'I don't understand. It's not any different than I first described to him.'
'He didn't believe it. I know he was hoping he would get her cured and thus bring me back,' I said.
'What's he going to do?' Beau asked.
'I don't know. He sounded so strange to me, Beau, not like Paul. I think he'd been drinking.'
'He made a commitment to us,' Beau said firmly. 'I'm going to hold him to it.'
He got up quickly to embrace me, and I laid my head on his shoulder. He kissed my hair and stroked it gently as he kissed me again, whispering soothing words into my ear.
'It will be all right. Everything's going fine. It's meant to be,' he insisted, but Paul's words had made my blood run cold and drain down to my ankles.
'I can't get rid of this sick feeling in the base of my stomach, Beau. I love you and I want to be with you and I want Pearl to be with you, but it's like a dark cloud hovers above us always, no matter how blue the sky.'
'That feeling will pass,' he promised. 'Just give yourself a chance.'
'I think we better go see Paul next week, Beau. We would bring Pearl back to see him anyway, wouldn't we?'
'I suppose,' he said, but I saw he didn't like the idea.
Every day for the next few days, I called Paul to see how things were. Most of the time, he was not at home. The servants told me he was at the hospital holding vigil. At first he didn't return any of my calls, and then, when he did, he sounded stranger and stranger. I almost didn't recognize his voice the last time we spoke.
'She remains in a deep coma. There's talk now of putting her on a machine to breathe,' he said in a voice that seemed devoid of feeling, the voice of someone who had had all the emotion drained out of him until he was just the shell of his former self.
'Paul, you're wearing yourself down. James told me you're hardly ever home anymore. You spend day and night at the hospital.'
'A man should be at his wife's side at times like these, don't you think?' he asked, followed by a chilling little laugh. 'He should be at her bedside, holding her hand, talking softly to her, pleading, begging, encouraging her to snap out of the coma, if not for his sake, for the sake of their child. Everyone at the hospital understands. They all feel so sorry for me. The nurse even cried herself today. I saw her wiping the tears away,' he said.
For a moment it was as if I were the one who couldn't breathe. I felt my chest turn to stone, my heart freeze within. I tried to swallow and to speak, but I couldn't. I heard him sigh.
'You never understood, did you? Not really, I mean. You're married, but what's marriage to you? A convenient union serving your own selfish purposes?' he said, his voice coming almost like the hiss of a snake.
'Paul, please . . .'
'You should see how small she's getting, Gisselle. She's wilting like a flower in that bed, her beauty decomposing right before my eyes.'
'What? What did you call me?'
'You know what I tell people? I tell them the angels were jealous. They looked down on us and saw how perfect our love was. Even heaven was not as perfect and so they conspired out of envy to cause this tragedy. Too romantic for you, Gisselle? You were never very romantic, were you? What was a man to you . . . a partner in bed, someone to tease and torment. You were jealous of your sister because she had the capacity to love and you didn't, right?
'Oh, what a miserable thing jealousy is. It rots you from inside. You'll see, Gisselle. You'll see. I feel sorry for you and for all the women of the world who don't have the capacity to love as Ruby had.'
A numb kind of sensation in my chest made me feel unreal. 'Paul, why are you talking like this? Is there someone standing near you? Why are you saying these things?'
'Why? Because . . . because I'm sick to death of the good suffering and the bad enjoying all the pleasure and happiness in this world. That's why. Anyway, thanks for calling. You did your duty. You can ease your conscience and go back to your pursuit of pleasures.'
'Paul!'
'I'm tired. I need to get a drink and then try to get a little sleep. Good night, Gisselle. Oh, say hello to your dashing, debonair husband. I'm sure he feels lucky his wife isn't the sick-to-death one.'
'Paul!' I cried as the phone went silent. I stood there holding the receiver in my hand as if it were a dead bird. Then I ran to find Beau. He was in the office going over some business documents, and looked up with surprise.
'What's wrong?' he asked immediately.
I told him about Paul and what he had been doing all week.
Beau thought a moment and then shrugged. 'Just sounds like he's taken the responsibility of his role in all this seriously and he's putting in a good performance. We should be grateful.'
'No, Beau. You don't understand. You don't know Paul. He wouldn't say the things he said to me. He's not well. I want to go to Cypress Woods tomorrow. We have to go, Beau. Don't try to talk me out of it!'
'All right. We'll do it,' he said. 'Calm down. Are you sure he's not just playing to your feelings, taking advantage of them?'
'I don't think so. You don't know how strange he sounded. Beau,' I said, looking up with my eyes wide and full of anxiety. 'He called me Gisselle and spoke about her as Ruby.'
'So? That was the idea.'
'But I don't think anyone was listening in. He had no reason to call me Gisselle.'
