Little Deadly Things (13 page)

Jim and Eva sat in silence for several minutes. “That writing assignment was weird,” Jim said, at last. Eva did not reply. She thought about her life in Sofia, and the last time she had seen Gergana. Eva had kept the scarab brooch she’d never had a chance to give her sister. No, Eva thought, I’m not going to spend much time in that class. She reached her hand up and tentatively, touched Jim’s shoulder. He turned to her and offered a neutral smile. Her hand fell back to the counter. Jim reached over and squeezed her hand.

“Friends,” he said, with a smile as genuine as Coombs, and squeezed her hand again.

The din was gone, the Table was silent. Space opened up at the Table to admit a new member. Jim stood at its head. He exerted a powerful influence, calming the others. In his presence, Eva felt a respite from the din.

Marta, Eva, and the Hidden Scholar Foundation car converged at the school’s front steps. Marta had a faraway look and Eva asked, “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Sort of,” Marta said.

“What happened?” asked Eva.

“I took the writing assignment seriously. It brought back some memories.”

Eva rolled her eyes. “So, what, you’re better than me?”

“Why would you say that, Eva?” Marta sounded surprised.

Eva mimicked her classmate, her voice taking on the singsong, dreamy quality of Marta’s reply,
“I took the writing assignment seriously.
Look, what nobody seems to understand is that I don’t need stories. I am science,” she said, a bit of her old accent spilling back into her speech, a clue to her sudden anger. Eva paused, “So, what did you write about so...seriously?”

Marta stared at Eva before she replied. “I wrote about my parents.” She hesitated a few moments and then added quietly, “My mom died a few months ago. She was sick and my dad didn’t take it well. I ended up spending the summer with my grandmother. Maybe I have seen a ghost.”

Her voice was both testy and sorrowful. Eva looked at her and then reached out and touched Marta’s forearm. Today, the gesture was one of solidarity. In time, the gesture would be as much a warning as a cobra’s hiss “Here’s the Foundation driver,” she said.

They got into the car. Marta smiled at the driver, leaned back in her seat, and closed her eyes. It had been a long day. Pain etched a grimace on her face. Eva looked out the window and saw Jim and Ringer.

“Hey, driver,” she said. “Pull over. I want to give our friend a ride.”

“Sorry, miss, I can only take the students from the Foundation.”

“Well, today you can make an exception.”

“Sorry, miss,” the driver repeated.

Eva threw her door open, forcing the car to stop.

“Miss, please close the door.”

Eva ignored the driver and called out to Jim. “Yo, Ecco. You want a ride? The driver says he would be delighted to give you a lift.” She drew out the word, looked at the driver, and arranged her mouth into the approximate shape of a smile. Her eyes were hard. She hopped into the front seat, startling the driver, and said, in a near whisper, “Listen. We owe this kid. Somebody tried to jump us this morning and he stopped them. So, just for today, you’re going to find a little different route home. Tell your boss there was a detour, something. Help me and one day I’ll help you.” Then she opened the front passenger door and leaned out again. “Otherwise I drop to the pavement and say that you took off while I was getting in the car.”

The driver frowned as if trying to decide which held more danger: her threat or her smile. He pulled over.

“Jim,” Eva called. “Get in. We’ll give you a ride.”

Jim and Ringer got in the car. The driver glared at Eva. She held his gaze until he looked away. Jim looked puzzled, then concerned. A flash lit Eva’s eyes. Then they turned opaque, and evicted any attempt to see into her soul. That territory was off-limits.

The riders sat without speaking. Eva was sphinx-like, wrapped in stony silence. The driver kept his eyes fixed ahead. Marta was reengaged in her reverie, eyes closed. Ringer sniffed, hunting for food, and then settled on Jim’s lap. She looked back and forth among the friends, lost in their own worlds.

Jim and Marta and Eva were inseparable during their freshman year at Los Pobladores. The next year Eva and Marta spent less time together, and Jim divided his time equally between his two friends. As a third year began, he spent more of his time with Marta.

Jim Ecco was as skittish as a wren the day that Marta kissed him. When people stood close to him he was anxious, and when Marta moved into his intimate space to embrace him, he was unsettled. His repertoire of responses to members of the two-legged set had been limited to fight, flight, or wary distance, and the movement from impersonal space into a conjoined embrace was a slow journey.

Jim knew that Marta was willing—her pupils widened slightly, she positioned herself to face him squarely, open and inviting. Her head tilted back a fraction, inviting contact. He thought,
It’s taken me two years to kiss her,
a moment he’d wanted since meeting her.

Truth be told, she kissed him.

They had met after school on a warm day in early spring. A nearby park offered a few acres of green grass and a hedge of jasmine bushes. The jasmine lent an intoxicating scent and privacy. They’d decided to work together on a homework assignment. Marta had brought a blanket and a small lunch. They’d arranged the blanket and Marta set out a variety of fruits and cheeses, a small loaf of sourdough bread and sparkling water. She’d packed small plates, indistinguishable from bone china, but unbreakable, and two glasses. The place settings were compressible nanoplastics, shape-shifting materials that could organize and reorganize at a molecular level. The glasses collapsed into discs the width of a drinking glass but as thin as a coaster. Gentle pressure on the circumference of the plates allowed them to collapse into equally small discs so that the table settings occupied less space in Marta’s bag than a pack of cards.

“You think of everything,” Jim said as he took in the small feast.

“I wanted us to have a nice time. Hunger is distracting, don’t you think?”

Her words were matter-of-fact, but he heard the warm harmonics of affection in her voice. He was alert, senses aroused. She spoke with a quiet, measured cadence, almost hypnotic, and Jim had to lean in to hear her. As he leaned in, Marta closed the distance between them, an inch, and her movement drew him closer still. Marta’s lips parted and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

Jim heard blood pound in his ears. His heart sped and every capillary in his body dilated. He felt a flash of warmth like a corona of radiant sunlight. The heat was real but it was all generated from within. Without thinking—finally, without thinking!—Jim closed the tiny gap between them and touched his lips to Marta’s.

At first he feared that he’d committed an offense. Perhaps she read his anxiety, for she placed one hand behind his head and held him to her lips. They kissed again. At that moment, Jim Ecco began his life’s longest journey, the eighteen-inch passage from his head to his heart.

Seconds or hours later—who could be certain?—Jim and Marta backed up just enough to see each other’s faces. Her usual look of curiosity was creased with amusement. “Nice,” was all she said, and then pulled him back and kissed him again, slowly. “Like this,” she breathed. Jim brushed the plates and food aside and sank to an elbow. She followed in his embrace. He held her in the crook of his arm and played with her hair, stroking and pulling it gently. His hand explored the terrain of her face and he thought he saw something new in her familiar features.

Jim started to speak but Marta placed a finger on his lips. She kissed him again and took his right hand and placed it on her breast. “I will not make love with you today,” she whispered. “But I will give myself to you soon. I promise this to you.”

He bowed his head in fealty. He removed his hand and kissed her at the soft indentation where her collarbones met. “Te
quiero,
Jim,” she breathed. I love you. She held his head against her breast.

Surely the infant Jim had laid his head on his mother’s breast. Surely she soothed and comforted him in a loving embrace. He would not have known how to be held and comforted without that experience. But whatever quotient of tenderness had been offered to the infant, he’d existed without it, and the sensation of intimacy with Marta was unfamiliar. They lay together on the blanket, unmoving save for fingers that caressed the outlines of each other’s forms. Marta traced his jawline and the soft skin of his neck and then rested her palms on his chest.

“Touch me again,” she urged and drew his hand up once more.

He kept her cradled in the crook of his left arm and ran his right hand over the contours of her body, exploring the flat of her stomach and the roll of her hip. She arched her back and pressed herself in closer as he ran his hand over the smooth curve of her buttocks. She breathed into his neck.

“Marta, I feel...funny. No, not funny, but, I don’t know...different. Is this what it feels like to be in love?”

She took his hand in hers, and placed both on the center of his chest.

“What does your heart say,
querido?”

“I don’t know. This is all new.”

“Your heart knows. Haven’t you wanted to kiss me all year? No. No words. Tell me with your heart.”

So he kissed her again, now at the corners of her mouth, on each lip and then openmouthed and urgent. His thoughts stilled, replaced by the need to possess and be possessed, to draw her in, to find a calm surcease of anger.

Four days later Marta fulfilled her promise. She gave herself, took his strength in exchange, and passed into womanhood. Jim discovered a still place within himself where turmoil paid obeisance to the gentle parts of his being.

There was no school and the house would be his for the day. He spent the morning cleaning his room, checking for dog hair, pacing and then cleaning again. Marta arrived. She wandered through Jim’s home, looking at the photos on the refrigerator, the art on the walls. Ringer kept to her side. When Marta sat at a dining-room chair, Ringer placed her head on the girl’s lap. Jim smiled and said, “She beat me to it.”

They laughed and stood and embraced and kissed. Marta laid her head on his chest and held him close to her. Together, they swayed to an inaudible rhythm.

“Would you like to make love to me?” she asked.

Jim said nothing. He took her hand and kissed each of her fingers and then led her to his room. They undressed each other in self-conscious wonderment, and handled each piece of clothing with the reverence of a pilgrim touching a holy relic. Jim sank to his knees before her and pressed his head to her stomach. He breathed in deeply, and then sank lower to kiss the gnarled joints of her left leg. She gasped and started to pull away but Jim held her fast, as she had held him four days earlier. He pressed his cheek to her calf and then kissed her feet. She allowed herself to sink onto his bed. She reached to pull back the sheets. They might as well have been cemented in place, they were tucked in so tightly, and they laughed as they struggled to free the linens.