The Others by Sarah Blau (best ereader for academics TXT) 📗

second hand keeps spinning at full tilt, the tiny scalpel trapped between the two knives. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

“I think you know why,” he says very quietly.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

He’s right, of course. In a way, I knew from the very first moment. Turns out I knew a lot of things. Good witches never lose their powers; they just decide sometimes that they’re better off not knowing; they know that in certain cases, living in denial is better than the alternative.

“How long were you together, you and Dina?” I ask, feeling my lungs slowly fill with water. “How long?”

While waiting for an answer, I remember how in every interview, Dina always took pride in the fact that “when it comes to men, I have a strict, casual, short-and-sweet policy,” and I know that if it turns out that he, of all people, was the one who got her to break that policy, it’ll hurt.

“Only a few months,” he says. But it still hurts, because I hear that naked pining in his voice, that note that sounded in our very first meeting, when he told me, “my girlfriend was your age,” and even back then, even back then!, I detected a distant, dim echo coming off his words, but I chose not to listen, and it may have even made me want to get closer. And there were also those little moments when I could feel his admiration – excessive, in my opinion – for her, and when I felt the tiny pang of jealousy, I convinced myself it was just my regular Dina envy, but deep down I knew something else lay there, deeper and darker. The Others will always recognize each other. And as with the feeling of lurking danger, this too made me want to get closer to him.

Didn’t I already tell you you’re a stupid baby? Dina’s voice whispers in my ear again, but I’m not listening to her, I know she’s wrong. I was never stupid, I just chose not to be smart, and while some choices are irreversible, this one I can change in a wink.

“You were the father of her baby?”

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

His eyes fill with pain.

No tot, no tot.

“No chance,” he says, “she broke up with me more than a year ago.”

Of course she’s the one who broke it off; Dina isn’t someone who gets dumped, Dina isn’t someone who gets ghosted after sex. Right now Dina is someone who’s dead, so you can ease off a little.

“So who was the father?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“And who’s the killer?”

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

“Don’t know that either.”

But I do. And I know it’s not you, it could never have been you: because it’s a few sizes too big on you, because you’re just a little boy who happened to stumble into a grown-up’s world, because I find it ridiculous to even think Dina was into you, and that you yourself were? Because even this conversation, which should be dripping with drama, is plain boring. Because you’re boring, sitting here, a little boy in a wife beater, an empty shell of self-importance.

“So you have no idea who the father could be?”

“I think she went to a sperm bank. And I’m telling you, sometimes the sperm bank is probably best for everyone.”

A small, bitter smile appears on his face, and his hand reaches for his tattoo. “You know Dina was the one who suggested I get this tattoo? She knew the story about my dad.”

I look at him as he launches into a long monologue about an emotionally absent father and a hard-knock life, and I wonder why he’s telling me all this. Why now, when it’s all over? He’s sitting in front of me, going on and on, a diatribe full of rage and accusations against his father, with a passion that’s usually reserved for the early days of a relationship, especially if he’s the younger partner and you’re there to play “understanding adult,” even if we never played that game, thank God, and he’s still holding forth, and I can’t help but think how it always goes back to the starting point, the scene of the crime, the source of the genes, to what will be passed on from generation to generation; what is crooked can never be straightened. Never!

“You know that tattoo of yours is a commonly misconstrued verse,” I cut him off in the middle of his sob story. “That sentence actually ends with a question mark. It’s ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?’ The children are not supposed to pay for the sins of their fathers.” Or mothers.

“I know, Dina explained it to me,” he says, again with that yearning in his voice, “she was the smartest person I knew.”

I look at him and wonder whether I’ll ever stop feeling that prick of jealousy whenever someone praises her, and realize it’s probably just a matter of time. Tick-tock, sometimes it can actually work in your favour.

“You see, my father is a sorry excuse for a human being, and this tattoo makes sure I never forget that.” He strokes his arm slowly, with lustful rapacity. It’s a spine-chilling gesture.

“Fortunately, my uncle was there to save me,” he adds.

“The precinct commander?”

“Yeah, I owe him everything.”

“And what will the illustrious commander say when he hears about what you did to me?”

“What did I do to you?” He’s not playing coy, he genuinely thinks he did nothing wrong and I’m just being dramatic. I feel like knocking him off his armchair and kicking him so hard he’ll need that back brace again.

“You tricked me! You lied!” You had sex with me, you left!

“Oh, come on, Sheila, you’re a smart person.” I keep myself from asking if I’m “Dina smart,” and he goes on, “She talked about you a lot, Dina, and at first I thought there was a chance you did it. Although I have to say, the moment you opened the door, I knew it wasn’t you.”

He says this