unconscious dreams have. I saw myself on a film loop, almost getting hit by that bus before Pierre’s party. Each time, I stepped into the street. Each time a different man yanked me to safety. Whoosh. Yank. Whoosh. Yank. The hair blows across the face. Whoosh. Yank. The worried male expressions come into focus, one after the other, panic followed by heroism. I had the fantasy while in the shower, while at work, while at the dentist’s office. I was ashamed of the antiquated scenario of it. I am not some helpless woman who lives in a tower. Should I not be the one yanking myself to safety?

It’s just that sometimes you really need a bus pointed out to you.



* * *



Max looked even taller than I remembered after only two weeks away. And perhaps because we were in a temple, a place where people had come to learn and recite and be reprimanded by God’s law, I could feel myself in trouble. Deep trouble. Principal’s office trouble. He looked like he was about to eat me.

“Max?” I repeated.

I tried to will my feet to move. Modern Psychology once did a sidebar on the oversimplification of dividing a fear response into “fight or flight.” This duality left no room for the most common choice: freeze. Most people react to fear with stillness while the heart races and the mind disassociates. They close their eyes and hope the danger passes. Which is what I did. But when I opened my eyes, I was still in this room. Max, stone-faced, walked over to the far wall and returned with two metal folding chairs, which he kicked open.

“When did you get back?”

He looked tired and tense, like he’d just gotten off a flight. He gestured and I sat in the chair across from him.

“That’s your question?” he asked.

“It’s a question. Did you—were you in San Francisco?”

“You want to know if I lied to you? That’s cute.”

“Boots—”

“Don’t. Do not.”

“Max! Did Clive kidnap you? He does that kind of thing now.”

“Yes, I went to San Francisco,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “For two days. I got the contract, incidentally.”

“Congratulations.”

“Oh, shut up.”

I fought to keep my cheeks down. “Shut up” had a long run as the most scandalous phrase available when we were kids, before the full plumage of curse words were introduced.

Now that the lights were on, I could see a platform at the far end of the room with little cubbies, perhaps once used for Hebrew School, now filled with yoga mats, rolled up like Ho Hos. There was also a perfectly made bed and, on the shelf above it, the sculptures Boots had been selling online.

“What in the fuck is going on? Are you the last one?”

“The last one of what? Of the Mohicans?”

“Max.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Maybe start with why you’re here. Or how you know of this place. Or how you got in. I’ll go first: Me, I scaled a dumpster.”

He looked at me as if he were looking straight through me, out the door, out the building. It was the look of someone who wanted to get on a bus and circle the globe until they died. After what felt like a long time, he resumed focus.

“I’ve been here, you idiot. Every night you’ve been here, I’ve been here. Every night you’ve been out, doing God-knows-what with your ex-boyfriends, I’ve been here. Sometimes alone, mostly alone. Sometimes I order takeout, which sucks because getting in and out of here is a thing. Sometimes I sit with these crazy-ass rich freaks in lotus position. They really like to meditate. And don’t worry, Jin used a fresh suction cup on you.”