Nothing But Blackened Teeth(9)

“Excuse me?” said Lin.

“Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai,” Talia repeated, pronunciation paced for intelligibility. She looked at me then, really looked, harpooning my attention with the steadiness of her regard. “A Gathering of One Hundred Ghost Stories. I think?”

“Or weird stories,” said Faiz.

“Ancient samurai started this game as a kind of parlour game to see who the bravest of them were. They’d light one hundred candles in the room. Each samurai would tell a ghost story, extinguishing a candle at the end, and the winner would be whoever survived the ordeal without flinching.”

“Or going to the bathroom?” said Lin.

“Uh. Sure,” said Faiz.

“So, what’s the point of the whole ritual anyway?” said Lin.

Talia was on her feet now too, walking a reverse circuit from her fiancé, her shadow growing longer as she extinguished the lanterns limning the parabola of her route.

Until at last there was one lantern remaining, its flame twitching, throwing shapes over the walls. From up the stairs, candlelight fell unevenly.

“What do you think?” Talia’s smile was sly. “To make a place where spirits would be welcome. Now, come on.”

We went up. Someone had lit one hundred red candles in a room that must have belonged to a second wife, a concubine who had lost her lustre, a room too small and too spare to have homed someone who mattered, a chapel sacred to the incidental. If the owner was ever beloved, it was grudgingly, resentfully: an act of reluctant duty. The room’s only grace was an oval mirror, taller than plausible, its frame made of black ceramic, seamed with gold arteries.

“This isn’t creepy at all,” said Phillip.

“You talking about the room, the ceremony, or the fact that Talia packed a hundred candles in her bag without any of us noticing?” said Lin after a quick glance around him, Talia nowhere in immediate sight.

“All of it?” Phillip’s reflection had no face, just a thumbprint on the bronze mirror. It could have belonged to anyone, anything else. “Like, this feels unholy.”

“And the fact you could purchase access to a historical site without having to fill out any kind of paperwork didn’t?” Lin drawled, shoulder laid against a pillar, no color to the latter any longer, not unless ancient was a hue. “If there’s anything unholy, it’s the heights that rich white men—”

“I knew I shouldn’t have taken time to fill you in. And come on, it’s not like I’m doing it for myself.”

“You’re doing it for Talia, I know,” said Lin.

A beat that went too long. “And Faiz too.”

“You’re still sweet on her, aren’t you?” said Lin, face cracked into a grin. He pushed from the wall.

“Jesus hell, Lin,” I said.

“What?” He threw a shrug, hands tossed up so quickly that his fingers, if they had been birds, would have broken in the violence. “We’re all thinking it. The stupid little figurines that Talia gave us. This was supposed to be a surprise elopement. How did she know, dude? Come on. Tell me.”

Phillip moved fast. Faster than I think any of us could have gambled he’d go even with his quarterback history. With that much muscle, you expected to see the machinery move: his physique bunching for motion, creating momentum. But Phillip poured across the room: six gliding steps and Lin suddenly was pincered between him and a wall, head ricocheting from the impact.

“The fuck are you doing?” I shouted, lunging for Phillip’s arm.

He glared at me then. And his eyes were cold, so cold your heart would freeze in that blue.

“You’re right,” he said. Phillip, we all knew, had his universal script. “I’m above that.”

“But not above sleeping with someone else’s wife.” Lin collared his own neck with a hand and rubbed his Adam’s apple after Phillip had let him go, smile enduring as a bad habit.

“I didn’t sleep with Talia.”

“Sure,” said Lin, strolling out then—finally—and the house devoured his footsteps. Silence leaned into us, a conspiring friend. I looked up at Phillip. He stood stooped with two fists balled-up at his sides, teeth gritted, breath bleeding in trails.

“Hey.”

A sidelong look but no sound yet otherwise.

“Hey,” I said again. “The fuck was that?”

His rage began to slough as he spoke. “I don’t know. I lost my temper. That asshole does it to me all the time. I think I can keep my shit together but something about Lin just makes me want to punch a wall.”

Phillip wiped his tongue along the edge of a tooth, hands raised for me to see, the palms cut with half-moons from his nails.

“You know that’s what he’s like, though.”

“I don’t know how you put up with him.” Phillip kept going, his internal monologue, as always, so loud it couldn’t ever make space for collaboration. “He’s a piece of shit.”

“Is he right, though?”

“What?”

“Is he right?” I said, and the house breathed in, swallowing half the candles, making a mess of the dark. “About you and Talia.”

“You sound like you want it to be,” came the reply, too slow for it to be innocent of Lin’s insinuations, air filtered through Phillip’s teeth in a languid hiss. At least there was no more anger, that part of him thankfully exhumed. His countenance, badly lit, was grave but harmless.