“Let’s just head back,” Alice said, already walking downhill. For two miles she could feel Gabby beside her, studying her every movement, wanting to press her, but knowing when to stop. Of course Gabby was right. Beatriz was happy. Carrie was happy too. That should be all that mattered. That was all that mattered. Still, after two failed stories, Alice couldn’t shake the feeling that their happiness was a result of luck, and Alice knew all too well that luck was a streak, a roll, a spell destined to be broken.
But Alice could not stop writing now. There were too many people counting on her, too many souls who had entrusted her with their love. She needed to keep believing, if not for herself then for them.
24
The Purple Book
After meeting Lulu at her bakery, Alice and Madeline continued to parse through the green books, discovering more stories of jealous lovers, more relationships ruined by envy, cheating, and distrust. Jealousy did not always look dangerous. It did not always involve screaming or control. Sometimes it looked like hurt. Lovers bruised by their own expectations, by all the ways they wanted to be and were not loved. Sometimes it was earned, a rational jealousy spurred by a lover’s misdeeds. Sometimes it was passionate, broken plates and shouting matches followed by sex on the kitchen floor. Sometimes it was professional, not romantic, a lover resentful of his beloved’s success, a lover coming second to a job. There were as many types of jealousy as there were types of love.
Since that seemed to be what green meant, Alice reluctantly added the color to her list, writing in her spiral notepad,Green = ruined by jealousy.It worried her to admit that, of the three colors they’d explored, two represented relationships that had come to an end. Still, almost all the former clients they encountered were happy. None of them seemed permanently bruised by the affairs they’d had in response to Madeline’s books. And so many of them wound up with other partners they loved. Maybe Madeline hadn’t given these souls everlasting love, but she’d taught them how to recognize it when it presented itself with someone else. Surely this supported her continued commitment to her craft.
But Madeline continued to feel vindicated. All those relationships ruined by jealousy and envy. All those clients she’d failed. As she slipped the last green book they’d investigated onto the shelf, she motioned to all the rest, “Each and every one of these is a failure.” Instead of being gleeful she was resigned, as though she was at last understanding that winning their wager was not winning at all. “Face it, Alice, this is not a gift.”
“I disagree.” Alice refused to let her resolve waver. “Besides,” she said, trying a different tactic, “we have two colors left.”
“You aren’t going to admit I’m right until we’ve looked through every book in this library, are you?”
“That was the deal.”
“And when we’re through? When we see how many new ways people can feel pain in these blue and purple books, will you give up?”
No, Alice thought, for she knew she would not be proven wrong. Even if many of their stories didn’t last, their service bettered people’s lives. “When we get to the end, we’ll discover who was right,” she insisted.
Madeline frowned at Alice. “Fine, but we’re looking at purple next. I don’t have eight hundred stories in me at the moment. I need something easier.”
As if fewer meant easier. As if less could not also be more.
“Not that one,” Madeline said as Alice reached for a thin purple book. She tucked it back onto the shelf and let her fingers run along all those eggplant spines, their wails so soft Alice suspected she might be imagining them, until her fingertips electrified again.
“Not that one either,” Madeline said.
This happened three more times before Alice suggested that Madeline pick the next book.
The old woman stood before the shelf staring at the twenty-eight purple books—twenty-seven from their original count and an additional book that had shifted during their studies. “I have a bad feeling about these books,” she said.
“Purple is the color of royalty.”
“Beheadings happen to royalty.”
“You’re being silly,” Alice said, moving to retrieve the first book that had called to her, the slender one. As she pulled it out, Madeline ducked, prepared for the ceiling to fall on them. “Madeline, it’s just a book.”
“You know as well as I do that there’s no such thing as just a book.”
Alice found the first line in the ledger and came up with a name, Dee Raymond. “She sounds like an old-time movie star.”
“Looked like one too. When she came to see me, I answered the door and thought, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’” Back then, Madeline’s door was an open one. There was no email. No cellular telephone. A landline, when she deigned to answer it. The only guaranteed way to reach her was to drive up the mountain and knock on the door.
She rejected as many people as she granted entry. There were all sorts of reasons for saying no—a weak demeanor, a disheveled appearance, an impatient attitude. If she got a bad feeling, she would simply close the door, no apology, no explanation, and the poor soul was left to conclude that they’d been rejected.
“Isn’t that a little cruel?” Alice asked.
“Love is not for the faint of heart,” Madeline told her.
There was a rumored handbook for how to approach the love giver, as Madeline was called. Madeline never saw the handbook but she did not doubt its existence. She even heard that one of her former clients was offering consultations on how to guarantee an audience with Madeline. She did not begrudge such an enterprising person their hustle. Ingenuity, resourcefulness, these were qualities Madeline admired.
“I almost sent Dee away. I didn’t trust that someone so beautiful needed my help until I saw her cower.” Madeline hunched her shoulders, shrinking into herself. “It was like she was trying to make herself invisible when there was no hiding her beauty.”
Dee dressed impeccably in expensive and voluminous dresses. Her face was composed yet understated, in neutral tones that matched her olive skin. Her hair fell to her waist with a natural wave and shine. The combination indicated that the woman was aware of her beauty as well as how to flatter it without calling too much attention to it. Still, her every pore emanated insecurity. It wasn’t just her posture and lack of eye contact. She introduced herself as “not really a sculptor” since she hadn’t sold any of her pieces to a gallery, just through word of mouth, mostly to her parents’ friends. Everything Madeline said Dee accepted without question, even when Madeline contradicted herself, first saying that external accolades were not what made an artist, then testing Dee and saying, “You are not an artist until the gatekeepers embrace you.” When Dee reported that she had never been loved, that she feared she was unlovable, Madeline knew that she was. She knew she could help her.
