I reached past a girl standing in front of one of the racks and snatched a silver bracelet covered in turquoise stones. She looked up at me, surprised. I gave her a friendly smile and turned back to him.
“I realize that, but there’s no reason I can’t be prepared.”
“Agreed,” he said, his eyes following the girl as she tried to escape our bizarre conversation. “My issue is the ‘fashionable’ aspect. What purpose does it serve?”
“It’s a disguise, Arthur,” I said and rolled my eyes.
“Then there were many ninja at the club?”
I laughed and put my items on the counter.
“No, but when you walk into Rome not wearing a toga, people tend to wonder.” The cashier was grinning, trying not to laugh as she made my change.
“I should think they would care more about the nudity than the choice of attire. Though it was Rome, and they didn’t really care about nudity.”
Harassed, I shook my head and led him to the door, where he halted and pointed out a bracelet of metal spikes. I was about to ask him why he was suddenly such a comedian, when his hand shot out. Without turning around, he took hold of the arm of the young girl we had bothered, as she tried to exit the store. There was no hint of an explanation as he walked her past me and toward the wall, and for some reason, she did not protest.
I was going to demand to know what he was doing, when he stopped and put his face directly in front of hers. Her eyes were wide and I could see the pulse in her neck thumping in fear. Her gaze flicked to me, but I had learned to trust her captor implicitly and could offer no camaraderie.
“What you did,” he whispered when she looked at him again, “was dishonest.”
She froze, every muscle alert and stiff, and suddenly I understood. The baggy sweater, the glance over her shoulder, the willingness to let him pull her aside; she had been shoplifting. Her face fell, but I knew what she was feeling. Trying to look away from his eyes was impossible if he did not allow it. She swallowed.
“It may not hurt the woman working there or the business itself, indeed, no one else might ever find out,” he asserted, his hand resting on her shoulder heavily, “but you would know. What is your name?”
“A . . . Anna,” she said between gasps that were dangerously close to sobs.
“Anna,” he repeated, making the name sound like a prayer. “Anna, as easy as it is to do, it is fifty times harder to undo.”
“Are . . . are you a cop?”
He shook his head and without a second thought, released her, turned around, and gently steered me away. I looked back. Like a boulder in a river, she stood, staring after Arthur as if her soul had stuck to his hand. I knew that feeling too; it was what he’d made me feel in the cemetery. As I took his hand, I tried to explain that to her with my eyes and a heartening smile.
“You didn’t eat your breakfast,” he said. “Do you want something now, while we have time?”
A traffic jam pressed him behind me and his fingers, laced with mine, sat on my shoulder. Without knowing why, I blushed.
Was I as bad off as that girl?
“Sure.”
We walked to the food court, the oasis of the commercial free-for-all, and while he positioned himself nonchalantly at a table, I waited in line at a sandwich shop. Plastic tray in hand, I juggled its contents, set it atop the condiments bar and tried to keep from upending it into my bags. A helpful hand deposited some napkins in front of me just as I reached for them. I looked up to thank the person and found her, still recovering from the shock of his compelling presence.
Sympathetic, I raised my eyebrows. “Anna?”
She couldn’t have been older than thirteen. Her hair was pulled back, her clothes had the unmistakable look of hand-me-downs, and her nail polish had been picked at as if she had been nervously chewing.
“Is he . . . is that man a priest?”
I smiled awkwardly. “Sort of, I guess. He has a way with people.”
“Do you think it’s okay if I talk to him?”
I hesitated, but when I looked toward him and found him watching me, I knew the answer. “Sure, sweetheart. Go pick his brain. It’s full of useful tidbits in tons of languages.”
She turned instantly and went to join him at the table. I took my time, selected more mustard and mayo than I needed, got a fork just in case, and settled on a few more napkins for my glove compartment before I meandered back.
She had pulled a wadded-up paper bag from a cargo pocket inside her jeans and had put it on the table in front of him. His hands were folded and he was looking at her face with that divine impartiality that amazed me. I had stolen a piece of candy once, and my mother had gone on like a harpy for almost two hours.
I set my tray down and took a seat quietly.
“That’s everything,” she said. “Should I give it back?”
“Will it erase what you did?”
She was ashamed and completely confused as to why she should be. Without his guidance, she would get frustrated and forget he had ever touched her. Anxiously, I tried to nudge him with my eyes, but he would not look anywhere but her face.
“No. So . . . do I keep it?”
“Will it make you feel worse, or better, do you think?”
She shrugged, but it was obvious she knew they would only be reminders of her crime.
He ignored the bag like it wasn’t there. “I won’t tell you what you should do. I believe you will figure it out.”
She frowned and I almost lost the faith he kept instructing me to keep.
“If I try to give it back, they’ll arrest me.”
“Ah,” he replied and leaned forward, “so the real issue is, do you believe that the punishment they will give you is deserved?”
She shrugged again in that all-purpose teenage answer, the refuge of someone who did not want to be caught against a wall unprepared.
Arthur crossed his arms. “If you do, then you must accept the punishment, but if you do not, then either you feel that you have done nothing wrong, or you believe that you have already learned the lesson. Which is true?”
Her head bowed and she shuffled her feet. “Learned my lesson.”
He considered her through narrowing eyes. “Then what should you do with it?”
“Find a way to give it back so they don’t catch me.”
“Erasing a mistake with cunning is perhaps its own crime,” he scolded and turned away in what appeared to be disappointment.
She looked around, adrift, remembered that I was there, and looked to me for help. As much respect as I had for his method, I had to help her; I had been where she was.
“Mall security has an office. Tell them you found it on a bench and leave.”
Arthur pretended I had not spoken and when he said nothing to her, she made a half-hearted escape attempt. Yet again, his hand snaked out and caught her. Afraid she had done something else wrong, she let him pull her back.
“This doesn’t stop here,” he murmured and retook her eyes with a docile glance. “There’s a reason you did it and it’s not the reason you tell yourself it is.”
Her lips parted expectantly and she examined his face for signs of knowledge.
“You didn’t want these things. You didn’t really need to sell them. You weren’t getting back at the people who hurt you. There was no one there to praise you for your stealth.” There was a moment of softness, as if the room went quiet, as if the whole mall had suddenly ceased to be. She stared into his eyes and he looked right back at her, his hand on her far elbow, light but weighing her down. “So . . . did you get what you really wanted?”
She tried to speak but failed. A cough uncovered her tiny voice. “Yes.”
“And what was that?”
I sat there motionless, transfixed by something that was the eerie contrast of Ursula’s horrifying game. I knew what he wanted her to say, what she needed to say, but even if I had been asked to say it, I would have been too afraid. If she admitted it, it would be like
stepping off a cliff into a raging river that was miles wide.
But sometimes, mercy was a more important lesson than the plunge of vulnerability, and no one understood that better than Arthur. “You were hoping, all this time,” he breathed, “that someone would see you, the real you, and ask why. Why would someone as amazing as Anna not think more highly of herself?”
I sucked in air and the pit of my stomach tightened down.
Eva.
It wasn’t just for Anna. It was to remind me what I never did, to show me back to the place where it had all begun, back to the question. Why did Eva do it when everything seemed to be going so well?
Anna nodded and I could see the little shards of light dancing around her eyes.
“Well,” he sat back and carefully removed his hand, “I have asked it, but more importantly, you have asked it. When you can answer, then your lesson is truly learned, and not before. Do what you may to make amends, but remember that it is the source of the action that matters.”
She sighed heavily and managed another nod.
Without saying anything, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a five dollar bill. He presented it to her and tucked it inside her sweater pocket.
“Go and spend that.”
The moment was crowded by sound. She looked around vaguely and realized we were still in the eye of a capitalist hurricane. Taking out the money, she looked at it as if she recognized it, but couldn’t figure out how it had gotten into her pocket. In that second, the slip of paper seemed to transform into a symbol of all the things she had used to conceal her own turmoil. As she looked at it in that glazed way, it seemed to become a foreign thing that she no longer understood.
“Katsu,” Arthur whispered. I glanced at him, wondering if it was another one of those Sanskrit conundrums, but he was so focused upon her face, her blank stare and breathlessness, that it was as if he was waiting for something.
Like an automata, Anna slowly put the bill into her paper sack and with the decisiveness of presentation, dropped the bag onto the ground, turned around, and wandered away without ever glancing back.
Worried, I reached for the bag, but he stopped me.
“Leave it.”
“Is she okay?” I demanded.
He smiled. “Yes. Eat your sandwich.”
I obeyed, though it took me a few minutes to return to the routine of stuffing my face. I didn’t eat because I was hungry; I had lost my appetite. I ate because I was stalling for time. If I asked too soon, he would not tell me, because it had been a lesson for me that I had not yet understood.
When I had eaten as much as I cared to, I sat back and took a deep breath. “Was that word Sanskrit too?”
He shook his head. “It originated in China. It means ‘to shout.’”
I looked at the paper bag in confusion and when a janitor picked it up and tossed it into the garbage he was emptying, marveled that Arthur let it happen.
“Why?” I demanded of the entire event in general.
Arthur watched the bag’s progress from treasure to trash and closed his eyes peacefully.
“Because she walked into the river.”
Chapter 13
After we left the mall, I dropped Arthur off at the coffee shop. I thought he might insist on staying with me until I had to face the monster, but he got out and said good-bye as amiably as usual. I assured him I’d meet everyone there, at our base of operations, when it was time. He leaned through my window and poked me in the third eye, which I had a feeling was wide open and staring at him in awe.
“Leave your katana in the car. Weapons are not permitted in the shop.”
I watched him go, still too confused about what had happened with the girl to really laugh at his joke, though I wanted to. I sat there for a few moments before I made a decision. I had several hours until the club, and I would be damned if I’d go any longer without a means of doing some kind of research. The case and Arthur were both raising a lot of questions and I needed a way to stay on my toes, especially if I wanted to keep his cryptic friendship.
I drove to an electronics shop and made the salesman’s day. I bought a state of the art laptop with wireless internet plan, and a cell phone, all picked out by him with the assurances that they were the best and that there was no assembly or setup required. By the time I left, I was sure that if I had asked him to scratch my back, he would have.
At the apartment, I sat in the happy face and plugged myself into the World Wide Web. I typed in the word and because I could see her face as he whispered it, added “Zen” to the search parameters. Within moments I had more information than I could possibly ever need.
“Katsu; a shout used to express one’s own enlightened state, or induce another person to move beyond rational and logical thought to potentially achieve an initial experience of enlightenment.”
Amazed, I read on. Time and again it spoke of the word as a guttural exclamation, but that was not how Arthur had used it. His voice had been so soft it had taken me several attempts to spell the word. I couldn’t help but think there was a reason for that, and as I sloshed through links and descriptions, sorted ancient terminology from modern, I stumbled onto the Noble Eightfold Path, the rules set down by Buddha for his disciples to follow. Inherent in their wisdom was a very simple idea: no person wishing to alleviate suffering should ever do anything that was unnecessary, whether in speech, deed, or thought.
I considered Anna, her distant stare of uncanny peacefulness. She did not need to be shouted at, and indeed, that would have frightened her and forced her soul back into its shell. However, she was a child and like me, did not have words for such thoughts. He had supplied her with one.
“Katsu,” I murmured, and sighed.
A few more taps and clicks carried me through the Buddha’s teachings, his life as upheld by myth, his friends and companions, and finally, his demise. His last words echoed in my mind and heart and even brought a tear to my eye; how truly awesome would it have been to sit beside him and hear such a thing uttered for the first time ever, before mathematics or science, before the endless evolution of philosophy.
“All things are perishable. Through vigilance, awaken!”
As time ticked by, I researched, and at each turn encountered Arthur. With a smile, shaking my head every step of the way, I wondered why he had been so hesitant to call himself one of them, when they were certainly like him. Then I stumbled upon it and curiosity drove me to commit the word to memory so I could tease him later.
“Srotapanna,” I repeated, until it rolled off my tongue effortlessly.
I looked at the clock and realized that I only had a couple hours. I decided to test my new phone and called Unger. I expected him to be half-asleep, but he was wide awake and chewing something.
“Phone acquired, sir!” I saluted my reflection in the window.
“Good. Meet me at the diner down the street from the coffee shop.”
“Huh, why?”
He slurped something. “Because I want to talk to you without them around.”
I rummaged through my bags, pulled out my clothes, laid them out on the bed, and started the shower. “Again I say, why?”
“Because.”
I sighed. “Give me twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes?” he complained. “What are you doing?”
“Look, I’m only going to say this one more time. It’s a disguise. If I don’t blend in, there’s no point!”
He backed down. “I’m almost to dessert, so hurry up.”
I hung up on him and wondered what had happened to the nice man who was so supportive. I was the one to blame though, since it was I who insisted he not treat me like a victim. I was also the one to involve myself in his investigation. I probably also got him in trouble. Truthfully, I liked this Unger better anyway; this was my Unger.
I showered quickly, applied the makeup like someone who had done it once before, and this time, pulled back my hair in a tight bun. Rings and bracelets in place, ca
sh, phone, and ID tucked into zipped pockets, I was ready physically, if not mentally. I wished I’d bought a stun gun or some pepper spray, though I doubted it would make any difference. I drove to the diner in an altered state, nervous, shaky, and desperate to hear Arthur’s voice.
Unger was sitting at a booth drinking coffee and flipping through papers. He looked up as I got closer and froze in what seemed to be shock. I had to admit, I understood why. Thus far, he’d seen me only in ratty sweatshirts and a business suit, not in sleek black fashion with sultry façade in place.
I sat down and folded my hands. “What?”
Surprised and unhappy about it, he blinked. “You look . . . nice,” he mumbled.
“Um, thanks?” I shifted uncomfortably. “I always try to look my best when fighting crime.”
He nodded. He was so dumbfounded by the fact that I cleaned up well that he didn’t even think to question how often I fought crime.
“That was a joke.”
He finally seemed to come to himself with a head jiggle. “Right. Sorry.”
I leaned forward to give him a sweet smile. “You wanna make this a date, Detective?”
He snorted incredulously.
“What? I’m divorced and you don’t wear a ring.”
Unger could clearly not imagine me stooping to date him. “I’m old enough to be your father,” he insisted.
“Yeah maybe, but if you do dishes and take out garbage, we’ll make a great match,” I laughed. “That’s all I want, plus the occasional bouquet of roses.” The waitress came over and offered me a cup of joe. I shook my head. It was Arthur’s coffee or bust.
He swiped a crumb-speckled hand across his face. “I’m a lot older than I am.”
“Do you mind if I ask when you’re supposed to retire?”
His face fell into dismay. “I’ve got a few years.”
I eyed the manila folders in front of him and could see the edges of a few photographs. “After that?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “I’ll probably end up getting a PI license.” His eyes seemed to drift to the window, but he was seeing something else entirely, in some far-off time. “It’s either all or none. You can’t go back and if you can’t, you either move forward or don’t go anywhere.”
Craving Page 14