I tilted my head back against the headrest, but it seemed to curve the wrong way and only succeeded in making me more uncomfortable. “They killed him,” I said, but I was scouring our last meeting for oddities, recalculating the time of his nervous departure and Mrs. Russo’s appearance in her camel coat. Mrs. Russo, who went faithfully to church and sometimes hosted a Bible group in her apartment.
“They wondered at his rising from the dead, but that didn’t amaze me. I knew better than any mortal who this God-man was. Of course his power extended over death as well.”
This brought my attention back to him. “You’re saying he really rose from the dead.”
“Yes, really. By then I knew for gospel fact, if you’ll pardon the expression, that it would happen. Everything was coming to horrible fruition. I also knew El would call back that part of him to himself, and this God-man would ascend to heaven. Later, it struck me as ironic that he had achieved with ease the thing Lucifer attempted so long before—ascension to heaven and a seat at the right hand of the Almighty. Lucifer took it as a blow, but the reality was harsher than that: Lucifer’s star had been eclipsed by a new Son.
“The followers of Jesus scattered to spread the news about what had happened. And people began to believe with an insight that incensed and amazed me. It was one thing for us to know that this Jewish carpenter had been more than a religious fanatic, but it was an altogether different thing for the clay humans to believe it.”
“What did it matter to you?”
He sighed, and the Shadow Creek logo on his polo stretched and slumped back into a wrinkle. “Ordinary men, hitherto blind, began to see this redemptive blood for what it was and this man, this Messiah, for what he was. And they saw it because El gave them yet another thing: guiding discernment, the gift of his own Spirit, given first to the God-man before the spilling of his messianic blood and freely offered afterward. To anyone. It was awful. Gone were the days of Israel’s elite, the heyday of the Jew. Anyone could have this ‘Holy Spirit’ freely for the asking.” He dropped his head back, reached up to adjust the airflow.
“I’ll never forget the first human I watched receive it, this gift. Before my very eyes, he changed from a shattered thing of darkness, like a mirror reflecting nothing but shadows no matter which way its fractured surface turned, into something whole, reflecting El’s radiance, so that I had to—could not help but—turn away. When I recovered, I saw that it was true; my eyes had not played me false. On the outside he was still flawed. But the soul inside had come alive, as though all defects had been erased. There was only that loveliness, that light, shining in him.”
“But he was still human.”
“Yes, but here was the difference: El drew close to those people who called to him as he had with Adam in the garden. Not only did he walk with them, he began to change them. And in them I saw more than the uncanny resemblance to that first man and woman. I saw something beyond what they were originally meant to be: ‘Children,’ he called them.”
“Children of God,” I said, with some wonder.
“I hated them! Never had I dared to aspire so high. Never had I imagined any such thing. Hades, I’m so tired of saying that I’d never fathomed this or that. But I hadn’t. It surpassed any angel’s dream, any human’s deserving. How I craved it, jealous of your inheritance. Like Cain to your Abel, wanting you to die.”
His last words jarred me, and I remembered the final line of his e-mail.
“For the first time, I saw the ill effects of the ages upon Lucifer, his waning brilliance, the wearing of the years taking its toll upon him like the first wrinkles of your human age. The moment I saw that, I wanted to hate him, too. Disdain and rage came naturally to me by then, and this time they came with such force I thought I would kill him had I only the power to do it.”
“You used to adore him.” Echoes of our first conversations washed over me like waves on a tranquil shore.
Lucian’s laugh was hard. Gone was the slight mania, the high-pitched sound. “What reward had I gained in following him? What prize but the forfeiture of my soul? But even my hatred could not save me from misery. Every moment I looked upon these followers, these renewed people, these believers—and their numbers were growing— the more wretched I became. But as much as I wanted to kill Lucifer that day, I also wanted to rip from every one of those believers the brilliant vestige of their new souls, knowing El had no such designs for us. For me.”
I searched for something to say as a beverage cart stopped in the aisle. Over the top of Lucian’s head, a flight attendant smiled and asked if she could get us something to drink.
HE WAS SILENT AFTER that, not looking at me. I gazed out the window, sipping tomato juice and wishing it were a Bloody Mary, his words still reverberating between us.
Shortly before we landed, he unbuckled his seat belt and got up, ostensibly to go to the lavatory, but he never came back. As the plane taxied to the terminal, I noted his shoes, still under the seat in front of us.
24
I lay on the beach beneath an umbrella, the skin of my chest and back too pink to withstand the sun. That had happened the first day despite 45 SPF lotion. Between the sunburn and the swelling in my legs from the flights, I bore a stunning resemblance to a hotdog. But none of this mattered; I was glad to be out of Boston, to feel the air on my arms and chest, to sit with my laptop at the breakfast buffet and read—even with pen in hand—by the side of the pool. I could get used to wearing swim trunks every day, eschewing underwear, ambling over to the grill for a burger whenever the mood struck, and watching the bikini-clad scenery.
I passed on the Coronas and Dos Equis, which was no hardship, never having been a beer drinker, but a shot of tequila had never sounded so good.
I didn’t need it. I had run up my credit card getting here, but it was worth every all-inclusive penny. The only thing missing was Lucian. It was almost as though he had truly disappeared on the plane that day, leaving only his shoes behind. I tried not to think about it; doing so sent my heart into strange stutters even when I was at rest. Obviously, I needed this reprieve.
