Death

by Madhuri Pavamani

  Instead.

  “Where’s the safe house?” he asked, and his lip curved into a slow slight delicious smile, the kind that made it impossible for me not to smile, and even though seeing it right then and there made me cry again in front of him, an all-out-in-the-open-can’t-deny-this-shit-is-happening kind of cry, I couldn’t help but smile in kind—that was his effect on me.

  “I have no idea which safe house is being used,” he said as he wiped my tears, as if seeing me cry were no big thing. I wanted to lean into his touch and stay there forever, but I knew if I did, I would never leave, I would want to slip inside his skin and get lost in him and now was not the time, and probably there would never be time for such escapes and pleasures and simple freedoms like getting lost in each other, so I didn’t move or react or respond in any way to his touch except to laugh low and kind of embarrassed because Dutch was right. He didn’t know which safe house because when I was there safe, just as the phrase suggested, he was cut and flayed and strapped to that goddamned table in that bloody awful palace.

  I sucked in a deep breath and finally replied.

  “Huh?” he asked as though he didn’t know it or had never heard the name, and I wondered if I’d imagined waking up alone in a white room with only a picture of him to keep me going.

  “Martha’s Vineyard,” I stated with certainty because the fact of it was, I did wake up alone in that white room with only that picture of him to keep me going. “Oak Bluffs. Big house sitting back from the road, long curved driveway, kind of hidden but kind of not. Pool, basketball goal.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” he said as he waved me off and stepped back and I could breathe again because he wasn’t touching me his smell wasn’t surrounding me he wasn’t clouding all my thoughts. “I know it. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  He smiled and the moonlight kissed his angles and full lips and the simple beauty of his words settled in my bones and against the judgment of my better selves, I stepped to him. Close. Closer than he had been seconds earlier. So close, I could hear his breath and feel his heat and sense the effect my nearness had on him and I knew I needed to leave but I also needed this right here.

  This moment of him and me and us. Because many moments before this one in the dark in the middle of India, I was dead and I thought he was, too. And now here we were. Alive as all get out.

  So yeah. I needed this.

  Even if it was fleeting and damn near illusory. I needed it anyway.

  “Juma.” He sighed and pulled me close, and the way my name rolled off his tongue had me thinking about all kinds of dirty shit I wanted him to do to me. “Goddamn you, Juma.”

  And I knew right then, he needed this, too.

  We both did.

  After being surrounded by death and its spoils and the most horrific mayhem conjured, we needed to feel alive, to take a moment and revel in the sheer insanity of our wondrous connection to one another, to breathe each other in and hold it and

  oh

  so

  slowly

  sigh it out.

  “Dutch,” I whispered, and it sounded like a plea from the deepest part of my soul, that place only he knew because only he had ever touched it. “Please.”

  And I didn’t have to say another word or worry that he would make me ask for anything at all, because he, too, had a soul full of please just waiting to burst forth and land in my hands on my skin in my blood. I don’t remember if I had other words sitting on the tip of my tongue for him. If I did, he swallowed them with his kiss, the lightest brush of his lips with mine, the kind that ignited every inch of me, then left me shattered and useless at his feet.

  He held me close, his hand snaked around my neck so that all of me felt possessed by him, and all of him felt taut and alive and so fucking good, and had Rani not shifted somewhere on the fringes of my awareness, I would have worked his jeans open right there next to that lake and let him fuck me hard and fast under the stars because I needed him inside me as close as possible, a part of me so we could breathe together as one. But she was there and she moved ever so slightly and, just like that, brought us back into the here and now.

  God, I hated her.

  So much.

  Dutch’s eyes flashed dark and cold as he released me and mumbled something foul to himself.

  He hated her, too.

  “Go,” he said as he glanced in the direction of the palace, and I despaired the thought of him considering that place or remembering what had happened to him within its confines. I wanted to burn it to the ground decimate it wipe it from existence, but that would change nothing. Kowdiar was imprinted on him, it birthed his darkness, held his worst selves. Destroying it would change none of that, ripping its inhabitants limb from limb might help, though.

  “Be safe,” he said as he touched the knife at his hip and watched me leave.

  “I’ll see you there,” I replied, then turned and disappeared into the darkness without a word of goodbye or see you later or anything else resembling adieu because we’d promised ourselves no more of those words would fall from our lips to touch the ether between us, and if I intended to do anything in these lives of mine, it was to uphold each and every promise I made to Dutch. Also, I couldn’t bear his quiet pain at our parting. His eyes held so much hurt and worry, and all of it killed me but now was not the time for overwrought deaths and despair, so I hurried away, grateful as the night swallowed me.

  I backtracked a less circuitous path and found myself outside the golden gates of the palace in a quarter of the time it took us to leave. Under the moonlight and still of the night, Kowdiar was magnificent, a stunning masterpiece of beauty and understated grandeur, and I knew the untrained eye considered it a gem of Indian architecture. Those idiot Brits probably lauded it as one of the many jewels in their crown of imperial domination and white privilege. But my eye was hardly so naive or impressed by hand-carved doors and soaring archways. I knew behind the beauty lay grievous crimes committed against unwitting souls, acts almost too heinous to be spoken aloud.

  Pure.

  Black.

  Terror.

  “Namaste, miss, may I help you?” A voice emerged from the night, and only then did I realize my fingers were wrapped around the gold-leaf bars of the main gates, their grip so tight, the tips had turned white. My silent rage poured into those bars as if that simple act could defeat generations of perverse power and greed.

  I loosened my grip, then turned and smiled into the face of an unwitting night watchman, “No, thank you, sir—I’m fine.” I headed for the hub before he could say another word or alert anyone inside that I was standing outside.

  There would be a time and a place for such announcements—Juma Landry is here to kill all of you—of that I was certain. But this night was not it. Fifty yards away, in the back of a closed dosa shop whose owners slept on the floor with their four children and whose guard dog lay curled in repose and watched me with one wary eye but never barked a warning, I slipped into the hub and seconds later landed on Martha’s Vineyard—in the far-right fitting room of Edgartown’s Black Dog store, to be exact. It was the middle of the day and I told myself the store was crowded enough that no one noticed a random black woman who’d never entered the store exiting it, which was laughable because, come on.

  Random.

  Black.

  Woman.

  Every motherfucker in that store noticed me, but by the time my appearance messed with their brains and they contemplated my wheres whats hows and whys, I was down the block in the parking lot chatting with a cabdriver for a ride to the house. And fifteen minutes later, I was walking down the driveway of Thirteen Jessica Lane. The safe house Kash had picked as our current hiding spot. The one that probably belonged either to him or Avery, but because I’d sneaked out a side window and escaped into the night to rescue my lover instead of rising from death and sitting around the table for some idle chitchat, I had never learned its secrets and details.

  Thirteen Jessica Lane
stood at the end of a long and winding driveway, and at this time of the day, everything was quiet, as if the heat of the afternoon made even the birds a little sleepy. The top of the drive was more path than paved, gravel and pebbles ground hard by years upon years of cars and trucks moving over the dirt until permanent ruts formed and grass didn’t dare try to stake a space. Majestic birch trees shot heavenward as if in competition to see who could touch the gods first, their branches and leaves curling overhead to form a canopy of lush green gorgeousness. And here and there, the sun peeked through to kiss the ground in random places—a small boulder here, a copse of purple flowers there—letting everyone know that, yes, the birch was beautiful, but I’m here, too, and y’all want to see me feel me revel in my magic.

  And because I couldn’t help myself—everything around me was pretty and peaceful and full of life—I did just that. I closed my eyes, tilted my face to the sky, and let the sun wash over me. And as her warmth seeped into all my cold dark spaces, the blood-filled rooms of my soul, I became lost in memories filled with children and laughter and hot Georgia nights where everyone played outside long after the sun went down and the dusk rang out with joy of youth.

  I remembered what it felt like to have no care in the world except not being tagged “it.”

  I remembered Atlanta and my ma and da.

  I remembered me.

  Juma Landry.

  Before all of this.

  Then I opened my eyes and stepped back into the present, and despite the chaos and calamity of my reality, I thrilled at the beauty of the Vineyard and the soft of my skin and the sweet of my breath and for a few seconds I reveled in myself. A slight smile curved my lips as I stepped from the bumped-up gravel to the smooth pave of the drive and headed toward the house, my footfalls quiet and steady as I took my time studying my surroundings. Life as of late offered few opportunities to smell the roses and be easy about much of anything—this moment, this walk, all of it was special, and I was in no rush to see it end. So I meandered and dallied and did all kinds of other things one does when moving at a snail’s pace—until I came to a bend in the drive that rose above everything else and there I stopped.

  And stared.

  And after what felt like an eternity, I breathed again.

  And beheld brown skin and lean muscles and narrow hips that held on to a pair of jeans just so. Tatted arms and long fingers and that trail of smoke from the cigarette. Lips that knew all my spots and a smile that warned of danger and death and an eternity of love.

  Dutch.

  I gazed upon him for long drawn-out seconds because I couldn’t resist and because his beauty, all his darkness, demanded it. That was his effect on me—even the first time I’d seen him from afar in a subway station when I knew neither his name nor any of his details and everything about him screamed danger, I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t not watch him. It was as if I already knew he was mine. Not in an ownership sense but in that way of roaming the planet for so long alone, working your way through the world dependent on no one, and then just like that, where you’d once felt like a work in progress, you were suddenly complete.

  I exhaled the breath I was holding and he turned and I knew he’d been waiting for me, I could tell from the way his lips almost-curved into a slow smile, how he flicked his smoke to the ground in a way that said It’s about time, how he watched me. My presence seemed to both surprise and relieve him, the former because just like me, he probably still marveled at our interconnectedness and the latter because he was Dutch and he couldn’t help but worry.

  “Hey, you,” I said as I came to a stop and breathed in all of him again.

  “You made it.” His voice was tense and tight, and I sensed he had probably been somewhere pacing and cursing and drinking lowballs of Old Scout until someone inside the safe house grew fed up with his carrying-on and told him to get outside with all of that.

  “Of course I made it, Dutch,” I said, and hooked my fingers into his belt loops to pull him close, my curves melting into his planes as if made for each other. “What did you think? I stopped back by the palace for afternoon tea?”

  He stared down at me hard and serious as he pushed my hair out of my face as he liked to do and trailed his fingers along my skin until his hand found the perfect resting spot curved around my neck. “That is exactly what I thought, Juma.”

  I started to laugh and maybe joke with him that as tempting as the idea seemed, drinks with Khan and Veda would have to wait for a more opportune time, but I didn’t because even though he stood in front of me whole and beautiful and full of life, hours earlier he was quite the opposite. I’d seen the flayed flesh and carved-up limbs, the blood and misery firsthand. He lived it. And, yes, his flesh no longer bore the marks of such trauma, but his eyes did. Silly stupid jokes falling from my lips would not exorcise those ghosts anytime soon, so I pushed my words down and saved them in those spaces of my soul tattooed with his name in hopes that one day we soon would laugh and joke.

  Instead.

  “Well, don’t,” I said, “because I would never.”

  He considered me for long quiet seconds, and even though I smiled, Dutch didn’t return the gesture and I wanted to kill Khan and Veda for doing that to him.

  No. Scratch that.

  I was going to kill Khan and Veda for doing that to him.

  “I’m serious.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him a little tighter. “Never.”

  He heard my words and I think maybe somewhere in his newer darker self he believed me, but he’d suffered too much and all of it was so recent that even with me, he hesitated. My heart ached for him in ways I didn’t think possible, and I wanted to touch him hold him stash him away inside my skin but he wasn’t ready for all of that just yet. Right now, Dutch needed something much simpler. Dutch needed my voice my words me.

  “There you are, baby girl. It’s about time. This one here was about to burn a hole in the floor waiting on you.”

  Ma.

  My beautiful tiny ferocious ma.

  My once - upon - a - time - dead ma.

  My timing - could - not - be - worse ma.

  I wondered what she recalled of me from her time in Death’s realm when she’d learned all my secrets and delved into my details. And how many of those details had she learned since crossing back to her life and my da?

  I smiled an apology and released Dutch—that poor man again pushed aside for my ma—then pulled Mimi Landry into my embrace. She wrapped her thin arms around my neck and held me tight and all of her was warm and strong and alive and as much as I despised Death and her manipulations and machinations, I sent her a word of quiet thanks as I stepped back and studied my ma. She smiled wide and full, and a particular twinkle in her eye let me know she knew. That all my strange pauses and open-ended answers had probably been parsed over and pieced together by her, and I felt a pang of sympathy for Kash—I could see Ma interrogating him mercilessly until he had no choice but to divulge my truths.

  Poor Kash. Ma was a force of nature to be reckoned with—I loved her, but I wouldn’t wish her upon anyone.

  I glimpsed Da behind her, his broad shy smile and always-quiet soul, and held my arm out to him to pull him in for a group hug.

  “I love you, Da,” I whispered into his chest as he held me tight and kissed the top of my head.

  “Love you, too, doodlebug,” he said, using my childhood nickname, the name he’d used before I died, the name I never heard again after that bullet tore out my throat and left me a bloody mess on an operating table in his hospital all those summers ago.

  And right then, I knew he, too, knew about dying and Death and the many-layered lives I lived.

  “Rufus.” My ma sucked her teeth as she stepped back and watched us. “Leave that girl alone with those childhood nicknames so she can stop almost-crying and make some introductions.”

  And I couldn’t help but laugh as I caught Ma’s eye and she arched a sculpted brow in Dutch’s direction. I’d nev
er considered myself normal, there was nothing in the timeline of my existence that seemed run-of-the-mill. Except this one instance. This moment of my ma’s being so damn obvious and embarrassing me to no end. And as annoying as she was with her raised brow and not-at-all-subtle words, she was also precious and lovable and divine.

  She was so Mimi, and I loved her for it.

  “Ma and Da, this is Dutch Mathew.” I caught his eye and smiled. “And, Dutch, these are my parents, Rufus and Mimi Landry.”

  “I know who he is, Juma,” my ma said as she waved off my introductions. “I want to know who he is to you.”

  “Relax, Mimi.” My da laughed as he wrapped his arm around her waist. “Juma just got here.”

  “Juma escaped the confines of her room without any of us the wiser,” my ma replied, “took off after Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome, then sauntered down the driveway like all of this”—and here I knew her “all of this” encompassed as much as I imagined it did—“is normal. So let’s not pretend Juma just got anywhere, Rufus.”

  She wasn’t being nasty, she was just being my ma. This was the fierce Mimi who lashed out at those she loved, talked shit, and took no prisoners. This was the fireball I’d learned to step around as a child, adore as an adolescent, respect as an adult. This was the woman who knew both sides of life and knew I did, too.

  “Does it hurt, Ma? This life?” I cut to the chase and rather than indulge her curiosity about all things Dutch, I asked about her reclamation. She paused and smiled. “I know you know what I’m talking about, and I know you’ve told Da what I’m talking about.”

  “I do know what you’re talking about, and so does your da because I tell him everything, and no, sweetness, it doesn’t hurt.” She rubbed her arms and smiled, her bangles jingling with every movement. “So now your turn—the details of Mr. Mathew.”