2 The Judas Kiss (20 page)

             
The server came by, briefly asking Alex if she wanted anything, and she ordered a cappuccino to go.  She slipped the server her credit card, giving Ben a wink when he tried to protest.  “Oh have breakfast on little Olivia here,” Alex said, patting her own shoulder.  “The girl wanted to do at least that for you last night.”

             
“Can you see their thoughts when you’re inside them?” Ben asked, that revelation horrifying him.

             
“Glimpses,” Alex said with a shrug.  The server returned the bill and she signed it swiftly.  Ben presumed she left a larger than normal tip, seeing as the server’s eyes went wide and thanked them profusely as the rose from their table full of uneaten food.

             
“She’s a nanny, you know,” Ben said as they walked the path back toward Ben’s suite.  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she probably doesn’t have an advertiser’s salary to throw around.”

             
That gave Alex pause.  “Hmm.  Never really thought.  Well just remind me to transfer some money to her; god knows I have enough disposable income to take care of that breakfast.”

             
Ben put his key into the hotel room door and they walked in.  The room was cold, the heater was off and the beds were still unmade meaning housekeeping hadn’t been by.  Ben had completely forgotten he had a hangover until he set foot in the room and the pounding in his head gave him the reminder.  He groaned and fetched a cold water bottle from the small, black fridge set into the cabinets.

             
“So what are we doing here?” Ben asked, flopping down onto the hotel sofa.

             
Alex dug into her thin jacket pocket and retrieved the silver lighter and pack of cigarettes.  Tossing them to Ben, he caught them with a deft hand and was nearly trembling as he pulled one from the packet and lit it. 

             
“I’m going to get fined for smoking in this room,” he said, offering one to Alex.

             
She shook her head and sat down in a chair.  She shifted uncomfortably, tugging at the waistband of the jeans, and sighed.   “I think it’s mostly the clothing which make me avoid running around in a woman’s body.”

             
Ben gave a light laugh and shrugged.  “Do you have a gender?”

             
“Specifically no,” Alex said, unbuttoning the top button and letting out a breath.  “I spend more time as a man, and I suppose the state of my being is related more to male than female.  Frankly I’m happy either way.  Boobs are great.”  Alex grabbed her chest and gave her breasts a jiggle.

             
Ben winced, forcing himself to look away from the woman practically fondling herself on the chair across from him.  “Do you mind?”

             
“You think she doesn’t do this on her own?” Alex challenged.

             
“Likely in the privacy of her own room, and not in front of some ancient god and detective she doesn’t know,” Ben insisted.

             
Alex dropped her hands into her lap.  “We can have sex if you like.  I know she’d appreciate that.”

             
Ben let out a sigh and sat up a little, finishing the cigarette in one long pull.  “I’d rather not, thanks.  Feels a little bit too much like date rape to me.”

             
“Fine,” Alex pouted.  “Why don’t we get drunk, and I can show you a few magic tricks.” 

             
Before Ben could respond, Alex stood and a bottle of wine went flying from the self and into her hand.  She popped the cork with a snap of her fingers and took a long swig of the rich ruby liquid.  Ben, staring in half-disbelief, merely shook his head at the offered drink. 

             
Alex sighed and took a seat next to him, setting the bottle on the low coffee table.  She looked him directly in the eye and spoke in a very matter-of-fact tone.  “You’d better get used to this, my friend.  You may not be a god like us, but we are your destiny.  You were always meant to know us, and now that you do, we’re never going away.”

Chapter Ten

Mark’s Story

              Although I was of a very precocious nature, it didn’t occur to me that the only reason Maryam and Yosef agreed to let me spend time with their sons and learn the art of carpentry and wood making was purely out of fear that I would have them arrested, or worse.  Alexandria was one of the freest cities in the known world, but there was still the ever present Roman threat to society.

             
Alexandria would never become a city under the heel of Roman rule, just as it had never really succumbed to the absolutism that Alexander the Great’s empire brought with it, before it became Alexandria and it was just Rhakotis, the small city beside the sea.  The presence of Romans was all around, however, and truth be told, Yosef had always had plans to bring his family back to Jerusalem one day.

             
I was too young to really understand the pull Jerusalem had over many of the Hebrew occupants of Alexandria.  All I knew was that Alexandria was rich and prosperous, and where one might find themselves destitute and enslaved in Jerusalem, in Alexandria they lived as free as the Roman citizens did.

             
I learned a lot from Yosef and his sons as I worked my fingers calloused and bloody.  Wood working was a coveted art, everything necessary and usable, and nothing left to waste.  It took patience beyond normal reasoning, a patience that I had, but had yet to hone.

             
My mother never asked where I went off to, though from time to time when she bothered to emerge from her chambers, she’d inspect me and give me a curious look, the curiosity in her eyes never spoken aloud.  Only once did she warn me and it was nothing more than a simple, “Do not get yourself into trouble that money can’t buy your way out of.”

             
I smiled and nodded and dashed off to the street where Yehuda was waiting for me.  I passed him the sack of food I’d pilfered from the house and we ran off toward the docks, our spot on the roof waiting as we stuffed ourselves, greedy and secretive.

             
I liked his brothers okay, they were full of ideas and dreams that were foreign to me and I wanted to know them all, but none of them bothered to get to know me like Yehuda did.  He asked me questions, listening to my answers and theories patiently as I rambled on with the dreams of an adult but the perception of a child.

             
“There’s no sense in not knowing everything,” I said, my arms waving wildly.  “There’s no sense in wasting a single moment when we still don’t know the answers to the sky and the sun and the stars and moon.  One day, Yehuda, we’ll get into that library and I’ll read every single scroll in there.  I don’t care if it takes me a thousand years.”

             
“You won’t live a thousand years, you know,” he said, gnawing on a dried bit of meat.  “You’ll die before you get to read half those books.”

             
“I won’t,” I said, crossing my arms petulantly.  I dropped down into a squat in front of him, my eyes meeting his.  He was older than I was, but I always felt that I was his equal.  “I won’t die until I consume every bit of knowledge that the world has to offer.”

             
“You’re foolish.  You’re foolish in birth and you’ll be foolish in death.”

             
I gave him a playful shove and he laughed as he toppled over.  “So you say!  But you’ll be looking foolish when I prove you wrong.”

             
We finished our lunch and went straight to the workshop where his father was setting out a rather large piece for a table that one of my neighbors had commissioned.  He wanted the table carved, intricate markings of the ancient gods.  He’d provided tablets to Yosef, who held them gingerly in several layers of cloth on the ground.

             
“Makabi,” Yosef said.  I’d shared my Hebrew name with him after I felt that I could trust him with my secret, and after he gave me his solemn vow my mother would never find out.  He treated me like one of his sons now, and having never had a father who cared much for my wellbeing, I was desperate to make him proud.  “Remember what I showed you yesterday?”

             
I took the small, sharp-tipped tool and held it in my hand like he’d showed me.  “Yes.”

             
“I want you and Yeshua to start working on the table legs.  Yehuda, you and I are going to start smoothing out the base.”

             
Yeshua gave a small groan and followed me to the four stacked table legs that had been shaped, but were rough and unpolished.  Yeshua was good with his hands, even better at the ornate designs that their tables often displayed, but he didn’t enjoy it.  Yeshua was a different sort.  I didn’t understand him; the inner workings of his mind were a mystery to me.  I knew, though, that if men from the East were searching for someone like them, Yeshua was the one.

             
I made myself comfortable in the dirt and started making tiny chips in the wood, just as Yosef had showed me the day before.  “You want to come fish with us later?” I asked Yeshua after a little while.  I never tried to keep Yehuda’s twin from our activities, but he preferred to be alone most of the time.

             
“I don’t care for fishing,” he said, his chips quicker than mine, and the detail finer.  I huffed at his natural talent, but it only drove me to work harder. 

             
“You always say that,” I complained.  “Why?”

             
“Taking the life of a fish,” Yeshua said with a shrug.  “Seems such a waste.”

             
“The fish exist for us to eat them,” I said, looking up at him from my work.  “That’s their point.”

             
“Is it?” he asked.  “Have you ever asked a fish what its point is on this earth?”

             
I froze, the tool in my hand poised over the wood.  Of course I had never asked a fish, and what a thing to say to me!  But as I went back to my work I wondered, was he right?  Could he talk to fish?  What, exactly, gave me the notion that fish existed for us to eat them?  I had never spoken to a fish, and no one I knew had, so what made me think that I was right above him.

             
“What shall we do then, Yeshua?”

             
He paused, surprised by my question.  Usually I would ask him to join us and when he refused, I moved on.  “I want to find a spot by the water where it’s quiet.  Where there aren’t any people.”

             
“We’ll come with you,” I said.  When he hesitated, I insisted, “If you never spend time with us, how do you know you won’t like our company.  I’ll bring things with us that aren’t meat.”

             
“Mother has asked me and Yehuda to stop taking food from you,” Yeshua said, but there was a glint in his eye that said he was interested.

             
“I swear the food won’t break the rules,” I vowed.  I could see in his silence I’d won him over.

             
I stopped working early to run home and fetch my coin purse.  When I got there, there was a man I didn’t recognize sitting in the front room.  I stopped, staring at him, trying to figure out his purpose before he spoke. 

             
“You must be Markus Gracchus.  Master of the house?” he asked.  His voice was patronizing, which I didn’t like, but he deferred to me which meant that he was there to serve my mother somehow.

             
I gave a little bow, keeping my eye on him.  “Who are you?”

             
“My name is Antonius Lepidus, I’ve come from your grandfather’s household to oversee your mother’s health.”

             
He was fairly short for a man, his belly far wider than any other part of him, and he was old; balding and his eyes squinted telling me that his vision was failing.  But his hands were steady, I noticed as he lifted his goblet to his lips, and he spoke clearly.  I was worried now, my mother was ill enough to warrant someone coming in from Rome, and I had the sudden realization that she might die soon.

             
“What’s wrong with her?” I demanded, forgetting all about the coin purse and the twins, and I plopped down on the sofa.

             
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he said, losing his patronizing tone with me.  “Your mother has been fighting an illness for some time now, and I’m afraid she’s only been getting worse.  I have only a few remedies I’ll try on her, but your father has paid me well to oversee her health.”

             
“Are you sure he didn’t send you to ensure her death?” I questioned.  It was no secret that my father only married my mother for standing, and it was no secret that he was not fond of her.

             
“I assure you, your father has only the highest regard for your mother, and her wellbeing.”  He looked at me different after that, though.  I could tell that he knew I was a little more than just some boy running around playing Centurion with my brothers, and dreaming of the day I’d sign up for the legion.  I was a scholar, and I would someday be far smarter than he was.