by Mark Tiro
“Well, after you… after your body—appeared—to die,” she said, pronouncing the word slowly, “I tried forgiving the people who murdered you. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Still, what you had said about forgiveness just sat there, echoing around my mind. It seemed so important to you. And so I started with something easier. Something small. I practiced forgiving the guy in my building who won’t seem to clean up after his dog.”
“I see,” David began. “So I go through everything you saw, spent all that time together teaching you the best I’ve come to learn, from lifetime after lifetime. And you take it all—everything I’ve taught you, the best I had to give—and you apply it to… the guy who’s not picking up his dog shit?”
She suppressed a snicker, but they both laughed. “David,” she chided him gently, still smiling, “I don’t think you’re supposed to swear anymore. You know, now that you’re—”
“Just to keep things interesting Maya.” He raised his hand, and added, “I’m innocent, I swear.”
“Obviously.” She retorted, not missing a beat. Maya smiled gently one more time, and then went on. “I figured I might not be able to forgive the people who shot you David. Not right away at least. It was just too raw. Or Tom, or my mom even. These were all still too painful. Sure, I’ve come to do that since then. But I had to give it time. At first, it was just too hard. So I decided I’d start to practice forgiveness with the little things. But I’m stubborn too. Well, at least I was. It’s getting less so now. Anyway, it was all I could do then, to forgive the guy who didn’t clean up after his dog.”
“How’d that go for you?” He grinned.
“Depends on what the dog had to eat that day,” she said. They both laughed. “Baby steps, right? Some days I could almost forgive. I could almost see him as perfect love. Other days, though… Well really—would it have killed him to just bring a bag and pick it up?”
David laughed. Then she went on.
“It’s a process. But when I do it, I can see the change. I feel lighter, and more peaceful now. I never really thought much about the value of inner peace before. But I am so much calmer, now that I’ve been forgiving stuff as it comes up. And happier too. Oh, and I have the strength to actually do so much more of what I really like in the world. But I know having fun in the world wasn’t really your point.”
“It can be a pleasant side effect though,” he said. “You’ll start to see happy dreams take the place of where your nightmares used to be. Once you’ve forgiven them, that is. There’s nothing that says you don’t get to enjoy your life here. That is, until all your dreams are done once and for all. But I can tell you, that’s the happiest dream of them all—the one where you wake up from all dreams. In the meantime, and even though it’s just a projection and it’s not real, sometimes it’s just fun to go watch a good movie. Even though you know the movie’s not real.”
“But movies are fun, even though everyone knows it’s just a movie.” She became quiet, reflective a moment. “The world is the movie, huh? So I have no reason to feel bad… about enjoying life here. I see your point. I will try, thank you.”
“Of course.” He smiled sweetly. “Just try to remember, there is no difference between your sleeping dreams and your waking dreams. You are at their center, but reality is unaware of any of them, and completely unchanged by them as well. And that’s okay. Every morning, you wake up in your bed and everything that seemed so real as you dreamed it the night before—including the dream version of you—is gone. The second you open your eyes—just gone.”
“But I’m still here,” she said. She looked at him one more time, and he nodded. Just then, Maya heard her dog barking, excited again.
“I think there’s someone who wants you now.” David gestured, as Maya turned to look.
As she did, her dog jumped up on her lap, into her arms and began licking her cheek.
When she looked back over, David was gone.
She gave her dog a big hug. As she stood up, Maya smiled and then laughed softly to herself.
“Come on baby. Let’s go home.”
The End.
IMPLICIT: Soul Invictus
Book Three
“…wars begin in the minds of men…”
— from the Preamble to the UNESCO Constitution
“…and it’s in the minds of men where they need to be undone.”
— Ken Wapnick
I
COFFEE AND CHRISTMAS
1
One
“Office hours don’t start for another half hour,” I told him as I rounded the corner to my office. Students always seemed to spill over my scheduled mid-day office hours. They were always coming early, or coming five minutes before it was over.
“Ms. Lee—I won’t take up much of your time,” he told me as he followed me into my office, oblivious.
I sat down at my desk, and offered him the chair reserved for students during my regularly-scheduled office hours. “So how can I help you Vance?” I said the words deliberately. Coldly. Then I unwrapped my sandwich, leaned back, and started eating.
For the past eleven years, I’d been trying to let go—to forgive. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. And sometimes—like with my student Vance here—I just couldn’t bring myself to even try.
“You see,” he said as he sat down, “Maya, it’s my grade. It is okay if I call you Maya, right?”
“Ms. Lee will be just fine, thank y—”
He cut me off.
“Maya it is then. I think there must have been some mistake. Yes, mistake. Easy enough for you to fix.”
I glanced at him, over my sandwich. The second I did though, his eyes shifted.
“You see—Maya—I noticed you had given me a D on the last exam, which of course…”
I stopped chewing now. Then I looked up in his general direction, narrowed my eyes and just glared.
“Nope. No mistake. You earned that D Vance. Good job. Now, really—what are you doing here?”
“Well thank you for asking. You see, I can’t re-take your course. I’m sure it was just a….” He hesitated, and a smug grin slowly formed on his face. Finally—apparently unable to contain it, and obviously quite proud of himself—he finished his sentence, adding the word “misunderstanding.”
Then he broke out in a broad grin, though he must have realized how ridiculous that was, and so he tried to look serious, even menacing. I put my sandwich down just in time to keep food from flying everywhere. I couldn’t help myself—I burst out laughing.
Seemingly emboldened now, by what he must have thought was the most witty thing anyone in the world had ever come up with, he went on.
“You see, Ms. Lee—er, Maya. You see, Maya, I have plans this summer already, with my family. You know my family, right? I think there’s a board meeting for the family trust. Or something, I'm not exactly sure on the little details. I mean, I’ll be there of course. At least by proxy. Anyway, I’m sure you know just how important our family trust is to this school. I think our trust is responsible for keeping it open? For paying your little salary.”
“How the hell would I know Vance,” I snarled, then relented. “Of course it is. But whatever point you believe you're trying to make, the real crux of the problem—can I call it that? Your problem?—is that you really didn’t earn that D. I was being charitable! Come on—we both know that unless you know someone, there’s no way you’re ever going to pass the bar exam. You’ll never be licensed to practice law Vance, even assuming you do actually… you know, somehow—graduate.”
But that smug grin flashed onto his face again, and a sick feeling came over me.
“You do know someone, don’t you? You know someone in the state bar? You can’t even pass the most basic of law school classes, and already you know you’re going to pass the state bar exam?”
“Let’s just say, I’m confident there won’t be any problems. Now, what do you say? I even think a B+ might just be fine here. I am modest after all—
it’s not like I'm going to ask you to change it to an A or anything…”
“No.”
“Well, then Ms. Lee, I’m sorry. I’m just a simple student. You know how much I love the law, and how much I love to learn.” I didn’t throw up at his words, though I wanted to.
“Oh, and I’m just devastated how a teacher such as yourself—someone I trusted and respected—would have threatened to give me such a bad grade—a D, for godsakes. Can you believe it, a D?” These last words, he spoke into the air, like he was an actor addressing an audience in a packed house.
He broke into a full, somewhat cockeyed smile. His face contorted and the left-side of his face twitched.
“I never—” I started to answer, but he cut me off.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t finished,” he said, standing up now. “I am devastated, Maya,” he said, drawing out my name into what seemed like three, maybe even four syllables, “I am devastated that someone of your years, of your experience, of your—age—would threaten to give me such a bad grade unless I would agree to sleep with you. Which, of course I would never…”
“How dare you!” I jumped to my feet. “I never told you any such thing! You completely made that up, you liar!” I blurted it out. My eyes narrowed. I put my sandwich back into its wrapper on the desk. I had seen some dark shit in my time, back when I was a public defender, but I can’t remember ever seeing anything quite as coldly articulate as this bastard.
Psychopath.
That thought raged in my mind. In anger, I opened my mouth to respond some more to his vile words. But I couldn’t get a word out. He cut me off. Again. He didn’t raise his voice. He hadn’t raised his voice at all during the entire, sickening time he had been in my office. But now, his smug grin fell away. He put his twisted, sick little finger quietly up to his lip, and gave me a ‘shushing’ gesture. And then he smiled.
It stopped me cold. I stood there, stunned.
“Ms. Lee, what I was saying when you so rudely interrupted me was this: I think we both know, I would never sleep with the help.”
His eyes were cold. Ice.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump out and strangle him. But I was stuck there, stunned. Paralyzed. I think I might have been technically in shock. Something in his cold, dark way had kept me glued there still, silent, standing with my mouth shut. I was unable to speak, to move, to scream.
The thought also occurred to me, much later of course, that my shock had probably also prevented me from reaching over and killing him. So it wasn’t all bad.
“You see, this law school thing is basically a formality for me,” he went on. “My family thought it would look good on paper, and who wouldn’t want to spend three years in the City of Angels. Just from that name, I knew it’d be a perfect fit for me here. Easy pickings.”
With that, he seemed to relax now. His smug grin reappeared. “Now, of course I wouldn’t sleep with you, even though you took your clothes off, locked the door behind me and lay down across your desk. I would never do such a thing. I am an innocent young student.”
He walked toward the door, stopping just short of it. “You really should have taken me up on my offer. Giving me a B wouldn’t have been too painful for you, would it? Bygones though I guess. Still, you just might want to finish up that sandwich of yours, and start cleaning out your desk. I wouldn’t count on being here much longer.”
Then he turned around and walked out.
I was in shock that he would make up a lie like this. It was only once the shock had fully worn off a few days later—though really only once I received the law school’s notice of termination in the mail—that it fully sunk in.
Bastard.
That lie of his had shut the door on my entire law school teaching career.
2
Two
“Quiet night, eh?”
I wasn’t sure the barista heard me. As she looked up, wiping the foam from the milk that had fallen on the counter, I smiled towards her. Just a little. There weren’t all that many people coming in for coffee at eight at night on a Saturday, but the ones who had were anything but quiet.
I turned around to look for a table. The only one open was a table closest to the short hall that led to the bathroom. But it was by the wall—with its outlet—so I’d be able to plug in.
I sat down with my latte and pulled out my laptop. The spot had just a little privacy, partly shielded by the store’s Christmas tree display.
I plugged in, and then I pulled up the draft of the latest motion I was working on for my lawsuit. After staring at it on my screen for what seemed like a few minutes, I closed it up, and then pulled out my phone and tapped in the number.
And then I waited as the phone rang. One ring, two, three. I went to hit ‘end’, but I heard the familiar voice answer just before I did. I pulled my finger back and said ‘hello’ as I brought the phone up to my ear.
“It’s not too late to call, is it Larry?” I asked.
“For you Maya—never.”
Images and memories of our years in law school flashed in my mind. They made me smile even now, and I leaned back into my chair and pulled the phone up close to my ear.
“So you filed your lawsuit yourself, huh Maya? Never too late to jump into a second—or third or fifth—career now, right? It will be fun to watch you as a civil litigator. God knows it was fun enough to watch you in all your other iterations too.”
“That’s why I called you. Will you help me with my case? About the last thing I ever want to do at this point in my life is become a civil litigator. I’ve been mostly in criminal law my whole career. That, and dealing with little shits in law school who aspired to become big shits after they graduated. Help me out, please Larry? One law school buddy to another?”
“So, it’d be kind of like closing a circle, right?”
“Wait, what?” I protested. “No, it would absolutely not be like closing the circle of anything. Absolutely would not be that.”
I heard him slug back whatever it was he was drinking. “Sure then,” he laughed. “Of course I’m in!”
“Thank you Larry. Thank you. You do know, though—lawyers and law professors and law students, all suing each other? There’s something poetic in that, something that makes me just want to break out in song.”
There was an instant of silence on the phone. Then, at the same time, we both broke out into singing. “In the circle of law, do, do do do doooo….” Neither of us could ever remember the words to that song.
We both broke down laughing. At some point, once we had gotten that out of our systems, and we were both exhibiting a grown up semblance of normalcy, I heard Larry’s voice again.
Now he sounded wistful, even subdued.
“God knows Maya, you were the only person who would still talk to me those couple of years when I almost went over the edge.”
In his words I heard an echo of the painful times I’d watched him go through.
“You know,” he went on, “I almost lost it.”
“You did lose it Larry. You were halfway to OD’ing when I came along and picked your ass up out of that hole you’d fallen into.” I said it blithely—mainly just trying to lighten up his mood.
It didn’t work.
“I probably would’ve gotten disbarred if you hadn’t gotten me into that rehab. Thank you Maya. Whatever I can do for you, I will always do it. Just ask.”
“So, how’s Nadia doing? It can’t be easy for her—you know, having to see your face every day,” I said, trying again.
“Ha, ha, funny,” he deadpanned. “Seriously though, I’m relatively sure I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. For you, and for her. Do you know she even has a son we’re raising together? Can you believe that? She even tells me I’m the protective father figure now.” I could almost hear him smiling gently to himself on the other end of the phone.
Then there was a long, but not unpleasant silence. For just an instant, I had second thoughts about asking for his help. After all�
��who was I to drag him into the middle of my battle?
“Maya?” he said at last, breaking the silence. His voice was reserved now, even quiet. “Are you sure you really need this fight? Because I’ll do it for you if that’s what you want. Hell, I’ll even sub in and make the court appearances for you if you think it’d help. But do you really want to sue—”
“I do.”
“You know that student of yours—well, the whole law school actually—together, they have a ton of resources you don’t have. They have a war chest Maya they can throw at you—just to crush you, if they decide to. They wouldn’t even have to bat an eye. They can litigate you into the ground. Do you really need this fight?”
“First—no one can litigate me into the ground. No one! Almost eleven years I’ve been teaching at that law school. Eleven years! And this little shit comes along in one semester and—”
“And what Maya? Lies and gets you fired? Where has proving you’re right ever gotten you?”
“I spent years building up that career. Years! Do you even know how many summers and weekends I gave up for that place? And how much absolute crap I wrote and published for them? No one outside of an insane asylum would ever want to read a damn word of it.”
“Hey, be nice to people with mental illness—”
“I forgot Larry, you were one. Sorry. I’m so insensitive. Now will you stop talking and let me vent?”
“Oh, of course. Sorry. But it’s good to see you’re still competitive as ever. I’m always surprised you weren’t born a man.”
“Fuck you Larry.”
“Exactly. And see? That’s why I love you Maya.”
I narrowed my eyes, and just glared at the phone.
“Still, you know better than anyone that the kid who fucked you…”
