The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards: A Novel Read online

  “Julian’s novel,” I replied.

  “He’s a writer?” she said, clutching her throat as if the pills she’d swallowed might come back up. “I thought he was rich.”

  “Well,” I said. “He’s a very good writer. But that’s not why he’s rich.”

  She skimmed the first few lines, and the look on her face did not improve. I reached over and pushed the papers down below the edge of the door so Julian couldn’t see them as he returned.

  “He’ll go berserk if he thinks anyone’s been reading it,” I said.

  “Well, isn’t that the whole point?” Bethany asked.

  “It isn’t done yet. He’s a perfectionist.”

  The truth was that he’d never let me read a page of it, and he’d been working on it for as long as we’d known each other. Even now that it had a publisher and the advance check had been cashed, he wouldn’t let me see it. I strongly suspected that his increasing mania over the past few weeks was a result of realizing that, now that it was slated to be published—now that he no longer even technically owned it—that soon people would actually be reading it.

  “Well, you’ve read it,” Bethany said.

  “I haven’t,” I lied.

  I had. I had read every draft. I had read it while Julian was occupied by alcoholic stupors and off on pharmaceutical benders. I had read it again just the night before, while I’d been moping about whether to break up Evelyn’s wedding. The book was good. In fact, it was extremely good.

  “But I’m sure it’s good,” I added hastily.

  “You’re lying,” she smiled. “The only person you can’t lie to is a better liar.”

  “I’ve heard that,” I admitted with a grin, as she shoved the book back into the bag while we waited for Julian.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said finally. From the look on her face I could tell what she wanted to know. She kept glancing at Julian behind the rocks, then down at the radio, still quietly playing its opera. “Is he . . . uhm . . . ?”

  “Indeed,” I said. “I’m assuming he didn’t exactly consummate the marriage?”

  She giggled and leaned in secretively. “It’s all a joke. We’re not really married. He just wants everyone to think he is. We’re going to have a terrific fight at the wedding reception and call the whole thing off.”

  I began laughing as I grabbed her hand and held her ring up to the light.

  “Cubic zirconia,” she giggled.

  “So, what? Is he paying you?”

  She nodded mischievously. “I’ve had stranger requests.”

  “So you’re a . . . uhm . . . ?” I asked. Now it was my turn to be too embarrassed to finish my question.

  “Escort,” she said cheerfully. We both turned, silently, to see what had become of Julian. He was still behind the rocks—either making quite a number one or having moved on to orders of greater magnitude.

  It wasn’t unlike Julian to try to upstage the most grandiose wedding I’d ever heard of. Not that I wasn’t hoping to upstage it myself. Still, I wondered. Was this Julian’s lunacy, ever-increasing? First there’d been the incident with the hummingbird feeder, which he’d hung out of our twelfth-story window and watched for days, though no bird ever came, humming or otherwise. Then there’d been the episode at Petrossian with the high-heeled shoes and all the oyster shells. And last week, there’d been the disappearance of Mrs. Menick’s always-barking shih tzu puppy. There’d been the scratch marks on Julian’s left arm. And then a cabbie had found “Shihtzy” a day or two later, outside Hempstead, Long Island. The dog was doing just fine now, except that she had yet to emit even a single bark or whimper since her disappearance.

  “Why?” I asked Bethany, finally. “Why would he hire you to be his fake wife?”

  Bethany shrugged, the desert sunlight glancing off her bare shoulders as she eased back against the headrest falling under the grips of whatever medicine she’d found in the bag. “I just do what I’m paid for. You’d have to ask Julian.”

  I considered this, but then I noticed my roommate, having removed all his clothing, running through the bramble and dust. Golden-hued in the noon sun, he flew with arms wide and fingers stretched wider, like Icarus.

  The best thing to do—usually—was to let him play these things out. Who was I to tell a genius it was time to put his clothes back on?

  “You tell me a secret now,” Bethany giggled, sliding over toward me and laying her head down on my shoulder as I looked at my watch. We had time.

  “I’m going to ruin the wedding,” I said. “I’m in love with the bride and I’m going to tell her not to go through with it.”

  Bethany cackled madly, as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Then she kissed me, deeply, and I felt her climbing on top of me, blocking out the warmth of the desert sun. Julian was still off howling in the distance. “That’s so romantic,” she breathed in my ear, as her hands searched downward. I could have stopped her but I didn’t. A hundred miles away, Dr. Avinash Singh would be promising Mr. Demont to secure eternal dharma, artha, and kama for his daughter. And Mr. Demont would be pouring sacred water as a symbol of his acceptance of the arrangements. Then he and his first former wife would place a conch shell in Evelyn’s hands, filled with gold and fruit and flowers, completing the ritual of Kanyadaan and granting their permission for the wedding to proceed.

  We arrived three hours later—not exactly on time, but by no means too late.

  • • •

  I’d heard that the Grand Canyon is the only thing in the world that lives up to the hype when you finally see it. While I can’t speak to the hype of everything else in this world, I can confirm that the Grand Canyon does, indeed, live up to its own. Sheer walls fell down and down for miles, changing from blood-dusty reds to golden sandstone and back again. At the very bottom was an acid snake of green and black, river water running lazily in places, as still as glass, and in others it roared and rampaged in frothy rapids. For the first time I half understood Avinash’s hesitance to stray very far from it. No one inch of it was like the inch above it, or below, and there were more inches of it than any of us could ever see in ten lifetimes.

  The wedding ceremony was to take place on Grandview Point, on the traditional mandap, a prominent raised stage covered in flowers, which contains the Agni—the Sacred Fire. Around this dais, to allow guests some shelter from the heat, were two rows of white tents, the dry wind blowing them all a little westerly. Here the aristocracies of both Manhattan and Mumbai were gathered, the women in gowns that could walk a red carpet and saris and veils woven of gold and the threads of Bombay’s finest silkworms; the men wore Armani tuxedos and sherwanis and ornate, flower-covered turbans. The air surrounding the bar was thick with jasmine and Chanel No. 5. Our landing party quickly appropriated glasses of Scotch and moved over to dutifully admire the chasm. Far off from the proceedings was an incongruous elephant, finished with its journey and resting happily under a shade. And even the elephant looked pathetically small, with the canyon behind it.

  “Oh, I do not like this one bit,” said Julian loudly, of the canyon. He had been successfully cleaned up and re-dressed at eighty-five miles per hour by the industrious Bethany.

  “Makes one feel rather small, eh?” chuckled a bald-headed guest with the distinctive look of a doctor.

  “Yes, it does make one,” Julian agreed. “And when one doesn’t prefer to feel as small as one does, it is certainly time one does something about it.”

  He raised a pill bottle directly to his lips and tossed back an unknown quantity of its contents into his mouth. The balding doctor looked somewhat alarmed as Julian passed the orange plastic cylinder to Bethany, who daintily tapped two out into her palm.

  “Vertigo,” I explained to the bald man. “Crippling cases. The both of them.”

  The man rejoined the crowd, mumbling something about being off duty. Soon people were giving the three of us a bit of a wider berth. I knew Julian well enough to know that he did this, at le
ast somewhat, by design. He seemed at peace, however, there beside the empty chasm.

  Not only was the canyon more beautiful than anything I could ever hope to produce—and so big that it defied comprehension—but it was also literally as old as the very life on Earth. The rocks at the top were an unimaginable 230 million years old, and the ones at the bottom were more than 2 billion years old. And it had endured. It had endured because it was nothing. Because it was only an abscess. An absence. A void that patiently expanded and that nothing could ever fill.

  I watched Julian watching the canyon. I wondered what he was thinking about it. What else did he see that I could not see? What more did it mean to him that I would never understand?

  “Julian McGann!” called someone from the crowd. “Didn’t think I’d see you here!” A trim boy with owlish glasses emerged, and I was sure he was a classmate from the prep school where Julian and Evelyn had done their time together.

  “Charles!” Julian said in the high pitch I knew he used when he was, in fact, cursing the very gods for this surprise. “May I introduce my wife, Bethany?”

  Charles nearly fell over at this announcement, which I imagined was just the sort of reaction that Julian had been hoping for, especially with so many old schoolmates bound to be there—and with so many, like Charles, I imagined, who had been with Julian in many a darkened broom closet. Was this why he’d planned the whole Bethany deception?

  In that moment, I felt a rare kind of pity: the sort that comes only when you feel it for the person of whom you are the most envious.

  While Julian was distracted, I tailed a bridesmaid in an ornate mulberry sari back to a wide white tent, where I’d hoped to find Evelyn. I didn’t know just what I’d say to her, but I had decided not to overthink it. For years now we’d danced in circles. She’d let me lead for a while and then I’d let her. But now we were at the end of it. She didn’t love this geologist. I’d seen it in her eyes on six of the seven preceding nights. Probably she was expecting me to stand up during the ceremony and object in some dramatic fashion—and I would—if she wanted that particular drama to unfold. But wouldn’t it be kinder, and ultimately less tiring for each of us, just to slip away before things got going? If we did it now, the assembled Singhs could all be back in Vegas in time for dinner and a Tom Jones show.

  There were far too many mothers and bridesmaids and junior wedding planners circling the main entrance to the tent, so I worked my way around to the back, where I gently untied a flap in the tent fabric and peered inside.

  Evelyn sat alone on a white-padded stool, staring into a mirror, putting makeup on with a gentle touch. She was more stunning than I’d ever seen her before—more radiant than the desert sunlight, more magnificent than the canyon beneath it. Every few seconds, she looked down at a photograph in her left hand—a picture of an Indian woman in traditional bridal makeup. I’d been to many of her shows but I’d never gone backstage to her tiny dressing rooms. I’d never seen her do this before.

  She touched a brush to a rouge in a small plum-colored container and painted it onto her lips with careful strokes. I’d seen her wear the same color on stage. It made her lips catch the light, she always said, so every seat in the house could make out each quiver and curl. Some acted with their hands; others, their eyes; but as I watched her, for the first time I realized that Evelyn acted with her lips. She studied them in the mirror, trying out the various possibilities. She pursed; she pouted. She bit the lower one, then the upper. She let them twitch a little. I caught a rare glimpse of tongue, running across them. Then an even rarer smile—the corners drawing back like the panels on a pair of velvet curtains.

  She looked away, once, toward the door to the tent. Was she looking for me? Was she wondering if I would come? If I would stop her? Was she wondering if she would stop, if I did come? She lifted another brush to her eyelids and shadowed them over. There was no spark behind them now. And if I did nothing? Would she and Avinash settle down here, in the desert, while he chipped away at pebbles? Would his parents buy them a Frank Lloyd Wright manse in Los Angeles, where she and I would pass the time as always, no change but for a ring she’d remove beforehand? What if he finished his work and they returned to India? How far would I follow?

  She set down the eye shadow and lifted another brush to her lashes. They were long and dark, and her hands were now sienna with the dye. Only that single circle was still exposed. I wanted to press my thumbs to it and push, down and outward. Wipe away the mehndi in all directions. Perhaps tonight—if we took the Shelby Cobra we would be at the coast in five hours—we could wade into the salted waters of the Pacific and let the colors wash away. We could head south into Mexico, where no one would ever find us. We could return east, and hope the scandal blew over with the seasons. In the vineyards in the north we could drink until we forgot who we’d ever been. West seemed the only proper way to go, and yet there was only a little more west left. On the other side of the ocean was just the world again, and eventually we’d come back to where we’d begun, and still nothing would have changed.

  Evelyn turned away from the mirror and bent down to lift something from her bag, a small painting in a golden frame. I wanted to see it more closely, but suddenly a car horn honked, somewhere off on the side of the canyon. I lifted my head from the flap and looked out at the chasm. There was a faint echo as the blaring sound kissed the edge and bounced back. And then nothing. The noise was swallowed up and gone. The source of the noise was a silver Bentley that had nearly rear-ended a Rolls-Royce. The Rolls honked back, and this time the sound was like a whisper, as it journeyed the other way, into miles of desert. The two cars stayed, squared off there, in the middle of the small sea of limousines and Town Cars. Each refused to let the other by, and the Beamers and Benzes began to pile up behind them, all honking their horns in time, like seconds ticking in a snarled clock, and vanishing into the empty canyon. Red-vested valets started scrambling over, their hands clamped to their ears protectively. There, in the heart of the lot, the sound of all those pricey cars making their urgent demands must have been deafening, but it was barely audible from where I stood, just a hundred yards away.

  All around me, the wedding preparations spun on, last-minute affairs being quickly settled. Florists hung heart-shaped slipper orchids from the tent poles; caterers sailed about with silver trays of curried prawns. A harpist and three accompanying sitar players argued over some detail in the sheet music. Two of the bridesmaids rushed by, carrying an industrial sewing machine. Looks of desperation were written on their faces. Something had to be hemmed, or mended. Everything had to be perfect.

  How many millions had it all cost? The white silk tents? The single-malt Scotch and the imported flowers and the jet fuel and the fucking elephant?

  It was at this moment that Julian’s fist suddenly connected with my jaw. The entire Grand Canyon at once swerved upward into a right angle as my body crumpled to the ground.

  Julian’s other fist connected with my neck, and the first again with my shoulder blade. What he lacked in aim he more than made up for in enthusiasm.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he seethed.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I managed to gasp. Julian’s eyes were as dark and impenetrable as ever. Was he seriously trying to stop me?

  “You slept with my wife!” He began dragging me away from the tent so that Evelyn would not hear.

  “Your—. She’s a fucking escort, Julian!”

  But he didn’t seem to hear me. Was this it? Had his nominal ties to reality finally been severed? Had the pharmaceuticals chewed through? Or was it whatever else was wrong—whatever had always been wrong—in the wormy folds of his brain? I managed to shove him off me. I tasted blood in my mouth.

  “No, I’m saying you just slept with her. An hour ago. And now you’re going to go in there and ask Evelyn to run off with you?”

  Suddenly I felt deeply ashamed. I had hardly thought about the escort. She’d barely seemed real. Regardless,
I charged at Julian and threw a punch that connected up around his eye and sent him staggering backward.

  “You’re out of your mind!” I spat, releasing a thin stream of blood that disappeared into the dry earth. “You’re completely insane! You know that, right?”

  He flinched but agreed. “Definitely,” he said, brushing himself off. “Definitely I am. But at least I try to make a point of only ruining my own life.”

  His eye was swelling, and I imagined that by morning it would be a lovely shade of eggplant. I didn’t even want to think about what my own face would look like.

  “You really think you love her,” he said, surprised.

  “Of course I love her, you idiot. I’ve loved her since the moment we met. Since the moment you sent her off to roam the college with me because you were too caught up in your damn story to spend any time with her.”

  “God,” he said, rolling his eyes in desperation.

  “What, you think she doesn’t love me?” I challenged, ready to remind him about six of the past seven nights.

  “I don’t know if she loves you or not, you solipsistic son of a bitch, but I hope to hell she doesn’t! Because what I do know is that you don’t love her at all.” Julian shook his head. “You’ve gotten just good enough to fool yourself, haven’t you?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped.

  “It’s fiction!” he shouted. “She’s just this character to you. Both of us are! And we always have been. You don’t know what goes on in our heads. You don’t know where we come from or who we are . . . Can you even tell the difference anymore between what you’ve written about her and who she really, truly is?”

  I didn’t understand what he was talking about. Clearly he was losing it.

  “But how could you?” he continued. “You’ve made everything up—even yourself, for God’s sake. Well, here’s the truth. Let me remind you—The Biography of You: Son of a man who had a layover in Newark and the flight attendant who brought him peanuts with a smile that afternoon. Recipient of a Vacheron Constantin watch that your mother found wedged between two first-class seats and stole for you, so you’d be able to count the hours she’d abandoned you. One-time escort—paid escort—to a debutante ball and introduced to high society as a character from a Wilkie Collins novel. You project these fantasies onto us. It’s fun playing the people you think we are, but this is where it stops. This isn’t some story anymore; this is her life. And you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to.”