Love, Greater Than Infinity (Book 1: New Adult Romance) Page 14

  Pablo, still in his pajamas, slipped off the couch and tiptoed into the master bedroom. The door was ajar and Pablo peeked in, repeating Rico’s question into the solemn lifeless room. Every keeper had the ability to sense the decay of energy, which in the lower dimensions, often signaled the end of a mortal’s life. And that’s exactly what Teddy sensed coming from that room—death.

  “Says she don’t want nothing,” Pablo reported back.

  “She doesn’t want anything,” Rico corrected him, whisking eggs and juggling toast. “Why aren’t you getting ready for school?” he noted Pablo’s pajamas.

  Pablo didn’t have a good answer. “Are we having eggs again for breakfast? We had eggs for dinner last night,” the boy whined.

  “And we’re gonna keep on having them until someone else learns how to cook around here. Now, I want you to shut that TV off and put on your school clothes. You hear me? Or you’re gonna stay home all day and watch Mama.”

  Obviously, Pablo had suffered this punishment before because he quickly turned off his favorite cartoons and rushed into the second bedroom, stuffed with two bunk beds and a crippled dresser with a missing middle drawer.

  Teddy stared at Rico. He was a handsome guy, not more than eighteen, with a face prematurely aged with the anxiety of too much responsibility. He wore modest jeans and a faded T-shirt, stained with last night’s attempt to make dinner. Teddy wondered if a teenager like Enrique, who was busy playing “mommy” to four younger kids really had time to be hanging out with his friends, daring each other to break into Gracie’s apartment. Rico left his pan of scrambled eggs bubbling on the stove and entered the master bedroom. Voices of hushed Spanish traded back and forth in the darkness.

  “Can I help you? Or haven’t you seen enough, yet?”

  Teddy turned towards the female voice, a tough-talking keeper was eyeing him from the apartment’s doorway.

  “I’m looking for Enrique Chavez.”

  “Well, you found him. And you found his keeper, too. I’m Charro. So what’s your business?”

  Charro leaned against the wall, cracked her gum and sized up teddy. She was the kind of keeper who had seen more than her fair of surprises, and a random visitor like Teddy in her mortal’s living room didn’t faze her much.

  “My name is Teddy Mulligan. My assignment, Gracie Harris, lives across the street.”

  Rico’s keeper didn’t respond. She just stared at Teddy, impatient for the punch line.

  “Look, I’ve been to see Infinity last night. She told me to come here. Enrique Chavez broke into Gracie’s apartment last week. He stole a sapphire ring from her.”

  “Infinity told you that, huh?” Charro barely blinked.

  “Yeah. I’m here to get it back.”

  Charro blew an indifferent bubble before sucking it into her mouth. “Well, I’m sorry if Miss Richie Richie got her favorite sapphire ring stolen by my boy. I guess her daddy’s just gonna have to buy her a new one.”

  “He can’t. He’s dead.”

  “That’s a shame,” she acknowledged, smacking her gum and moving to the couch.

  “Look, I’m not here to cause trouble. I’m just here for the ring.”

  “Well, you’re too late. Rico pawned that ring last night.”

  “Where? Which pawn shop?”

  “Don’t know. Why don’t you go back to Infinity? I’m sure she can tell you.”

  Charro stared straight at Teddy and flopped down into the couch. It was a gesture of insolence.

  “Look, that ring is the only thing that means something to her. It’s an irreplaceable memento that your punk stole and hocked for a measly two hundred dollars.”

  “Now, just who are you calling a ‘punk?’” Charro lifted herself from the couch and challenged Teddy with aggressive rage. “Now, I’m reeeeeaaaaal sorry if you’re prima donna mortal has been exposed to my ‘punk’, but maybe in the future, you just better keep her in the Gold Coast if you can’t handle seeing what’s on the other side of the tracks.”

  “Maybe you better keep your assignment out of other people’s apartments.”

  “Hey, you’ve got summer camp compared to me.”

  “So that makes it okay?” Teddy countered. “Punk boy’s got a hard life, so he’s entitled to do whatever he wants, like stealing from other people who seem to have it better off?”

  “Life’s unfair. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want you to do a better job at watching over your mortal.”

  “Listen, here…,” Charro demanded. “My seventeen-year-old punk-boy’s got four younger brothers and sisters. No father. Just a single mom who’s dying of cancer. He broke into your girl’s apartment because he needs money, not just for food, but for medication. His mom’s suffering, and she needs painkillers to make it through the day, and those cost more than weekly groceries. Now I understand that at the end of the day, your girl lost something more important than just a sapphire ring. But you gotta understand that Rico’s lost a part of his dignity while trying to give his mama some. That, my friend, is Free Will, and nobody said it was pretty.”

  Rico returned from his mother’s bedroom to find his scrambled eggs burning brown, and his bread smoking inside the toaster. Rico rushed to turn down the gas range, but it was too late. With angry frustration, he whizzed the spatula into the sink and disturbed a precarious stack of dirty dishes.

  “Rico? Everything okay, baby?” Rico’s mother called out from the bedroom.

  “Yeah, Mama. Sorry,” Rico covered his face, struggling for composure. “Just dropped a spoon. You know how clumsy I am in the kitchen.”

  Rico’s keeper glanced back at me. “Summer camp compared to me,” Charro repeated.

  “Look, just tell me which pawn shop, and I’ll be on my way.”

  But Charro’s attention shifted over Teddy’s shoulder. “Now what? Reinforcements?”

  Teddy turned and saw Lou, standing in the doorway. “Lou? What are you doing here?”

  He looked ragged and shell-shocked. “I’ve come to find you, kid.”

  “That’s nice, Lou. But this has nothing to do with Luke, so you can just mind your own business.”

  “I’m afraid it has everything to do with Luke,” Lou stopped, as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words. “You’ve been summoned, Teddy. Summoned by the Dimension Council. They’ve sent me to find you—”

  “The Dimension Council?” Charro whistled with gravity. “Sounds like you got more to worry about than the whereabouts of some stupid ring.”

  “They’re putting you on probation,” Lou continued. “Effective immediately. It’s over, Teddy. It’s over. You’re no longer going to be Gracie’s keeper.”

  Teddy gazed at Lou like he had just slapped him with an eternal prison sentence.

  “For what? They’re mad about the stunt with the fire alarm?”

  “And the sprinkler system. And the damage to the hotel’s property. And irrevocably altering Gracie’s Destiny by bringing Luke and Misty’s affair to Gracie’s attention before she was meant to know about it.”

  “Dang, that’s some laundry list,” drawled Charro. “Sounds like you care about your Gold Coast girlfriend a little more than what’s good for you.”

  “And for crossing over into the lower dimensions,” Lou added with gravity.

  “You’re joking, right? This is a joke,” Teddy insisted.

  “The Dimension Council’s revoking your assignment as Gracie’s keeper, pending your trial when they’ll decide whether or not to make it…permanent.”

  Teddy sank into the sofa, unable to comprehend the severity of it all. “There must be some way around it. Right, Lou? I mean, c’mon. She’s better off knowing about Luke and Misty now than later. And I didn’t go visit Gracie. I mean, I thought about it, but I didn’t go. I only went to Infinity’s diner to find out about how to come here.”

  Lou gazed at Teddy with conflicted eyes. “The Council sent me here on their behalf. They’ve instructed me t
o escort you to your arraignment. If you fail to come with me, then you’ll be automatically found guilty of felonious intervention and immediately removed from your assignment. You’ll never serve as a keeper or see Gracie Harris again. I’m sorry, Teddy.”

  Teddy surveyed the poverty of the apartment—the muddy rug, the duct tape on the upholstery, the crusty blinds layered with city soot. It felt like the kind of place that had been forgotten, ignored, even denied a chance at a better life. Teddy suddenly understood Rico Chavez’s determination to make things right in his own eyes, regardless of the consequences imposed on him by an outside world that had long since remembered to care about him.

  “She knew,” Teddy suddenly whispered, replaying Infinity’s warning in his mind. “Infinity told me to hurry because she knew you were coming for me.”

  “We have to go now, Teddy,” Lou insisted.

  Teddy glared at Lou in silence. As a protest to the injustice of it all, Teddy discarded Gracie’s five-carat engagement ring into a metal ashtray, resting atop a wooden crate posing as an end table. The ring rattled inside the cheap aluminum tray like a penny falling into a soda can. In the course of a single night, it had become a worthless token of betrayal. Now, even Charro thought it was a fake, even though the sharp rays of daylight reflected its sparkling clarity.

  Lou escorted Teddy out of Rico’s apartment, handcuffed by his own overwhelming sense of failure until Charro suddenly called down to them.

  “Hold up, hold up—” her sharp voice stopped Lou and Teddy on the second floor landing. “Is this thing real?” She held up the diamond ring in the shadows of the dark hallway.

  Teddy nodded. “And no one’s going to be looking for it either.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Charro cried out, her voice quivering with excitement, her body trembling with the weight of more than thirty thousand dollars in her hands. As Lou and Teddy started their final descent down the stairwell, Charro exploded in frantic desperation.

  “Let him check Sal’s pawn shop, on the other side of Lawrence,” she petitioned Lou, pleading for leniency on Teddy’s behalf. “It’s owned by a great uncle of the family. You might find the girl’s memento there.”

  Teddy peered up over to Lou with a determined grin. Lou knew there was no stopping him.

  * * * *

  Lou followed Teddy across the street, right to Sal’s pawn shop. It was almost eight o’clock in the morning, too early for the store to be open. There was a metal accordion iron gate that stretched across the windows. The most valuable items—earrings, watches, wedding bands—were displayed along the front window, a taunting reminder to their owners, plagued with vague hope of reclaiming their belongings next week on payday before it could be sold to a stranger at a discounted price. The necklaces hung against faded black velvet palettes; gold pocket watches lay above shimmering scarves of Indian silk; and sparkling rings encircled rolls of dull beige foam—all fulsome attempts to glamorize family heirlooms pawned by poor people.

  Teddy’s heart sank. There, between a cloudy emerald broach and a gold anniversary band was an antique ring with a 1920s silver mesh band and a deeply set octagonal sapphire—and it was Gracie’s ring.

  Lou saw Teddy eyeing the ring. “I’m not witnessing you steal that ring, Teddy.”

  “Then shut your eyes.” Teddy took off his coat, preparing to pass his hand through the glass window.

  “Man, kid, I’m already crossing the line here. My job is to get you in front of the Dimension Council, not become your accomplice in crime.”

  “Since when did you become the Council’s whipping boy?”

  “Look, pal,” Lou lay hard into him. “I’m up for Dimension Review this year. I’ve been passed up for a promotion into a higher dimension every century for the past three millennia. So if the Council wants me to stand on my head and squawk like a chicken, then I’m gonna stand on my head and squawk like a freaking chicken.”

  “Bak, bak, baaaaaaaaak,” Teddy mimicked a dying hen. “Trading friendship for brownie points, huh? Never thought I’d see the day. How’s it feel to be a sellout, Lou?”

  “You are un-freaking-believable. You know that? Aren’t you in enough trouble already?”

  “Exactly. So what do I have to lose?”

  “Man, oh man, kid,” Lou muttered, turning his back, planning to plead ignorance.

  Teddy surveyed the jewelry display, and considered the best place to pass his hand through the glass.

  “Just watch your hand when it comes out,” Lou suddenly said.

  “What?”

  “When you pass your hand through the glass,” Lou warned. “Be careful on the way out.”

  Too late. Teddy’s hand went through the window, like it was a wall of jelly Vaseline. But when Teddy retrieved the ring and pulled his hand back out, the ring didn’t follow. Instead, it rapped, rapped, rapped against the interior window pane.

  Crap. Teddy hated it when Lou was right. And he was always right.

  As a keeper from a higher dimension, slipping through material objects in the lower dimensions was easier. Transporting a solid metal ring through a solid glass window, on the other hand, was a bit trickier.

  Lou heard the pling, pling, pling of platinum against the window. “Pull it through the mail slot, dummy.”

  “What mail slot?”

  “The one in the door, genius,” Lou kept his back turned away from the crime and burned through cigarettes like a nervous look-out. “Un-freaking-believable,” he heaved.

  Lou was right. There it was—an old style mail slot with a brushed nickel flap, just waiting for Teddy’s escape with Gracie’s ring. He pulled the ring across the window, down to the bottom of the wooden door and out the mail slot.

  Teddy held up the ring in the rays of the twinkling sun. Dawn danced off the stone, transforming the sapphire’s opaque density into a bottomless nautical blue. Nothing could have been more beautiful.

  “Jeez, kid,” Lou said, staring at the ring with disgust. “There goes my promotion.”

  * * * *

  Teddy and Lou entered Gracie’s apartment just before nine o’clock. Lou surveyed the busted door frame and the chaos of the scattered books on the floor, but he knew better than to make light of an already bad situation. Teddy passed into Gracie’s bedroom. She was still fast asleep. The jet lag had smothered her into a deep slumber. Dresser drawers teetered on their extended hinges. Mangled boxes lay crushed and tossed out from the closet. Shoes, purses, loose photographs, old make-up kits cluttered the floor like spilt contents of a garbage can. Protected by her heavy drapes, darkness sheathed the room in denial; morning daylight would force action and order. By noon, Gracie’s tears and prayers from the night before would only be a faint headache. She would be busy scavenging through the cabinets to produce stale cereal for breakfast and reflecting on which phone call to make first—the one to her landlord or to her mom. But until then, she slept with the serenity of a fairy tale, insulated against the harsh realities of a complex universe.

  Teddy always loved watching her sleep. There were endless nights when he pretended that she heard him in her dreams, and imagined what it felt like to express mortal love and to feel it in return. Those nights would be all gone now. Soon, Gracie would have a new keeper, and she would never know just how much Teddy cared about her.

  He suddenly regretted not coming to her—not searching her out, not meeting her in-person, not staying longer in the lower dimensions when he had the chance. Teddy knelt beside her bed, touched her ivory skin, and slipped the sapphire ring on her finger. He whispered in her ear, telling her that he had tried his best. Then, he wished her a shining, brilliant, radiant life—certain he would never see her again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A keeper must uphold the

  Canon of the Dimension Council for Eternity

  Lou and Teddy headed straight for Dimension Council. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. As the most supreme entity in the universe, there was no hiding fr
om the Dimension Council. Teddy didn’t feel badly about the fact that it was Lou who was delivering him to them. In fact, it was kind of a comfort for Teddy as he reflected on how he and Lou had spent all these centuries together, pounding on each other with the ambivalence of brothers; and now, Lou would be right there by his side when it all came to its bittersweet end.

  They arrived at the mortal portal that would transport them to the Council’s front doors—an abandoned warehouse in Chicago’s Fulton Market District. The warehouse’s large pane windows, riddled with bullet holes and rocks, were obscured with soot and graffiti. Thick tire chains locked up its main entrance doors like iron snakes. And slats of warped wood sealed shut the tiny windows of its below-grade basement. Teddy and Lou followed a crumbling cement staircase down into the bowels of the warehouse’s foundation.

  “You know, most keepers go lifetimes without ever once coming before the Dimension Council,” Lou said.

  “Yeah, I like to consider myself an over-achiever.”

  Teddy reflected on the last time he had been brought before the Council for going against his keeper oath and interfering in the life of his previous assignment, Martha Tannenbaum.

  “What was your punishment last time?” Lou asked.

  “They suspended me from being Martha’s keeper and sentenced me to two months of pigeon duty.”

  Lou whistled. “How did you get out of it?”

  “A whole lot of obsequious ass-kissing and the old ‘I’m-just-a-young-dumb-keeper’ face. Theyn, I just begged. And they bought it. They made me swear by the Canon of the Dimensions, twice, and then… they assigned me to Gracie.”

  “Wow, kid,” Lou shook his head. “It only took twenty-five years for you to be summoned back for breaking almost every law of the Canon.”

  “For Gracie—I’d break them all again.” Teddy said it with a finality that silenced them both.

  Lou turned to the rusty emergency exit door at the base of the stairs.

  “Ready, kid?” he asked, like a jail guard escorting a prisoner to his final Fate.