“You can have the music always, Michael.” Okoya whispered. “You may take it from me whenever you wish.”
Take it? thought Michael. He had always thought of music as something that was given, not taken. But Michael now sensed that Okoya’s music was not a passive thing—and that to listen to it took a supreme force of will. To seize it, to envelope it, and to drag it in through his ears. Yes, Okoya might play it, but its power was not in its playing, but in its taking.
Okoya left, but the power of the music remained with Michael. My music, thought Michael. It’s mine now, because I have taken it. And knowing that gave him the fortitude to seize more than just the music, but the moment, and to take that singular decisive action which he had so feared.
And so that night, while the rest of the Shards slept, Michael climbed the narrow winding steps to the Celestial Suite in the dark, counting each step as he went, like a countdown to ignition.
Drew was asleep. A mosaic of moonlight shining through the patterned window grille painted his face as he lay beneath a down quilt.
“Drew?” Michael ventured forward, and spoke in barely a whisper. “Drew!”
Drew shifted in bed, and opened his eyes. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Michael.”
Drew didn’t say anything for a moment; he just stared at Michael, not sure what this visit was all about. Michael sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I came to give you something you want.”
Drew took a moment to think about it, then pulled his knees up beneath the covers. “Don’t play games with me, man. It’s cruel.”
Michael smirked, knowing what Drew must have been thinking. He should have realized how this secret visit might appear to Drew—but that sort of liaison was not what Michael had in mind. There was a wicked power in knowing his own intentions but keeping them secret from Drew for just a moment longer.
“I didn’t come here to be with you, Drew. I came to give you a gift.”
“What kind of gift?”
“It’s a surprise,” said Michael. “Close your eyes.”
“I don’t know if I should trust you . . . . You killed me once before.” But the fact was, Drew did trust Michael. In the end, Drew closed his eyes, and leaned back on the pillow, waiting for this mysterious gift.
Michael had no idea how to accomplish this, for he had never done it before. So he took a deep breath, and pressed his fingers to Drew’s face, in something that resembled the Vulcan Mind Meld.
Perhaps, thought Michael, this won’t be so difficult after all. He summoned up a depth of confidence he had only recently found in himself. Then, with hands pressed firmly against Drew’s forehead, he focused on the deep core of Drew’s nature, forced his way into Drew’s mind—an intrusion far more intimate than anything physical—and then Michael began to reroute the many feelings held within.
Somewhere outside, a single cloud began to turn itself inside out.
That same afternoon, Okoya had advised Lourdes as well. Not with words of comfort, but with a single, unhappy suggestion.
While Michael stole song from Okoya, Lourdes brooded around the Rose Garden. After the day’s grueling session of fixing, Lourdes tried to spend some time with Michael, but found herself performing another painful skate down Michael’s endless cold shoulder. Since the moment she had kissed him in Newport Beach and received nothing in return, she knew capturing his affections would be an uphill battle, but it had always been a battle she was certain she would win. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Okoya eventually joined her in the Rose Garden, and told Lourdes point-blank that Michael’s interests lay elsewhere.
“Watch him,” said Okoya. “Watch him tonight, and you’ll understand what I mean.”
So Lourdes did as she was told. She watched Michael through dinner, she shadowed him throughout the evening—and late at night, when she heard the door of his room creak open, she followed in darkness through the winding corridors, and up the stairs to the Celestial Suite.
She knew very well whose room that was.
Standing at the closed doors, she couldn’t quite make out their whispers, but her imagination painted for her a picture as complete as could be—and never once did it occur to her that she might be wrong, because it made so much sense. In fact, it all made sense now: the strange way Michael and Drew had avoided each other’s looks in the light of day; the quarrel they had on the boat that led to Michael’s tornado; the reason Michael returned none of Lourdes’s affection.
Because his interests lay elsewhere.
For Lourdes, it felt as if a dislocated joint had suddenly, painfully, slipped into place. She stumbled through the cold hallways, and down stone stairwells, until she finally found herself in the kitchen . . . where Okoya sat, having a midnight snack.
Lourdes sat beside Okoya, and told her exactly where Michael was. She began to sob freely as Okoya put an arm around her to comfort her. No matter how bad things had gotten in the past, she had never cried like this.
“Poor Lourdes,” Okoya said. “Poor, poor Lourdes. A will so strong, you could control the movements of armies, but you can’t have Michael . . . and now you know you never will.” Okoya cut a huge wedge of cherry pie, its filling glistening in the kitchen lights, and piled it high with ice cream. Then Okoya pushed the plate in front of Lourdes.
Lourdes wiped her eyes. “I—I can’t,” she said. “I have to watch what I eat. If I don’t . . .”
Okoya handed her a fork. “If you don’t, then what?”
Lourdes thought about it. Then what? Gluttony had nourished the beast that once lived inside Lourdes, packing her flesh with fat. But that beast was gone now, and she could control her own metabolism, indulging herself as much as she wanted. She could eat like there was no tomorrow, and endow the fat onto someone else—anyone else she chose. And why not indulge? She deserved it. She had earned it—and God help anyone who tried to stop her.
Lourdes took a small scoop of pie on her fork, and ate it. Then she took another, and another, and another, shoveling its luscious sweetness into her mouth, just as fast as she could swallow.
“Eat, Lourdes!” said Okoya, with deep understanding and sympathy. “Eat . . . . Not because you have to, but because you want to.”
And Lourdes did.
Morning saw a bright day filled with muscular tufts of confident clouds that knew their place in the sky. Drew Camden, however, did not concern himself with the weather. He did not look out of the window. In fact, lifting his head out of the Celestial Suite’s toilet would have been a great victory. His body fought itself, like a patient in the throes of chemotherapy.
Michael’s night visit had been a strange and inexplicable event. He had done nothing more than press his hands to Drew’s face—yet somehow he had done more than that. Michael had somehow entered Drew’s thoughts and feelings as easily as opening a cupboard . . . and then proceeded to rearrange the shelves.
Suddenly Drew’s whole world had changed. Drew had felt his mind and spirit stretched and folded like taffy, leaving him dizzy and confused.
He felt many new things now. He thought of the girls in school whose affections he always pretended to return—and suddenly he longed to be back there, finding he now had a lusty passion for them. He thought of the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, and regretted that he had read the articles instead of ogling the pictures. He thought of his cousin Monica’s tits, and wished he could have a nice long talk with them.