“Lotus, what the hell is going on?” He sweeps the room with a confused look, taking in the four lit candles strategically placed around the bed at the north, south, east and west. At the salt encircling us.
“What’s all this?” He looks at me, naked and completely still, sitting cross-legged with my hands pressed together between my breasts. “What were you saying?”
“Psalm thirty-five,” I croak, my voice raw from repeating the psalm the protection spell required for so long.
“Why?” He walks on his knees toward me, naked, magnificent. Mine.
Tears sneak past my lashes and jagged breaths fight their way out of my lungs.
“Okay,” Kenan says, his voice hardening. “You tell me right the fuck now what’s going on. Why you’re crying. What’s—”
“It’s death,” I cut in over his building tirade. “It’s here. In this room. I can’t lose you.”
Confusion gives way to frustration as he realizes what I’m saying.
“Lotus, this shit isn’t real,” he says, his words heated. “I hate seeing you upset over superstition and hocus-pocus bullshit people use to control others, to make money off them.”
“No.” I shake my head adamantly. “Yes, there is some of that. I know what you mean, but this isn’t that, Kenan. I know what I feel. I felt it when MiMi died. I felt it when my mother died. I know how death feels, and it’s here.”
I close my eyes because I know he won’t believe what I say next, and I need him to believe me. “It’s here for you.”
He sits on his heels and runs a hand over his face, dropping his head back and contemplating the ceiling before returning his gaze to me. The moon reveals the stark masculine beauty of his features. It reveals his disbelief.
“I’m gonna blow these candles out before you burn down the damn house.”
He jumps out of the bed and runs his foot through the salt, disrupting, destroying the circle. All four candles snuff out at once.
Dread starts as a knot in my chest and blooms over every limb.
“What the . . .?” He looks from the extinguished candles to my face and back again. “These trick candles don’t fool me so—”
“They’re not trick candles, Kenan,” I tell him solemnly. “I know you don’t believe me, but—”
“Of course, I don’t, Lotus.” He sighs. “Baby, what do you expect me to think when I wake up in the middle of the night surrounded by some candles and salt and you chanting? I . . . it’s too much. Tell me you know this isn’t real.”
We watch each other in mutual obstinacy, the silence an impasse hanging like a broken bridge between us. I won’t say it’s not real. I don’t know everything. I don’t always know what’s true, and I can’t always interpret what I sense, but I know there is more beyond the limits of the three dimensions we see—that the walls between one dimension and another aren’t as thick as we might believe. Beyond this life lies eternity, infinity, time that’s not measured by minutes, hours, days or years.
“I can’t lose you, too,” I finally whisper. My hands tremble around St. Expedite, the little statue I found at the bottom of MiMi’s chest. “If anything happened to you, I . . .”
The stiff lines of his shoulders, the inscrutable expression softens. One strong arm scoops me from the end of the bed and into his arms, into his lap. He rocks me like a baby and kisses my hair.
“Nothing’s gonna happen to me,” he says in what I’m sure is supposed to be a reassuring voice. “We fly out tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”
I bury my face in his neck and swallow my tears, letting him think he’s comforting me, but long after he falls asleep, his heartbeat evening out under my ear, I lie awake. In this house, I learned to peel the film from my eyes—to discern beyond what’s right in front of me. I may not be able to see the threat, but the threat sees me. I show it my rabid heart, prowling in a fiery, salted circle, my teeth bared. Vigilant. A psalm on my lips, and the little saint who guards the grave clenched in my hand.
41
Kenan
Lotus and I are exiting the airport, headed for the car my assistant, Davis, arranged for us when the first reporter approaches.
“Kenan,” he says, the phone aimed at me to record, audio or video, I’m not sure. “How’d you feel about tonight’s episode?”
With the fast trip back from China, going down to Louisiana, and our idyll in the bayou, I’d forgotten the first episode of Baller Bae aired tonight.
Dammit.
“No comment,” I mutter, lowering my head and pulling Lotus closer.