The Heart of the Circle

by Keren Landsman

  Not to hear him whisper my name. Not to sway along with him. Not to feel him inside me, touching every spot in my soul. I recoiled. Just imagining his absence hurt. A pressing, all consuming pain that crushes every other feeling until there is nothing left but the pain itself, and that’s the only thing that will be left, until you can take no more. That’s what will be left of me. That’s all Lee will have left of me after it’s all over. Blaze will have the day we saw movies until late at night. My parents will have our last lunch. Daphne will have ten years’ worth of shared memories. Lee will have nothing but the pain of the absence. Of the part of the soul that vanished.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Open my eyes. Look at his skin from up close, so close it’s all a blur. Take in his scent. Sweat and soap.

  Pull back. A little. To know he has been crying and his face will be wet, and still be surprised there’s so much emotion in his expression. Caress his face. Wipe away the tears. Kiss him. A salty kiss. Taste him, really taste him, and commit the taste to memory. And the feeling of his lips against mine. And his tongue. The morning, and maple syrup, and he still hasn’t brushed his teeth, and I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. And to know that that’s it.

  And to pull back. A little more. Enough to look into his eyes, that were still wet, and still red, and still so green and breathtaking. Physically. I felt my breath catching every time I looked at them. I needed another kiss. One last kiss. To feel him moving in front of me, pressing up against me with all his weight. To drown in him. But it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to him. He was right. He needed to be himself to diminish the pain, and as long as I was with him we couldn’t separate.

  To pull myself out of him. To hear his moan, faint, pained, when he realized what I was doing. To feel him brushing his fingers through my hair, flicking it off my face. Touching my cheek. My right cheek. I made a mental note of it. He touched me for the last time on my right cheek.

  And to pull away. Truly. To not touch anymore. Not breathe him anymore. Not smell him anymore. Not step on those stupid pants he had to put on to get away from me, because it hurt. It hurt so much. And it would only hurt more the longer I lingered.

  To pick up my clothes from the floor. To make sure I had everything. Underwear. Pants. Shirt. All scattered in different locations around the apartment. Remnants of these final days, when neither of us was able to think. Sandals. To know, with certainty, that he was still lying on the couch, naked, wanting me to return and knowing I won’t, that it was the better choice, and not look back, and leave the apartment, and not wait.

  And to sever the last thread that had tied us together.

  And to walk away.

  Ten minutes. That’s all. A ten-minute walk from his place to mine. To go up the stairs. Not to think. Not to think. To open the door. To step inside. Daphne’s in the kitchen making herself coffee.

  To avoid her gaze. To go to my room. To not think about how it all hurts. About how my body can still feel him, still breathe him, and he’s not here. To not think. To hide inside my own head, alone.

  39

  I didn’t say a word when Daphne knocked on my bedroom door, and I didn’t answer my phone. I lay beneath the blanket, fully dressed, breathing in the darkness. Every breath hurt. My skin still had Lee’s smell on it. I couldn’t tell how many times I broke down in tears. Every time the wave slightly abated, and the pain resurged.

  I needed to go to the bathroom again, and this time I knew it was my need and not his, and it hurt even more. I held it in for as long as I could, until I realized I still couldn’t edge out all my bodily needs.

  I walked out of my room. Daphne was sitting in the kitchen, staring into the hallway. She rose the moment I emerged from my bedroom. I had a pee and washed my hands. Slowly. My stomach was rumbling. I didn’t know what time it was. The light from the window had a yellowish glow of dusk. Four, maybe five in the afternoon.

  Daphne waited. I felt her nervousness.

  I bit my lip. “It’s going to hurt him,” I eventually said.

  Daphne walked past the table and approached me. I lifted my hand. “Don’t…” I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t want to touch anyone.

  She nodded.

  “He’s going to be in so much pain,” I said. She didn’t know what he felt. Only what he would do. She had saved me once. She had to do that for him. “When I die, here,” I pointed at my temple with my middle finger, making sure she understood I was talking about Lee’s psyche, “he’s going to be so lonely. I can’t hurt him like that.” The tears began to pool in my eyes again. I wiped them with one hand. I didn’t want to break down in front of her.

  Daphne didn’t move. Didn’t try to come closer. I didn’t know if she saw me dodging her, or simply chose the one future in which I stayed put and talked to her. I knew that if she made the slightest move, I’d go hole up in my room again. I couldn’t face the world. She just stood there, looking.

  “It’s not fair.” My tears burst forth despite my efforts. I wiped them again.

  Daphne shook her head. I leaned back against the wall behind me, the tears blurring my vision, and collapsed onto the floor.

  Daphne took a step forward. I recoiled.

  “I’m not going to touch you,” she said, her voice so lucid, contrasting with the haze of my thoughts. “I know you don’t want that.”

  She crouched before me, without getting closer, without touching. “That’s not what I saw,” she said quietly. “I saw the two of you together until the end.”

  “This will break him.” I looked straight at her. “You have to help him get through this.” I wiped my eyes again. This time the tears remained trapped where they were and stopped trickling out. “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  I stared at the ceiling. There was a crack above me. The landlord had promised to fix it two months ago. “I know you saw him die. But he doesn’t have to die right away. Make him stay in Israel. Talk to him. He’s going to need someone to talk to.”

  “OK.” Daphne’s voice was brittle.

  The crack snaked above my head. A single ant was following its trail. My hands hurt. I realized my fingers were clutching each other. I shifted my gaze back to Daphne. She was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, keeping her distance.

  “Is it going to hurt him anyway?”

  Daphne nodded.

  “But it’ll hurt him less now, right? Because I’m still alive, and he’ll cope with the separation gradually.” I felt the tension in each muscle in my body.

  “Yes,” she finally answered. I suspected she was lying, but didn’t dare ask.

  I took a deep breath. “OK.”

  She kept looking at me, her smile gone. “Reed?” she asked, a slight tremor in her voice. “Remember how you once asked me what it was like to see the future?”

  “You said it was like transparencies. That they pile on top of each other, and when they merge, you know it’s the path that’s going to happen.”

  Daphne nodded and bit her lip. I scratched my cheek. Where Lee had touched it. My right cheek. I had a few days’ worth of stubble. I had forgotten to shave.

  The knot in my stomach popped.

  Daphne’s sadness was infinite. She was going to pieces right in front of me, her sobs gushing towards me. I rushed to close the distance between us. She was hurting. She was hurting bad, and I was too messed up to help her. I hugged her, grabbing onto her curls.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You were supposed to be happy. You were supposed to be happy, and I was hoping that it might, that maybe you’d change your mind… I’m so selfish…” She faltered, unable to complete the sentence.

  I didn’t know what to say. I hugged her. Tightly. She couldn’t stop crying. Something she said. Something small that lingered on the edge of my consciousness, linking into what Ivy had said. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I had run out of options, but the options weren’t supposed to unfold like this.

  I opened my
eyes and swept my gaze across our apartment without actually seeing it.

  I replayed our circle in my mind. The protection coiling around me, the elements roiling around us when we had cast it. They were going to aim at Sherry. I would leap in front of her to protect her.

  My mind was racing. There was a solution here. Something that eluded all the damuses. Including Daphne. I just had to think hard. We’d cast a protective circle around Sherry, and they’d aim at me to break the protection and create a breach, like when Aurora’s injury shattered the circle that was protecting me. But Sherry would know that, and so she’d demand that we cast the circle on me, and they’d aim at her, and she’d go down. Or we’d cast the protective circle on her, and they’d aim at her, but the circle’s protection would deflect the bullet and it would hit me.

  The damuses on the Sons of Simeon’s side had manipulated us into this current situation. They knew everything, but had failed to take Lee into account. Lee who knew how to simply not feel. How to block out all emotion. He knew what to give me. I mustn’t plan things. I mustn’t decide. I mustn’t think, because the other side’s seers had to keep thinking their plan was going to work. Sherry would die, and they’d take over every position of power, and all the sorcerers would be free to do as they wished as long as they cooperated, otherwise they’d be executed, and they’d finally realize their utopian vision.

  I held Daphne in front of me and looked into her eyes. “I need you to tell me how much time I have left. In hours.”

  Daphne shook her head. “Don’t make me, please.”

  “Now,” I said, raising my voice.

  “Four and a half,” she said, her voice strained from crying.

  I straightened up. Four and a half hours. “We’re going to organize a rally.”

  “No,” Daphne said and got up. “Absolutely not.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’m the one who’s going to die. I get to decide how.” I turned away and picked up my phone. “You call Aurora and River. I’ll call Sherry and Lee.” Uttering his name pained me. But if I was right, soon it wouldn’t hurt anymore. It wouldn’t hurt at all.

  I turned to Daphne. She still wasn’t moving. I approached her. “We’re going to initiate a rally. We’re going to cast a circle, again, and this time we’re going to find the motherfuckers who’re trying to kill me and Sherry.” I focused on that. The other side’s seers would have a field day with that plan. I’d call it ‘Reed’s Moronic Plan.’

  “You’re going to die.” This time there were no tears. She was completely numb.

  “I’m already dead.” I looked her in the eye. “I’m dead because when Blaze came to the Sinkhole I brought Lee coffee instead of telling him to get lost. You said so yourself.”

  I didn’t dare develop my plan any further than the initial glimmer of an idea. If I made any decisions, she’d know. I had to play by the rules the other side had set. Not make any decisions. Not commit to anything other than the timeline everyone saw. I had to actively not think of the timelines that became clearer and clearer in my mind.

  “Lee is going to die in a year,” I said, clutching Daphne’s shoulders. “I want him to die thinking of how I saved the world, and how I was busy having sex with him.” Lie. It was a downright lie.

  I erased that thought, and focused on one thing. I was going to initiate a rally. We would tell everyone to come. We would cast a circle on Sherry. The Sons of Simeon would attack me to break the circle. And I’d die. I forced myself to picture it, to make peace with it. Not to think about a plan, or a getaway route. To think about the bullet Daphne had predicted, eviscerating me.

  “And I don’t want Matthew there this time,” I told Daphne and took a step back. “I don’t want him waking up from a nightmare about how he tried to save me.”

  Daphne didn’t move. Her face was frozen. “You’re going to die.”

  “Yes,” I said and gazed at her. “And you’re going to help me.” She leaned back against the wall behind her. “We’re going to organize a rally. We’re going to call everyone we know, and we’re going to cast a protective circle on Sherry.”

  That was the plan. A pesky thought in the back of my head said this was a bad plan. That I was trying to get myself killed. That I should run, hide. I ignored it. I had no plan. That was the important bit. I had no plan at all.

  I called Sherry and told her to get herself over here ASAP and brief all her cops to meet us at the rally’s usual starting point.

  “There is no rally today,” Sherry said. I heard the rustle of papers in the background and wondered whether she was at work. “There is.” I took a deep breath and looked at Daphne who was supporting all her weight against the wall behind her as if she’d collapse if she moved. “I’m going to cast a protective circle on you, and let those fuckers who want to kill you show their faces.”

  Sherry was silent. I heard her breathing. “It’s a bad idea. They’ll kill you.” She knew. She knew exactly what was going to happen. She figured it out on her own, and knew that she’d demand that we cast the circle on me again.

  I looked into Daphne’s eyes. “No. They’ll try to kill you. I’m not going to wait around for them to do that. I’m going to initiate it myself. Bring all your cops and we’ll catch them.”

  “We have enough people in lockup and we’re close to figuring out their plan…” Sherry began to say.

  “And that’s still not enough. I’m still going to die.” I didn’t raise my voice. I was calm and collected.

  Sherry sighed on the other end of the line. “What do you need?”

  “Lee’s pages. You said you had a list detailing what he did to your cops.” She said she had them and would bring it over herself. I suspected she wanted to talk me out of my plan.

  Daphne finally picked up her phone and dialed Aurora with shaky fingers. Her voice failed her when Aurora picked up. I put my phone in my pocket and reached out for Daphne’s. She handed it to me.

  “You’re coming, we’re casting a protective circle on Sherry. I die,” I said.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Aurora yelled.

  “We’re meeting in four hours at the Three Sons Intersection. Round up the guys.”

  “No way. Forget about it,” she said. I heard Forrest in the background, and Aurora repeated what I had told her. Forrest yelled, “Tell him to stop talking nonsense. We’ve lost enough good people.” Then she told me, “I’m not going along with this. There are better ways of resolving disputes. You know that, you’ve seen it yourself. We’ll organize roundtable discussions. We’ll invite them to march with us in the next rally, we’ll explain to them that–”

  “Enough!” I cut her off. “The world isn’t filled with unicorns and fairies. You know I’m going to die. You know how accurate Daphne’s visions are.”

  “No,” she said and sniffled. “We’re all mourning Gaia. That’s no reason to throw away everything you believe in…”

  “You can have all the roundtable discussions you want after the rally. Today, I need you.”

  “Please,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t make me be part of this.”

  I pounded my fist against the wall. Tears were rolling down Daphne’s cheeks. She wasn’t going to help me. She wasn’t going to volunteer the argument that would convince Aurora.

  “You remember when we met at Structures and Spaces?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Aurora sniffled again on the other end of the line.

  “You remember the first thing you said to me?”

  She mumbled something unintelligible. I didn’t wait for an actual response. “You said, ‘Great, you’re a moody, just what I needed today,’ and then you told me how Yoyo was going to change my life.”

  I heard her incessant sniffles.

  “I’m going to die today. I need my death to be meaningful. What I need is that twenty years from now you’ll look back and say, ‘I’m so fortunate to have met Reed. He truly changed my life.’” I closed my eyes, avoiding Daphne’s dejec
ted gaze. “I’m going to die, but thanks to my death the world you want, we all want, will come into being. Please, come.”

  Daphne wiped her tears. After a moment of silence, Aurora quietly said, “OK.”

  I hung up and handed Daphne her phone. “River. Blaze. I’ll talk to Lee.”

  She took it without saying a word and dialed.

  I called Lee. It took him forever to pick up, and when he did he could barely put a sentence together. He didn’t sound sleepy. He sounded high. It didn’t bother me.

  “I need you to come,” I said with a clear, sharp voice.

  “Sure,” he said and paused. “Come where?”

  “Here. To my place.”

  Silence. And then, “You left.”

  “I’m here, and I need you to come. It’s urgent.” I drummed my fingers against the wall. Either he didn’t want to come, or his brain was too slow to grasp what I was saying. Too fogged up with his drugs that took away who he was and left only an empty shell.

  Another silence. I thought he might have nodded off.

  I raised my voice. “I’m going to die in four and a half hours. Daphne just told me. I need you to come, and I need you to bring all the things only you can find.”

  “I’m coming,” he said and hung up.

  My heart leaped in my chest. Without having intended it. Without having prepared for it. It just started racing, and wouldn’t stop.

  Sherry was the first to show up, in uniform. Apparently she indeed had been at work. She simply looked at me and shook my hand.

  Lee arrived soon after.

  He seemed disheveled; unshaven, his hair a mess, eyes sunken. I felt his walls and the faint scent of sage as he walked up the stairs. There was nothing inside him. No pain, no sadness, no loss. Only the emptiness of the sage. I opened the door. He leaned against the doorframe and held up two fingers.

  “I had two months with you.” His speech was slurred, and he was swallowing the ends of his words. It sounded like the last sentence in a conversation he was having with himself. I wanted to kiss him. Hug him. Carry him off to my bed and forget about the world.