Silence descended on the table. I didn’t want to feel them. I focused on the feelings of the baby, who was no longer hungry and was starting to fall asleep, enveloped in his parents’ warmth.
My dad broke the silence. He lifted his fork and knife and cut a piece of potato. “I think that if Reed doesn’t want to go to Heather’s, he doesn’t have to.”
I was hit by a wave of betrayal. It was coming from Mom. She shot Dad a look. He looked up from his plate and met her glare.
Matthew turned to me. “Are there testimonies from seers that go that far back?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mom interrupted him. “What matters is that–”
“No,” I answered Matthew’s question. “But our stories are more credible than…”
“Than ours?” Matthew raised an eyebrow.
I nodded. There was an invisible yet clear line running down the table isolating me from them. The silence hung heavy in the air.
“Cool,” Matthew finally said, smiling. “One day you’ll have to tell me the psychics’ theory of how the universe was created.” He stabbed a piece of schnitzel on his plate.
All I felt from him was pain and empathy, no curiosity. And yet I returned the smile and said, “All matter was compressed into a single point, and then there was a big ‘bang!’…”
Matthew chuckled and dunked his piece of schnitzel into a puddle of ketchup.
Mom sighed, finally breaking her gaze away from Dad and fixing it on me. “Fine, if you don’t want to come, don’t come. That’s absolutely fine. We’re already used to going there without our children.”
Matthew offered her a perfectly polite smile, and said, “Great. Then Reed will come to the hospital and we’ll eat in the cafeteria together. Their idea of a festive vegetarian dinner is textured soy protein.”
“Sounds amazing,” I said, and dunked my spoon in the cucumber-flavored tomato soup. “Maybe you two want to join us?”
My dad let out a gurgle of laugher that felt more genuine than Matthew’s affected smile, and we managed to get the conversation back on track.
When we left, Matthew wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him. “I got a car for the weekend. You want a ride home?”
“Very much so.”
We got into the small vehicle, which appeared to be white underneath the layer of dust. Matthew started the car. “You don’t have to let Mom climb all over you. And you don’t owe her any explanations. Just say you don’t want to go to Heather’s.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“You’re the one making it complicated. Stop reacting to her feelings. Just react to what she actually says. Like me. You can’t solve the competition between her and her sister-in-law, and you can’t give her any explanation she’ll be able to repeat later.”
“Maybe I should go to med school. I could use the on-call excuse.”
Matthew slapped my knee. “It’s not an excuse. I work my ass off during the holidays.”
I snorted. “At least you get to avoid family dinners.”
Matthew smiled.
“You want to come over to my place?” I asked, moving the seat back. It was fun not taking the bus for once.
“I have plans,” he replied, his smile quickly disappearing. “Someone who’s ‘so none of my business’?” I tried mimicking his voice.
He shot me a sideways glance. “Yes. And before you ask, we’re just going to a movie. I can’t be away from the hospital for more than a couple of hours. My plans include a movie with Sherry, and back to the ER at midnight.”
Daphne’s vision involved a rally. Rallies only took place at the beginning of the month, which meant at least two more weeks. Once I talked to Sherry she’d want to hear all the details, and she’d forget about Matthew. I could wait with the conversation until after Matthew returned to the ER.
We spent the ride in meaningless chitchat, and when Matthew wasn’t looking I copied Sherry’s number from his phone to mine. I’d call her at midnight. That was the plan. If we were all going to get horribly wounded anyway, at least I could give Matthew a nice evening.
The giggles were the first thing I heard when I walked into the apartment. The door to Daphne’s room was open. I felt her consciousness, light, lively and free of pain, and I felt Oleander’s presence. I walked toward her room. She was sitting on her bed, dressed in a hideous T-shirt and jeans. She clearly hadn’t been expecting Oleander’s visit. Only another damus could hide himself from her.
Daphne looked up when I leaned against the doorframe. “You’re back early.”
“Felt like an eternity,” I sighed. “No more hangover, huh?” Daphne gestured at Oleander. “Someone came over with a painkiller, an egg sandwich and lot of OJ.”
“That’s nice of you,” I said to Oleander, edging out my usual fear. Then I turned to Daphne again and asked, “Any hot water left?”
Daphne nodded. “And leave some for me, OK? I want to take a shower before we leave.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Daphne giggled. “We’re not going anywhere. Oleander and I are.”
I bit my lip. “Daphs…”
“Don’t worry, I looked at it. Made sure we don’t end up at the ER or the police station. We’re both going to have a nice evening. We earned it.” My phone rang. It was Lee.
“Go,” Daphne said, tilting her head towards my room. “I’ll let you know exactly where we are. OK?”
I went to my room and shut the door behind me, hearing the giggles resume on the other side.
“Thanks for letting me know everything’s OK,” Lee said. “Sure.” I unbuckled my belt, cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“I wanted to ask…” Lee said, “I don’t…” he paused again. “I don’t know anyone here, and it’s Friday.”
I straightened up. “You’re looking for a date?”
“Not with you.”
“Ouch,” I blurted.
Lee laughed. “Don’t take that the wrong way, but two empaths together? We’d drag each other down into a black pit of depression. And I’m not looking for a date date. I just want to go out, and I don’t know the area well enough.”
I plopped myself on the bed and closed my eyes. Just the distraction I needed. “There are a few places that aren’t too terrible. I can take you.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m glad I’m not being offensive. You don’t look like someone easily offended.”
“Your accent is appalling,” I poked back at him.
He laughed. We agreed to meet, and something in his voice made my smile linger even after I hung up.
When I came out of my room, Daphne’s door was closed. I felt her exuberance replenishing. I took a shower, leaving her enough hot water, and rummaged through my closet until I found a decent looking shirt.
Daphne opened the door to my room while I was trying to decide whether to tuck in my shirt or leave it out.
“Out,” she said, looking at me.
I pulled the shirt out of my pants.
“It’s more than a one-night stand,” I said, gesturing towards her room.
“A two-night stand,” she replied, shrugging. “Don’t forget,” she added.
I remembered, “Talk to Sherry.”
She smiled.
“Have fun,” I said, returning the smile.
“Fun? God forbid. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.” Her smile shriveled, and her pain trickled towards me. She waved and walked out of my room.
12
Lee lived close by, a ten-minute walk from my house, in a low-rise last stuccoed in the eighties. The sign on his door read only LEE, no last name, above a doodle of a robot holding a fluffy baby chick in its hand.
He opened the door dressed in shorts and a tank top in a color similar to the light blue I was wearing.
I pointed at the door sign. “Lovely.”
“Thanks,” he said, taking a step back. I walked into the apartment and was hit by the smell
of tobacco mixed with faint notes of sage. I tried not to wrinkle my nose.
There was nothing stylish about the apartment; it was the complete opposite of Blaze and River’s place. The living room couch was frayed, and there was no TV in sight. The walls were covered in posters of old Sci-Fi movies with giant squids and damsels in distress. Standing in for a coffee table were two upside-down crates, laden with notebooks filled with doodles. There were stacks of books on the floor, leaning against the corner of the wall.
“A drink?” he asked, gesturing towards the fridge. “I have some non-alcoholic stuff. I think.” He froze mid-movement and turned back to me. “What happened?”
I returned the stare. “Nothing.” I wasn’t expecting the force of my internal wave, and strained to produce a smile; I couldn’t help but wonder whether Lee was one of the wounded people Daphne saw in the rally.
He considered me, took a step forward and pressed his finger against my forehead. With me in shoes and him barefoot, he was only half a head taller. “Here. What happened here?”
I bit my lip.
“Want some help with that?” he asked softly.
I shook my head, unable to cope with his offer.
Lee didn’t respond, he just kept looking at me. I made sure my walls weren’t leaking. “I don’t want you in my head,” I said quietly, “no offense.”
“None taken,” he replied with the same soft voice. “If you change your mind and want someone who gets it, just say the word.”
Lee smiled a small, almost imperceptible smile, took a step back and turned around, severing the intimacy between us. He went into his room, giving me time to pull myself together. I approached one of the posters. It wasn’t a movie I’d ever heard of. When I looked closely, I noticed it wasn’t printed, but had been done by hand. Lee’s signature appeared at the bottom. It was the same hand that had illustrated Blaze and River’s door sign. I wondered how painful it was for him to make it.
A small wad of paper hit me. I turned around. Lee was wearing long pants, holding another wad in his hand. “Are we staying in or going out?”
We walked to the Beer Belly, a relatively new sorcerer-friendly pub with an alcohol selection that easily outdid the Basement’s. I had the feeling that Lee would appreciate a place with good alcohol, and preferably one that didn’t have a permanent photo display of murder victims on the counter.
We talked. Lee had studied history and graphic design in college and met Blaze in an elective on the history of sorcery. He wanted to be a historian, but couldn’t get a scholarship and settled for graphic design instead. Moodification design didn’t appeal to him at all. He landed at ArtDot while looking for a place that didn’t shy away from people like us, and one that would let him wander from branch to branch according to the workload. When he heard about an opening for an accountant, he brought in Blaze.
I knew Blaze had a scholarship to study elemental math in Boston. He managed to get discharged from the military to pursue his scholarship. I told Lee how I had considered going to the airport after him to persuade him to stay in Israel, with me, but we had just gotten over a big fight and I was in the army and I believed my parents when they told me he didn’t love me, that he was just using me to take away his difficult feelings. I didn’t go to say goodbye to him, and he left. Blaze and I spoke only a little after that, and the relationship petered out.
Lee filled in the gaps for me: there was next to no demand for Blaze’s expertise in academia, and after a few years he gave up and went to study accounting in order to make a living.
Lee didn’t touch me. He didn’t send me anything. He only stood there, looking at me with his lips pursed, and then said, “I don’t want to keep talking about him.”
“Then what do you want to talk about?”
“Explain your hand gestures to me.” He steepled his fingers. “That’s our sign for sorcery. What’s yours?”
I interlaced my fingers, palms up against my heart. “That’s the sign for general sorcery.” Then I pressed my thumb to my index finger, forming a circle. “And that’s for psychic sorcery.”
Lee burst into laughter. “Back home that means ‘Want to have sex?’”
I laughed. The American gesture for psychic sorcery was pressing your hand against your forehead with outspread fingers. I remembered the question that was on my mind when we first met. “Don’t you have nicknames over there?”
Lee raised his brow and sent me an inquisitive wave.
“We don’t use the official terms, just the slang,” I explained.
He nodded. “It’s the same back home, but only north of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s considered impolite to use slang in the South. One time in Richmond I accidentally said starter. You should have seen the guy’s face…” He paused, noticing my confusion. “What is it?”
“Starter?” I asked, sending him a baffled wave.
“As in firestarter,” he said, holding his hand in a clenched fist and spreading his fingers. “Fire.”
“Pyro,” I said, holding my hand with my fingers turned upwards.
“Surfers.” Lee arched his hand, palm down. “Water.”
I nodded. I showed him our sign for water sorcery – palm down, fingers mimicking a wave-like motion. “Splashers, we call them.” I winked. “Or Splashies, if you really want to annoy someone.”
Lee giggled. He balled his hand into a fist. “Rock. I know that one.”
I shook my head. “We haven’t been calling them rocks since the eighties. We call earth sorcerers pebbles now,” I said, holding my hand flat, palm down, fingers spread outwards.
Lee held his hand flat in front of his chest and moved it side to side. “Levitators? Floaters? You know, air sorcery.”
“We call them airheads now.” I raised my hand, stretching my fingers out and pulling them back in twice.
Lee linked his thumb and index finger and pressed them against his forehead. “Clairvoyants.”
“Seers,” I said, pressing my pinkie against my forehead. “We call them damuses.”
“Damuses?”
“Like Nostradamus, abbreviated.”
Lee lowered his hands to his sides and looked at me. “And us? Empaths?”
“Moodies.” I wondered whether to explain to him where the name came from.
“As in mood. It’s nice.” He gestured half a salute with his palm out. “Back home we’re called vampires, because we feed off other people’s emotions.”
I twisted my mouth into a grim smile. “They have no idea what it feels like deep down.”
Lee nodded. “No one does.”
We exchanged glances. “Sorry for bumming you out. Want to go home?”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“Then come,” I said, pulling him by his arm. I edged out the fear caused by Daphne’s vision, the sliver of pain Lee and I shared, and led him into the pub.
It was hot and noisy inside, and I could lose myself in the music. I felt the sorcery crackle in the air. Lee smiled and took a deep breath. “Now I feel at home,” he yelled into my ear. Our loneliness was diluted by the crowd.
We danced for a while and drank, only a little, and once Lee felt completely at ease, he allowed himself to blend in with the crowd. I felt him disappearing with the others. I could feel his walls as long as he was standing relatively close. Every once in a while he shot me an inquiring arrow, and I sent back a little ball of reassurance.
There was no talk of the political situation, and no one mentioned the rally. It was the perfect escape. All I felt like doing was having a cold drink and sinking into a world in which sorcery was permissible. I could breathe.
Around midnight, the music became louder. My head started pounding. Lee appeared out of nowhere and leaned against the bar beside me, holding what looked like a glass of orange juice. He was radiating confusion and disorientation with a thin veneer of artificial happiness. He rested his head on my shoulder and, breathing on my neck, said, “It’s nice here.”
I
put my hand on his head and gently pushed him away. He seemed like a completely different person from the calm and collected Lee I had come to know.
He took another sip of his juice and handed me the glass. “Want some? There’s a lot of fun stuff inside.”
I shook my head and gestured at the glass of Coke in my hand. “I’m good.”
“Someone told me there’s another floor for people who want something a little different. Want to come with me?”
The lower level. Of course. I hadn’t forgotten about it, I simply chose to block it out. I’d been there only a few times, and always ran back upstairs after a few minutes. “It’s packed with a lot of people with a lot of very strong emotions. You’ll be flooded. You’re sure you want to go down there?”
Lee stroked my shoulder, his hand sliding up my neck in an intimate gesture. “Only if you come with me.”
I put my hand on his. “Sure, I’d be happy to, but not when you’re like this.”
Lee leaned into me, giving off the smell of sweat, smoke and booze, and whispered, “It’s only when I’m like this that I can do these kinds of things. I don’t have the nerve otherwise. I keep it all inside. If I wasn’t like this right now, I couldn’t tell you I like you.”
“I like you too,” I replied, and sent him a small, warm wave of affection.
“But not like this?”
I shook my head. “Try again when you’re sober.”
Lee tore himself away from me and straightened up. “That’ll take a while. I’m going to see what’s downstairs.”
“OK,” I nodded with affected formality.
“See you in a bit,” he said, smiling. I returned the smile.
He hurled at me what was clearly meant to be a ball of gratitude, but that was mixed with confusion and discombobulation. I laughed. I had no idea what he was on. But he was obviously happy. Lee turned around and walked away, disappearing into the mob crowding the bar.
I took a sip of my Coke. I needed to call Sherry, but all I could think about was Lee caressing the back of my neck. I decided that when he returned, I’d agree to go downstairs with him. If he still wanted me to.
“Hey,” a hand on my shoulder startled me. Sherry. I turned around. “Your roommate sent me.” She was wearing plain pants devoid of any feminine embellishments. She didn’t look like someone who had just been out on a date – a meeting with a friend, at most. Poor Matthew.
The Heart of the Circle Page 10