by Ciana Stone
Until now, a voice inside reminded her. Max knows things even Ben doesn’t. Like about your foster father.
Nikki closed her inner ear to the voice, despite knowing it was right. She’d revealed far more to Max than she’d intended. While he didn’t know everything about her, he knew things that no one else did.
Maybe it would be good for her to talk to Ben. Sometimes a sounding board helped put things into perspective and at the moment she really didn’t feel she had a very good handle on being objective. Try as she might to remind herself, warn herself and even stop herself, her feelings for Max were growing. Too fast.
Yes, it would be good to talk to someone. Even if she couldn’t summon the courage to discuss Max, she could get Ben’s take on the meeting with Mark Robinson—another dilemma she was trying to deal with. With a change in attitude, she started the car.
Ben was waiting in his normal booth when she arrived. Two cups of coffee sat on the table.
“So, what gives?” Ben asked as she sat down.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“How about the beginning?”
She took a sip of the coffee and propped one elbow on the table, resting her chin on the heel of her hand. Hesitantly at first, then gaining in momentum, she poured out everything that had happened since she had first met Gaspar and had gone to see the Westons, leaving out only the part about what had happened the previous evening when she’d conducted some preliminary tests with Max. She also left out the favor she wanted from him.
By the time she finished they’d gone through an entire pot of coffee, two club sandwiches, and a slice of pie with ice-cream.
Ben whistled and leaned forward to take her hands. “Nik, you know I don’t like being a killjoy, and you know I love you for your big heart, but this time I really think you’re in way over your head. I mean, the way I see it, you’ve got a couple of major problems. One, you took off on some…quest for the Holy Grail—”
“The Blue Stones of Atlantis.”
“Yeah, whatever. My point is you take on this quest with only some story from some guy to go on.’
“He’s not just some guy! Don’t you recognize the name? Come on, Ben, I know you took medieval literature.”
Ben shook his head and Nikki cocked her head to one side as she said, “Parisfal?’”
Ben’s facial features all moved upward, from the preliminary rise of his eyebrows to the smile that came to his lips. “Oh yeah, yeah, I remember. The Grail stories. So?”
Nikki shook her head. “And you call yourself Mr. Logic. Okay, walk this road with me for a second. Centuries ago writers used what they read from writers and historians who had come before them. They then based their own new stories on the myths and legends that were the result of tales that’d been passed down. Now bear in mind that for centuries, many of which were centuries of oral tradition, there were no records. So from the original telling of the deed or event, it’s logical to assume that the stories the medieval writers read were widely divergent from the original. Can you agree with me thus far?”
“Provisionally, yes.”
Nikki couldn’t help but smile at Ben’s answer. He always left himself room to maneuver, change tactics, or position. She supposed that was what made him so brilliant. He never left himself in a position where there was no way out. She’d often wished she could siphon off some of that particular talent for herself.
“Okay.” She pushed herself back toward the topic on the table. “But even though the tales the medieval writers wrote are vastly different from the original tale, there always remains common elements.”
“Well, I’m not exactly an expert on this particular subject, so I’d have to rely on your judgment in that.”
“Okay, fine. So let’s say you take my word for it and go from there. What’s most striking in every tale ever written about certain objects, people, or events is that if you take away the names and the geography, make everything very depersonalized, you see a definite pattern that’s woven through all of the myths and legends.”
“Which is?”
Nikki suddenly wondered if she had been the one leading the conversation or if she had somehow managed to fall into a skillfully laid trap. She couldn’t count the number of times she and Ben had come to this point. And every time the outcome was the same. Despite what she thought was the truth, because she had no proof, she couldn’t disregard the possibility that she was wrong and until she knew for sure, she had no position to defend.
This, in a strange way, was the sum of her life thus far. Never in her life had she had anything she could put her trust or faith in. Every time she did, she left herself wide open to having life kick her in the gut and leave her groaning and gasping in a shattered world.
A memory played through her mind, of coming home from school and finding her mother lying on the bed, a syringe still in her hand and her eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, with a smile on her face like she was seeing the most beautiful thing imaginable.
Nikki had never forgotten her mother’s face. Nor had she ever forgotten the revelation that sight gave her at only nine years old. Her mother had been happy to die. She’d wanted to go away and never come back. She’d wanted it more than she wanted to be a wife or a mother.
Now she could reason and justify what her mother had done, and perhaps even sympathize. But the little girl inside her still felt that her mother hadn’t considered her important enough to live for. And when you’re nine, if you can’t trust in your mother’s love, what’s left?
“Hey.” Ben reached over and nudged her.
“Sorry.” She shook the memories away.
“Back in that dark place you can’t share?”
She looked at him with a mixture of gratitude and guilt. She knew he tried to understand when she chose not to share with him. That was why she loved him. But she also knew that he was disappointed that she couldn’t trust him enough to share her burden. She shared that disappointment. It’d be a most marvelous thing to trust someone that much, but she’d yet to find that someone she could truly and completely believe in.
Nikki nodded and took his hand. “Sorry. Now, if I can find my way back to what we were talking about…”
“You were about to divulge the great secret to me—the definite pattern that’s woven through all of the myths and legends.”
“Oh yeah, that.” She shook her head, chuckled uncomfortably, cleared her throat, and fell silent.
“All right.” He let her off the hook. “Enough said. Except of course the point I was originally trying to make which is, despite who this Gaspar is—and by the way you still haven’t told me squat about him—only his fifteen times great grandfather or whatever. But despite what he said, you don’t have anything that’d lead you to believe he could be telling the truth. Come on, you’re a scholar. You know that just like in science and math there are steps to be followed. You can’t jump from point A to Z without something in between.”
“I agree. No really, you’re one hundred percent right. It was lunacy to believe him. And even if he was right, how the hell would I ever find it? You think someone as rich as this Weston guy would just leave it lying around? No way. So, yes, you’re right, you’re right. It was a dumb move. But I took it and here I am, so now I’ve got to figure out what the heck to do!”
Ben leaned his head back and blew out his breath long and slow. “And there we have the crux of the problem, don’t we? First you let this de Troyes put a bee in your bonnet over some mythological artifact, and then out of the blue Professor Bernard wants to see you and asks if you’ve spoken with de Troyes. Upon which the two of you get chased all over the city and he ends up doing the complete unexpected and offing himself. And now this Robinson guy claims Bernard and de Troyes are part of some group that’s responsible for killing people, and you have what?”
“A mess,” she groaned.
“Not just a mess, but what sounds like a potentially dangerous mess with a lot of conflictin
g stories. And…” He held up his hand as she opened her mouth. “Not to mention the second element in the twofold problem I see. This thing isn’t about some artifact, or even a fat bank account. It’s about the guy. Maxwell. Something about him does you in a way no one else ever has and it’s driving you nuts because you have no idea how to handle it. First of all, you’ve never been there before and secondly, when you finally do reach the point you have, it’s with some guy who’s not playing with a full deck.”
“That’s unfair.” Nikki knew which battle to choose. She fought for Max, which diverted attention from her. “You can’t make that kind of judgment.”
“Okay, maybe this Max guy is smarter than everyone realizes, but still—all the shit he’s done to you? I don’t know how to put it in a nice way, but it seems to me he’s a twenty-megahertz machine in a terabyte game.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“And the reason?”
Nikki looked down at their clasped hands on the table, trying to find the right words to make him understand something she was not sure she did herself. She looked up at Ben. “Remember when Jimmi first moved in next to Catherine and me?”
Ben laughed. “Yeah, she really went off, didn’t she?”
“To say the least. She got one look at his dreads and was sure we were being invaded by either Jamaican drug runners or voodoo “head shrinkers” as she put it.”
Ben’s smile faded. “Her paranoia just about got all of us—well, me and Tony, anyway. But not you.”
“That’s not important. My point is, Cat just saw what was on the outside—his appearance and the fact that he didn’t dress or act like the rest of us and she made a judgment on only that. It’s the same with Max. Everyone treats him a certain way because they’ve been told to. Everyone on the staff’s terrified of him except the butler Osgood and his wife Louise and they treat him like he’s got the IQ of a turtle.”
“And you don’t think they’re right.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Okay, but can I ask why?”
She smiled at him. “The same reason I knew I was right about Jimmi, or about you. I see it in his eyes.”
Ben studied her face for a moment then gave her hands a squeeze. “How can I argue with that?”
“I’m hoping you can’t.”
“Okay, I won’t. I know you see things not all of us do, Nik, but I’m still concerned. See, I remember how things were with Jimmi, and me, and Tony and Tom and even Bill. But this time it’s different. You’re different.”
“How?”
“Your eyes.”
Nikki had no reply. Was it that obvious? She looked away and Ben gave her hands a tug.
“Come on, you don’t have to hide. I’m not judging and I’m not telling you it’s wrong, I’m just concerned. In all the years I’ve known you—what is it now—five years? Anyway, in all that time I’ve never seen this look in your eyes. You don’t fall easy. You always hold something back and you always have your door locked. You’ve never let anyone get inside that room, no matter how much they care. I’ve never asked the reason and I don’t expect you to tell me—we all have our demons. But there’s no closed door this time. It’s like you’ve opened—no, you’ve knocked down the door. Is this guy really that special?”
Until that moment Nikki hadn’t faced the truth about herself and her feelings for Max. Now she realized that Ben was right. There was something in Max that made her want to let someone inside. She wanted to trust Max, to let him be what she believed in. But why? Why Max and why, if it was true, could she not admit it to herself? Was she that afraid or just that unsure?
“I guess so,” she finally answered, then laughed in a self-deprecating way. “Wouldn’t you know? I finally find someone I think could be Mr. Right only there’s a good chance he’d be a better fit as a kid than a…”
“Lover?”
She nodded and pulled her hands away to lower her face down into them. “What am I doing?”
Ben smiled and pulled one hand away. “Taking a chance, maybe?”
She groaned and lay her head down on her arms on the table. “What am I going to do, Ben? What if I’m wrong about Max?”
Ben laughed and she looked up at him with a hint of irritation. He grinned and rounded the booth to engulf her in a hug. “Don’t worry, if it blows up in your face, you always have me.”
Nikki nestled up against him, taking solace in the feel of his arms around her. She prayed what she was about to do wouldn’t blow up in her face. It wasn’t just for herself. There was someone else involved who stood to be hurt.
“I need your help, Ben.”
Ben pulled away. “Why’s my stomach suddenly in a knot?”
Nikki shrugged with mock innocence.
“Okay, what do you need?”
“A copy of the college entrance exam.”
“What?”
“Look, I got a sample IQ test and I’ve modified it, but I need more.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know just where his strengths and weaknesses are. Ben, I’ve been doing some experimenting. For example, I took a dictionary and picked words at random—simple words at first. I’d read the definition then give Max words to choose from to match the definition. He had no problem, so I increased the difficulty. Still no problems. You wouldn’t have believed it. I gave him definitions of words I don’t even know and he never missed. Not once! We did that for over an hour.”
“How’d he get such a big vocabulary if he can’t communicate?”
“He can read, remember? I told you. And it isn’t like he always had this problem. I didn’t realize until last night was that he apparently has eidetic memory. He remembers everything he ever saw or heard. Complete recall. It’s kind of spooky. I mean, imagine having all these memories and experiences and not being able to communicate your feelings about them.”
Ben nodded. “I see what you mean. Not a place I’d wanna be.”
“Me either. So, will you get me a copy of the exam?”
“Shit, Nik, why don’t you just have me break into NASA and schedule the shuttle for the weekend. Yeah, that’d be phat. Stock up on champagne and strawberries, some tunes—kick back, watch the stars, and maybe catch a comet. You could come along.” Ben grinned wickedly.
Nikki rolled her eyes at him. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”
Ben ignored the question. “Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll ask someone else. Someone more…affectionate.”
“Ben!”
“Okay, okay,” he laughed. “I’ll do it. Just remember, if I get busted, it’s on your head.”
“You won’t get caught. You never do.”
Ben grinned again. “You mean so far.”
Nikki pushed him from the booth. “Up, up. Let’s go.”
“Go? Where?”
“To your place.”
“You mean you want it now?”
“Yeah.”
Ben looked down at the bill on the table then at Nikki. “And I guess I’m paying, too?”
She took it away from him and hurried to the cash register. Less than a minute later they were on their way to his place.
Bill, the soon-to-be lawyer, was in the living room reading when they walked in.
“Nik, hi.” He got up to give her a hug. “I’ve missed you.”
“Same here.”
“What’re you guys up to?”
“Nik wants me to hack into the university system and—”
“No! No!” Bill held up his hands. “Don’t tell me. Keep your illegal activities to yourself.”
Nikki laughed at his antics. Ben just shook his head, muttered “paranoid conservative” and headed for the computer.
Nikki took a seat on the couch and talked to Bill while Ben performed his magic. Less than half an hour later he walked in the room with a flash drive and a stack of printed pages.
“Exam, answers. Printed and on flash drive, Your Majesty.”
Nikki grinned and
jumped up to throw her arms around him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re a genius.”
Ben grinned over her head at Bill who muttered “and soon to be an imprisoned genius if he doesn’t straighten up.”
Nikki released Ben to look at Bill. “Well, at least he’ll have excellent representation.”
Bill gave her a mock growl and tossed a pillow at her. She caught it and dropped it on the couch. “Seriously, thanks, Ben. I owe you.”
“Indeed you do, my pretty.” He wagged his eyebrows comically. “Oh, and I added a little something extra. Look at the last page.”
Nikki flipped to the last page of the printed papers. “What’s this?”
“A formula. If he’s the hot-shot brain you suspect, then ask him to tackle that.”
“Looks like Greek to me. What’ll it mean if he can do it?”
“Let me see.” Bill held out his hand.
Nikki handed him the page. He looked at it then up at Ben. They both laughed.
“What?” Nikki did not get the joke.
Bill gave her back the page and Ben solved the mystery. “Let’s just say that if he can solve it, he’s one of about a dozen people in the world.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. Leave it to Ben to come up with something that was impossible. “Listen, I really do appreciate it. I better get going.”
Bill stood to give her a hug. Ben walked her outside to her car.
“Thanks again.” She gave him a kiss.
“Just do me a favor and don’t let this…” he put the tips of his fingers over her heart, “get the best of this.” He then touched her forehead.
“When do I ever?”
Ben rolled his eyes and kissed her on the forehead. “Point taken. Go on, get outta here.”
Nikki got in the car and rolled down the window. “See ya.”
“Yeah, later. Hey, let me know how the tests turn out.”
“Will do. Love ya. Bye!”
Driving back to the estate, Nikki wondered what the tests would reveal. It never occurred to her that she was only taking Max’s intellectual capacity into account. The question of his emotional maturity never crossed her mind.
Nikki waited for the oncoming car to pass before she turned in to the entrance of the Weston estate.
