Body Surfing

did he have anymore? Immortality. The ability to jump from body to body like a frog leaping from lily pad to lily pad on a cosmic-sized pond. A memory that could retain anything it was exposed to, a body that could withstand almost anything that was thrown at it. Yet all that came to him were his father’s words.
    I have no face .
     
    As Q. watched Larry Bishop walk into the hospital, his new cell rang. He reached for it without the slightest sense of trepidation. It was barely eleven. Miranda had left messages with both of his parents that he was back, and he assumed it was one of them. The caller ID was blocked, but they both had private numbers.
    “Hello.”
    “Hello, Q.” came a voice he thought he’d never hear again. “How’s Jasper?”
    “Dr. Thomas?” Q. said. “Um, hi .”

18
    M adelaine Szarko had chosen a Monet print to hang over the marital bed. Water lilies, natch. The pastel blossoms went perfectly with the delicate toile wallpaper, and the milky water complemented the fabric that covered the chairs and bed. Only incidentally did it occur to her that there were no faces in the painting. No eyes looking down on her, to see what she got up to while her husband was away. He was in…Columbus, was it, or maybe—ugh!—San Diego? She didn’t pay much attention anymore. She’d read one of her historical romances for half an hour, filled her mind with images of pirates ravaging damsels’ purity. She was ready.
    She reached for her jewelry box, lifted out the false bottom, and pulled her old friend from it. It was still slightly sticky from the last time she used it, but she was in too much of a hurry to wash it now. She told herself she would do it after.
    She slipped her friend under the covers. Pulled her nightgown up. Closed her eyes.
    There was a faint hum as she hit the switch. She smiled in anticipation. Lifted her hips and lay the tip of the vibrator against the folds of her vagina. Letting them both—vagina and vibrator—warm up. In her mind she sat astride a sorrel stallion, her arms wrapped around the tight waist of a man whose face she could barely see. The richsmell of his leather jerkin filled her nostrils, the pulsing of the horse’s muscles vibrated in his thighs, her pelvis, her—
    A scream ripped the night apart. A scream of pure abject terror—panting, gasping, sobbing, desperate. It was the scream Madelaine Szarko had been waiting for ever since her daughter’s miraculous recovery from her injuries.
    “No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!”
    There was the sound of glass smashing, and then the night went silent, save for the faint electronic hum from beneath the blanket.

4
The Solomon Jar
    “Where have you been, my long, long love?”
    —“The Demon Lover,” author unknown

1
    T he house John Van Arsdale had inherited from his father was a small building made of jagged chunks of brown stone. The building’s squatness was emphasized by a low-pitched roof, its window slits so narrow they gave the place a fortresslike air. A metal plaque at the bottom of the front yard proclaimed that the structure had been built “c. 1690,” making it, as John Van Arsdale frequently reminded his son, the oldest building in Greene County.
    Whatever value it conferred, the plaque did little to disguise the fact that the house was, for all intents and purposes, a dump. The shingled roof sagged noticeably in the northwest face, and the glowering aspect was equally present inside. The ceilings were so low that Jasper had been able to jump up and touch them since he got his growth spurt. Not with his hand—he didn’t have to jump for that—but the top of his head. A quintessentially stupid adolescent activity. Slamming your head into the ceiling just to prove you could. Van Arsdale used to scold his son that each of the dozen concave circles in the living room ceiling represented one less IQ point. “I’m just trying to be more like you, Dad,” Jasper had responded, brushing plaster dust from his hair. “Another twenty or thirty, and we should be right at the same level.”
    Holes in the ceiling. That’s all John Van Arsdale had now. A bunch of cracked-plaster dents in the house he’d sacrificed everything for, just so he could leave it to his son.
    The building’s best feature was the land it sat on. A high hill bounced it right into the sky. The Catskill range dominated the western view, and each night a miraculous sunset played itself out in