24

Quatrang

EVERYTHING I DO IS WRONG. WHAT I FEEL IS RIGHT IS WRONG. I fight, I don’t fight, we hide, we walk in plain sight, I give away your money, I cover up your sins, I gamble with your life, I say the right things, keep bad words to myself, I give you myself, I help you find your best self.

And still it’s wrong.

I’m sorry, Miri.

In the pillory pose, a convulsing Julian pitched forward. Ashton grabbed him, shock and incomprehension on his face. Julian was wearing breeches, hose, funny shoes. He had on a waistcoat, a puffy shirt. Julian stank and was stained with tomato juice. Behind them, Sweeney yelled for help. Ashton’s bewildered expression told Julian that Ashton was seeing things that could not be attributed merely to Julian’s psychosis.

“Jules, my God, you’re bleeding.” Ashton pressed the palm of his hand against Julian’s head wound. The blood ran down Ashton’s wrist, down Julian’s face and neck.

I was stoned in the pillory, Julian said, in the middle of a medical emergency and unable to explain further. An ambulance took him to Queen Elizabeth. The bleeding was stopped, the head was stitched up, antibiotics were administered. X-rays showed multiple splinter-like fractures in his hands and feet. The doctors counted a half-dozen separate fractures in each foot, a half-dozen in each hand. Julian displayed marks of electrocution, the profuse violet flowers swelling like burns over his torso and arms and legs. The doctor asked where the injuries had come from this time. Ashton said don’t ask, but Julian replied, “I was stoned in a pillory.”

“I told you not to ask,” Ashton said.

Julian turned his face away from his friend, and from the acid memory of being catapulted through her death.

Everything I do is wrong.

The doctor and Ashton continued discussing things. Julian implored Ashton to stop speaking. Leave it. You know there’s nothing they can do.

Yes, they might think it’s black magic, Ashton said.

No, they’ll fire Sweeney and replace him with a real guard. They’ll forbid me entry to the Transit Circle. I won’t be able to go back.

Go back? Are you insane? Have you seen yourself? Of course you won’t be able to go back.

Please, Ashton.

You mean, if I continue to speak to the doctor, you might stop doing the thing that’s killing you?

Please, Ashton.

“If there’s one word that describes you, it’s relentless,” Ashton said after the doctor left, without answers. “You wouldn’t think it by looking at you. That’s why your whole life, you’ve been underestimated. They laughed when you told them you’d be a boxer. They laughed until they watched you fight. When you went missing, they said you’d never be found. They said you were dead. Then they said you’d never come out of the coma. They said you’d never fully recover. Your brain would never function again like it used to. You wouldn’t make any money working for yourself, being Mr. Know-it-All. They said you’d go broke. When you met her, they said you didn’t love her. When she died, they said you’d get over it. And then I said, no how, no way did you travel through time.” Ashton fell silent. “Honest to God, I don’t know what’s going on with you, Julian.” He stared out the window. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I really don’t,” Ashton said. “It’s not like before, in the desert. That time you walked off and vanished when I wasn’t looking. Yes, something happened, but I wasn’t paying attention, and afterward, even you couldn’t tell me what it was. This time, I didn’t walk off. I was looking. You never left my side. You stepped over the railing and were maybe a foot away from me, but you never left my side or my sight. There was a flash of light, like a flare from a mirror pointing into the sun. I blinked.”

“You didn’t blink,” Julian said. “You were blinded.”

“I blinked,” Ashton repeated. “And you pitched forward. That’s all. Nothing else happened. A flare. And a pitch. I thought you tripped. I grabbed you.”

“I wasn’t in Thermoprene anymore.”

“That’s the least of it. Nor did you stink or have broken feet or bleed from a head wound, or wear breeches. Or carry gold rings in your pockets. Nor were you electrocuted. I know all this. Except I also know that you never left my sight.”

“Except when you blinked.”

“I fucking blinked! I didn’t space out, or faint, or step away. I blinked. You do know the definition of the word blink, don’t you?” Ashton said. “To quickly shut and open one’s eyes.”

“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

“One hundred percent my lying eyes.”

“Time is relative, Ash,” Julian said. “It’s just coordinates. Like latitude and longitude. Time is just direction. And most of the time that direction is forward.” He closed his eyes.

There was no denying it, no pretending anymore, no wishing it away: 49 days is what she had. What he had. What they had together.

Los Angeles, from their first word at Book Soup to Fario Rima on Normandie Avenue, 49 days.

Clerkenwell, from her first wail in the garden to Falk’s hands around her throat, 49 days.

The Silver Cross, from the great bed to the Great Fire, 49 days.

St. Giles in the Fields, from Seven Dials to the stones at Charing Cross, 49 days.

It was the loudest, most implacable, merciless, pitiless truth of Julian’s life. It was an unending scream—49 fucking fucking days.

Gravity bends to my will, not the other way around. But my will is not enough. I am a Möbius strip of light and shadow. I am nothing but a quantum particle entangled with your immortal soul and spiraling through infinite meridians toward you—and away from you. I am a devastated supplicant, begging, pleading for a redress to your blight, stretching out my hand to the window, the sun, the heavens. Oh, Miri. Our bodies are like mercury, like quicksilver. They’re torn apart but not disintegrated. They wait for someone to come and collect the pieces, like you waited for me, and still I failed you. Sometimes poverty hides inside a goddess, and sometimes the goddess hides inside poverty. You were royalty walking through that rookery. I knew it, and still I lost you.

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After weeks of uneasy convalescence, they went to Quatrang, Julian limping on his healing feet. Ashton insisted. I want to hear what the little wise man has to say, Ashton said, his teeth snapped shut like a portcullis.

Devi’s place was shut like a portcullis. The rolling steel shutter was padlocked into the hook in the concrete. Julian rapped his knuckles on the window of the Vietnamese joint next door.

“Sometimes he leave like that without notice,” the harried owner said. “I think his mother die.”

“That’s not it, Shinko,” the man’s agitated wife said, stepping forward, dishrags in her hands. “He gone over a month.”

“Over a month? How long have I been home?”

“It’s May,” Ashton said.

Julian reeled against the steel shutter. Time had ceased to exist as he had ceased to exist. May?

“He is”—the woman waved her rag through the air, still talking about Devi—“over in mountain, looking for his son.”

What mountain?” said Julian.

What son?” said Ashton.

“I not know what mountain. He go look for him. Son missing.”

“Also his mother die,” said Shinko.

“How long does it take to bury mother! But to find son?” Wife of Shinko started yelling at Shinko in Vietnamese. They skulked off.

Julian stood dumbly. So did Ashton.

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Weeks later, Devi returned, late May, early June. The boys returned, too.

“You’re back,” Devi said to Julian. He looked a decade older.

You’re back,” Julian said to Devi. He looked a decade older, too.

Ashton grabbed Devi by the arms.

Julian pulled Ashton off. Dude, stop it, what’s wrong with you?

Devi didn’t even fight back.

“Leave him alone,” Ashton said to Devi, ripping his arm away from Julian. He looked so angry. Julian wasn’t used to it. “Why are you doing this to him? What voodoo wand are you waving over him?”

“Why does everyone blame poor voodoo for everything?” Devi muttered, unperturbed by the violence.

“You’re going to kill him, don’t you understand?”

“Like you, I keep telling him not to go.”

“Bullshit. You’re a devil worshipper,” Ashton said. “You say white, but you mean black.”

Ash, come on, man, Julian thought, but didn’t say.

Devi straightened his shirt. “It’s fine, Julian. Your friend is worried about you. I understand.”

“You understand nothing. I looked up the meaning of Quatrang.”

“It means white crow. Why is this upsetting?”

Again Julian had to come between his friend and his shaman, pushing Ashton to one corner, keeping a lackluster Devi away in the other.

White crow means a rare thing,” Devi said. “Something unique and unseen.”

White crow means a malevolent omen,” Ashton said. “A sign of bad things to come. It also means a Trojan horse. Something that at first seems great but turns out to be a disaster. Which do you think is more applicable in Julian’s case, your definition or mine?”

They both swirled to Julian for his opinion.

Julian said nothing. He turned to Devi. “Did you find your son? Shinko’s wife said you were looking for him. What mountains?”

“My mother d-d-d-died,” Devi stuttered, after a long pause. Even Ashton looked thrown by Devi’s sudden speech impediment. “I brought her b-body back home to Vietnam to b-bury her. I s-s-s-stayed a few extra days.” Devi dusted himself off, flattened his black shirt. When he spoke again, the stammer was gone, and he was back to his old self, even a little energized. He stared at Ashton coldly. “What do we think of a man who, instead of putting a roof over his house, yells at the wind and rain for making him wet?”

“You are most certainly not the wind and rain,” Ashton said.

“First fight the wrong that’s in you,” Devi said. “Because it’s impossible to change the weather.”

Julian had to separate Ashton from Devi. “Ashton, stop it!” What was going on with these two!

Walking unafraid, Devi strode past Ashton to the back of the counter to grab his black apron. “What did Thomas Aquinas write?” the Hmong cook asked, tying the apron strings. “For those who believe in God, no explanation for miracles is necessary. For those who don’t, no explanation is possible.”

“Fuck you,” Ashton said. “I believe in God. And miracles. It’s you I don’t believe in. And just to be clear—what you’ve brought him is not miracles but the fucking apocalypse.”