The Elizas: A Novel(73)

Kiki grins. “Classic!” Then she leans closer. “That said, you need to hold on to him. You need to be careful.”

I frown. “How so?”

She fiddles with her straw. “Don’t go out as much.”

“What are you talking about?”

She studies me carefully. “Steadman saw you at this club he likes. Kosmos, I think? You were talking to some guy.”

I give her a crooked, incredulous smile. “That’s impossible.”

“That’s what I said, but he was sure it was you. Just watch it, okay? He said Kosmos has this website where they take pictures of the crowd. Don’t get snapped in one. I’d hate for Desmond to find out.”

“Kiki. There’s nothing to find out. I haven’t been to any of those places.”

Kiki looks at me carefully. I can tell what she’s thinking. How do you really know, Eliza, if you can’t remember everything else? But I have a witness. Desmond can vouch for where I’ve been every night, because every night I’ve been with him. Except for the few nights when he’s had a conference emergency, but even then I’d hung back at the apartment and watched TV. A doorman could corroborate my whereabouts. Or Stefan. Right?

At the imaging center, an assistant smiles at me and hands me a form to fill out. I list that a year ago, I’d been at UCLA for surgery. I list my doctor, Dr. Forney, and his address and phone. Kiki checks her phone while we wait; after its battery dies, we pass the time by watching Rachael Ray force her guest, some actress I’ve never heard of, make duck ragout with her. There’s a lot of fake laughter that makes me feel jittery.

They call my name, and I walk through the door and into a long hall. In a small room, I change into a gown and lie down on the table. They start the IV of dye, which warms my body slightly but otherwise feels like nothing. After a few minutes, I’m led into another room where they slide me into the long, dark, metal tube, the walls closing around me. I wince at the earsplitting sounds of machinery and play Beethoven’s Ninth loudly in my head. The lyrics and melody of a 311 song I may have listened to with Leonidas come back to me in a rush, and I let the whole thing play out, realizing I know every word. I feel an itch coming on, and I’m about to scratch it, when I hear a voice: Don’t scratch. They’ll be mad at you. They’ll sequester you to the ICU for this.

My eyes open wide inside the tube. The clicking sounds of the MRI machinery rush back, loud and urgent, as though I’ve woken from a dream. The ICU. But I was never there. Dot was, as a child. So why was the memory so vivid? Why did I suddenly and distinctly remember the pull in my chest as a nurse pushed my wheelchair down the hall? Where was I going? Is it just a dream? I follow the memory to its end. I remember glancing at my face in a mirror as we passed. There’s a child staring back. Eight, nine years old—a knockoff Wednesday Addams—but it’s my eyes, my face. Only, there’s no way. I wasn’t in a wheelchair at nine.

Was I?

Count backward from ten . . .

The banging sound stops, and the silence is earsplitting. Slowly, the tube moves, ejecting me. I blink in the beady overhead lights. The nurse smiles above me. “We’re all done. You do okay in there?”

“Yes,” I think I say. I feel my arms, my legs, and my stomach to make sure they’re still intact. I want my body to feel different, smaller, lighter, more slippery. Like that of an arachnid that’s just fumbled out of its egg, blind and ignorant to the world into which it’s just been thrown. But it’s just the same old me.

? ? ?

It’s Sunday. I am lying on Desmond’s bed, my ear against his stomach. It is dusk; lavender light has cloaked the room. I can hear the gurgle of his digestive juices. I can also hear him turning the pages. I’m letting him read The Dots. It’s time. The book comes out in two days.

He is focusing so intently on the page it’s as if he is turning each of the words upside down and shaking them for change. I want to get up and go somewhere else—it is torture, lying here, watching him read, trying to gauge what he’s thinking—and yet I cannot move. I can’t go into another room and pretend to occupy my thoughts. I want to know immediately, the very moment he finishes.

Finally, he marks a page, closes the book with a slap, and looks at me. “Well.”

“Well?” I practically shriek. “That’s all you can say? Well?”

“Well.” He runs his hand over his hair. “It’s . . . exigent. Like a pandemic.”

“Is that bad?”

He gathers me in his arms. “Of course not. That’s good. I’m not quite at the end,” he adds. “But I feel like it’s going to be tragic.”

I nod. He is right.

“But in an apropos way. Shakespearean, yes?”

“Don’t compare me to Shakespeare.” I let out a sigh. “So why does my mother hate it? Did I make the mother too unyielding? Too much of a bitch?”

“It’s definitely raw, but she’s not that bad. I mean, she’s sort of absent, she’s sort of angry, but she clearly cares.”

“So why did my mother get so offended?”

“I guess it hit too close to home for her.” He scratches his chin. “Roxanne’s going to ask you that, you know. How your family is taking it, if you have any regrets.”