“No, remember, you said you were… that you had…” She glanced toward his pants area.
Keith jumped out of bed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to be a bitch.”
I was about to slap this fool, but then I realized it was kind of my fault. I moved across the room and knelt by Evey’s bed. “Let him leave,” I whispered. “Let him walk away.”
She was staring off into space. Could she hear me?
“I was nice to you about it,” she said weakly as Keith tied his shoes at the edge of the bed.
“I was fucked up. I don’t remember anything.”
“Okay, I get it,” Evey said.
I was hurting her. Even though I was trying to protect her, doing everything I could to make sure she was safe, she was still getting her feelings hurt after having so much sweetness and compassion. She still looked to be zoning out.
“Let him go, Evey,” I whispered again.
Keith left without saying good-bye. He slammed the door behind him.
“Fuck him,” Evey said.
Thatta girl. She rolled over and fell asleep for the rest of the day.
That day went by in a rush. The sun sped past the horizon. It was night, and aside from Evey getting up to go to the kitchen for water and a short conversation with Brooklyn about how neither one of them had had sex, that was it for the day. Zack was on his phone outside, doing his bookie shit, and I was trying not to drink.
Then I realized that it was going to be a very long and boring night. I flew to the liquor store and got a bottle, came back, and sat next to Abigail on the stoop. Zack was sitting on her other side.
He said to her, “Why won’t you go out with me?”
She ignored him. I pounded the whiskey and stared off into space.
Ten minutes later, he asked again. “Just one date?”
She ignored him again.
I had had enough of her. “Abigail, you snooty bitch, will you please fucking answer him?”
“Fuck you, Lucian.” She flew off before I could respond.
“Nice one,” Zack said.
A moment later, he was gone too. I was alone. I finished the bottle and went into Evey’s room.
Bad idea. She was reading in bed. I knelt next to her. She set the book on the nightstand and looked at the ceiling.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hi,” I whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear me or see me.
She squinted. Could she hear me?
“Hi,” I said again.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. How could she hear me? Was I messing with her? What was happening?
I bent near her ear and whispered, “Evey, next time, in the next life we’ll be together—that’s how this will be corrected. This will be righted. This can’t be our forever fate. Next time we’ll live together, we’ll die together. We’ll experience every war together, inside ourselves and outside in the world. We won’t be out of reach, unavailable, unattainable, just love longing to be. Let’s keep moving fast in opposite directions. Keep praying we meet on the other side. I’ll see you there; I know I will. I have to believe that. Watch for me. I’ll be barreling toward you, arms wide open, and then we’ll crash into each other with the force of two spent lives yearning to be one.”
When her eyes opened, one stray tear trickled down her cheek. I touched her shoulder, and she relaxed. She squeezed her eyes shut again, took three deep breaths, then dozed off. I wished I could hear her thoughts.
I took Mona’s advice and got on Tinder. It really was a disgusting mechanism, but I was horny. During magic hour that night, I met Zina in room 1203 at the St. Francis Hotel. We had a corner room with frilly old-timey curtains and a floral bedspread.
“This is the old part of the building,” Zina said as she kicked off her heels.
She was tall with very dark hair and wings. Yeah, the carpet always matched the drapes. Blond angels had blond wings and so on. She was exotic and similar to me, which meant we were both old. Think operating systems on your iMac. We were basically the same version. As time went on, with each new version, God or someone got lazy. The older angels were stronger and better-looking, in my opinion. By the way, I’ve heard Jobs is one of us now, so don’t expect Apple to crash and burn anytime soon.
“You’re about my age, huh?”
She was undressing with no modesty. “No, I’m older. We’ve met. You don’t remember me?”
“I drink a lot.”
She sat on the bed in her expensive lingerie and crossed her legs. She was trying to recall when we had met before. “I think it was the late fourteen hundreds.”
“Da Vinci,” we said at the same time.
“I remember now,” I said. Somehow, even after my little debacle with Joanie “I speak to God” Arc, Mona had still been willing to assign me to da Vinci. Those were prideful years for me.
“I’m still kind of pissed at him for making me ugly in the Vitruvian Man. And my you-know-what was not exactly to scale. He didn’t want other, less fortunate men to get a complex.”
“Mmkay,” Zina said. “So you revealed yourself to him.”
I undressed and sat down next to her. “We were great friends. I trusted him. We trusted each other.”
“Is it true that he was…?”
“What? Gay? I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you anyway. He was the most interesting man I’ve ever met. Truly a genius and a workhorse. He was tireless. I only revealed myself to help him more. The Plate tectonics theory was all me.” I grinned.