"You seem different, Michael. Are you okay?"
"I've been thinking about the end. I don't think I'm really ready. I ..." His gaze flicked over to me, then out to the crowd. "After you left the church, I spent a lot time waiting for you to come back. It was the first extended period of time I spent here alone, just thinking – testing out my own feelings, my own motivations."
Before he could continue, Rebeckah entered the hall. The mood of the crowd shifted with her presence, like light coming into focus through a lens. Things began to happen. People wept more openly. As Rebeckah moved toward the doors, people touched her and held on to each other. They pressed closer, and Michael and I were swept into the center of bodies. I floated in a sea of embroidered yarmulkes and covered heads. I felt exposed and disrespectful.
Seeing us, someone handed Michael a skullcap and a scarf for me. He put the cap on deftly, as though he had done it many times before. I had expected him to look silly – the formality of the yarmulke clashing with the leather jacket and jearis – but he didn't. It transformed him into something even more beautiful than the Italian cop who disrupted my Saturday, what seemed so long ago. Before my eyes, Michael became a kind of Jewish prince. He was one of them, and I was suddenly the only outsider.
"Michael," I whispered, as we moved through the doors, "I'd like Daniel's Bible."
"Of course," he said. Reaching in his pocket, he handed it to me. "I'd forgotten all about it."
I nodded. The weight of the Bible in my hands wasn't nearly as substantial as I'd hoped. Prison issue, the book was small enough to fit in the back pocket of Michael's jeans. A greenish brown recycled plastic cover bent easily in my grip, and I tugged at its edges as we made our way into the theater proper with the others.
The Malachim had draped the room from floor to ceiling with protective material. A musty smell hung in the air, like the dust of an old library. Some raw glass was still visible, but the protection would be sufficient for a short ceremony. My fingers brushed along the fabric as we walked down the aisle. Soft, it felt almost like satin – smooth and cool.
Michael and I stood where directed. Even the seats had been draped with the armored material. I looked up at the stage, which had been left untouched and glittering. Its brightness was strangely compelling, perhaps because the dark cloth made the place seem smaller. The theater held us closely, like the walls of a womb.
Rebeckah came in carrying Torah scrolls. At least, I assumed it was Rebeckah by the way she walked. In full uniform, including the helmet, her features were obscured. I assumed she wore the helmet in order to keep her head covered; the uniform and a scarf would probably look odd.
All eyes followed her as she climbed the half-finished set to the second tier. There, she sat on a frozen chair in full view of the auditorium. She cradled the scrolls in her arms lovingly, her head bowed. A rabbi came in next. Suddenly people were sitting down; a beat behind, I joined them.
"Yisgadal vyiskadash shemey rabo," The Hebrew sounded like nonsense to my ears. Next to me, Michael followed along flawlessly. "Be'olmo di'vero chir'usey ..."
I let the sounds wash over me. I looked down at Daniel's Bible in my lap. My hands, in their usual way, smoothed and tugged at the book, as if of their own accord. The plastic frustrated me. Encasing a sacred text in the waste from a thoughtless generation offended my sensibilities. It was too close for comfort, reminding me of my own false faith.
I'd asked for the Bible with the hope of feeling less like a stranger, to find some comfort in what was supposed to be the center of my spiritual life. Looking at the book now, I knew I'd feel even less at ease in Eion's church ... my church. That an angel of God sat next to me did little to bolster my faith.
Michael's existence should be proof positive that God watched over us and that what many believed about the universe was true. It was not enough for me. I felt as though there was something missing, something deep inside me that remained empty.
Tears surprised me by splattering wetly against the Bible. Even my tears were a sham. There was no grief for Daniel in them. I cried for myself, for my own death. Tears I should have wept a year ago rolled down my face in an unstoppable tide.
A part of me died when the dark veil of excommunication fell, shroudlike, over my days. Yet, even before that, I was never whole. I forever sought to fill the void in my heart with action or distraction. First, by immersing myself in the LINK, almost to the point of addiction, and, then later, by throwing myself into my career. My life was the opposite of Michael's: only marking time and place, a heavy, slogging clay bereft of the lightness of spirit.
People were standing again, and I struggled to my feet. Daniel's Bible slipped out of my lap, but I caught it before it landed on the floor. I leaned heavily on the cloth-draped chair in front of me. Under my weight, the Bible bent to the contour of the seat.
Like the Bible, I lacked a hard back or something in me that would not bend under pressure. I lost Daniel the first time because I didn't have anything solid to hang on to – no faith, no trust. Instead, during the trial, I relied on the facts, and what I so nobly believed to be the truth. The truth, I was beginning to understand, was more than just the sum of the facts. If I'd had faith, I could have made the leap beyond the facts, to something solid, unchanging.
When I chose not to betray Michael and Jibril to the FBI, the LINK had miraculously reactivated. "By an act of faith, it is done." Too bad my act of faith had come too late for Daniel.
Michael tugged on my arm. I looked up from my reverie to see that I was the only one still standing. I quickly dropped into the seat. I considered LINKing into a translator so that I could better follow the service. My fingers touched the filament, but stopped. Like Michael, I rarely allowed myself the luxury of uninterrupted thought. I consciously resisted the urge to plug in and lose myself in the motions of someone else's ritual.
Instead, I flipped open the Bible, hoping to find something Daniel had marked as meaningful. Being a Red Letter version of the New Testament, all of the words of Jesus were highlighted in the text. Parchment-thin, the pages were made with low-grade recycled newsprint. I flipped randomly, hoping to find the notes Daniel had promised were inside. There was nothing except the printed word. I flipped more frantically, but still found nothing.
Rhythmical sounds of Hebrew drifted through the auditorium. When Daniel told me he had notes hidden in the Bible, I'd hoped for a journal of thoughts in the margins, or even cryptic, insane scrawl. There must be something I wasn't seeing. Then I noticed dog-ear folds marked certain pages. Maybe, given time and energy I could put together Daniel's puzzle.
"Faith," I whispered to myself. "Have faith."
The service had apparently ended, as people were standing up and quietly making their way out of the theater. I cradled the Bible in my arm. Even though I suspected it was useless, it was all I had left of Daniel. I followed the others numbly, letting the tide of people push me along. I wasn't even conscious of Michael following me until he took my hand.
"You okay?" he asked. "You look shell-shocked."
I gestured weakly with the Bible. "Do you believe in the idea of a holy madman?"
"Why?"
"Daniel's Bible. He seemed so lucid when we met, but ... just Iook at it, you'll see." I offered the Bible to Michael.
Pulling away from the shuffling crowd, we stopped near the holo-pictures again. Michael leafed through the pages. I scanned the room, as I waited for Michael's solemn agreement of Daniel's insanity.
"This is a great gift," Michael said, handing the Bible back to me.
"Yes, yes. But there were supposed to be notes in there from Daniel," I said, flipping the book open again to show Michael the empty pages.