by Gred Herren
Colin reached into his little shoulder bag and pulled out his cell phone. “You weren’t there, Scotty. We looked for you, but we just couldn’t find you, and Frank did tell me, you know. I never knew you were so jealous.”
“I’m not jealous!” Liar.
He dialed a number and just gave me that infuriating grin. “Hmmm. He’s not answering. Obviously, he’s otherwise occupied.” He lay down next to me and put his arms around me. “Guess you’ll just have to settle for me tonight.” He nuzzled my neck. “Am I not enough for you?”
I pushed him away. “That’s not it; you know that. But I’m not in the mood, okay? This has been a really weird night.”
“Sure. Okay.” He shrugged.
“Colin—” I stopped, not really knowing how to say it.
He put his hands behind his head. “What?”
I hesitated, trying to think of the right way to say it, and then plunged ahead. “How do you . . . how do you know the things you do? I mean, you said you’ve dealt with the Russian mob before. You know how to fix engines, you can hack into the INS computer, you can . . .” My voice trailed off.
He gave me a sad smile. “I also speak five languages fluently: English, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and German.”
My jaw dropped. “How?” I grasped for words. “I mean, you never talk about your past, your family, anything.” It was true. When he’d moved into the apartment upstairs from mine, there was nothing really personal there. No pictures of family—Frank had plenty. You couldn’t turn around up there without bumping into Frank memorabilia. Photos of his dead parents, his sister and her family, his graduation picture from Quantico—there was no escaping it. But Colin had nothing—no college diplomas, nothing of a personal nature, like high school yearbooks and photo albums or anything. It was like he’d never existed before he came to New Orleans. He’d just moved in with his clothes, some CDs, and some books, but other than that, nothing. I’d noticed it—Frank had even said something about it to me once—but we decided to let Colin open up to us about his past in his own time.
“I wondered when you were going to ask. With your curiosity, it must have been driving you crazy.”
“Actually, no.” I shrugged. “I figured you’d talk about your past whenever you were ready to. But I really want to know.”
He leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes, I do.” I sighed. “I mean, this whole thing with the triplets, I mean, I can’t believe Mom and Dad kept this from me. I don’t want us to have any secrets, okay?”
He sighed. “Okay. I was born in San Francisco. My parents were Jewish—Italian Jews whose families had gotten out of Italy before, well, before the war. I had an older sister and two younger brothers. When I was ten, my dad was killed in a car accident. My mom’s brother had relocated with his family to Israel right before I was born, and my mother decided to move us there too after Dad died. She couldn’t take all the memories in San Francisco, I guess.” He gave me a sad smile. “I was fifteen when they all died.”
“They died?” I felt a knot forming in the pit of my stomach.
“It was my brother Noah’s birthday,” he went on, his voice an emotionless monotone. “I had a test the next day, so Mom made me stay home. I was furious. They were all going to a movie and then out for pizza after. I was so angry I yelled at her, but she wouldn’t budge. School was the most important thing to her, you know? So I stayed home to study and off they went. When it was time for me to go to bed, they weren’t home yet—which was odd. It was a school night, after all, and Mom was always adamant about making sure, you know, that we all got a good night’s sleep before school. After a while, I started to get worried. I called the pizza place they were going to but couldn’t get through. I turned on the television. There was a special news bulletin.” He closed his eyes. “A fourteen-year-old Palestinian girl had strapped explosives to her chest and detonated herself in the pizza place. And I knew, I just knew, they were all dead. A little while later, the police showed up and told me.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Anything I could say seemed so trite, so foolish. “I’m so sorry, Colin,” I finally said, patting his leg.
A single tear spilled out of his right eye and down his cheek. “She was flirting with Noah, witnesses said, at the counter, and then she came right over to their table and just . . . blew herself up.” He shuddered. “And I was angry, Scotty, so fucking angry. I hated them all—the Palestinians, the Arabs, all of them. And I wanted to make them pay. So I trained. I studied hard in school, worked out, studied self-defense and martial arts. After I got out of school I was in the army for two years. The Mossad saw something in me—I didn’t care if I lived or died, and I was smart and I was skilled, so they recruited me as an agent. I went undercover, infiltrating their terrorist cells, killing when I had to. . . .”
“How could you go undercover?” The horror he was telling me—the only way I could handle it, digest it, was to keep my mind blank. I couldn’t imagine how it must have felt . . . how I would have felt if Mom and Dad and Storm and Rain had been killed. “You don’t look . . .”
“Arab?” He laughed a little bitterly. “I told you—I am fluent in Arabic. Yes, I have blue eyes, but contact lenses can change that. A little base make-up, grow out my facial hair a bit, and speaking the language . . . oh, yes, Scotty, it’s very easy to pass. For seven years, I was the Mossad’s best agent. I took the toughest assignments, the ones where the odds were so against my surviving, because I just didn’t care whether I lived or died. I kept hoping that one day they’d find out and just kill me . . . so the pain and the hate would go away. But I was too fucking good at my job. I kept thinking, ‘If I succeed, I’ll be saving Israeli lives.’ I was dead inside, not capable of feeling, and then one day I was caught—and I had to kill or be killed.” He closed his eyes again. “I was caught talking to my superiors on a cell phone. My cover was blown . . . by a fourteen-year-old boy . . . and I had to kill him. As I held my gun on him, all I could see was Noah’s face . . . and the boy was so frightened . . . and I couldn’t do it, Scotty. I just couldn’t do it. All I could see was my brother’s face. He was such a bright kid, so sweet and kind and loving, and to die the way he did . . .” He wiped at his eyes again. “I couldn’t kill this kid. I couldn’t. So, I just knocked him unconscious and got the hell out of there.”
“Of course you couldn’t do it.” I was taking deep breaths as emotions washed over me. I felt nauseous. My eyes were filled with tears.
“His eyes haunted me,” Colin went on, like I hadn’t said anything. “I took a leave and went away. To Greece. I hadn’t felt anything in so long, Scotty. I’d been dead inside . . . but that kid . . . all I could think of was Noah, and my mom, and Rachel, and Abram. What would they think of the way I’d turned out? Would they be proud of me? And I knew. I knew they’d be ashamed. I was ashamed. I thought I was avenging them, protecting other families from what had happened to us, but the truth was I’d turned into a killer—and my job required me to kill their children. There was so much blood on my hands . . . I knew I couldn’t go back. I knew I couldn’t keep doing my job. I couldn’t. Where was it all going to end? Hatred breeds hatred, violence only breeds more violence, and you just keep piling hate on violence and it can only end in a bloodbath, with everyone on both sides dead. On Mykonos, I met a Greek boy, nineteen, named Alexandros. I always knew I was gay, you know, but I’d never ever acted on it.” He laughed. “I was a twenty-six-year-old virgin, if you can believe that. All I’d ever done was jack off when I got horny, but this kid . . . he was beautiful and he was very aggressive. . . wouldn’t take no for an answer . . . and I wound up spending a couple of weeks with him. He taught me how to live again, how to feel—that life was something to be cherished and enjoyed. I called my superiors and told them I was resigning my commission and staying forever on Mykonos. I wasn’t going back to Israel . . . and it was on Mykonos that Angela Blackl
edge approached me.”
My head was spinning. I couldn’t absorb it, take it all in. Colin, my sweet, loving boy with the big smile and the devilish sense of humor, was a killer—had killed. This same guy, who could make awesome brownies and always fixed my sister’s car, in whose arms I’d lain and slept, whose warmth I’d cuddled up to in bed at night, and always, somehow, managed to make me feel safe and protected, had killed mercilessly—who knew how many people? How many innocents?
I remembered David once mockingly saying to me, “You know, you’re the fag most likely to sleep with a serial killer.”
He’d meant it as a joke, but he’d been right.
“So I went to work for Angela,” Colin said. “And it was great, you know? Being a private eye, righting wrongs, and you know what? I’m good at it—and I can be proud of being good at it—but I could never really be proud of myself before. Oh, sure, I could always tell myself about all the lives I’d saved, but I was a killer—that was the bottom line. But all the skills I’d learned, to survive, actually came in handy for this line of work. And I never killed again, Scotty.” His voice broke. “And then I met you . . . and Frank, and I found that I was capable of loving again, of falling in love and having some kind of normal life. And your family . . . taking me in and treating me like a member of the family without question . . . it was almost as though it were meant to be, you know?”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” My voice was hoarse.
He looked at me. “Because . . . I never wanted you to look at me the way you are right now—like I’m some kind of monster.” His voice broke, and he started to cry. He put his hands over his face and his body shook.
I sat there for just a moment and then threw my arms around him and pulled him in close, kissing the top of his head, my mind racing. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He put his arms around me and we just sat there for what seemed an eternity in silence. He’s a stranger; you don’t know him at all, kept going through my head. This man you’ve loved, you’ve made love to, been intimate with, has killed Goddess knows how many people, the hands that have explored your body have blood on them, and how many of them were innocent?
And then a kind of calm came over me. Imagine yourself in his place. Imagine being a teenager and finding out that your entire family was killed, blown up, for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . that you could have been with them, but for the random choice of fate. How would you feel? What would you have done differently? Yes, he’s killed, but is it any different from him being a soldier? Can you love someone who’s served in a war and killed? Of course you can. Try to be a little more understanding. He’s suffering, and he is a good person. He’s proved that to you over and over again, and you couldn’t have loved him if that were not the case. He needs you. He’s just revealed himself to you, opened himself up the way you’ve wanted him to, and you can’t just reject him—after everything he’s been through in his life, you can’t do that.
I turned his face up so he was facing me. I reached over and wiped the tears off his face and gave him a smile. “Colin . . . how awful for you. How absolutely awful.”
In a small voice, he said, “I do love you, Scotty.”
I leaned in and pressed my lips against his and smiled. “I love you, Colin.” I brushed my hand against the side of his face. “How horrific it must have been.” I struggled to keep my voice steady. “How you must have suffered . . . it breaks my heart.”
And once those words were out of my mouth, I knew I was right. He didn’t need judgment; he needed compassion and love; he needed me.
One of the basic tenets of my belief system is that love and intimacy are the ultimate healing power. And if anything, Colin needed that healing.
“I love you so much,” he finally said, stroking my hair.
“I love you too,” I said. “I’ll always love you, no matter what.” I kissed his cheek again. “You can always count on that.”
We lay down and I slid my arms around him.
I held him until he fell asleep.
And then I allowed myself to cry for him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Page of Swords, Reversed
an impostor about to be revealed
I woke up in the late morning.
The light coming through the windows was grayish, like it was going to rain at some point. I hadn’t slept well—no big surprise there. I didn’t feel completely rested but was wide awake—that horrible middle place where you know you’re really tired but you won’t be able to get back to sleep. I lay there for a few minutes more, hoping I was wrong, that sleep was still possible, but finally just gave up and got out of the bed.
Colin was still sleeping, his mouth open, his breath coming softly and a look of complete peace on his face. I stood there for a moment, watching him almost in wonder. Some glitter still glinted in his hair in the dull light. I don’t know why I watched him. I still loved him. Was that crazy, knowing what I now knew? My mind kept darting back and forth, arguing with itself. I wondered how soldiers’ wives did it; how they coped when their husbands came home from war. Obviously, they had to know that their husbands had killed people. Maybe they pretended to themselves that their husbands hadn’t actually, that it was someone else who had done the killing. I couldn’t pretend to judge Colin. I didn’t know how I would have reacted in the same situation. He was a good person. My family wouldn’t have taken to him so strongly otherwise; we may be a family of nutcases, but we’re usually pretty good judges of character. I remembered, standing there, one afternoon when we’d dropped in on my parents and had lunch. I could picture it so vividly, he and my mother standing in the kitchen making a salad together, how easy they were with each other, just talking and laughing and having a good time. No, in spite of what he’d done in the past, he was a good person. No one was good enough of an actor to fool my mother, which also gave me pause about the whole Sasha situation. I was pretty sure he wasn’t telling us the whole truth; but Mom seemed to believe everything he said. So, maybe I was wrong about him.
I walked down the hall to the kitchen and started grinding beans for coffee. The entire house was silent. There wasn’t much noise coming from the street. Lundi Gras, Fat Monday, wasn’t as crazy as the weekend. Even the tourists seemed to take the day off, until the parades started again that night. A lot of locals have cocktail hours around five for friends, and everyone usually winds up wandering home around nine to rest up for Fat Tuesday. The locals, from years of experience, know that it’s best to turn in early and not overindulge on Lundi Gras. Fat Tuesday starts early in the French Quarter. Some people get up early to head down for Zulu and Rex on the parade route. Others get up as early as four to start putting on their costumes and make-up. The Society of St. Ann, a foot parade of celebrating people in costume, begins its bar-hopping route through the Quarter somewhere between eight and ten—one of its great traditions is its unpredictable start time. By eight, people in costume are everywhere—heading to breakfasts with mimosas, Bloody Marys, and Irish coffees, cheerfully toasting those up on the balconies, wishing each other a happy Mardi Gras—and it lasts all day until the bells of St. Louis Cathedral begin to toll at midnight, announcing the end of Carnival, and the streets empty. That’s why the locals try to retire early on Lundi Gras. So, on Lundi Gras night, the vast majority of people out are from out of town, the ones who don’t know that the best part of Fat Tuesday is the morning, which is fine with the locals, because that means the morning still belongs to us—well, us and the tourists who’ve stayed out all night.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and took it out to the deck after spiking it with Irish crème. There was a bit of a chill in the air, but it was also damp, the air heavy. The sky was full of gray clouds, but here and there the sun’s rays shone brightly through holes, like the image of God in a religious painting. My parents’ deck is a rarity in the Quarter. A door in the kitchen opens out onto it
, and they have deck chairs and a table with a rainbow-colored umbrella. The deck can’t be seen from the street. The house rises up all around it on every side. In the summer with direct sun, it can be completely unbearable out there. But on a cool morning, it is a little piece of heaven. There are ferns and plants in pots scattered everywhere; my father created a misting system for when the sun is strong to keep them from frying to a crisp. I sat down and sipped my coffee, trying to will myself to relax.
Last night hadn’t been the first night I’d slept alone with Colin since the boys had moved to New Orleans, but it had felt strange. I didn’t know if that was because of what Colin had told me—and I was still processing that—or if it was because Frank had voluntarily left with some guy last night. Something about that didn’t feel quite right to me; somehow I’d never thought that Frank would be the first one to stray. Maybe I was arrogant, but it felt like I’d been betrayed. I guess I’d always thought I was the slut most likely to. Frank was such a stand-up guy, so committed to both Colin and me. Sure, he’d been on Ecstasy, which threw everything out the window. I guess I’d figured that Frank would never do it.
Which was incredibly self-centered and selfish of me.
“Get over yourself, bitch,” I said out loud.
The door opened, startling me a bit. “Do you mind if I join you?” Colin asked. He was holding a cup of coffee in his hands. His hair was tousled, and there was still sleep in his eyes. He was bare chested with a pair of my old gray sweatpants covering him from the waist down. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept well.