by Amanda Leduc
Lilah licks her finger, catches the sauce at the corner of her mouth. Sweet. A hint of chilies. “I hate him.”
“You don’t hate him.” Israel pats his mouth with his napkin. She watches the skin over his collarbone, dark and brown. The pulse in his neck has quickened, like her own. “You love him so much that it feels like hatred.”
“Or I hate him so much that it feels like love?”
Israel smiles his crooked smile. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, Delilah. You see — you are beginning to understand.”
—
This time he ties her completely to the bed, her hands and feet stretched to the bedposts, her knees bent so that she’s exposed, all of her, to the air. To him. She shakes with terror, with anticipation. The pillow beneath her cheek is damp with tears.
“You fear me,” Israel says behind her, “because you think I have power over you. Because you are used to having power over men.” A caress, then the crack of his whip against her thigh. “But what you don’t realize, Delilah, is that this is where the power comes from. This recognition — it is pain, only that. It will disappear. You are Infinitely more than your body.” He stops the whip and then draws it back over her reddened skin. Agony; like nothing else she’s ever felt. Lilah sobs into the pillow, into the bed. She pulls against the scarves until her wrists and ankles chafe — these will be harder to disguise, these marks, and tomorrow at the office Debbie will be overwhelmed with concern. But right now, here, she says nothing. She couldn’t say anything even if she tried — in these moments of calm before the whip descends she’s holding infinity right in her mouth, teetering on the edge of a climax so radiant it’s a wonder her organs don’t implode. Is this what they meant, the saints?
“‘For the Lord disciplines the ones He loves,’” Israel intones, “‘and chastises every son whom He receives.’” At chastises, he snakes an arm around her front and jams his fist into her mouth, so that her teeth clink against the gold of his ring.
She bites him because it is the only thing she can do, bites until his flesh breaks and the warm tang of blood spills over her tongue. Israel grunts behind her and then pulls his hand away. He rams his fist into her cheek — she hears the bone crack, or shift, and then her head hits the pillow again and for a moment she feels nothing. More blood in her mouth. She spits it out onto the pillow.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Never mind.” He pulls his hand through her snarled hair, rests his fingers against her cheek. “It will all come out.”
Lilah rests her head against the pillow and smears her forehead with the blood. Her breath comes in short, ragged bursts. Her skin aches. Her ass shivers. And yet she is calm, focused. She feels Israel ready himself behind her. He presses close, so that her shivers become his shivers, his heat becomes her own. For a moment, just before he pushes inside her, the space between them is filled with something endless, something other. His arms come round and cover her, like wings.
Two
Nearly a week after the encounter on the streets, someone came to the house. It was morning. They were on the patio. Timothy had come back from a solitary walk on the streets last night looking like a beaten dog. He’d gone into his room, and he hadn’t spoken to anyone, and all three of them had slept around the noise of muffled sobs. Now he sprawled on the patio stones, his limbs loose and awkward, the joints pronounced, like some kind of wooden puppet.
“What if,” said the boy, “what if this is what we all become?”
“What if,” Sam repeated. Today everything felt like a struggle. “I don’t know.”
“This could be death. This could be why no one talks about it.”
“But no one sees us to talk about it,” Sam said. “And — surely — if it happened to everyone, we’d know something. You,” and he pointed to the priest, “would know something.”
“What do you think?” said Timothy. His voice cracked with longing. “Father.” Fa-ther.
“I think,” said the priest, “that God is full of mystery. And perhaps he is already using you for something wonderful. There is always that.”
“You didn’t make it sound so wonderful before,” Sam said.
“Things can be wonderful and terrible at the same time.” Father Jim took a sip of coffee and continued. He’d slipped the whiskey straight into his cup this morning — a quick sleight-of-hand, but Sam had noticed. “You both have family you fought with, whom you love. You’ve both had your hearts broken, in some form or another. We human beings — we love and despise at the same time. Once you acknowledge this, and recognize the limitless possibilities of your own heart, you’ll realize that God isn’t that different.”
“Still,” Sam said. “‘Everything else is a toy, by comparison’? That’s what you said.” A shimmer in the air, the weight of feathers on his soul. “Or something to run from. It’s either/or — it can’t be both.”
“What you’re fighting, that other thing — it has to be . . . charming.”
Timothy laughed. “That’s not what I would say.”
“But it has to be.” The priest was calm yet insistent. “Think about it, gentlemen. What would you do if the Devil came to you in a roar of smoke and fire, threatening pain and eternal damnation? I don’t know about you, but I’d sure as shit be running for the church.”
“I thought you already ran for the church,” Sam said, his voice wry.
“The point, Timothy,” and the priest faced the boy, “is that if there is a Devil, and there is a God, and the point of the Devil is to draw you away from that God, then the Devil — or this other force, thing, whatever — needs to be as attractive as possible. The Devil needs to make you an offer you can’t refuse, to seduce you so deeply you can’t see any other way forward. Gentlemen — fire and brimstone is not a selling point. It’s that simple.”
The doorbell rang and Sam went to get it, sliding back into himself as he walked through the house and up through the front hall.
It was Emma. He held the door open for her and she stepped inside.
“Hello,” he said. Hell-o.
“I’ve been calling,” she said. She was pale, shaken. “I left messages.”
“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t checking the messages anymore. He slept, and he walked, and he waited. That was all.
“I thought — I thought it had happened.”
“Thought what had happened?”
“I don’t know.” Her laughter was shaky, forced. “Whatever it is that’s happening to you.”
Whatever it is. “No. Not yet.” Whatever that was. He swept his arm out and pointed to the back of the house. “Everyone’s through there.”
“Everyone?”
He stopped. Remembered. Then he took her hand and pulled her through to the back of the house. She saw Timothy, and her hand squeezed his hard.
“Oh,” she said. It could have been a prayer.
Timothy sat upright, quivering and terrified. “Who are you? Who is she?”
“It’s okay,” Sam said. He released her hand. “This is Emma.”
“Hello,” she said. She sat next to Father Jim.
“Emma used to be my student,” Sam said. “And now — ”
“We’re friends,” she finished.
“Friends,” the boy echoed. He looked at them both. “I never had friends.”
“You have a sister,” the priest said gently.
“She hates me.” Timothy rocked on the ground. The sounds out of his mouth reminded Sam of the deer he’d killed, all those weeks ago.
“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you,” Emma said instantly, leaning forward. “Why would she hate you? Maybe she’s just . . . upset.”
“She doesn’t understand,” Timothy said. “She doesn’t understand, so I have to keep everything from her.” He looked at Emma and sobbed. “But you. You can see them. Why you and not her?” He
stumbled to his feet, breathing hard. “I want it to stop.”
“Timothy,” Sam said. This he could do, he could understand. Hadn’t he helped children such as these in his other, long-ago life? He stood up, counting the seconds as he rose. He locked eyes with the boy. “I know. I want it to stop too.”
“I want to go home,” the boy said, weeping. His wings shone white and terrible. “Make it go away, Sam.”
“Timothy,” Sam said again, and he reached forward, took the boy’s hands in his own. They were both so warm. And yet the hands of God, come down to touch them both, were sterile, strange, and cold. “I would,” he said. “I would take it for you. I would take it all away from you, if I could.”
The boy shook and cried. His own hands were nail-less, and crisscrossed with veins, like Sam’s. “You can’t. You can’t do anything.” He wrenched his hands away and ran into the house. They heard the front door open and slam.
Sam stood there, staring at the open patio door until he couldn’t hear the slap of Timothy’s feet anymore. The boy, stumbling down to the city, his heart pulsing with fear and grief and rage. He turned back to look at the others, who were both stunned and quiet. Emma wept silently, her eyes shimmering and dark as the grass.
“He’s gone to find his sister,” Sam said. “He has nowhere else to go.”
“He’ll come back,” said the priest. “He will, Sam.”
“I’m sorry,” Emma whispered. They turned to look at her. “I’m sorry. I thought — I thought it was a miracle. You. Him. I didn’t understand.”
“It is a miracle,” Sam said softly. “And we don’t understand it, either.”
“Will he find her?” Emma asked. “Does he know where she is?”
Sam and Father Jim looked at each other, then at Emma. “Yes,” they said.
“Should we go after him?” she said then, even though it was already too late. “Does he need help?”
“He’ll find her,” Sam said. He rested his hands against the back of his head and saw Emma start. Yes — no gloves. “Or she’ll find him. One way or the other. There’s something between them. I don’t think we can see it.” He thought again of Timothy. Weeping. Running. Alone.
“I need a drink,” the priest said suddenly. “Does anybody else need a drink?”
Sam laughed. “No.”
“Emma?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“Very polite.” Father Jim nodded and stood. “I’ll take myself to the bar, then.”
“There’s whiskey in the cupboard,” Sam said.
The priest shook his head and offered them the tiniest bit of a smile. “No,” he said. “There isn’t.”
—
They sat in the kitchen, on opposite sides of the counter, just as everything had started on opposite sides of the desk.
“It’s going to happen soon,” Sam said. “Whatever it is.”
“I know.” Emma ran her fingers over the countertop, then raised a hand to her mouth and bit a nail. “I can feel it.”
“I’m sorry. That you had to see that, I mean.”
“I’m sorry for Timothy,” Emma said, her voice low. “And you.”
He shrugged. The cat came and jumped into his lap. Still purring. For Chickenhead, there was still so much to love about the world. “Emma — talk to Father Jim. If I’m not here. He’ll know. He’ll be able to tell you . . . what happened.”
She nodded. “I still don’t understand why I get to see everything. Timothy. I don’t even know him.”
Sam remembered Father Jim again. “Maybe you’re just supposed to watch. To bear witness. To tell me that I needed to grow up, and stop screaming.” He paused. “I didn’t thank you before,” he said. “But you were — you were so right.”
She laughed, sniffled. “Who knew.” She took a deep breath. He could hear the sadness whistle through her lungs. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too,” he said. This unexpected soul beside him, this unforeseen friend.
Emma reached over and took his hand, traced her fingers around the veins across his palm. “It’s terrible, what’s happening to you. But . . . I want it to be beautiful too. Somehow.”
He laughed. “Forever the poet, you. Always ready to find the thing that shines.”
Emma curled his hand into a fist and held it between her hands. “Maybe,” she said softly. “I’m going to hope for something beautiful, all the same.”
II
The next morning, there’s no bruise.
“I don’t understand,” Lilah says, looking into the bathroom mirror. She runs her fingertips lightly over her cheek. The skin is white and smooth. “I thought you broke it. I felt you break it.”
Israel leans against the doorway. “Everything feels different when you and I are together.”
“But there’s nothing. It’s not even red.”
He shrugs. “I did not hit you that hard. Perhaps it only felt that way at the time.”
She thinks back to that moment, to the crack of his fist against her cheek. “Maybe.” The rest of her body is mottled and purple, so much so that the sight of her white face is disturbing. Then she remembers something else. “I bit you. Are you all right?”
He laughs. “I am — Delilah, I am more than fine.”
She peeks back into the bedroom. Even from the doorway she can see it — a stain on the pillow, murky reddish-brown. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I can buy you new sheets, if it doesn’t come out.”
“I do not want new sheets.” He smiles and runs his hand through her hair. “I will keep it. It is a good reminder.” Then he nods to her clothes, still crumpled on the floor by the bed. “Get dressed. It is still early — I thought that perhaps we could look for your brother before we both go into work.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Your brother. Timothy. It is a beautiful morning. Perhaps he is out.”
“I — I can’t. I have plans.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows go up. “What plans, so early in the morning?”
“I have . . . work to do. I’m so far behind. And anyway, I don’t know if we could find him. I never know where he is.”
“We would find him,” he says with a certainty that unnerves her. “I think it would be . . . interesting.”
“Why?” She walks back to the bed, pulls her shirt from the floor. “Because he’s homeless? Because you think he has some weird power over me?” She yanks the shirt over her head. “Look, don’t talk about him like that. He’s not some — he’s not a travelling sideshow, for fuck’s sake. And I don’t — ” a sudden, painful truth, “ — I don’t want to see him. Not today.”
“What a terrible sister you are,” Israel says softly. He comes up behind her and bites her ear, so sharp that she stops for a second and closes her eyes. “Never mind — we won’t go today. We will go later. Next week.”
“Maybe.” Lilah bends and steps into her pants. “Maybe not.”
“You can’t keep me from your family forever,” he says. “It is impolite.” A sudden smile widens his face. “But then, perhaps I was wrong. Did he not drive you to me last night? Maybe he does not hold the power over you that I thought. Maybe Timothy’s purpose for you is . . . over.”
“He’s just a boy,” she says. Sweet Timothy. She smoothes the wrinkles in her shirt and tries to calm her trembling hands. “He’s just — lost.”
Israel moves away from her, and tosses the duvet back over the bed with one twist of his arm. “Perhaps,” he says. “But you forget, Delilah — even lost boys have a way of being found.”
—
At the office, it’s spreadsheets and telephone calls as though nothing has happened, as though nothing has changed. Halfway through the day, Penny leaves a note on Lilah’s desk telling her to go and get coffee.
“You know,
” Debbie says, “I don’t remember him asking for it once when you were off visiting your mom. Isn’t that weird? I mean, normally the man drinks enough to kill a horse.”
“Yes,” Lilah says. She flips the note through her fingers and stares at Debbie, then pulls her coat from the chair. “Do you want anything, while I’m out?”
“That’s sweet of you. But I’m okay.”
Lilah nods. “All right. I’ll be back, eventually.”
Outside, she walks as slowly as she can, kicking at leaves on the sidewalk as she goes. She crumples the note, and then unfolds it. Penny’s writing is black and perfect, the cursive of a schoolteacher. Kopi Luwak. One pound. One pound, and another look from the coffee merchant, who must go home and wonder exactly what it is that Lilah does to afford one pound’s worth, every week, of the most expensive coffee in the world. Maybe she’s an unobtrusive CEO, or a film actress just about to break into the world. Or perhaps she’s old money.
Maybe she does other things entirely.
She pays for the coffee and walks out of the store, the coffee tucked deep into her purse. She dawdles on the way back to the office — sits on this bench, and then that one, and smiles at every person who passes her on the street. Penny would fire her for this, but Penny can’t touch her now. Penny, who deals in ordered, civilized disciplinary hearings, and underhanded bitchiness. A woman who oversees office politics, and knows nothing of the currency of souls.
She turns the corner, close to the office, and there’s a figure up ahead. Israel. He doesn’t see her. He walks with purpose, with that even stride she knows so well. Israel, walking down toward the water.
She ducks into a side street and runs to the beach. Her purse slaps against her side and her goddamned heels are loud on the sidewalk. She runs, and she wonders at the same time why she’s running, why it matters. How she could possibly know that Timothy will be down there, waiting.
But he is. Sitting on a wooden bench and staring out to sea, his shoulders bony beneath another sweatshirt that isn’t his own. She sobs mid-step and keeps running. Then she reaches the bench, and her hand on his shoulder is firm. Insistent.