“Happy Birthday, Lenny,” I say, pushing the cake towards him.
He reaches out and feels the edges of the cake with his fingertips. His blind eyes stare straight ahead, milky white and smooth as marbles, but he sees okay with his touch.
He forces out a smile and says, “Elliot, you shouldn’t have.”
It’s not a real smile. I haven’t seen a real smile on Lenny’s face in a long time.
“It’s the least I can do for my best friend,” I reply.
I steal a glance around the room, trying to keep my breath steady and my movements quiet; I don’t want him to know I’m looking for the red light.
Lenny pulls the cake towards him, and then he angles it to fit neatly between the lines on the table’s surface. He doesn’t like it when things don’t line up. It’s one of his many torments. My poor, pathetic Lenny.
The cake is a cheap one from the bakery section in the budget-mart down the street, yellow sponge loaded up with thick white sugar icing and covered in sprinkles. It didn’t come with the sprinkles; I put those on myself. There are four candles on the top – one for every century we’ve known each other.
“Do you remember the time we were hunting in Dobruja, and you chased that sheep over the edge of a cliff in the dark?” I ask.
“Yeah, I remember.”
He does remember. I can see that much. He remembers the event, but he doesn’t remember how it felt. He doesn’t remember how we lay on the rocks at the bottom of that valley and laughed half the night away. It’s been so long since we’ve been able to laugh like that. Lenny’s body hasn’t changed for centuries, but his mind hasn’t held up well to the years. He was already losing his sight before we were cursed, and I think that’s how his slow slide into despair and compulsion began. Being condemned to blindness forever must be a hard thing to take.
“When was that?” I say. “A hundred years ago?”
“Two hundred and three years, seventeen days.”
“Wow.” My surprise is feigned. “I have such a bad memory. I couldn’t even tell you how many years we’ve know each other, can you believe that?”
“Four – ”
“Lenny, don’t. I don’t want to know.”
“Oh,” he says with a slightly hurt tone. He looks betrayed. It’s hard to lie to him, but I don’t want to spoil his surprise.
He touches the surface of the cake gently with his fingertips and finds the sprinkles there. His brow furrows. He is fighting one of his brave battles inside, but he’ll lose this one just like all the rest,and then he’ll hate himself a little more for it afterwards.
I won’t let him go through that, not today, not on his birthday.
I gently place my hand on top of his.
“Lenny – ”
“Yes?” His reply is distant and automatic. He’s busy inside that tormented head of his.
“It’s okay to count them.”
He stops and his brow unknits. There is a mixture of embarrassment and relief on his face.
“You always said I shouldn’t give in to it.”
“Today it’s okay, buddy. I’ll wait for you. Go ahead.”
He begins to count, his fingers brushing lightly over the icing, registering the sprinkles like candy Braille. He counts fast – years of practice see to that – but it still takes him a while. As he sits there deep in concentration, I watch him with tears shining in my eyes and I look for the red light.
Long, painful minutes pass with the two of us sitting there in his unembellished kitchen on the eighteenth floor of the Manhattan high rise. I glance out through the open window across the city, knowing who is out there. New York has been good to Lenny and me. Lots of homeless people make it easier for us – they go missing without too much of a stir. The clock ticks loudly on the wall, and I can hear the traffic on Sixth Avenue far below us. The window blinds clack gently against the frame as the June breeze comes in.
Suddenly he lets out a stifled laugh.
“You always were a sneaky bastard, Elliot!”
“What do you mean?” I say, keeping up the pretense, although I almost start to cry and ruin it.
“Four hundred and twenty-two,” he says.
“Four hundred and twenty-two sprinkles, you mean?”
“That’s how many years we’ve known each other. You did remember!” There is genuine amusement on his face, though it’s not enough to cut through his troubles. It’s just a shiny little nick on their surface. “Okay, come clean, how long did it take you to count them?”
I shake my head and smile. “A lot longer than it took you; trust me.”
He leans across the table, taking my hands in his and holding them tight. I wish he could look me in the eyes, but he stares through me with those sad, white marbles of his instead.
“Thank you. You really are a good friend.”
That’s it. The sincerity in his voice bites through me and I can’t bear it any more. But just as I’m about to make my excuses and run for the door, the red light finally appears. It’s a circle, the size of a pushpin, and it materializes square between Lenny’s eyes. It’s a holy light, a saving grace, and it focuses me again.
“There’s something else I have to give you, Lenny.”
He begins to object, but I push a tiny box into his palm. I picked it up from a jeweler’s booth in the mall a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to hold a ring, but that’s not what it contains today. I close his fingers over it as if I’m asking him to marry me.
His face becomes serious. “What is this?”
“Open it.”
He opens the box and takes out the tiny cylinder from inside. He holds it in both hands, turning it between his fingers to examine it. Gradually, realization dawns on his face and smoothes out some of the weary wrinkles beside his eyes.
“It’s a bullet,” he says with a whisper of excitement in his voice. “Is it – ?”
“Yes, Lenny. It’s silver.”
His face splits into a smile then – a real smile, the first I’ve seen in centuries. Tears appear in his eyes, and for a moment I have such a longing to be his friend for another four hundred years that I almost falter in my resolve, but he means too much to me for that kind of selfishness.
“Is it true?” he says. “Is it real?”
“Yes. If you want it, it’s real.”
“When?”
“Now, if you like, or later, it’s your choice.”
He rises suddenly from his chair and walks around the table towards me. The red light follows him all the way, never once deviating from his forehead. I am truly impressed at the marksmanship. I got what I paid for.
He embraces me hard and I hug him back. We are both crying and laughing at the same time – laughing like the time he followed that sheep off the cliff in the dark Romanian night.
“I mean it,” he whispers. “You are a good friend.”
“So are you, buddy,” I reply. “So are you.”
Then he stands up straight, composed and smiling with his chest pushed out like a soldier standing to attention. He takes a deep, peaceful breath.
“Now is good.”
I look up at him one last time and then, before the tears in my eyes can blur my vision, I look out of the window into the faceless city and nod my head.
In the distance, from far across the way, there is the tiniest crack. A human wouldn’t have heard it, but I hear it clearly. A long moment passes – longer than I would have ever expected – and then suddenly the red light on Lenny’s forehead is gone and so, too, is my friend of a half-dozen lifetimes.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and look down at Lenny as he lies on his kitchen floor.
He’s smiling.
“It was a pleasure, Lenny, it truly was,” I say, with every word sticking in the back of my throat. Then I leave his apartment. I step out into the hallway and I hear the tiniest whisper on the breeze. It could be a distant siren, or a gull sailing high out over the Hudson, or maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, but I swear it sounds like him.
The pleasure was all mine.