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What he didn’t understand was why he also wanted, apparently, the consequence of falling in love with Rosemary, which was losing her.
This was what losing her looked like and felt like: the two of them standing on a sidewalk in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, breathing in exhaust fumes that didn’t do anything to help with the raw ache at the back of his throat.
What was the point of falling in love with a woman who was always going to leave him? What kind of fucking karmic suffering bullshit was that?
She put her hand on his face and brought him back into his body. He kissed her. She tasted like strong black tea. She tasted like everything he wanted. Kal held her tight, breathing against her neck, and almost told her, Stay.
But one man had done that to Rosemary already. Kept her close, kept her home, turned her into wallpaper because it felt so good just having her in his corner. Kal wasn’t going to be the second guy to make that mistake.
He kissed the top of her head. “Fly safe. Let me know when you get in.”
“It’ll be late. The middle of the night.”
“That’s okay. I’m not doing anything that can’t be interrupted.”
She pressed her lips against his one more time. Then she picked up her bag and walked down the sidewalk and through the doors. She receded into the crowd.
Gone.
Chapter 21
His mother pointed to a road sign. “Pull over there.”
“What for?”
“Because I said to.”
The traffic around the airport was light. Kal dutifully flipped on the blinkers and moved into the turn lane. He followed the signs to the cellphone lot and pulled into a space. “You want me to leave the engine running?”
“You’re not very bright.”
He turned off the car. They listened to the engine tick for a few seconds. “Can I ask you something?”
She nodded.
“It’s about the chain of causation thing. You know, where you do something, and all your actions are interrelated and interdependent, so you’re causing your own suffering. How do you not do that? I mean, how do you understand why you’re making yourself suffer so you can stop?”
His mother looked irritated. Maybe he wasn’t saying it right. It was hard to remember Buddhist doctrine over the agonizing black hole in his chest where Rosemary had been. A little tough to breathe, too, around the panicked second-guessing of every decision he’d made since he met her, and also every decision he’d made in his entire life.
Kal focused on the feel of the steering wheel under his hands. The new-car smell hadn’t faded. He breathed it in as his mother unzipped her purse and extracted a tube of mints. When she offered him one, he took it and crunched it up between his teeth.
The lot was nearly empty. He didn’t know where they were headed next, but that was fine, because nothing mattered beyond his own epic idiocy.
“I don’t know what happened to you,” his mother said.
“Yeah, me either.”
She shot him a quelling look.
“Sorry.”
“You used to see people. I thought it was because your spirit was so big, it filled your body, and it gave you this gift. I used to worry Merlin would hurt you, make your spirit smaller. Then there would be room for doubt and other bad things. Then you would lose your gift.”
She fell silent. Kal knew he was supposed to say something, preferably something respectful, but he actually had no idea what she was talking about. Had that been some kind of stealth-Buddhist answer to his question, or had she ignored his question completely?
“Can you be more specific?”
“Do you remember when you told me if I was born a boy, I would have married a white woman instead of a white man?”
