Chrysalis, p.2
Chrysalis, page 2
I spent so many years as a monkey, forcing my grimace into a smile as I clambered my way up. And I’d started lower than any other monkey I’d ever met on that tree. I’m grateful for where I came from—few people understand the gifts that come from growing up poor. But I didn’t want to stay that way. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been driven to achieve.
And I’d done it. I’d hand-washed the one uniform at a time my mother could ever afford every single night. Each morning, I’d put it on a little damp before I took two buses and a train to reach my posh private school. It wasn’t cool to be younger, or smarter, or to be on scholarship, but I made it through. I got what I needed in terms of book study, but the real calculus I’d learned was getting people to like me. The difference between what I came from and what I’ve become is hard to fathom. But the saying is true—you can take the boy out of the South Side, but you can’t take the South Side out of the boy. Even now, in $8,000 custom-tailored suits, some part of me feels that I don’t belong.
“It’s nice to see you, Michael,” Alicia says, smiling hopefully as I walk into my private conference room. She’s my first meeting and, as always, she’s on time. She looks to be in her late twenties, has short, smartly-cut blonde hair, a gorgeous figure and is the object of many an office crush.
She’s been cold to the advances of other men. Yet, I can tell she’s interested in me. She’s offered to show me around Sydney four times in the nine months since I started coming here. I’ve politely declined each time, but she’s not taking the hint.
“Morning, Alicia,” I say neutrally, pretending not to notice that she’s pulled out the seat next to her at the conference table.
She has her laptop open, and some papers out, but I don’t take the bait. I sit across from her at the table and pick up the television remote.
“Why don’t you put what you’ve got up on the monitor?”
Experience has taught me not to sound like too much of a dick when I’m trying to give off the “don’t even think about it” vibe. Acting like a pompous jackass is a turn-on for some women.
“I’ll just lower the lights, then, so that we don’t get glare.”
Alicia hits the button that lowers the blinds a second before she turns down the dimmer on the overheads. She then closes the door that I’ve intentionally left open.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Before the door clicks shut, my finger is on the speakerphone button of the Polycom and I’ve dialed Kat’s extension.
“Would you mind coming in to take notes, please?” I ask evenly while avoiding Alicia’s questioning eyes.
Kat sails into the room a moment later and I give her a grateful look. As my head assistant and the manager of all the admins, there’s nothing she doesn’t know. She sits silently, but gives Alicia a look that says she’s got her number before training her eyes to the TV.
We spend the next ninety minutes poring over Alicia’s designs. She’s talented, and normally I would be thrilled to work with her. The project we’re talking about is exciting, and, professionally, this has been a good move. The aesthetics of architecture in this part of the world are different, and I’ll learn a lot, even in a role as hands-off as mine.
The rest of the day is more meetings, more feedback to give to juniors, a call with a client, and a late afternoon call with Dale, the firm’s founder, my boss and the Managing Partner in the Chicago office. I’ve been open with him about having affairs to settle back in Chicago, and he knows this is the first day I’m in the Sydney office for real.
Because he thinks he’s hilarious, he’s sent me an enormous welcome basket full of nothing but Vegemite. There are jars, tubes, and even single-size mini-servings of this abhorrent spread and a huge yellow ribbon that matches the label. The first time I was here, we had breakfast together and he lightly recommended that I try it. I actually gagged a little. And he’s never let me live it down.
By the time I get home, my lack of sleep has caught up with me. The housekeeper has stocked my fridge, and I whip up some chicken and vegetables to bake in the oven while I slog through a run. Running feels better than it should for someone so tired. I’m exhausted by the end, but running five miles actually makes me feel normal.
I watch the news channel that I’ve taken a liking to, still not totally understanding or caring about all of Australia’s current events but watching just the same. It’s the only sensible thing to do while I eat. I shower again, don’t bother to attempt reading, and stare at the photo of Darby on my phone for a full fifteen minutes before drifting off to sleep.
“Randy.”
I hear the guilt in my voice as I say my friend’s name. He’s been trying to get a hold of me for weeks. He knows how busy I get, but this is the first time I’ve been so slow to respond.
“You’re alive! I was starting to worry.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Things have been nuts. I should’ve at least texted.”
“Cringer was ready to put out an APB,” he says, speaking about his ten-year-old tabby cat who is named for He-Man’s shapeshifting battle cat in Masters of the Universe. Randy lived, ate and breathed comic books.
“What are you doing up? It’s, what, 6AM there?”
“Early flight,” he explains. “Sac Comic-Con is this weekend. Seems like you’ve got quite a fan base in Northern California.”
Getting up from the sofa where I was having my dinner, I walk into my office and fire up my Mac. A nudge on my mouse causes the huge screen to light up and it doesn’t take me long to navigate to my Andrew Dufrain e-mail. It’s the account Randy uses to send me stuff about my book.
“I’m weeks behind,” I admit. A quick scan of seventy unopened messages shows that at least ten are from Randy. I’ve ignored this account for so long that I have a backlog of fan mail, too.
“You’re losing your edge, kid,” he says. “What kind of hack can’t juggle a high-powered job, a non-profit, a bestselling graphic novel series and a hot-as-Violet girlfriend?”
I can’t even bring myself to tell him to shut the hell up and quit ribbing me about comparing Darby to Violet. The second he met Darby, he knew.
“Me, apparently…” I mutter, sweeping my hand over my face. And I do feel like a failure. I hate the feeling of letting people down.
I know he’s just giving me shit—trying to get me to quit being such an overachiever just like he’s been doing for the better part of twenty years. But he’s more right than he’s ever been. I have too many balls in the air and, one by one, they’re starting to drop.
“Think we should delay the launch?”
“No,” I say reflexively. “We’re already pushing a year since The Architect came out.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Your asshole publisher will probably drop you if you don’t deliver on time.”
The asshole publisher Randy is referring to is none other than himself.
“You know I work best under pressure. Nothing would ever get done if I didn’t have a deadline.”
“You have a deadline now, and nothing’s getting done,” he points out. “If I had to decide whether to spend my time with a fake girl and a real girl, I’d make the same choice.”
“Yeah, well, that’s no longer an issue. The real girl is 10,000 miles away.”
There’s no point in concealing the misery from my voice.
“How’d she take it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her.”
I don’t say that I’m starting to worry. She’s texted me, but it’s not the same thing. I’ve been resisting the urge to call her all day.
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s only been four days.”
“Have you learned nothing from my life?”
“I know, I know. Clarine. The only woman you ever loved. The one you let get away.”
I still remember the day Randy had gotten the invitation to her wedding. I’d been about thirteen. It was the only time I’d ever seen him cry.
“I still see her at Cons sometimes,” Randy mutters, and now it’s his turn to sound miserable. “The first thing I look at is her left hand. Every time, that ring is still there. I put it there. Because I was the idiot who was so busy building a future for us that I didn’t remember to make sure there would be an us to enjoy it. At least I needed the money. What the hell is your excuse?”
I swivel around in my chair. I’m not looking at the monitor anymore anyway. Instead, I look down at the city.
“It’s not the money.”
“Then what is it? Any idiot can see you two are in love. Why did you take a promotion you don’t need?”
“You know what we agreed to.”
“Yet, you fell in love with her.”
“Yes.”
“And she fell in love with you.”
“I think so.”
“And your clean, no-strings-attached breakup is messy as hell.”
I don’t gratify his sarcasm with a response.
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe you have an IQ of 162,” he says with a bit of reproach.
“Not helpful.”
But he ignores me.
“You should have gone with Plan A.”
Plan A had been half-baked, but I’d liked its simplicity, and the movie reference would have been apropos. I still would have done the thing with the flowers and presented her with the necklace. But I’d have told her it didn’t have to be over. From there, I’d have given her a choice.
I’d wanted it to be a nod to her favorite movie, Before Sunrise. In the movie, two strangers spend a single night walking the streets of Vienna together and fall a little bit in love. But they each have their own lives to get back to, and things to work out if they decide to be together. So they agree to meet again in the Vienna train station in exactly one year if they still want something more.
What I would have told Darby is that if she wanted a different ending for us, she could meet me in the Vienna train station, on Platform 7, just like in the movie. A year would have killed me, so I’d planned to give her three months. I would have told her that I would show up, because I already knew what I wanted—that part would have been true. I also would have told her that if she didn’t show I’d be okay—that part would have been a lie.
“Plan A is off the table. I’m focused on Plan B.”
“Plan A had a nice romanticism to it. You could still do it, you know.”
“Knowing about the transfer kills the sense of possibility. If she thought choosing me meant choosing a long distance relationship, she’d feel like I was already too far gone.”
“She already thinks you’re gone.”
“She knows I had to go. There’s a difference.”
“Which is…”
“I want her to know that me being called here is separate from what happens with us.”
“Yet instead of showing her a path for the two of you to be together, you left her in limbo.”
“No,” I say slowly. “I laid the first stone on the path. I killed an agreement that neither one of us was sticking to. One that can’t possibly work from so far away.”
When Randy doesn’t fire back, I know he’s letting up a little.
“So what does she think your status is?”
“Undefined.”
“Says the man who hates ambiguity.”
“In order for something better to live, the agreement had to die.”
Noon in Sydney means that it’s nine at night in Chicago and if Darby didn’t have to stay late, she will have just gotten off of her shift. I calculated it all six weeks ago. My lunch hour will be the ideal time to drop her casual calls, at an hour that’s decent for both of us.
Except this doesn’t feel casual. We rarely talked on the phone when I traveled, always saving ourselves for our next rendezvous. Except there is no next rendezvous. And it’s been four agonizing days since I left her with tears in her eyes.
Hold my calls, please.
I message Kat, but it’s redundant. I’ve already blocked time off on my calendar. So I dial, not knowing what I’m going to say, but hoping she’ll pick up. I’m shocked to discover that my usually flawless planning overlooked the possibility of being sent to voicemail. Rather than rattling off an unscripted mess, I hang up when she doesn’t answer. It only makes me feel like we’re farther apart.
By that time, I’m drawing. Sometimes my fingers cramp from how often my pencil is in motion. I can sketch while doing nearly anything, and when I’m alone, I do. Sometimes, they’re random things, sometimes they’re scenes for my graphic novels. Darby hasn’t mentioned reading The Architect, and I haven’t pressed it. I’m dying to know what she thinks—but I’m not eager to talk about how the heroine, Violet, bears an unmistakable resemblance to her.
I’ll never admit it, but the line between Darby and Violet was once blurred in my own mind. They’re both my ideal woman, though one I created and the other materialized. Seeing the woman I had invented personified was what prompted me to speak to her that first night. If there had never been a Violet, there may never have been a Darby, or an us.
But what I’m sketching now is Darby. In my drawing, she is in her room, lying in bed—her hand is touching my side of the bed—now empty, with a nearly imperceptible imprint of where I’ve once been. From behind her, a ghostly figure has wrapped her tightly in his arms. Even though he’s barely visible, he is holding her. Her eyes are closed, and it’s not clear whether it’s from the anguish of being alone or from the comfort of feeling held from afar. The entire drawing is done in graphite pencil, but only the butterfly painting, the snapdragon necklace, and the blue of his eyes glow in subtle color.
I have never—not once—drawn anything expressly for her. In this moment, I don’t care that this will be a dead giveaway as to how I feel. The compulsion to connect with her in some way is strong, and I’m just lovestruck enough to take a picture of the drawing and send it.
Since I can’t be there, this’ll have to do. XOXO
When my phone sounds with the first bass guitar notes of Sex and Candy, I startle awake. A look at the clock tells me I’ve only been out for a few minutes. I grab the vibrating phone off of my nightstand faster than I’ve ever grabbed anything in my life. My thumb rushes to hit the green button that will allow me to pick up the call.
“Heyyyyy.”
“Oh, no…were you sleeping?”
I blink and rub my eyes. “Even if I was, I’d wake up to talk to you.” I’m smiling in spite of the uncertainty that has plagued me. “I was starting to get worried.”
“I’m sorry…I didn’t want to call at weird hours. But I texted you…”
“Which I appreciated.”
And after our first words comes our first silence. If our chemistry doesn’t translate even a little to talking on the phone, I’m screwed.
“I loved your drawing,” she offers. It’s adorable and shy and above all else, her voice is a welcome sound to my ears.
“I think I drew it more for myself than for you.”
I hear her let out a shaky breath, but I’m still holding mine.
“Your gifts are…astonishing, Michael. The necklace, the butterfly, The Architect, and now this. They’re all exquisite.”
“You read The Architect?”
“Parts of it.”
“Do you like it?” I try to sound casual.
“Michael. Are you kidding? You’re an amazing storyteller.”
The hero, Keith, is a modern-day prince masquerading as a commoner. When his engagement to Violet is threatened by her disapproving father, he goes on a quest that will help him win Violet’s hand.
“How far into it are you?”
“I’m taking the ending kind of slow…”
That’s code if I’ve ever heard it. Last year, I pulled every string I had (and some I didn’t) to get her a signed copy of the Before Midnight screenplay from Richard Linklater. When I’d implored her to read it, she’d insisted that it was too precious to handle, claiming that it was a collector’s item. I’d given her hell over it that day.
“What is it with you and endings?”
“The part before the ending is full of possibility. But the end is just…the end.”
But I can’t let her keep thinking this way. If I want to get her back, she has to see hope.
“What if the ending is better than you could ever have imagined?”
“Every once in awhile, I get so invested that I just can’t handle having my heart broken.”
I want to tell her that my story gets its happily ever after and that ours can, too.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” I don’t like how hesitant she sounds. I don’t want distance to mean distance.
“How does a guy who doesn’t believe in love write such a beautiful love story?”
“I never said I didn’t believe in love,” I answer carefully. “I said I didn’t think I could be a good partner—and I was right. I was barely around. Now I’ve moved halfway around the world. And it feels like shit. And I left you feeling like shit too.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she says with a bit of her fire. “It only feels like shit because you were a good partner.”
Neither of us speaks for a minute.
“So it’s not…” Why is she struggling to ask me questions? “…autobiographical? Like, Violet isn’t based on somebody?”
“I wrote Violet before I met you.”
“Yeah, but I thought that maybe Violet was based on somebody else, and that I just happen to look like both of them.”
“There is no real life Violet. But when I saw you that night on the patio, I nearly tripped over my own feet for how much you looked like her.”
More than a year has passed and I’ve never mentioned it before.
“That night…I stared at you for a long time before I walked up to you. You were different from her in so many interesting ways. I wanted to memorize you and go home and draw you—not her. I’m really good at observing people without them knowing—but something different happened with you. I wanted to meet you. I told myself that I’d let myself talk to you for just a minute. But you know what happened next. I couldn’t stay away from you, Darby. I haven’t been able to since.” I don’t know why I can’t stop spilling my guts. I’m saying far more than I planned. “Does that bother you?”
