Page 3 of White Lights
Rafe scoffs. “No one gives up what you had for love.”
Sam sketches, says nothing.
“Right. Where do you intend to find this … love?”
“Could be this librarian I just met,” Sam says. “I walked in for a book of Byron’s plays. I walked out with Adah. Astonishing. The unspeakable softness.”
“Yet you’re hitting on the waitress?”
“All mortal women carry a spark of the divine in them. Once you’ve experienced it, it becomes addictive.”
“It sounds to me like all you’ve done is replace one object of devotion with another,” Rafe says, hearing the blasphemy in his own words.
“And I’m telling you,” Sam says, smiling, fearless, “it’s an upgrade.”
“How long has it been?” Rafe manages to say.
“Three nights. Already everything has changed. You should hearthe sound of Adah’s laughter, Rafe. Like a nightingale. We stay up all night talking, make love at sunrise in her backyard under the lemon tree. She’s giving me surfing lessons! I’m starting to think maybe one day I can see myself as a dad—”
“You’ve been gonethree nights? That’s four hundred and fifty thousand souls—”
“I can do the math. I just don’t have to anymore.”
“Why didn’t I sense it? Why didn’t I know?”
“You know now. I’m telling you.”
“Three nights. And no one’s noticed?” Rafe whispers. It’s unfathomable. Suddenly impatient, he grabs the napkin from under Sam’s pen. “What are you drawing?”
“Her.” Sam points out the window at the woman with the camera.
Rafe feels a wild pulse of jealousy. He studies her likeness on the napkin, the careless lines his mentor has just made. He never knew Sam could draw, but he’s captured something essential about her that makes Rafe want to steal the napkin, to stare at it for centuries.
“Why are you sketching her?”
“For future reference,” Sam says. “She’s talented. Seems like she could use a mentor. And maybe it’s time you thought about paying it forward? To a young filmmaker who could use a leg up?”
Rafe grips the edge of the table. Moments ago, he’d convinced himself the woman with the camera was mere eye candy. Now her proximity, her existence feels threatening.
Had she really seen him out there on the pier? No.
“You know what I want,” Rafe says. “I have wanted it for a long time. You’re telling me suddenly it’s within reach. The last thing I need is games.”
The corner of Sam’s mouth tips up. “There are the things we say we want, and the things we think we want. And then there are the things we really want,” he says. “If you want this, Rafe, you need a protégé.”
“I work with you.”
“Workedwith me,” Sam says. “Now it’s graduation day. Time for the pupil to become the iris.”
“No,” Rafe says. “I’ll work alone.”
“Wecanlearn from them, you know,” Sam says, taking back the napkin to continue his sketch. “You’ve been aboveground too long. Away from the soul of things.”
“And you’re the expert? Three nights with a librarian and you’ve figured it all out?”
“I’ve heard it said,” Sam says, staring past Rafe, “that when you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I want my flash to be a good one. Something beautiful, you know?”
“Tell me what to do,” Rafe says.
