The Inner Circle (Man of Wax Trilogy) Read online

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay, I sleep all night and I work all day.”

  The Kid stopped there and waited, his cheeks burning, looking around the room.

  We all stared back at him.

  He cleared his throat again, started to sing once more, this time with a louder bass.

  “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay, I sleep all night and I work all day.”

  Then he paused again and waited, but he didn’t have to wait long.

  It was Ronny who started the chorus, Ronny who, in a distant and low voice, echoed that first line.

  “He’s a lumberjack and he’s okay, he sleeps all night and he works all day.”

  “There we go,” the Kid said, nodding and smiling. “That’s more like it.”

  He continued the song—it was “The Lumberjack Song” from Monty Python’s Flying Circus—stopping where he was supposed to stop, waiting for Ronny and everyone else to start in with the chorus. And it was pretty much everyone else.

  Only I didn’t join in, sitting slumped on the couch, my arm propped up on the end, holding my head as I stared past the Kid at the dancing flames.

  Maya sat beside me, and as she sang she would look at me, sometimes place a hand on my thigh, give a slight squeeze, as if to ask if I was okay.

  I never acknowledged her. I just listened as everyone else joined in with the Kid, singing the same song over and over, watching the flames but also watching the scene of Carver’s death, up there on the third floor of the Beachside Hotel, pulling him down the hallway toward the elevators while Carver spat up blood.

  At one point—when they had started the song for the third or fourth time, everyone really into it now, all of them clapping—I got up and left the living room, walking through the kitchen and out the back door.

  I wasn’t angry. Not at the Kid or anybody else. The Kid was more shook up about this than anyone. His whole singing, his whole trying to get everyone involved, was to release the tension. It was to cheer everyone up.

  I sat on the swing, the place I’d sat with Graham earlier today, the place I had sat with Carver many times in the past. I stared down the hillside, out at the trees, out at the distant peaks.

  The sun had set hours ago, leaving a clear night sky, the stars shimmering from their places in the void. It made me think about my daughter, about what I’d said would be the first thing I’d tell her when I found her again. About coming outside, staring up at the sky, asking aloud whether the sheep had eaten the flower or not.

  I had stopped doing that over a year ago. Even before Christian Kane came on the radar. The stars had always been quiet to me, and I was pretty certain they would forever remain that way.

  Maya came outside a few minutes later. She shut the door quietly behind her. She asked, “Can I sit with you?”

  Staring out at the dark horizon, I said, “You know you can.”

  She sat down beside me, leaving a couple inches between us.

  She didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. We just sat there in silence, listening to the noises of the night, to the insects and a lone owl hooting somewhere in the trees. Behind us, inside the house, distant voices continued, still singing along with the Kid.

  Eventually Maya spoke.

  “You’ve been distant.”

  “What do you expect?”

  “It hasn’t just been recently. It’s been the past couple of months.”

  I said nothing and continued staring out at dark trees, listening to the owl.

  Maya placed a hand on my thigh and said, her voice fragile and soft, “I do love you, you know. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anybody.”

  Maya Smith was twenty-six, eight years younger than me. She was dark-skinned, had dark eyes, had long jet-black hair. She had been beautiful once, back when life was kinder. Now her face was worn and drawn, her body thin from her disease. Yet despite this, there were times when she smiled that you could see the beauty that once resided in her face—a beauty that continued to reside in her heart and soul.

  She was Native American, though she did not know from what tribe her people had originated. She was born on an Indian reservation in Washington State—this she knew for a fact—but she never knew which reservation that had been. Spokane, Colville, Quinault, Umatilla, Yakama, Makah—it could have been any one of them, it could have been none. Her mother never told her, having taken her away right after she was born to live in Seattle. There her mother hooked up with a white man twenty years her senior who promised to provide and take care of Maya and her mother.

  That was how Maya spent her childhood, living in a white man’s house (a man whose last name was Smith, which she ended up taking as her own), going to a white man’s school, learning the white man’s ways. Maya knew she was different but she didn’t know why, and it didn’t help that when she got into middle school the kids started teasing her. More than once she would hear hiya-ya-ya hiya-ya-ya in the hallways, always whispered behind her back, and when she turned around the offending parties would stop, already moving away, like they had never uttered a sound.

  When she was sixteen, she had had enough of living in a white man’s world. She was Indian by blood and she wanted to find out where she had come from, the culture, the people that she could rightly call her own. So she ran away, never to look back, never to speak to her mother or her white father ever again.

  “Ben?” Maya said. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah. I heard you.”

  “Well? Don’t you love me too?”

  Maya didn’t get very far. Not for a sixteen-year-old girl without any money, any transportation, any clue of where to go next. So she hitchhiked.

  She knew the dangers in this. She even carried a pocketknife, in case any driver ever tried to take advantage of her. For the most part, though, not many people picked her up. The few that did told her she should know better than to hitchhike. It was a tiring experience, and she found herself walking most of the time.

  She went from reservation to reservation, asking about her mother, trying to find any kind of family. She barely got any answers, only offers for her to stay with them, to not travel by herself. Maya would have none of it.

  Eventually she ran out of what little money she had. She couldn’t afford any food. She couldn’t afford any shelter. She knew she could return home, but she pushed the idea far from her mind. So she began living on the streets. Begging for and stealing what little she could get. She hooked up with a group of homeless girls her own age. They didn’t treat her differently because she was Indian. They treated her as an equal. They even helped her learn how to survive on the streets. How to avoid the police. How to steal worthwhile food and clothing. All of them sold their bodies from time to time. It was just something you did on the street. Maya refused to do this. She knew she was better than that. But after a while the girls started distancing themselves from her. No longer did they treat her as an equal, but as someone who thought she was better than them. This was the very last thing Maya wanted—they were her only friends in the world—so she agreed. The girls took her to their pimp.

  He was a forty-year-old black drug dealer. When he met Maya for the first time, he smiled widely—his teeth capped in gold—and said he was going to have fun with her.

  He broke her in that night. It was what he did with all the girls, to see just how valuable she was, how much he thought she could charge. She didn’t want to, but she cried the entire time. This turned the pimp on even more. When he was done, he asked her what her Indian name was. Maya told him she didn’t have one. He said that wouldn’t do, she needed an Indian name, and called her Suntaker. Because, he said, her face was so pretty it took away the brightness of the sun. Then he fucked her again.

  Now, less than ten years later, a completely different Maya sat on the swing beside me, waiting for my answer.

  “Well?” she said again, her voice still soft.

  I closed my eyes. Thought briefly of my wife, of my daughter, both whom I knew were long gone,
whom I would never see again.

  I opened my eyes and tilted my head in her direction. Stared at her worn but beautiful face in the dark.

  “Of course I do,” I whispered.

  She took her hand resting on my thigh, placed it against my stubble-haired cheek. “Then why won’t you let me in?”

  For close to six years Maya lived her life as a prostitute. When the pimp that broke her in got killed in a drive-by, she ended up with a different pimp, one that didn’t treat her much better. This pimp got her hooked on drugs, so much so that she tried every form of narcotic there was.

  Out of all the drugs she took, she found acid to be her favorite. One time, after dropping, she had seen all these things floating in the air. Very small things, like bugs, flying about here and there. Some were black, some were gray, but others were a beautiful iridescent. They were close to her and she tried reaching for them but couldn’t feel them. She said, “Wow,” drawing the single syllable out, and as she spoke what looked like a rainbow-colored butterfly fluttered from her mouth.

  It was then that she understood what these flying things were. Not bugs, not butterflies per se—though that was what they looked like, all of them floating about—but words. And not just her words, but everyone’s words, everyone in the history of the world.

  Every word spoken became a butterfly. The color of those butterflies depended on what kind of words they were. If they were good words—wholesome words, words that expressed love and gratitude—they were rainbow-colored. If they were ugly words—hateful and hurtful words—they were black.

  Most words, she found in the few hours during her trip, were gray. Words that were neither good nor bad. But between the two, the good and the bad, she found that there were many more black words. So much so that the rainbow-colored butterflies were so few they almost got sucked up by the rest of the black and gray butterflies.

  She never saw those butterflies again. No matter how much acid she took, how many other drugs, she never experienced the same thing.

  But it stayed with her. Even when she wasn’t tripping, she would sometimes find herself squinting her eyes to try to see the butterflies. Mostly she couldn’t, but there were a few times when she claimed that she could. That if you looked closely enough, if you knew what you were looking for, you could see the words of the world, all the different words spoken throughout the history of time, just floating about.

  I closed my eyes again. I touched her hand touching my face. Held it there for a moment, then pulled her hand away.

  I said, “Do you want to know the truth?”

  “Not if it’s going to hurt me.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at her, waiting.

  “Of course I want to know the truth, Ben. What is it?”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready yet.”

  “Do you ever think you will?”

  I looked past her, saw the distant and faded memory of my wife and daughter. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  Her hand in mine, she squeezed it lightly three times, her silent way of saying I love you.

  “Take all the time you need. I’ll keep waiting.”

  Maya was twenty-five when she woke up in Simon’s game. Her show had been listed as the Suntaker. It was two months after Maya had learned she was HIV positive.

  Simon, of course, had used this to his advantage. He’d used it to taunt Maya. That and the fact she was an Indian but didn’t know from what tribe. Simon claimed that he did know. That he had done the research, and he knew which tribe Maya’s blood came from. But, Simon said, he would only tell her if she played by the rules and won the game. If she won the game, she would not only learn her true identity, but she would get to keep her life.

  It was nothing new for Simon, really. He didn’t always follow the same formula. In fact, he tried to mix it up as much as possible. The I’m-holding-your-family-hostage routine could grow tiresome, and Simon knew the audience wanted something new, so he tried to keep it fresh.

  Maya was only in the game three days before Carver, Ronny, and David rescued her. Before she was brought back to the farmhouse and explained what was going on. By that time she had been addicted to heroin. She had no track marks on her arms, would instead inject the drug between the toes of her feet.

  One of the things Simon had used to keep the Suntaker going was the promise of more and more drugs. But now that she was out of the game, in Carver’s care, there were no drugs. After only a day she started going through withdrawal, and somehow, between finishing the painting of the farmhouse and barn, taking care of Maya Smith became my responsibility.

  I never once complained about it. My wife and daughter were gone, I felt I had no more purpose, and now, taking care of Maya, I realized I did have a reason to keep going. Maya had become my reason.

  So I took care of her. I nursed her back to health. And as the days became weeks, the weeks became months, we started to get to know each other very well. Nothing sexual in nature at all, but we started to connect. She fell in love with me, I fell in love with her, but neither of us went forward with our desires. Maya didn’t go forward because of her HIV and fear that she would somehow pass it on to me. I never went forward because I felt by doing so would be a betrayal to Jen and Casey.

  But now almost two years had passed. Maya and I had started growing even closer. Oftentimes we would sleep together, but not have sex. Just hold each other until we fell asleep, listening to each other’s breathing, feeling each other’s heartbeats. Sometimes we kissed.

  That was as far as it ever went. I was still holding back, and Maya, sensing this, understood. And recently, I found myself falling more and more in love with her, and as that realization blossomed in my head, I started to become afraid again. I started thinking more and more about my lost family.

  Then Carver died, and I became even more scared.

  Staring out at the dark horizon, holding Maya’s hand, I said, “Back in Miami, when we went into that hotel and they ambushed us? My first thought was you.”

  Maya didn’t say anything.

  “You were the thing that made me want to keep going. What made me want to survive. Just seeing your face, thinking of you ... that’s what made me want to come back home.”

  She squeezed my hand again, those three light squeezes.

  Maya said, “What did it look like?”

  I closed my eyes. Thought about being back in the Beachside Hotel. Watching Carver speak his last word.

  “It looked like a butterfly.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “It did.”

  “What color was it?”

  I let go of her hand. Adjusted myself on the swing so I could look at her, so I could see her dark eyes staring back into mine. I opened my mouth, started to speak, but then stopped. I listened to the insects, to the owl, to the voices inside the farmhouse. The Kid had stopped singing, everyone else had stopped, and now they were just talking, probably about Carver again.

  Finally I whispered, “It was black.”

  Maya stared at me another moment, biting her lower lip. She nodded, took a breath, and stared out at the trees.

  I leaned back in the swing and stared out at the trees too.

  “Maya?”

  “Yes?”

  “I ... I love you.”

  “I know. I love you too.”

  We continued sitting there then in silence, just watching the night. I squinted my eyes and imagined that I could see our words out there, rainbow-colored, fluttering about the night, rising up toward the stars that may or may not have been tinkling like bells.

  32

  At eight-thirty the next morning, the Kid had his overnight bag packed, Carver’s hard drive stored away in a box, and was ready to go. Jesse was going to drive him out to the airport. I volunteered to come along.

  Jesse said, “Then you want me to thay?”

  We were standing in the front yard, the three of us, only a couple feet from the pickup.

  “
No,” I said. “You can drive. I just want to tag along.”

  The Kid had taken a shower, had applied gel to his hair, and he stood there now under the bright morning sun, not a strand of hair out of place. He gave me a strange look but didn’t say anything.

  We got in the truck, Jesse in the driver’s seat, the Kid in the middle, and me on the passenger side.

  It took nearly an hour and a half to get to the airport, and none of us spoke the entire way. Jesse played his country music, and while neither the Kid nor I cared for it much, we didn’t object.

  When we arrived at the airport, the Kid said, “Thanks, guys. I’ll give you a call later tonight.”

  I had gotten out of the truck so he could get out, and I stood there holding the door open.

  “I’m going with you.”

  The Kid said, “No you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I leaned back into the pickup, told Jesse to head back to the farmhouse without me. He looked dubious but I told him it was okay, I would give him a call later when I boarded my returning flight.

  “Tell Drew he’s in charge of checking up on the Racist,” I said, and shut the door, took a step back and waited for him to pull away.

  When he did, I turned back to the Kid.

  He said, “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “I just can’t be there right now. Especially when they’re having that memorial service.”

  “But you can’t come with me.”

  “I’m the only one that believes boojum means anything. I want to be there for this.”

  “It might not be anything.”

  “But it might.”

  The Kid sighed, shook his head, stared out at the parking lot.

  “Fred’s not flying this time,” he said. “You can’t just hop on board.”

  “I know that. That’s why I went online last night and reserved a ticket.”

  “Yeah? And with whose money?”

  I smiled at him.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Mine.”

  He started walking away, toward the airport entrance, his overnight bag swinging from the strap off his shoulder, the box containing Carver’s hard drive cradled in his arm.