T
he santeros work late into the night. At some point, Dr. Tijou politely asks if I wouldn’t mind changing the sheets for her so she can crash out on my bed. I don’t even think she has any reason to be here anymore except pure curiosity. And maybe a doomed crush on “Dr. Voudou.” She slips under the fresh covers and passes out with a smile on her face.
“So that’s the magic stabbing lady that stole your heart,” Kia says as we have coffee at the kitchen table. It must be getting near dawn by now.
“Indeed it is.”
“You knocked her up.”
I nod. “Indeed I did.”
“Well, at least you got to sleep with her, then.”
“Thanks, Kia. That’s comforting.”
“I’m saying, it’s better to have loved and lost, right?”
“I think so. I’ll let you know after this ordeal is over.”
“Fair enough.”
We sip in silence for a few minutes. In the other room, the babas chant softly. Iya Tiomi’s voice rises above the others in a raspy staccato and then the men answer her. Someone’s clanging away rhythmically on a cowbell and
beneath it all is the endless swooshing of water. I’d be able to appreciate how beautiful it was if I weren’t so worried about losing the woman I love.
“You love her?” Kia says, once again digging into my private thoughts without permission. One day I’m gonna have to speak to her about that.
I search myself for a second, even though I know the answer. Maybe so it doesn’t seem as irrational as it feels. Then again, who ever said love was rational? “I do.”
Kia nods solemnly. “Seems complicated.”
“It is. Very.”
The conversation’s strangely comforting, for all its simplicity. Kia has a way of showing that she gets it without saying too much. And anyway, I couldn’t deal with a lot of chatter right now.
A few minutes later, Baba Eddie walks in looking exhausted. He slumps into a chair and pulls out a cigarette, plops it into his mouth without the usual fanfare, and lights up. I raise my eyebrows at him.
“She’s all right.”
Thank you, universe. Thank you, stars, world, all of that. Thank you. Yes.
“And the baby?”
Eddie puts his hands up. “Best I can tell, yes. We have spiritually deep cleaned her with everything we got. The spirits seem to be in accordance and have given their blessings, so on my end, all is well.” He puts his hand on my knee reassuringly and then leans back into his chair and exhales a huge mountain of smoke.
“Thank you, Baba. I don’t know what to say.”
“De nada, Carlos. Just give me some coffee please.”
I put a new pot on, and we sit listening to the clunk and clatter of santeros cleaning up and the gurgle of freshly made coffee.
* * *
“You almost died.”
Sasha’s smile is faded, but she’s still somehow full of life. “I know.”
“You saved my life.”
She smiles again, but a second later it’s gone. “You saved mine too. Thank you.”
This is harder than I thought it’d be. But then, she’s probably exhausted.
“Can you talk about it—what happened?”
She sits up a little, and it crashes down on me one more time how beautiful she is, even after all the hell she’s just lived. All the pieces fit together just right. “I tried to contact you.”
“Ginny,” I say.
She nods. “Felt you looking for me that first night. You know fortune-tellers, even wack ones, got all that energy floating around the place. Figured that’d be the easiest way to ping you, and you’d put the rest together when she told you I was going to TiVo.”
“I did!”
“Not quickly enough.”
“I know. The giant jumped me while I was waiting for you to come out.”
We sit in the silence of our missed connection for a few seconds. I try not to wonder if anything would’ve been different if we’d have managed to link up before Sarco got to her.
“Anyway, I knew he’d be coming for me,” Sasha says. “And that it would be useless to fight him. I knew he’d have some other plan up his sleeve. I more or less had pieced together what he was up to from what Trevor had
told me and some of my own sources. I was gonna do a Carlos.” (Sad smile. I crumble a little inside.) “And go along right up until I had a chance to come at him. But, of course, someone like Sarco won’t be caught in the same trick twice. Even when he swarmed up inside of me, I was still figuring eventually he’d have to come out, and when he did, I’d figure out how to destroy him one way or the other. I focused all of my protective energy around the baby and just tried to stay conscious while that madman rushed through the streets with my body.
“He knew exactly what he was doing, made right for the entrada, and as soon as we got there, he relaxed his hold on me some. Sarco knows I’m better with a blade than he’ll ever be, even with all that sorcery. And he also knew as long as he was inside me, occupying me, this baby’s life was in his claws and I wouldn’t try any kind of slickness. And he was right, of course. As soon as I had control of my body back, those old phantoms were closing in and I had a blade in each hand that I knew exactly what to do with.”
“I saw.”
“You didn’t know I was a trained assassin? How do you think the Survivors survive?”
“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Sasha.”
“Anyway, he was back in control as soon as we were in the clear. And then once he left me, I had no idea . . .” Her voice trails off, and for a second I think she might just break down. Instead she rallies herself. “. . . just how fucked up I’d feel when he was gone. It was like there was a thousand-pound weight around my neck and a million razor blades hacking away at my insides. And all I could think about was this baby inside me, this life that I’d only just gotten used to having and suddenly seemed so up for grabs, so fragile.”
“It’s . . . ours?”
She laughs. “Of course, Carlos. Who else’s would it . . . ? Yes, it’s ours. Yours and mine.”
I nod, ecstatic and heartbroken at the same time.
“And, Carlos.” Uh-oh. I feel the next two words closing in on me from a mile away. “I’m leaving.”
“
Leaving
leaving? Where to?”
“I don’t know.” She thinks for a minute. “I can’t tell you.”
“Ah.” A lump is forming in the pit of my . . . what is that, my stomach? My soul? I don’t know. It sucks though. “But . . .” But what? I have no words.
“I can’t . . . be with you.” I nod, even though I don’t really mean to. “You killed my brother, Carlos.”
I was following orders!
No. That won’t do.
I didn’t know he was . . .
No.
I’m sorry.
Sweet and true, but too little, too late. “You stabbed me.” I didn’t really mean to say that one; it just came out.
She actually smiles a little. “I know.”
“I could’ve died. That doesn’t make us even?” Ugh! Of course it doesn’t. Why must I open my mouth and make sentences?
“I knew you wouldn’t die. I made sure of it.”
“Ah, I thought so.” Sweet, but . . . I’m still losing. “I’m sorry.”
“I know. Me too.”
“We died together.” I blurt it out like it’s my last grasp at salvaging whatever we had. Then, like an asshole, I temper it with, “I think.”
She cocks her head to the side. “At Grand Army Plaza?”
“Yes. I spoke to the resident ghost there a few nights back. He saw everything but would only give me cryptic answers. I think Sarco had him under some kind of spell.”
“What’d he say?”
“That there were seven of us, and none survived, and then there were five.”
Her eyes are far away. “Anything else?”
“Nothing worthwhile. And now, of course, he’s been obliterated in the melee along with the only other guy that knows what happened.”
“Maybe not the only one . . .”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll be checking on some things. Maybe I’ll get in touch. I don’t know.”
“The baby . . .”
She looks dangerously close to tears. “I know it’s not fair to you, Carlos. I know that. But it doesn’t change . . . what happened. Maybe someday, I don’t know. I don’t even want to say that because it seems cruel. I just . . . I can’t.”
My whole body tenses and I almost overturn the coffee table. A fury hurls through me. It’s not directed at one thing or another, just . . . everything. I close my eyes and will it to subside, force my mind back to somewhere semirational.
The fury simmers some.
“No. Stay.” Something not quite pleading but not demanding either. But her face is steeled. I nod. “Okay. I see.” What else can I say? I can’t force her to stay.
“Go,” she says. “Give me a few hours. I have some people coming to get me. I can’t do lingering good-byes.”
“So you’re going to take my child and kick me out of my apartment?”
“Carlos.”
“No, I don’t want a drawn-out thing either.” I stand up, suddenly very far away from her. My face tries to make itself into a smile but doesn’t quite get there and it comes out as a grimace instead. “Good-bye.”
“Bye.”
I grab my coat and the new cane-blade that Riley brought me and walk out into the weird, drizzly morning. Halfway down the block, I put a Malagueña to my lips and light it, letting that thick rich smoke invade me. A few hours pass while I circle Brooklyn, thinking so many thoughts and then none at all, smoking and cursing and smiling and dreaming. I’m more like a ghost now than I’ve ever been—just a wisp of a soul slipping through the streets, barely noticed. Wrestling endlessly with myself.
Maybe when I return she’ll be there waiting.
Quiet.
Maybe her smell will greet me as I walk through the door, her smile will find mine and my hand will rest on her full belly, and we’ll settle into the couch and find that oneness we once slid so easily into.
Shhh.
Absurdly, I remember that little boy in the Spider-Man outfit, arguing with himself outside her building right before I got jumped. I’m almost back at my place, and I don’t want to go in because I know what I’ll find and what I won’t find. I briefly consider just walking away and never coming back, walking south and south and south till something makes sense again. Then I crumple up the thought and throw it away and walk up my stairs.
She’s not here. No one’s here. I’ve never felt so much emptiness in my own house. I think maybe I’ll collapse dramatically onto the couch and take a semi-infinite nap, when I notice something sitting on the coffee table that wasn’t there before. A cassette tape. It has one word scrawled across it, and I don’t have to read it to know what it says.
My hands don’t tremble as I slide it into the old tape player and press play.
Okay, they tremble a little.
The first note is all I need to hear. I stop the tape, take a deep breath, start it again. When the voice comes in, everything, all that thinking, stops. The drums clackity-clack beneath and each note is a river that runs from the speaker into my blood vessels and through my heart.
When the whole thing crashes to a close, I rewind the tape and play it
again.