“I hadn’t heard from your family. One of the nurses had to call me.”
“I just wanted to hide from everyone. No one should have to look at me.”
A paralyzing fear gripped him. He avoided meeting her eyes because every time he did, he became afraid. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her to be strong, that she was having a bad day; hope stuck in his throat. She didn’t have much longer—the disease consumed her so quickly, yet she stared at him as if he was supposed to have the answers.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
“I didn’t ask. Anything I want to know, I’ll find out soon enough. Oh, the way I must look. You can see my skull and bones. You look like you’re losing more weight, too.”
Samuel dropped his head. The Nkosi he knew faded in and out, already repeating her thoughts through the jumbled haze of her mind. The last thing he wanted was to talk about his own struggle with the virus. He eyed her long dull curls that puddled into her pillow.
“You think God abandoned us, don’t you?” Nkosi asked.
“Don’t you?”
“Hold my hand.”
Samuel wrapped his hand with hers. Her muscles tensed, and he knew she meant to pull him closer, so he leaned in.
“You have been God for me. You’ve wiped my tears and held my hand. Your presence...I feel Him through you. Don’t you see?”
“If I’m God, I’m doing a pretty lousy job of things.”
She coughed violently, all that remained of her barreling laugh, spittles of blood spraying her sheets. Not that he had anything to fear from them. “You’re doing better than you think.”
“I wish I had your faith.” He held her tighter.
“Mine? You’re funny. It’s been yours keeping me going all this time. But I’m so tired.” She folded into him like an exhausted dove. Still so beautiful, so loving, so trusting, his heart yearned toward her. She charged the very air around her, the air he breathed.
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it. I stare out the window and I want to see one more day. Keep looking out for your brother. He’d be lost without you.”
The words fell like loose dirt on a coffin. She closed her eyes, still smiling a bit. Her breath became shallower, settling into sleep.
12
Requiem, a hole in the wall night club, used to be a church. The refurbished sanctuary was now the main dance floor broken by rows of columns. Clusters of tables and chairs separated it from the lounge and bar area, the words “Entertainment one better than sterno enemas” painted on a nearby column. A dimly lit balcony ringed the main floor as huddles of shadows watched from above. Roadies scurried about the stage that had once supported a pulpit and choir loft, preparing for the band, Madonna’s Abortion, to play.
An overweight girl with a feather boa draped around her shoulders and her hair pulled up sat in a corner of the club. A crescent moon caught in a shower of stars advertised tarot readings. Her business cards read “The Witch Cottage.” The prospect intrigued Samson; he’d never gotten a tarot reading before. He sat down across from her, attempting to hide the condescending smirk etched on his face.
“How much?”
“Fifteen dollars. You can ask me as many questions as you like. Here, shuffle these cards.” She handed him a stack of well-worn, oversized cards. Samson shuffled them awkwardly then handed the deck back to her. She dealt them in front of him.
“How long will I be married?” he baited her. He wasn’t going to let this turn into one of those eerie moments. He suspected how this worked: the more he expressed on his face or in his voice, the more information she’d have for the con.
“You will end up alone,” she said as if she didn’t hear his question. Studying the cards with a brooding intensity, Samson wanted to lean over to see what she was reading. “If you did the right thing, which you won’t, things might work out. You’re being punished by the Divine. What you’ve put out is coming back to you.”
“Yeah? Well, fuck you too.” He threw a twenty dollar bill in the fortune teller’s face as he rose from the table.
Techno strains from the band drew him back to the main floor; the music was little more than violent whining, like rending metal to a beat. Maroon light bathed the stage and the fog machine worked overtime. Between the multiple strobes and psychedelic haze of smoke, the dancing figures were little more than shadowy faces crying in the night. Sticking to the periphery, he walked to the bar, discrete from the dance area in its own pocket universe. Candles created flickering pools of amber light from the lounge. Incense burned in scattered piles. Samson ordered a drink, but everything tasted gray.
No, tonight was about the hunt.
He turned his attention to the gyrating flesh. Reading people, women especially, was what he did. One woman strayed from the pack of her friends as if afraid to catch a case of popularity. She chewed on the tip of her right thumb, her hair pulled back in a low maintenance ponytail. Leather straps encased her small breasts. Boots came up to the knees of her lanky legs, a matching mini skirt barely covering her behind. Her face was androgynous, not pretty, though fascinating all the same, conspicuous by her paucity of makeup.
She lacked the smell of prey: too little of the neediness, the lack of self-esteem, the eagerness to please that Samson knew he could twist and pervert until she was happily signing her soul away for the self-validation of casual sex with one of the world’s most desirable men.
That was when he spied his true intended. She struck a pose of too-cool-to-dance, catching herself if her head bobbed to the music. Her tall frame possessed an awkward grace, her swaying suggested sexiness in its own way. She wore a blood red gown that flowed and swirled with her movements. Long ivory gloves, the sleeves slit up the middle, revealed lengthwise scars down her wrists. Her long black hair—too black, obviously dyed—draped down her alluring neck. Her skin chalked to a drained, grayish hue, bordered on whiteface. She met his lingering gaze.
She had probably spent two hours getting herself ready for the club, afraid to be seen without every hair intact, every visible patch of skin creamed and powdered to a ghostly white pallor. Afraid that others would see the missing parts of her if they weren’t covered in make-up, afraid that she was little more than a pretty thing others wanted to fuck. An Egyptian hieroglyph encircled her large eyes, giving them a vaguely Asian appearance. Radiating a special brand of vivaciousness, she would do. She sauntered over to him.
“Why do you keep staring at me?” she said with a deep, gravelly voice. A sexy rasp. Completely affected. Another layer of her mask.
“Because you’re beautiful and I want to make love to you.”
Her eyebrows rose sharply and a smile broke quickly onto her face, shattering her cool aloof exterior. “Damn! You don’t waste time with small talk do you?”
“Not when I find what I’m looking for, when I find someone worthy of what I have to offer.”
“And what is it you’re offering?”
“Freedom. I’m offering absolute freedom through total subservience.”
“Oh, you’re a dom then? I would have never guessed you were into all of that. You don’t dress the part,” she said as she stepped back to get a better view, taking in Samson’s Bruno Mali shoes, Hugo Boss jeans and Versace silk shirt.
“Why else would anyone come to a club like this?”
“Most people come because they have no idea what they want or what they are.”
Samson leaned over and breathed his next words directly into her ear. “Oh, I know exactly what I want and exactly what I am.” His deep, resonant voice vibrated against her earlobe as his lips brushed against her jaw line.
“And what’s that?”
