‘I could spend my life here,’ he thought. Settle in Vancouver? Maybe it was time.
The performance ended and the place erupted into a polite, ready applause. The dignitaries were herded to the museum’s permanent exhibit space for a walk through shelves full of old, dead folk’s things. Delilah stuck to the Sheik, laughing when she ought to, being a silent and endearing companion when it suited him and pointing out bits of interest when the tour guide thundered into another self-important ramble. Caleb hung back and teetered at the edge of the crowd, letting them pass by to the Scandinavian jewelry and Inuit canoe. He rubbed his fingers along the gold torqued ring on his left thumb. It’d fit right in.
“Fascinating collection, no?” A man sauntered over to where Caleb had stopped to inspect a Chinese Opera costume encased by glass. Caleb watched the caramel skinned reflection, saw the cut of the tailored suit and turned his head.
“The people or the artifacts?”
“Are we not all artifacts in waiting, Dr. Mauthisen? I’ve read your work. Comparative Cultures and the Genesis Origin. It’s fascinating… if pedantic.”
“Gee, thanks. Do I get the honour of insulting your thesis too? It's Reverend. Not Doctor.”
“Excuse me. I am the Sheik’s son Muhammed Al Abba. It is a pleasure. I did not think the Countess would bring an escort this evening. You are familiar?”
“Old friends. I popped in on her today, and happened to get in too late to cancel and too early to step aside.” Caleb smiled, returning to the collection and meandering over to the Tibetan exhibit. Countess. He bit back a sardonic laugh. Little more than a stack behind glass, the bone necklaces and warm knit clothing was fine enough to steal the spotlight from Chinese brocade.
“Are you researching another book? Do I have the joy of reading it when it is done?”
“Yeah, I’m… you know. Researching. Can’t talk much yet. I’m knee deep in primordial man’s rise from semi-sentient ape to fratricide as a condemnable crime.” A book was the best cover for the academic crowd. Few questioned potential authors about purely academic research.
“Come now, Reverend Mauthisen. You must be more intelligent than the pseudo-intellectual Atheists. Allah is the creator and Man was created to serve. You do not need to research to discover that.”
“It’s more about the fratricide.” Caleb’s pupils dilated. The Sheik’s son meandered through the artifacts as if he were surging past a cloud of witnesses too mute to be heard.
“Cain and Abel, then? Or Ishmael and Isaac if I may be bold.” Muhammed said.
“You may. What do you make of it? Bad blood between brothers?” The air smelled of old unfinished conversations and school kids’ backpacks. Caleb pursed his lips and stared at a mala necklace hewn from human bone after the death of some arthritic lama of yesteryear.
“An unfortunate circumstance we must learn to avoid.”
“Two people groups can’t occupy the same space in harmony, sad as it sounds.” Caleb said.
“And yet the First Nations and settlers here seem to be making strides.”
“It’s taken a lot of work, not all steps forward if you catch me.”
“Is cohabitation not worth the fight?” The Sheik’s son said.
Caleb put his palm to the glass in front of a Tibetan Lama’s bone mala necklace. Prayer beads. When did they become a hipster thing?
“It’s always worth the fight.”
“There you have it, if the fight is worthwhile we must always fight it.”
“Have you heard of the Mark of Cain?” Caleb asked.
“We do have Abel and Cain in our scriptures, Reverend Mauthisen. Although, the Qur’an states that Cain became ‘one of those who regretted’, his regret was his mark. Cain became one of the lost ones, bound in his sin. Why do you ask such things?”
“Caleb! Muhammed! I thought we’d lost you!” Delilah sidled up, ringing her hands into both men’s elbows.
“Imagine my surprise, my astonishment and shock when I turned to speak with you and you’d wandered off? We’re all back in the exhibit space. Tut tut, let’s not get lost again, shall we?” Delilah’s hand dug into Caleb’s suit jacket. She pulled him along, a raucous sea latching on to the particulates of sand at his shore.
14 Years Before
“I don’t know. I get the idea you care for me. You even like me! But want me? When was the last time you touched me? As a man touching a woman?” Delilah cradled her chin on the back of her hand. Her eyes angled behind the sheets of raven hair which held her twitching cheeks at bay. Caleb, a younger Caleb sat with his elbows on his knees, sleeves pulled up his bare forearms.
“I’m trying to respect you, Lilah. I thought you’d appreciate the attempt.”
“Am I supposed to read your mind? Why won’t you touch me, there’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing evil about it, just two people finding comfort. I need affection, Caleb! How am I supposed to know what your feelings are unless you show me?”
“Can’t a man use other ways?”
“You, you, you.” Delilah huffed, puffing up on her haunches.
“You… you hide behind these veneers as if no honey sticks to that pit of a soul. I can’t taste your envy, Caleb! I can’t bank on your mental sensations if I can’t caress you why are we here?”
“We’re here because I… care about you.” Caleb clenched his jaw and worked his fingers in and out of a fist. Delilah looked to the heavens. Her eyes crashed back to the sand of Jericho Beach chilled and defeated.
“There it is. You won’t fess up. I’m sorry Caleb, a woman like me can’t move this slow. I think it’s best you stay with friends tonight. Be gone by morning.”
“Delilah…”
She shrugged his hand off her ivory shoulder, pushed her arms underneath her chest and walked to the sidewalk. Caleb’s tongue folded heavy and lopsided in his mouth. It worked between his teeth until the curses he wanted to spew lost all emphasis. Delilah was gone.
Present Day
The way up to the penthouse had Caleb carrying Delilah’s shoes, clutch and stole. Delilah pulled a keycard from her glove and waved it in front of a small silver box inset in the door. The door popped open and she nudged it with her foot.
“Uuugh. Those anthropologists can talk forever. So can you, when someone gets you going. Did you know that? Did you know how intense you get in conversation? It’s epic. I don’t know why I try to… to whatever it is I do to you.” Delilah said.
“Cart me around to cultural events and shove me to the side the second a piece of rich arm candy peaks around a corner?”
“Mmm, that. Yes.” Delilah flung herself on a chaise in her living room, stretching her arms above her head as she doffed one glove at a time over the side. Caleb snorted and hung up the stole, dropped her shoes and set the clutch on the kitchen counter. Lilith's doorknob glowed. He shook his head and rubbed at his temple, biting at the urge to reach out, or question Delilah about the girl.
“Did you get what you want?” He asked.
“Am I the cat who caught the canary? The feathers are doomed to get stuck in my teeth, but yes I did. Did you?”
“Somewhat. Almost. No.” Caleb kicked off his shoes, draped his jacket over a chair and sat by Delilah’s feet. He ran his thumbs down the inside of her sole. She cooed and groaned.
“I know you won’t take it, but my advice is to forget this Cain business. It’s got all the hallmarks of something bad for your health.”
“What would you know?”
“Someone who has it.” Delilah sat up, glaring at Caleb’s face. He stopped massaging her foot.
“What?”
“I thought that’s why Finnegan sent you here.”
“No… no, that’s not why I’m here.” How could he tell his ex-lover Finnegan had sent him home? What did home mean, when it had ceased to exist in piecemeal? First a statement spoken, then a key returned, a canvas duffel bag thrown over a defeated shoulder. Twelve years hadn't brought Caleb the relief or distance he ne
eded to look fondly on the past.
“Then what? The little pimple’s idea of a joke?” Delilah had cast the past off with yesterday's fashion. Her ever changing wardrobe clung to his bitter lips.
“Yeah.” Caleb started massaging her feet again, cracking his neck and stifling the onset of another epic yawn.
“Aw, baby. You’re getting pulled under. Come to bed.” Delilah whispered. She pulled one foot then the other away, setting them on the floor to sink into the cream carpet. Caleb watched her rise. He felt the tug of her sea. She pulled his hand and led him to the bedroom, where layer by layer she undressed him. His fingers brushed against the fabric of flannel pj bottoms. He watched her lungs stop as her fingers accustomed to another thin, pink, sutured scar.
“Demon in Russia.”
She spied his chin, his lips, his cheeks but not his eyes. Not the eyes. She wouldn’t.
“No demon in the universe could get in here tonight.” She said.
None but the ones they brought with them, torn and sutured together in the bed Caleb couldn’t stomach. He stared at it, lost in its gravity and silk sheets.
“I should sleep on the couch.” Caleb mumbled.
“Nonsense. Come to bed.” Delilah emerged in a night gown and slippers, the make-up washed off her pale, moisturized face.
“Honey, you’re gonna fall asleep standing up if you don’t sit down and I can’t drag you, I’m not that strong.”
Truer words… Caleb bit the comment off his tongue and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Why’d you want Cain’s Mark, Caleb?”
“I want to know what it’ll take.”
“What’s the it, honey? Sit down. That’s it, sit down.” Delilah guided him toward the mattress. She pulled the covers away.
“The fall.”
Caleb’s body hit the mattress. He pulled his arm around Delilah’s waist and tugged her to him, nose nuzzling in her locks of hair. Her fingers interlocked with his. Caleb tugged the covers over them and drifted off to the smell of another man's cologne on the back of Delilah’s neck.
Chapter 5
“I don’t like it, Colin. What happens to us when Caleb trots down the ragged end of that road?” Finnegan pulled a calendar from the air and peered into it.
“… There!” The Leprechaun in fine clothes punched at the calendar and drew a circle around a rapidly appearing collection of letters. “Van-cou-ver Aquar-ium.” He read aloud.
“I think I’ve got a door there!” Finnegan boasted, flipping through the charts and pages in his black leather book.
“Girls like a spot of fish watching.” Finnegan grinned. Colin put down his tumbler and took up another. Somewhere in the distance a man called out for pints. Colin started to pour.
“Right! See you on the flip of it!” Finnegan adjusted his peacoat, took a final swig out of his liquor and pushed through a navy blue door with a utilitarian steel handle.
“Now, to fix the d—oh!” Finnegan went to fiddle with the doorstop and was nudged by a tiny body rushing by.
“S’cuse me, Mister! Gotta go!”
“Lewis? Lewis don’t run off!” A young man rushed into the bathroom. His tie wasn’t as tight as it ought to be, hair less trim than a businessman.
“Sorry, Mr. Cho I gotta go!” Lewis said, pushing past Finnegan and into a bathroom stall. Must be a teacher, Finnegan thought, reaching back for the door. Now, to keep it open.
“This is the door? Blinking aunt.” Finnegan rubbed his hands on his trousers. Bringing dames after hours was a far and about different prospect than coming during daylight. As Finnegan looked for the chock he usually shoved in the door, Mr. Cho groaned and looked at himself in the mirror. He splashed water in his tired face, reaching blindly for the paper towel dispenser.
“Steady on!” Finn yelped, as Mr. Cho bumped into Finn’s side.
“Pass the paper towel, buddy?” Mr. Cho said as the bathroom door clicked closed.
Finnegan reached. He threw the door open.
Kids. Nothing but swarms of froth-mouthed children and gaggles of adults with arms reaching to guide the swarms about.
“No… No, no, no, no, no, no!” Finnegan yanked the bathroom door back open. His pub was gone. He skittered out into the crowd, trapped between oceanic information and aquarium tanks.
“Oh… oh no.” Sitting underneath a large cylindrical tank, Finnegan watched the jellyfish as the sea of humanity parted, swirled and reconvened around him.
“How’m I getting back?” Finnegan shoved his hands in his pockets and took stock. A pen, pencil, his address book, a map, a couple of pence, a bottle opener and a handkerchief.
Wasn’t all that much, come to think.
“Should’ve packed a bag. People have bags. Men have bags. I’ve seen ‘ehm… phone. Where’s a telephone?”
Finnegan scoured the aquarium for a payphone, hoping folk still called collect. A legion of cellular telephones stuck out of peoples’ pockets. Screens lit up and all manner of beeps, clicks, notes and flashes flickered through the damned things.
“Why couldn’t he’ve brought her to an aquarium in England, eh? Norway, for bloody’s sake. Still have pay phones there.” Pushing past a crowd of screaming children, the Fae Lord of Finnegan’s Bluff and host of the world’s longest party rushed to the parking lot. Packed with squawking horns and the car cages which surrounded them, the parking lot crawled with inching machines guided by frustrated humans tapping their feet to find the one elusive spot which might open up for them and them alone. Telephone. Where was a telephone? How would he call without cash?
Finnegan ran down a gravel path toward a massive field and searched around. In the distance, he saw an ice cream stand, a house and a set of public loos. The ice cream stand, which in the distance looked a stand-alone affair, was a proper collection of kiosks and food purveyors set there for weary travellers and their impetuous spawn to beg for $9 ice creams. Along the path, local artists spewed their collective works on the ground in an attempt to keep the selling of art alive.
“Oy! Kid!” Finnegan ran for a child carrying a violin case.
“Umm, me?” The boy said, searching back and forth for responsible adults just in case.
“Yes, you! Ain’t by chance you’ve got a fiddle in said case, eh? Give you half me haul if’n you let me borrow it for a few ticks of the clock and play for the gathering townsfolk?”
The boy stared at Finnegan through mousy brown eyes, rubbing his pale chin and jet black wiry hair.
“You wanna play my violin? Umm, okay. But my Mom’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
“S’fine! It’s all fine! Won’t take but a tick or three. Thanks, kid. What’s your name? Mine’s Finnegan!”
“Ho Min Sun.” He said, opening the case on a park bench beneath sprouting, happy green trees.
“Well, Hominsun, how’s about we make a bit of money, eh?” Finn grinned and plucked the violin from the case, tinkering on the strings and picking up the bow with a flourish. He kicked the case to the path and waggled his eyebrows.
“Is that legal?” Min Sun said.
“Tis now.” Finnegan winked. An Irish dancing wheel poured from the fiddle’s svelte body. Tripping triplets and bouncing doublets of flourishing, cascading notes and a merry jig’s rhythm popped, weaved and split from Finnegan’s fingers as he tapped his toes and bobbed his knees in the middle of the Artist’s row. A small gaggle of Vancouverites collected, adults whose children must have been pouting kissy faces in the Aquarium. Finnegan motioned for the kid to hold up the case as he pranced around in the thicket of folk who gave up their coins and small bills. Caleb might have abolished Finnegan’s use of magic in the human world, but he hand’t abolished cheerful spirits, musical talent and blind blinking luck. Plucking his merry way through the crowd a third time, Finnegan ended his song with a ‘Hey!’, a bow and a flourish of both arms, violin aloft in the air.
The crowd applauded, and Finnegan retreated to the bench to give his small cha
rge a grin and bob of the head.
“If you’re gonna play, you’ve got to work the crowd, eh? Once they forget their worries, they’re putty in your hands!” Finnegan dove into the bills and coins. He laughed with a tight grin on his pale, freckled face.
“Woooow.” Min Sun said, hesitating to reach into the case. Counting the bills, Finnegan indeed made two piles, separating the small haul into hills of Canadian currency.
“S’your cut, my lad. Spend it wisely, invest and get yourself a small treat once in a full moon, eh? Never say Finnegan short changed his business partners, eh lad? Cheers! Keep up the practice and one day you’ll be half as good as me!” Finnegan laughed and shoved his money in his pockets, hopping off on the path back to the refreshment stands.
“Thanks, Mr. Finnegan! Wow! Sixty bucks!”
Passing by a souvenir stand, Finnegan grabbed a thin leather wallet with an embossed maple leaf on the front. He tossed off the tags, shoved his money in its’ pockets and skipped on toward a series of vending machines and arcade games. Wallet and petty cash, check! What else did everyone have?
Finnegan’s grin pulled at the side of his mouth as he tossed a Loonie into the claw machine and took hold of the joy stick. Surrounded by a plastic bubble, a glistening smartphone sat suspended in a bed of plush toys. Luck was as luck did for a leprechaun on the prowl. It took a couple flicks of the wrist and a jostle of the old knee on the side of the machine, but Finnegan emerged from his arcade experience holding a rectangular white box.
“Haha!” Finnegan held his prize aloft. A chilly stone picnic table became his makeshift unpacking station.
“Goodness, how’s it work? Whatever happened to buttons on things?” Where did the batteries go, for that matter?
Son of Abel (The Judge of Mystics Book 1) Page 4