The Heart of the Circle

by Keren Landsman

  “Your brother thinks his dreams are meaningless,” Sherry said to Matthew, pointing at me.

  “His brother thinks he wants to go back to sleep,” I replied casually.

  Matthew yawned. “Want something to help you sleep?”

  I patted Lee’s thigh. “Already got it.”

  Lee hugged me and looked at Matthew. “I’ll get him to sleep. Don’t worry.”

  Matthew and Sherry exchanged glances.

  I straightened up. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Matthew replied, a little too quickly.

  I shifted my gaze between the two of them, then to Lee. He returned the look, his eyes dark in the dim room. “What’s the problem? Everyone has nightmares.”

  Lee brushed my hair off my forehead. I waited. He let out a quiet sigh. “I don’t think your dreams have some deep message. I think we’re all worried the stress will do you in.”

  Sherry said, “I’ve seen people go to pieces over a lot less.”

  I stifled a yawn. “I dreamed that Linden gets one of your suspects out, and she comes after me.” I felt Lee strolling through my psyche, smoothing out the painful edges, his touch a gentle flutter. “And she has splashers that drown me.” That was the cleaned-up version of the arms reaching out for me and the teeth gleaming in the darkness.

  “It’s perfectly normal–” Sherry began to say.

  I raised my hand. “I know. Trauma. Post-trauma. All that psychobabble.” I sighed. “I’d really like to try and go back to sleep.”

  Sherry nodded. She looked at Lee.

  “I’ll take care of him,” he said and hugged me.

  Matthew yawned. “Give us a shout if you need anything.”

  I nodded. They left the room and closed the door behind them. I leaned back in bed, Lee pressing me tightly against him.

  I listened, waiting to hear Daphne’s door opening, but all I heard was the screeching of the foldout couch in the living room and quiet whispers. I vaguely felt Matthew’s warm thread of affection towards Sherry. I felt twelve years old again, burrowing underneath the blanket while Matthew and whoever he was dating at the time were busy in the next room, entirely unaware of what I was going through. I knew Lee could feel him too, could sense Matthew’s slowly uncoiling passion.

  “Someone’s going to have himself a good time tonight,” Lee mumbled in my ear.

  Instead of telling him that Sherry had already turned Matthew down, I edged my discomfort underneath my affection towards Lee and burrowed deep in the part of his psyche he marked as mine, in an attempt to erase the memory of my dream.

  “I ran into Ivy when we left the hospital,” I whispered to him.

  He tightened his arms around me. “Want to tell me about it?”

  “Have you ever had friends who crossed the lines?”

  Lee shrugged. “I told you. Back home they have a way of dealing with those kinds of people.”

  I caressed his bare chest. His body was pressed up against mine, and some part of me wasn’t interested in talking but in entirely different things. “Here it isn’t like that. Free speech and all.”

  He stroked my back silently. I took in his scent. “Talk to Aurora for ten minutes and you’ll understand.”

  “Aurora is…?” Lee asked quietly.

  “Blonde. Glasses. From Yoyo.”

  He nodded.

  “So she’s really into the whole embracing diversity bit, and understanding everyone, and accepting everyone, and if we only listened to each other, we could find a solution that would work for everyone.”

  I was engulfed in a cloud of Lee’s scent. I pressed my feet against his. “She and Ivy were really close. They both kept yapping to Forrest and me about how privileged our approach is, and how we have to listen, and accept and embrace diversity. It’s practically Aurora’s slogan. Embracing diversity. When Ivy walked out on us, it was bad. I think Aurora took it even worse than me.”

  “Why?” His voice reverberated through his chest.

  I closed my eyes. “I think she suddenly realized it was one thing to talk about accepting diversity, and quite another to actually do it.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “What exactly did she do?”

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to think about that day. But I wanted Lee to know. It was important to me that he understand. I told him about how Ivy joined me at the meetings at Yoyo when I was counseling three groups a week, juggling work and my studies and volunteering, and I was happy. I had a moody member of the group who barely uttered a word during meetings, looking as if she was about to drown inside one of the oversized coats she wore. After every meeting Ivy would make her stay behind and talk to her for almost half an hour, sometimes more. I thought she was helping me support the most fragile moody in my group, that it was the first step towards taking on a group of her own.

  Ivy gave her a false vision. She told her that she’d die if she didn’t join her in a Sons of Simeon meeting. She led her into a sorcery fountain, showed her their shared vision and made her leave my group, her one and only source of support. When I consulted with Daphne about ways to remedy the situation, she warned me against interfering. Daphne said the girl wasn’t supposed to die, but if I made her leave the Sons of Simeon, that’s what would happen.

  “How?” Lee asked, drawing gentle circles on my shoulder. “Daphne said the Sons of Simeon had become her primary support group, and pulling her away from them would made her spiral into depression, and from there…” I fell silent. Lee knew that path. The swift pain surging inside him made me realize we were both thinking the same thing. “Are you proud of her?”

  “Of who?”

  “Ivy. Look.” Lee stroked my psyche and highlighted a line that was hiding from me. Pride entwined with pain and disappointment over the separation.

  I flipped onto my back and stared at the ceiling. Lee turned to me. “It’s OK,” he said quietly. “It’s good you’re proud of your friend for taking a stand.”

  “She joined a bunch of lunatics who were trying to kill us all and basically robbed the girl I was counseling of her only chance at a normal life.”

  “Right, but it’s more complicated than that.” Lee stroked my hair. “She acted on her beliefs, she did what she thought was right and tried to bring about a better future.” He waited, and when I didn’t reply, he said, “She was still your friend. Despite everything. And you’re the kind of person who can see the good in everyone.” He paused and smiled. “Even in me.” He reached between my legs and kissed me, and we stopped talking.

  32

  The following night, my nightmare presented even more teeth and arms. This time the faceless people tattooed dots across my entire body. I caught fire wherever the tattoo needle punctured my skin.

  Lee woke me up with a violent invasion of my consciousness. He pulled me out of the dream, and I roused with his pale face inches from mine, glowing orange from the streetlights outside. He was hunched over me, propped up on one elbow.

  “You were shouting,” he said, sweeping away the vestiges of my dream.

  “Sorry,” I said, my voice gravelly.

  He caressed my head and brushed strands of sweaty hair off my forehead. “There are things you could take.” He placed his finger on my lips before I could answer. “I mean, I could take for you.”

  I shook my head. “I can handle it.”

  Lee leaned back beside me. I felt the pain in his arm, the spot he leaned against to stare at me, and his overwhelming exhaustion.

  “Why don’t you want me to help you again?” he whispered. Because I didn’t want to lose myself again. “Because I trust you to pull me out if I have another nightmare.” I kissed him and cuddled up against him. Lee wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck.

  “What’s that?” he asked, kissing my shoulder.

  “A shoulder,” I mumbled in his ear.

  “No, that scar,” he said, and pulled back from me.

  “It’s from fou
r months ago. They were throwing rocks at us and some pyro blew one up too close to me.”

  Lee’s forehead creased. “All your scars are from demonstrations?”

  I nodded and pointed at my right arm. “This one’s from almost a year ago. It was raining like crazy, and they threw bricks at us. Matthew patched me up.”

  Lee caressed my arm, inched over and kissed it.

  “This one,” I said, lying on my back and pointing at the scar on my chest,” is from some nutjob who charged at us with a knife. Daphne tripped, and the knife didn’t go in, but still managed to graze me.”

  Lee hummed and kissed my chest, his tongue tracing the scar.

  I lowered the blanket and pointed at the scar at the bottom of my stomach. “This one’s from the demonstration in front of city hall, after they blew up two school buses full of…” My words turned into a deep groan when Lee kissed me. Down and down, and further below, and very soon I stopped talking and he stopped asking.

  When I woke up the next morning, Lee was still asleep, lying on his stomach with his arm hanging off the bed. His feelings were quietly swirling. I caressed the back of his neck. I wanted his dreams. They felt much nicer than mine. All I could remember from my nightmares were the white shining faces chasing me and the sense of suffocation that stuck with me all night.

  “Five more minutes, Oliver. We don’t have to submit the project until ten,” Lee mumbled in English, turned his head on the pillow and continued to sleep.

  His clothes stood in a neat pile on the chair, folded like in a store display. I picked up my clothes from the floor and put together an outfit that would be deemed acceptable out in public.

  Sherry was sitting at the dining room table, scribbling on a yellow legal pad, surrounded by light brown folders and a pile of papers. I took a closer look at one of them. It contained Forrest’s full name, date of birth, military service, place of employment, family members, school and a full description of his ties to me. There was even a list of the Yoyo sessions he had participated in, including dates. I picked up the document, and found a similar one about Aurora underneath.

  I placed them back on top of the stack. “What are these?”

  “Almost everyone you know,” Sherry said without looking up from her legal pad or putting down her pen. “Everyone you’ve ever worked with. Everyone Daphne knows. Everyone she’s ever worked with.” Sherry smiled her joyless smile. “Someone’s garbling the timelines to keep everything hidden from everyone. The upside is that the only one who can see clearly what’s going to happen to you is Daphne, because she’s the only one who’s close enough to you. The downside is there’s no other seer who can tell me what’s going on.” She slapped the stack of papers. “So, back to the good-ol’ investigation methods.”

  I felt a little joy lurking inside her. She was enjoying her work. I didn’t want to ask how she managed to glean so much information about my life in such a short amount of time.

  “Aren’t you afraid some damus will see what you’re reading and sway you to ignore important things?”

  “A seer would have to actually be here to see accurately what’s happening. Ask Daphne.”

  “Is Lee in the pile?” I asked, picking up a page that carried the name of some girl who had taken Introduction to Folklore with me at the university; we used to work on our papers together. Apparently she had gotten married, then divorced, and moved to a kibbutz with three dogs of the tiny, yapping variety.

  Sherry pointed at a bunch of stapled papers. “That’s the summary.”

  “And Ivy?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  Sherry pulled out another bunch of stapled papers from a different pile. “Here you go.”

  I skimmed over the words. How we had met, in two short sentences. Work. Current social circle. Her activity at the Sons of Simeon was underlined with two bold lines.

  “You think she’s… I mean…”

  Sherry looked at me. “What do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t want to think someone who was so close to me would try to hurt me.”

  “You don’t have to think that. That’s my job. Your job is telling me if I missed anything in her evaluation.”

  I looked at the pages again. Under the title ‘Mental History,’ I found the description: ‘Extreme mood swings. Underwent several emotional dismantling treatments. In psychiatric treatment for the past two years.’ Beneath the description appeared a list of the meds she was on. I looked at Sherry. “So she’s in treatment?”

  Sherry nodded.

  “And she’s not dangerous anymore?”

  “She was never dangerous.” Sherry took the pages from me. “She’s the kind of person who likes the vision and wants to feel meaningful, but not the type who’d die or kill others to promote that future.”

  “Do you know what they show in their visions?”

  “Sort of.” Sherry rummaged through the pile of papers on the table. “A vision in which sorcerers rule. No one’s restricted. The more talented a seer you are, the more details you can see.” She gave me a side glance. “You know they let moodies see it too, right?”

  I nodded. “In a fountain of sorcery. Ivy tried to take me with her.”

  “They have to bring someone with them, a new recruit, if you will, if they want to stay part of the program. It’s a little like a pyramid scheme.” Sherry pointed at the bottom of the page. “Opal, 17, member of the Sons of Simeon for the past five years. Sleeper agent.”

  The moody. One of my Yoyo teens. “She’s still alive,” I said. Sherry nodded and handed me another page. “Want to see Oleander’s?” She pointed at a sentence on the page.

  “Founding meeting of Hands Across Israel,” I read, and grimaced.

  Sherry took the page from my hand. “He fled after one meeting.”

  “He has good taste.”

  “More than his sister. He never attended a Sons of Simeon meeting. In fact, as far as I can see, even though he and Ivy are siblings, they seem to be polar opposites when it comes to ideology.”

  “Good to know.”

  Sherry scratched the top of her head and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked whether Alder is in the pile.”

  I bit my bottom lip.

  Sherry yanked a page from the bottom of the pile and read aloud: “Alder Bareket. Thirty-two years old. Married with three children. Resident of Herzliya. System analyst at xBit.” She looked up from the page and handed it to me.

  I pulled up a chair and sat next to her. I breathed in slowly and took it from her. “How did you even know about him? Daphne wouldn’t press charges.”

  “He was on the list because of your military service. Whoever commanded you and Daphne is in this pile.” She pointed at the short stack containing the page on Alder.

  “Yes, but how did you know that…” Daphne never told me the details of what happened between them. One night she knocked on my door, even though she wasn’t supposed to be in the men’s barracks, and came in without saying a word. Her whole body was radiating pain. “You want to tell me what happened?” I asked, and she shook her head silently. “Want a hug?” I asked. She shook her head again. “Want me to dismantle it for you?” I asked, and she looked at me with dark eyes and said, “Don’t you dare.”

  “You want to just sit here?” I asked. She nodded. We sat together in silence for nearly an hour, after which she got up and left without the slightest explanation. The following morning, when Alder walked into our office, Daphne’s body went rigid and her heart numb and hollow. She smiled at him casually, and I felt the blatant dissonance and couldn’t do a thing.

  “I don’t know anything,” Sherry said, taking the abandoned page from my hand. “There are no complaints. Not a single sanction or note on his personal file. That’s what’s so suspicious.”

  “That his personal file is clean?”

  Sherry nodded. “Every officer in the IDF has something on his file. Someone who took offense and issued a complaint against him. Some
female soldier who felt harassed. No one’s perfect. His file is completely clean. Unblemished.”

  “He’s a damus.”

  “Precisely.” Sherry returned the page to the bottom of my military service pile. “He knows how to avoid things, or, which makes even more sense, how to make the evidence disappear.” She turned to me. “I really don’t know what happened, but he’s the only person in the whole shared history between you and Daphne who looks truly suspicious.”

  “I never did anything to him,” I replied. It was the truth. We barely spoke. He was only interested in Daphne, and after that night he hardly ever showed up at our office. “I only saw him at meetings and things like that, and I haven’t seen him since my discharge. He doesn’t even come to the rallies.”

  Sherry hummed. “OK, back to the drawing board.” She picked up a folder from the stack to her left and showed me the title, “Kibbutz Horshim.”

  “God, that was a horrid summer.”

  “Certainly reads like it.” She opened the folder and her attention drifted away from me. My gaze lingered on the pile that contained the document on Alder. A single page. There was a whole pile on Lee, and that was only the summary. I put the paper down on the table and went to the fridge. Coffee, and then I could face the day.

  Lee emerged from my room when the coffee was ready, dressed in the worn-out sweatpants that barely reached his ankles. Sherry looked up from her legal pad. “Joining my force today?”

  “Good morning.” He looked at my cup. “Too much milk.”

  “This one’s mine.” I pointed at the cup on the counter with the coffee grains and two sweeteners inside. “That’s yours. Waiting for the water to boil.”

  He kissed me, sent me a warm wave and approached the kettle. “Lee,” Sherry said, her voice slightly raised.

  “What?” he asked, rummaging through the cutlery drawer. Sherry stood up and approached us. She barely came up to Lee’s chest. “You remember the promise you made me two days ago?”

  “I remember,” he replied, straightening up. “Do you remember that I gave you all my notes?”