THE BASILISK, THE KING OF THE SERPENTS, WAS ENDOWED with a crown. He was the egg of the cock, hatched under a toad. One basilisk burned to the ground whatever Julian and Mia came near. Another wandered through their lives upright, and when they looked upon the heads of the Medusa, they died from the horror. Unlike other serpents, the basilisk walked arrogant and tall, withering the flowers, breathing death upon the hours and tearing stones like robes.
“She’s going to die, Ashton,” Julian said. “I feel it. No matter what I do, she is going to die.” He and Mia had finally left the Marmont and returned to their lives, and that’s where Julian was, returned to the roof deck with Ashton, shivering in the middle of the desert night.
“Dude, it’s not true,” Ashton said. “Well, I mean, yes, she is, because we all are eventually, but that’s no way to live. Just look at you. You’re a ghost, haunting my room at night.”
“I don’t know how to live anymore,” Julian whispered.
“Look,” Ashton said, “there are two ways you can do it. One is to know that you approach death with every hour of your life. And one is to feel like you’re going to live forever. Even if you know it’s not true. You and I are a good study in humanity. One way is your way—and look at you. And one way is mine—and look at me.” Ashton grinned with all his teeth, flinging out his arms like a triumph on the stage. “So you tell me, which way is better?”
“Like it’s even a choice.”
“What, you don’t think I can be all morbid and miserable like you?” Ashton said. “Well, maybe not. It’s like living with a Russian. I had a girlfriend like you once. She was from St. Petersburg. Every single thing was a catastrophe with her. I couldn’t run away fast enough. Who can live like that? Well, you, clearly. But who’d want to? If you don’t cut this shit out, your angel Mirabelle is going to run from you, too.”
“Not fast enough,” Julian said.
* * *
Julian walks and walks and walks and walks. He is exhausted, but he keeps on. It’s cold and hot, it’s ice and boiling, the buildings erupt, and the earth shakes. He walks through the caves and black holes, over lava and the craters in the streets. The leaves fall off the trees, and the blizzards come. His body gets thin, then emaciated, his hair grows long, then gray, then falls out. He bleeds from his arms, his legs, his back, and still he walks. He catches a reflection of himself in the black water. He is nothing but a skeleton. He looks at his arms. Radial bones. He looks at his legs. Femoral bones. Long bones in his feet, and his ribs are like cages, and still he walks. The bridges look familiar, the buildings, the river. Another once around the scorched earth, and another, and another, a circle he can’t break out of. In horror he realizes that if he doesn’t wake up and do something, he’ll be walking in circles like this for eternity. It feels as if he already has. Julian stops moving, stretches out his arms to make his body into a cross and screams.
That’s when he woke up.
“Oh, honey, you poor thing. Not again.”
They were at the MGM Grand. He and Mirabelle drove to Las Vegas to watch Buster “The Exterminator” Barkley lose a heartbreaker to a knockout in the seventh. As consolation, they were comped by MGM with a corner suite with a view of the desert and the strip. Julian was crouched in the corner of that suite, by the windows overlooking the city that never slept.
“Come back to bed, Jules. Please.”
“Come here,” he said.
“Really? Instead of us spooning all cozy under the blankets in a warm bed, you want me to get down on the hard floor with you?”
“Yes.”
She hopped off the bed and came to stand naked by his side. “Okay, now what?”
“I wanted a fairytale,” Julian said, “and instead I’m down on my knees.” He stared up at her in the pale crescent moonlight. He kissed her stomach, her thighs. Either he was in the midst of death or he was in the midst of life.
“Mia, marry me.”
“What?”
“I love you,” he said. “I didn’t know it was possible for me to love someone like I love you. Please, will you marry me?”
She swayed.
“You think it’s too soon,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I know. There are a million reasons not to do it.”
“I said yes, Julian.” She fell to her knees in front of him. “What took you so long? There’s nothing I want more, nothing. When?”
“Well, we are in Vegas, the capital of classy weddings,” he said. “How about tomorrow?”
“I can’t believe I have to wait that long,” she said. “Okay, fine. Maybe that’ll give you time to buy me a ring.”
Julian opened his clenched fist. Inside the palm of his hand, like an ancient relic, like a crystal of souls that had once been inside her palm and was now in a storm drain on Sunset Boulevard, lay a two-carat princess-cut sparkling diamond.
Mirabelle wept.
* * *
“Chapel of the Flowers?” Julian asked her. “Or Chapel of the Bells?”
“I hope that’s the hardest decision I’ll ever have to make.”
“We could wait,” he said, brooding in a chair by the window.
She got upset. He was backpedaling already.
“We could wait to get married in a real church,” he said, half-explaining.
“Chapel of the Bells is a real church,” she said. “It’s got the word chapel baked right into the name. Why would we wait?”
“I don’t want your mother to think it’s a fake wedding.”
“Who cares what she thinks,” Mia said. “And who’s she to judge? She and my dad got hitched on the Coney Island boardwalk during the thirty minutes between end of confession and start of Mass.”
“Haven’t you dreamed of a perfect wedding?” he said, looking up at her standing over him, arms akimbo. “What did you wish for? Whatever it is, I want to give it to you.”
“I have dreamed of my wedding, of course I have,” Mia said, planting herself in his lap. “What girl hasn’t? Do you want to know what my idea of a perfect wedding is? Okay, I’ll tell you. One in which I become your wife and you, Julian Cruz, become my husband.”
That took his breath away. “Okay.” He patted her bare hip. She was wearing his boxer tank and a barely there thong, just a silk thread between her buttocks. “So which one? Bells or Flowers?”
“I’m trying to imagine which answer I’d prefer to give people when they ask where in Vegas we had our fake wedding,” Mia said. “They’re both so good! I can’t decide. You decide.”
“No matter what I do, you keep saying it’s all good.” He patted her hip again, a little harder.
“Because everything you are and everything you do is good.”
“Chapel of the Flowers, then.”
“Why’d you pick that one?” she said. “I liked Chapel of the Bells.”
“Aaaand it starts,” Julian said. “Not even married, and already it’s not all good.”
She laughed. She just wanted to know why.
“Because Flowers is harder to rhyme,” he said. “Therefore, flowers will make a better story because the words will be less common.”
“Powers devours,” she said, rocking on top of him back and forth. “Speaking of rhyming, we need a wedding song.”
“How about ‘I’m So Afraid’ by Fleetwood Mac.”
“Aaaand, you see, he can be funny, ladies and gentlemen! He’s here all week. Try the veal. Make it real.”
She rocked so hard against him, the chair tipped back. They fell over.
Don’t get hurt before the wedding, he said.
I won’t get hurt before the wedding, she said.