Still

by Camilla Monk

  My head hit the nightstand in my fall, and gold flashed before my eyes as I took the bedside lamp with me, its cord tangled around my arm. Over the furious pounding in my temples and the sticky fog clouding the rest of my senses, I made out my bedroom’s painted ceiling. Fuck, my forehead hurt. I rasped in agony. One of my legs was still in the bed; the other lay on the floor along with the rest of my body, most of my covers, a pillow, and well, the broken lamp. I registered the sound of something light rolling on the nightstand above me. Squinted my eyes at the gleaming shape. The mini bottle of vodka fell, at last, landing squarely on my chest, like a finishing move.

  It took me a while to muster the strength to move, and when I did, I sat up just in time to see my bedroom door open.

  “Em, are you okay?”

  Lily. Her apartment was right under mine, and, of course, she had to hear me fall from bed in a drunken stupor, freshly messed up from a nightmare that felt like getting my heart torn out of my chest during an epic shroom trip. I waved a quivering hand. “I’m good. Tossed around a little too much; that’s all.”

  She kneeled by me, saw the vodka. I wanted to say something lame like, “It wasn’t that much booze; I just had a nightmare,” but it sounded pathetic even to my own ears. I let her pick up the empty flacon and place it back on the nightstand without a word.

  I blinked up at her yoga pants and a blinding white smudge that was probably one of Dante’s shirts. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll help you up.” She sighed and bent down again, but this time I managed to scramble to my feet without further humiliating myself.

  “Don’t worry, I’m fine,” I mumbled, running a hand across my face. “I need . . .” to brush my teeth. Also, cold water.

  “I was about to make myself some apple tea. Do you want some?” Lily offered as she picked up my comforter and smoothed it back atop the bed.

  My eyes scanned the nightstand, looking for my phone. Almost midnight. I scratched my stomach under my tank top. “You weren’t sleeping?”

  Her lips pursed in a sorrowful expression. “Dante and I were going over the first scans we received of the table. It’s hard to sleep when it’s . . .” Her right hand twitched toward the window. “. . . awaiting us less than two miles away.”

  I gave a slow nod, but in truth, I didn’t fully understand. I’d never been passionate about anything in my life, never really cared about anything—except weed and metal maybe, in my teens. So, I couldn’t really relate to that kind of . . . well, the way Lily said it, and the way Dante had been looking at that table back at the digging site, the first word that came to me was obsession. They were obsessed by their huge archeological discovery, to the point that they couldn’t even sleep at night. Just like their relationship, this was another bubble I could never get into. Best I could do was watch from the outside and try to figure out how it felt to love someone or something that much.

  Lily watched me quietly, her arms wrapped around herself. “So, tea?”

  I thought ugh, but I said, “Yeah.”

  “Sugar?”

  “Thanks.”

  I inhaled the fruity scent rising into the air as Lily poured a golden tea in my mug. She’d nudged a stack of papers and her laptop aside, to make a little room on the coffee table for a tray. Sitting across from us on some kind of designer day bed that matched their cream sofa, Dante watched the delicate movement of her hands, the hint of a smile on his lips. His eyes never really left her, even as he took his mug and slowly brought it to his lips.

  It made me feel a little on edge, the way I could almost physically feel their bond even as a spectator, like particles hanging in the air, that would raise unbidden goose bumps on my forearms under the long-sleeved tee I’d slipped on before joining them.

  I grabbed my own mug and gave the apple tea a cautious try to distract myself from the weird mood in the room. I’d never been a tea person, but it didn’t taste as bad as I expected—sweetened water, basically.

  “It sounded like you were having a bit of a party up there,” Dante chided gently, glancing up at the ceiling.

  Shuuuut the fuck up . . . I bit the inside of my cheek, my nostrils flaring. “I had a nightmare, and I rolled out of bed.”

  Lily’s eyebrows drew together a fraction. “Nothing too bad?”

  I shrugged and smirked at Dante. “I dreamed someone had canceled my booking.”

  Lily winced, but he let out a warm chuckle before taking a long sip of his tea. “I deserve that one.”

  Having scratched that particular itch, I allowed myself to relax a little, shifting to sit cross-legged on the couch’s cushions. I eyed the stack of papers Lily had disturbed to serve the tea. On one of her books, I recognized the same kind of vaguely Greek-looking characters I’d seen on Chronos’s Table back at the digging site. I narrowed my eyes at the bold line of text peeking above it. “Understanding the Principles of Ancient Magic?” I raised an amused eyebrow at Lily. “Do I need to worry? Are we gonna, like, sacrifice a chicken?”

  Dante’s lips quirked, but his eyes weren’t smiling as they met mine. “No. I’m done summoning uncontrollable forces for tonight. I have all I need, thank you.”

  Lily giggled, her eyes mock-scolding him. She told me, “It was my granddad’s favorite field of research. Before we were able to locate the Roman shrine, most of what we knew about Chronos’s Table came from that book. He’d conducted extensive research and collected all the texts referencing it one way or another. He had this intuition the table was real, and we proved him right.” She pulled the book from under the rest of the papers to show it to me. The cover featured a frayed piece of parchment whose faded text looked like the characters on the table—probably that archaic alphabet Lily had mentioned earlier.

  I flipped through the pages lazily—856! Get out . . . Tiny, tiny text everywhere that made my head hurt just glancing at it. I noticed a black and white pic of the sculpture of a horned deity on one page. “So, he studied, um . . . witchcraft and devil worship stuff?”

  Dante chuckled, but Lily’s face pinched in that kinda cute-serious expression she donned when she was about to unleash science on the unwashed masses. “He studied literally anything but the devil, as you call it.” Ouch . . . I’d questioned the famous grandpa’s line of work, and it was on.

  As I summoned a memory of his hooked nose and graying temples, I saw myself again in the bedroom I shared with Lily in Richard’s big condo on East 57th. I was eleven, and I lay sprawled on my bed, busy doodling a Blastoise all over my math textbook while old McKeanney sat at Lily’s desk with his granddaughter, reviewing a freaking novel about the civil war—I actually wondered if her teachers even bothered to read these papers before tossing her an A+. After a while, the old man had come over to my bed and asked me, “Do you need help with your homework, Emma?”

  Grandpa McKeanney had stepped in the wrong hood. Richard had asked the same thing a hundred times before, and my tactic of choice was to either mumble a contemptuous “no,” or plainly ignore him until he gave up with a tight-lipped nod. I kept drawing, pointedly ignoring the old man’s frown and the faint scent of eucalyptus clinging to his tweed jacket. He didn’t repeat the offer. Instead, his fingers reached to graze the angry red imprint of a fresh slap on my cheek—probably for stealing stuff from my mom’s dresser or talking back to a teacher at school. Ours is a generation raised by Michael Jackson. I instantly recoiled at the head of the bed like he had “pedo” written all over him. He didn’t apologize; instead, he murmured, “It’s a big universe, and one day you’ll realize that this,” he motioned to my cheek, “isn’t much in the grand scheme of things.”

  At the time, I just thought he had Alzheimer’s, or he was crazy, but now, thinking about it, I realized he’d been right. It was just a slap, half a second in a lifetime. Sure, I’d seen my fair share of shitty moments, but even so, the sum of all those amounted to what, a quarter of my entire life if I lived to be eighty? Always look on the bright side, and all . . .

&nbs
p; Anyway, I was eleven; I had an attitude, and what I did was look up at McKeanney and reply, “Cruise back to your retirement home, bro.”

  I clearly remembered the way he’d cocked a bushy eyebrow, right before Lily’s strawberry-scented eraser hit me square in the forehead. It was the last time I’d seen the old guy, and, more importantly, the only time Lily had ever been violent with me—if you can call tossing an eraser violence. She definitely wasn’t cut out for the thug life.

  I dropped the book on the table and offered Lily an apologetic smile. “Hey, I meant no diss.”

  Her features relaxed. “I know.” She patted the cover. “Still, your reaction is interesting, because when you bring up magic, spells or that kind of thing, people immediately conjure up the late Judeo-Christian cultural cliché of women riding brooms and worshipping Belzebub.”

  “I guess . . .” I confirmed hesitantly, while Dante watched us from behind the screen of his MacBook with what I swore was a mocking gaze. Dude was literally sending me douche vibes from across the coffee table without even taking part in the convo.

  “Well,” Lily went on with a dramatic pause. “Believe it or not, people didn’t wait for the Catholic church to take an interest in the occult and explore the limits of their physical reality. And that was basically Grandpa’s playground: rediscovering pre-Christian occult practices, understanding their beliefs, the roots of those beliefs,”—she pointed at the symbols on the book’s cover—“deconstructing their spells and the written traces they left us throughout history.” Her voice faltered, suddenly tight. Her eyes met Dante’s, something unspoken passing between them. More than just love or understanding. Passion for their work and each other, I figured. “Most people don’t care. But it’s . . . an invaluable well of knowledge that’s been lost for a very long time.”

  I felt awkward, sitting here on that couch, listening to all this, unable to reciprocate the kind of intensity they literally oozed—okay, mostly Lily. “I think he’d be super proud of you,” I said lamely.

  “He would,” Dante concurred, setting his laptop aside and rising to sit by Lily. He hugged her, and I realized her eyes were glistening.

  And . . . now I felt shitty, and like a complete outsider too—nothing new under the sun. I squirmed away to give them some space. “I’ll go to bed.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Oh no! I mean, you can stay if you want. Sorry, I kinda got carried away. It’s just, you know . . . the pressure, I guess.”

  “From Katharos,” I stated, my eyes narrowing a fraction as I remembered our dinner with Lucius the dancing clown. “What’s in it for them, though, if no one cares about the subject? Can they do an exhibit or something like that?”

  “Among other things,” Dante replied, stroking Lily’s wrist absently. “People may not realize the significance of this discovery, but it’s possible to educate them.” He flashed one of his tiny winks like we were BFFs now.

  “Sure,” I said with a dubious look. Cool your jets, Dante. I still mostly hate you. Something else clicked in my neurons as I considered the mess scattered on the coffee table. I replayed in my head that comment she’d made earlier that most of what they knew about Chronos’s Table came from Professor McKeanney’s book.

  “So,” I said to Lily, “Katharos hired you because you were taking over your grandpa’s work, looking for the table.”

  She ducked her chin in confirmation.

  “Why didn’t they just hire him directly back when he was alive?”

  Dante’s eyebrows jerked, and I swear he flashed me the are-you-stupid-or-what look—but he allowed Lily to answer that one. “Actually, he worked for Katharos as a consultant before he died,” she replied.

  “Like you,” I replied flatly, struggling to keep a straight face when my lips quivered from the urge to cringe. This was more than just walking in her grandfather’s steps. Lily had chosen to work for the same foundation he had and to finish his job for them. Those fifteen-page long 8th grade history essays had been one thing, but this was another level of worship.

  I sent one last look at the stack of papers and Lily’s precious copy of Understanding the Principles of Ancient Magic. Nodding to myself, I sprang up from their couch. “Okay, going to bed for real this time. Thanks for the tea, and,” I padded to their door and paused, my hand on the knob. I gauged Lily’s pale, tired features. “Don’t forget to live for yourself at some point when you’re done with that table.”

  I didn’t see Lily and Dante at breakfast, for reasons like the fact that my hangover and I fell out of bed at noon, and we crawled together into the bathtub, curling away from the sunlight pouring through the windows like a ghoul. My eyes didn’t open fully until I was done drinking a whole bottle of water and eating every last chocolate in the minibar.

  Once I was human again, I shrugged on my backpack, popped in my earphones to block out the real world and hurried down the stairs, keeping my eyes down to avoid the glances of a couple of maids cleaning the hallway.

  Lily had texted me to say she’d spend the day at the foundation’s lab with Dante and Lucius. She wanted to know if we could see each other later. I tapped to reply and saved the empty draft. I wasn’t sure what to say. My first impulse was to tell her I was too busy visiting stuff, but after all she’d told me last night, I was kinda curious about the next episode in her History-Channel-style adventures with Chronos’s Table, or about Ken doll Dante, and just how much of a hold he had on her. Would she eat Tide Pods for him? From the looks of it, yes. With a side of bleach.

  I closed the draft and shoved my phone back in my jeans pocket with a deep sigh. It pissed me off that I’d run so far and for so long, only to end up getting texts and stale Ancient Rome memes from Lily, like we were . . . Shit. We weren’t bonding, were we? Striding past the goat monsters framing the Residenza’s door, I gave silent thanks to Chronos for no doubt keeping everyone very busy while I tried to sort my priorities.

  I rolled my shoulders, breathed in, breathed out, and took out my phone again. Google said it’d take forty-five minutes to get to my dad’s address by bus. Assuming he had a job, he probably wouldn’t be home until the end of the day; I could always start with a recon mission to check if his name was on the intercom. I stared down at the map on my phone, trying to imagine how he’d react if he saw me creeping around his place. Would he recognize me? Freak out? Or maybe he’d spent the past thirteen years waiting for this moment like I had, but he just never dared to make the first step . . .

  I chewed on my nails, oblivious to the people walking past me. Time to move, instead of unraveling right in the middle of the street. Plus, I needed to find myself a new place for the night. I cringed at the memory of Dante’s little “surprise.” Just picturing his wink again gave me douchebumps, but I wouldn’t let him ruin my day. I exhaled the bad vibes and strolled down the Via Tomacelli toward the Tiber, enjoying the fall sun, and idly checking clothing stores. There was a secret smile on my lips, and overall, life wasn’t so bad.

  As I lingered in front of a Mango, I was treated to a familiar sight: a couple of cats lounged on a pink fleece blanket on the ground while next to them a guy shook his empty McDonald’s cup at tourists. My eyebrows jumped. Same mess of sandy curls, beard, and steel toes. His wooden cane rested at his side, and he wore a clean gray T-shirt under his ratty coat today. I smacked my tongue. I knew he wasn’t a real bum—gutter punk squatting in an abandoned building somewhere, more likely.

  I kept my distance and watched his little business. He was petting one of the cats with his left hand while holding out the cup with his right. A pair of Asian girls stopped because he was talking to them in . . . whatever language they spoke, I realized. I had no idea if it was Chinese, Japanese, or something else, but he sounded pretty fluent. They held hands and listened to his bullshit for a while before reaching into their designer bags. My lips pursed in reluctant appreciation as they dropped him a ten each. Smooth pitch, I had to give him that.

  After the show was over, I shoved my
hands in my pockets and casually walked past him. He didn’t have his glasses on today, probably to make sure everyone would steal a glance at his milky pupils and feel bad.

  “Hey, hey! Pretty girl from yesterday!”

  I stopped mid-stride, muffling a curse under my breath. I bet it was one of his classic ice-breakers, and I felt stupid for being the only sucker around who’d fallen for it, when I, of all people, should know better. I shook my head and resumed walking.

  “On the Palatine . . . I know it was you!”

  I risked a peek back. He was waving at me—or at least, in my general direction. How could he know? My bumdar yelled for me to cruise on. If I let the dude hook me, he’d bullshit me until my ears bled and I gave him something just to make it stop. Why my legs chose to turn around instead, I had no fricking clue. I planted myself in front of him, arms crossed. “Look, I’m broke, and no, I’m not gonna blow you even if you ask real nice. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, is there anything else I can do for you today?”

  He raised his head at me with a lazy grin and closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply. “Hmmm . . . you smell even better now that you’ve showered—like chocolate.”

  My cheeks heated up at the realization that he had it right. I had taken a shower not even an hour ago and stuffed my face with Gianduiotti for breakfast. Maybe it was true that blind people developed their other senses to make up for their sight loss. I averted my eyes, even though it made no difference. “Free dating advice: ditch the cheesy pickup lines,” I snapped back.

  His smile stretched wider, warm and guileless—I was starting to see why those Asian girls had coughed up the cash so easily. Dude rubbed his leg through the hole in his corduroy pants, and—you may want to sit for this—here’s what he served me next: “You wouldn’t happen to have a Band-Aid, would you? I think I scraped my knee falling for you.”