Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Book 1: Hell-bent (Shooting Eros Series)

by Benjamin Laskin

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “Just some guy,” Malkah answered. “He didn’t leave me much of a tip.”

  “I don’t think he had anything more to leave,” Saul said. “Let me make up the difference.” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

  “No, Saul,” she said, swatting at his arm. “It’s fine. I don’t mind. He was nice. A little quirky, but quite the gentleman. You don’t find that very often anymore.”

  “Was he doing what I think he was doing?”

  Malkah hesitated. “Umm…”

  “Malkah, it’s okay. It’s me, remember?” He smiled and pointed at his kippa.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Saul nodded. “Well, you don’t find that very often either.”

  The fall evening air was exhilarating, but the night would bring cold, and without shelter, blanket, or any warm clothing, Cyrus didn’t think sleeping on the street or a park bench particularly enticing.

  He pondered retracing his steps back to the homeless shelter to maybe find a place on the lobby floor, but on second thought decided that his reappearance there would not be well received. He scolded himself for even considering the idea; thinking it a sign of desperation and a lack of bitachon, trust in HaShem [The Name, God]. So he walked on, praying that something would turn up.

  A minute later something did turn up—a black and white with flashing lights. Two police officers jumped out of the car and ordered Cyrus to freeze. In one of the officer’s hands was a charcoal sketch. He compared the picture to that of Cyrus.

  “It’s him,” the officer said confidently.

  Tink.

  “Ow,” I said, reeling myself back in from my travels inside the Midrasha. My head felt like it was going to explode, and my body like a string of overcooked spaghetti.

  It took a full minute for my blurred eyesight to clear, and when it did the first thing I saw was a sparkling pebble on the cave’s granite floor an arm’s length away. I picked up the crystal and examined it in wonder.

  Wow, I thought, and to think Captain Cyrus produced hundreds of these, and twice the size! How did he keep from frying himself?

  Against Captain Volk’s warning, I had returned to the Midrashic Cave to see if I could find anything that could be of help to Captain Cyrus. I traveled deeper, farther, and longer into the Midrasha than I had ever dared before. It was frightening and exhilarating at the same time, and I think I was lucky to have made it back alive.

  I rolled the crystal between my thumb and forefinger, and then placed the jeweled drop of sweat into my sleeve pocket. I lay back on the cool granite floor and massaged my temples. My head throbbed and I felt drained of energy.

  I relaxed and let my mind float across my memory banks to review what I had seen and learned during my investigation. While I was in the Midrasha, I had attempted to do a sort of ‘six degrees of separation’ survey, based on the idea that every human is within six persons of knowing one another. I thought that if I could look up the record of one of Cyrus’s previous matches, I might be able to follow one of the thousands of strands of his or her story back to Cyrus himself. It was a dizzying exercise, and I had failed.8

  Note 8: I had never heard of a twentieth-century film star named Kevin Bacon, but heck if every person on Earth wasn’t within six degrees of separation from this guy. But, alas, even Mr. Bacon couldn’t lead me to Captain Cyrus.

  Along the way, however, I learned that I wasn’t the first malach to try this idea. Indeed, it was none other than Cyrus himself who had used it. Only he differed from me in two significant ways.

  By retracing his footsteps, so to speak, I discovered that he had gone six degrees of separation for each of thousands of people both ‘horizontally’ in the present and ‘vertically’ into the past. Moreover, whereas I had only viewed certain records, he had managed to download virtual copies of them all into his mind! It was a phenomenal feat, and something that attested not only to his extraordinary angelic powers, but also to the high level of mastery he had attained over himself.

  I conjectured that if Captain Cyrus were able to hold on to all that knowledge and experience, he would be a walking compendium of every ability known to humankind. Not only would Cyrus truly be a rocket scientist, he’d also be a surgeon, a computer hacker, a master chess player, a musical virtuoso, a forensics expert, a botanist, a lawyer, a carpenter, a pilot, a nuclear physicist, a magician, an acrobat, a Navy SEAL, an architect, a bomb disposal engineer, and every other specialist, master, or expert one could imagine.

  Cyrus would be a polymath extraordinaire—a doctor of everything, holding, essentially, a doctorate in everything. He would be Homo Universalis: the ultimate Renaissance Man. Leonardo Da Vinci times the World Wide Web, squared.

  But that was a big if. As Captain Volk said, if Cyrus did not find a way to activate his soul soon, he would not only be unable to retrieve and use the knowledge and experience that he had acquired, but he would eventually forget most everything from his previous life, except that he had had one—a fact that would ultimately drive him insane.

  31

  Jailbirds

  “Are you sure that’s the guy?” Officer Liddy asked the three men standing beside him as they looked through the observation room’s two-way mirror.

  A thirty-five-year veteran of the force, Officer Liddy was honest, professional, and worn-out. His retirement was only one birthday cake away, and that was his first thought upon waking every morning. Officer Liddy pointed at the tallest of the men in the lineup of suspects: the guy in the silvery-white one-piece, Cyrus.

  “Yeah, datz him,” exclaimed the first man. “Datz da muddah fuckah! He da dude dat broke mah fuckin’ nose!”

  “You?” Liddy said to another.

  “That’s him all right,” the next man snarled. He waved his brand-new crutch. “Let me in there so I can stick this up his ass!”

  “How about you?” Liddy asked the third man.

  “Hell, yeah. That’s the guy. Throw the book at him!” He swung his arm in simulation. “Ow…shit!” he cried, hugging his cracked ribs.

  “Okay, fellas, we’re done here,” Officer Liddy said. “We’ll call if we need you.”

  “I don’t have a phone,” said the second man.

  “We’ll find you.”

  “Howz about money?” said the first.

  “How about it?” the officer replied rhetorically.

  “Don’t I git no money from dis? He broke mah fuckin’ nose. I helped ‘chu find a vee-holent criminal!”

  “You’ve been in jail sixteen times, Mr. Washington, and no one got any money for putting you there. Call your lawyer.”

  “I can’t pay no damn lawyer,” he bleated.

  “That’s not my problem, sir.”

  “Hell yeah, it be yo problem. You works for me! Mah taxes pay yo stinkin’ salary!”

  “Yeah!” chimed in the other two men.

  “With all due respect, gentlemen, the only tax any of you have ever paid was the sales tax on your booze.”

  “Well, dat counts, don’t it?” said the first.

  Officer Liddy said, “You got a problem, call the mayor. Now go home.”

  “I don’t have a home,” the first said.

  The officer shook his head wearily and motioned to a couple of cops to lead the men away. He pushed a button for the intercom inside the viewing room.

  “All right,” he told the lineup, “you can all go. Except you, Mr. Cyrus. You stay put.”

  “For a guy who has only been in town a day,” Liddy said, leaning back into his chair, his clipboard resting on his grumbling stomach, “you sure have made a lot of enemies.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Cyrus said.

  “Arrested twice.”

  “I admit that must not look very good.”

  “No, Mr. Cyrus, it most certainly does not.” He flipped a page on the clipboard and pushed his glasses to the tip of his nose. “…No wallet, no ID, and neither your fingerprints nor an
y other biometric identifiers turn up on any data base. Can you explain that?”

  “No, Sir. Unfortunately, I cannot.”

  “And that, Mr. Cyrus, or whoever you are, is why you will be spending the night here at lovely Precinct #7. Maybe a night in our cozy, one-star accommodations will revive your memory.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Cyrus said. “Thank you, Officer Liddy.”

  The precinct drunk tank stank of gin, vodka, whiskey, beer, pot, urine, and vomit. The stench was so strong that Cyrus could taste it.

  Not all of his fellow arrestees were winos, however. From his corner at the back of the cell, Cyrus also noted an assortment of thugs, punks, and general riffraff. They were sober, but equally as lost as the drunks, or deficient in one or more mental or spiritual capacities.

  Some faces were raw and scarred beyond their years. Other faces, like those of two college kids, twitched in fear and incomprehension at how an innocent blend of beer, unchecked hormones, and a bad choice in friends could betray them so badly as to land them in such a harsh reality. Others, however, seemed quite at home; the glazed look in their eyes revealing neither shock nor outrage, concern nor impatience. They had given up on themselves and for anything better a long time ago.

  Cyrus looked at the three words he had scrawled onto his hand. He rolled his fingers into a fist, as if doing so would keep the message to himself safe. He closed his eyes and entered a state of meditative prayer, beginning with the recitation of holy psalms. He continued to pray into the night, ignoring the ruckus around him: quarrels, fistfights, snores, and hacking coughs.

  He floated above the commotion, searching for a way to fan the ember that was his human soul. Cyrus knew he was alive, that he was human in every way, but he felt something was missing. He felt like a thirsty man lapping at a dribbling faucet. He could keep his tongue moist, but his body screamed out for more. If only he could find a way to turn the handle to release a gush of soul-quenching water.

  Eventually, he fell asleep, sitting on the floor, his back pressed into the corner of the cell. He dreamed he was back in Heaven. He saw Captain Volk and me, but we could not see him. He called out to us, but we could not hear him. He tried everything to get our attention, but we were oblivious to his presence.

  Come morning, Cyrus was awoken by the slide and clang of the cell bars. A police officer allowed some men to leave as he ushered in a new arrestee. Cyrus closed his eyes again and tried to get back to where he had left off.

  “Hello,” said the new face.

  Cyrus looked up, blinked the stranger into focus, and then instinctively sprang to his feet.

  The elderly man stood out from the rest of the roughscuff like a sheep among wolves. He was tall and dressed in a mechanic’s blue jumpsuit, and despite his full, smoky beard, cap, and workingman’s attire, Cyrus felt that there was something royal about the fellow. His carriage was erect and full of dignity. Because of his youthful gray eyes, his age was weirdly hard to guess, and Cyrus thought the gentleman could pass for anywhere between fifty and seventy.

  “Hello,” Cyrus said, stepping aside. “Please, take my corner. I swept the floor here and you can use the walls to rest comfortably against.”

  “Thank you, young man, but I won’t be staying long.”

  Cyrus grinned. “That’s what they all say.”

  The man smiled knowingly.

  “What brings you here?” Cyrus inquired.

  “You did.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I saw you on the street yesterday, twice. The first time was when you were attacked by a bunch of goons, and the second when you were arrested. I thought it my civic duty to come down here today to speak in your defense.”

  “That was noble of you, my friend, and I thank you. But why then are you in jail with me now?”

  “I asked to speak with you, but an Officer Ferguson wouldn’t allow me to. I thought it was important, and so I popped him in the nose. Now, here I am.”

  Cyrus chuckled. He wasn’t sure if the gentleman before him was valiant or a lunatic. “Assaulting an officer is a serious crime, my friend.”

  “I didn’t hit him hard.”

  “Hard enough to land you here.”

  “Exactly,” the man replied with a smile. “Excuse me for a few minutes. In my hurry to get here this morning I missed my morning prayers.”

  He unzipped his mechanic’s jumpsuit and withdrew a blue velvet bag.

  “They let you in with that?” Cyrus asked. “They didn’t pat you down?”

  “They did. But,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “I guess they missed it. Baruch HaShem!” He opened the pouch and took out a second, smaller bag, and then a tallis, a Jewish prayer shawl. “Could you please hold this a moment?” he asked, handing Cyrus the smaller pouch. The man put the tallis over his shoulders.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Cyrus asked, weighing the pouch in his hands, his fingers tracing the objects with in it.

  “If you think it is tefillin, then yes.” The man reached into the bag Cyrus was holding and withdrew the first of two small boxes, the tefillin, or phylacteries. The man observed Cyrus’s interest with an amused smile. Cyrus was staring at the tefillin with childlike wonder, his hand rising hesitantly to touch them, but overcome with awe, he didn’t dare.9

  Note 9: The rock-hard, square-shaped tefillin box is made completely of kosher leather and painted black, as are the straps that attach it to the arm. The tefillin have the look of polished ebony. The arm-tefillah, which is put on first, has one compartment containing four biblical passages written upon a single strip of specially prepared parchment. The head-tefillah has four separate sections, formed from one piece of leather. Each compartment holds one parchment scroll, passages from the Hebrew Bible referring to the commandment of tefillin. The tefillin have numerous exquisite details, all of which are symbolic and mystical, understood by Kabbalists and sages. Behind Cyrus’s wonderment was his knowledge of the holiness of tefillin.

  The old man was touched by the speechless manner in which Cyrus marveled at the sacred object in his hand.

  “Nu?” the man said. “Would you like to put them on?”

  “Huh? What? No! I wouldn’t dare. I’m not—”

  “I have it on good authority that for you, Cyrus, a unique exception can be made.”

  “You know my name?”

  “You are very well known in certain parts,” he answered cryptically.

  “Or,” Cyrus smirked, “maybe the officer you punched in the nose told you?”

  “Or that,” the man replied with a shrug and a smile. “But, what I am telling you now is that this is your one and only chance to charge that sputtering thing you’re barely holding on to.”

  “What thing?”

  “I think you know. Are you going to take me up on my offer, or remain forever in wonder and ignorance?”

  Cyrus looked long and hard into the old man’s shrewd eyes.

  The stranger smiled and bounced an eyebrow. “So, nu? What’s it going to be?”

  “I do not want to sin against God or His commandments.”

  “Chas v’chalila!” the man exclaimed. God forbid. “Do you think that I would want to be an accomplice in any wrongdoing?”

  “You belted a cop.”

  The man laughed and dismissed the statement with a wave of his hand. “Pshaw, he’s fine. Better than ever, trust me.”

  Seeing the longing in Cyrus’s expression, the man took off his tallis and placed the prayer shawl around Cyrus’s shoulders. Cyrus ran his hand down the front of the tallis, and let the tzitzit, the fringes or tassels, that hung from each of the four corners of the tallis stream between his fingers. Soon he began to feel a warm, tingling sensation circulate through his body from head to toe.

  “Nice, huh?” the man said, seeing Cyrus’s smiling face. “Think of yourself as standing within the Mishkan, the holy Tabernacle.” The man held up the tefillin. “This is a very old pair, by the way. A family heirloom, you m
ight say.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “You should be,” the man rejoined. He proceeded to put the tefillin on Cyrus’s left arm, having Cyrus repeat after him the proper blessings. Next, he instructed Cyrus to wrap the leather strap seven times around his arm, put on the head tefillin, and then complete the ritual with the wrapping of his hand. Each step along the way the stranger had Cyrus repeat after him the appropriate blessings.

  The warm, tingling sensation gathered in strength and intensity. The energy didn’t just circulate through his body anymore; it coursed, growing hotter and hotter. Cyrus felt he was being electrocuted from the inside out. His eyes bulging, he looked at the man, but was unable to utter a word. His body began to shake, and his arms and legs straightened and stiffened like tree limbs.

  “Good,” the old man said. “Hang on…” He then laid both hands on Cyrus’s head as he pronounced a holy blessing, “Yivarechecha Adonai viyishmirecha…” Cyrus’s head flung back and his body went into convulsions.

  All the while that Cyrus and his visitor had been talking, they did not go unnoticed by the other inmates. Far from it. The inmates huddled around the bizarre characters and questioned and mocked them, but Cyrus and the old man ignored them. It was as if they were isolated from the inmates like fish in a bowl.

  A few of the inmates tried to penetrate the bowl, but they couldn’t. They were separated from Cyrus and the man by an invisible force field. The inmates hollered and screamed, but to Cyrus and the stranger, their voices were small and distant, as if drifting from across a rushing river.

  Never had Cyrus known such searing pain. Not even his battle injuries with the yetzers over the centuries could compare. He thought that he was going to die. His mind raced as he stared in agony at the complacent old man. Who are you? Why are you doing this…?

  The inmates scampered as far away from them as they could get, hugging and banging on the bars of the cell.