Spells of Blood and Kin (18 page)

“I'll be happy to move in with you,” Hannah said after a while.

“That wasn't how I meant to ask you.”

“That's okay. I was going to ask you, if you hadn't said anything by the time I needed to house hunt.”

“Do you have names?” Jonathan asked.

“Sorry?”

“Our kids.”

Nick stood stock-still, breath held, waiting for the answer to come amid the sounds of traffic and pigeons and distant streetcars.

“Abby and Noah,” Hannah said finally. “Abby for my sister; it's her middle name. And Noah—”

“My grandfather,” Jonathan said. “Yeah. That's nice.”

Then the soft sound of a kiss. Nick wondered who'd made the first move, and then a moment later, he was disgusted with himself. Or with Hannah and Jonathan. Or with the whole fucking mess.

He turned on the stereo and pressed play on his iPod, which was halfway through a workout playlist. He raised the volume until he couldn't hear Hannah and Jonathan walking away. Then he uncapped the pinot grigio, took a long chilly swallow straight from the bottle, set the cooler near the heavy bag, and went to work.

MAY 18

  
FIRST QUARTER

Maksim slowed to a stop on a stretch of dusty sidewalk in front of a nail salon, a municipal campaign headquarters, a pawnshop. He smelled toasting spices: delicious for a moment and then almost nauseating. He was soaked with sweat, his shirt wet all the way through, the waistband of his shorts chafing at his skin.

A woman was coming toward him, a youngish Indian woman in pink and yellow. The glass bead of her bindi sparkled in the morning sun.

Morning. Not too early, either: the sun was above the nearby apartment buildings, the street was lined with cars, and the sidewalk scattered with shoppers and baby carriages.

Maksim had no idea where he was.

The woman with the bindi was staring at him.

He turned his face away casually, instinctively. Wiped sweat from his forehead beneath the rim of his cap. Saw her hesitate and then continue on.

He saw a street sign on the corner and headed for it. Something was wrong with the letters: the shapes looked familiar, most of them, but they didn't sort themselves into anything that made sense.

He would ask someone for directions. He saw an elderly man crossing the street, bracing himself with two canes. Opened his mouth to call out. Found his voice knotted in his throat like a choke pear.

He turned away and walked quickly down a side street, head hunched, hand pressed over his throat. He knew this feeling. His body took longer, sometimes, to come back to him than his thoughts did.

What had he been doing?

He had been running. Obviously. Running was fine.

He sat down on the guardrail of a parking lot to look at himself. His shirt was one of the ones from his own gym, and apart from being sweat-drenched, beginning to stain with salt as it dried, it was unremarkable. No bloodstains, no tears.

His shoes were on his feet. They were gray brown with dust, with all the running he had been doing lately. His calves were dusty, and the dust showed sweat trails through it. Sweat, nothing more.

His knuckles were scabbed still from fighting with Gus. The bruises had darkened to green and gray purple. He flexed each hand in turn and felt no new stiffness.

But there was yellow on his left palm: bright yellow like pollen, smeared across the central lines and the web of his thumb and up to the pads of his index and middle fingers. He sniffed at it. Not pollen: something synthetic but not strong-smelling, some kind of paint, maybe. He spat into his palm and rubbed it on his thigh. Nothing came off.

In the sunlight, the color looked too vivid. So many of the colors did now. A house painted coral pink across the way. The subtly iridescent red of a stop sign. A car painted the same pearly green as the beetles Maksim used to see among the ash trees in eastern Russia, an age ago.

He blinked his eyes. The sun jumped.

His shirt was nearly dry now. When he ran his fingertips over his skin, he felt the fine grit of salt.

He got to his feet and felt the ache of the long run halt his steps a little. There was a young man standing on the corner now, handing out leaflets. Maksim cleared his throat and approached.

“Can you tell me which way is downtown?” he asked, pleased that his voice came out this time, hoarse but his own.

The boy looked white-eyed at him and handed him a leaflet.

Maksim began to repeat himself and then realized he was speaking Russian.

He shied away from the boy when he realized, dropping the leaflet.

“Are you okay, man?” the boy said in English.

Maksim understood him; at least there was that.

“You have a little…” the boy said, gesturing at his own upper lip.

Maksim nodded. Got himself away.

Safely around the corner again, he ran his fingertips down his face and felt the crust of dried blood below one nostril without much surprise. He rubbed at it until it seemed to be mostly flaked away.

This was not good. The last thing he could really remember was before sundown yesterday. Maybe. He hoped it was yesterday. He'd awakened from a restless nap to a breath of fragrant air and headed out toward the park … maybe.

Nothing in his pockets: nothing at all, in fact, no wallet, no cash. He still had the key to his flat, which he'd taken to clipping to a carabiner on his belt loop.

Nothing at all to show him what he might have been doing except for the trace of blood crusting his nostril and the streak of yellow on his palm.

And the sweat, and the thirst on him, and the dragging ache in his legs.

Nothing to hint why he'd lost his voice, why he'd lost an entire language for a little while.

He would have to go home. See if he'd merely left his things behind or lost them too, somewhere in his irretrievable night.

He picked a direction and began walking.

MAY 18

  
FIRST QUARTER

Lissa came home from work with her nose tingling from the smell of ink and heated paper and her own sharp sweat; the air-conditioning in the shop couldn't quite keep up with all the printers going at once. She washed her hands with Ivory soap and let the fresh cold water run over her inner wrists for a minute or two.

Stella wasn't home. At breakfast, she'd said something about art galleries. Lissa stood still in the relative cool of the house, breathing the flat air.

She had not heard from Maksim for several days; good news or bad, she was not sure. She should call him, she thought.

Later.

Now she just wanted a tall glass of sparkling water over ice and an hour to herself. She sat by the window in the front room, in the late afternoon sun, listening to bees in the lilacs outside.

Her eyes passed over the pages of one of Stella's
Vogue
magazines without taking anything in. She'd been fretting over Stella's constant presence, and yet now that she had a bit of time alone, the silence in the house oppressed her. Everything still smelled like Baba. She wondered how long it would last. Already the upstairs smelled like Stella too, a breezy, rich scent composed of expensive facial moisturizers and hair silkeners.

Lissa could not call this
grief
. Half-grief, maybe. As if Baba had moved to a far foreign country with poor telephones.

Before Lissa could grow too pensive, Stella swung in with an armful of grocery bags. “I found the most darling market. It had Pim's biscuits, of all things! Have you ever had them? No—stay there. I know you've just got home from work. I'll get you something cool.”

Lissa sat by the open window for a few minutes, listening to Stella putting the groceries away, opening and closing cabinets, stirring ice in glass. She could not pretend, even for a moment, that the physical presence in the house belonged to Baba. Baba's step had been slow and heavy, even in Lissa's childhood. Her wiry soot-gray hair had been tamed by a musky-smelling pomade. Her voice, even when she sang, was pitched low and dark.

Stella came in with a cocktail. It was a gin and tonic, with a slice of lime perched on the rim.

“I never drink gin and tonic,” Lissa said. “I mean … I never think of it, that is. Thanks.”

Stella set the glass on the windowsill, hesitated for a moment, and walked away.

Lissa thought about following. Instead, she remembered how many times she herself had walked from this room, leaving Baba behind at the window, still and ageless and full of silence.

Maybe Baba had felt this way about Lissa's presence in her house, after Mama died. Maybe solitude was the way of witches.

Stella came back a few minutes later with a drink of her own and a plate of rice crackers topped with cucumber and curls of salmon. “You're off tomorrow. Yes?”

“Yes…”

“Eat up, then. I made us an appointment for half six.”

Lissa blinked. “Appointment?”

“Pedicures!” Stella said, extending one foot and wiggling the toes, which were painted brilliant coral. “Look at the chips—I haven't been for one since leaving home.”

“You said ‘us.'”

“Sure. You haven't been, either, what with all the stuff that's been going on. Right? Time for a bit of pampering, isn't it?”

“My grandmother wasn't much into that kind of thing.”

“Haven't you ever? It's not scary—it's nice. They massage your feet with sea salt and things. Then you get to pick a color. And you chat with the people while they do it, and they give you a little glass of tea or something. Never?”

Lissa shrugged.

“I've put my foot in it again, haven't I? I thought you could use something relaxing, is all. I'm sorry.”

“No. No, it's nice of you … it's just…”

“You're not coming, are you?”

Lissa shook her head.

Stella filled her mouth with a rice cracker and crunched determinedly.

“It
is
nice. Really. I just need, I don't know…”

“I don't know, either,” Stella said, dropping her feet to the floor and dusting crumbs from her shirt. “I'm trying, but I can't figure it out. I want to
help
you. Only every time I think I have a great idea, you look at me like I'm from bloody Mars instead of London. So I've had it, and I'm going to get my bloody feet done. See you 'round.”

Once she was gone, the house still smelled of her hair product. Lissa stayed exactly where she was, listening to the tick of melting ice cubes in Stella's emptied glass.

 

Five

MAY 20

  
WAXING GIBBOUS

Nick went back to the sports bar in Parkdale. It stank.

He didn't see anyone he recognized. He asked for Johnnie Walker and drank it down quickly; it felt as necessary as water, a thought he kept having lately and kept dismissing. He asked for another.

The people in the sports bar—midafternoon on a workday—were a sad assortment of older men and two women, all with the leathery skin of serious drinkers. They stank too. Nick buried his nose in his scotch instead, inhaling the tear-jerking fumes of it.