Free MOSAICS: A Thriller by E.E. Giorgi Page A

Guesswork based on some theory that we all want to murder our fathers and fuck our mothers.” I scraped the bottom of my food box and sucked the last noodle. “Oedipus’s myth isn’t about that.”
    Sat squashed his box, drained his Coke, then tossed everything in the trash. “No? What’s it about, then?”
    “About a bunch of fools who thought they could get away from their own fate. Truth is, no matter how hard you try, your fate is always gonna come back to bite your ass.”
    Satish crossed his arms and leaned back, one of his dreamy smiles plastered across his face. “Sounds like somethin’ my old man would’ve said.”
    He said nothing else for a little while, the skin between his brows pinched together like pizza dough. “You know what this reminds me of, Track?”
    I rose and slid my jacket on. “Can’t wait to hear it,” I said. 
    He gave me a puzzled look. “Jeez. You missed me that bad, huh?”
    “In some twisted sort of way.”
    Our steps resonated in the deserted hallway.
    Strange night to be catching a faceless killer .
    Satish was lost in one of his stories. “It reminds me of prasada ,” he said.
    But then again, all killers are faceless and all summer nights have a tendency to be strange .
    “ Prasada ?” I repeated.
    Satish pressed the elevator call button and bobbed his head. “It means ‘cooking for the gods.’ It’s a big deal in India. There’s a whole ritual that goes with it: you have to thoroughly wash before and after cooking. You can’t taste the food while you make it. You’re supposed to meditate and pray as you cook. And you can’t eat until after the gods have eaten.”
    “Good luck with that.”
    The elevator chim ed, the doors slid open and we stepped inside. “As always, you miss the point, Track. Ma would make rasgulla to please the gods. She’d place two or three in a special plate and set the plate in front of the altar. After that, we’d all bow our heads and close our eyes while she’d recite Om Namo Narayanaya over the rumble of our empty stomachs. When done reciting all prayers, she’d return the food to the kitchen and we could finally eat.”
    “So, the gods wouldn’t literally eat the food?”
    Satish winked. “Except one time they did.”
    We exited the elevator. The lobby was dimly lit and had the distinct smell of old building material and wood decay, mixed with remnants of fried beans from back when the cafeteria was there.
    Outside, hot air yawned in our faces. I jingled my car keys and pondered. It was past dinnertime, the honks of traffic had tapered off, and downtown was cloaked in a hazy sunset. Cruisers at the end of their shifts turned into the San Pedro parking lot, while others left to prowl the night beats. Pink clouds spilled into the sky and reflected off the glass façade of Parker Center.
    “Ma threw a fit when she opened her eyes and one ball of rasgulla was missing. And then she started the investigation. Except, she already knew the perpetrator.”
    “She did?”
    “Well, me and my brother, we always got excited about rasgullas . We helped Ma making them, but we were forbidden to even lick our fingers. It was torture.”
    “So you ate one?”
    “Uh-uh, we did not. But Ma was convinced we did. Our hands were sticky and there was sugar on our cheeks. She sent us to our room. The gods were very mad at us.”
    I winked. “I thought the gods had eaten the missing rasgulla .”
    Satish walked to his car and unlocked it. “Not the gods. Our baby sister Rhani, who’d just started crawling. My old man came back from work, picked her up, and asked, ‘Why is Rhani’s face all sticky w ith sugar?’” Satish chuckled, unlocked his car and slid behind the wheel.
    “I see,” I said. “So your mom had the perfect profile for the perpetrator, except it led her to the wrong suspects.”
    Satish scrunched his brows together. “Perfect profile? What are you talking about?”
    “You said this is what our meeting with Washburn