He returned her embrace and put his chin on the top of her head. Like Milo. The gesture was jarringly familiar, and she had to fight the urge to pull away and run. Maybe Gregor was right. Maybe she had barbed wire inside her.
Matjaž ran his hands up her arms to her neck and held her back to kiss her. A hungry, open-mouthed kiss.
Her body responded before her mind did. She kissed back, pulling him into her by his waist. When her brain checked back in, she pushed him away, gently and with restraint. She wanted to shove him, not because he’d been untoward, but because she couldn’t process it all.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“Fuck. Please. Don’t apologize.” Jo stepped back trying to gather her thoughts and slap down her emotions so she could say what she needed to say. She took a breath. Then two. Matjaž stood there, like the nice guy he was, waiting for her to speak. Damn him.
“I… fuck, I’ll just be honest. I want to fuck your brains out. I have since the moment I met you at the…” She winced thinking of how, when, they had met. “I just can’t. You’re her brother. It’s just wrong.” She threw her head back for punctuation. She just wanted to wail. For all of it. For Helena, for this fucking weirdness that had descended on her unbidden, for Maja, for him. For everything. She just wanted to go back to Saturday morning and stay in bed.
He stared at her. She couldn’t tell if he was amused or angry, so she asked.
“Not angry. Maybe amused. And the feeling about wanting to fuck your brains out is mutual. Except when I met you I thought you and Gregor were an item.”
“Hm. That’s kind of our shtick.” She bent over with her hands on her thighs and looked up at him. “What do we do now? I can’t do this. You. I can’t do you.”
“I’m going to walk you to your friend’s apartment and go home and take a cold shower. And I’m going to hope you reconsider your position. I’m not sure what you’re going to do.”
“That makes two of us.” She grabbed his wrist and headed down Vodnik toward Rok’s block of flats. He’d lived in the same apartment as long as she’d known him. The building was a square, ugly vestige of communist architecture at its worst, but Rok’s apartment was a hidden Aladdin’s cave tucked into the concrete high rise boxes.
Matjaž walked her up to the front door. She stood on the step, evening out the height difference for a moment. He kissed her again, a chaste goodnight kiss. He ran his hand down her arm and squeezed her fingers. “Please. Think about what I said, and please don’t put yourself in danger. Let the police do their job.”
She watched his silhouette moving through the orange glow of the security light at the edge of the parking lot and into the darkness of the street beyond. She watched until she couldn’t see him anymore.
She pushed the button for Rok’s flat. The door buzzed and she hiked up the stairs to his apartment.
He met her at the door in a kimono. Aromas of pot and curry and incense drifted out onto the landing. She could hear Gogol Bordello turned down low on the ancient sound system in his living room.
She pounced on him. She pushed her way into the apartment, taking his face in her hands to kiss him as hungrily as Matjaž had kissed her. She kicked the door closed with her foot and backed Rok into the living room. She let go of his face and untied his kimono. Still kissing him, she kicked off her clogs and started peeling off her clothes. She pulled away long enough to yank her shirt over her head, then she pushed Rok down onto the Moroccan wedding blankets that covered the couch. She climbed on top of him, her knees burning against the scratchy wool.
She wanted to hurl herself against him, to break herself, or him. Break something. He responded with the same intensity. He stood, holding her legs under her thighs, their bodies still connected. He carried her the few steps to his bedroom and threw her onto the bed, separating them. She reached for him and he crawled into bed on top of her.
She screamed. Clawed her fingers down his back. She wailed and cried until they collapsed together. Her face was wet with tears. He had blood smeared on his cheek. Jo looked at her hand. She must have scratched him and drawn blood.
He raised his head and looked at her. “Better?”
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.” She tried to wipe off the blood on his face and succeeded only in spreading it further.
He rolled off her and leaned on his elbow. He shrugged as best he could. “There have been worse injuries for worse reasons.”
She laughed, despite her chagrin at having wounded him.
Rok sat naked on the edge of the tub while she dabbed the scratches on his back with a paper towel soaked in vodka. He barely flinched.
That was going to leave a mark, she was pretty sure. She was naked, too, except for her bra which neither of them had managed to get off. She put the lid back on the vodka and sat down next to him. He turned so their thighs were touching from hip to knee.
She lowered her head to her knees, still holding the alcohol and the paper towel in her hands. Rok took them from her gently and put them in the sink. He ran his calloused hand up and down her back, warming the skin and soothing her.
“You are going to be okay.” He massaged her neck.
“I think you have too much faith in me.” She didn’t raise her head.
He sighed at her.
She sat that way, staring at the ugly yellow linoleum in his bathroom with his warm hand on her back until she felt like she had enough blood in her brain to think straight.
“Thank you.” She sat up.
He laughed. “Thank you.”
Jo woke up to her phone ringing. She reached around next to the bed and then remembered she wasn’t at home. She sat up on the edge of the bed. Who was calling at…what time was it anyway? Where was her phone?
It was in the hallway, in the pocket of the coat she’d shed inside the front door. She got to it just in time to miss the call. Who called at midnight, other than Aunt Jackie getting the time mixed up? She picked up her coat and continued along the trail of discarded black clothing that led to the couch. She gathered everything up and walked back to the bedroom, where she deposited it in a heap on the edge of the table Rok used as a desk. Her phone chirped with a voice message.
It was Leo. She should call him in the morning. Setting her phone on top of the pile of clothes, she climbed back into bed and curled into Rok. She wanted nothing more than to fall back into a dreamless sleep. Instead, she stared at the ceiling thinking of all the horrible things that fucking doll may have unleashed. At last the dark blue light of dawn found its way between the gap in the curtains.
Jo gathered her things. She put on the clean underpants and brushed her teeth with the weird baking soda and chalk mixture Rok had in his bathroom. She put her coat on and slipped back into his room to kiss him goodbye. He was awake and pulled her into bed with him. He kissed her back, greedily.
“Where are you needed so early?” His voice was warm with sleep.
“I need to do prep for Maja’s thing at the shop and Jackie gets in tonight. And I need to see my priest friend for confession.”
He laughed. “He may enjoy your mea culpa about last night.”
“That is not something I need forgiveness for, I hope.” She tousled his hair.
“No. It isn’t.” He hesitated.
“What?”
“I’m leaving today.”
“I thought you weren’t going to Nepal.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Um. We’ve kind of ruined your celibacy preparations.” She ran her thumb over his eyebrow.
“Yes. There are other things I still need to take care of there.”
“Okay.” She had hoped he would stick around. It would have been nice, having someone nearby who understood what was going on.
She sat up on the edge of the bed and he curled around her, resting his head against her hip. I
t was probably for the best that he go to Nepal. She couldn’t just stay burrowed here in his cave and forget about everything outside. Fuck it. It wasn’t a curse, this new superpower. It was a duty, which was a lot worse. To turn away from duty would be selfish and cowardly.
“Are you afraid?”
His question surprised her. Rok waited for her to speak.
“No. Maybe?”
“Maybe?”
“It’s so much bigger than me. I feel like I have this huge responsibility, and at the same time I feel like a chess piece.”
He nodded. And waited.
“But I know there are some things I have to do.”
He nodded again. “Tread lightly.”
Jo walked in the cold and mist through Tivoli back to the central city. Tread lightly, Rok said. Not be careful. Not beware. Tread lightly. Just like Rok to be her very own Cheshire Cat. She caught herself humming “Time Bomb” and felt Maja walking next to her.
A lone runner was crunching gravel, moving away from them in the fog. Then the park was empty except for the two of them, one alive and conflicted, and one sarcastic and dead.
Maja’s voice carried a tease. “So, how was your evening?”
“Complicated.”
“I’ll say.”
“Just how much can you actually see?”
“I know you went to dinner with Matjaž. And I know you spent the night at Mr. Bear’s flat.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I’m not interested in amateur porn. Besides, central Ljubljana on a Friday night is great for people-watching – alive and dead.”
Snappy patter with Maja felt good, but Jo had things to accomplish.
“I think Tomaž is our murderer.”
Maja stopped. “What happened to your theory about Olga?”
“I gave it a little more thought, and you were right about that. There’s no reason Olga would kill anyone. But she is part of Tomaž’s web of connections. Tomaž, who was sleeping with Helena and with you.” She told Maja about the stone Brother Leo gave her and how it started quivering and humming when she’d stood near Tomaž at Helena’s wake.
“It has to be him.”
“I don’t know. He’s an asshole, but a killer? He’s too big a chicken. And what about all the woo-woo shit going on at the museum? Maybe it’s not even a person we should be looking for.”
“Maybe. I need to call Leo. I need to do prep for Sunday’s thing for you at the shop. I need a shower.” Her hair smelled like sex.
“Are you going to my interment today?”
“Shit. It is today. I don’t want to go. Is that terrible of me?”
“Not terrible, but who will I snark to?”
“You’re still going?”
“Would you miss your own funeral?”
“If I had a choice? Probably. If you have something nice to say about me, say it while I’m alive. If you want to say something nasty, same.”
“If I were alive, what nice thing would you say to me?”
They were at the exit of the park, walking up the long hidden ramp by the modern art museum. Jo stopped.
“I would’ve said that you were tougher than you needed to be. And that I really did want to know more about you.” And now, she would say she was sorry for all the life that Maja wouldn’t live, for all the things she would miss. But she couldn’t say it. It was raw and fresh and to say it made it real. She couldn’t break open right now. Grieving her dead would have to wait.
Maja stared at her, blue lip trembling.
Jo hugged her, and it felt like hugging a statue, same as when she hugged her father. “I haven’t been very good about taking my own advice. Or letting people in.”
Maja hugged her back, but didn’t speak.
Jo held Maja a moment by the shoulders. “And I’m really pissed off that the best baker we ever had is dead and now I’m going to have to hire someone else.”
They both laughed, awkward in their shared discomfort, and continued on. They walked into the square in front of the museum, and Maja flickered out of sight amid the early morning walkers and their dogs.
Jo let herself into the shop. It smelled stale. They’d been closed long enough for the smells of kitchen and people to settle and mingle into a flat metallic funk, punctuated with vanilla, because everything in this part of her world smelled like vanilla.
She threw her bag and coat on the table inside the door and flipped on a few lights. She stood in front of the new mural and followed the lines of the waves as they washed the burning crates back toward the suggested land at the edge of the wall. She imagined them crashing open on the beach, spewing burning boxes of tea into the surf. She could almost hear the sizzle and pop of the seawater extinguishing each little fire. The water always wins.
She remembered clambering over the rocks on the Irish coast with Rok on one of their many adventures with Faron in tow. She’d stood on the edge and turned to look back at Faron on the grass. Rok had laid out a picnic to make the most of the first bright sunshine of the trip. A rogue wave had smacked her from behind, knocking her face first into the rocks and bracken between her perch and the edge of land. She felt for an instant like she was being pulled back into the sea, but she found a foothold. Rok had helped her up onto the grassy jut of land and removed a clump of seaweed from her hair. She was banged up and soaked to the skin. Wiping the blood off her chin, he’d said, “Never turn your back on the sea.”
She couldn’t trust the sea. She couldn’t trust her friends and family to not be supernatural weirdos. She couldn’t trust herself not to be a supernatural weirdo. She couldn’t trust lovers and friends not to die. She sat on the nearest chair and wept until she was dry.
She could trust herself. She had to. And Vesna. And Leo, even though she barely knew him, and his world seemed way weirder even than hers. She trusted Faron and Gregor. She hadn’t told them everything, but not because she didn’t trust them. She just didn’t want to involve them. And she trusted Rok, at least to be there and bandage her wounds. But he clearly wasn’t up for a fight, if that was what this was going to be.
Her phone rang in her pocket. It was Leo.
“No. I’m at the shop. I was going to figure out what we need for Sunday. Do some prep. Maybe go to the market. Then Maja’s funeral.” So much for not telling him she had rejected his house-arrest idea.
“Can I join you? We need to talk.”
“Sure.”
She touched the red button and slid the phone back into her pocket. She rummaged in the kitchen for her coffee stash and started a pot of Turkish coffee on the stove. The ritual of it was calming. Coffee, a little sugar, and water in the chipped enamel ibrik she kept hanging with the utensils for coffee emergencies. Bring to a boil. Add another spoonful of the powdered coffee and stir it down.
She let the grounds settle while she pawed through the bottom drawer in her office desk for her chipped mug. She poured the coffee into it, trying to leave as much of the grounds as possible in the little flared pot and taking care not to burn herself where the flames had licked the long, metal handle. She splashed some milk into the mug and sipped from it while she surveyed the contents of the reach-in, mentally putting together a menu for Sunday.
The bells on the front door clanged against the wood. She poked her head around the kitchen door. It was Leo dressed in his black cassock, towering over the tables of her little shop. He cut an impressive figure, reminiscent of Jeremy Irons in The Mission. She guessed Leo would not welcome the comparison. And to be honest, Leo was much better looking than even young Jeremy Irons.
“Coffee’s hot.” She held an empty tea cup out for him.
“I would’ve expected tea.”
“I try not to get high on my own supply.”
“I’ll pretend I know what that means and happily accept your offer of coffee.”
She poured the rest of the liquid out of the ibrik into the tea cup, leaving the coffee grounds sludge behind. She poked her head around the door again. “Milk?”
“Please.”
She carried her mug and Leo’s teacup of coffee out to the table where he sat. He was so tall the tables looked like children’s furniture.
“I thought you would call me back this morning.”
“It’s been a…it’s been a difficult start to the day.” She knew her face was probably still blotchy from crying. Her eyes still felt sticky and swollen.
“I can see that. Are you okay?”
She hated for anyone to see her like that. Jo gave him a lop-sided smile. “I guess. As okay as I can be. It’ll be nice to get to a place where I don’t feel like I’m standing on the edge of an emotional precipice all the damn time.” She had been trying to sort out and catalog her feelings lately, with no success. She seemed to have no problem spilling them all over him. “It would just be easier to feel nothing.”
Leo set his cup down and looked at her. Her skin flushed under the intensity of his gaze. She reminded herself he had taken a vow of celibacy. But it wasn’t just that. He looked through her. He looked at her like he could see the atoms swirling in her cells.
“I don’t think that is something you would wish for if you had truly experienced emotional emptiness.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Fair enough. I don’t want to be empty, I’d just like to go back to where I was a week ago. I think I fully understand the concept of ignorance being bliss now.”
“How you feel right now, wanting to not know? That’s why I do what I do and it will be what you do now, too.”
She cocked her head at him.
“We protect others from knowing about what is really out there.”
“But people actively seek that. They ghost hunt. They track Big Foot. They watch for UFOs. People seem to want to know exactly what’s out there.” She flapped her hand at the front door indicating everyone in the world beyond the two of them.
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