Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3

by Benjamin Laskin

  “Hi, Malkah.”

  “You remember my name,” she said, hand on her hip. “I’m impressed. Now, don’t go shaming me by asking if I remember yours. Wait…wait…” She held up her hand and put a finger to her chin. “Cyrus, right?”

  “I’m honored.”

  She smiled. “So, what brings you back to Saul’s Deli, Mr. Cyrus?”

  “The food.”

  “And what took you so long?”

  “I’ve been very busy. But it’s nice to see your friendly face again. I’ll have the special, rye bread, and just water, thank you.” He handed back the menu.

  Normally, she would have smacked her pad with her pen, uttered an “okey-doke,” and hustled off. But it was the end of the lunch rush and she wasn’t in her usual hurry.

  “You look different since the last time you were here,” she said, noting that jeans and a blue flannel shirt had replaced the funny getup he was wearing when they first met. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the blue baseball cap with the red-letter C, which she assumed made him a Cubs fan. “Life been treating you well?”

  “It’s been treating me fine,” he answered. “And you?”

  Malkah shrugged. “Just waitressing and stuff.”

  “There is nothing wrong with waitressing.”

  “I know, but sometimes I wonder if it’s all I’ll ever do.”

  “I’m certain that ‘waitressing and stuff’ are not the rest of your life.”

  “How do you know? Times are tough, my résumé is paltry, and I’m a college dropout.”

  “So?”

  “So my options are rather limited,” she insisted.

  “No, just your imagination, your will, and your faith.”

  “And my bank account,” she added.

  “Do you need some money?” He reached for his wallet.

  “No, no,” Malkah said, swatting at his arm, embarrassed. “I’m joking. I’m fine.”

  “Okay, then snap out of it,” Cyrus commanded.

  “Pardon me?” Malkah said, taken aback by the man’s rebuke.

  “There will be no self-pity on my watch.”

  “Your watch?” she said, astounded by his gall.

  “That’s right. I’m the only person who would have the guts to scold you, so I’m the only person really watching. Do you have any idea how lucky you are? How good you have it? You’re bright and beautiful and healthy. I’ve been around and around this world. I’ve seen things you could not imagine in your wildest dreams. And I’ve seen young women who haven’t half of what you have in brains, charm, and situation accomplish deeds of heroic proportions. So, no whining. It looks bad on you.”

  Malkah was speechless. No one had ever spoken to her like that before. Oh sure, she had been chewed out on occasion—who hadn’t?—but never in this manner. Her opinions elicited angry responses all the time, but not her very being, and she had been accused of many things in her life, but self-pity had never been one of them.

  “Who do you think you are? My father?”

  “Surely not,” Cyrus replied calmly. “Glenn Stern never spoke to you like I am. He rarely spoke to you at all. The last you heard from him was an email from China a year ago. It included a picture of him at the Great Wall. He had scribbled a few hasty lines saying that he was on business there. He thought that the picture would impress you, but it didn’t.”

  “You know my father?” she said with surprise.

  “We’ve never met, but I know him better than he knows himself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you, Malkah.”

  “No, you’re talking crazy talk,” she said miffed and confused.

  “Am I? I don’t think so.”

  “Is this why you came in here today? To freak me out?”

  “No, I came in for a late lunch. But since you brought it up, I figured I’d add my own observations. I’m sorry if I upset you, but I am hardwired for honesty, not tact.”

  “So you lecture everyone you meet, is that it?”

  “No. And table five wants to pay their bill, and table seven wants to order dessert.”

  Malkah looked up to confirm his words and saw that both tables were looking at her impatiently. “How do you do that?”

  “I told you. I’m very observant.”

  “You stay here,” she commanded with a wagging finger. “I’m not done with you.” She turned and hustled off.

  It was true what Cyrus said; he had come just for lunch. It wasn’t until he saw Malkah did his Midrashic memory kick in. The first time they had met his soul was struggling like a match in the wind, and he had not yet reclaimed his memory. But now, weeks later, revitalized and in full possession of his faculties, as soon as he saw her bright smile and heard her voice, her record flashed before his eyes.

  Upon seeing everything and learning her whole story, he wanted to smack himself on the forehead. How could he have missed it! Ellen Veetal and Malkah Stern were related, first cousins. Stumbling into Saul’s Deli that day was not a coincidence because there were no coincidences.

  But what was he to make of it? Why was he meant to meet Malkah Stern? Cyrus reviewed her file in his mind as he watched the girl winsomely perform her waitressing duties, turning her disgruntled customers into adoring fans.

  The data was clear, Malkah Stern possessed the same requisite attributes that had led Cyrus to suspect that Ellen Veetal might be the Swerver; only Malkah Stern had them in spades. Whoever it was that had moved Ellen Veetal’s records from the Midrasha after Cyrus’s curiosity about her had been aroused, seems to have missed the connection, for Malkah’s record was there for him to download.

  Or, he thought, it was purposely left for him to find. Was her record missing now too? Exiled and relegated to the human realm where he could not update the records he had downloaded, he might never know.

  What he had saved to memory, however, was incomplete. After dropping out of college large patches of time were missing from her record, especially those leading up to or just after one of her many trips abroad. Curious. Family and friends knew little about her journeys either. To the inquisitive, she confessed to suffering a bad case of “wanderlust.”

  Was Malkah Stern the Swerver? He didn’t know, but she was certainly as likely a candidate as her cousin. But if he was wrong once, he could be wrong again. He had to admit to himself that within the world there were surely at least a few thousand men or women who might qualify as Swervers.

  In fact, it was just such people with whom a Swerver’s fate resonated. If a Swerver succeeded, the first to know the metaphysical charge of his or her vibration were typically the other candidates. From these persons the vibration rippled outward, spreading first to thousands then to millions of people, creating just enough human fortitude to stymie the yetzers’ advance for another generation.

  There hadn’t been a successful Swerver for generations now. Whoever they were, they had failed or were stopped. If a Swerver didn’t come forward soon, Cyrus worried that there would be nothing left to swerve. It wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of the world, but it would be the end of love, and a world without love would be a Heaven without love’s angels. The world could continue, but those living in it would rather it didn’t.

  Malkah returned with his lunch platter. She hovered over him, fists on hips. She watched as Cyrus made a blessing over his food and then popped a French fry into his mouth.

  “Salt?” he said.

  Malkah huffed, snatched a saltshaker from another table and slammed it down in front of him.

  “Thank you.” He sprinkled the salt over his fries.

  “Well…?” she prompted.

  “Tasty.”

  “For a know-it-all, you sure are obtuse.”

  Cyrus smiled. “I’ve been called worse. But tell me, if you don’t like it when your cousin Ellen uses that word on you, why use it on others?”

  “You know Ellen?” Malkah said, unable to contain her surprise. “Or do y
ou know her like you know my dad?”

  “I’ve met Ellen Veetal a few times.”

  “You’ve met her? Face to face? How could someone like you know someone like her?”

  “Through the university. You two are similar in many ways.”

  “Hardly,” Malkah snorted. “Ellen’s working on a doctorate in psychology and I’m working on pastrami.”

  Cyrus smiled. “I’ll take your pastrami over her baloney any day.”

  Malkah wasn’t sure if she should put on an act of high dudgeon, or thank him. She did neither. Instead she asked, “What do you know about my cousin?”

  “I know that she envies you.”

  “Me?” Malkah scoffed. “That’s a joke.”

  “She knows that you are stronger than she is, more principled, and happier. She secretly envies your free spirit, the way you’ll jaunt off to locales unknown at the drop of a hat, and your stubborn self-reliance.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No, we never spoke of you.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “You know it too,” Cyrus replied. “You’ve said as much to your beloved grandmother—your bubby.”

  “You’re not going to tell me you know my bubby!”

  “We’ve never met, no.”

  “Then how—?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cyrus said. “What matters is that you wake up to your full potential. As the Chinese philosopher Mencius said, ‘He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.’”

  Malkah gave the restaurant a quick scan to see if anyone was observing them. “Look,” she said, “I get off work in twenty minutes. Can we talk?”

  “If you like.”

  “I don’t know that I will like it, but this is not the time or place for this discussion. So, if you wouldn’t mind…”

  “Sure. My sandwich is getting cold.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry about that. Meet me out front in half an hour, okay? I have tables to clear and stuff I gotta do before I leave.”

  Cyrus tipped his ball cap to her.

  “Good,” she said, and scooted off.

  As he ate, Cyrus took to reviewing Malkah’s Midrashic record in more detail in his mind’s eye, visiting as many degrees of separation as he could without getting a headache. The gaps in her record intrigued him. Some spanned months, even years at a time, and he figured totaled more than six years in all. She may or may not be the Swerver, he thought, but he was convinced that she was more than a waitress.

  7

  Good Tipper

  “Cubs fan, are you?”

  “Excuse me?” Cyrus said, not catching her segue.

  They had been talking about Saul’s Deli as they strolled down the sidewalk from the restaurant. Malkah flicked at his baseball cap with her finger.

  “C for Cubs, right? Or, are you as big a narcissist as you appear, and that’s C for Cyrus?”

  “I’m more of an A for Angels fan,” he said, playing along. “But they were out of those.”

  “This way,” she said, tugging at Cyrus’s elbow, leading him through a short side street that ended at a small, square-shaped children’s playground with park benches and old elm trees on each side.

  Like most places in town, the trashcans were overflowing and every glance included some sort of litter—wrappers, bags, plastic bottles, and the discarded tools of the trade of junkies and prostitutes. Graffiti was omnipresent. They were alone, except for a homeless man covered with newspaper sleeping on one of the benches, an empty booze bottle in his gloved hand.

  “You come here a lot,” Cyrus said as they took a seat on a bench opposite from the sleeping man on the other side of the dirt playground. “Why?”

  “You tell me, smarty-pants,” Malkah challenged.

  “When you come here it is either very quiet, like today, or filled with the sound of children’s laughter. Either pleases you. But that’s not the only reason you come here. You come here because you’re looking for someone.”

  “Oh, yeah? And who might that be?”

  “A guy. A man. A husband.”

  “This dump?” Malkah snorted. “Why on earth would I come here for that? The only men that show up here are depressed divorcees spending their few allotted hours a week with their kid. Or, more typically, guys like that one passed out on the bench over there.”

  “I’m not saying it’s a brilliant idea. I’m just telling you what you do. You hate bars and clubs, and you don’t much like coffee houses either. You have acquaintances but few friends, and you rarely go to parties. You’ll go to the occasional movie or museum or visiting exhibit, but always by yourself. You’re a loner and you like it that way. You figure that if you were going to meet someone, it would be by chance, and that a place like here is as likely as any other. Again, I’m not saying it’s a great strategy. In fact, it’s a lousy, self-defeating strategy, but it is one of the reasons why you come here.”

  “How is it that you can assume so much about me?” Malkah said, feigning offended. “About someone you’ve met only briefly once before? Aren’t you embarrassed?”

  “As I said, I’m hardwired for honesty.”

  “You do realize how pretentious that sounds, don’t you?”

  Cyrus shrugged.

  “How old are you?” she asked bluntly.

  “I-I don’t honestly know.”

  “Oh, come on, everyone knows his own age.”

  “I never knew my parents. I have no birth certificate.”

  “Someone must have told you something,” Malkah said, dubious.

  “I’ve been told I’m in my thirties, but I feel a lot older than that, I can assure you.”

  Malkah gave Cyrus a quick appraisal. “You look in pretty good shape to me. You look like you could be a Navy Seal or something. Do you dye your hair?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you feel so old?”

  “Not physically old.”

  “So you’re an old soul, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, I’d say I’m a pretty young soul, actually, but with a very long memory.”

  “Who are you?” Malkah demanded.

  “Just a man.”

  “You are not like any man I’ve ever met. And don’t jump to conclusions that that is a compliment.”

  “I don’t, and I won’t.”

  “So, how do you know these things you speak of?”

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  “And if I did, and you don’t believe me, or even think I’m crazy, what then?”

  “Why should you suddenly care what I think, Mr. Hardwired-for-honesty? Besides, you’ve already asserted a number of nutty things, and I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “Very well. I’ll tell you what you want to know, but only if you swear to me that you will never share what I have to say with anyone else no matter what. Not your bubby, not your cousin Ellen, not even your future husband, whomever that may be. No one. And understand too,” he added with solemnity, “that an oath is sacred. Are you willing to do that?”

  “How can I resist wanting to hear your tale when you dangle it in front of me that way? That’s some tease.”

  “I’m not joking,” Cyrus said. “And may God be my witness and deal with me ever so severely should I speak untruthfully.”

  Malkah hesitated. This guy wasn’t kidding! He really believed that she would be swearing an oath. She had no idea what secret the stranger could be hiding, but she sensed that it wasn’t going to be the conventional skeleton in the closet. Could she trust herself to keep his secret, even if she were to consider it absurd, a lie, or some kind of joke? She’d surely want to mention it to somebody someday, wouldn’t she?

  “You’re a scary dude, you know that?”

  “Good. It is better that you be frightened of me than to perjure yourself in the eyes of the Almighty.” He stood up. “Shall I walk you back then?
”

  “No,” Malkah said, reaching for his sleeve and yanking him back down. “I want to get to the bottom of this, of you. I accept. My lips are zipped. What you have to tell me will stay with me, I promise.”

  “You are either a very brave woman, or a fool.”

  Malkah shrugged, “Well, you know what they say, a fool rushes in where angels fear to tread.”

  “Not only is that a quotation from English poet Alexander Pope’s 1709 ‘An Essay on Criticism,’” Cyrus said. “It is also a very intuitive transition to my story. Now brace yourself, because by the time I finish, nothing is ever going to look the same to you again.”

  Malkah smirked. “We’ll see about that.”

  He nodded in confirmation of her words and said: “My name is Cyrus, and for a very long time I was a captain in a select group of highly trained Special Forces called the Cupid Corps…”

  When Cyrus began his tale, he noticed that the sun was perched at the tip of the highest branch of the elm tree across from where they sat. When he finished, the sun was replaced with Venus and a smattering of stars bright enough to pierce the city’s dome of light.

  Malkah had sat quietly in rapt attention throughout the story of his life. Her eyes had flashed every emotion she had ever known, as well as some she hadn’t—from utter disbelief to awesome wonder, from horror to nervous laughter.

  Cyrus told her about the reality of angels, their nemesis, the yetzers, and the eons-long battle between the two. He recounted the Civil War that he had fought in, the relationship between the cupid angels and humankind, and the dire situation that both Heaven and Earth had found themselves in.

  He spoke reverentially of his mentors, admiringly of his best friend, Captain Volk, and adoringly of his last student—me—Kohai. He described the existence of the Midrasha, and how every detail of a person’s existence was inscribed in his or her own “Book of Life.” He told of his banishment, and how he had escaped the worst of its penalties. About the only thing he did not tell her was his suspicion that she might be the Swerver of the generation.

  Malkah was unnerved, though she tried not to show it. The man’s story was at the same time both absurd and vividly lifelike. How could he make up such a thing? The details of Heaven and the Academy and all those characters he spoke of? And his descriptions of the demon creatures? Horrifying! It was all so chillingly real. He spoke with an authority that she believed could not be faked, except by a madman.