Tim Shelly staggered up between Gautama and me, reeking of alcohol. His eyes were glazed over and his bowtie undone.
“Hey, great rock!” he said, slurring his words. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder and slid it down my back inappropriately. “Go get somebody else, Gautama,” he said. “Brek’s mine.”
“You seem to be enjoying the evening, my son,” Gautama replied, not bothered by the remark, or Tim’s apparent drunken condition. I, however, was very uncomfortable with the way he was behaving.
“I think he’s enjoying it a little too much,” I said, pushing him away.
Tim grabbed me again and tried to kiss me full on the lips.
“Stop it, Tim!” I yelled, turning my face away. “What’s gotten into you?”
“What’s the matter, Brek? Too good for me?”
“I believe it is time for you to go home, my son,” Gautama said.
“Why?” Tim said, “so you can have her?” He winked at Gautama and gave him a punch on the shoulder. “I’ve been watching you…I know you older spiritual guys still got it in you.”
Gautama smiled but said nothing, as if he were dealing with a misbehaving child.
“Problem is,” Tim continued, “she thinks she too good for you, too. She only screws Jew boys. She likes them circumcised. Well, I say it’s time for her to find out what a real man looks and feels like. You wait your turn here, Gautama, and we’ll see what she thinks. It won’t take long.” Tim lunged toward me and I screamed, but Gautama stepped in front of him and spun him around in the other direction.
“Good night, my daughter,” he said, leading Tim away by the arm. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
26
I left the reception badly shaken and walked down the long office corridor outside the Urartu Chamber to calm myself down. For the first time in Shemaya, I feared for my personal safety. It wasn’t like there was a police department or I could call 911 if Tim attacked me.
But was there really anything to be afraid of? Can a human soul be raped-or harmed in any other way? Tim Shelly looked like a man with a man’s body; I felt his hand on my back, on my woman’s body; but none of these things existed-and yet they did. And how disappointing must it be for Jews to learn that anti-Semitism survives even death! I wasn’t even Jewish, and I never told Tim that Bo was; how did he know, and why did it matter? None of it made sense. Yet, Tim’s ugly words and threats were as palpable and real as if they had been made during my life; there was something genuinely cold and malicious about the way he looked at me. What happened to the sweet guy who thought he was a waitress and camped out with his father-the guy who visited Tara with me, and sailed with me on the caravel, and worried about how his mother was taking his death? Maybe it was just the alcohol talking…but how can a human soul consume alcohol, let alone become intoxicated by it?
I continued walking down the corridor until I reached Tim’s office. A sudden chill came over me, but that was nothing compared to the dread I felt when I saw my name on the office door next to his, on a brand new plaque that read, “Brek Abigail Cuttler, Presenter.” The door was unlocked, and I went in. The office was identical to Luas’ with a small desk, two chairs, and no windows. I was not the first occupant: two white candles sat on the desk, burned unevenly, their sides and brass holders clotted with polyps of wax. It was a claustrophobic little room, not unlike a confessional in a rundown cathedral; the air hung damp and heavy, laden with the sins of those who had exhaled their lives there; but it felt safe and almost cozy-and it was mine. I lit the candles, closed the door, and settled in behind the desk to enjoy the privacy.
Then came a knock at the door.
Tim?
I slipped quietly around the desk and braced the guest chair against the door.
The knock came again, followed this time by a girl’s voice, Asian-sounding and unfamiliar: “May I come in please?”
“Who is it?” I said, wedging the guest chair more tightly into place with my foot.
“My name is Mi Lau. I knew your Uncle Anthony. I saw you leave the reception.”
“Anthony Bellini?” I said.
“Yes.”
I pulled the guest chair away from the door and opened it. What I saw standing before me on the other side was so hideous and repulsive that I shrieked in horror and slammed the door shut again. A young girl stood in the doorway, her body was burned almost beyond recognition and still smoldering, as if the flames had just been extinguished. Most of her skin was gone, exposing shattered fragments of bone and tissue seared like gristle fused to a grill. Her right eye was missing, leaving a horrible gouge in her face, and beneath the socket two rows of broken teeth without lips, cheeks, or gums and an expanse of white jawbone somehow spared the blackening of the flames. The stench of burned flesh overpowered the hallway and, now, my office.
“Please excuse my appearance,” the girl said through the door. “My death was not very pleasant. Nor, I can see, was yours.”
I looked down and saw myself as Mi Lau had seen me-as I had seen myself when I arrived in Shemaya, naked with three holes in my chest and covered with blood. I opened the door again. Mi Lau and I stared at each other, sizing each other up like two monsters in a horror movie. We obviously could not communicate or even be in each other’s presence if our wounds were all we could see, so we engaged in the same charade played by all the souls of Shemaya, agreeing to see in each other only the pleasant hologram reflections of life the way we wished it had been. In this filtered and refracted light, Mi Lau suddenly became a beautiful teenage girl with yellow topaz skin, large brown eyes, and long, thick, dark hair. She was a child on the verge of becoming a young woman-fresh, radiant, and pure, and dressed in a pretty pink gown, making the gruesomeness of her death all the more cruel and difficult to reconcile.
“I am very sorry my appearance frightened you,” she said. She spoke in the rhythmic, loose guitar string twang of Vietnamese, but I somehow understood her words in English, as if I were listening to a hidden interpreter.
“No, I’m the one who should apologize,” I said. “I didn’t expect anybody at the door and then, well…yes, you frightened me. Please, come in.”
Mi Lau sat in the guest chair with her hands folded in her lap. I closed the door and returned to my place behind the desk.
“So, how do you know my Uncle Anthony?” I asked. “He died before I was born.”
“We met during the war,” Mi Lau said, “and he is also one of my clients here.”
“My uncle is on trial here?” I asked. “Can I see him?”
“Yes, you can come see his trial. I present his case every day.”
“Legna ends it before you finish?”
“Yes, like the others.”
“That’s unfair, and it doesn’t make sense. Why bother having a trial?”
Mi Lau said nothing.
“How did you meet during the war?” I asked. “What was he like?”
“Your uncle came to my village with other American soldiers, they were chasing the Viet Cong. The VC stayed with us; we had no choice; they were mostly just young boys; they left us alone and didn’t harm us. When the Americans came, there were gunshots, and my family hid in a tunnel beneath our hut. Always my mother would go into the tunnel first, then my sister, me, and my father last; but the fighting caught us by surprise and this time I was last. The tunnel was narrow, and we had to crawl on our stomachs. We could hear the machine guns and the Americans shouting, and the VC boys screaming. My sister and I covered our ears and trembled like frightened rabbits.”