The Heart of the Circle

by Keren Landsman

  “You have to get closure with your ex before–” Lee was whispering.

  A small wave of rage rose from Blaze, tinted with self-blame and some undertones of warmth and affection. I couldn’t tell at whom the warmth was directed. Me? Lee?

  Blaze noticed me, straightened up and curved his lips into a smile that stood in jarring contrast to everything I felt from him.

  “Your coffees are on me,” I said, handing them the mugs. Your ex, he had said. They were talking about me. Of course they would be. “Everything OK?”

  “Sure,” Blaze replied a little too quickly. “Lee’s a bit cranky. He hates jet lag.”

  Lee looked at him before shifting his gaze to me, his expression unaltered. “While he,” Lee intoned, “hates the Middle East.” He waved at the street. “With the heat and humidity, it’s no wonder everyone here is murdering each other.”

  I flinched.

  “Did you know her?” Blaze asked, radiating a detached interest.

  I shook my head. “They always choose the loners. The ones with the least protection around them. And however hard we try…” my voice trailed off.

  “There’s no police, or, something?” Blaze asked.

  Lee snorted.

  “What?” I tightened my grip on the tray. Lee was blocking me like only another moody could. Nothing could pass through those walls of his.

  Lee took a sip of his coffee and said, “The police here is a joke. In the States we have the Crimes Against Sorcerers Unit.”

  “Lee…” Blaze said in a cautioning tone.

  “I’m glad the Confederacy has a unit that fights crimes against sorcerers,” I said with a successfully impassive tone. “Do they operate inside or outside the reservations?”

  “At least back home we had some protection,” Lee replied, lowering his cup from his mouth.

  “At least here we’re allowed to get married, and to talk, and to walk the streets freely,” I said, sending Lee a well-aimed arrow of anger into the tiny crack I detected in his wall.

  Nothing but a small spark in his eyes indicated that my anger had made it through. “And get killed,” he said with an icy voice, “freely.”

  “Enough,” Blaze raised his voice, causing two people on the sidewalk to stop and look at us before shuffling along.

  Lee lifted a submissive hand.

  I picked up my tray as if erecting a barrier between me and the rest of the world. The murmur from the nearby tables died down, and people were staring intently at their plates.

  Lee clenched his jaw. “I’ll go pay.” He stormed into the café, leaving Blaze and me on the sidewalk. I didn’t bother reminding him it was on the house.

  “I’m sorry,” Blaze said, slouching his shoulders. I felt the sigh of relief he was trapping inside himself. “He’s mad at me for something completely unrelated to you. And the murder… it’s… it’s tough on him.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I blurted, injecting as much sarcasm into those four words as possible.

  “You don’t get it,” he said, looking past me at the people starting to fill the street. “His father is… they’re activists. Death threats are an everyday thing in his family. We came here, among other reasons, to get away from that.”

  “You picked one hell of a destination,” I said in a softer voice.

  He sipped his coffee, grimaced, peered into the cup, and the liquid started to bubble. Classic pyro, preferred heating up his coffee on his own to asking for a new one, even though reheating it changes the chemical makeup and completely ruins the texture and flavor. The fact that he did it out in the open, in plain view, only showed how detached he was from us and our daily lives. At least there wasn’t much left in the cup so no one could see it frothing.

  I wanted to tell him that I missed him, that his absence had been felt, especially these past few years. I wanted to apologize for the way I started the conversation, but it was too late.

  “I need…” he said, staring at his feet. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Sure,” I replied. He was going to tell me that he and Lee were an item. I could take it. It had been ten years after all, and I’d also had my share of relationships. I looked him in the eye. “It’s OK, you know.”

  “What’s OK?”

  I gestured towards Lee, who was standing at the bar talking to Daniel. “That you have someone. It’s OK,” I said, trying to smile. “It’s important to move on.”

  Blaze let out a brief chuckle. “Yes, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had,” he said, and quickly added, “other than you, of course.”

  “Of course.” So Lee was a friend. “You two aren’t a couple?”

  “No, no.” Blaze tightened his grip around the cup. He was radiating some serious tension and fear. I couldn’t understand why. “We went out twice, it was a disaster.” Blaze was breathing slowly. I felt the fear mounting inside him. “I’m not with Lee. I’m with River.”

  “River?” It sounded like a name that meant something, a name I would’ve remembered. I didn’t know any Rivers.

  “Lee’s River. I mean, Lee is River’s brother.”

  “OK.” It stung, but not as much as I had expected. Whether it was Lee or his brother didn’t make any difference to me.

  Blaze exhaled, the tension leaving his body like a deflating balloon. He smiled, this time genuinely. “I don’t know why I was so worried. Of course you’re fine with it. You’ve always accepted me for who I am.”

  “Of course,” I said, maintaining a calm expression. “So when do I get to meet this River of yours?”

  “As soon as she lands,” he said, still smiling. “Lee and I took an earlier flight to find an apartment and all that. I mean, it’s not as if we’re living together. I mean, we are, but…”

  He kept on rambling, talking about the apartment he had rented, and that if River didn’t like it, they’d move into the apartment that Lee had found for himself, and he talked about the rent, and signing the lease in front of the landlady, who sounded a lot more tolerant than my landlord, and the packing and shipping, and kept repeating how happy it made him that I accepted him for who he was.

  But all I could think about was those few words, ‘as soon as she lands.’ River was a woman. Not a man. I felt the universe whirling around me. Blaze was dating a woman. I thought back on all those times we were together, an endless sequence of images. How could he possibly be interested in women? I knew him. He had never expressed the slightest interest in the opposite sex. He was the reason I felt so comfortable with myself in high school. He was like me. I wasn’t alone.

  His phone rang. He apologized for taking the call before stepping aside.

  I followed him with my gaze, feeling a deep, sharp burn. I focused on a stranger walking by and pushed some of the pain his way. I still had an entire shift to get through with Blaze’s smile flashing before me, and with the customers whispering about how they saw the local sorcerer arguing with some guy in the middle of the street, and…

  “I know how you feel.” Lee was suddenly standing beside me, looking at Blaze who was pacing the opposite sidewalk.

  “And I don’t mean that metaphorically.” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “I mean that you’re leaking all over the place.” He had green eyes shot through with brown specks. “Do you need help blocking yourself?” His voice was different. Soft.

  I shook my head. He was right. I reined in my feelings. The surprise. The anger. The disappointment. I could take Blaze choosing Lee over me. I couldn’t take Blaze choosing a woman.

  Lee folded his arms across his chest. He seemed fidgety, his eyes still following Blaze on the sidewalk. His voice was so quiet it sounded like he was talking more to himself than to me. “Blaze was dating like crazy, and always seemed miserable, and he didn’t want me because, well,” he said and gestured at me. “It took me two years to ask him out. After our second date, which was great, we went back to my place and River was there, she came to borrow something, I don’t remember w
hat, and I could feel Blaze shifting all his attention from me to her.” He chuckled. “You can imagine. Right?”

  “You don’t mean metaphorically.”

  “He even offered to walk her home. And I’m standing there, knowing exactly what he’s planning,” he said, shrugging. “And since then they won’t shut up about how it was love at first sight.”

  I closed my eyes, focusing on my breath. I can take it, I can get through this. I felt Lee touching my shoulder. Had he been Israeli, that gesture would have symbolized that he was willing to take away my pain. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t want his help. I fenced my feelings, hemmed them in. I opened my eyes. “That’s what you were fighting about?”

  “Blaze didn’t want to tell you because it ‘isn’t the right time.’” He grimaced. “As if there ever is one.”

  It hurt. More than I could bear. Blaze was still on his phone across the street. I looked back into the café. Daniel waved at me that he was fine and didn’t need help. I knew Lee could feel Daniel’s peacefulness as well as I could, which meant I had no excuse to go back inside.

  Lee rubbed his forehead, his hair falling over his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. He seemed more genuine, vulnerable. “If we had known you worked here, we never would have come. He shouldn’t have told you like this.”

  It stung. I didn’t want his pity. “It’s been a decade. People change.”

  “So there’s hope for us yet?” The grim smile returned to his face. “One day we’ll find out we were actually always attracted to women, and we’ll get married and have kids?”

  “My mom would love that,” I said, twisting my face into a sneer. “She suggested I make a pact with my roommate. That if we don’t find a partner by the time we’re thirty, we’ll marry each other.” I sighed. “I have five more years of freedom.”

  Lee laughed. “Can’t be, you and Blaze are the same age. Twenty… seven?”

  “Eight.” I shot him a grumpy arrow. He produced a huge smile, and suddenly I understood what Blaze found in him. His smile lasted no more than a second; he drew it back in once he saw Blaze approaching.

  Blaze shifted his gaze from me to Lee. “Everything OK here?” He was tense, the fear still radiating from him.

  “Sure,” I said, leveling the tray. “I was just grilling Lee about you.”

  Lee shot me a glance from the corner of his eye. I ignored him and smiled at Blaze. “More specifically, I was trying to find out how you reacted when you saw River naked for the first time and discovered she was missing something.” I looked at Lee and said, “I assume he was quite in shock, am I right?”

  I shot Lee a soothing arrow. He nodded. “It was awful. How would I know what my sister has between her legs?”

  Blaze shifted his gaze between us and started laughing. Lee was the only one who managed to keep a straight face, until he too finally broke down and burst into laughter, and my pain was pushed to the back of my mind, repressed, waiting for the night, when I’d be alone and safe.

  4

  I made it home after midnight, my legs paralyzed and my back firing well-aimed bursts of pain with every wrong move I made. Daphne was asleep. The lights were out, but I could still see the upside-down pots on the dish rack. It wasn’t her turn to do the dishes, but she had washed them anyway. The living room couch looked inviting. Soft, piled with throw pillows. In the dark you couldn’t see the mysterious tomato-sauce stain, whose origin neither of us could recall, or the loose tile next to the couch, which shifted at the slightest movement. We always joked that was where the landlord was hiding the millions he was making from raising our rent.

  I crawled to the shower. The hot water helped a little, not enough. I closed my eyes and washed off the sweat. The memories of Blaze started creeping back in.

  With my eyes closed I could evoke his image from nearly thirteen years ago, when we first met. He was going for a smoke behind the gym and bumped into me while I was walking out of a class for the millionth time, tired of the teacher trying so hard not to look at me. Trying to show how grown up I was, I bummed one of his cigarettes. I took one drag and nearly suffocated in front of him, and he laughed. I was coughing so hard my eyes welled up.

  I squeezed out soap and lathered up. How many times had I pretended he was standing next to me? How many times had I rehearsed what I would say? Until that one time when I worked up the nerve to mumble something about how I thought he was handsome, unable to look him in the eye because I was afraid he wouldn’t return the look, or that he’d make an excuse, or say he was “fine with that,” like everyone else before him, which was to say – not into me, but not offended by the proposition. Without saying a word, he leaned into me, and when I dared look him in the eye we were so close I couldn’t breathe, and my feelings poured out and flooded him, and he smiled and said, “I didn’t know it was like that with empaths,” and then kissed me and my mind went blank.

  I noticed my heart was racing. I stood perfectly still, and put out my feelers. Daphne was still asleep. I was safe behind my walls.

  I opened my eyes, edging out the memories. I scrubbed my back, my arms. The present came crashing down on me, enveloping me in pain. For a few hours I had managed to forget. Blaze had that effect on me. Back when we were together, Matthew used to joke that I was flying so high someone might come and snatch me, and Blaze hugged me and said I had nothing to worry about, that he’d keep me close to the ground. I remembered his arms around me, the scent of his new aftershave mixed with the faint smell of sweat that I loved like only a seventeen year-old could. That was before Blaze went away, and before the first rally. Before everything. When the world was still intact, and normal, and the military draft and society’s ignorance was all that kids like us had to worry about, as opposed to knives and incompetent cops. I couldn’t tell whether I missed Blaze, high school, or that period of relative safety. I only knew I was longing for something that no longer existed.

  I dried myself off, put on the worn-out sweatpants that served as my pajamas in the summer, and went to my room. My clothes were scattered all over the floor. I couldn’t imagine picking them up and throwing them in the laundry basket. I was exhausted, but my thoughts kept racing. The rally. One image chasing the next. The feelings of emptiness among the empaths. The framed photo on the bar top, the shared pain and certainty that there was nothing we could do. That we couldn’t win.

  I tried to conjure up another image of Blaze. To recreate that moment in the shower when he took over every part of me. Too late. I couldn’t sink into the sensation again. I grabbed onto the edge of Daphne’s consciousness. Her mind was full of fog, and I took some for myself. It wasn’t the usual temporary fog of a sound sleep. It was something stronger, meant to knock her out for hours. I took enough to fall asleep, and let the blanket of oblivion cover me.

  5

  I was running. Everything around me was black. Daphne stopped me and said, “They’re coming,” and suddenly red and blue lights flashed around us, and Daphne shouted and collapsed, and I drowned in her tears.

  I woke up in a panic, drenched, my mouth dry. I cursed. I was so busy disarming the memories of Blaze that I hadn’t dealt with the memories from the murder. Of course they would creep into my dreams. I was behaving like a teenager, not an adult. I checked Daphne. Her waves were roiling. I didn’t know whether it was the result of her dreams or whether the emotions from my own dream had seeped into her. The feelings emerging in a dream have a longer range than waking feelings, due to our inability to control a dream. I tapped into a neighbor who was sound asleep and extricated some of his calm, transferring it to Daphne in the hope that it would give her a more pleasant sleep. I picked up on a little girl who was stirring in her sleep and gave her some of his calm as well. I kept canvassing. My dream hadn’t seemed to disturb the sleep of any other neighbor.

  I drank some water and returned to bed. The key was to approach feelings cautiously, and not let them overwhelm me until I couldn’t deal with them.

&n
bsp; I closed my eyes, replaying the rally. Moment by moment, feeling by feeling.

  We were marching on Shmuel HaNavi Street, holding hands, singing about love and acceptance. There were normies marching among us. At least three damuses made sure to maintain a present in which no one was being harmed. I linked arms with Daphne. I didn’t sing. I hate singing. Daphne sang and I only joined in the chorus, when the singing turned into chants. Daphne laughed. She was happy. All the damuses were happy, so sure that nothing would happen. Not this time.

  The moodies were marching on the fringes of the crowd, making sure no one infiltrated. This time no one would die. There were cops everywhere. Someone joked that there were more cops than protesters. I heard one confess that it was his first rally, and that he hoped nothing would go wrong.

  An errant thought wandered into my memories. I wondered whether Sherry had been there. Whether I’d met her at the rally. It wasn’t important. It’s not like she managed to stop it. I edged out the thought and focused on the real memories.

  I felt sleepiness taking hold and shook it off. Not yet. I couldn’t allow myself to fall asleep just yet.

  There was some commotion on the sidelines. Once again, a group of the Sons of Simeon trying to disturb our march. The cops were pushed back as a few of us rushed to the area of the riot to stop it in time.

  I remembered the exact moment someone yelled ‘Knife!’ It was behind us, nowhere close to the riot, and someone said the commotion on the sidelines was just a distraction, and a wave of fear and anxiety passed through us, pouring out of the cops and amplified by the crowd, completely curbing the moodies’ ability to act. There were too many feelings gushing around, and we couldn’t put our walls back up in time. I remembered myself standing there, unable to understand how we failed to feel his homicidal outburst. To track him down.

  And I felt the damuses falling like flies. One after the other, pulling the moodies down with them into a bottomless pit of overwhelming fear when the futures collapsed. One of the damuses searched in vain for the assailant, and the elementalists channeled every force of nature around us, but even they couldn’t track him down; it was all too late.