February 17, 2024
This is how it ends, thought Ricki, paralyzed, as Ezra wrapped up his utterly demented tale. This man is insane and he’s going to kill me. Think fast, Ricki. What are your options? Ms. Della’s at the Russian baths with Auntie Su, hitting her third bucket list item. I’m in the house alone. Call the police. No, I can’t call the police on a Black man! But what if he really does try to murder me? What if I end up as the subject of a Netflix doc about a lady-killer who seduces gullible women before distracting them with some Anne Rice–ass fan-fiction backstory and choking them to death with his beautiful bare hands? I wouldn’t give my sisters the satisfaction. CALL THE POLICE. No, call Tuesday. But where’s my phone? Fuck, I left it in my purse up front in the shop! Okay, BREATHE. No sudden movements. Can’t let him know you’re scared. Jesus Christ, whyyyyyy? Haven’t I been a faithful servant to you, Lord? No, you’re right, I haven’t. I’m heathen trash, a tawdry lapsed Catholic with ho-ish tendencies, but I’d be happy to rehabilitate if you save me, Lord. This isn’t the first time good dick’s gotten me in trouble, but in my defense, it’s never felt like THIS, that rapturous thing people write poetry about, risk it all over, go a little bit crazy for… but I’ve learned my lesson, Lord. Please save me from this deranged psycho.
Ricki was still entangled with Ezra on the floor, her cheek still resting on his chest as the thoughts raced through her head. Was he really expecting her to believe this? She hoped he couldn’t feel the frenzied, staccato thumping of her heart. Or notice the way her whole body had stiffened in fear.
Bathed in early-morning sunlight, her studio was almost uncomfortably bright—a stark contrast to the seductive darkness of the night before. There was nowhere to hide. Ricki squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness, firecrackers of light bursting behind her lids.
She had to think fast.
For her safety, Ricki couldn’t appear scared. Slowly, she disentangled herself from Ezra and sat up on her shag rug. She hoped she looked casual, which was a challenge while fully nude and perched next to a delusional lunatic. After an unbothered yawn-stretch combination that was more theatrical than she’d hoped, she grabbed the closest article of clothing—Ezra’s shirt—and slipped it on. It fell to her midthigh.
“Want some water?” she asked breezily, padding across her studio to the kitchen area. Nerves frayed, she floated on her tippy-toes like Tinker Bell on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Ezra sat up from the floor, frustratingly attractive in one sock, boxer briefs, and miles of sinewy chest. He ran a hand over his face, visibly miserable. He peered up at her with concern.
“Ricki? Are you all right?”
“I’m wonderful! Why wouldn’t I be?” Her voice was several octaves higher than normal. With strenuous calm, Ricki pulled a pitcher of filtered water from the fridge and set it on the counter. She poured the water into a glass. And then, with her back to Ezra, she slowly reached into a junk drawer under the sink filled with loose change, a discontinued Fenty lipstick, Pantone chips, matches, and two broken curling irons. She grabbed one in each hand and then whipped around to face him, crossing the curling irons into a makeshift crucifix.
Ezra’s eyes flew open in surprise. He stood up.
“Don’t. Move,” growled Ricki.
He sat back down on the floor.
Wielding the hair tools in front of her, Ricki approached him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What are you…”
“THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!” she screamed, thrusting the curling irons at him.
“You don’t need to do this, Ricki.”
“Are you a vampire?”
“A vampire?” he groaned with a world-weary sigh. “Let’s not make this worse than it is. Vampires subsist on blood and have supernatural powers; they’re monsters. All we have in common is immortality. Vampires are dead people who are given life. Perennials are living people who can’t die.” And then, in a hurt tone, he added, “I know you didn’t mean it, but it’s… actually insulting and demeaning to call us vampires. It’s not politically correct.”
“Oh, pardon me.”
Sighing, Ezra tried to stand up again.
“Take one step closer to me and I’ll end you.”
“What’re you gonna do, curl me to death? I can’t die!” Looking defeated, Ezra sat back down.
Ricki stood before him, shaking all over. Slowly, she lowered the crucifix, but only because her muscles were trembling too much to continue holding them up.
“Ricki, I’m not a vampire. I’m a normal, warm-blooded human like you are. Just with some unique features.”
“Unique features,” she repeated incredulously.
“Yes. Perennials are unkillable. Plus, we don’t feel the effects of aging or get sick. Not even a common cold. We can’t catch or pass on any diseases, and we’re sterile. No babies.”
“No diseases and no babies? Then why’d you wear a condom?”
“Well, uh, because it’s bad manners not to.” Visibly uncomfortable, he cleared his throat. “The other major difference is that we don’t leave a strong imprint.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Meaning we don’t stick in people’s minds,” he explained. “The rule is, if I don’t have regular contact with a mortal for a month, the mortal will forget me.”
She flinched with recognition. You will forget me in a month.
“I become that foggy memory everyone’s felt at some time or another. You ever repeat a story you heard somewhere, and can’t remember who told you? That was a Perennial. You ever have a déjà vu feeling, a flash memory of a person you kinda recall but not really? Perennial. Ever look at old photos of yourself, group shots, and see someone you can’t place? Perennial.”
“Why do I remember you, then? Why does Tuesday remember you, and Ms. Della?”
“Because I see y’all all the time! A month has to pass before I’m forgotten.”
“Mmm,” she said, folding her arms against her chest. “I regret to inform you, Ezra, but there’s no such thing as Perennials. Outside of flowers like peonies, daylilies, and lavender.”
“That fella at the flea market last night? The one who said we were doomed. He was a Perennial. And he said we were a terrible idea because Perennial-mortal relationships are impossible to sustain.”
“Sure, everyone knows that,” Ricki said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Tell me, Ezra, how did he know what you were?”
“Perennials can always see other Perennials. To each other, we look unfocused, hazy. Like watching a 3D movie without 3D glasses, a technology I’m still not convinced elevates the movie experience, by the way.” He paused for a beat. “Let me ask you something. Do you remember who I sent to buy your portrait?”
“Of course I do. It was…” Frowning, Ricki realized she actually had no idea. She strained her brain, trying to remember.
“I… well, I just…”
“You recall the person who gave you my phone number?”
“Well, off the top of my head, I don’t really…”
“You remember a name? What were they wearing? Any details at all?”
This can’t be happening, she thought, mind racing, heart thumping. None of this is real.
“She was my counselor, Dr. Arroyo-Abril. She posed as my assistant as a favor. She’s a Perennial, too. And she’s vanishing from your mind.”
Ricki was speechless. Honestly, she couldn’t recall this woman. There was a vague memory of… something? Her tuberose scent. The sound of her boots—maybe Uggs?—crunching in the snow. But the details were a pixelated blur in the way back of her mind.
“Why did you send her to buy my portrait?”
“Because it was of you. I had to have it.” He paused, looking away. “I’d been dreaming of your face for an eternity.”
And then Ezra begged her to listen to the rest of the story.
Ricki relented. “You have two minutes, tops.”
So he started talking.
He told her that at first, he didn’t believe the curse was real. Who would’ve?
Racked with guilt over Felice’s death, he knew he had to get out of New York City. Fallon County was out of the question, and the only other place he’d lived was France. So he shipped off to Paris—and tried to die. He wanted to test his mortality. One blisteringly hot evening, he drank himself blind and flung himself into the Seine. But he came to hours later, fished out of the river. Alive and without a scratch. In the alley behind a Left Bank café, he tried to set himself on fire with a lighter. But the flames never caught. Finally, he hired a hit man to kill him when he didn’t expect it. When the hulking gunman showed up at his apartment with a pistol, the guy froze and then refused to shoot.
“I know why you’re doing this, but it won’t work,” said the gunman in French. “You’re a Perennial. So am I. Scary at first, but you’ll get used to it. C’est la vie!”
The friendly immortal gunman handed him a business card, shook his hand, and disappeared.
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And thus, he found Dr. Arroyo-Abril. Through the doctor—a longtime immortal, herself—Ezra discovered the vast international network of non-aging folks like him. His diagnosis was immortality, but the proper term for his kind was Perennial. Ezra was a Perennial. Now he was forever twenty-eight years old and carrying more memories and history than any human was meant to. A young man with an old heart, stumbling to catch up with the world, wondering which he should cling to: the past or the present.
Ezra was a clock ticking in an airless, windowless room. He wandered around Paris, inescapably lonely and unable to shake his cosmic purposelessness, until February 1, 1932. It was four years later, the next leap year after his curse. A time when the veil between the physical world and spiritual world grew gossamer thin. His purpose became clear.
On February 1, her face appeared in his dreams. Her, the true love Felice had cursed him with. That day and all February long, he was haunted by her face, as well as disparate, discombobulating musical notes: pieces of a song that he couldn’t make work. He felt a tingling in his chest, a restless tugging, a yearning for memories he hadn’t made yet.
That was the first time Ezra was pulled back to Harlem involuntarily. Before he knew it, he was back in his brownstone. And all month, he roamed the streets, looking for this woman, driven by a grasping longing for his true love, who, if Felice’s curse was to be believed, would die soon after he found her. But on the first day of March, the longing subsided, the visions stalled, and Ezra felt free to leave. And he did, traveling wherever there was music. Saint Louis. Abeokuta. Chicago. London. Trenchtown.
Then, four years later, on February 1 of the next leap year, it all started again. He was visited by her face and the weird snippets of music in his dreams. And once again, he was pulled back to his Harlem brownstone for the month. And it went on and on like this, every February of every leap year, with Ezra spending the first to the twenty-ninth searching Harlem for his Big Love.
When will we meet? he used to wonder. 1944? 1976? 2112? 3068? Not knowing was its own misery. Ezra couldn’t do anything but wait for the day their timelines collided. And then he would have to send her far away from him. He’d prevent another tragedy.
Ezra had pictured her face in his mind for damn near a century but had never seen her in real life. Until he spotted her in the community garden where Eden Lounge used to stand.
“I was terrified,” he admitted in his slow, deep drawl. “It felt like a beginning and an ending. After decades of preparing to meet you, I… wasn’t prepared. Because I knew I’d fall in love, and I knew I’d have to convince you to leave. And deep down, I knew you wouldn’t.” He cast his gaze downward. “I’ve had too much loss in my life. I can’t bear this.”
Ricki considered the way Ezra delivered these comments with absolute frankness. It made him sound even crazier. She backed away from him slowly, into the kitchen, until her ass hit the counter.
“You’re saying that you’re not twenty-eight. You’re actually an old man.”
“Well, I’m twenty-eight, but I’ve been twenty-eight since 1928. So technically, I’m a hundred twenty-four.” And then he attempted levity. “I’m not old; I’m chronologically premium.”
Ricki glared at him with blazing fury. Ezra gulped, realizing that this was no time for jokes.
“I’ve practiced explaining this to you in a thousand different ways,” he went on, his eyes pleading. “But every way sounds insane. I know.”
“I don’t think you do.” She tried to still the tremble in her voice. “Let’s recap, shall we? You were a famous jazz pianist during the Renaissance. You were living it up until you played at a rent party in my shop. At which point your girlfriend hexed you and jumped off the roof.”
“The roof of this building,” he noted. “It bears repeating.”
“And, allegedly, this is your piano.” She stormed over to it and slammed her hand down on the top. An obliterating force leveled her, sending warm tingles through her body.
Ezra watched her, his gaze possessive.
“It’s mine,” he said quietly. “Probably why it makes you feel like that.”
Ricki snatched her hand away, like she’d just touched an open flame.
“Sure. And every leap year February you’re drawn to Harlem to find your soulmate. And I’m really expected to believe that’s me.”
Planting his hands behind him on the floor, Ezra leaned back a little. Gravely, his eyes searched her face.
“I don’t know, Ricki…,” he started. “Do you believe you’re my soulmate?”
And then, for a moment, as their gazes collided, sense-memory scenes of the night before hit her like a sudden punch. His mouth, his tongue, his hands, the hungry desperation of his growl as he sank into her the first time. Her connection to Ezra Walker felt earth-shattering.
God, Ricki was so weak for him. Still. Even knowing that he was out of his mind.
Keep it together, she thought, taking a restorative inhale. Don’t falter.
“And Felice?” she went on, in an unsteady voice. “Her family? Her people?”
“Her mother was sent her belongings: her clothes, shoes, and the pearl bracelet. Maybe her things are still in the family. Her death didn’t even make the papers; I doubt it’d even appear in civic records.”
“Convenient. Well, don’t think I won’t do my research,” she threatened.
“Ricki, I know it sounds like malarkey. But why would I invent all this?”
“Shrooms? Peyote? Multiple personality disorder? I’ve dated guys who’ve had experience with all three. I know the symptoms.”
“Listen to me,” said Ezra, getting up off the floor. This time, Ricki let him, but she still backed away into the kitchen, maintaining a safe distance. “We’re fated. It’s why we kept running into each other. It wasn’t a coincidence. We were destined to fall for each other.”
Ricki went still, her breath catching in her throat. If they were, in fact, fated lovers (she knew it couldn’t possibly be, but if), then the rest of Felice’s curse would be true, too. A grave realization settled over her, and it felt far heavier than every other detail in Ezra’s story.
“If we’re soulmates,” she breathed, “then I’m also destined to die on February 29.”
Ezra’s whole body seemed to wilt. “I tried to save you, Ricki. I told you to leave Harlem. I tried to avoid you, before we got in too deep. But here we are. And it’s too late.”
“Because we’re twelve days out from February 29.”
He nodded, miserable. “And it’s all my fault. I did this to you. And I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”
Ricki shook her head back and forth, trying to clear her mind. “Sorry, no. No. None of this makes sense. Ezra, you’re clearly having some sort of mental break or… or… a hallucination or something.” She delivered this gently, the way you’d speak to a hysterical child. “I don’t believe in magic, dark or otherwise.”
“You got eucalyptus hanging in your shower to enhance emotional clarity.”
“It’s an aesthetic,” she declared. “And don’t look at me like that!”
She made an impatient sound and buried her face in her hands. Ricki felt destroyed, toyed with. She felt like a cosmic joke. That she was able to fall so hard, to feel so protected and sacred in his arms, was beyond cruel. Ricki felt more like herself with Ezra than without him. He put this wild ache in her. He made her crave him; he made her fucking fall so hard—but he hadn’t given her a place to land. And now she was suspended in midair, a terrible purgatory. Until, of course, her death sentence.
Feeling what she felt for him and having it snatched away was worse than never feeling that connection at all.
Why do I seek out these outrageous, ridiculous situations? I moved six states away to start fresh, but I can’t escape my calamitous personality. I’d be me even on the moon.
“Let’s say that, by some insane possibility, you’re telling the truth,” she started evenly. “What have you been doing since 1928? Just wandering the earth aimlessly?”
“More or less.”
Ricki threw up her hands. “Specifics!”
“All right,” he mumbled. “The first February I came back, four years after the curse, I realized Harlem wasn’t the same place. It was 1932. Prohibition ended but so had the Renaissance; the Depression decimated Harlem. And no one remembered me. Not Lo, not my band. It was like my old world had pushed me out the door, turning the lock behind me. So I stayed in my house every fourth February, but the rest of the time, I rented it out and traveled the world. Went where the music was.
“I was too blocked to play my own stuff, so I became a… well, an influencer. But not how y’all think of it nowadays. I influenced the artists that mattered. Because I don’t leave a strong imprint, I can easily move in and out of studios, jam sessions, gigs. There’s always a few questions at first. Who booked him? What’d he say his name was? So on and so forth. But after folks heard me play, the questions were forgotten.
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you start to see patterns in the culture. I especially notice patterns in music. A popular sound stays fresh for about eight, ten years, and then it evolves into another sound. I can feel what’s next. I can pinpoint the bridge between eras.
“I’ve been a silent collaborator on too many hits to remember. I was the whisper in someone’s ear, the suggestion in a smoky bar. The applause was never mine, but it was enough.
“After a session at Chess Records in Chicago, I ran into this kid, Chuck Berry, plucking his guitar out back. Sounded plumb crazy, like nothing I’d ever heard. He said the label wanted him to choose between blues and pop. No surprise—corporate kills creative. Tale as old as time. So I told him to marry blues and pop and spike it with country licks on a backbeat piano. I showed him what I meant on the studio piano, and he fucking lost it. Oh. Sorry, I…”
“Ezra Walker, don’t you dare pull that chivalry shit right now. Keep talking.”
“Right. Anyway, the blues, pop, country equation felt like him. It felt like the future. In his memoir, Chuck said I put the roll in rock. But he couldn’t remember my name.
“Look in the liner notes of The Great Ray Charles, his 1957 album. He dedicates two songs to ‘some Harlem cat’ who showed him how to ‘use his left hand like a drum.’ Quincy Jones heard me play a few chords in the late ’60s; I wanna say it was at the Lighthouse in LA? Later, he reimagined the melody when he produced Michael Jackson’s ‘Human Nature.’ He says so in his documentary. Didn’t include my name, of course. He couldn’t remember it.
“At a Motown studio session in 1970-something, I whispered a few ideas in Stevie Wonder’s head. Some chords, a few melodies. They ended up on what music theorists think is his most experimental album.” He rubbed the back of his neck, seeming to hesitate.
As blatantly improbable as this story was, Ezra was such a convincing storyteller that Ricki was sucked in. She couldn’t help herself. “Wh-what’s the album called?”
“Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants.” He looked down at his hands, speaking quietly. “I know, it’s got you written all over it.”
Ricki’s jaw dropped, an icy chill rolling down her back. Feeling dizzy, she grabbed on to the counter for support. It couldn’t be. She’d never even mentioned to him that she played that album every day of her life.
“Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’? The fire-red moon in Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’? The title itself? Me. In ’67 I was gigging at Atlantic Studios, and I overheard Aretha rehearsing Otis Redding’s track ‘Respect.’ Her band was calling her by this nickname, Re-Re. I thought it would differentiate her version from Otis’s if she sang ‘Re-re-re-respect’ on the chorus.” Ezra glanced at Ricki. “Worked, you could say.”
Ricki couldn’t speak. All she could think of was Tuesday sharing the Chaka Khan anecdote at the Sweet Colette party. And hearing the Jimi Hendrix story in the documentary at Ms. Della’s house.
God help me, she thought. I’m going crazy. Just like him.
“I’ve been around for decades, Ricki, slipping in and out of memory, places, lives, and music. It’s been a lifetime of loss. Everyone I’ve ever cared about is gone. And it never gets easier,” he said, his expression strained. “It’s nasty work, tricking folks into thinking you’re normal… for a week, two weeks. Because you start to believe it, too. Then you wake up and realize you’re standing in a life half-lived. Just going through the motions in the dark.”
As Ezra walked over to her, Ricki took a long breath. He was softening her edges. Her heart was at war with her brain; all she wanted was to run into his arms, but then she’d be just as crazy as he was. Ricki stood still, backed against the kitchen counter, as he closed the distance between them. This time, she didn’t push him away or scream or threaten him with heat tools. Grasping her shoulders, he spoke with a helpless melancholy.
“I’ve seen beautiful things and terrible things. Until you, I didn’t know that they’re two sides of the same feeling. I want you, Ricki. Actually, it’s not a want. It’s an uncompromising, inconvenient need. But it’ll ruin us both.”
Her eyes welled up with tears, hot and sharp. She dug deep inside herself to find the strength to not fall for this. To not get sucked into some dude’s madness, like all the times before. Her father’s admonishment, You let things happen to you, was imprinted on her brain. But she’d changed.
Ricki would dictate the terms of her own story. No one else.
“You need to leave, Ezra,” she said, tears flowing. “Do yourself a favor and seek some psychiatric care. Get help. I believe you’re a good person. But I can’t ever see you again.”
Ezra understood the conversation was over. He grabbed his jeans and shoes and then realized he was bare-chested.
“Um. Can I have my… Would you mind…” He gestured vaguely at her wearing his shirt.
“GET OUT.”
“Right.” He nodded. “Yeah, of course, you keep it. I’m gone.”
He was out the door in under sixty seconds.
After he left, Ricki stood frozen in place for what felt like an eternity. At some point, she crawled into the bed and curled in on herself, tucking her knees into Ezra’s shirt. His warm, clean scent enveloped her like the sweetest embrace. And then she cried herself to sleep.
Much later, Ricki woke to frantic knocking on her back door. She stumbled from her bed and caught a glimpse of herself in the wall mirror. Not good. Mascara-tear streaks, tangled bedhead, pillow-creased cheeks. A hickey was blossoming just under her jaw, and her lips were still raw from kissing. She was not presentable. But the person at the door was banging with such force, there was no way to ignore it.
“I’m coming.” Ricki yanked on joggers and checked the peephole. It was Tuesday, with a crazed look in her eyes. She burst into the studio.
“Thank God you’re alive.” She swept Ricki into her arms ferociously. Then she stormed around the apartment, opening the shower, checking the closet, peering under the bed. Her energy was bonkers.
“Where is he? Where is that motherfucker?” she bellowed. “I’ll kill him!”
Chasing after her, Ricki said, “Ezra? He’s gone; he left hours ago.”
Tuesday paused in front of Ricki, in the middle of her tiny hallway, breathing hard. “I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. Where have you been?”
“My phone’s in my purse.” She slumped against the wall, sliding to the floor. Tuesday sat next to her. “It was the best twenty-four hours I’ve ever spent with a man. And it all just imploded with the galactic force of a dying star.”
“A dying star, huh?”
“I’ll never speak to him again.” Ricki dropped her cheek to Tuesday’s shoulder, drained. “He’s batshit. Seriously. This man believes that he’s immortal.”
Tuesday blinked. “Girl, what?”
“Forget it. What’s wrong?”
“You know I know how to spot a shady man,” said Tuesday. “I knew Ezra was hiding something. So I broke into his house yesterday.”
With a groan, Ricki drew up her knees and buried her face between them. “Tuesday, I’m hanging on to my sanity by a very thin thread. Please tell me you didn’t commit a felony.”
“I absolutely did,” she admitted, unashamed. “First of all, I was sitting at home with writer’s block and needed an activity to distract me. And second, what I’m not about to do is allow some slick stalker to savagely murder my bestie. Or worse.”
Ricki raised her head. “What’s worse than that?”
“The point is, if I had someone looking out for me in Hollywood, I might not have ended up in horrible situations with horrible men. You’re lucky you have me.”
“But Tuesday…”
“And just as I suspected, Ezra Walker is weird. And so is his house. He’s got a renter on the bottom, in this normal, if uninspired, apartment. He lives on the upstairs floors… but it’s all empty. Except, there’s this one creepy-as-fuck room crammed with all this old-timey furniture and technology.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you know what a liminal space is?”
“Yeah, it’s a space that serves as a conduit from one place to another. Tunnels, doorways, stairwells, bridges, airport terminals. Transitional spaces.”
“Exactly. Well, this room felt like a liminal space in time. The stuff in the room? It wasn’t artifacts from one particular era; it was a century’s worth. It felt like I’d stepped outside the time-space continuum. And that,” she announced grandly, “is where I found these.”
Tuesday pulled out her phone and showed Ricki photos of the sheet music.
“Music. Sheets and sheets of music, all with these crazy, impossible dates. So random.”
“Not random,” whispered Ricki, with growing horror. “They’re leap years.”
“Look at the oldest sheets. They’re fragile, like if you breathe on them, they’ll disintegrate. Where did he get this ancient paper? And read his commentary in the margins. He says that the notes don’t add up, that he can’t make a complete song out of them. Then, on February 1 of this year, the day you saw him in the garden—he says it started to come together.
“I’ve solved the mystery,” continued Tuesday, staring Ricki directly in the eye. “Ezra Walker is a psychopath antique collector and possible time traveler. Now, we just need to find out what he wants with you.”
Ricki lolled her head back against the wall.
“Oh, Tuesday,” she said softly, “I think I already know.”