13: A Wish to Forget

An­oth­er two weeks passed quick­ly, bring­ing Christ­mas at hand. Brig­it had gone on about her busi­ness at the firm, reap­ing as many as she could be­tween the times the sun rose and the sun set. John ex­pressed his sur­prise that she had tak­en on such a heavy work load so quick­ly. Brig­it had on­ly shrugged and picked up an­oth­er pile of port­fo­lios be­fore walk­ing out.

Things at home were pro­gress­ing as well. Brig­it had watched as Mag­gie came in from her date that night, a slight flush present in her cheeks that Brig­it im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized. It could have been the wine they had en­joyed over din­ner, but Brig­it heard the voice in her head telling her firm­ly that she knew it was some­thing else. Lore­na had asked to see Mag­gie to the door, but Mag­gie had on­ly al­lowed the wom­an to kiss her on the side­walk out­side. Brig­it had felt the tini­est mea­sure of re­lief in that ac­tion. Per­haps Mag­gie was un­sure af­ter all…

Mag­gie had no­ticed the dead flow­ers in the bou­quet the next morn­ing. She had mere­ly shrugged and plucked the two stems out to throw them away. Brig­it’s ef­fort had gone un­rec­og­nized and now lay in the garbage. She de­cid­ed that she would have to work on an­oth­er way of let­ting Mag­gie know her feel­ings.

Two nights lat­er, Brig­it had come home to find Mag­gie cook­ing din­ner. The din­ing room ta­ble had been set for two and can­dles were lit. Soft jazz played through the speak­ers of the stereo in the of­fice. Mag­gie was dressed ca­su­al­ly, but not in her usu­al lounge pants and over­sized t-​shirt. She was en­ter­tain­ing and Brig­it knew ex­act­ly who was com­ing to din­ner.

Brig­it had stayed long enough to watch them eat and con­verse. Lore­na did most of the talk­ing de­scrib­ing her ex­ag­ger­at­ed ad­ven­tures in the Swiss Alps and the huge cor­po­ra­tions she had tak­en on in be­half of the un­der­dogs of so­ci­ety. Brig­it couldn’t help but roll her eyes when Lore­na made a joke that was meant to im­press Mag­gie. When Mag­gie stood to clear the ta­ble, Brig­it’s anger was ig­nit­ed by Lore­na’s sud­den move to catch Mag­gie by the hand.

“Dance with me,” she said as a slow bal­lad had be­gun to play on the sta­tion that Mag­gie had cho­sen.

“I don’t dance well,” Mag­gie an­swered, a quick blush ris­ing to her cheeks.

“It’s sim­ple. I’ll lead,” Lore­na said as she stood. She pulled Mag­gie to the cen­ter of the liv­ing room and slipped her arms se­duc­tive­ly about Mag­gie’s waist.

Brig­it felt her fin­ger­nails bit­ing in­to the cloth on the arm of the read­ing chair as she watched the scene un­fold­ing. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t watch where the scene would end. Quick­ly, she jumped up and stormed to the door. With her anger at its height, she yanked the door open and slammed it be­hind her.

Mag­gie and Lore­na both jumped at the sound of the slam­ming door. Mag­gie had felt the rush of wind that had swept past them be­fore the noise had come. The en­er­gy with­in that wind was fa­mil­iar. There had been a faint scent of French laven­der on it. She had smelled it be­fore, but she had thought it was just be­cause Brig­it had so re­cent­ly been present in their apart­ment; but now… af­ter so many weeks of Brig­it’s ab­sence… She be­gan to shake with the fear it had awak­ened deep in­side her.

“What the hell was that?” Lore­na asked. Even though there was a trem­ble in her voice, she was try­ing to ap­pear brave.

“Maybe it was a neigh­bor’s door,” Mag­gie sug­gest­ed even though she had heard it clear­ly as her own front door. She was try­ing to sup­press the shiv­er that had tak­en con­trol of her, but it re­fused to go away. Even the weight of Lore­na’s hand still on her waist gave her no re­as­sur­ance.

“Does that hap­pen of­ten? Your neigh­bors slam­ming their doors?” Lore­na asked.

“No,” Mag­gie said. Lore­na turned and looked at the shak­ing wom­an. A look of con­cern came in­to her eyes as she re­al­ized Mag­gie had turned death­ly pale.

“What’s wrong?” Lore­na asked, rais­ing her hands and cup­ping Mag­gie’s face.

“I don’t know,” Mag­gie of­fered.

“Are you fright­ened?” Lore­na asked in a purr, gen­tly stroking Mag­gie’s cheek with her thumb. Mag­gie tried to shake her head, but it bare­ly moved un­der Lore­na’s firm hold. “I could stay tonight, if you want,” Lore­na of­fered. Mag­gie tried to shake her head again, but Lore­na’s hold was not eas­ing up.

“That’s not re­al­ly nec­es­sary,” Mag­gie whis­pered. Lore­na low­ered her head and brushed her lips across Mag­gie’s soft­ly. Mag­gie felt her knees be­gin to gel, but she was sure it was more from the in­ci­dent that had just hap­pened and the know­ing that it was su­per­nat­ural than it was from Lore­na’s kiss.

“But I want to stay,” Lore­na whis­pered be­fore press­ing her lips against Mag­gie’s again. When they fi­nal­ly part­ed, Mag­gie could on­ly nod her head even though ev­ery in­stinct with­in her was yelling for her to do oth­er­wise. As Lore­na led her down the hall by the hand, Mag­gie couldn’t help but glance over her shoul­der and won­der…

Brig­it found John at the Bleeck­er Street Café. He was sit­ting at the counter con­vers­ing with Giuseppe qui­et­ly and seemed some­what sur­prised when Brig­it slid on­to the stool be­side him. The an­gry ex­pres­sion on her face told him the an­swer to the ques­tion be­fore he had even opened his mouth to ask it. Mag­gie had found some­one new. Brig­it was feel­ing be­trayed. In­stead of broach­ing that par­tic­ular top­ic for im­me­di­ate con­ver­sa­tion, John feigned ig­no­rance and ex­pressed his joy that she had shown up.

“I was just telling Giuseppe about a po­ten­tial new re­cruit. I found his file to­day. I think he would do well with the ‘Po­ten­tial Prob­lems’ de­part­ment,” John ex­plained as Giuseppe slid a cup of cof­fee in front of Brig­it. She ac­cept­ed it with a silent nod. The fact that she had nev­er heard Giuseppe ut­ter a word made her briefly won­der how John could car­ry on any­thing more than a one-​sid­ed con­ver­sa­tion. That thought, how­ev­er, was quick­ly burned by the bon­fire of her anger.

“That’s great,” she mum­bled in re­sponse to John’s rev­ela­tion.

“I think we’ll go to­geth­er to in­ter­view him,” John de­cid­ed be­fore pick­ing up his tea cup and sip­ping nois­ily. He was be­ing ob­nox­ious, Brig­it thought.

“I can’t wait,” she said.

Her mind was go­ing else­where. She was won­der­ing if she should have stayed and watched what she as­sumed would hap­pen. She won­dered if Mag­gie would al­low the oth­er wom­an to touch her like Brig­it used to touch her. The thought of it caused Brig­it’s fury to burn hot­ter. John had fall­en silent be­side her, star­ing at the op­po­site wall wait­ing for her speak again. Know­ing he was bait­ing her with his si­lence, she con­ced­ed by ask­ing: “How long does it take?”

“How long does what take, dar­ling?”

John turned and lev­eled his ice blue eyes on her. He could see the emo­tions run­ning wild­ly through her mind. Her face was as smooth as stone, but the en­er­gy flow­ing through her body was scream­ing it all. He knew ex­act­ly what she was ask­ing, but, he want­ed her to voice it out loud.

“To for­get – how long does it take to for­get what Life felt like?” she asked. She turned and met his icy gaze with a lev­el one of her own. John felt him­self stiff­en at the sight of the emo­tions churn­ing in the depths of her soul. He forced a gen­tle smile to his face and re­laxed.

“Oh – that,” he sighed. “Well, love, it de­pends on you. If you tru­ly want to for­get it, you will with time. How­ev­er, you run the risk of for­get­ting ev­ery­thing,” he warned gen­tly. He hoped she would catch the sub­tle­ty he was try­ing to in­voke em­pa­thet­ical­ly.

He had been there once him­self, ask­ing the same ques­tion of his own now-​re­tired-​men­tor. He could still hear the ice filled an­swer that had pierced him to the core and helped him make the de­ci­sion to try to re­mem­ber how Life had felt. He would re­mem­ber the good times and the bad sim­ply be­cause he didn’t want to be as cold blood­ed as Arax­ius Herodotus. John had walked away from that dis­cus­sion and con­scious­ly de­cid­ed to re­mem­ber ev­ery­thing. He could not fath­om for­get­ting the feel of his lover’s touch or the warmth of breath against his skin in the dark­ness. He nev­er want­ed to for­get the long warm kiss in the mid­dle of a cold Septem­ber rain­storm that had etched it­self in­to his mind as the ab­so­lute hap­pi­est mo­ment of his life.

He had the in­stinct now that Brig­it, de­spite her anger, would not want to for­get such sen­sa­tions from her own life ei­ther. Not re­al­ly. He had not met Mag­gie yet, but, John could feel the love Brig­it still car­ried for her. It was Brig­it’s cloak, her pro­tec­tion and courage. He had the sense that it had been that way dur­ing their mor­tal ex­is­tence to­geth­er. If she were to dis­card all of that just to sidestep the pain she would feel up­on bear­ing wit­ness to Mag­gie’s con­tin­ua­tion of life, Brig­it Mal­one would be left vul­ner­able. The soul she would be­come would be an emp­ty shell of the soul she was now. How could he make her un­der­stand that pain was part of the new ex­is­tence she had cho­sen to hon­or her promise to Mag­gie? How could he teach her to be tol­er­ant of Mag­gie’s pro­gres­sion through life?

Brig­it re­mained silent as John con­tin­ued to look at her. She knew he was read­ing her as eas­ily as he read one of their port­fo­lios. She didn’t care. At least some­one could see her.

“Don’t make the de­ci­sion light­ly, love,” he sug­gest­ed. “Take your time on this one, trust me.” Brig­it nod­ded in ac­knowl­edge­ment of his ad­vice be­fore ask­ing:

“How do you know?”

Her voice was soft and John re­al­ized that she was deep with­in her con­fu­sion at ev­ery­thing as a whole.

“Be­cause I’ve been where you are,” he an­swered.

“You weren’t al­ways a Reaper?” Brig­it asked. She slow­ly picked up her cof­fee and blew across the sur­face.

“I was mor­tal once. I didn’t choose this par­tic­ular oc­cu­pa­tion when I was alive, if that’s what you mean. No one grows up say­ing they want to be The Grim Reaper,” John laughed.

“I guess that would be kind of on the mor­bid side. Can you imag­ine how many moth­ers would put their child through a life time of ther­apy if the kid’s first words were ‘Grim Reaper’?” Brig­it smiled at her own joke. She was be­gin­ning to re­lax. John was glad.

“Or worse, ex­or­cism… the church’s busi­ness would be at an all time his­tor­ical high,” John con­tin­ued with the joke.

“So why did you take the job?” Brig­it asked.

“For love.”

“Oh,”

“You sound dis­ap­point­ed,” John chuck­led as he turned and reached for his tea again.

“Oh, no, I’m not. I just thought maybe you had a slight mor­bid streak. That’s all – what was her name?” Brig­it asked, reach­ing for her own cup.

“His name was Dil­lon.”