Fonsi peered at the image beneath the passage about dorlis portals. It was an amulet. Round features, eyes closed, shadowy, vacant mouth open… a look of ecstasy on the figure’s face.
He picked up his phone and scrutinized the photo of the amulet they’d spotted at Pastor Samuelson’s.
It was the same image.
He continued to read, becoming sick to his stomach the more he learned about the dorlis and this idea of there being portals. A darkness entered the room, entered his heart.
“Fonsi…”
He jumped from his chair, heart almost bursting from his body. Matteo stood behind him with a sheet wrapped around his waist.
Matteo pulled him close and planted Fonsi’s head against his chest. His underarms were rank. “Oh, bay-bee, this is what I was worried about. You’re working too hard. Skittish like a gafanhoto. Come to bed, rest.”
“This!” Fonsi waved the picture of the amulet in front of his man’s face. “This, Matteo! I’ve figured out what’s behind the Afflicted!”
PART THREE
BESIEGED
CHAPTER TWENTY
LINDA
You know I get cray-cray when you wear that,” Linda said.
“Girl, you are one basic bitch,” Imani said right before she took another toke of weed and dabbed the stub in the red plastic ashtray she’d placed among thin plaid sheets. “This some Fruit of the Loom shit I bought at the dollar store.”
Didn’t matter how low-budget the brand. It drove Linda wild when Imani pranced around in her gray underwear. Well, really any underwear, truth be told. But there was definitely something special about cotton gray. How the fabric lay against her chest, how it accentuated the slight curve of her bosom and contrasted with her skin. Drove Linda nuts, and Imani knew it. On such occasions, lasciviousness usually ensued. Backs being massaged. Nipples being kissed. Necks being devoured. But the mood that evening was heavy, off.
But Imani still knew how to play. She studied Linda’s hungry eyes, sprang up on the bed, and posed like she was in a Calvin Klein ad. She tousled her braids, pouted her lips, and snickered before settling into the type of facial ennui meant to imply one was above it all.
“So tell me something you learned about me… something you shouldn’t know,” Imani said as she settled back down into the sheets cross-legged.
Something you shouldn’t know—the game the two played with each other ever since Linda had revealed her special gift. How she could explore people’s emotions and thoughts and memories with her mind. “Uhhhhm… okay. That you stole thirty-five dollars from your grandma’s purse and felt so bad you replaced it with a fifty a year later.”
Imani flicked Linda on the shoulder. “Sure did. And I think Grandma sussed that shit out as well. You know how long it was before she gave me Christmas money again? Like she was telling me for years, ‘You little thievin’ ho, payback.’”
Linda smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn.”
Imani stared hard at her girlfriend. “That you cook all the time now, even though you hate cooking… because you want to make sure your dad is eating right… and you want the kitchen to smell like your mama’s favorite dishes.” Imani leaned in close. “I didn’t have to read your mind to figure that out. And I know today it’s been a year since she passed. I remember. I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up.”
That was Imani’s way, to be playful and cackle like a crackhead, then veer into the territory of deep introspection and care. Linda used to wonder,Does she behave this way because she’s a Gemini?But she eventually realized that it was a ploy to encourage people to let their guard down so Imani could share some hard truths. To help them out. Her girl, a Bronx-born trickster wise beyond her years.
This was the game they always played, after Linda had used her empathy to reminisce with Imani. She would absorb bits of memory that Imani chose to share with her and project back to Imani bits of her own past. What parcels of each other’s memory could they verbalize, could they hear come from each other’s lips? Linda preferred to use her power like itwas a parlor trick for public consumption. She never shared anything too heavy or serious that she learned, even though she easily could. But that’s not how Imani operated.
The exchange of consciousness bound the two in a way Linda had never experienced with any of her previous girlfriends, not that she’d had many by the age of twenty. Not that she would’ve let any of them know about her gift. Imani was the first person she trusted to share who she really was outside of her parents and Estelle, who would sometimes plead with Linda to visit her, to help her train. Linda would never have met the overbearing woman if it weren’t for Papi, who practically dragged his daughter to Estelle’s botanica once he realized that there was something strange about how she moved through the world.
“I do miss Ma,” Linda said to Imani. “Every fuckin’ day. I was trying not to think about it, but…” For months, being in a house without the person who loved her the most, her father constantly working double shifts at the precinct, refusing to stay home and be near his daughter. All of it, a weight she often felt she couldn’t bear.
“I miss her, too,” Imani said. “And you don’t talk about her enough.”
“Yeah, I know.” Linda wiped her eyes and kissed her girlfriend. She tasted the weed on Imani’s breath. She hated the scent. Hated how her tiny bedroom reeked of the stuff even though Imani mostly stuck her head out the window to smoke. But Linda didn’t complain. Such things were frivolous compared to everything else her girl offered.
They continued to talk into the night, heaviness ameliorated by closeness. Linda asked Imani to stay since she knew Papi wouldn’t be back from the precinct until morning. They took out old photos of Linda’s mom, most taken when she’d just immigrated to the Bronx from Guyana in the 1980s. Soon after she’d met Linda’s dad, who’d arrived from the DR. The resemblance between mother and daughter was uncanny, though Linda had taken after her father in terms of her athletic build.
Linda loved to play with Imani, loved how much their connection helped her keep her head above water. She wasn’t in the mood for any big-time intimacy, even with the lovely gray, but she wanted her girl to know how much she appreciated her. That night, as the two drifted off to sleep, intertwined, Linda used her empathy to share with Imani how much she adored her.
I love you…
