Ari #2
The first photograph is a shot of a woman walking along a narrow street shaded by neem trees, a braid pulled over her shoulder and a little girl balanced on her hip, in the middle of an animated conversation with her father.
Her limbs are long and lanky, her once-awkward teenage gait now graceful in the way of a grown woman.
Their father’s hair has long since turned gray, and there is a slight hunch to his back, but he looks strong otherwise, and there is a smile on his bearded face.
His sister. His father.
Ari looks at the next photo. It is of his mother, older and softer, sitting in front of her house.
It isn’t the house that Ari remembers. This house has a real gate, has a worker sweeping the driveway clear of leaves.
His mother is surrounded by his aunts, fan fluttering in her hand, her sari billowing around her legs.
The next photo shows his uncle standing at a shop on a street that scratches at Ari’s memories, talking to the clerk.
He’s gotten so thin. His beard has gone entirely white, and lines etch his face.
Ari recognizes the way the cars bump along the road, can hear a distant echo of the roar of motorbikes and the calls from the nearby market.
But even this looks different, the city streets both cleaner and more crowded than he remembers, the buildings in the distance more refined. Surat has transformed, too.
He feels like he has stepped outside of himself, looking passively at these images of people who have changed so much that they almost seem like strangers. At an unrecognizable homeland. He tries to speak, fails to find his voice, tries again.
“When were these taken?” he finally manages.
“Last week,” Reed replies.
Last week.
Last week, his sister and her child—his niece, he’s an uncle now—were walking down the street with his father, and his mother was talking with his aunts, and his uncle was buying cigarettes.
All these years of getting nothing but verbal promises of money being delivered to his family, receipts of a new car and a new house, impatient assurances that they are all better off because of Ari—all these years, and yet this is the first time Ari has seen them.
The knot of loneliness in his chest that has been there since he was a child tightens until it feels like it will break.
Ari can’t help the tears that haze his vision.
God. Why is he so sad? His heart is breaking because he barely recognizes them, because it has been so long that he can only see faint resemblances in them to what he remembers.
Because he realizes that, if they saw him today, they would feel the same sense of detachment.
Because he has missed everything. He has lost them.
At least everyone is alive. Everyone is well. But this is not what Reed is telling him with these photos. This is a reminder that their wellness is due to Ari, their success tied to his success, their safety dependent on his obedience.
Reed takes the photos from Ari’s hands and slides them back into the folder. “Now, I’m curious, Shakespeare. Is there anything else from your meeting with Mozart that you recall? Anything you’ve neglected to tell me?”
His sister’s smile, genuine and full. His mother’s sari, pink and gold. Their fates, dangled before him.
“Think carefully,” Reed says, “about who you’re willing to fight for.”
“Her mother’s name is Connie Sun,” he says quietly. “Sam joined Grand Central to protect her.”
Reed searches his gaze carefully, as if looking for a lie. Whatever it is that he sees in Ari’s face, guilt or resignment or fear, it seems to satisfy the man. He nods at Ari’s words, then says, “That wasn’t so difficult, now, was it?”
Ari stares at him and wishes he could, in this moment, grab the man by the collar and transmute him into fire and ash.
Reed leans his arms against the table. “I’ll handle her mother,” he says.
“Once we have her brought to us, you tell Mozart that we have her. That if she wants her back, she needs to meet you in person. When you agree on a date and location, you’re going to let us know, so we have the proper crewmen in place. She’s not leaving that meeting alive.”
I have to warn her, Ari thinks desperately. But even as he thinks it, he knows Reed will have plenty of eyes watching him, knows it will be next to impossible.
“Should it all go well, Shakespeare,” Reed continues, “you can rest easy that your family will be set up for life. Lumines is yours, after all, when you inherit it. And should it go wrong, well, I will simply cut our losses from your family. Do you understand?”
Ari looks numbly on as the man returns the folder to him.
“Keep that,” Reed says quietly. “And remember this feeling, Ari. Remember who you truly love, and then ask yourself what you’re willing to sacrifice for the sake of a girl.”
Ari speaks as if he is no longer himself. The folder before him blurs. “Yes, sir,” he says.
Reed straightens, satisfied. His eyes are visible now, flat and gray. He sips his coffee. “Good boy.”