All the Gates of Hell (21 page)

"I remember what it was like to be young and have a brand new boyfriend. Just finish checking those depositions as soon as you can."

"But I -- " Jin began, then thought better of it. Let Joyce think whatever she wanted about Jin and Frank's relationship; it was certainly easier than explaining the real reason Jin was late. "Right away," she finished, lamely. She made a detour past the coffee pot for something to overwhelm the toast and then got right down to work.

For a little while there was nothing but the sounds of the mutual shuffling of papers, but then Joyce's clients began trickling in. Joyce greeted several clients in turn and then directed them to the private conference room, finishing just in time to meet the next appointment. They were the usual sort that Jin saw almost every day: pensioners contesting evictions or rent increases, one or two parents with sullen teenagers in tow destined for Family Court, poor, frightened people in trouble with the law and distrustful -- often rightly so -- of court-appointed counsel. The Pepper Street Legal Aid office had only a small network of
pro bono
volunteers; Joyce had to take a lot of the cases herself. It was at times like these that Jin half-way considered taking her mother up on her offer to send her back to law school. She thought that, maybe, she could be more help that way. Then she looked at the mountain of paper work that Joyce was depending on her to finish and concentrated on the task at hand.

At 11:30 the same morning Jin's phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Lotus Blossom. When are you moving in?"

For a moment Jin blanked, then she remembered. "Mom, I'll bring some of my things over tonight and we'll try it out, ok? I'm keeping my apartment for now, though."

"I never thought otherwise, dear."

Jin shook her head, grateful that her mother couldn't see her. "One thing, though -- I may be fairly late. I've got an errand to run first."

"You have your key," Margaret said serenely.

"Listen, Mom..."

"What is it?"

"Ummm, oh nothing. Later, Mom."

Jin hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Joyce happened to be passing Jin's desk at the time, and apparently noticed the look on Jin's face.

"Trouble?"

"Not yet," Jin said. "I'm moving back home for a little while. Mom needs me."

Joyce looked a little wistful. "At least you still have a mom. I'd love to be able to talk to mine sometimes."

Jin grinned. "I've got one you can borrow any time you want...oh. Joyce, can I ask you a personal question? I'm afraid it's going to sound a little weird. And this is just hypothetical, understand. I mean, it's not about Frank and me."

"Out with it, girl."

Jin took a breath. "If you wanted to... I mean, you thought it was for the best and all, how would you make a man fall out of love with you?"

Joyce didn't answer her for a while, and Jin was starting to think she'd offended her friend somehow when Joyce finally smiled. "Haven't a clue, but then I don't know why a man falls in love in the first place. If they do. Sometimes I think that's just a big misunderstanding all by its own self. As you may have guessed, the only question I've really pondered lately is 'how do I stop loving someone I shouldn't?' Don't know the answer to that one, either."

"Lucius... yeah, I see that. Love is complicated," Jin said wistfully. "I just had no idea how complicated before now."

Joyce smiled again, but it didn't last. She looked hesitant. "Listen, Jin..."

Jin looked up. "Yes?"

Joyce paused, then finally shook her head. "Oh, nothing. Forget it. I've cancelled my last appointment; I've got to meet someone. Can you hold down the fort until five?"

Jin frowned. "Sure, no problem. Ummm... are you sure there's nothing else I can do?"

Joyce shook her head. "No, girl. Some things you have to do for yourself, you know?"

"Try telling my mother that."

Joyce laughed, though Jin thought it sounded more polite than real. Joyce stopped by her desk just long enough to pick up her purse and she was out the door. Jin stared after her for a little while. She had the feeling that Joyce really had wanted to talk about something. Maybe she'd just been in too much of a hurry, but Jin made a mental note to see if she could draw Joyce out about it later. She suspected man troubles again, but she hoped she was wrong. Jin got back to work.

About 4PM Ling came by to report that there was nothing to report. Jonathan Mitsumo was seeing clients in his office and had been doing so all day.

"Sorry to give you such boring work," Jin said, but Ling smiled.

"You're talking to someone who once meditated upon a giant pearl for two hundred and ten years. Boredom is an illusion."

"I keep forgetting that," Jin said dryly.

Ling just shrugged. "Most humans do. Constantly."

Jin had no answer to that, nor did one seem required. She sent Ling back to her post. When five o'clock came around she summoned Ling again.

"Ling, do you know where Teacher is?"

"It's Monday, so I believe he's feeding pigeons in Resolution Park," Ling said. "I can take you there if you want."

"No, thanks. I just wanted to know before I wasted time hiking through the corridor to the First Hell."

Ling started to leave, then hesitated. "Jin, would you mind summoning Shan Cai... I mean Frank, next time? I think he's getting jealous."

Jin tried not to smile, and failed. "Sure, I'll do that, if it'll make him feel better."

Jin locked up the office and headed toward the park. She found Teacher where Ling said he would be, sitting by himself on a shadowed bench under an ancient water-oak, throwing bits of bread from a little brown sack to a flock of squabbling pigeons gathered at his feet.

"Teaching the birds about the sins of avarice?" Jin asked.

He didn't even look up. "Nope. Waiting for you," he said. "Seems I did that for a lot of years, though not so much lately."

Jin brushed off a few fallen acorns and sat down on the bench next to him. "So you knew I was looking for you."

He shrugged, and the carnation in the jacket of his lapel shed a petal. "Pretty much. Keeper of the Names told me he ran into you, and how you went off after he mentioned Madame Meng. I was rather hoping that wouldn't happen, but it seemed inevitable."

"I was very angry with you," Jin said. "I think it's better that I found her first."

He smiled a little wistfully. "Maybe. Hard to see all the ends. Maybe a knock down, drag out fight would have done us both some good. Cleared the air, perhaps."

"I've got a couple of very specific questions for you, Teacher. If you don't answer them, you may get your wish."

Teacher looked unhappy. "It's not that I don't
want
to answer them, Jin. Besides, I don't have all the answers; I told you that from the start."

"See if you have this one," Jin said dryly. "Did you or did you not tell Shiro that I was in Medias? He says you did."

"Speaking to him a lot these days?"

"Just answer the question. Please."

Teacher fumbled for another piece of bread. "He found out I'd incarnated and was hanging out here, so he came to Medias and waited, and was ready when your nature began to manifest." Teacher said. "So maybe from his point of view I did tell him. Your real question is: Did I deliberately betray you to him? The answer is 'no.'"

Jin took a piece of bread from Teacher's sack and threw it to one of the smaller birds. "Madame Meng says you were sent to the Fifth Hell for a while. I don't pretend to understand all the hierarchy, but I take it that was not a good thing?"

"I didn't enjoy it, if that's what you mean."

"It was because of Shiro, wasn't it?"

Teacher tore a larger piece of bread in half and expertly flipped the pieces toward opposite sides of the flock. "Sometimes you ask questions just like a lawyer, you know that? I see it when I get hauled in for vagrancy every so often. I see it when I sit in judgment in the First Hell: if you're asking the question, you already know the answer. The point is not to get an answer. The point is for the person questioned to damn himself. Is that what you want me to do, Jin?"

Jin thought about that, something that would not have been possible had she found Teacher before speaking to Madame Meng. "No, I want you to explain yourself. And before you start dodging, I thought I better mention that the Guan Yin That Was told me to ask you about it. That's the truth. I do know you got into trouble for helping Shiro. I really want to know why you did it."

"I didn't help Shiro," Teacher said.

"You showed him leniency, as I understand it. That looks like help to me."

Teacher smiled. "And you'd be right. I was trying to help someone, I still believe. But who?"

"You're being cryptic. Stop it."

"Am I? You throw a crumb at that sparrow and the pigeon next to him gets it. Who are you helping?"

"The pigeon, obviously."

"But was that your intention? No? Do you accept the obvious fact that sometimes we do things that don't work out the way we meant?"

"Sure. Now will you accept the obvious fact that I want to
know
what you meant? I'm rather at a loss about the matter otherwise."

Teacher looked thoughtful. "Jin, at any time during your childhood, did you ever come across stories of star-crossed lovers? Those who were meant to be together but the fates, nay, the very
universe
itself was against them?"

"Sure. Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe, Heloise and Abelard, to mention a few. They usually end badly."

"Leaving aside the fact that very few things end in the first go-round, I'm betting that not even once did it occur to you that, just maybe, the universe was right?"

Jin stared at the squabbling birds. "Teacher, what on earth does the notion of star-crossed lovers have to do with Guan Yin and Shiro? Whatever Shiro thought, whatever Guan Yin's reasons for indulging him, I think we can safely assume that her agreement to marry him wasn't about love, at least not the kind Shiro was hoping for."

"Irrelevant. Do you know what Karma is?"

"Fate?"

"More like consequences. Every volition, every act, good or bad, is what we call Karma. It accumulates over several lifetimes, and what Hell or Paradise one is reborn into is determined ultimately by it. Now, as an Enlightened Being, Guan Yin no longer accumulates Karma, but Shiro certainly does. With me so far?"

"I think so," Jin said.

"Good, since here's where it gets hazy. In some traditions you hear of people who died for love in one life who are reborn in another, where they get a second chance."

"Sounds too good to be true."

Teacher smiled. "That's because it is. See, their second chance is not to find love again. Their second -- or third or thousandth -- chance is to free themselves of it."

Jin sighed. "Ok, now you've lost me. What's wrong with love?"

"Nothing, except when it becomes an end in itself, when two people cling to each other above all else, that is not a virtue. They become centered in each other. They cut themselves off farther from spiritual progress."

"Even if I buy that," Jin said, "Guan Yin was certainly not building her world around Shiro."

"As you say. But I think it's a safe bet he was building
his
around
her
. Once she agreed to marry him, even though her intention was to cure his obsession, at that point his Karma was linked to her. He's been tying himself tighter and tighter to Guan Yin through thousands of cycles of death and rebirth. I think he was very close to trapping her again on the Wheel of Death and Rebirth with him. I hate to say 'I told you so' but I said as much to her at the beginning."

Jin sighed. "Madame Meng said marrying Shiro was a dangerous act."

"And she was right. That's why I didn't send Shiro to the Fire-Jar Hell or tip him into a vat of molten lead or any of the things that he certainly deserved."

"So instead you gave him the keys to all the hells. Why?"

Teacher sat quietly on the bench, ignoring the birds at his feet. Jin reached over and took the last piece of bread from the sack and threw it toward the sparrow. Then, "Teacher, I'm fully prepared to concede that you meant well. What I really need to know is why you thought giving Shiro free range of the entire cosmos was going to help, because I just don't see it."

Teacher shrugged. "I'd have thought that was obvious. It's beyond my power to give Shiro or anyone Enlightenment, but I could do the next best thing -- get him out of the cycle of death and rebirth. He's not really beyond it... more 'in between.' Despite what he's done or failed to do, he no longer accumulates Karma. He neither progresses nor devolves. He just is."

"So there's no chance of his trapping Guan Yin within his own little universe of delusion? I'm here to tell you, Teacher -- that didn't work. It almost happened yesterday."

Teacher nodded, looking glum. "I applied a band-aid when clearly a tourniquet was required. I goofed."

"No shit, Sherlock."

Teacher looked at her. "You're still angry."

"One of the advantages of the being mortal. Maybe Guan Yin reincarnated as me just so she could be properly pissed at you. She may be beyond passion, but I'm sure not."

Teacher smiled a weak smile. "Don't think that didn't occur to me."

The pigeon flock and the few sparrows milled about for a while, hopefully, but when it became obvious no more bread was coming, in twos and threes they started to fly away. Soon they were all gone.

"I have one more question," Jin said. "If you're right about the danger of love then Madame Meng is right again I'm risking the very existence of Guan Yin, and not just this mortal incarnation. All well and good, but in the meantime Shiro has the full run of Medias, and he's capable of anything."

"Not anything," Teacher said. "But quite a lot. You're having your servants keep an eye on him, I suppose?"

"You bet."

"Remember what Shiro was like when you first saw him that day in the corridor? Just keep in mind that, whatever he looks like at the moment, he can become that same shadow again at a moment's notice. If you think love's hard, try getting a grip on a shadow."