Juma

by Madhuri Pavamani

  “Yes, sir.” I approached him as he stood in the middle of the practice yard, wearing pristine combat boots, tweed pants, and a matching vest with a pink shirt underneath, his hair trimmed short and perfect, just like his beard, looking nothing like any other Keeper I had thus far seen.

  He studied me up and down as new recruits around the yard practiced their weaponry, surreptitiously watching our every move. I felt naked and hardly worthy under his withering gaze and wished our encounter could come to an end and I could go back to dealing with that maniac, Sussex.

  “Let’s go,” he nodded. When I didn’t move, he shouted, “Now!”

  I walked off the practice field with him, waited as he discussed something intense and angry with James, waited again as he updated my father on something involving Poochas and nine lives and all kinds of things I had yet to wrap my head around, and then he grabbed me and we walked.

  And we walked.

  And we walked.

  Until we were at the top of a hill, overlooking the practice field and the valley below and everything around us was bathed in quiet and calm and my sixteen-year-old self thought I could stay there forever, even though I already knew such thinking was foolhardy and pointless. It was day one of my new life and I already understood I was doomed.

  Now I just needed to survive whatever agony this Chinese guy had concocted for me.

  “Dutch?”

  He turned to me, his eyes gentle, his demeanor warm, a complete turnaround from the man of just minutes earlier.

  “Yes sir?”

  He held out his hand with a smile and waited for me to accept the gesture.

  “It’s Avery. Avery Lu. Keeper for The Gate and the keeper of you, it looks like, if you plan to survive this shit show.”

  My jaw must have hit the ground because he laughed and told me to pick it back up and walk with him. He then armed me with his secrets and observations of my family and our power, giving me my first lessons in Gate politics, true friendship, and the lengths he would go to protect me. I never asked him why—why he chose me to protect and nurture and care for like a brother. I think I was too relieved to wrap my head around the many ifs ands or hows of our relationship.

  I also never thanked him.

  And that fact seemed to be catching up to me as I sat in that kitchen on the French seaside and watched him keep his back to me while he cooked and pretended I didn’t matter.

  “Ave?” I lit a smoke and watched him ignore me. His phone buzzed. He checked it, sent out a text, and then returned his attention to the pots on the stove. I stood and walked over to his side of the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and watched him for a second. He had three woks going at once, one filled with meat, another with pasta, and the last with vegetables brighter than any I had seen in a while, and everything smelled fucking delectable. This was what he did when he was stressed. Cooked his worries into the most mouthwatering food I’d ever tasted.

  “What’s going on, man?” I asked him, hoping to get a word out of him.

  He cast his eyes my way as his hands continued moving around the stove. “Nothing, why?”

  “Do not bullshit a bullshitter,” I replied. “Something’s wrong. Tell me.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Dutch.” He shook his head and waved off my concern.

  “Look, I’m sorry. For everything. There’s too much for me to apologize to you for but know I regret every bad decision I’ve made that’s affected you.” I pleaded with him because his refusal to speak to me was beginning to stir up panic in the pit of my gut. “I’m sorry for all the times you had to find me and heal me and hold me together, I’m sorry for never saying thank you, I’m sorry for never asking why you picked me of all the motherfuckers out there to watch over, I’m sorry for it all. But right now, what I’m really sorry for is not listening to what you had to say about Veda and The Black Copse. I’m sorry for brushing you off.”

  “Shut up, Dutch! Goddammit”—he threw down his wooden spoon and glared at me—“fuck you and your sorrys. All of them. What do you think? My entire life revolves around you and your problems?”

  “Nah, man”—I held up my hands and shook my head—“not at all.”

  “Bullshit,” he spat, “otherwise you wouldn’t start reciting your pathetic list of apologies, as if I give two fucks about you and your goddamned regrets. Fuck you, Dutch. Fuck. You.”

  He seemed like he had so much more to say but held back, the veins in his neck and forehead throbbing in anger and frustration as he seethed over that stove. And even though his words stung, and his tone stung even worse, I sensed his outburst had nothing to do with me and everything to do with Kash and that meeting my mother had called. And because he liked to deny anything and everything regarding Kash, because he feared desperately for Kash’s life whenever they were apart, he lashed out at me. I realized this the second he began shouting, I just needed to give him a moment to calm down and breathe easy and let him know that I was okay being his punching bag as he had been mine countless times over the years.

  “A wise man once told me it’s okay to love,” I finally spoke into the silence, repeating Kash’s words to me about Juma, “so I feel I should repeat it to you—it’s okay to love Kash.”

  “Fuck off, Dutch,” he growled but his anger wasn’t so fire-hot and explosive and there was no bite in his bark.

  “You’re worried about him being at the Palace without you being there as well and I get it”—I sucked on my smoke and exhaled long and slow—“but let me tell you, for all his proclamations of hating violence and being a horrible Keeper, Kash is no joke and I’ll take him into battle over your fancy ass any day.”

  Avery barked out a laugh full of surprise and a hint of relief.

  “Don’t laugh, shithead. That brown motherfucker is the real deal.” I pointed at Avery, my cigarette perilously close to his food, and having had my hand smacked more than once with his wooden spoon, stepped away from him and the stove.

  Avery turned down the heat on the gas burners, ran his hand over his head a few times, and turned my way.

  “I know,” he admitted. “I just worry.”

  “I checked the roster of the meeting and it’s too mixed of a group to be an ambush,” I said. “It’s being led by Shema, and Veda isn’t there. In fact, none of the members of The Black Copse, or at least those I could verify on such short notice, are going to be there, which means this is really my mother’s meeting.”

  I let my words take a hold on Avery, kind of sink in and settle him a bit.

  “And your mother is the one, Mathew, who here and there actually hints around at some legitimacy,” Avery finally offered, “and believes in her role as leader of the Junta.”

  “Ahhhhh, yes. Good ole Shema, gotta love her sometimes,” I joked, then added with a laugh, “Hey, I’m full of legitimate shit.”

  Avery grinned and even laughed a little and seemed a bit more himself, a bit less wound up and ready to hurt someone. I gave him a second to enjoy the fact that his lover was probably safe. I looked around the space a bit and out the window and kind of took in our surroundings before turning back to him.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked.

  “You know what I’m doing here, motherfucker.”

  “Stalking that hot piece of ass Rani?”

  “Something like that, although from what I’ve heard, you would know more about her ass than I would any day.” I laughed—we both knew either situation was a goddamned impossibility.

  “Seen her?”

  “Yup.”

  “She seen you?”

  “Yup.”

  I raised a brow at that news.

  “And you’re still alive to tell about it.” I nodded in false admiration. “Rani must be losing her touch.”

  “Fuck you, asshole.” Avery poured himself a whiskey, shot it, and poured another. “Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I’m soft.”

  “No way. For real?” I laughed. “And all this time, here I
thought the two went hand-in-hand.”

  “Why do we deal with each other again?” he asked. “Oh yeah, because I’m addicted to curry-scented bitches.”

  And for two seconds there was silence because that was a new insult and I had to give it the respect it deserved, then we collapsed in laughter because stereotypes and stupidity was the kind of shit we joked about with each other.

  “For real, though,” he continued, “she said she has no beef with me and wants me alive to let you know she’s coming for you and it’s going to hurt.”

  I leaned back in my chair.

  “Those were her words?”

  He shook his head.

  “Verbatim.”

  “Well, holy fuck, I’m shaking in my goddamned shoes. Rani’s going to make it hurt. Maybe she meant the way I made it hurt when I rammed my dick up her ass and fucked her like she begged me to to—hurt me, Dutch, please hurt me—you think that’s what she meant?”

  Avery burst into a fit of snorts, enjoying my perfect impersonation of James Sussex’s better half.

  “Fuck that bitch.” I waved off any thoughts of Rani. “I want to see her make it hurt.”

  “You asked.” Avery stated the obvious.

  “You’re right, I did ask.” I sucked on my smoke and laughed. “But still, fuck her.”

  He grinned, tossed back another whiskey, then raised a brow in my direction. “The Black Copse?”

  I knew he would bring it up and it was the reason I’d come here in the first place, seeking him out to let him know I had seen the light, but that didn’t mean it didn’t make my blood boil to admit anything Veda touched was of significance.

  “You were right, Ave. So fucking right.” I lit another smoke and poured myself a whiskey. “That’s why I came here, to say I’m sorry for not listening to you in the first place and to admit that I’m a goddamned asshole and agree to your face that we have to deal with Veda and her crew right away.”

  “Pray tell the inspiration for this turnaround,” Avery requested as he checked a message on his phone and visibly exhaled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Kash,” Avery replied and began making us heaping plates of whatever goodness was on the stove. “He’s fine and headed back to Florence and told me to stop being a bitch and checking his every move.”

  He smirked and I laughed and the air around us changed. We relaxed and dug into the food and for a few minutes the only sounds in the room were the two of us and our chopsticks moving and shoveling and chewing and ahhhh, the food was fucking perfection.

  “The gay Chink does it again.” I leaned back, rubbed my stomach, and lit a smoke.

  “Said the Paki whore,” he shot back and shoveled the last bits of beef into his mouth, “who was about to grovel at my feet and beg my forgiveness before we dug into this beautiful meal.”

  “Nah.” I laughed and smoked and gave him a few beats before I turned serious because we were at that point when some shit needed to be spoken aloud. “What I was about to tell you was how Veda wound up in Atlanta, outside Juma’s childhood home, and tortured and killed her right in her own backyard.”

  “What the fuck?” Avery’s perpetually tanned skin paled somewhat as he took in my news. “What the fuck, Dutch. You found her?”

  I started to respond, but he didn’t give me a chance—he was too busy analyzing and speaking and turning shit over in his head all at the same time.

  “How the fuck did Veda wind up in Atlanta? And at Juma’s parents’ home, of all places?”

  I shot him a look and if I was the type of motherfucker who said “duh,” this would be the moment to unleash it. Because the answer was so goddamned obvious.

  “Ave! Come on.” I pounded my fist on the table as if doing so would make his brain work faster. “It’s plain as day how Veda found out. Think about it.”

  “I am doing just that, Dutch.” Avery leaned back in his chair and rubbed his beard. “There’s no way Veda could get that information so quickly unless she’s already got people tracking Juma. But that makes no sense either, because Juma’s last kills in Italy were all Keepers. There were no Black Copse involved.”

  “Sevyn, motherfucker,” I interrupted him, unable to help myself, staring at him long and hard and expecting him to finally get it. “Suleiman. That olive-skinned bitch some folks like to call my wife.”

  Avery started shaking his head in the face of my accusations and I couldn’t help but wonder what hold that woman had over my best friend—why he was always able to see my line of thinking except with her.

  “No, Dutch. You’re wrong.”

  I lit a smoke because I needed to do something with my hands to prevent myself from shaking some sense into his small frame.

  “I’m right, Avery.” I pointed at him and smoked. “And eventually you’re going to realize it. I’m not going to hold it against you because I know I’m a fucking asshole and you and Frist and everyone else, even Juma for fuck’s sake, think I’m bitching and moaning because I don’t like being a pawn in whatever game the elder Mathews are playing. And also because I damn near hate everyone, especially that big-eyed bitch. But mark my words, I know fuckery like the back of my hand, it’s imprinted on my being, I am nothing but a black hole of fuckery and bullshit, but that bitch is all that and more.

  “And when the bodies are stacked up and the mass graves are full, she’s going to be behind the scenes, right next to Veda. Mark my words.”

  35: JUMA

  when the first rays

  of sunlight

  kiss the earth

  and light

  the heavens

  do you bask

  in the warmth

  and think of me

  * * *

  when the cool

  of the river

  floods your fields

  and nourishes

  your crops

  do you burst

  with joy

  and think of me

  * * *

  when the meandering

  path

  weaves to and fro

  and calls

  for adventure

  do you grab

  a compass

  and think of me

  * * *

  when the flames

  of fire

  burn with glory

  and light

  the skies

  do you fill

  with passion

  and think of me

  * * *

  when the birdsong

  on high

  kisses your ear

  and touches

  your soul

  do you dance

  in the forest

  and think of me

  * * *

  because I think

  of you

  always

  I stood on my roof and watched the sun rise over the city, everything so quiet and almost still while down below it was all trucks and buses and horns and people because even though it wasn’t yet five in the morning this was the city that never slept.

  The walls of my apartment would not let me breathe last night as I paced and planned and paced some more and even though I showered and forced myself to bed my brain never shut down my eyes stayed open my body found no peace.

  “Hey, Ma.” I spoke low into my phone.

  “Sweetness, why are you up at this hour?” she asked in her deep morning rasp.

  “I could ask the same of you.”

  “I’m always up at this hour,” she said and I could hear the smile on her face and smell the coffee in her cup. “I like to catch the light before she starts making shit all hot and stuffy.”

  She laughed to herself and the sound was like music for my soul.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I admitted. “I just tossed and turned so I finally came up to the roof to get above it all and think.”

  “And?”

  “I still can’t sleep.” And we both laughed and the moment seemed so precious after all the other m
oments we spent together on my side of things. And I knew she didn’t remember those moments just as I knew she didn’t remember my true self but a tiny part of me couldn’t help wishing she did. Childish notions, I knew, but sometimes a part of me felt it would be so nice if she knew all of me.

  “Your life is full of so much stress, sweetness,” she spoke into my ear and sounded so close even when she was not. “Be easy on yourself here and there. Find a lover and wrap yourself around them every once in a while. You’re always so set on doing everything alone but here and there, a partner in crime doesn’t hurt.”

  Although she didn’t mean them to be, my ma’s words were a punch to my gut, hitting me right in that spot taut with worry and fear and all things dark and deadly, where butter-soft leather and the clink of metal and the ting of knives made my skin crawl. She didn’t know I already had a lover, a most wondrous man full of barbs and tenderness who snuck up on me in the dark of night, crawled under my skin, and settled in my bones. She didn’t know he stole my heart without touching my skin my breath belonged to him he was my everything. She didn’t know anything about Dutch and I wasn’t ready to share one word about him now, mostly because what would I say?

  I have a Great Love, Ma, and he’s beautiful and dark and sweet and oh yeah . . . you want to meet him? Ummm sure, as soon as I find him. Because right now, he could be anywhere in the world, I really have no idea. Why don’t I know where he is? Well, ummm, I didn’t ask. Ha! That is an excellent idea, I should call him. Only thing is I don’t have his cell. You heard right. I don’t know his number, I don’t have the slightest clue how to find him. YES, Ma, I’m being serious, I love him.

  That was the truth of it, keeping me up all night, gnawing at my toes and fingertips, tickling my ears and nipping at my lower back—I had no idea how to locate the man I loved to know whether he was safe to hear his voice whisper good night. And I fucking hated it.

  “I should go, Ma,” I suddenly breathed into the phone, needing to be elsewhere at that very moment, unable to move as fast as my soul desired because I was up on my roof at 5:21 in the morning, deep in conversation with my ma.