Love Is Red (8 page)

I knew a girl in college whose boyfriend, it was rumored, hit her. She was a well-educated woman. She had long dark hair and a good laugh. She wasn't a close friend, but even I could see that she wore sunglasses when there was no sun. She wore turtlenecks on warm days. Everyone wondered,
Why doesn't she leave him?

I think she moved to Canada. We lost touch.

“Katherine,” Sael calls again, “come to bed.”

I stand looking at the knife in my hand.

“Katherine?”

I put the knife down. I turn and walk back into his room, closing the door behind me.

 

It is sunny in Central Park on this Sunday. Hot. Humid. There is tension in the air, fear and sex humming like low voices on the radio. Picnics sprout up like mushrooms. All over the grass, pale skin meets the sun. Hairy men lie determinedly on their stomachs, and a couple of guy friends throw a Frisbee, a little too hard, to one another.

You see couples draped all over the lawn—what better than to be in love and be slightly inappropriate about it? What is the point of affection if not to rub it in everyone else's face? Friends shimmy up a tree. A redhead with generous breasts, her white tummy spilling over her pink jeans, is surprisingly quick; there's a bearded guy and another man who would be good-looking if not for a flush of terrible acne.

You see amazing amounts of food—potato chips and baked pita chips, potato salad, tabouli salad, hummus and a block of cheddar—and there's Brie, homemade cookies, a pan filled with gooey brownies, their surface finger-swiped, plastic knives and plastic forks and the usual surreptitious search for a bottle opener, but that's for the later part of the day; it's still too hot to drink. There's the obligatory fruit salad, watermelon quietly wilting. There's orange juice and lemonade and water in big plastic
bottles, even ice, though it's melting. The guy who comes from Colombia bonds with the Frenchman over the stupidity of having to conceal one's alcohol.

There are people in the park passing out pamphlets. One guy holds a sheaf out but he's not looking at you, only gazing at those two girls on the beach towel. He'll make his way over there. The blonde in the pink bikini is particularly fetching.

You take one of the pamphlets from his unresisting hand. The front says “Heaven's True.” There's a single tree in the shape of a cross. A solitary leaf grows on the lowest right-hand branch, but the leaf is red and shaped like a drop of blood. Nice touch, you think. Eye-catching.

Inside the pamphlet declares the world has become an evil place, that sin and suffering abound. The pamphlet says that the Antichrist is coming, that soon the Beast will be upon us and all will have to take the mark or die. The pamphlet says that only in the love and the blood of Jesus Christ will all be saved. It speaks not only of love but also of sacrifice, and asks, “What would you sacrifice for the Lord?”

Yeah, Heaven's something, I don't remember. I've seen a bunch of pamphlets stuck up in the subways. End-times shit, “only a few shall be saved,” “the marks he carves are the signs of the Beast” kind of thing. Fucking fanatics, it's probably one of them.

Thanks to you, faith is questioned and reaffirmed and questioned again. Why does such a thing happen?

I hope they knew Jesus, I hope they got right with God.

At least it got one thing right.

You casually make the pamphlet into a paper plane and sail it softly out onto the still air. You lie back down. You shade your eyes with a book. The sun is warm on your face and neck, soaks through your shirt. The air is filled with the shrieks of laughter; the grass is springy under the towel beneath your back; your legs are bent, your toes spread.

A breeze springs up, and so do two policemen. One group of furtive-looking thirty-somethings near you mutters as the police draw closer—
If you have booze put it away, put it away!
—but the policemen are not looking for stray bottles. They are looking for a little boy.
Have you seen him?

The cops don't ask you; you appear to be sleeping, lying back on the towel with a book over your face. But you never sleep.

The parents must be going crazy.

And that's not the only thing either, what with, what with—

They don't even want to say your name, as if by mere mention they'll conjure you up.

In a way, that's true. You
are
called; you
are
summoned.

You know exactly where that little boy is. You can smell him. All the way across Sheep Meadow. You think about it and then you slowly get up; you amble over and ask the group if they'll keep an eye on your stuff, your friends haven't arrived yet (roll of the eyes). Want to see if you can spot them. Maybe they're lost.

Sure, no problem.
You seem nice. Reading the
New York Times
and you have a book, a bottle of water, a little basket. You're like them. Maybe slightly better-looking but a sweet smile; you're shy. They think about asking you to join their Frisbee game when you get back.

You walk away, hesitant at first, still in their vision, and then you veer a little; the cops go one way and you another.

The cops are old, older than most. It's not a hard post, Central Park. Under the midday sun on the weekend no trouble is (was) expected.

You walk deeper into the park; there are balloons, and a large group of children, a birthday party? Even two. The parents young, determinedly cheerful, showing off their parenting skills to other parents, calling their children old-fashioned names. The girl's names start with vowels, Olivia and Elizabeth, Ava and Amelia—
Isabelle, come here!
The boys are biblical, Jacobs and Noahs and Matthews and Elijahs, all stomping and running and crying and laughing, and rolling around in the grass and eating bits of dirt. The parents are exhausted. They long to sleep. They do not see the little boy who is playing a little game in the shadow of a giant gnarled oak. This little kid is good at blending in.

But you see him. He is not like the others. You wonder what he is. You call out to the boy with your mind to see if he can hear you. He turns to you without a sound, away from the other children, and gazes at you with his huge shining eyes. You gaze back. You are enthralled. It is wonderful, like coming across an animal you have not seen before. You hold out your hand.

He comes over, looks but doesn't take it.

You walk together side by side and there is the distraught woman dragging her own bewildered son. She sees the boy with you, shrieks, draws him into an embrace. “Lucas! Oh my God!”

Pure relief is the color of a ripe peach.

Bystanders clap; the heaviness stealing over people's hearts evaporates as the air lifts, the wind wandering elsewhere to stir up trouble. You smile, give half a shrug,
no big deal
.

She turns to you, still hugging him. “Oh my God, thank you. Where did you find him?”

“Just over on the other side of the hill near a children's party. He was fine.”

“Bless you.” Her shoulders droop. Her relief is now giving way to defensive embarrassment, a smeary shade of puce. “I swear they were just here playing and when I looked again—”

“I totally understand.” You are sympathetic, nonjudgmental. “My sister's having a heck of a time with her own.”

She smiles at this, blinks back tears. “Well, thank you again, really, from the bottom of my heart.”

She turns to the two small boys. Her voice has a wheedling, cheery note. “Well, that was an adventure, wasn't it? I think we've earned ourselves some ice cream!”

Please, please don't make this into a big deal. Please don't tell your mother.

You watch as they head off down the slope of grass toward an ice cream cart. Once more, you call silently to the little boy. Again, he looks back at you. You waggle your fingers at him as you whisper, “Bye-bye, Lucas. See you soon.”

His thumb finds his mouth as he turns back around.

Your actions have earned the admiration of another woman sitting on the grass, who has taken her headphones off and is shading her eyes to look up at you.

She's ironic, dry, her method of flirting like mustard, a trifle sharp with some bite, but underneath she's impressed.

“Wow. New sheriff in town, huh? Superman?”

You joke back, with a straight face, “Shucks, ma'am, weren't hardly nothin'.” You tip an imaginary hat.

She wants to know how you knew. She's impressed with the
way you helped the child to reunite with the adult. How modest you are. And good with children. “Do you have kids? That was awesome.”

You say how you heard the cops talking about it; it was sheer dumb luck, good timing. Luck and timing. How true this is for so many things.

The police have drifted over, only to be told that the work is done; you wave and smile. You're already walking back to your towel. There's no question of you taking the child. They saw you sleeping. They give you the thumbs-up, thumbs-up from the police. The law, as necessary as salt. The moment you don't have it, you notice its absence.

You should get back to your friends.

Wave of disappointment.
Typical. Girlfriend, so obvious.

She jokes with her friends that men smell need. In her heart she knows it's true.

Why is it always the good ones?

In this city where it feels like there's a million women for each single man she feels like a fool.

But then, as you turn, you say something to her. And everything changes. Funny how the world tips and spins on a series of syllables.

You feel her eyes upon you as you slowly stroll back to the group of people who were watching your stuff, the ones who will ask you presently to join their Frisbee game. Clearly you're a popular guy with all those friends, no loner, no creep. Not that guy dominating the news, the knife guy, what's his name? Scythe Man? No, it's on the tip of her clever tongue. Anyway. Nothing bad can happen on a Sunday in the sun, not when she's spending the day stretched out, melting like gum and rocked gently by the music in her ears.

Wistfulness is apricot, the color of the rose that your crush wore to the dance and the last patch of the sky above you when you sat alone at a white linen table, pretending to have a good time; it feels like the smallest, tiniest toe of a baby's foot, a baby who isn't yours; it tastes like the fuzzy warmed skin of a summer fruit; it echoes like the tap of a microphone being tested.

She holds what you said close, teases it out like the last bite of brownie, sweet and dark in her mind.

I might have to come back to check on you. Clearly it's easy to get lost in this park.

She had smiled. “Just in case I go missing?”

She's right. You'd hate for that to happen. And after all, who knows who's lurking around in this huge and sunlit expanse of green. Who knows?

You know.

At the tree you get ready to join the Frisbee game, and just before you do, you turn and give her a quick thumbs-up. She smiles; she's been waiting, getting a little nervous; she won't have to wait much longer, though.

Thanks to you.