The Tiger Catcher

by Paullina Simons

  “Not if I can help it,” Ashton said, “why?”

  “They might have the flower I want. Hang on, I’ll call them. What did Zakiyyah . . . wait—”

  Long Beach also did not have asphodel. Julian cursed as he hung up.

  Ashton picked up a colorful flower from a display bucket. “What’s wrong with this one? It’s nice.”

  Julian took it out of Ashton’s hands and dropped it back in the wet pail. “Marigolds, Ashton? Please. Marigolds are for grief. Let’s walk over there, look at the orchids. What did Z want?”

  “She came to tell me to tell you that you and Josephine can’t get married.”

  “I hope you told her to get in line.” Julian shook his head, examining a spray of azaleas. “Get in line behind you, my parents, my brothers, my sisters-in-law, her friends from Brooklyn . . .”

  “Oh, I told her,” Ashton said. “Hence the yelling.”

  The two men chuckled. Julian put down the azaleas and picked up the red roses. He was feeling defeated by the paucity of his choices.

  “One thing was weird, though,” Ashton said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “She said she didn’t even hear about the wedding until yesterday.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “No, that can’t be,” Julian said. “You must’ve misunderstood.” He held the bouquet of roses like a bride. “Because that would be weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And impossible.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Since Zakiyyah is the maid of honor and everything.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She really needs to get on board and fast,” Julian said, inspecting the rose petals for rot. “Maids of honor are supposed to make things easier, not harder. No wonder my bride is stressed. So how did you handle it?”

  Ashton paused ever so briefly. “I told her Charlie was dead.”

  “Who’s Charlie?” Julian said—and laughed. “Oh, yeah. That Charlie. Good one, Ash. Well, like I say, always leave them with a joke. How did she take it?”

  “Door-slam-exit.”

  “Of course. So you made her hate you even more.”

  “That’d be pretty hard,” Ashton said, squinting into the sun. He took out his Aviators.

  “In two days you have to walk with her down the aisle, arm-in-arm. What’s your plan? How are you going to smooth things over?”

  Ashton adjusted the shades to cover his eyes. “I’ll think of something.”

  “You better.” Asphodel, the immortal flower. Oh, well. “I’ll take the roses,” with resignation Julian told the wedding coordinator, who’d been shuffling behind them, feebly gesturing to one plant or another.

  “You probably should talk to your girl, though, Jules,” Ashton said. “Make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Talk to her about what? That Z doesn’t want us to get married?”

  “Here’s the thing,” Ashton said after a moment of silence. “Zakiyyah looked like trouble.”

  Julian smiled. “Well, like you always say, chicks are trouble.”

  “I do say that, but it’s not what I’m saying today.” Behind his sunglasses, Ashton wasn’t smiling.

  17

  A Rose by Any Other Name

  THE NOTORIOUS JUNE GLOOM HAD LIFTED BACK IN JUNE, and here it was, the start of August, and the thick fog still drifted all over L.A. The morning after the florist, the newsletter about the roses had taken Julian too long to get out. It took him hours to write a hundred words. The new day dawns, we wake without pride, and outside is fog. Okay, yes, but we know that in three hours it will be nothin’ but sky till sundown. Why couldn’t he buck up? Because the clement weather was still in the future. In the present, there was unease in the muddy air, a stillness as before the Santa Ana hellstorms, a prelude to a raging fire that made you want to throw yourself into the sea to escape. The gloom weighed on Julian, made his brain and body sluggish.

  He ran late. He forgot the car keys, had to return for them, and then once more for the sweater she’d left at his place. This afternoon was Josephine’s last performance in Paradise in the Park. He was supposed to pick her up at Z’s and bring her to the Greek by noon. Julian would’ve liked to attend her last show, but he had too many things to do. It was Wednesday and the wedding was Friday. He had to pick up their platinum bands at Tiffany’s, and pay for the ruby ring he had ordered as a wedding present for her (in the right size). Then he was meeting Ashton and Riley at the country club to finalize the menu. Julian didn’t think Riley would be helpful since she didn’t eat food—and what if the wedding fell on a B day and all she could recommend was wheatgrass juice—but she turned out to be a surprisingly capable advisor. She understood, at least intellectually, that other people enjoyed food. Where was the list of dishes Josephine had selected? Julian had stuffed it somewhere. No time to look for it now. He was late.

  He broke all the speed limits, running four stop signs on Fountain and two stingy yellows on Melrose that turned red over his head. He pulled up to the house on Normandie at 11:50 and took the stairs two at a time.

  He knocked. Pounded more like.

  “Josephine?”

  Silence.

  The sound of shoes on linoleum.

  An opening door.

  In front of him stood a small woman, square and solid, with a rectangle of a body and a sphere of a head, helmeted by short black hair. Her hand did not leave the doorknob as she stood in the frame. For a second Julian thought he had knocked on the wrong door. “Is Josephine here?”

  “I don’t know who that is,” the woman replied in a grousy Brooklyn/Irish accent. Or was it Scottish?

  “Josephine, the girl who lives with—is Zakiyyah here?”

  “If you knew anything about Zakiyyah, you’d know she’d be at work.” The woman inflected all her sentences upward, whether or not they were questions. It was disconcerting. It made it hard for Julian to understand her. Yes, because that’s what made it hard for him to understand her.

  The woman didn’t ask who he was. She just stood in the door.

  “Her call time is at noon,” Julian said, trying to catch his breath.

  “You’re a little late for call, aren’t you?” the woman said. “She left a while ago. So she could be on time.”

  Julian frowned. “Excuse me, please, but who are you?”

  “Excuse me, please,” the woman said, “but who are you?”

  That he understood. Loud and clear. The same tone he had used with Poppa W. Who the fuck are you, buddy, and why are you knocking on my girl’s door?

  “I’m Julian Cruz.”

  She appraised him censoriously. “So you’re Julian Cruz.”

  She’d heard about him. That was something. “Are you her mother?”

  “Whose mother, Julian?” the woman said. “Whose mother am I?”

  “Uh—Josephine’s?” This was painful.

  “No,” the woman replied. “I’m most certainly not Josephine’s mother. My name is Ava McKenzie. I am Mia McKenzie’s mother.”

  For a flicker, for half a breath, Julian was relieved. She was Mia McKenzie’s mother! Thank God! “I don’t know who that is,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m certain of that.”

  “I’m looking for a Josephine Collins.” He peered over the woman’s helmet head.

  “No one by that name lives here,” Ava said. “Are you looking for a pale tallish girl, thin, brown haired? Likes to pretend she’s all sorts of things she’s not? Like a working actress? A good daughter? A good friend? Someone named Josephine? I only have one daughter, Mr. Cruz. Mia McKenzie is her name.”

  There went his brief relief. “Ava . . . Mrs. McKenzie, I mean,” he corrected himself off her glare, “I don’t know what’s going on, but . . .” Josephine wasn’t her real name?

  “You don’t know what’s going on,” said Ava.

  “Can I talk to her? Is she here?”

  “You said yourself she had call at noon,” the mother sa
id. “What time is it? Is it noon? No. It’s well past. So you’ve answered your own question.”

  Julian stood on the landing by the dried-out pot of browning azaleas. Ava blocked the entry, hand on the knob.

  “She must have changed it and not told you,” Julian finally said. He kept his voice low and even. “Her name, I mean. I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t upset you.”

  Ava laughed unkindly. She was stocky of leg, inflexible of neck. She didn’t look like the mother of his bride. His bride was soft and lithe, a smiling ballerina, not a blunt-force jab of a human being. “You think it’s me she hasn’t told things?” Ava said. “Dear boy.”

  Julian stood, clutching the car keys in his hands, Josephine’s red cardigan.

  Ava reached for the sweater. “That’s hers. I’ll give it to her when she comes back.” Was that a question? As in, was there a possibility she wasn’t coming back?

  Julian snatched it away. “It’s fine. I’ll do it.”

  “Okay,” Ava said, “you do it.” She began to close the door, but he thrust out his hand to stop her. The hand with the shirt in it.

  “Wait, Mrs. McKenzie. Please, can I come in?”

  “I don’t know, young man. Can you?” Inhospitably she sighed. “If you must, but only for a minute. I just flew in, and I’m very tired. That was quite a scenic five-hour ride in the cab from the airport,” she said as they stepped inside. “How many miles is LAX from here, ten? I flew three thousand miles in less time.” On her feet she wore pragmatic thick-soled sneakers, like a nurse, not a teacher. Next to the kitchen cabinet stood a brown square carry-on, in many ways the luggage equivalent of the woman in front of him.

  “You knew who I was,” Julian said. “She’s told you about me?”

  “Not a word,” Ava said. “Not a syllable. You know who told me about you? Zakiyyah.”

  Julian’s incomprehension deepened. Didn’t Josephine assure him that she had told her mother they were getting married, and her mother was fine with it?

  Fine with it.

  Was this what Zakiyyah had come to talk to Ashton about? That the mother was flying in? But why didn’t Josephine text him, warn him, prepare him, explain, say anything? They could’ve gone to LAX together to pick up his future mother-in-law.

  Instead, Josephine told him that her mother was abroad, visiting family in Morecambe Bay, and would not be back in time to attend their wedding. Josephine was fine with it, she said, her mother not attending her wedding. After the honeymoon sometime, during New York’s Indian summer, she and Julian were planning to host a reception in Brooklyn for all of Josephine’s friends who also couldn’t make it. Her mother could come to that.

  Why hadn’t Josephine texted to let him know that her mother had returned from Morecambe, wherever that was? You’d think that would qualify as news, your actual mother attending your wedding. And also—don’t kill yourself to drive me to the Greek on time, Jules. I’ll make my own way.

  Something was scratching at the back of Julian’s throat that made it hard for him to swallow. Something about the name Josephine.

  Her name, her name, her name, her name, her name, her name, her name.

  He sat (sank?) down at the kitchen table. He felt weak in the legs.

  Ava didn’t sit. Her face cross, her arms crossed, she stood over by the sink where not too long ago, Josephine had plied Julian with shame toast.

  “So, Julian Cruz, is it true what Zakiyyah tells me?” Ava said. “That you’re planning to marry my daughter?” There was ice in Ava’s voice, disbelief, a little grief. But something else, too, an indefinable yet undeniable whiff of condescending mockery. Like when your four-year-old nephew informs you he’s planning to hitchhike from Simi Valley to Disneyland all on his own. And you pretend to take him seriously until your sister-in-law calls him down for chicken nuggets. Except in the analogy, Julian was the four-year-old with the impossible dreams.

  He’d been asking Josephine for weeks to go to the Beverly Hills city clerk’s office and apply for a marriage license so the official one could come in time for the wedding. It was always one of those things they had to do and meant to do and didn’t get around to doing. She was sick one day, had an audition the next, wanted to go back to Disneyland another (that Disneyland again!), and then it rained so hard, the cliffs tumbled into the water.

  Finally they went, just two days ago, on Monday. They presented their IDs, signed the affidavit in front of the notary. Josephine signed after him. Julian didn’t look to see what name his bride had signed above the line of their marriage license. He didn’t think there was any reason to.

  That was the day before yesterday.

  And yesterday was when Zakiyyah told Ashton she had just learned about the wedding. Julian had laughed. It was so farcical. Ash misunderstood. Z misunderstood. It couldn’t be.

  And yet . . .

  Could Josephine really not have told her mother or Zakiyyah that she was getting married, and the only reason Zakiyyah found out was because she spotted a copy of the marriage license application carelessly left out on the bedroom dresser?

  Is that why Josephine hadn’t worn his engagement ring? The large diamond on your white finger is hard to hide from your oldest friend.

  A stunned Julian didn’t know what to say to the woman by the counter who was about to become his mother-in-law, in a future that suddenly began to seem to him as distant as the sun.

  “Do you know what you should be asking me, Julian?” Ava said.

  “No.”

  “You should be asking why my daughter didn’t call me herself to tell me about you. Why did Zakiyyah have to do it? It’s not Zakiyyah’s responsibility, is it? She didn’t want to call me, but Mia forced her hand. She wanted Mia to take care of it, but that’s one thing about my daughter, which you probably haven’t had a chance to discover yet. All her life it’s been Mia first, Mia last, Mia only. What Mia wants, Mia does, and nothing else matters. Poor Zakiyyah. She’s such a lovely girl. She felt like a snitch and a traitor. The girl is an angel. She’s always trying to do the right thing. Unlike my daughter,” Ava said, “who’s constantly doing the kinds of things decent people—Just. Don’t. Do. She is my child and believe me, I have made all sorts of excuses for her, but not this time. She’s put Z in a terrible position. Z said she was advised to keep quiet, but I told her absolutely not. Friends must look out for each other. Otherwise how dare you even call yourself a friend? If there’s truth out there that needs to be known, then your friends must help you, and your mother must help you most of all, don’t you agree?”

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Yes, you don’t know a great many things,” Ava said. “And I can see by your face, you don’t want to.” She shook her head. “Such a pity. But it’s like I always say—the passion for truth is the faintest of all human passions.”

  Dear God. Julian struggled to his feet. He needed Ashton. Ashton would know what to do.

  “Who are you, that you think you can marry my daughter?” Ava said.

  “We are meant to be,” Julian managed to utter.

  Ava laughed. “You are destined for misery, my boy, misery such as you have never imagined. Listen to me and run while you still can. I know things. Don’t you know that the earth is ruled by mothers? With any luck, someday my Mia will be a mother—but not by your doing. Because she is engaged to be married to a man in New York. They’ve been together four years. The wedding is next May. Save the date was sent out months ago. What, you didn’t get the email? Her fiancé is flying into LAX later today to take her back with us to New York. Enough of this nonsense. What a mess she has made of things, as she has pretty much out of everything.”

  Julian wasn’t listening anymore. He was tumbling down the stairs.

  18

  Lilikoi

  HOW JULIAN GOT TO THE GREEK THEATRE, HE DID NOT KNOW. As he sat in the parking lot waiting for her to finish in Paradise, he stared with blank eyes at the menu c
hoices she had written out by hand on his stationery and folded into his wallet. They had spent the last month planning the wedding that was coming the day after tomorrow.

  Unfortunately today was a day before that day.

  Cheese Stuffed Italian Olives.

  Spanish Octopus.

  Poached Eggs in Wild Mushrooms.

  Chinese Chicken Salad.

  Hawaiian King Prawns.

  Milky Burrata.

  Ahi tuna sashimi salad.

  Maui beef carpaccio.

  Lobster steamed with lemongrass and ginger.

  Mango and strawberry shortcake.

  Macadamia nut shortbread.

  And a raw wedding cake made of chocolate, coconut, and passionfruit. In Hawaii, they called it lilikoi.

  On the back of the menu, she had written out a phrase she wanted to use in her vows.

  Neither the demons below nor the angels above can sever my soul from your soul.

  He parked in the lot below the mountains they once climbed, turned his back on the stage on which she currently stood, and furiously dialed and redialed Ashton’s number. Julian must have called him a hundred times.

  “Where are you?” Ashton said when he finally called back. Not, you missed another set walkthrough. Not, you didn’t open the store like you were supposed to. Not, you never listen to me. But where are you.

  It could’ve been ten minutes or an hour when Ashton screeched up next to Julian’s Volvo in his blue BMW. “Jules, no, this is just wrong,” was the first thing he said when he jumped in. “Your AC’s not working. We’re going to fry in here.”

  “Car overheated,” Julian said. “Fucking Volvos. Good for nothing.”

  “Why didn’t you call Triple A?”

  If only Triple A could come and fix things.

  “Let’s get in my car,” Ashton said.