Juma Read online

  “Where are you going?” I asked, and then because I couldn’t help myself, “Are you mad because of my choice, Dutch? You of all people should understand, I have no choice!” I threw those words at his feet in desperation tinged with anger, knowing he’d tossed out something similar when explaining himself and his family and his decision to sacrifice himself and me at the altar of The Gate. It seemed quite fitting to hurl it back.

  He stopped and studied me for a moment, his eyes flashing something I almost fooled myself into believing was depth and sorrow but the hint of emotion disappeared so quickly I wondered whether it even existed or I’d simply wished it into being.

  “We all have choices, Juma, you made yours and this is me making mine.” And as he reached for my door I pushed myself into his space and touched him wrapped my fingers around his arm pressed my skin to his to make him stop and consider and just fucking breathe for a second.

  He flinched and pulled away as if my fingers burned as if they pained him as if our many moments of touching sucking fucking didn’t happen. “Don’t touch me, Juma.”

  And just like that we ripped at the seam.

  4: DUTCH

  I wear a pretty big sign

  across my chest

  on my forehead

  in my eyeballs

  * * *

  Do not trespass

  Do not touch

  * * *

  And I don’t think she gives a fuck

  * * *

  I told her she was ugly

  and she laughed

  I told her she was stupid

  and she quoted some random poetry

  that left my head spinning

  * * *

  I told her I was made of thorns and nettles

  and she put on some gloves

  I pushed her

  and she pushed me back

  * * *

  I disappeared and found countless others

  to sink myself into

  all the while

  thinking of her

  * * *

  She is loads of fuckery and trouble

  She is too much too fast

  * * *

  She is heat and touch and gentleness

  all things I cannot afford

  She is light and laughter

  and I am a black pit of poison

  * * *

  I told her this

  in an effort to save her

  and she laughed

  and said she was here to save me so bring it

  * * *

  I wear a pretty big sign

  across my chest

  on my forehead

  in my eyeballs

  * * *

  Do not trespass

  Do not touch

  * * *

  and I don’t think she gives a fuck

  But she better start

  5: DUTCH

  I stalked out of Juma’s elevator and strode through her lobby, needing some air, some relief from the bullshit.

  “Juma’s friend,” Oscar called to me in passing, a hint of laughter in his tone, an air of I’ve-seen-this-before that shot rage up my spine and stopped me in my tracks, “leaving in such a rush?” Which really wasn’t a question no matter how much the mountain of a doorman slash security guard slash Juma’s man Friday wanted it to seem. I knew he was making a statement, insinuating something about my worth and his lack of belief in it.

  I met his judgmental stare, knowing he thought I was a piece of shit, not deserving of Juma’s light and love, and he was right. I was a piece of shit.

  “Watch out for her,” I said, knowing he didn’t owe me a thing but he owed her and from the look on his face, would very likely watch out for her every waking second of his existence. “Don’t let her know you’re doing it, but make sure she’s okay. And if you see anyone you don’t recognize hanging around here, find me. I’ll kill them first and ask questions later.”

  It was true. No matter my decision, I would kill anyone who came for her. And with Juma reclamating her mother, despite the deal I’d made, motherfuckers would be coming. That was a guarantee—Khan Mathew would not tolerate any breach of an agreement he brokered. Juma would be at the top of his kill list, but to get to her, his fuckboys would have to get to me first.

  “And how the fuck am I going to do that?” the security guard shot back. “With my cape and x-ray vision?”

  I paused and he paused and we both stared at each other, locked in a battle of wills and wonder because I didn’t quite know what to make of him and he damn sure didn’t know what to make of me. Our one commonality was her. Juma. She was it.

  She was everything.

  I walked over to his security desk, glanced around for a pen, then wrote my number on a piece of the building’s stationery. Pushing the paper in his direction, I stepped away from the desk and made to leave. “I’ll answer that number any time, no matter what.”

  He studied the paper, then slipped it into his shirt pocket.

  “So that’s it, huh?” he asked. “All done with Juma? In and out?”

  His voice was calm but his eyes shone with rage.

  I didn’t give a fuck about a big man and his rage.

  “Something like that.”

  And I tossed up a wave before I pushed through the door, stopped on the landing to light a smoke, then hit the street to disappear into the night. I had shit to do and none of it involved Oscar the Security Guard and his bullshit righteous nonsense.

  Fuck him.

  I need a detail.

  Small.

  One or two of the best.

  And loyal.

  I typed a text to Avery Lu—one of my only friends, my well-dressed, sophisticated-as-fuck protector, and a fellow Keeper for The Gate—and hit send, then continued uptown and east, toward Avenue A and my pink-haired mad scientist, Frist. The woman with the stuff. The woman I turned to when everything went to shit.

  My crutch and my conscience, most important, my friend.

  I just fucking hoped she was home.

  Lingering on her corner as I finished my smoke, I leaned against a building and watched folks pass, noting every side glance and intake of breath, each curse and condemnation. The New York City streets were full of all kinds of devils and demons, this I knew, as I was one of them. I just wanted to make sure none of those black-hearted motherfuckers watched as I rang Frist’s buzzer. Frist only needed one black-hearted motherfucker in her life and she already had me.

  Certain the streets were clear, I worked my way toward her door, pressed 7B, and waited.

  “Say your piece.”

  “It’s me.” I leaned toward the decrepit box next to the entryway, eyeing the black gunk caked between the slats, wondering whether she could hear a word I said.

  “Fuck you,” Frist replied, then buzzed me inside.

  I made sure the door closed behind me, contemplated her bullshit excuse for an elevator, and took the stairs two at a time. When I reached her landing, I caught my breath and lit a smoke before I knocked on her door and waited. Seconds later the door cracked open and I was met with a shock of lavender.

  “I like what you’ve done with the hair,” I noted with a smirk.

  Frist opened the door wider, grabbed my hand, and pulled me inside. “Get inside, asshole.” She stuck her head outside and looked both ways down the hall before closing the door and locking her various bolts with a sigh. She pressed her forehead to the metal for a couple seconds, then slowly turned my way and smiled, the expression never reaching her eyes.

  Her eyes.

  Specifically, her right eye.

  “What the fuck, Frist?” I reached out and touched the violent black and blue bruise marring her beautiful face with its brutal anger.

  She winced and glanced to her right, just a flick of her eyes, blink and I would have missed it, but I didn’t. I saw that shit and I knew Frist like the back of my hand—she never flinched, never balked. Whoever did this to her was still in the room. With us. Without
thinking, I reached into the back of my waistband, whipped out the small blade, and flung it past her. Quick, short, and deadly, both the blade and the toss, as the room filled with a scream of pain and a river of curses. I moved toward the sound, grabbed the brown-haired, blue-eyed Keeper who had been hiding in the shadows of Frist’s laboratory, and pulled my dagger across his throat. He never had a chance.

  I tossed his body to the floor and moved back to Frist. She remained planted at her front door, watching me with a strange look in her eyes, one I had never before seen and wasn’t so sure I liked. I went to touch her cheek but before I could make contact she grabbed my wrist, the motion so fast it caught me off guard.

  “What the hell, Frist?”

  She turned my hand over and shot me a look.

  “I love you, Dutch, but my face is fucked up enough as it is. Don’t need you adding to it.” She then walked into her kitchen—stepping over the dead Keeper with such nonchalance an outsider would have thought his presence was an everyday occurrence—grabbed a towel, and flipped it to me.

  Rivulets of red streamed down my palm, soaked into my skin, and spread along the creases. Life lines and marriage lines and whatever other lines one finds on one’s palm seemed to scream out in anger, a bloody warning. I wiped away the foul remnants of the Keeper, working the towel into each line, erasing any evidence of the attack from my body, cementing it into the fabric of my mind.

  Frist.

  My Frist.

  Beaten, bloodied, and who knew what else.

  Khan’s fingerprints were all over this assault, as he very purposefully left Frist alive, but hurt and—I’m certain he hoped—forever scarred. He needed to make sure I knew he expected me to live up to my side of the deal we’d struck. That I would come back to India and him, and that I would sit upon the bloody throne of The Gate with a motherfucking smile on my face. Because the fact remained that Khan knew all avenues to reach me without touching a hair on my head, and he was going to pursue each and every one of them, beginning with Avery, then Juma, and now Frist. This was him, reminding me of all of that.

  Rage ricocheted through me, pinballing around my being, hitting every space possible, every organ, every cell, as I thought of the many and varied ways I would like to kill that motherfucker. And then I caught Frist’s eye as she watched me and I stopped thinking about myself and focused on her.

  “What did he do to you?” I asked as I stood before her, softening my countenance in the face of her trauma, almost cupping her delicate face and brushing my thumb over the nasty bruise as I studied her, crossing my arms instead.

  Frist rolled her eyes and asked, “Would it make you feel any better if I said he only landed one punch?”

  I chuckled but was hardly amused. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Frist rocked back on her heels and grimaced. “Oh yeah, let me see. A violent and crazed Keeper follows me home and pushes his way into my building, chases me up the staircase, then beats the shit out of me on the landing outside my door. And right then, I thought to myself, ‘shit, shoulda called Dutch.’ Fuck you, asshole. I can take care of myself.”

  “This is you taking care of yourself?” I asked.

  “I’m alive, thank you very much,” Frist growled and her eyes flashed with anger. “So yes, Mr. Mathew, this is me taking care of myself. A few bruises aren’t going to kill me. And had you not shown up when you did, he was about to get this in his face.”

  And here she whipped out a small vial hidden in the folds of her sleeve.

  The stuff.

  Her stuff.

  The shit that melted motherfuckers in the most gruesome way possible—from the inside out. And she was going to use it. Because she was a badass mad scientist with a temper to match.

  God, she was such a beast.

  “Don’t smile at me, asshole,” she hissed, but I could hear a hint of laughter in her voice. “You still suck and your timing is balls. He let me buzz you in to try and trap you—either get here before or after, not while shit is going down.”

  “I killed him, didn’t I?” I asserted in my defense.

  Frist smiled and it met her eyes and I relaxed a bit.

  “I wanted to fucking kill him.”

  And finally I laughed, pulling her into my arms and holding her close. We stayed that way, wrapped around each other, comforted by the familiarity of each other and the knowledge of time. I broke the moment first, pulling back slightly. She studied me with a curious gleam in her eyes.

  “Where’s the red dress woman?”

  I knew she meant Juma. I must have betrayed some conflicted emotion because Frist tensed in my arms, then cupped my face and made me look her in the eye.

  “If she fucked with you, I am going to kill her.”

  “It couldn’t be helped,” I replied cryptically as I untangled myself from all of Frist’s gangly limbs and poured myself a drink.

  “She’s dead,” Frist growled, pacing, seeming more caged animal than even the actual caged animals at the zoo. “I don’t care who the fuck she is.”

  “She has nine lives,” I stated matter-of-factly as I lit another smoke. “Couple that with her killer instinct and you’re going to be at it for a while.”

  Frist shot me a look filled with shock and incredulity before falling into a fit of laughter. She held her sides and shook with amusement as tears welled in her eyes and she found it difficult to speak.

  “Glad to be your chief source of levity this fine day,” I offered as I dropped to her couch, leaned my head back, and inhaled deeply on my smoke.

  “Only a motherfucker like you”—Frist pointed at me—“dark, twisted, deranged you, would fall in love with the very beast your kind hunts. My god, Dutch, must you always seek that which tortures and torments you most? Doesn’t it get boring being so black and doomed?”

  “Black and doomed is my middle name, lovely purple-haired one,” I replied as I turned Frist’s way and smiled. “I know nothing else.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Frist sat next to me and took my smoke, placed it between her full lips, and inhaled, watching me all the while from the corner of her eye. I pulled another from my pack, lit it, and leaned back heavily, the sirimiri of the afternoon mixing perfectly with my mood, dulling all that had been bright back to the lackluster of my fucked-up existence.

  “Let’s not waste words on me.” I turned to face Frist. “And instead discuss the dead Keeper on your kitchen floor. What happened? And no bullshit.”

  “No bullshit, Dutch.” She inhaled, exhaled. “I already told you what happened. Just like I said: he followed me home, chased me upstairs, beat me up, and was about to get his when you showed up to save the day.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Frist softened for real this time, her shoulders released some of their tension, and she let out a deep breath.

  “Thank you. I didn’t need you, but thank you anyway.”

  She then leaned over and pressed her very full lips to my cheek, and kissed me twice more before giving me my space because sure, I’d changed, but not really. I still didn’t want to be fucking touched by anyone but Juma.

  “How’d they find you?” I asked, pretending she hadn’t just kissed me and I hadn’t just almost-flinched.

  “How would I know?” she asked. I knew she was speaking rhetorically, but this was not the time for snark and fuckery.

  I leaned forward, pressed my elbows into my knees, and stared at the floor while I inhaled on my smoke and tried to make sense of the shit bumping around in my skull.

  Frist.

  That Keeper.

  The lingering smell of death.

  His fist crushing the paper-thin skin around her eye.

  Hair like dirt, eyes like the sky.

  And the liquid velvet of his blood.

  Spilled everywhere.

  “You would know because you are Frist and you miss nothing. So think back on it and consider every bastard who crossed your path or caught your eye or made a
shiver run up your spine. Then think about where you saw them, how often you saw them, felt them, heard them. Consider all of it, then consider it again, and only then tell me you didn’t know you were being watched. Or you didn’t sense something awry.”

  “Who the fuck uses the word ‘awry’ in everyday conversation?” Frist stubbed out her smoke in a coffee cup near her feet and ran her fingers through her hair, frustrated with my words but running over them in her mind. I could tell just by the way she chewed her lip. She was contemplating each step she had taken as of late, parsing every movement, analyzing every glimpse.

  “I mean, come on.” She leaned back, rolled her neck, and stared my way. “Maybe I knew something was up, but I sure as fuck didn’t think the goddamned Gate was coming for me. Mostly because you told me you would never let that happen.”

  I cringed and she smiled, pleased her words hit their mark. Amused as well.

  “Oh, Dutch.” She reached out and pushed me. “I’m fucking with you. Stop looking like the world is coming to an end because I got a little black and blue.”

  I started to say something and then stopped. I don’t know why, I just did, and instead let the ensuing silence of my non-response envelop us for a few seconds, surround us in its unease, then spit us out on the other side.

  “If it’s not ending”—I rubbed my hands over my face and through my hair, once twice three times—“then it’s damn near close.”

  I then proceeded to unload my shit at Frist’s feet. Everything. The horrors of my sixteen-year-old self witnessing all of Kajal’s deaths at the hands of my parents, the moment I saw Juma sitting in that restaurant wearing that red dress waiting for the date I couldn’t seem to make, the smell of death clinging to the walls of Kowdiar Palace, my childhood home and adult house of horrors, the yellow of Keeper James Sussex’s eyes the afternoon my father turned me over to his psychotic henchman, my first kiss under the banyan tree, wrapped around Kajal, awash in her magic, the thunk of every blow Khan landed on my body whenever the chance arose to strap me to that dining room table and do his thing, the curve of Juma’s smile when I touched the inside of her wrist, my very intimate knowledge of Death, my unholy deal with The Gate, Juma’s decision to love me despite the fact I sold her down the river and made promises I knew she could not keep, our mad crazy love for each other. And that moment.