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He looks at me strangely. ‘Are you messing with me?’
‘No, I’m serious. Ever since this place was built, people have been coming here bringing all their pain, sadness, hopes, gratitude, and joy. The stones have absorbed it. Hundreds of years of human emotion. Can you not feel it?’
He stands very still for a few moments, then looks down at me. ‘Nope.’
‘Shame,’ I whisper, and move forward.
He follows me. ‘Have you never been to a church before?’
‘No. My mother is a non-practicing Christian so she never took us to church. However, I begged and harassed my nanny until she gave in and took me to the temple with her in secret.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘My first trip was when I was five.’
‘Are you a Hindu then?’
‘No. As a child I didn’t go to temple to pray. I just loved my nanny so much, I couldn’t bear to be parted from her for any length of time. Plus, I enjoyed the trip because it was colorful and the priest allowed me to ring the bell.’
We find ourselves at a side altar with burning candles, and Shane turns to me. ‘Do you want to light a candle?’
‘What does it signify?’
‘It’s a symbol of your prayer that carries on burning even after you are gone.’
I remember Chitra lighting oil lamps and asking her why she was lighting them, and I still recall her answer. Sweet Chitra. I miss her so. ‘It is a way of asking for something from God. The fire lifts your prayer up to God,’ she said.
I look up at Shane. ‘Yes, I’d like to leave a prayer here.’
He drops a note into the donation box slot and takes two candles out. He passes one to me, and we stand side by side and light our candles solemnly. I watch Shane place his in its holder, and I close my eyes and pray. I pray like I’ve never prayed. I pray to any god, Hindu or Christian, who will listen. I ask the stones to absorb my prayer and keep it safe after I am gone and even when the candle burns out. I pray for a bright, silent intercession from the heavens that my actions harm neither Lenny nor Shane.
I open my eyes and see another candle about to sputter out. It seems to grasp desperately for its last br
eaths of life. I cannot watch it die. I look up at Shane. He is watching me avidly. ‘Can we buy another candle?’
His eyebrows rise, but he puts another note into the box and takes another candle out and gives it to me. I light the candle using the fire of the prayer that is about to sputter out, and plant it next to it. I watch the new flame take over and then I turn to Shane and smile. ‘Shall we go?’
We go out into the afternoon air. It is warm and full of the smell of the sea.
‘Feel like an ice cream?’ he asks.
‘Lead the way, sir.’
‘Step this way, madam, for the best ice cream ever,’ he says when we reach a sweet little shop with a green and yellow signboard and cast iron metal tables and chairs outside. There is a bell at the door that chimes prettily when we enter the shop. It is obviously a mom and pop business. The ice cream counter curves around the entire shop in the shape of a U. A man with a walrus mustache is standing behind it. He knows Shane, and talks to him in French.
‘You can have as many flavors as you want in a cone,’ Shane tells me.
There are so many unusual flavors it is difficult to choose, but in the end I decide on four different types of chocolate: Ecuadorean dark chocolate, Mexican chocolate with cinnamon, Rocky Road, and white chocolate with ginger. Shane has salted Turkish pistachio, grape nut and black raspberry. Shane pays for our ice creams, the man gives us napkins, and we carry our treasures out into the sunshine to sit at one of the tables outside. I carefully lick the white chocolate ginger bit first. It is delicious.
‘Good?’ he asks.
‘Very,’ I say looking up at him through my lashes.
‘Are you flirting with me, little rabbit?’ he asks, his lips covered in ice cream.
I remember how they felt and tasted last night, and feel a rush of something through my body—what, I do not know, but it is exciting. I like that about him. The way he makes me feel so alive. ‘Maybe,’ I say boldly.
His grin is wolfish, his eyes full of light. ‘Works every time,’ he says.
