He grins at me. Of course he knows it. “I just saw the board right before I knocked it over, so I remembered where everything went. It’s not that hard once you learn how to do it—anybody can.”
I stare at him. “Anybody can learn how to memorize an entire chessboard in one second?”
Griffon shrugs. “Well, eventually anybody can.”
I shake my head. “If you say so.” I glance over to the old guys’ table, where they’ve resumed their game, turning every now and then to look at him.
“Did Veronique come for her lesson on Thursday?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It was fine. Uneventful.”
“No more memories?”
I hesitate. Telling him that Alessandra died that night at the mansion isn’t going to do either of us any good. It won’t change anything with Veronique, and it will only make him worry more. “No. Nothing.”
“Good.” Griffon smiles at me and reaches for my hand across the small wooden table. His fingers gently brush the top of mine, and I feel a surge of electricity run through my entire body. “You have beautiful hands. I’m so glad you let me come to the concert last week.”
“It was open to the public,” I say with a smile. “I couldn’t have stopped you.”
“Well, you did an amazing job.”
“Julie did,” I say. “She works so hard.” Practice this week had been difficult, as I listened to every piece carefully, wondering if I’d already played it before in a past life. It makes me feel guilty, like I’m nothing but a big fake. It takes some of the joy out of the whole thing. “Now it just feels like I’m cheating.”
“I already told you, it’s not cheating. What if some of the people at the conservatory are using memory breaks to become world-class musicians? There aren’t that many Akhet in the world, but a lot of the ones who are about to transition show abilities in some way—sports, art, music. A lot of those musical geniuses are just Akhet who haven’t realized their potential yet. The only difference is that you’re aware of where your abilities come from and they aren’t. If you’re cheating, then every prodigy who comes along shouldn’t be able to do what they were born to do, because they’re cheating too.”
“It’s only cheating if you know you’re cheating.”
Griffon leans forward and puts his elbows on the table. “Somehow I don’t think that’s the dictionary definition.”
“So what do you do with your abilities?” I ask. “I mean, besides drawing and putting chessboards back together.”
“Like I said, I have my responsibilities,” he says, tracing an imaginary line on the tabletop. “Things I need to work on from before.” He sits back and stops talking as the server comes and places our steaming pizzas on the table. She pauses long enough to give him a smile as she turns to walk back to the kitchen, but Griffon doesn’t seem to notice.
“Anyway,” he says, continuing our conversation. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for being good at something. You should feel comfortable sharing it with the world. Using what you have in each lifetime isn’t cheating; it’s what makes us valuable. Human beings take thousands of years to evolve, but we get to cram thousands of years of knowledge and experience into every lifetime.”
“Maybe.” I try to pull a piece of the pizza off the plate, but strings of cheese hang down from all sides.
Griffon laughs. “Need some help?”
I blush, embarrassed that I’m making such a mess. “No. I think I can handle this.” The smell of garlic is so strong as I pull the piece free that it makes my stomach rumble. I’m glad that we’re both eating the same thing, because I have a feeling I’m going to be reeking of the stuff for the rest of the day—and if there’s going to be more kissing involved, which I sincerely hope there will be, I don’t want to be the only one with garlic breath.
Griffon cuts a piece of his pizza and holds it out to me. “Want a bite?” he asks, in an obvious attempt to change the subject. He looks at our plates. “Wait a minute, I thought you hated tomatoes.”
I think back to the dinner at his house. I thought I’d been so sly about pushing the tomatoes off to one side of the plate. “You noticed?” I ask, immediately embarrassed.
“Just a little. Don’t worry. Janine didn’t mind.”
“I only hate regular tomatoes. Mashed up in sauce is fine.”
Griffon looks thoughtful. “Maybe you had a bad tomato experience in a past life. Could be that you choked on one once, and that’s why you don’t like them now.”
I love the thought that everything has a meaning, a purpose. Whatever you’re experiencing in this lifetime somehow, some way, has ties to another past. “Really? You think so?”
“No.” Griffon laughs. “I’m kidding. Not everything has a hidden meaning. Sometimes hating tomatoes in this lifetime just means that you really don’t like tomatoes.”
I make a face at him as I slide the piece from his fork and pop it into my mouth. “Like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
“Exactly. Sometimes a tomato is just a tomato. Speaking of, how is it?”
“It’s good. Want some of mine?”
“No, thanks,” he says, and in that second I remember the vegetarian meal that Janine made.
“Oh, God! You’re a vegetarian aren’t you? I’m so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” he says. “I’m not that good at it anyway.”
I laugh at his attempt to make me feel better. “Not good at it?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “I get all of Janine’s reasons, and she’s right. Bad for the environment, bad for animals, not part of what we’re doing to make the world a better place, all of that. But sometimes I just need to sneak down to the diner down on Fourth Street and get a big fat BLT.”
“So you’re a vegetarian with a weakness for bacon?”
Griffon shrugs. “I try.”
We finish our pizzas and emerge back into the hustle of the late afternoon sidewalk. Wandering up the street, we stop in a few shops, although I have a hard time concentrating on anything that’s for sale whenever Griffon is close to me. As we walk, our shoulders brush, but he makes no move to hold my hand again, so I try to keep my mind on other things.
“Can we go in here a second?” I ask as we pass a huge record shop. “My dad’s birthday is in a couple of weeks, and he collects vintage records. He’ll be shocked if I get him something he might actually like.”
The amount of stuff crammed into the store is visually overwhelming, and it takes a second to be able to focus on any individual thing.
“What kind of music does your dad like?” Griffon asks, scanning the rows and rows of album covers.
“Mostly classic rock,” I say, wishing I’d paid more attention to his collection upstairs. “You know, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Seventies stuff.”
“Got it.” He walks over to a table and starts flipping through the covers. “This one’s good,” he says, handing me a cover. “Or this one. God, I haven’t seen that one in ages.”
I flip the two records over. “MC5? The Stooges? I haven’t heard of either one of these.”
“They’re awesome,” he says. “Trust me. Does he have them?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. I look at both covers. “Which one do you think is best?”
“Well, if he likes Zeppelin, then I’d go for MC5,” he says. “A little faster pre-punk style, but still cool.” He leans over toward me so that nobody can hear. Griffon taps the album. “I had this very same record back then.” He laughs. “It’d be funny if it really is mine, wouldn’t it? Somehow it landed at this record store and here I am, holding it all over again. You never know.”
I watch him as he turns to walk down another aisle, wondering how I’d feel with so much of my past life set out in front of me. I look down at the unfamiliar record in my hands and wonder if I’d been alive in the seventies. And if I’ll ever remember if I was.