Kristopher Jansma - The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

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.”