30

Below the words, an image resolved itself.

He pushed through the side door and she was right there, waiting for him, all her buttons now undone. Her mouth seeking his, she pressed into him, all over him. Prin shook his head away from hers and tried to get past her. He did not try as hard as he could have.

She took him by the hand and walked down the hall to a metal staircase leading to the roof. There was a low humming all around from the air conditioning units, and they could see the rooftops of other buildings in the complex, most of them dotted with men holding cigarettes and big guns. Two approached them right away but then nodded and left, grinning. One gave Prin a green-gloved thumbs-up.

He wanted to kiss her again. No, he wanted to be kissed by her again. No, he wanted to kiss her again. Because, thank God for prostate cancer, what did it matter? Beyond the brain spark at the thought of what she had shown him, what she was offering him, what she was giving him, after all these years, he felt nothing. He could feel nothing. Head, heart, hips: Nothing. At least, he felt nothing in his head and hips.

Technically, this could only lead to nothing.

So he kissed her.

She pressed close and moved him with everything she had. Nothing. She ran her hand down his chest, hooked one of her thighs between his legs, and pressed and rubbed. Now her hand pressed down against his hip bone and slid across the front of his pants and searched and searched and stopped. Dropped. She pushed him away and walked to a further, darker part of the roof. Prin followed.

“You’re terrible,” Wende said.

“What? Why?” Prin said.

“You’re terrible. You’re a fucking bad person. The last few minutes have made it really, really clear that you’re not interested in me, at least not like you used to be. You’re only doing this to prove it,” Wende said.

“Wait. You think that because I didn’t get an, I don’t have an … that that means something?” Prin asked.

“For people like us, who live so much in our heads, that’s the kind of incontrovertible truth we need, yes. I bet those moron security guards got hard just watching,” Wende said.

“Just from seeing you,” Prin said.

She put her hands on him again.

“Wende, stop. This isn’t going to work. I’m sorry to have to explain this but—”

But what? Why did Prin have to explain this? Maybe she didn’t know about the cancer. Molly had told her about something else, in the kitchen. What? It didn’t matter. He was invincibly impotent. She was invincibly ignorant. Why not keep things that way?

“But what?” she asked.

“But nothing, I guess. Actually, I’m the one who has questions. Never mind my kissing you back and coming out here. That’s something I’m going to have to deal with myself now. I’m a married man. I’m a married man. I’m a—”

“Say it three times and it’ll feel true?” she asked.

“Why have you been trying to do this? After all these years, and after the way we ended things, the way you ended things, and with your fancy life now, I’m supposed to believe that you still have feelings for me? Really? I don’t. I don’t believe that. So what is it? What’s the truth? Are you trying to entrap me? Does this have to do with The Nephew?” Prin said.

“Ha. As if I’d need to do that. As if you were really that crucial to what’s going on, Prin. It’s kind of cute, actually. The Nephew is here in Dragomans with us because we’re combining the plans,” Wende said.

“Meaning?” he asked.

“Meaning, UFU is going to provide diplomas to Dragomans students in Eldercare Studies. The students will study here and then come to Toronto for internships at the condominium The Nephew is going to build on your campus. Everyone wins,” Wende said.

“And how long has this been the plan? Wait, it’s been the plan from the beginning, hasn’t it! That’s why that video we show at the condo lecture has all the young Arab people smiling in the background. Right?” Prin said.

“Does it really matter? You’re still going to have a job, and you’re going to help some Middle Eastern orphans get educations and jobs in Canada. Do you really care more about that than me?” Wende said.

“Yes! Of course I do!” he said.

“Well, fine. Fuck you, too. And believe me, there’s no entrapment going on here. I’ve been trying to figure something out for a long time, and it’s not about you, and it’s not about us,” Wende said.

“Oh, let me guess … it’s about you? That Wende the ice queen bitch-goddess of the wordplay universe can have any man she wants, even the happily married Catholic professor she once dated and cheated on?” Prin said.

He was surprised at how angry it came out. It shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have done any of this. What was Prin doing here, all this nothing, when the everything that was his life was somewhere else, waiting for him, smiling?

God had said Go. He’d come. But for this?

“You don’t get it, Prin. You never got it,” Wende said.

“Please, enlighten me. Actually, don’t. I’m going to bed. I’ll teach the seminar in the morning and then I’m going home. I’ll discuss this with people at the university, and also, yes, I’m going to tell Molly about all of this, all of it. And it’s going to be awful—you know why? Because what just got wrecked, with you, by you, is real,” Prin said.

“Wait, please, just wait. That’s it. That’s what you don’t get,” Wende said.

He should have turned and gone. But also, he should have never come up to the roof, gone to the stairs, followed her out of the party, gone with her to the party, left Molly and the girls behind. He should never have come to Dragomans. But God had said Go. He had. He could not deny that any more than he could deny what he’d just done with Wende, what he’d failed to do for Molly. But really, Lord, for this? Also, he should have deleted the picture Wende sent him. But he forgot.

“You know I’m sort of Jewish, right?” Wende said.

“Okay,” Prin said.

“So once, when I was a little girl—”

“Seriously? It’s going to be one of those?” Prin asked.

“I still remember you telling me about playing peekaboo with candles in church to prove God existed. There’s also a passage from Infinite Jest I could quote, something about using tennis to prove the existence or non-existence of God. Would that be more acceptable?” Wende asked.

“Just tell the childhood story,” Prin said.

“So I never have before. Do you understand? I never have, to anyone,” Wende said.

“Okay,” Prin said.

“We were driving west one summer. We had a station wagon. My sister and I were allowed to sleep in the big, boxy trunk. Usually, we fought. She was older. I was smarter. I was prettier. I make more money. Way more money. But anyway, we didn’t fight when we camped out in the back of the station wagon. We arranged our heads side by side so that we could see the stars while my father drove.

“I remember hearing my mother complain when my father bought coffee and said no to a motel for the night. But we loved it. We got set up all nice and cozy in our sleeping bags and ignored the motor oil and the little red jerrycan smells. We just watched and watched, and it was all disappearing road and the black shapes of tall trees and millions of stars passing through the rear window. Rebekah had her head beside mine. She told me we should pretend we were lying on the backs of carousel horses that had broken free and were flying to the moon. She was my older sister. She was trying to be nice. But even then, and I was probably ten years old, it sounded so childish. I said okay but I wasn’t lying on any flying carousel horse. I was thinking about when we would go to my grandparents’ house in Newark for Passover. They always recited this really long kind of story and prayer at the same time about the history of the Jewish people and I remember this one time—”

“The Haggadah,” Prin said.

“Yes, you’re more Catholic and more Jewish than I am, congratulations. Can I continue?”

“Go on,” Prin said.

It had been a clue on Jeopardy, three rejected-article submissions ago. Molly and the girls. Why was he listening to this unbuttoned woman instead of calling home? Because he couldn’t call home. He’d have to tell, or not tell, and he couldn’t. Not yet.

“So, God told Abraham: I will make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky. And this one time my grandfather looked over at me and nodded and everyone was looking at me and I could tell I was supposed to say thank you or wow or something. But I didn’t. Then my sister leaned over and says ‘We’re the stars in the sky,’ and I thought, no we’re not. We’re some people sitting around a dining-room table in New Jersey with a lot of candles and it’s hot and I’m wearing the crinkly dress I hate and the barrettes in my hair are too tight and I can’t eat the bread yet. I looked at my mom and dad and sister and grandparents all looking at me and I thought: How are we stars? How are we anything except a bunch of “me”s? And then it all went away, just like that, Prin.”

“What went away?” Prin asked.

“I didn’t believe in any of it. In God. The worst was that I didn’t even know I didn’t believe until that dinner. But whatever, I was a kid, I was hungry and hated my hair and I didn’t think much more about it until the next summer, when we were lying there in the trunk of the car and looking up at the sky, at all those stars. They were bright and pretty and I tried to feel something about them, about God and Abraham and me and the rest of us, but they were just things hanging in the air. And we’re just things on the ground. And thinking that made me feel very lonely. So I said to my sister, maybe hoping she’d convince me otherwise, ‘You don’t really think that’s us, do you? Like grandpa says God says?’

“Rebekah said: ‘Stop it, Wende, or I’ll tell mom you’re asking weird questions. And I bet she’ll tell grandpa. You need to go to sleep now.’

“I waited for her to answer me or tell on me but she just went to sleep.

“And I was so, so alone, Prin, in the back of the car, looking up as my dad drove and drove. I don’t know how long this went on for, only that I kept telling myself this is it, this is what it’s like.”

“What’s like?” Prin asked.

“To be us. To be me,” Wende said.

“Did it make you want to scream?” Prin asked.

“Why would it?” Wende asked.

“When I was a kid, I once saw a man screaming and screaming and I thought it was because he thought there was nothing out there,” Prin said.

He hadn’t even told Molly about the man in the hospital parking lot. He had to get away from this.

“So are you saying when you were a kid, you were like me? We—”

“No. I am not like you.”

Wende said nothing. She looked away. Then she looked back. Prin worried she was going to put her hands on him again but that was wrong. That wasn’t what was on her face. She had taken and tried to take more and yes, he had let her try and still she wanted more from him.

“You’re waiting for me to be, what, moved by that story, Wende? Impressed that you were once the youngest atheist in America? Or maybe you want me to feel sorry for you, because apparently you’ve never had what you think I’ve always had?” Prin said.

“There it is again! Like when you said something about that screaming man. Your voice was different. Are you saying you don’t?” Wende asked.

She looked, for a moment, hopeful. Not just bitten and sad but also just a little hopeful.

“No, Wende. I’m saying it’s kind of sad and obvious that you’re trying, and I guess you’ve somewhat succeeded, not in bringing me to disbelief with a story of how you spent your summer vacation losing God, but in getting me to cheat on my wife, because, what? Because somehow this, that, proves there’s no God? Is that it, really? Is that all, really?” Prin said.

“Well, if you consider the implications of a religious believer’s decision-making—”

“Spare me all the clean, logical little steps in between, which are really just a way to cover your muddy tracks. Enough of this. Let’s return, please, to why we’re really here in Dragomans. Or is all of this, the work here with UFU and Rae and The Nephew: it wasn’t just so you could be proven right about, what, the inconsistencies of your Catholic ex-boyfriend’s life? Seriously? All that, all this, just to figure out what everyone else already knows? Please tell me that’s not the case. Because otherwise you’re trying really hard, Wende, and not for very much,” Prin said.

“To you not very much. To me, a lot. Obviously, with this job, with this brain, this body, I can enjoy. And I do. I do. I have, for the years since we were together. And I will, for a long time. But when I saw you at that meeting, and then visited your house and saw what you have, all that you have, which is so different than what I have or what I want, I just needed to know,” Wende said.

“What?” Prin asked.

“Well, if we can both look up, right now, and one of us sees nothing and the other one sees all of Abraham’s descendants, and so I live my way and you live your way, as we have for years, centuries, longer even, does it make a difference in the end? Or are we really just pieces of wired meat, ugly, pretty, fat, thin, whatever, and it just takes the right kind of charge to prove it? I think I proved it,” Wende said.

“No. Because of what happens next, for you, and what happens next, for me. You’ve concluded an experiment. I’ve broken a bond. But actually, I do think you’re right, Wende. We’re the same, all of us; you and me as well. But never mind looking up, try looking inside for a moment and tell me what you see, and how that makes you feel. Keep telling yourself it’s just a lump of meat sending error messages up and down your circuits. All of this, all these years, you’re trying and trying and trying, Wende,” Prin said.

“Trying to do what? Answer my question about whether God exists or not?” she asked.

“No. Trying to answer God’s question to you, to all of us, each of us, all the time,” Prin said.

“You really think it’s that simple?” she asked.

“No. But it’s there. The question,” Prin said.

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous you are?” Wende asked.

“Yeah, that’s about it. I think, at some point, we all hear God asking us that question,” Prin said.

She left him on the roof. He looked up and around at the Dragomans sky, which, past the white smoke of the various security lights and spotlights, and past the bright green auras floating above all the electric mosque signs, was black and star-filled. Mountain ranges blocked in the horizon, here and there. Which one was it where something, someone involved with the crucifixion had gone? Could he still visit before they left?

Not that it mattered. Visiting or not wouldn’t change what Prin believed, what he saw. Because he looked up and around and he still saw darkness shot through with light, true light. Flickering here and there, yes, like the tops of candles hanging down above them, sending down tongues of fire.

Yes, he also had had ridiculous, little-kid ideas about God. And ridiculous little worries, too. But why had his ideas and worries brought him to fullness, and Wende’s, to nothing? He could not know the reason why.

And surely this wasn’t why God had told him to come to Dragomans. What kind of God would do that? No God.

Just say something—now!

Nothing.

Wende.

Molly.

The girls.

Status naturae lapsae simul ac redemptae: it was fine and well for the convent girls of old Ceylon and for the rest of us. It’s always Easter Sunday somewhere. But what Prin also knew, damn but he knew it to his bones, was this: off in the corner of the far heavens hanging above Dragomans, one of those flickering little lights now looked a little smudged.