LITMIR.BIZ

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world. Then, too, I had seen this trick before.

      We walked alongside the car as it accelerated to thirty and then forty miles an hour. Somehow we were ambling along at forty miles an hour, stopping at stop signs, then effortlessly accelerating despite the fact that when I looked down at my feet they were doing no more than walking. There was no stiff wind in our faces, we were not huffing and puffing, we were simply effortlessly keeping pace with a car moving several times faster than the fastest runner. The car still sounded like a car, and all the other sounds of the road roared in our ears, but I could hear the conversation in the car as clearly and as intimately as I always heard Messenger’s voice.

      It was not a conversation I enjoyed hearing. Much of it was a string of angry expletives and racial slurs covering every ethnic group, but mostly focused on Muslims.

      And the theme that grew from that obscene anger was one of revenge. Revenge for the suspension from school. But not revenge against the vice principal, no. No the talk was of getting them.

       Them.

      “Is there anything more exciting than a pair of angry fools with a them to pursue?”

      Oriax.

      She was beside us, walking along on her absurdly tall and impossibly pointed boots. As always she had a new outfit, not more revealing than the earlier one, but every bit as likely to cause a sudden cessation of conversation among those who appreciate female sensuality.

      I did not resist the feeling. At that moment my brain was still reeling from the shooting of Aimal and the girls and the teacher. I would have preferred any thought to that memory.

      Probably it was shameful that I was so desperate to push that horror aside. But I had already seen far too many things I’d give anything to purge from my memory. If this was to be my fate I would see many, many more. They would be tattooed on my flesh until all of me was covered. I knew my sanity would be at risk, was at risk.

      And I had no Ariadne to hold on to.

      “What do you think they’ll do?” Oriax asked, and clapped her hands in gleeful anticipation.

      The answer was not long in coming. Trent pulled a bottle of peppermint schnapps from under his seat.

      “Of course!” Oriax said. “I should have guessed. They’ll need that.”

      Messenger ignored her as he usually did, as though his refusal to engage would discourage her. It was clear he had no power to make her go away. He could lose her sometimes in the swift movement through whatever impossible geography comprised our universe, but he could not forbid her to be present.

      I decided on a different approach. If I was truly to become the messenger myself someday, then Oriax would become my problem to deal with.

      And curiosity has always been my strength as well as my weakness.

      “What do you get out of this, Oriax?” I demanded.

      She smiled at me, parting her mauve lips to reveal white teeth that looked a bit sharper than teeth should be. “Excellent question, mini-Messenger. I will answer it if you’ll agree to answer one of mine.”

      Messenger’s eyes flicked a warning, but I took Oriax’s challenge. “Okay. I agree.”

      “Excellent,” she purred. “What I get out of this is the joy of seeing and helping to inflict pain. I savor human despair. I revel in human weakness. But equally, I take enjoyment from offering its opposite: pleasure.” She made a sort of philosophical sound, a worldly sigh, a commentary on life’s interesting vagaries. “It’s fortunate, really, because in a way it’s also my . . . job.” She spoke that word with evident distaste. “I am what I am, and I am what I do, and I enjoy what I do.”

      She leaned toward me, very close, and I felt my heart race. It was not a rational thing, nor even strictly a sexual thing, it is something almost like gravity—invisible, inescapable, inevitable. Oriax does that and I could no more ignore it than I could ignore the heat of the sun or the pull of the earth’s core.

      “And now, my question for you, mini-Messenger. It is this: Have you fantasized about our lovely, handsome Messenger? Have you imagined yourself in his arms? In his bed?”

      I started to blurt an answer, but Oriax held up a cautioning hand. “If you lie, I will know it. And so will Messenger.”

      My mind went instantly to a dream I’d had, one of my more unsettling, though not at all terrifying, dreams.

      No one should be held responsible for their dreams.

      “I never imagined Messenger having a bed,” I managed to say as a blush rose up my neck to burn my cheeks.

      “Hah!” She seemed delighted with my pathetic evasion. She knew she had landed a blow. She knew she had made things awkward between Messenger and me. Awkward to say the least.

      She was, as she’d said, reveling in human weakness.

      Darkness had fallen completely by the time the car pulled into a cemetery that was much more opulent than the one we’d visited so far away. The car crept along manicured paths between stark marble testimonials to lost love. There were impressive marble crypts and small granite crosses. Here and there a Star of David.

      “There!” a slurring Pete said, and pointed.

      Trent stopped the car and the two boys stumbled out. The sun had gone down and the shadows were growing long.

      We followed them onto the springy grass to a modest granite headstone. It read Mohammed Marwat, beloved husband, father, brother. And a fairly recent date of death. It was decorated with an engraved crescent and star.

      “Yeah. Raghead,” Trent said.

      Pete offered some expletives of support.

      Then Trent kicked the headstone. His reward was pain that had him hopping and cursing. He limped back to Pete’s car and rummaged in the trunk until he found a tire iron and a can of red spray paint.

      With the tire iron he began digging at the foundation of the stone, wedging the crowbar end beneath it and, finally, toppling it onto its back while Pete kept watch.

      More loud cursing.

      “And now, the paint,” Oriax said with a wink.

      Trent shook the paint can, musing about his message. In the end he decided on his favorite word, Raghead, which he misspelled as Rag-hed. Then added an expletive. And finally the words, Go home.

      “And there we have your basic grave desecration,” Oriax said with satisfaction. “Are we really all here for a little grave desecration? This is your mission, Messenger? Trivial.”

      And then Trent urinated on the stone and Pete did likewise.

      “Okay,” Oriax said with tolerant humor, “now, it’s an enhanced grave desecration. But really, Messenger, are you going to subject these two cretins to the full-on Messenger treatment? I’m surprised you’d want to show mini-Messenger the true pitiless savagery of your absurd goddess’s so-called justice.”

      I expected Messenger to ignore her. But instead I found him looking at her very thoughtfully. And Oriax didn’t like it. She seemed to blanch, although that’s too strong an image for the very slight, barely noticeable pullback.

      I wondered if she was frightened of Messenger. But no, in the times I’d seen them together she had never shown any fear. But she had just now winced—and again, that’s too strong an image for a change of expression that was so well concealed as to be almost unnoticeable.

      Almost unnoticeable.

      And yet I was sure that she had done something or said something she now regretted.

      “Well, I have other, friendlier folk to see,” Oriax said lamely, and disappeared.

      “What was that about?” I asked.

      “Indeed.

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