The Last Illusion Read online

  When she left, he drank himself to a sleep he wished was death, whatever that was—no amount of dismembering and frying of fowl could really explain that to him, since he was in the business of their post-death anti-existences. When he woke up the next morning and saw the crime scene—dozens of broken fried chicken wings, some in buckets, some strewn on his floor, and, worst of all worsts: two telltale little bones, almost perfectly cleaned—he contemplated suicide for the first time.

  After several rounds of vomiting, he went in to Ken Lee and told him: “I am depressed. I can’t do this.”

  Ken Lee didn’t understand at first but finally let him go, with his last paycheck, which Zal refused to take. When he left, Ken Lee turned to his wife and made a circle in the air beside his ear with his index finger, though who knew if Zal had it in the first place to lose it now.

  Asiya-less. Wasn’t that what he was getting at the whole time? She called the next day, suggesting their breakup—something she didn’t entirely mean—and he agreed.

  “Asiya, I think I’m depressed, like you said. I think I’m in trouble . . . I’ll be fine . . . no, what I mean is, I just need you out of my life . . . This has nothing to do with you, no. But, yes, you have to go, too . . . The Ken Lee job is gone, yes . . . but so are you. I’m hanging up now.”

  He thought about going to the ER, he thought about turning to his father, he thought about calling Rhodes, he even thought about telling Silber he’d love to have dinner. But none of it seemed possible. The only thing that did, as is often the case with truly depressed people, was the thing that seemed the most impossible: he thought about escaping, leaving New York.

  And go where, Zal? he imagined someone, anyone, somewhere asking. The only answer he had for that someone sounded like the punch line to a pathetic joke or just some one-off cheap insult.

  To hell, Zal would answer.

  For months, naturally, Hendricks had been worried, but Rhodes had urged him to stay away. That this was a good thing, an important thing, the boy asserting his independence. When in the history of ferals had anyone seen anything like this? It was what most men did as teenagers.

  “He’s trying to be a man, Hendricks,” Rhodes said. “Let him try. Maybe he’ll come out close to one. Who are we to say?”

  But Hendricks didn’t know what to do with that. Did he simply just pretend Zal never existed?

  Rhodes thought of making the empty-nest analogy, but saw it was unfit just in time, for too many reasons.

  Hendricks stopped by his apartment twice, both times armed with the excuse of having forgotten something there, but both times Zal was not there. He still continued to mail Zal checks, and they would get cashed, but he never received a phone call, an e-mail, any proper acknowledgment.

  Finally, on Zal’s birthday—Persian New Year and the first day of spring, a day Hendricks had decided would be fitting, since Zal’s proper birth certificate had never been found—Hendricks decided to camp out at Zal’s apartment from morning to night, with a small vegan cake that said, in frosting, happy 23rd, zal! The Zal he knew would not turn his back on a cake. So he waited. And even though he had the keys to his son’s place, he still stood outside. If there was any way to win his boy back, it was through showing him the utmost respect, he had learned.

  His boy was, after all, maybe a man now, in spite of everything, considering everything.

  Zal returned to his apartment at 11 p.m.—earlier than had been the norm in that period—after six straight hours of drinking at the Irish pub where he had had his first Manhattan bar drink. He had recently discovered the Long Island Iced Tea—it was apparently everything behind the bar and maybe more. He had no idea. It did not taste like tea, and it was very strong—that was all he knew. He’d had more of those than he could count.

  Hendricks almost didn’t recognize the stumbling gaunt Zal, drenched in the stench of booze, muttering to himself like a typical city indigent. When the thing almost fell over him at the door, Hendricks suddenly realized it was him, his son. He took him into his arms, to which Zal responded with a failed punch, not realizing whose arms he was in, but Hendricks caught the blow.

  “Oh, Father, what the hell are you doing here!” he tried to say, casually, as if amused, as if it was nothing.

  “Zal, I came to wish you a happy birthday. Are you okay? What’s happened to you? God, you’ve lost weight!”

  “Of course—it’s my birthday! Happy birthday to me!” Zal hooted loudly.

  Hendricks took his keys from him and let him in.

  The inside of the apartment was a wreck, as he expected, but a worse wreck than he imagined, given Zal’s appearance: crumpled newspapers all over the floor, something that looked like sunflower seed covering the couch, empty bottles of beer and wine, and bulbless lamps. The place was dark, completely dark.

  “What do you do for light, son?”

  “I don’t,” Zal muttered as he lay on his couch. “Cake time?”

  “Cake time,” Hendricks agreed, still depressed, feeling his way to the bathroom light. “When did you start drinking, Zal?”

  “I don’t drink!” Zal shouted.

  “Okay, okay,” Hendricks muttered. “Where is Asiya?”

  “Dead,” Zal snapped.

  “Dead?!”

  Zal made a barking sound, cleared his throat, and said finally, “We broke up.”

  Hendricks could not help but be wide-eyed at that. “Really?”

  “Another cause for celebration!” Zal said, applauding.

  Hendricks remained silent. “Any matches, Zal?”

  “I don’t want light!”

  “For the cake, Zal, for the cake,” he said. “I wanted to sing you ‘Happy Birthday.’”

  It was then that Zal burst into tears, horrible endless tears, the ones he hadn’t bothered to shed for months and months. They had been so bottled up, he hadn’t even known how badly they’d wanted to come out. He cried and he cried and he cried in his father’s arms.

  “Don’t worry, son, you’re back with your father, you’ll be okay,” Hendricks cooed, rocking him. “And we’re going to my house for a little while. Let’s gather what you need in a moment.”

  When Zal finally stopped crying, he had one question: “Why do you think I can cry so easily, but can’t smile?”

  Hendricks tried to tip his head back so his own tears wouldn’t fall out—for Zal, that night especially, he had to be strong. “I don’t think anyone knows, Zal,” he said. “But if it’s going to happen to anyone, it’s gonna be you.”

  Neither Hendricks nor Zal told Rhodes about their reunion. For Zal, Rhodes was still a part of a past he didn’t want to face, but for Hendricks it was purely too risky—he couldn’t have another professional tell him that what he was doing was bad for his own child. On this, there was nothing to do but follow his heart.

  So Zal stayed with him, in a semi-permanent manner, constantly saying that the next day he’d leave, but when the day would come, there would be no sign of any change. Zal would still be lying on the sofa, eating and eating and eating—Hendricks was determined to get the boy to gain weight, so he filled his home with Zal’s favorite foods, at least the favorites he knew of—and watching television, never wanting to go out, never wanting to do anything really.

  It occurred to Hendricks that Zal might be depressed and that he would have to call Rhodes if this was the case, but he refused to accept it fully. Hendricks was back to the mind-set of the decade before: he told himself all his boy needed was his father.

  And Hendricks, of course, needed him, too. He began to take up a Zal-like existence—they spent their days together in pajamas, buried in junk food, entranced by talk shows. Once in a while Hendricks got them both to take a walk or go out for a meal, but aside from that, they were like roommates dorm-bound over spring break while the rest of the world celebrated blue skies and perfect temperatures.

  One day in early April, Hendricks got a call from, of all people, Asiya.

  Zal was, as us
ual, on the couch just a few feet away, and Hendricks was determined not to let Zal know who it was.

  “Oh, hello,” Hendricks said, trying to sound casual, and then in a lowered voice, “How did you get this number?”

  “You’re listed,” Asiya sighed. “Anyway, I’m sorry to call you out of the blue—I know we don’t know each other very well and that it’s been quite a while.”

  “Right, we don’t, and yes, it has.”

  “Right, so I had to call because I tried to call Zal and his phone was disconnected and his cell has been off for weeks, it seems like, and I went by his place and no one was there, at two different times. I don’t know if you know, but we’ve broken up . . .”

  “Oh, I know,” muttered Hendricks, keeping his eye on the oblivious Zal.

  “Oh, so you two are talking now?”

  “Yes. Can I help you with something?” he said, trying and failing to hide his irritation.

  “Well, I just need to talk to him,” she said, trying her hardest to sound sweet and sane. “I mean, it’s just about a small matter, and yet an important one. It’s nothing big, but I think he should know . . . about a friend of his . . . a good friend . . .”

  “Um, I don’t think he’s around.”

  That did it. Zal, as if telepathically charged—either that or he was an expert spy—darted upright. “Who?! Me?”

  Hendricks sighed. “Hold on,” he said gruffly to Asiya, then put his hand over the receiver and said, wearily, to Zal, “It’s your old girlfriend. I don’t know what she wants. Something about a friend . . . but, Zal, I can tell her you don’t want to talk, you know.”

  Hendricks and Zal had barely discussed Asiya, so Hendricks had assumed things were pretty bad. Wishful thinking, he thought as he saw a strange look in Zal’s eyes, the look people on TV took on when they played the hypnotized, a dreamy faraway look that suddenly manifested itself in an outstretched hand.

  “Really, Zal?” Hendricks whispered, holding the receiver like it was a dead mouse, like it was actually her, the worst thing he could wish on his son at that moment.

  Zal nodded slowly.

  Hendricks slowly passed the phone to him and did the only thing he knew to be right: he walked away and locked himself in his bedroom and put his fingers in his ears, should anything get to him. It wasn’t just Zal’s privacy; in some ways he simply just did not want to know, did not want to think Zal was anything but that little boy of just a few years ago who was all his.

  Zal, meanwhile, for a moment felt catatonic. He held the phone to his ear and just listened for her breathing.

  He didn’t hear a thing, as if she were holding it.

  He breathed heavily to send her a sign.

  She bit: “Zal, you there?”

  “Hello,” he said, trying to sound almost computerized with professionalism.

  She thought he sounded funny. “Hi, Zal, you okay?”

  “Yes. I am. Are you?”

  “Yes,” she said, and sighed. “Happy belated birthday. I tried to call then, but your phone was off.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, how are you?”

  “I am . . .” and Zal thought about how best to put it, “alive, for the most part.”

  Asiya paused and then said, “Me, too.”

  There was some silence.

  “So why did you call?” Zal eventually asked.

  “I miss you,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “You don’t, Zal?”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t miss me?”

  Zal paused. There was so much politics involved in that simple question—that much he knew, that much he had learned about relationships. “I do in some ways. In some ways, I don’t.”

  She sighed heavily. “I thought so. Well . . .”

  Zal could tell there was more. “Is that all?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, what then?”

  “Please don’t hang up on me.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “You could.”

  “It’s true. But I won’t. Why would I?”

  “Because,” she said, sounding whimperish. “Because I could annoy you.”

  “Hmm. Well, it’s less likely since we haven’t talked for a while.”

  “I don’t know who else to tell. Willa suddenly won’t talk to me, and Zachary moved out . . .”

  “He did?” For a second, it made Zal contemplate going back there. If only to see Willa. He wondered if that was why she mentioned it, a trap of sorts.

  “Yeah, he’s a mess. I think he’s doing something illegal. And Willa—I’m worried about Willa.”

  “Why?” He heard a different type of urgency in his voice.

  “I think she’s not well. I mean, I know she’s not well like us, but all bound up in that awful bed, I feel like she might need to break free, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “I’ve been having dreams, Zal.”

  He felt the urge to hang up, but then he remembered she had just moments before thought he was going to do just that. He was not going to let anything she said come true, not as long as he could control it. “Is there any reason to really worry about her or not?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to say, really. I’m afraid for her life.”

  “Aren’t you afraid for all of our lives? Isn’t that your point?”

  “I have just been having some intense stuff . . .”

  “What do you mean by stuff ?” He knew exactly what she meant, still well-versed in Asiya lingo.

  “You know . . . the stuff. Not just the dreams, the nightmares. But the . . . visions.” She said it very quietly, as if embarrassed, or, more likely, as if someone eavesdropping could pick it up.

  “Asiya, are you not taking medication?”

  “That’s the thing! I am! And still . . .”

  “Maybe it’s the wrong one.”

  “I’ve tried them all. This one has been the best. But it’s not stopping the visions.”

  “Now you’re going to tell me about it, aren’t you?”

  “Zal, can I?”

  “Asiya, I can’t do this.”

  “I’m only asking for you to listen. I just need one more person to know is all!”

  “What would that do?”

  “Well, if it is truly something to worry about, then you could tell someone. The authorities or something.”

  “Tell the authorities that the world is ending, Asiya?”

  “No, nothing like that. That’s silly.”

  “That’s silly?” Zal was amazed. She had been predicting the end of the world for almost as long as he’d known her. This had to be good.

  “Zal.”

  “Asiya?”

  “Zal, in six months, half a year . . .”

  “It’s coming?”

  “Well, yes. Something is.”

  Zal groaned. “Wow, only half a year till the world ends.”

  “Stop saying that,” she snapped. “I mean, for some people it will, yes. But not the world. Just us.”

  “Us?!”

  “I mean, New York.”

  “New York?”

  “Manhattan only, actually.”

  “Asiya, what are you talking about?”

  “I think something is going to happen here.”

  “Any specifics?”

  “I can’t talk about it on the phone. Do you think we could leave within six months?”

  “We?” He didn’t bother to tell her, Actually, Asiya, the one fantasy that has kept me going these days is the one where I leave New York for good. She would interpret that as a sign and suddenly he’d find himself married to her.

  “Zal, can you meet me? Anytime soon?”

  “No, Asiya,” he said firmly, thinking of everything—where he’d been, where he was now, where he was going. She was, he realized, what they called a sinking ship. He couldn’t blame it all on her, but he knew she had played the biggest part in the
best and worst year of his life. He had no choice but to move on.

  “You don’t love me?”

  “No, Asiya.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But what about that stuff ? You want to live, no?”

  “Asiya,” he sighed. “If you had seen me lately, you wouldn’t be sure of that. Let it come. Let it get Manhattan, whatever it is. You won’t see me stopping it.”

  And, for very different reasons, they hung up at that exact same moment, each thinking they had done the final cutoff. If a curtain could ever drop with true definitiveness, that was a way, one good way.

  When Hendricks gingerly entered the room again, he was surprised to see Zal giving a thumbs-up sign, as if he were a scout who’d just received another badge. They went on with their routine, their daylessness, their hourlessness, their vacuum of father and son, father and son and love, and pretended the call and its message had never even interrupted it.

  It was the summer of 2001, a strange summer Zal would always remember; Hendricks, Rhodes, and Silber, of course, and even Asiya would remember. June and July felt endless with odd news: there was the Nepalese royal massacre on June 1, with Crown Prince Dipendra killing his father, the king, his mother, and other members of the royal family before shooting himself. Ten days later, in Terre Haute, Indiana, Timothy McVeigh finally was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing. The next week, Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her children in a bathtub and was sentenced to life in prison. A month later, the Tamil Tigers attacked Bandaranaike International Airport, in Sri Lanka, causing an estimated $500 million in damages. There were more shark attacks than usual in the United States. Chandra Levy, a Federal Bureau of Prisons intern, disappeared in D.C.

  Asiya had decided to keep sleeping to a minimum. The visions tended to come to her in her sleep. And they were coming too fast. Sometimes she didn’t think she could take them and she wished they would just go away forever. But the minute they were gone, it felt as though she had hidden in the closet of a house in which a murderer was loose—any second he could fling open the closet door, but she’d never know when. She was the type of person who’d have to run out and announce herself and get it over with rather than hide and wait. If it was coming, it was coming—there was no point in being blind, or in denial, or in feigned invisibility, or in wishful thinking. So for the sake of maximizing time, conscious time, she just cut down on sleep, and on top of that, fearing that they might send her away again—and then who would know? Who could know?—she started talking about it less. Willa wouldn’t hear it anymore anyway, and Zachary was mostly gone.