The Startup Wife(85)

I try to assemble the random assortment of words that are flying around inside my head. “It wasn’t something I ever expected to do. WAI was born on my laptop, an idea that I had when I met the extraordinary man you just heard from.”

“And what happened then?”

“We all just agreed that Cyrus would run it. He was the one who had the rituals in his head, and once we launched, he was the person everyone looked up to.”

“He certainly is a charismatic man. And if you decide to become CEO, what do you think you might change, especially in light of last night’s tragic events?”

“We are all going to have to do a lot of soul-searching,” I say. “Not just us at WAI but at all the tech companies. We have influence across every aspect of human life now. We have to take better care of our communities.”

“Before we finish, I know our listeners out there are wondering—are you and Cyrus Jones going to remain a couple?”

I feel the tug of the fake lashes that are glued to my eyelids. “This project was a partnership from the start,” I say. “It will always be that.”

I’m led offstage. By the time Tina and I exit the building, there are cameras and microphones in our way. Tina takes a pair of sunglasses out of her bag and I put them on, and it’s like a wall has gone up between me and the world. “You did great,” she whispers, then she ushers me forward, where a car door is held open.

Jules is waiting for me inside the car. We drive downtown, the traffic still light at this early hour. He takes my hand. “We fired Marco,” he says. “Charlie made him sign everything over to us, so we can do whatever we want with the tech.”

“Burn it,” I say. Then I say, “A lot of people loved AfterLight, didn’t they?”

“It’s possible that we were trying to do something important. But it doesn’t matter now. It was too dangerous.” He is still holding my hand. “Cyrus is right, you know. It should be you. It should always have been you.”

“What’s going to happen?” I ask him.

“Come stay with us,” Jules says. “Gaby will cook, and we can sing duets and drive him crazy.”

I smile, grateful, and tell him I’ll think about it. But I feel like he’s talking about a totally different group of people. Not ones who just killed a man because they couldn’t stop what they were doing for long enough to consider the consequences.



* * *



Cyrus is curled on top of the blankets. He’s wearing his coat, but he’s taken off his shoes, which lie in a pile along with his hat, gloves, and scarf. He’s asleep; he doesn’t stir even as I lean over and lightly kiss the top of his head. I want to wake him up right away, but I also need a moment to take it all in. Cyrus, in our bed. Home.

I pace the apartment. Then I make myself sit down and reply to the frantic messages from my parents, and I send about a dozen emails to people who need to know that things are under control. My fingers are shaky on the keyboard, but inside I am strangely calm, working through the messages, saying what I have to say, reassuring, in control. Then I wander around the apartment again and eat an egg I boiled yesterday.

I pad up the stairs and find that Cyrus hasn’t moved, he’s still lying there on his side with his face pressed against the pillow and his hands between his knees. I get into bed beside him, and he stirs, removes his coat, and gets under the blanket with me. I nudge closer until I can feel the heat of his body radiating toward me, till I can smell his exhaled breath, which is so familiar it makes my own breath stop in my chest. He stirs, and then we are kissing, softly but urgently. Our bodies edge closer, our hands reaching toward each other. He mumbles tenderly to me, I hear him saying he loves me. He dips his head and grazes my neck with his lips, and then he unbuttons my shirt and everything is hazy and dreamlike, the want growing inside me as he shifts his body and presses on top of me. Cyrus. The tender yield of his skin, the rhythm and weight of his body, so familiar. I keep my eyes closed and let out a small cry. Cyrus.

We sleep. I wake up and it’s dusk, and there are about a hundred messages on my phone, so I turn it off. I put my hand on Cyrus’s face and he stirs, opens his eyes.

“I used my key. I hope you don’t mind.” And then: “I love you so much, Asha.”

“I love you too.”

“I killed Stephen.”

“You didn’t.”

“He wanted to stop, I know he did. He just didn’t give me enough time. We were talking about his wife, how they had gone all the way to this little town in Kerala to get married. That’s the first time he had asked the platform for a ritual, and it had sent him halfway across the world. And he talked about how his wife had said that she felt her soul belonged in India even though she had never left Connecticut. He told me all of that. He talked and talked. But then, when I begged him to come down, when I said, ‘Put the lighter down and you can tell me the rest,’ this other look came over him, as if he was being taken over by something else, and he just turned around and then he was on fire.”

Cyrus is crying now. “I ran toward him, but he had poured the gasoline everywhere and I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t even get close.” I feel him shake and I tighten my arms around him.

“It’s okay,” I say. I rub his back. I keep talking, soothing, reassuring.