Transcendence t-1

by C. J. Omololu

  “Come on, Hall!” “Kill it!” People all around me are shouting his name, and I feel almost proudly possessive watching him play. I look at the other girls scattered on the bleachers and wonder if he knows any of them. If he’s ever asked any of them to come to one of his games.

  Griffon taps the bat on home plate and then holds it over his shoulder, his eyes riveted on the pitcher. The first pitch goes by him and he doesn’t even flinch, just waves the bat in the air waiting for the next one. The ball barely leaves the pitcher’s hand before I hear the crack of the bat and the screams of the crowd. Griffon speeds down the baseline as the ball soars through the air, and I can hear excited shouts of “it’s going!” all around me. One guy in the outfield races back toward the little fence, and just as it looks like the ball has dropped into home run territory, he knocks it down with his glove.

  “He dropped it!” the man behind me screams so loud I can almost hear the veins bulging out of his neck. Never stopping or taking his eyes off the coach, Griffon speeds around the bases, finally sliding into third in a big cloud of dust at the same time the baseman leans out to catch the ball. Griffon jumps up grinning, and brushes the dirt off his pants as the umpire swings his arms wide and calls him safe.

  It takes two more batters before the ball becomes airborne again, and Griffon easily makes it from third to home, stepping hard on the plate as he crosses, giving his team the lead that lasts for the rest of the game. They’re like little boys as they try to compose themselves for the ritual lining up and shaking of hands with the losing team, breaking into high-fives and chest bumps as soon as it’s over. Of all the guys on the team, Griffon is the one who draws your attention, and I know from the way the rest of the team gathers around him that I’m not the only one who thinks so.

  The team is barely off the field when Griffon pulls himself away from the group to walk toward me. His curls are sticking out from under his baseball cap, and I can see a line of sweat coursing under his jaw. There are other people still standing near the field, and I wonder if he’s going to kiss me out in public like this. If that’s still where we are.

  I don’t have long to wonder. Griffon drops his bag in the dust as he reaches the bleachers, then leans down and kisses me hard, the excitement of the game still shimmering around him. His usual scent is even stronger, and I can feel my heart beating right into my core as his hand brushes mine.

  He pulls away, his cheeks red from exertion and a smile playing on his lips. “I’m so glad you came out here,” he says.

  I look at him in his gray pants and dark blue uniform shirt. It’s going to be hard to stay mad at him. “I almost didn’t.”

  A slight look of panic crosses his face. “Really? Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you say these amazing things, kiss me, and then disappear for a week.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about that,” he says. His eyes lock onto mine. “I couldn’t help it. There was something I had to take care of. An emergency.”

  I search his face, wanting to believe him. It would be so much better to have a crisis—okay, maybe not a bad crisis, but still—than to think he just doesn’t care enough to call me. “What kind of an emergency?”

  Griffon breaks his gaze and looks down. “I can’t talk about it right now. There’s some stuff I’m involved in, and I couldn’t have anyone know where I was. Or be able to trace me.”

  “What kind of stuff? You’re in high school.”

  “True,” he says. “But I also have other responsibilities.” Griffon looks around at the crowd that is slowly disappearing. “I can explain it more later.” He leans over and takes my face into his hands. Leaning in, he kisses me, gently this time. “Forgive me?”

  Looking into his eyes, I know there is no other choice. “For now,” I say.

  After a long, lingering moment, he pulls back and takes my hand in his. “Good. Are you hungry?”

  I’ve been too nervous about seeing him to eat much so far today. “Definitely.”

  “I know just the place,” he says, and pulls me off the bleachers. He leads me to a familiar red truck.

  “No bike today?” I ask.

  “No. Janine let me use this.” He swings his baseball bag behind the seat. “It’s easier with all of my gear.”

  As he starts it up, I notice the unmistakable aroma of fried rice. My heart starts racing as I recognize the first signs of one of my visions. I so don’t want to have one now.

  Griffon glances at me. “Are you okay?”

  I swallow hard. “I’m not sure. All of a sudden I got a really strong smell.” I know I look panicky, but I can’t help myself.

  “Like Chinese food?”

  “Yeah. Combination fried rice.”

  Griffon laughs. “It’s the car,” he says. “Biodiesel. Janine had it converted a few years ago so that it runs on used cooking oil. She gets it free from a Chinese restaurant on Shattuck, so the car always smells like Chinese food. Sorry. I should have said something.”

  I laugh too, more out of relief than anything else. I’m not going to pass out and have some crazy vision in front of him again. At least, for the moment. “I’d gain twenty pounds driving this car,” I say, my stomach rumbling so loud I’m sure he can hear it.

  Even though it’s late on a Wednesday afternoon, the streets are packed with college kids shopping or just hanging out. Every corner is filled with vendors selling necklaces or tie-dyed shirts, with ratty cardboard signs advertising their prices. As we pass the head shops and clothing stores, snippets of music blast out onto the sidewalk like an ever-changing radio station.

  After a few blocks, Griffon stops in front of a restaurant with big windows that gives diners nonstop street-side entertainment as they eat their meal. “This is the place,” he says, holding the door open for me.

  The inside of the café is even louder than it is on the sidewalk. I stare at the chalkboard menu by the counter, trying to decide what’s the right thing to eat on our semi-official first date.

  “You first,” Griffon says. “Their wood-fired pizzas are amazing here.”

  “That sounds good,” I say. “I’ll have the prosciutto,” I tell the girl behind the counter.

  “Mushroom and artichoke hearts,” Griffon orders. “I’ve got this,” he says, reaching into his pocket.

  “No way,” I say, not wanting him to think I’m someone who needs to be taken care of. “We’ll split it.”

  “I asked you,” he says. He smiles at me and puts a twenty on the counter before I can say a word. “You can get it next time.”

  The idea that he’s planning on a next time makes me almost giddy, but I try not to look it. The restaurant is crowded, and we have to pick our way toward an empty table by the window. Just as we pass a table where two old guys are playing chess, I hear a crash as the board and all of the plastic pieces fall to the floor.

  “Crap,” Griffon says, looking at the mess. “I’m so sorry.” His cheeks are red, but he stands motionless for several seconds, staring at the chess pieces on the ground.

  “Just great,” the old guy in the plaid cap starts to get up. “There goes the game.”

  Griffon puts his hand out. “No, wait, I’ve got this. Just give me a second.” He puts the board back on their table, centering it between them, and then picks up the black and white pieces from the floor, positioning each on the board in a different spot, starting off slow but getting faster, until he finishes by leaving a few white pieces on one side and four blacks on the other.

  “There,” he says, relief in his voice. “That should be right.” Griffon studies the board while the old guys stare at him. “Hang on!” he says, and swaps a pawn and a rook. He smiles at them. “Now it’s right. Sorry again.” He takes my hand and leads me to our table.

  I lean toward him as we sit down, watching the old men whisper about him. “Seriously? You put every piece back where it was?”

  Griffon shrugs and puts his napkin in his lap. “Yeah. It’s the least I c
ould do.”

  “You know that people are going to think that’s weird, right?”

  He grins at me. Of course he knows it. “I just saw the board right before I knocked it over, so I remembered where everything went. It’s not that hard once you learn how to do it—anybody can.”

  I stare at him. “Anybody can learn how to memorize an entire chessboard in one second?”

  Griffon shrugs. “Well, eventually anybody can.”

  I shake my head. “If you say so.” I glance over to the old guys’ table, where they’ve resumed their game, turning every now and then to look at him.

  “Did Veronique come for her lesson on Thursday?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It was fine. Uneventful.”

  “No more memories?”

  I hesitate. Telling him that Alessandra died that night at the mansion isn’t going to do either of us any good. It won’t change anything with Veronique, and it will only make him worry more. “No. Nothing.”

  “Good.” Griffon smiles at me and reaches for my hand across the small wooden table. His fingers gently brush the top of mine, and I feel a surge of electricity run through my entire body. “You have beautiful hands. I’m so glad you let me come to the concert last week.”

  “It was open to the public,” I say with a smile. “I couldn’t have stopped you.”

  “Well, you did an amazing job.”

  “Julie did,” I say. “She works so hard.” Practice this week had been difficult, as I listened to every piece carefully, wondering if I’d already played it before in a past life. It makes me feel guilty, like I’m nothing but a big fake. It takes some of the joy out of the whole thing. “Now it just feels like I’m cheating.”

  “I already told you, it’s not cheating. What if some of the people at the conservatory are using memory breaks to become world-class musicians? There aren’t that many Akhet in the world, but a lot of the ones who are about to transition show abilities in some way—sports, art, music. A lot of those musical geniuses are just Akhet who haven’t realized their potential yet. The only difference is that you’re aware of where your abilities come from and they aren’t. If you’re cheating, then every prodigy who comes along shouldn’t be able to do what they were born to do, because they’re cheating too.”

  “It’s only cheating if you know you’re cheating.”

  Griffon leans forward and puts his elbows on the table. “Somehow I don’t think that’s the dictionary definition.”

  “So what do you do with your abilities?” I ask. “I mean, besides drawing and putting chessboards back together.”

  “Like I said, I have my responsibilities,” he says, tracing an imaginary line on the tabletop. “Things I need to work on from before.” He sits back and stops talking as the server comes and places our steaming pizzas on the table. She pauses long enough to give him a smile as she turns to walk back to the kitchen, but Griffon doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Anyway,” he says, continuing our conversation. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for being good at something. You should feel comfortable sharing it with the world. Using what you have in each lifetime isn’t cheating; it’s what makes us valuable. Human beings take thousands of years to evolve, but we get to cram thousands of years of knowledge and experience into every lifetime.”

  “Maybe.” I try to pull a piece of the pizza off the plate, but strings of cheese hang down from all sides.

  Griffon laughs. “Need some help?”

  I blush, embarrassed that I’m making such a mess. “No. I think I can handle this.” The smell of garlic is so strong as I pull the piece free that it makes my stomach rumble. I’m glad that we’re both eating the same thing, because I have a feeling I’m going to be reeking of the stuff for the rest of the day—and if there’s going to be more kissing involved, which I sincerely hope there will be, I don’t want to be the only one with garlic breath.

  Griffon cuts a piece of his pizza and holds it out to me. “Want a bite?” he asks, in an obvious attempt to change the subject. He looks at our plates. “Wait a minute, I thought you hated tomatoes.”

  I think back to the dinner at his house. I thought I’d been so sly about pushing the tomatoes off to one side of the plate. “You noticed?” I ask, immediately embarrassed.

  “Just a little. Don’t worry. Janine didn’t mind.”

  “I only hate regular tomatoes. Mashed up in sauce is fine.”

  Griffon looks thoughtful. “Maybe you had a bad tomato experience in a past life. Could be that you choked on one once, and that’s why you don’t like them now.”

  I love the thought that everything has a meaning, a purpose. Whatever you’re experiencing in this lifetime somehow, some way, has ties to another past. “Really? You think so?”

  “No.” Griffon laughs. “I’m kidding. Not everything has a hidden meaning. Sometimes hating tomatoes in this lifetime just means that you really don’t like tomatoes.”

  I make a face at him as I slide the piece from his fork and pop it into my mouth. “Like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  “Exactly. Sometimes a tomato is just a tomato. Speaking of, how is it?”

  “It’s good. Want some of mine?”

  “No, thanks,” he says, and in that second I remember the vegetarian meal that Janine made.

  “Oh, God! You’re a vegetarian aren’t you? I’m so stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid,” he says. “I’m not that good at it anyway.”

  I laugh at his attempt to make me feel better. “Not good at it?”

  “Nope.” He shakes his head. “I get all of Janine’s reasons, and she’s right. Bad for the environment, bad for animals, not part of what we’re doing to make the world a better place, all of that. But sometimes I just need to sneak down to the diner down on Fourth Street and get a big fat BLT.”

  “So you’re a vegetarian with a weakness for bacon?”

  Griffon shrugs. “I try.”

  We finish our pizzas and emerge back into the hustle of the late afternoon sidewalk. Wandering up the street, we stop in a few shops, although I have a hard time concentrating on anything that’s for sale whenever Griffon is close to me. As we walk, our shoulders brush, but he makes no move to hold my hand again, so I try to keep my mind on other things.

  “Can we go in here a second?” I ask as we pass a huge record shop. “My dad’s birthday is in a couple of weeks, and he collects vintage records. He’ll be shocked if I get him something he might actually like.”

  The amount of stuff crammed into the store is visually overwhelming, and it takes a second to be able to focus on any individual thing.

  “What kind of music does your dad like?” Griffon asks, scanning the rows and rows of album covers.

  “Mostly classic rock,” I say, wishing I’d paid more attention to his collection upstairs. “You know, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Seventies stuff.”

  “Got it.” He walks over to a table and starts flipping through the covers. “This one’s good,” he says, handing me a cover. “Or this one. God, I haven’t seen that one in ages.”

  I flip the two records over. “MC5? The Stooges? I haven’t heard of either one of these.”

  “They’re awesome,” he says. “Trust me. Does he have them?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. I look at both covers. “Which one do you think is best?”

  “Well, if he likes Zeppelin, then I’d go for MC5,” he says. “A little faster pre-punk style, but still cool.” He leans over toward me so that nobody can hear. Griffon taps the album. “I had this very same record back then.” He laughs. “It’d be funny if it really is mine, wouldn’t it? Somehow it landed at this record store and here I am, holding it all over again. You never know.”

  I watch him as he turns to walk down another aisle, wondering how I’d feel with so much of my past life set out in front of me. I look down at the unfamiliar record in my hands and wonder if I’d been alive in the seventies. And if I’ll ever remember if I was. />
  “Janine said that sometimes people don’t come back for years,” I say quietly, catching up. “But it sounds like you were just here.”

  “I was,” he says. “My last life finished in 1986 when I was forty-two.” He glanced at me. “Heart attack. When or where we return is one of those things we can’t explain. Sometimes it takes decades, and sometimes just a few years. Pretty random.”

  I wonder if I’ll get used to the ever-growing list of questions that don’t seem to have any answers as Griffon stops in front of a stack of singles, staring at the one in front.

  “‘Strange Fruit’?” I ask, reading the label.

  “Billie Holiday,” he says, with an edge of sadness in his voice. He makes no move to pick it up, just stares at the small black record with the white label.

  “You want to get it?” I ask quietly.

  He shakes his head. “Too many memories,” he says, and from the way he says it I assume they aren’t all good ones. Griffon looks around like he’s forgotten where we are. “Places like this are hard sometimes.” He takes a deep breath and smiles at me. “MC5, then?”

  “I think he’ll like it,” I answer, trying to lighten the mood. “It comes highly recommended.”

  We stand in line in front of an older guy with long white hair. He smiles at us, then points at the record I’m holding. “MC5,” he says, his eyebrows raised. “I thought kids your age only liked that hip-hop rap crap that comes blasting out of the cars around here.”

  “I think that’s what people said about the MC5 back in ’68,” Griffon answers.

  The man laughs from deep within his rather large belly. “True,” he says, nodding. “I imagine you’re right.” His smile causes the wrinkles around his eyes to deepen. “They were good, though. That’s the best live album ever recorded—Detroit, 1968.”

  “They had an awesome show at the Fillmore East in ’69,” Griffon says. He glances at me with a tiny smile on his face.

  “At the Fillmore, huh?” the old guy says. “I don’t remember any live recordings in New York.”

  “I don’t think they made any,” Griffon says. He nudges me with his elbow and points to the cashier. “Our turn.”