“You? Moneybags you?”
“Oh, we never talk about money where I come from. My dad goes to sleep, and all the dollars just multiply.”
“Do your folks even know you moved to New York?”
“They said, ‘That’s nice, dear,’ as if I finally agreed to wear white pants to their Memorial Day party.”
I reach over and squeeze his hand. “I’m sorry,” I say, thinking of my own mother sending me off every morning with an egg sandwich. “Maybe we should bail,” I say. “We could just go back to Cambridge.”
Jules shakes his head. “Not possible. We’ve had a taste—even the smallest taste changes you.”
I had been thinking this very thing. “Is that what happened to you last time?”
“My business succeeded for about five minutes, and I spent the next seven years trying to chase that high again. Probably why I fell on my face so many times. Cyrus was the one who finally helped me get over it, because none of this stuff matters to him.”
I know exactly what Jules means. Cyrus really doesn’t care. He isn’t worried that we are on the verge of bankruptcy, or that there is the tantalizing possibility of something bigger. He is obsessively focused on both the present and on the esoteric distance. The middle ground, the place most of us inhabit—what we are going to eat for lunch, how we are going to pay our bills, how we are going to fulfill our petty human ambitions—those things do not occur to him. He doesn’t care, because they are not on his mind.
“We’re running on empty,” Jules says.
“There’s only one thing to do.” I wait for Jules to say it.
“We have to make Cyrus the boss.”
I nod. “He can make the pitch, get us our funding. You know how he is in front of an audience.”
Jules looks up something on his phone. “There’s another speed-dating thing in two days.”
“Look me in the eyes,” I say to Jules, “and tell me you’re sure.” We both know that if we can get Cyrus to agree, there’s no turning back. Jules doesn’t hesitate. He stares right back at me and says yes. Like me, he has no idea what’s going to happen if Cyrus takes charge, but that’s what I love about Jules—he always wants to plow forward into the unknown. We argue briefly about who should be the one to convince Cyrus, and after I lose three straight rounds of rock/paper/scissors, the task falls to me.
Against the wisdom of the No Touch twins, we shake hands.
* * *
At home, Cyrus is reading the Talmud, a leather-bound copy that lies open on his lap. “Whatcha doing?”
“I’ve been thinking about Auntie Lavinia’s neighbor,” he says. “A person who has left his community, tried to adopt another.”
“He’s between worlds?”
“Being in between is one of the best things about being alive,” he says. “It makes us yearn. It makes us uncomfortable, and that is the most human thing possible. But death—death requires certainty.”
“Purgatory?”
“I did consider Dante, but the whole point of laying someone to rest is that he goes somewhere, even if we don’t know exactly where that is. That’s the only knowable thing about it.” He closes the book, reaches for me. I feel that lurch in my stomach every time I’m near him. It’s been over a year, and I sometimes wonder when this particular feeling will fade—it has to, I’ve read too many novels to imagine it won’t—but right now I’m still in the swell of it, strange noises escaping my lips as he pulls at my sweater, all the time wondering what I would do if this feeling were ever taken away from me, if he stopped wanting me, if I stopped wanting him, if we turned into ordinary people who got tired of each other or simply decided to love each other in ordinary ways.
Later, we are lying on the floor among the books Cyrus has checked out from the library. I get up to fill my water bottle and decide this is the moment. “Jules and I were wondering if you would come to Utopia tomorrow. There’s something we need to ask you.”
“I think I know what it is,” Cyrus says. His cheeks are flushed and his forehead is shiny with sweat. It’s always warm in here; even when my parents are hot, they’re worried they’ll get cold, so the thermostat is set permanently to 85 degrees. Also: the carpets are too thick. It’s like walking on a trampoline. My irritation at being here, in my childhood home with its overly plush carpets and tropical air, is mounting by the day.