Behind him, music blared; the door opening. “Jake. Where you going, man?”
“Mai!” Jacob yelled.
She glanced back.
Saw him.
Started to run.
“Wait!” Jacob yelled, feet slipping drunkenly on gravel. The tread caught and he sprinted, Subach’s lumbering steps close on his heels. The big guy could move.
So could Mai. The distance between them rapidly stretched.
“Mai. It’s me, Ja...” — he was huffing — “Jacob. The — wait.”
“Wait!” Subach yelled.
The alley was roughly the length of a football field. Jacob put on the jets, and he seemed to be gaining on her, and for a moment he thought he might get to her, but they reached the mouth of the alley and Mai streaked into the street toward a vacant lot surrounded by chain-link and filled with dark weeds and he stumbled after without pausing for traffic and from his left came an onrushing air pressure and the heat of headlights and a gnashing aluminum grille and his collar tightened and he flew backward like a hooked vaudevillian so that the side of a van passed inches in front of him, close enough for him to count paint scratches.
He landed hard, on his tailbone, on the concrete.
The van fishtailed, coming to a halt thirty feet up the road.
Panting, Jacob rose to his elbows.
Mai had vanished.
Subach knelt by his side. “You okay?”
Jacob stared.
In front of him: the vacant lot.
To the right: a plumbing supplier.
To the left: an unmarked warehouse.
“Where’d she go?” Jacob said.
He tried to stand but Subach restrained him gently. “Buddy. You got to relax.”
The van gunned its engine and roared off, due south down La Cienega. Through the noxious orange of sodium vapor lamps, the weathered lettering was barely legible.
The Tower
Lying in a windowless chamber whose torchlight sustains an eternal dusk, Asham passes in and out of consciousness, fleetingly aware of a man’s presence at the foot of the bed, blinking to find him replaced by a boy, the child’s studious gaze identical to his father’s.
Veiled, unspeaking maidservants regularly appear to feed her, clean her, tend to her wounds. They stoke the fire and massage her feet. When she musters the strength to ask questions, they ignore her, leaving her alone and bedridden, too weak to stand, too weak to do anything but fix on a point in the air and will her broken body to mend faster.
To occupy her mind, she maps cracks in the clay walls, counts freckles on the backs of her hands. She raises her limbs off the bed, one at a time, each day a few more, a bit higher.
The maidservants bring heaping food, strange cooked grains and soured milks that make her gag. Knowing she must eat to heal, Asham forces them down without appetite. It takes considerable willpower to refuse the first dish that appeals to her: a roasted haunch, cut in thumb-thick slices, oozing juice, pink to the center.
“Take it away,” she says to the maidservant.
The girl stares blankly.
The aroma is making Asham’s mouth water.
She seizes a pillow and hurls it at the maidservant. “Leave.”
The girl hurries out, grease sloshing from the tray and splattering on the dirt.
If Asham had the strength, she would crawl over and lick it up. Instead she falls back, exhausted by her outburst, and drops into sleep.
A short while later, she feels the bed sag.
“I understand you’re doing better. Well enough to be difficult.”
Asham does not need to open her eyes to see the mocking smile on his face.
“Was something wrong with the mutton?” Cain asks.
“I don’t want it.”
“It’s delicious.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“There’s no shame in eating meat,” he says. “Everyone here does. It’s considered a great luxury, excellent for health.”
Asham doesn’t answer.
“I’ll bring you something else.”
“You mean you’ll have them bring it.”
“Tell me what you’d like.”
“Who are they?”
“My servants.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Everywhere. They’re wanderers, like me.”
“Killers,” she said. “Like you.”
He shrugs. “There’s more than one way to fall out of favor. You’d be amazed by how many, actually. Together, we’ve made a home for ourselves.”
“They refuse to talk to me.”
“I’ve instructed them not to bother you.”
“Does that include not answering my questions?”
“You need to rest,” he says. “It’s not good to overextend yourself.”
At last she opens her eyes. “The people in the city,” she says. “They serve you, as well?”
Cain bursts out laughing, the way he did when she was a child and said something stupid.
“What,” she says.
“No, the entire city doesn’t cater to me. Only those who choose to.”
“No one would willingly serve another.”
“Again — you’d be amazed. And I seem to recall our father being a big proponent of service.”
“To the Lord.”
“That’s different?”
“It absolutely is,” she says. “There is no law except that of Heaven.”
“You’ve become quite the zealot.”
“It’s not zealotry to do what’s right.”
“Is that why you’re here? To do what’s right?”
She does not reply.
“Well, whatever the reason,” he says, taking her cold hand, “I’m glad you’ve come.”
The next morning she wakes to find the boy, Enoch, crouched in a corner, his head tilted, his tongue extended in concentration.
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I was quiet.” He leaps up and begins to skip around the room, stopping to inspect minute variations in the walls. “You don’t eat mutton. Why not?”
Because your father wants me to.
“I don’t like it,” she says.
“What do you like to eat?”
“Fruit. Nuts. Whatever grows from the ground.”
“I like those, too.”
“We have something in common,” she says.
“You should see the market,” he says. “It’s full of growing things.”
“When I’m well enough, you can show it to me.”
“When will you be well enough?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know.”
He plops down on the floor, elbows on knees, chin on fists. “I’ll wait here.”
She smiles. “It might take a while.”
“Then I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be ready tomorrow, either.”
“Then I’ll come back the day after that.”
“You’re very persistent,” she says.
“What does that mean?”
“Ask your father.”
“I will,” he says. “He’ll know. He’s the wisest man in the valley. That’s why everyone loves him. When I grow up, I’m going to be a builder like him. I’m going to have a son and name a city for him. Would you like to see my toys?”
“Not right now,” she says, somehow fatigued by the thought of construction. “I think I need a nap. Hand me that blanket, please...? Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
True to his word, Enoch comes the next day, and every day thereafter. Affairs of state occupy Cain’s time, and weeks go by in which the boy is the only person Asham talks to. It’s less a conversation than an interrogation. What does she think about turtles? Has she ever seen a full moon? Does she know any good riddles? His chatter momentarily dispels the gloom; it distracts her from the pain of sitting up, or swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, or standing with quaking legs, supporting herself on the bedpost.