The Coming of Bright (23 page)

Zora said nothing. Her hand had stopped trembling.

“That sculpture may be beautiful, and it is beautiful, but it is only an object. You cannot truly love an object. And it is deeply wrong to pretend to love a person as you pretend to love an object. Zora is not an object and I am not sure you understand that.”

“I’m not Pygmalion doctor. Zora is not my ivory bride.”

“We’ll see about that. Let me ask you, just out of curiosity, how much did this sculpture cost?”

“If you must know, I paid a little over $5 million for it.”

Dr. Weaver’s eyes bulged out a little; she exhaled sharply. Under her breath she muttered, “Well, fuck Freud sideways.” Apparently Dr. Weaver had a kinky side herself, and a fantasy or two better left unspoken.

“That’s more than I expected, but the principle is still the same. The connection you share with this woman in front of you must be stronger than the connection you share with any item in your collection, any object in your life. And do you know what is stronger than ivory Professor?”

“I don’t know, what?”

“Alabaster!”

From the floor on the left side of her chair, Dr. Weaver picked up a small sledgehammer topped with a head of alabaster. She had brought it in especially for this purpose, and she was strong for her age. She lifted the hammer into the air, and before Victor could stop her, brought it down with incredible force onto the embracing figures of Cupid and Psyche. The entire upper bodies of both figures disintegrated, Cupid’s head flying across the room, Psyche’s upraised arms amputating themselves from her body onto the floor. One of Cupid’s wings launched itself toward Victor’s face, and he had to reflexively twist his head to the side to avoid being blinded in his right eye, impaled in his eye socket by the point of the god’s wing. The wing managed to graze his cheek and he started to bleed from the cut.

Frantically he grasped at the pieces of the broken sculpture lying about, trying in vain to reverse the blow of the hammer, put back together a scattering of severed body parts, a carnage of ivory. In his obsessive scrambling, he didn’t even check to see if Zora had been scathed by the shrapnel of ivory as he had. She was unhurt, too dumbfounded by the explosion of limbs to realize it.

Still scrambling for ivory, still ignoring Zora, he hurled his wrath at Dr. Weaver.

“You psychotic bitch, what have you done?!”

Dr. Weaver’s eyes were a cauldron of molten metal.

“Done you a favor. I have showed you what you have done to Zora. You broke her. But it isn’t too late to fix her, help her fix herself. With her love for you, and your love for her, she can be healed from within, healed from without. And she is real, a woman whole, unlike these fragments at our feet, which can’t possibly love, can’t possibly feel, even whole. You’ll come back to thank me.”

“Someone will come back here, that’s for sure—the police. You maliciously destroyed what belongs to me. That’s a crime, a felony. You’ll be in a cage soon doctor. Maybe I’ll come to thank you there.”

“You signed the consent form Victor. You’re a professor of law. If you had actually read the form, you’d know it includes any damage to property that arises during the course of therapy. The hospital’s not legally liable for your beloved sculpture, and neither am I.”

“Give me that fucking form.”

He started grappling for it.

“Security!”

Alerted by Dr. Weaver’s scream, a titanic guard materialized out of nowhere, through the door. Victor froze.

“Please remove this gentleman from the building. He has outworn his welcome, and wishes to enjoy the rest of his day elsewhere.”

Victor growled.

“What about my fucking sculpture?”

“I’ll mail you the pieces. Have a nice day.”

The guard put Victor’s arm in a vice-grip, forcing him away from the two women. Zora wanted to reach out to him but her arm wouldn’t move. As he was being led roughly from the room, Victor stepped on the armless upper body of the broken Psyche. He broke her once more. Under the weight of his body, under the sole of his shoe, the delicate ivory head of the maiden snapped clean off.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dr. Weaver was right: Victor recovered from the violent demise of Cupid and Psyche. The dismemberment of their ivory love. He loved Zora.
Her
psyche was his main concern. He still thought Dr. Weaver was in more desperate need of therapy than her patient. For the good doctor, he would have preferred extensive electroshock therapy—he would have been more than happy to administer it personally. He was in a bind between women: desperate to see Zora again, desperate not to see Dr. Weaver. Unless he could flip the switch to the electroshock machine.

And Zora yearned for him as well. Her heart had uncoiled open, with so much tension toward closing again that only will alone could keep it sprung. The will to have faith. Faith in other people and in herself. A spirituality of self and others, of love and compassion.

Her heart was open most of all to Dr. Weaver. She trusted Dr. Weaver, and Dr. Weaver trusted nature. A disciple of naturopathic medicine. Why else all the plants, the flowers, the shrubs, the vines? A blooming forth of nature’s bounty in a cold sterile place, a place of confinement of the self, of the mind.

Dr. Weaver put her faith in nature to work for Zora. Two plants in particular would be the salve for Zora’s soul.
Griffonia simplicifolia
—the kagya vine, harvested in Ghana.
Hypericum perforatum—
St. John’s wort, harvested in Australia. These would ease Zora’s anguish, bring a placid radiance to her mind. Dr. Weaver knew the plants she prescribed like she knew the people she cared for. She knew that the Akan people of Ghana had a saying:

Esie ne kagya nni aseda.

The anthill and the kagya plant need not thank each other
. The saying symbolized symbiosis, how the plant provides food and shelter for the ants, and the ants help protect the plant from over-grazing. A truly mutual relationship, rendering gratitude unnecessary. For gratitude is a sign of a debt—in a relationship of equality, neither side is indebted to the other. Love bears no debt.

Victor still bore her a debt—a debt of repentance. And she expected prompt payment. Her first day back in his class was a Wednesday. There was Jack, looking very concerned, whispering well-wishes in her ear like sweet nothings. Victor must have revealed something to him of her condition. And there was the devil himself, not neglecting her in the sea of faces for once, his own face awash with gratitude and relief. So much energy of connection passed from him to her that the rest of the class barely got a glance. He knew better than to riddle her with Socratic questions though. He left her alone.

At the end of class, Jack gave her another note from Victor. She took the liberty of reading it after she and Jack had parted ways outside the hall.

I may not have my Cupid, I may not have my Psyche—but imagine how thankful I am that I still have you. Shall I be your Cupid and you my Psyche, now that the ivory is gone? I will heal you with a kiss and you will heal my soul with your self. Let the truth resume where we left it. Ask of me another question and you will see my soul. Anything and everything tonight, Goddess of my Soul. And I have a piece of thrilling news to share.

V.

No, no, no—it would not be that easy. He had a debt to pay that no kiss could dissolve, no shudder of ecstasy could erase. In its infancy, love could be purely physical, but in its adulthood, love had to mature beyond the body. And so she replied.

Love is nothing without proof. You of all people, a master of Law and a student of Eros, should know that. I will not come tonight. At the meeting on Sunday, you must renounce that atrocious Act, the one you know I hate. And then I
may
come to you for the answer to my question. Or I may leave it unanswered and assume the answer lies in the mirror.

Who do you love most in this world?

Sunday night, Victor opened the meeting with some run-of-the-mill business. Two people were getting bumped up the hierarchy. Jonah Spiegel, a 2L and a rising star in anti-terrorism law, got the lictor’s ax burned into his chest. Next up was someone much older than Caesar himself, a septuagenarian professor of Admiralty Law, Professor Purcell Chase. Professor Chase had finally reached the organization’s ninth tier. He’d been stuck at Consul for over a decade because of his apathy toward the politics of the group, its higher calling. Too landlubberish. But the key to the success of the Juris Club
was
politics—to see their glorious Second American Revolution come to pass, its members they had to be lobbyists, they had to be agitators, they had to be warriors. Someone like Professor Chase was fortunate even to make it to Prefect before making it to Woodlawn.

“Fellow Blackcoats, lend me your ears.”

Shit, Caesar sure did know how to play his Shakespearean role to the hilt. Wherever he was, heaven or hell, Shakespeare would be beside himself. He was probably in hell—thanks to one pun too many about tits and testicles. Even if, by some miracle, Shakespeare had arrived before the pearly gates, he had probably volunteered a saucy joke about the size of St. Peter’s peter. And gotten himself banished forthwith to the lowest circle of perdition. Zora was sure Victor was well on his way there himself. She wasn’t necessarily displeased about that fact, or what he had done to her physically to get onto that downward road.

“I have portentous news. Senator Brown and I have had a fruitful discussion on the phone about the timing of the REVAMP Act. We both agreed it’s premature to introduce it now, when the political climate isn’t favorable for its passage. So he’s going to be withdrawing the bill from the floor of the Senate.”

As he spoke, a glint of a smile played upon the lips of Caesar whenever his glance turned to his lover. This was not lost on a certain Magister in the room. Vane had the insight, the clairvoyance, of a perpetually resentful sibling. He immediately surmised that Victor was saying all of this, was doing all of this, for Zora’s benefit. And he was as right about that as he was enraged. Over his dead body would his own brother sacrifice their ideals for a woman, no matter how sensational a fuck she might be.

Vane stood, slightly quivering.

“Caesar, this will not stand. We already have enough votes in the House and Senate lined up. You know that as well as I do. Our members have been working for months to get those votes. President Heath will sign the bill. Now you’re going to throw it all away. I demand to know why. Maybe you have been corrupted.”

He looked down upon Zora with infinite contempt.

“The decision has been made brother. I already explained why. We need the will of the people behind us. We just don’t have it.”

Veins began to pop out on Vane’s neck and face; his tone began to crescendo.

“The will of the people? We
are
the will of the people! Or have you forgotten that? Have you forgotten how to be our Caesar?”

The question was clearly rhetorical, and he answered it clearly himself.

“Yes, you have forgotten. You are too weak to lead! Too weak!”

The pretense of Roman authority disappeared, flew away, and it was simply two brothers, one elder talking to one younger. Trying to maintain the power that drips from blood.

“Brother, we’ll talk about this in private. I’ll listen to you. You have my word. Trust me.”

It was too late. A new light, a brilliant radiance, had appeared in Vane’s eyes. A flame that Zora had seen once or twice in the patients at Wellcome. The incandescence of the God of Madness.

Vane rushed forward and sprang like a beast of prey at Victor. Zora saw something utterly unfamiliar in Victor’s face: fear. The elder brother had been secretly afraid of the younger, and was now openly afraid. What events had transpired in their childhoods, what wrongs could have given Victor such terror of his brother, Zora could only imagine.

Victor backed up, tried to push Vane away, Vane reduced to the bestial level, simply screaming over and over, “Weak! Weak! Weak! Weak!” He had the strength of a hunger-crazed leopard, and quickly overpowered Victor, knocked him to the ground. His hands closed around his brother’s throat and he choked off the air that flowed within. The breath of the only person left in the world who loved him. Victor’s face had a look of panic and pity and death.

These things happened in mere moments. For what seemed like an eternity, enveloping Vane’s violence, his insanity, the rest of the room had retained an eerie calm. Finally, in actuality only seconds later, several people jumped from their seats, jumped on Vane, tried to pry him off Victor.

They couldn’t. When they lifted Vane, they lifted Victor with him, as though the hands of the younger brother had become inseparable from the neck of the older. They tried to pummel Vane, but his body absorbed their blows without effect. He actually seemed to absorb their force into his own, becoming stronger, more determined, as they attacked him. Victor’s body started to flop pathetically about. He was struggling with the last light in his brain to stay conscious—the boundary between light and dark was close, and then soon after, the boundary between life and death.