The Storyteller Read online

  Zebras don't change their stripes, and war criminals don't repent.

  It doesn't surprise me that Josef Weber, who confessed to being a Nazi, isn't one. After all, it's what I expected. What surprises me is how much I really wanted Sage Singer to prove me wrong.

  When you can prolong the inevitable, it's always better.

  That's why, for a predator, the wilding begins with a chase. It's not toying with food, as some people think. It's getting the adrenaline level to match your own.

  There comes a point, though, where waiting is no longer possible. You hear the prey's heart beating inside your own head, and it is the last conscious thought you will be able to hold. Once you give in to the primeval, you are an observer, watching another part of you feast, shredding the flesh to find the ambrosia. You drink in the victim's fear, but it tastes like excitement. You have no past, no future, no sympathy, no soul.

  But you knew that before you even started, didn't you?

  SAGE

  When I show up for work the next night, someone else is baking in my kitchen. He is a behemoth of a man, six-foot-something, with Maori-style tattoos on his upper arms. When I walk in, he's cutting slabs of dough and tossing them with incredible precision onto a scale. "Hey," he says, in a squirrelly voice that doesn't match his body. "Howyadoin."

  My mind is a colander, and all the words I need to have this conversation are funneling fast through the sieve. I am so surprised I forget to hide my scar. "Who are you?"

  "Clark."

  "What are you doing?"

  He looks at the table, the wall, anywhere but at me. "The dinner rolls."

  "I don't think so," I say. "I work alone."

  Before Clark can respond, Mary enters the kitchen. She was no doubt alerted to my arrival by Rocco, who had greeted me in the front of the bakery with this cryptic observation: "Dreamed of traveling? Maybe taking up knitting? Now may be the time."

  "I see you've met Clark." She smiles at the giant who is now shaping loaves at a blistering speed. I wonder if he's poked through my pre-ferments and pored over my spreadsheets. It makes me feel as if someone has been rifling through my underwear drawer. "Clark used to work at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont."

  "Good. Then he can go back to them."

  "Sage! Clark's just here to help you out. To relieve some of the stress."

  I take Mary by the arm and turn her away, so that Clark can't hear what I say. "Mary," I whisper, "I don't want any help."

  "Maybe so," she says. "But you need it. Why don't you and I take a little walk?"

  I'm fighting tears, and the uncontrollable urge to throw a tantrum; I'm equal parts angry and hurt. Yes, I took the night off without telling my boss, but I found my own replacement. And maybe I changed the menu without running it by her, either, but that challah I baked was moist and sweet and perfect. But mostly I'm upset because I thought Mary was my friend, not just my boss, which makes her zero-tolerance policy even more devastating.

  She leads me past the last few customers in the shop, who are being rung out by Rocco. As we pass the register, I turn away from him. Did Mary tell Rocco she was getting rid of me? Is he her new confidant about this business, the way I used to be?

  I follow her through the parking lot and the shrine gates, up the Holy Stairs, until we are standing in the same grotto where Josef told me he was a Nazi.

  "Are you firing me?" I burst out.

  "Why would you think that?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Maybe because Mr. Clean's in my kitchen baking my dinner rolls. I can't believe you'd replace me with some drone from a factory . . ."

  "King Arthur Flour's hardly a factory, and Clark's not a replacement. He's just here to give you a little flexibility." Mary sits down on a granite bench. Her eyes are a piercing blue, with all that monkshood behind her. "I'm only trying to help, Sage. I don't know if it's stress or guilt or something else, but you're not yourself lately. You've become erratic."

  "I'm still doing my job. I've been doing my job," I protest.

  "You baked two hundred and twenty loaves of challah last night."

  "Did you try any? Trust me, no customer could find a better one anywhere else."

  "But they would have to go somewhere else if they wanted rye bread. Or sourdough. Or an ordinary wheat loaf. Or any of the other staples you chose not to make." Her voice grows soft as moss. "I know you were the one who got rid of the Jesus Loaf, Sage."

  "Oh, for God's sake--"

  "I prayed about it. That loaf was a call to save someone, and now, I realize that person is you."

  "Is this because I played hooky?" I ask. "I had to see my grandmother. She wasn't feeling well." It is amazing, I realize, how quickly lies compound. They cover like a coat of paint, one on top of the other, until you cannot remember what color you started with.

  Maybe Josef had actually begun to believe he was the person everyone thought him to be. And maybe that was what finally made him tell the truth.

  "Look at you, Sage, a million miles away. Are you even listening to me? You're a hot mess. Your hair looks like there are birds nesting in it; you probably haven't showered today; you have circles under your eyes that are so dark it makes me think of kidney failure. You're burning a candle at both ends, working here all night and then committing adultery during the day with that trollop." Mary frowns. "What's a male version of trollop?"

  "Shimbo," I say. "Look, I know you and I don't see eye to eye about Adam, but you didn't get all up in Rocco's grille when he asked you the best fertilizer for a cannabis crop--"

  "If he'd been stoned on the job, I would have," Mary insists. "You may not believe this, but I don't think you're immoral for sleeping with Adam. In fact, I think it bothers you deep down, just as much as it bothers me. And maybe that's why it's taking over your life in a way that's affecting your work."

  I start to laugh. Yeah, I'm obsessed with a man. He just happens to be a nonagenarian.

  Suddenly an idea lights in my mind, delicate as a beating butterfly. What if I told her? What if this burden I've been carrying around--this confession from Josef--wasn't only mine to bear? "Okay, maybe I have been a little upset. But it's not Adam. It's Josef Weber." I look her in the eye. "I learned something about him. Something terrible. He's a Nazi, Mary."

  "Josef Weber. The same Josef Weber I know? The one who always leaves a twenty-five-percent tip and who gives half his roll to his dog? The Josef Weber who was given the Good Samaritan award last year by the chamber of commerce?" Mary shakes her head. "This is exactly what I'm talking about, Sage. You're overtired. Your brain is firing on the wrong cylinders. Josef Weber's a sweet old man I've known for a decade. If he's a Nazi, honey, then I'm Lady Gaga."

  "But, Mary--"

  "Have you told anyone else about this?"

  Immediately, I think of Leo Stein.

  "No," I lie.

  "Well, good, because I don't think there's a novena for slander."

  I feel as if the whole world is looking through the wrong end of the telescope, and I am the only one who can see clearly. "I'm not accusing Josef," I say desperately. "He told me."

  Mary purses her lips. "A few years ago some scholars translated an ancient text they believed was the Gospel of Judas. They said the information, told from Judas's point of view, would turn Christianity on its ear. Instead of Judas being the world's biggest traitor, he was apparently the only one Jesus trusted to get the job done--which is why Jesus, knowing he would have to die, picked Judas to confide in."

  "So you believe me!"

  "No," Mary says flatly. "I don't. And I didn't believe those scholars, either. Because I've got two thousand years of history telling me Jesus--who incidentally was one of the good guys, Sage, just like Josef Weber--was betrayed by Judas."

  "History's not always right."

  "But you've got to start there anyway. If you don't know where you've come from, how in Heaven's name will you ever figure out where you're going?" Mary folds me into an embrace. "I am doing this because