The Game of Love and Death(77)

“Your fingernails. They’re red.” Ethan’s voice slurred. His eyes rolled back and his limbs jerked as she poured the contents of the book into his mind. He fought back, trying to peel her fingers away. But even this perfect human specimen could no sooner escape her than the earth could unhitch itself from the sun.

If he lived, the boy would know the entire futile, messy history of the Game. He would watch the asp sink its fangs into Cleopatra, the castration of Abelard, the slow death of Lancelot, the suicide of Juliet, players all. Certain things she would keep from him. Her own identity, for example. She would also conceal the fact that the Game would end in three days. Should he tell Henry and Flora, that knowledge might risk her victory. Everything else, he would learn. And he would understand her gift: deliverance from pain. Real love was death. If he withstood the learning, he would welcome the gift.

And yet she could not end his life. Not yet. Not when they were so alike, Ethan and she. So she released his hands. Left him gasping on the love seat as she walked slowly from the room, taking the book with her.



The earth turned, dragging tracings of starlight across the velvet sky. Ethan stumbled into the hall. He climbed the stairs, one slow step at a time until he was at the top. Helen’s room was near. He could hear her rustling about. What had happened? They’d sat down to read, and then she’d taken his hand, and then he knew all of these things that seemed impossible.

And yet, they explained so much. They explained the hold James had on Ethan. Why it felt like love when he’d first laid eyes on him, even if was he nothing more than a pawn.

Ethan closed his door. Looked at the space where he’d spent so much time: at his bed, at his desk, at the windows that looked out over the grounds below and gave a view of the booming finale of a fireworks display in the distance. If James Booth was someone else, someone who was not a human exactly … perhaps what Ethan had done with him didn’t count.

Perhaps he wasn’t one of those.

For a moment, Ethan felt relief so great he wanted to weep. To not be attracted to boys. He wanted this so much for himself. He’d spent hours in this room, trying to talk himself out of the wanting, the desire for Henry most of all.

And yet he could not continue to pretend. All of that attraction had happened before James. Even though he had never acted on it, it was who he was. There was no changing it. The Independence Day celebration outside had ended, and the open curtains revealed a crescent moon. Was it waxing or waning? He never could tell. But if it had a choice, would it shrink into complete darkness or make its journey bursting with reflected light?

Ethan picked up a pen and a sheet of paper. One slow letter, one hard-fought word at a time, he wrote to Henry, who needed to know what he and Flora were part of. Henry needed to know who James was, that he was an ally of sorts. Ethan wished he knew who Death was. One of the musicians? The person who had arrested Henry? That seemed the most likely thing of all.

He told Henry not to give up on Flora. We do not choose whom we love, he wrote. We can only choose how well.

The handwriting was atrocious. Entire sentences had been crossed out. Ethan was sure he’d spelled half of the words wrong. It wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t send it. Tired as he was, he copied the words on a new sheet. He threw the draft away. He sealed the letter and addressed it. Then he wrote a shorter note to his parents, explaining that he would be enlisting in the navy in the morning. He slipped it under their door. Then he packed a bag, left Henry’s letter in the outgoing mail slot, and disappeared into the night. Ethan wanted to spend one last night as a free man, a free man who knew who he was and who he would never be. He wanted to watch the sun rise on that day his life began anew.

When the door closed behind him, Death slipped out of her room. She found the letter in the mail slot.

And then she burned it.





AFTER the whole sorry Ethan business, Love demanded a meeting. Death agreed, but insisted on choosing the location. When Love arrived in the Chinese room of the Smith Tower, a few floors down from where Henry’s father had jumped, Death was already there, lounging in a rosewood chair carved with a dragon and a phoenix. She faced a small table with a glass of red wine and a plate of escargots, and was tearing the snails out of their shells with a tiny fork.

Love settled on a plain mahogany chair. The space over his heart where the book had been felt empty. Nagging, like a missing memory.

Death demolished a snail shell between her teeth. “That one didn’t want to come out.” She spit the splintered remains into the dish. A shard clung to her lips, and Love wanted nothing more than to remove it.

“Soup?” she said, pointing to a tureen. “It’s turtle.”

Love declined.

“I don’t know how the girls stand this chair.” Her lips glistened with butter. “It’s uncomfortable.”

The Wishing Chair had been a gift of the Chinese empress. Any young woman who sat in it was guaranteed an engagement within a year. The chair might have been uncomfortable, but it worked as promised. He felt a stab of compassion for his opponent, who had no capacity to feel hope. He shrugged it off. This was not his sadness to carry. He wanted his book back. Ethan too. But that, he feared, was a heart he dared not call again.

Behind him, the city of Seattle reached toward the water’s edge. Electric lights burned in many of the buildings, hazing the bottom of the sky with their glow. Beside a nearly vanquished moon, stars hung overhead, the solitary recipients of infinite human wishes.