By the time we get to Manhattan Community College, CNN stops following us. The police, escorts, news crews, and curious are more news-worthy than we are. Even the Enquirer‘s and Midnight Sun‘s psychics have forgotten us, more concerned with some women in Toronto having Beriah’s child.
He hasn’t even been here a month.
CNN pays a crew to follow us and keep a directional mike on us at all times. People tire of Beriah’s snoring, even though it sounds more like a cat wheezing at night.
All we ever do is walk. We never challenge anybody and, now that the word is out, nobody challenges us. People have even stopped coming to be healed, although I hear there is a cult in Indianapolis which worships us from afar.
We stop in front of a boarding house on Albany. The manager comes to the door as he sees us walking across the street.
Beriah reads the sign in front. “We can sleep here.”
I scan the sign and, ever articulate, agree. “Huh? Yeah, yes.”
We start up the steps and the manager opens the door towards us. “You looking for a room?” He scans up and down the street then up at the windows on the buildings across the street. He keeps the door between us, him inside and the four of us outside, only his head and chest peering past the edge as if he were some Hollywood Indian gazing from around some tree at a wagon train of settlers crossing the plains. The image is insane. He stands behind a glass door.
“Yes, we are.”
He continues to look up and down the street.
I reach for the door. “May we come in?”
He looks at us hard, as if maybe to figure us out. He licks his lips. The skin just below his nose starts to glisten. “I – ”
The Healers walk away. The man points at their backs. “Guess you won’t be staying.” He steps back inside and closes the door before I can turn around.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you want to go in there?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you? He couldn’t keep you out. It would have been against the law.”
Beriah doesn’t stop, doesn’t ponder, only explains. “A law created by one to create an obligation in another.”
Cetaf doesn’t glance back, keeps moving forward “He didn’t want us there.”
Thinking I was learning, I said, “He was just afraid of you. He doesn’t know you.”
Beriah stops, considers. “Perhaps…Perhaps he resents us.”
“How can he resent you? He doesn’t know you.”
“Knowledge has never been a prerequisite to resentment. Besides, obligation breeds resentment, choice breeds acceptance.”
Previous entries in The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) series
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