Cult Classic(74)

“I like him.”

“Good.”

“It’s clear you won’t harm each other.”

“That’s a shitty thing to say. It’s a relationship, not a Hippocratic oath.”

But he was right. Do no harm. That’s how we became a couple, grafting onto each other’s life until our nights apart became rarities. But somehow, I’d convinced myself this was a bad thing, that the stability was turning us into two beige fabric swatches who humped on occasion. But it was never a bad thing. And if I did feel bored? And if I didn’t like his friends? All I had to do was tell him. Why hadn’t I ever just told him? Most mistakes get made slowly, almost imperceptibly, over time. They do not hinge on a moment of epiphany. But I wanted to be with Max, I had always wanted to be with him. Because this desire had never caused me any grief, I did not know until now how much I wanted it.

“I do love you,” I said, this time feeling the weight of the words.

I walked over to the platform and sat on the corner of the bed in case he didn’t want me there.

“I mean,” I said, correcting myself, “I love you.”

There was a pinch of tears in my eyes.

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you and I don’t think you’re a fabric swatch.”

“What?”

“I’m an asshole and I just really love you. I’m sorry.”

I sank into myself and cried, giving myself over to the kind of full-bodied hysterics people rarely “burst” into. Normally there’s some kind of emotional on-ramp but this was a flash flood. I could not look at him, knowing the contents of the list in my pocket, detailing his flaws as if I had none. I couldn’t seem to close my jaw, which was unhinged in self-pity. My nose was dripping. I may have drooled a little.

“Please don’t break up with me,” I said, shocked at my own wretchedness.

“Jesus, okay,” he said, rubbing my back, trying not to gloat.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sniffling, my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I shut you out and lied to you and got caught up in a weird expensive cult. That was wrong.”

“It’s not a cult.”

“Are we sure?”

“No.” He laughed. “Jin told me that Clive was trying to get everyone to call him ‘Shepherd’ for a while there.”

“That’s not how he tells it.”

“No shit,” Max said, laughing.

For the first time in a long time, I looked at him as you’re supposed to look at someone you adore, like at any minute you will be asked to sketch that person’s face.

“Lola, I know you love me. But all I’ve ever wanted was for you to love me more than you’re sorry. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to talk to me instead of about me.”

He pressed his finger against a raised mole on the back of my neck. I never see it, I just cart it around on my skin like a barnacle.

“I have a whole relationship with this mole. Sometimes, when you’re asleep, I stay up and commune with the mole. Like not molesting the mole. Just sorta talking to it.”

“What do you talk about?”

“What do you think we talk about?”

He pulled me closer and kissed me, telling me I tasted like salt and snot. But I could still smell him. The familiarity of it made me want to fall asleep in his armpit. It also, for the first time in months, made me want to fuck him. The room was getting lighter from the outside now, the sun groggy through the arches. I looked at my phone: 5:30 a.m. I’d never seen the Golconda in daylight. I had the sensation of emerging from a matinee.

“Clive needs better lighting in this room,” Max said, looking up. “It’s like a police station in here.”

I took advantage of this exposure of flesh, putting my face against his neck. He held my hand, squeezing it intermittently. Then he turned the hand over as if jiggling a doorknob. The ring. He was looking for the ring. I could sense him doing the calculus: Having the ring was better than having lost the ring, but having lost the ring was less of an insult than purposely not wearing it. He furrowed his brow. His skin was warm on mine.

“Is there any chance we can talk about that later?”

Then, as if they’d taken Max’s critique to heart, the lights crackled once more and went out.

And that’s when we heard the crash.





18




You were right about one thing, Clive: Much as we like to think of ourselves as hydraulic elevators, we are traction elevators. A traction elevator is beholden to outside forces, like electricity, which the elevator requires to move itself up and down. In a functioning elevator, when the power is lost, there is an electromagnetic brake that gets automatically released. The brake stops the cab of the elevator. In a functioning elevator, there are inspections. Maintenance checks. Code standards. In a functioning elevator, the cab of the elevator has multiple ropes that prevent it from falling should the brake fail as well. It is not, say, an oversized dumbwaiter suspended by a single rope and maintained by a loopy teenager with a dishrag.

I popped my head off Max’s shoulder.

We locked eyes and jumped down from the platform in unison.

Once in the atrium, we saw glass everywhere, spilled across the floor as if the building itself had been holding a stack of it and tripped. The elevator door had automatically opened when the cab hit the ground. I gasped. Max put his palm over my face but released it when he realized there was nothing to see. No Wicked Witch shins flopped out on the marble, though two heavy brass pieces had spun out and scratched the marble floor, like it was a car that had been keyed. But there was no blood. No parts, not of you at least. You were inside the wreckage under a jumble of metal and glass.