Damaged Gods

I can hear little bits and pieces of her conversation with her friend Jacqueline, but not enough to make sense of it. The gas pump clicks off, and Pie removes it from the tank as she makes a promise to go visit this friend one day soon. Then she looks down at the phone in her hand and I guess the call is over.

My eyes track her as she walks around the front of the Jeep and then she slides in next to me, sighing. “We got a full tank. I’m thirty dollars more in debt, and…” She pauses and her head slowly migrates my direction. “Thanks. She was actually so happy to hear from me. She said she thinks of me all the time and that I can come visit her any time I want. She just bought a house. She went to college, Pell. I never knew. She’s doing so good. She even has a guest room.”

Pie looks away, out the front window. Her shoulders drop. Relax. Like a whole world of tension was just lifted off of them. “I never knew, ya know?” She looks at me again. “I never knew I had someone. Not until this very moment.” She blinks, her eyes a bit glassy with tears. “Thank you.”

I nod at her, getting it. “No problem.” I start the Jeep. “It’s a crazy world so… yeah. It’s easy to start thinking it’s just you, when it’s not. It’s just… a crazy fucking world that never made much sense in the first place.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “It sure is.”

I’m really happy for her. I truly am. But it’s hard not to compare our lives.

She has someone, I do not.

She could, theoretically, leave the sanctuary for good one day and never come back. The chances of that happening for me are pretty much zero. But even if my curse was broken, where the hell would I go? I’d be a satyr chimera in a modern world and then what?

And it’s not like I even wanna be a human man. I don’t.

I just want to be me.

I just want to be with my own people, in my own time, and live my own life.

That’s never going to happen. Even if the curse is broken.

Pie and I drive in silence for a while. She messes with her phone. I’m not sure what those things actually do, but then she asks me, “Why do they call it Saint Mark’s?”

“What do you mean why?” I shrug. “It’s just the name.”

“But Saint Mark was a real person. So says the internet.” She holds up her phone. It’s lit up bright with a lot of words. “He was a real saint, at any rate. And maybe you guys even lived around the same time. So I have to assume that he’s part of this. The sanctuary is part of a church.”

“A church?”

“One with saints?”

I actually guffaw. “No, Pie. We’re not part of a church.”

“Then why is it called Saint Mark’s?” She shrugs, like this is obvious.

I let out a long breath, trying to search for an answer, but I just don’t have one. “I guess… I don’t know.”

“You’re sure the sanctuary isn’t connected with a church?”

“Hundred percent.”

“Well. Then it’s a mystery, I guess. But a weird one.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, then concentrate on driving.

In fact, we’re both silent after that. We say nothing all the way back to that abandoned gas station, and then Pie says, “I know what you’re thinking. But you don’t have to worry.”

I smile a little as I turn right, heading back home. “What am I thinking?”

“You’re thinking I’ll leave you one day. That I’ll go to Jacqueline’s house and stay in her guest room. But don’t worry. It’s not gonna happen. This curse has been in place for two thousand years. I know I was all confident in the beginning, but I get it now, Pell. Reality check, right?” She sighs. “I just don’t have what it takes to change anything here. That is painfully obvious.”

I wasn’t really thinking about her leaving. Not after her comment about the sanctuary’s name, anyway. But it’s hard not to think about it again now. It sucks that I’m stuck here. And I know I’ve been a jerk to all the other caretakers over the centuries, but that was all bitterness on my part. Maybe even jealousy. I don’t have those feelings for Pie. I want to be supportive of her. I wouldn’t want her to be stuck here with me. It’s not fair. She didn’t ask for this. She just wanted a place to settle and catch her breath and I totally get that. So I say, “You don’t know that, Pie. I think your fresh perspective on things is exactly what this place needs. So don’t sell yourself short. It could happen.”

“No,” she says without emotion. “It’s not gonna happen. I mean, even if I did manage to figure out how to break the curse, Grant said the debt book is a trap. He says you need a spell to get out of it. And I think he’s right. I’m so in debt already, it’s such a joke. And we’ll never stop needing things. Even if it was keeping track and erasing debts, there will always be new ones. Like this gas.”