The One We Feed (13 page)

“That would be
dishonest.”

My lungs
expanded painfully as I drew in as much wind as I would need to assail him, “You….”

“Be careful,
Lilith,” he interrupted. “In this moment, you must decide. Is anger the only
option left to you? I have faith that you can choose to be different from them,
however much you share,” and with a cool, detached blink, he walked back
inside.

An eerie
feeling passed through me like a draft blowing about old, dead leaves, rattling
bones in some dark cave. It was colder and more disaffecting than the
dissociative gloominess of only a few hours before. I reached out and steadied
myself with the hood of the truck, feeling as if the world was swaying with me
as its epicenter, as if I was somehow standing, one foot on the shore, one atop
the tide, neither here nor there.

Chapter
8

Perchance to
Find

I didn’t go inside. I couldn’t
bring myself to look him in the eye anymore. His face was some kind of permanent
puzzle I couldn’t quite figure out, though I knew I was meant to. It filled my
usually obsessive-compulsive consciousness with a sense of permanent
distraction because, when I was near him, all I could think about was the
contradiction he represented. He wasn’t the compassionate, lotus blossom,
curly-headed Buddha they’d painted him but some kind of uncompromising general
with a plan all his own. I wasn’t sure if I found it fascinating or
exasperating, but if there was one thing I was sure of, it made me angry. And
at that point, I could not afford to be angry around anyone.

Sometimes it’s
just best to stay away from the things we love most.

I sat in the
car watching the fog collect against the windows. Little beads of dew clung to
each other, until finally they would pull each other down in a tiny droplet,
leaving a tail like a comet. After an hour or so, the whole car was a sparkling
prism, with me encased inside, pulsing with apprehension like a beating heart.

My gaze lost
focus and I drifted in and out of a traumatized dullness, making no effort to
tweak my hormones and neurotransmitters, as if I even knew how to manage each
one by name. That control, as perfect as it was, was all very vague to my
conscious mind. I had faith that the machine of my brain knew what it was
doing, even if I didn’t. I’d be fine when and if I needed to be.

Suddenly,
there was a squealing at the window beside me. A finger was dragging through the
diamonds, tracing out an infinity symbol. It added two pupils and a smile, and
Ananda looked through the clean gaps at me.

“Go away,” I
said quietly, “you’re almost just as bad.”

He blinked. “I
am going to work.” He sounded for all the world like a child.

His fervor
drew a tiny smile from me. “Good for you. Take him with you.”

“I am.” He
tapped the window sweetly with a perfect fingernail, as if he wanted to chip
away the glass and get at me. I locked the door. He dragged a hand across the
window and swept away his bleeding smiley face. I hunkered down.

“‘My sword
leans against the sky,’” he quoted at full voice. “‘With its polished blade I’ll
behead the Buddha and all of his saints. Let the lightning strike where it
will.’”

I sighed. Leave
it to someone so unassuming to remind me that just because they were pacifists,
that didn’t mean they were pushovers. “Charming. I’ll be sure to ponder that
one until my eyes turn red.”

To my
surprise, when I looked at him, the Arhat was smiling at me as if I were the
childish one.

“It is a
simple truth,” he said. “The teachings shatter all need for lessons. Rest your
sword against the sky and be at peace again. You have slain the Buddha, Lilith.
He does not exist anymore.”

“I’ll add that
to my résum
é
, then, but
can we not talk about slaying, please?”

A dark blue
shape came slowly down the stairs and wandered toward the office. As it moved
past Ananda’s little patch of clarity, I could see that it was Arthur, dressed
in black slacks and a long-sleeved blue shirt. He walked to the sidewalk and
waited patiently, his back to us. I found myself wanting him to turn, just to
check if the blue was the right shade to do his eyes justice. It was a thought
that made me sick.

Ananda
followed my gaze and, with a heavy sigh, turned back to me. “Alive and well.”

“Or something.”

“Why so
somber?”

I gave up and
rolled down the window. He reached in almost instantly and touched my face,
smudged the taut skin where tears had dried, and brought some warmth to my
cheeks.

“He keeps
apologizing for not telling me things, and I keep saying it’s okay, but what’s
the point of having him here if he isn’t to be relied upon?”

“That is a
wonderful question,” Ananda said with a wink. “You are getting much better at
asking, I think.”

“Are you guys
going to get better at answering?”

“If a friend,”
he replied, the finger finally inching into the air slowly, “is there to be
relied upon, it is a strange kind of relationship. If humans collect each other
to satisfy needs, what happens when we have no needs to satisfy? You are
immortal, Lilith, with no hunger or thirst. If this is so, why are you still
collecting? What are your friends to you?”

“I still have
needs.” I didn’t want to concede the point or admit to the implication of motivational
impurity.

“That you are
more than capable of satisfying for yourself. Your definition of
friend
must change, I think, for you to be happy with any of us. I think, perhaps to
you, Arthur is a signpost to where you should go, but you already know where
you are meant to go. It is built into you, the ability to make these choices,
the ability to…,” he shrugged, “to strive and withstand where others fail. You
do not need him, so you are at conflict with the idea of having him.”

I reached up
and captured his hand, shaking my head. “You’re going to be late for work. Bosses
don’t like that.”

He leaned
against the damp car and kissed my cheek. “You are free, Lilith. So be free. At
least come out of the car. It’s as if you live in it.”

As he pulled
away, he tugged on the handle and opened the door, automatic locks helpfully clicking
open. Reluctantly, I twisted my legs out and stood, rolling up the window as I
went.

“Time to get
going, I guess.” I locked up and turned to him. He caught me in another hug. My
body resisted, but he would not take no for an answer. “Have a good day,” I
whispered in his ear.

“Lilith…,” he
held me out at arm’s length, “is the path the thing we walk or the thing we
leave behind?”

I stared at
him, momentarily caught in his sticky question. “Both?”

He released me
and silently trotted after his cousin as if he was late for his play group.

“Fucking
Buddhists,” a damp and disheveled Jinx grumbled from the balcony. “When do you
think they come up with that shit?”

I looked up at
him, ready to laugh or cry or something. “I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to
think there’s like, an almanac.”

“Need to
calculate the next solar eclipse?” Jinx said with a grin, “It’s always darkest
before the sun, even the sun casts shadows, light and dark are one, blah blah
blah. If it was up to them, the Connecticut Yankee would be a cinder by now,
poor bastard.”

“Hush! What
kind of Buddhist are you anyway?”

“The kind that
isn’t,” he snapped irreverently.

“The best
kind!” I wandered up the stairs, bringing my purloined comfort can of Redbull
with me. I presented it to him as if he were a monarch. “He’d have applauded
you.”

“Fabtastic.”

“He’s right,
though. At least I think so. I’m just gonna say he is until I know what the
hell he said.”

He held up a
finger, mimicking Ananda perfectly, “Right and wrong are unimportant. It is the
question that is essential. Translation: ‘Your whining is beginning to chafe.’”

I ruffled his
stiff hair lovingly. “Ah, Jinxy, my snarky calm in a storm of non-storming.”

He led me into
the room and shut the door behind me, still chuckling at his own jokes. I
explored, though it was just like every other room in every other city,
comforting and disconcerting all at once for its familiarity. If I tried, I
could still see the outline of a body haunting the wall opposite the very
different closet.

The computers
were still in the back seat of the truck, along with most of our personal
belongings, but that fact hadn’t stopped either Ananda or Arthur from having
fresh clothes or my hairbrush and fluffy slippers from magically appearing in
the bathroom. Above them, on a wall hook, a thick terrycloth robe hung
invitingly.

“Damn him.”

“Difficult to
stay angry, right?”

“No, just
difficult not to feel like an ass at the same time. I think I hate that about
him.”

“He really
upset you, huh?” He turned on the hot water in the tub and perched himself on
the free-floating counter while I took down the blood-spattered mess of my hair
and tried to drag my brush through it. “I heard you shout.”

The faucet was
hammering in the background like a full-force waterfall, robbing my words of
the solemnity I felt they deserved. “Karl’s powers are gone, just like yours.”

“Good! He’ll
finally have to learn some people skills!”

“He’s
invisible, but he hasn’t even
seen
the Crossroads yet. How is that
possible?”

“
Merde!
Lily,
maybe it’s just different for him.”

I looked at
him. I had felt like my statement was a loaded one, one almost too heavy for me
alone to carry, but he had punctured it. It deflated and sagged over my
shoulders incommodiously.

He fidgeted. I
watched him look away. There was something he didn’t want me to ask. We both
knew it. The knowledge twisted through the air with little steam clouds wafting
from the tub.

“What aren’t
you saying?” I asked in a voice I thought was too soft to be heard. “I can’t
take this anymore. Somebody please give me a straight answer.”

I had planted
my hands on the counter and was making an effort not to look at myself in the
mirror.

“I don’t know
yet,” the boy said with a peace-keeping sigh. “I just got his voice file
yesterday morning. Let me talk to Karl outright, figure some stuff out, and I’ll
let you know if I see a pattern.”

I saw a
pattern. Everyone was treating me as if I were a toddler, or perhaps they were
protecting themselves from a creature none of them could anticipate: me. I
watched as Jinx pulled down a clean towel and set it on top of the toilet, took
out the little bottle of courtesy body wash and emptied it into the tub. Large
bubbles began to form and the humid air began to smell of cucumbers. For
someone who was inherently anti-social, he could be pretty sweet.

“You need to
take some time off.”

“Off from
what? A rigorous schedule of watching Arthur play board games, or my unending
contemplation of all my ingrown failings, or maybe from my consistent
propensity to make bad things happen to good people?”

He shook his
head as if he’d seen the morose answer coming. “You sound like you’re fifteen.”

“You look like
you are.”

“Ha!” He took
my car keys from the counter and marched toward the door. “I can’t help it if I
grew up when the average height was five foot three.”

“So get
taller.”

“Got better
things to do. Besides, people never pay any attention to kids. Take a bath, you’ll
feel better.”

“No I won’t. I’m
a person of action; just
sitting
here is the bane of my existence.”

At the door,
he shook his head. “I’m going to unload everything, then I’m taking off. I’ll
be gone until late tonight, like midnight.”

I would be
alone again, stuck with the two most enigmatically self-ciphered individuals
that the universe had ever seen fit to produce. It couldn’t have been more
insufferable if the Sphinx and Helen Keller decided to have tea in our hotel
room and discuss agnosticism.

“No later, or
you’re grounded.”

The door
slammed on my hunched back. I stared at it in the mirror for a while, until the
acoustics of the bathroom let me know the tub was almost full. I turned it off
and without really wanting to, began to strip. My coat came off easily enough,
but it was crusted over with the fluids of several individuals. Between thumb
and forefinger, I examined it and determined that only its dark color made it
salvageable. My white t-shirt was thoroughly ruined and my jeans...well, they
were jeans. What were jeans if not the scarred and painted compendiums of our
lives?

No pun
intended.

I turned out
the lights and pulled the door shut. The water was too hot, but too hot really
meant nothing. I closed my eyes and focused on the pain in my skin. If I’d been
some kind of anatomist, I’d have thought about specific types of nerves or the
speed at which they conducted signals, or some-such, but I could only ponder
what I knew, and though it probably took longer for my body to acclimate, it
was fast enough. Soon I was slipping in, oblivious to the temperature, certain
a full-body first degree burn was easily fixed.

I poked at
places where there should have been the telltale white lines of my injuries,
but there were none. No bruises, rips, or stains on me. I looked over at my
poor denim lit up by the gap under the door, feeling more naked knowing that
they were the only signs of what I had endured.

Thanks to
Jinx, Lilith Pierce had vanished off the face of the earth. My money had been
reinvested and tucked into the dark spaces of the banking underworld, where
golden cockroaches reigned supreme. My family home belonged to strangers, its
former occupants all dead. Even my husband had gone under new management. All I
had left were my memories, my friends, and my goals.