Craving

by Kristina Meister

  I did not look away from his dazed expression even as my friends tugged and lifted me. Even with the heat, fumes, and rain, my smile did not wilt. We left him there among the rubble, to confront his future the way we all entered and left the world: alone.

  Spend this, I thought, seeing Ananda in his glassy gaze.

  “Katsu,” I whispered.

  Chapter 30

  I lay wrapped in a blanket in Arthur’s arms, healing bit by bit, watching through the car window as the fire trucks finished what the storm could not. The others had gone on ahead in the other two cars to care for Sam, granting me this opportunity to finally learn the truth. But resting there, listening to his slow, strong heartbeat, I realized I didn’t need it.

  I knew then that I loved him dearly, in as many ways as there were people to feel it, and because I loved him, I had to trust him. It was a huge responsibility, to know that he would always rely on me to be my best, to withstand torment, to push for the success of others, but then again, responsibility was my middle name.

  He brushed a strand of hair from my face. “Shall I tell you a story?”

  I nodded shallowly.

  “The bodhi tree was my Crossroads. Like you, at my death, I returned to it. Our scientific friend would talk of tachyons, non-locality, and time loops, I am sure, but . . .”

  The chuckle shook loose the final bullet, and as the hole began to close, he covered it with his fingers.

  “I withered, like a person, because sitting under that tree, I saw all I needed to. I could have stayed with them, tried to lead them by the hand, but . . .”

  “They wouldn’t have done it for themselves.”

  His chest rose and fell in a sigh.

  “Have you gone back to the tree recently? Can you see your future too?

  “Always, and yes.”

  I frowned slightly. I was certain that the visions were my unique gift, the result of my fixation upon preventing the horrible outcomes that plagued my life, but if Arthur could see too, then something was not right.

  “But . . . then it’s not . . .”

  “Lilith, you are overlooking the method by which you may prevent things. Your gift is the ability to have all the weapons you require to survive and protect your loved ones.”

  Each other’s weaknesses. If she was alive, I had nothing to fight.

  “You can build yourself to be unstoppable against any attack. You are made to constantly improve.”

  “How? How do I do it? Sometimes it seemed I had a grasp of them, sometimes they slipped away. How does it happen?”

  He smiled. “I do not know, as I have never seen it before this moment. You are unique, as I said.”

  “And Eva knew that is what would happen?”

  “Your sister…” He chuckled. “She was so very clever, and compassionate. She came and went from the shop, confiding in me about your parents, your life together, her fears and desires. When she began to translate the sutras, I could see the change in her personality. She became more guarded, and soon I realized that she had figured me out.”

  “She did. I’ve only just decoded it now . . . consciously, that is,” I said quietly. “But she left me a list of characteristics. ‘Abhi nila netto,’ blue eyes like storm clouds. I know Sanskrit now, by the way.”

  His laughter was a low rumble that vibrated through me. “I could never be sure of her though. She was exactly as she wished to be, you see.”

  “A blank space.”

  “Yes.”

  Outside the window, the rain drew lines in the spectacle of the fire engines, and bled light into light.

  “And the alley?”

  He shook his damp head. “I had come to tell her not to do what I suspected she might, but she had ideas of her own. There was no Crossroads for her.” He sighed. “Nothing in her life that impacted her severely enough, not even your parents. She could not cross the river. Something stood in her way.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking of her face when she’d asked him if that made her a bad person.

  “She knew that even though she had no way to change her life, she could change yours, and by changing you, change everything else. She seemed to think you would understand what she was trying to do and would readily take up her slack.”

  “Stubborn, just like me,” I said proudly. “I absorb powers. Ananda has his memory . . . do you . . . are you endowed with some talent at being in the right place at the right time?”

  “What I am . . .” He hesitated, but in the span of a few breaths, trusted me in return. “I do not know if anyone else can be. Perhaps I am unique, because even though you exist . . .”

  “I wouldn’t have, without you.”

  We rested there in silence for a time, as I pulled reason from seeming noise. It was a scant illustration of his state, but I knew it was all I would get from him.

  I was sure he was waiting for my reaction, afraid I was hurt that he had not included me, and I was, but not enough to let it overpower the rational majority of voices in my mind. People were so easily pulled away, seduced by the idea of divinity that they lost track of the words spoken. Alive, the Buddha would have become a messiah even sooner; at least dead, he could bide his time. But what was he waiting for? What would the next evolution look like?

  “I envision many things,” he whispered.

  “Global psychic networks, no more disease, peace on earth?”

  “As you said, there can never be peace or perfection, but there can be success, triumph over circumstance. I envision a world where no one settles.”

  I thought of Karl, a man so buried in dismay that anger seemed the only tangible thing. “I don’t understand him. He seemed so . . . powerful.”

  Arthur removed his fingers from the bullet wound and as if it were a magic trick, smooth skin was revealed. “Only because he had more knowledge than you. He had many years to cultivate new abilities, acquire new cravings and satisfy them in unique ways. But once you began outpacing him, he was left feeling inadequate, and in that state, could not react and evolve quickly enough. You saw through him and found ways around him. I hope you have learned something valuable from the experience.”

  “But why try to fight me? Shouldn’t he feel success, having made me, having finally done what he set out to do?”

  “You didn’t attend your sister’s graduation,” he replied as gently as possible.

  “Good point.” My mother had always said that by the time she was finished making Thanksgiving dinner, she was too tired to eat it. When Eva called to tell me she was going to walk the line, what I felt was exhaustion, not freedom. I made some lame excuse and she convinced herself that college graduations didn’t mean much, and that some people didn’t even participate in them.

  God, I sucked.

  “Will he be alright now?”

  “I believe so. All he lacked was a Crossroads, something you were kind enough to give him.”

  “And now?”

  “His life will go on,” Arthur said, “and some day, when it is possible, when he stares death in the face, he will return to that moment and decide to either live or die.”

  “Technically, that’s already happened if he can see forward now too.”

  “True.” He shifted his weight.

  “Then . . .” I sat forward and watched as he pulled himself free and opened the car door. “Is he technically . . . one of us?”

  Arthur hugged the car roof and leaned in. “I suppose he might be.”

  My mouth fell open. “All those poems. You wrote them. You were the one wandering around, spreading and changing the faith into a philosophy once again! You’ve been doing this for years, haven’t you?”

  He looked guilty “Not doing, but preparing to do, absolutely. You were the only missing piece.”

  As he climbed into the driver’s seat, I frowned after him. By the time we got to the shop, I had completely forgiven him. Everything had to be as it had been, or I would not be sitting there, contemplating the future.

&nb
sp; Thanks, Ev.

  He helped me out, and just to show him that I had no hard feelings, I took hold of his hand and turned it palm up. “Let’s see the wheels or spirals, or whatever they’re supposed to be.”

  He gave in and running the pad of my thumb over the shadows my new eyes could not penetrate, I sighed. All the creases of his hand ran outward from a central point, just like the spokes of a wheel.

  “They look just like my father’s,” he clarified. “There’s nothing mystical about it.”

  I brought the central point to my lips. “Says you.”

  At the top of the stairs, we discovered Jinx curled up on the sofa, dazed and out-of-sorts, mourning the loss of his dearly departed action figures. Matthew had apparently raided the coffee bar for a bottle of bourbon, and sat at Arthur’s desk, fixedly putting the sharper things in his life out of focus. William was washing his hands in the bathroom, the blood standing out almost prettily against the porcelain.

  “He’ll be fine. It was just a flesh wound, and that man’s as thick a side of beef as I’ve ever seen. Good thing you had that first aid kit. If we’d called the EMT’s, they wouldn’t have needed their duffel bags.”

  “Always be prepared,” Arthur advised.

  Sam was well-bandaged and propped up against the brass headboard, using Ananda as a pillow. My unused bottles of pain pills and antibiotics were already open on the bedside table.

  I leaned over him and kissed his damp cheek. “Did you take my medication?”

  He opened one eye. “Somebody ought to.”

  I left him there with a smile and went back out to the living room. As if he were Arthur, I slid my arms down over Matthew’s shoulders and hugged him tightly.

  “I’m retiring,” he announced shakily. “I can’t go back after all this. Not when there’s real . . . monsters running around. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “What a coincidence,” Arthur said, coming up behind us. “William, too, is looking for a new occupation. And with me gone, the back room will be vacant, the upstairs empty.”

  “Yes,” I added with repressed glee, “and ‘Unger Investigation’ just has such a witty ring to it.”

  The heavy-lidded eyes took me in distantly over his shoulder, then wheeled to Arthur. Obviously an internal battle was raging. I knew, though, that Matthew was a man who went by his instincts and that trust in Arthur would win. “What does William do, again, besides patch up bullet wounds?”

  “He sees bad things.”

  There was a pause.

  “He’s got a military background,” I pressed. “M1's and trenches, but it’s still military.”

  Another glass was poured and bottomed out. “That might be useful,” Matthew mumbled, “especially with Sam’s training.” He fished out a wilted cigarette. “Yeah, okay, but stuff like that costs money.”

  “I would be happy to invest.”

  He took in my smile, and after lighting his damp cigarette, sighed in gratitude.

  “Say it.”

  He growled, then worked his vocal cords into an approximation of Humphrey Bogart. “You’re some dame.”

  My giggle was cut short, as Jinx seemed to come back to life with a shiver. It was as if he was only just catching up to the conversation, as if the lack of repetition made it more difficult to internalize information.

  “Hang on a minute, gone?” It was when he was angriest that the French seemed strongest, turning “i’s” to “e’s” and “th’s” to “z’s.” It was almost cute. “What do you fucking mean gone? Where the fuck are you going, Art?”

  Arthur turned and smiled. “I have other places to be.”

  “You can’t just fucking ditch!” He jumped up, flapping his arms. “What am I supposed to do? My god damned house burned down, all my shit is ash, I’ve lost my power, and now you’re taking off? You bastard!”

  “I could just say everything twice if it would make you feel better,” I offered. Then I produced the shiny silver can I’d stolen from the refrigerator next to the coffee bar and set it on the edge of the desk next to Matthew’s bottle.

  Jinx stared at it, narrowed his eyes as if afraid he was looking at a mirage, then joined the rest of us a little too eagerly. After he had sucked the can dry like a starved calf, he crushed it with a single quick movement.

  “I just wish that you’d brought the rains before my priceless keepsakes were crushed by flaming rubble.”

  I chuckled. “Do your possessions make you feel better about yourself?”

  “I don’t think that’s possible. But they were so cool!”

  I slicked back his spikes with a tender hand. “I especially liked the beanbag.”

  Epilogue

  I set the tiny statue on top of the box with a miniscule, choked laugh. I tried, but could not remember having acquired it. It must have been Eva’s and somehow ended up in the attic when she moved out of her room.

  It was an Amitabha Buddha, sitting in as close to an elegant lotus position as mass-production could replicate, crowned with a spire, and made of a translucent, milky green plastic gilded with gold paint. It was everything the Buddha was not: gaudy, ugly, and poorly put together.

  I sensed him behind me and moved aside, presenting the horrible artifact to him with an ostentatious wave.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You know, it doesn’t look a thing like you.”

  “True. It’s green.”

  I crooked my finger around my chin in false consternation, “I like the chubby ones better. They’re jolly.”

  He smiled that smile. “I’m jolly.”

  “So then if I rub your stomach will you give me luck in my new life?”

  “No.” He shook his head lovingly. “But I will be beside you in your new life.”

  “Can I still rub your stomach?”

  “I suppose.” He took the box from me.

  “These are the last two.”

  “Lilith, are you sure this is what you want?”

  “I’ve never been surer about anything.”

  I stacked the last box on his already full arms and set the statue on top. Illustrious philosophical mind, incarnation of a living god, immortal super-hero: my butler.

  Outside on the front porch, the family stood in the disarray of all their meager belongings. I had found them sleeping in their car, a single woman and her two daughters, victims of a recent foreclosure. Their faces were confused, eyes wide in disbelief. When I had invited them to my house for a meal, I didn’t say that I’d be leaving it in their hands.

  I took the keys out of my pocket and dropped them into the woman’s palm. “The papers are inside, all signed. It has no mortgage. It’s been in my family for a while.”

  Her mouth fell open and her fingers did not close. “Sh . . . shouldn’t it stay in your family?”

  “I’m all that’s left and I don’t need it.”

  Her eyes welled with tears, “But . . .”

  I held up my finger. “One condition.”

  Her brows furrowed and for the first time, the skeptic appeared. “Yes?”

  I reached out and snatched the green Buddha from its seat in front of Arthur’s face. I presented it to the oldest daughter, who took it with a stern frown. Beside her, her younger sister shyly peeked out from behind their mother.

  “This has to stay in the house, even if you sell it. Stick a note to it or bury it. Do whatever you want, but it must stay here.”

  Arthur made a noise. I shot an askance glare at him.

  “A bit superstitious, isn’t it?”

  “Why, is it fighting a curse?” the girl asked.

  I couldn’t help my grin, “No, but it’s very precious. My friend just doesn’t think I should be granting objects a metaphysical importance they don’t deserve.”

  She frowned even deeper. “So, why don’t you take it?”

  I poked her third eye amiably. “Because I have the real thing.” I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder. “He’s more handsome, isn’t he?
”

  She blinked at me in bewilderment and then up at Arthur, who stood beside me, courteously shading her from the sun like a tree.

  “I guess so,” she shrugged.

  With a wave, I excused my footman and as he loaded the box into the Goodwill van, I squatted down and took one of the girls’ hands in each of mine.

  “Whatever happens, no matter how mad you get at each other, please always remember one thing.”

  “What?” the older girl asked.

  “You may sometimes not like each other, but you’re made of the same stuff. No matter how bossy she gets,” I said to the little one, “look up to her, because she learns from that. And no matter how silly she is,” I said to the elder, “smile back, because she will remind you how wise you should be.”

  The two girls shared a look and shrugged.

  I stood up. “Deal?” I held out my hand.

  The woman looked at her girls and then to the house. She hesitated, mulled over the pros and cons in her mind.

  “Deal.” She took my hand. “And thank you so much. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. Just turn it back into the home it used to be.”

  I waved my good-bye and wandered over to the pickup. Arthur was leaning against it, his arms crossed.

  “Well, Sid, where are we—?”

  “San Francisco,” Jinx shouted from inside. “The Sangha have a temple there.”

  I turned and stared at him.

  “No, I’m not back to normal,” he glowered. “I was just being rude.”

  “Normal?” I smirked in Arthur’s direction as I walked to the driver’s side. “Weren’t you the one who said it was annoying?”

  “Two hundred years and now I have to pay attention to people. Ugh.”

  I clucked my tongue. “Look at it this way; you can listen to your electronica music without constant interruption now.”

  He squirmed in his seat. “It turns out I really don’t like it that much.”

  “Two hundred years and you finally have to learn to like real music,” I grinned.

  He was sulking. “Lay off. Electronica is very complex.”