The Heart of the Circle

by Keren Landsman

  My phone beeped with a message from Aurora about the upcoming meetings of the Coalition for Peacebuilding’s youth support group, Youth for Youth, or as we called it, Yoyo. Aurora wanted me to serve as a counselor again. I tried drafting a reply that wouldn’t offend her but at the same time made it perfectly clear that I wasn’t going to do it. One of the main advantages of living in Tel Aviv was the high concentration of people like me; a city full of the “lunatic fringe,” as the deputy defense minister liked to call us. One of the disadvantages was that I was constantly expected to volunteer, as if I was some loser with no life, as if I hadn’t done more than my fair share already. I’d been volunteering since high school, and I’d had enough. Enough of people who kept demanding more of my time, who completely disregarded my private life, who didn’t understand why I couldn’t pick up another shift, take on another group, devote what little spare time I had to the community. The community could take care of itself for once.

  At least she hadn’t mentioned Ivy’s presence at the Basement.

  Someone touched my shoulder. Damn, I’d been too caught up in drafting the text to notice, and had let my guard down. I condensed my fear, and focusing it in case I’d have to strike, turned around. The bearded man from the bus was standing behind me, holding out an open palm, fingers spread in front of me. A splasher. I dissolved the intended blow.

  “I wanted…” he began, a small wave of hesitation creeping towards me before he continued. “When are you usually here?”

  I tightened my grip on the straps on my bag. “I’m on my way to work.”

  “Right, of course.” He gave a side-glance to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “I meant what time do you usually go to work, when can I find you here.”

  “I understood the question,” I replied, holding his gaze. “I have a job. A real one.” And it wasn’t relieving strangers of their feelings. I wasn’t that desperate. Not yet.

  “Of course.” He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, squeezing. “If this is about money…”

  I shook him off.

  He blinked, taken aback. “I thought…”

  “I know what you thought,” I interrupted him, “and if you don’t stop with those thoughts, you’ll get back everything I took with interest.”

  A wave of fear crashed into me. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, stepping back. “I didn’t mean it.”

  But he did. Just like every other person who held out an open palm in front of me.

  I gave him an icy glare. He took another step back.

  “I’m going to work now,” I intoned, “and I expect never to see you around here again.”

  He was taller than me, and yet seemed shrunken when he turned around, almost breaking into a run.

  Once he was out of my line of vision, I leaned against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. There was no reason for me to feel this way. No reason to want to run home and take a shower just because someone extended an open palm expecting me to relieve emotions that were too difficult to bear. I took in Tel Aviv’s humidity. I had to let go, get on with my day and immerse myself in work. I had to break away from the wall and keep going. At least it wasn’t my actual job. Unlike the woman from the bus.

  I opened my eyes and started walking.

  At the Sinkhole, Daniel was already cutting lemons behind the bar. He looked up the moment I walked in. It was one of the only cafés in town that didn’t have a separate entrance for people like me, or a segregated sitting area where the tables were painted white. I stored my bag in the employee lockers in the back.

  Remy, the boss, was standing in the kitchen yelling at the new cook, whose name I still couldn’t remember, for adding too much salt to everything and burning the toast. I got the feeling that she barely spoke any Hebrew and was used to this type of browbeating. She nodded every now and then, when Remy came up for air between sentences. Remy walked around with a bandana around his head, and in interviews the first question he asked every potential employee was “Who’s the best singer in the world?” Whoever didn’t know that the correct answer was Bruce Springsteen found themselves on the receiving end of a twenty-minute lecture about the real boss.

  I joined Daniel behind the bar. He was oozing loss and fear, similar to Matthew last night. Avoiding his gaze, I took a lemon out of the plastic container, picked up a knife and started cutting. Slow steady strokes, like he once showed me.

  Daniel didn’t say a word. We stood side by side, cutting lemons. His feelings gushed whenever he pierced the lemon, and ebbed when the blade hit the cutting board. Remy’s usual song list was playing in the background, current affairs kept at a safe remove from the bubble of the café.

  “You want me to relieve you of that?” I asked quietly, cutting another lemon slice.

  “Of what?” Daniel asked, considering me, his voice a little louder than the quiet space called for.

  I put down the knife and looked him in the eye. “Of what you’re feeling, you want me to take it away?”

  “And then what?”

  “And then you won’t be in as much pain as you are now.”

  He had brown eyes lined with wrinkles, a short, reddish and slightly scraggly beard, and freckles on the tip of his nose, which paled in the winter and darkened in the summer. And right now he was scared. He knew we were at the rally, but hadn’t called after the stabbing to make sure we were safe. I assumed Matthew had updated him. Daniel and Matthew had met by chance when Matthew came to pick me up from work one day, and bonded despite their differences. I knew they had a pact to inform one another about our rallies. I never asked for the details.

  Daniel wasn’t the crying type. Nor was he the kind of person who raised his voice, or scolded, or expressed any kind of emotion other than that calm, pleasant affectation expected from bartenders. I felt his inner conflict, the desire to say ‘yes’ and let me disarm his pain, his fear, leaving nothing but the simple joie de vivre floating beneath the stiff veneer.

  Once, during what seemed like an endless shift, both of us so tired we could barely keep our eyes open, he asked me how I could tell the difference between a person’s immediate feelings and his inner core. I explained to him that it’s like the crust of a hot chocolate gone cold, and he asked, completely deadpan, if I enjoyed stirring chocolate milk. We doubled over, bursting into such a hysterical fit of laughter that the boss came shouting at us to keep the noise down.

  “No,” Daniel finally said and pursed his lips, careful not let out anything more. He picked up his knife and started playing with it. “I’d rather feel it. I’d rather be angry, and afraid, and deal with it alone.”

  He started stabbing the cutting board repeatedly, and I placed my hand on his, stopping him. “You’re not alone.”

  Daniel curved his mouth into a small smile, barely crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Neither are you.”

  I returned the smile.

  “Don’t do that,” he said, fixing his gaze on his lemon. Fear. Stab. Slice. Fear, stab, slice.

  “Don’t do what?” I asked, taking a fresh lemon out of the container and cutting into it.

  Stab. Slice. “Don’t smile if it’s not real.”

  I reined in my feelings, building a fence around them. It became a little easier with every murder. I guess there’s nothing you can’t get used to. “So you shouldn’t do it either.”

  Daniel paused, the knife hovering above the rind. I counted. At seven he finally said, “Sometimes saying things helps. With words. Not just feeling them.” He cut through the lemon and pushed the slice aside.

  He was entirely focused on the lemon, slicing it as he had done with hundreds if not thousands to date. Daniel, who did nothing but work at a beachfront café all day and then go home and raise his twin girls, wanted me to talk to him about my feelings. He was a normie. If I tried telling him that I lacked the words to explain feelings, he simply wouldn’t understand. Only a moody could, and I didn’t know a single one I was willing to confide in.

  Stab. Slice. S
tab. Slice. Push slices aside. No. I was wrong. He didn’t want to talk about my feelings. He needed to talk about his.

  “Sometimes it helps to give words to feelings,” I said quietly.

  “I just…” Daniel said, dragging out the last word. “What would I do if one of my girls turned out to be…” He put down the knife and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  I studied his profile. His girls were too young to undergo an official detection, but I didn’t need the diagnosis. While sorcery only develops fully at puberty, you can detect early signs in children. “They’re normal,” I said. “Just like you.”

  I wasn’t expecting the emotional flood that followed. Fear and relief poured out of Daniel, easily knocking down my fences. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t think about the fact that one of my only friends is happy that his girls aren’t like me. Daniel leaned over the bar.

  I blinked back my tears. The same stifled tears from last night. “OK?”

  “Sure.” Daniel picked up his knife. “Anything else you want to talk about?”

  “Daphne brought someone home last night and he’s incredibly annoying.”

  Daniel laughed. “You always hate the men your roommate brings home.”

  Stab. Slice. We picked up the pace, working quietly, methodically. After a while customers began to trickle in, and I had to start memorizing who wanted his coffee black and who wanted milk on the side, who wanted his herbal tea to go and who wanted his omelet with extra parsley, hold the oil. Please and thank you.

  I concentrated on maneuvering people into leaving bigger tips. Just a bit more than usual. It was easy. The trick was to make them feel comfortable, a little happier, so when they got the bill they’d be a little more generous with their waiter. Not enough to make them notice it, but more than enough to fill up the tip jar. At least when you maneuver normies, the residual headache isn’t as bad. A few of the customers were wearing protective charm bracelets. They couldn’t actually keep me from maneuvering them. But they did symbolize lack of consent, and I didn’t want to get into trouble. I focused on those who weren’t wearing the charms. Mostly the café regulars. I assumed they came for that little morning boost. A shot of emotional caffeine. I never asked.

  Towards the end of the shift, the pain was shooting up from my ankles to the middle of my back. My feet had become numb floor tiles. Focusing on the physical pain helped me edge out the emotional anguish. The same kind that assailed me whenever I allowed myself a moment to consider it.

  Daniel was also working a double shift. I got the feeling that he had decided to keep an eye on me, that maybe he’d even offer to walk me to the Basement later. But I had no intention of going there tonight. Daphne’s latest distraction would help her work through whatever she was feeling, and I hated sitting there alone with the background music, and the moodies trying to disarm the grief of whoever sought relief, and the endless political discussions. I might go stand with the high schoolers. It would be an opportunity to let out some of my anger and frustration in a scrap we’d undoubtedly lose. None of us dared to practice our abilities in public. At best, it would end in a prison sentence – life without parole.

  I was busy cleaning one of the tables outside, clearing the half-empty mugs, when I turned around and bumped into someone.

  My tray came crashing to the ground, the leftover coffee spilling all over my dark shirt. “Sorry,” I mumbled, and bent over to pick up the tray and mugs. I would have to remember to thank Daphne for her morning prediction.

  “No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have…” the person I had bumped into said, and crouched beside me. He reached out for one of the mugs.

  “Don’t worry, it’s fine,” I replied, gathering the mugs back onto the tray. At least they didn’t break this time. I looked up, smiling without really registering the person in front of me, and went back to searching for the spoons that had scattered across the floor.

  “Reed?”

  I instantly lifted my head, our foreheads almost touching. “Blaze.” His name flew out of my mouth. He had aged. Soft stubble adorned the lower part of his face and his hair was shorter than it had been when we last met. His eyes were still brown and deep, and his smile subtle, almost hidden. He was wearing a suit, the jacket open over a light-colored shirt that brought out his dark skin. His shirt was now sporting a coffee stain; and he probably didn’t have a damus at home for wardrobe advice.

  I poked around inside him. There was joy there, and excitement, and a little sadness as well. He got up and extended his hand. I placed the tray on the table behind me and shook it. Not too firmly, not too softly. For years I’d been practicing what I’d say to him if we ever met again, and all those rehearsed lines had now disappeared. All I managed was to shake his hand and feel its warmth. His skin’s slight coarseness.

  I smiled at him. His own smile widened, and all at once it was the Blaze I knew. A wave of joy drifted out of him in my direction, and he pulled me in for a tight embrace. I couldn’t help but hug him back, my pain was abating with the embrace, making way for a myriad of new emotions. I kept them bottled up, so they wouldn’t seep out. The happiness, the way his touch felt. The simple joy of meeting him again.

  I took in his scent. I couldn’t think straight. It’s Blaze. He’s here. And he’s hugging me. That’s all my brain managed to process. He took a step back and gestured towards the man standing beside him.

  “Lee, meet Reed.” Lee was tall. Very tall. Too tall for my liking. Other than that there was nothing special about him. Just an ordinary guy in a dress shirt and jeans. He was unreadable; a moody with impenetrably high walls. He didn’t even send out his feelers in our customary greeting.

  “Reed, this is Lee, my boss.” Blaze’s smile was too tight, his words too distinct. Without reading him, I could tell he was oozing tension. I smiled at Lee and held out my hand. After a moment’s hesitation, he shook it.

  “So you’re Reed?” His voice was low and melodic, like in an infomercial. He curled his lips into a teeth-baring smile. “You’re a waiter? Because Blaze told me you’re a writer.” He had a faint American accent.

  I straightened my back. A sharp wave of pain shot through me, mimicking the one that throbbed in my back and legs. “Moodifier,” I said, any trace of my smile now gone. “A freelancer,” I added, before either of them could mention that there wasn’t much moodifying work in waiting tables.

  Blaze placed his hand on Lee’s arm but looked directly at me. “It’s so good to see you,” he said with a half-smile, the same kind that had once made me yell at him that if he wasn’t genuinely happy to see me, he shouldn’t fake it. The memory stung.

  “Nice to see you too. I didn’t know you were back in Israel,” I said, trying my best to keep my emotions from merging with my words.

  “We landed a few days ago. I meant to call, but then we saw the news and…” he said, his voice trailing off.

  We. Plural. And his hand was still on Lee’s arm. Whatever they had clearly went beyond employer-employee.

  “Was the Confederacy having an empath for an empath deal? Dump one, get the other free?” I smirked at Blaze.

  Lee pursed his lips. “Do you read all of Blaze’s friends, or should I be flattered?”

  “Friends?” I said, still keeping my feelings from creeping into my voice. “You didn’t know? Blaze can’t be friends with empaths.”

  Blaze seemed to recoil, an almost imperceptible movement. I regretted saying it. I didn’t actually want to hurt him. “I have to get back to work,” I said, gesturing behind me at the café.

  Blaze tightened his grip around Lee’s arm. “We have to get back too, we’re late.”

  Lee’s smile remained steady. “Wait, let’s grab a coffee to go,” he said. Blaze was trying to say something. Lee fixed me a look and said, “One black with two sugars, and one soy milk cappuccino with sweetener.”

  “You aren’t…” Blaze said, looking at me and shaking his head.

  I managed to edge out the in
sult and smile at Lee. “It’s fine. Be back in a sec with your order.”

  I re-entered the café, which was now teeming with customers. I squeezed my way to the bar. Daniel was pouring milk into two mugs at the same time. “It’s supposed to look like a cat. What do you think?” The shape that appeared in the foam could have passed for a nebula.

  “Sorry I’m not a splasher,” I said, leaning against the bar. “The best I can do is make a customer happy that his order came out, however it looks.”

  Considering his scrambled latte art, Daniel said, “You’re the least useful sorcerer I know.”

  Someone at one of the tables was mumbling something about places that hired “those kinds of people.” A person sitting at the table next to his reassured him that I was “actually all right.” One of our regulars.

  Daniel put down the milk jug, took a toothpick and drew a mustache in the foam. “Maybe you could make the milk happy that I’m designing it? Because that would definitely help.”

  When I didn’t answer, Daniel’s face fell. “What happened? That should have at least got a smile out of you.”

  I handed him Lee’s order ticket. “Make it on the house.”

  Daniel tilted his head towards Blaze and Lee who were standing outside, talking with their heads bowed, creating an island of intimacy in the middle of the street. “Friends of yours?”

  I shook my head. “One’s an ex and the other’s just some asshole.” It was a lot easier than explaining that one was the greatest love of my life, and the other a vain moody who was apparently above sharing.

  “In whose coffee should I spit?” he asked and winked at me.

  I managed to wrest a smile before elbowing my way through the customers and convincing myself not to maneuver Lee into feeling that he was being talked about behind his back. Empaths didn’t maneuver other sorcerers, let alone other empaths, no matter how much of an obnoxious dickhead that other empath happened to be.

  As I approached, I picked up on their feelings. There was nothing romantic about their whispers. Blaze was emanating anger. Lee was still unreadable.