He left them in the parlor room, standing near the little lamp and the inadequate heater and the supermarket sponge cake with the unlit birthday candles, and Julian knew with all certainty that even if he could persuade Ashton not to move to London, he would have to find another place to live. Both women condemned him in that yellow light as if Julian had been already betrothed to Frieda, as if he was no longer just the tenant or the lonely widower, but the faithless lover who broke the ungainly filly’s heart.
26
Great Eastern Road
THE NEXT MORNING JULIAN CALLED IN SICK, SLEPT OFF HIS hangover as best he could, forgetting all the hacks he once knew for curing hangovers, and at noon took the overground to Hoxton. The train was decidedly not a hangover hack, what with the constant screeching and stopping and megaphone station naming. He stumbled down Great Eastern Road in search of 153, the number on the business card the old woman had left behind.
The roads were crowded at lunchtime on Great Eastern near Kingsland and Commercial Streets. It took him ten minutes to go half a block. Number 153 turned out to be not a holistic center for spiritual growth and material renewal as promised but a tiny take-out joint called Quatrang. Didn’t specify Vietnamese or Thai like other restaurants on the street. Just said Quatrang in red letters with black hieroglyphics in the bottom corner. To say the place was tiny was a British understatement. It was the width of a door and a double window. The bell trilled when Julian stepped inside. The handwritten menu was scrawled on a large whiteboard on the front wall. There was room for two stools at the counter. Julian knocked one of them over as he opened the door, and perhaps that was by design, so the man behind the curtain would hear. The place wasn’t meant for lingering. It was meant for getting in and getting out.
The beaded curtain rat-tat-tatted, like rice falling on the steps of a church, and a compact, solidly built Southeast Asian man came out smiling. He would have to be small to fit into a place like this. He was wiry, alert, and unblinkingly calm. He had neatly trimmed black hair and black eyes. He wore a matte black shirt and crepe-like trousers and over them a black apron, freshly laundered, ironed and starched.
“Sorry, uh, ugh, yeah, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve come to the wrong place,” Julian stammered. “I was looking for 153 Great Eastern Road. Acupuncture and great Eastern rites.”
The man nodded. “You’ve come to where you need to be.” He spoke in fluent British. “Number 153. For the perseverance of the saints. I was quoting John. Do you feel you have persevered? Never mind, we’ll get to that. But let’s start with lunch.” He pulled out a place mat. “All things worth doing begin with a meal. It’s much more pleasant that way, wouldn’t you agree?”
Julian didn’t know if he agreed. The man’s incongruously excellent English was confusing him.
“Well,” the little man explained, as if Julian had argued the point, “the way you tell is just try doing anything of importance on an empty stomach and see how far you get.”
Julian stood dumbly. Had he spoken? Or did the man read his mind?
“Sit. Please.”
Julian sat like a lummox.
“My name is Devi Prak,” the man said congenially. “Devi like levee.”
“Julian Cruz. As in, the levee was dry?”
“If you say so.” Devi stuck out his wide hand. The handshake was warm and bone-crunchingly firm. “Many years ago, when I first came to this country, I called myself Devin, thinking it would be easier for the British to pronounce. But as with many things in life, the very opposite turned out to be true. The people I met could not compute the name Devin with the face they saw before them. They kept asking me to spell it, and even after I spelled it, still could not say it properly. They kept putting the accent on the wrong syllable. I changed it back to Devi. Everyone was much happier.”
Julian appraised the man. He had smooth but weathered dark skin, an indecipherable expression on his face, cheekbones high, the black eyes sharp. Too sharp. He was neat, not a stray hair on him. Julian wondered if the man was related to the old woman in the pub. It was hard to tell how old he was. He could’ve been sixty. He could’ve been seventy. His eyes reminded Julian of the woman’s, though, like bottomless pools. They were deeply unsettling.
“What does Quatrang mean?” Julian asked. “Is that a family name or something?”
“No. In Vietnamese, Quatrang means white crow.”
Julian focused on Devi’s face. The old woman from last night confronted him inside the White Crow pub. He had almost chosen the Blind Beggar on Cheapside. Did this mean she would not have appeared to him with her bewildering pronouncements? A flip of a coin—and suddenly nothing was making sense in Julian’s life.
“Does ‘white crow’ have some meaning I don’t know about?”
“I don’t know what you don’t know,” Devi said, setting a white china plate rimmed in gold in front of Julian. “A white crow, among other things, symbolizes time. Past, present—and future.” He gave Julian a cloth napkin, polished silverware, and a crystal glass filled with slightly sedimentary water.
Julian noticed that three fingers on the man’s left hand were missing, ending in smooth nubs at the second knuckle. Only the thumb and the index finger remained intact. Julian clenched and unclenched his own fully fingered fists. He didn’t mean to stare, but he did.
“What will you have, Julian?” Devi asked pleasantly.
Julian focused on the whiteboard above the spotless cast-iron Teppanyaki grill. “Is this Vietnamese food?”
“If you wish. I can make anything. I make whatever people who come to me want to eat.”
“Like lasagna?”
“Oh, so you’re a comedian.” Devi nodded. “Very good.”
“Seriously, what’s the food?”
“A mix of Vietnamese, Laotian, Chinese. I’m from the Hmong tribe. From the Golden Triangle, the mountains on the northern border of Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. The area’s changed hands so many times, even I can’t say for sure where I’m from.”
“Your English is excellent.”
“Been here a long time.” Devi paused a moment before continuing. “May I recommend some things? Perhaps some salt and pepper squid, freshly hawked by a reputable monger just yesterday? It’s very good if I do say so myself. I had some for breakfast this morning. And then a little bowl of beef pho. It’s spicy, but the broth is delicious, and I’m using twice cooked and marinated sirloin in it with a little leftover brisket. You will enjoy it.”
Julian nodded. It did sound good despite his empty, singed-by-alcohol stomach.
“Anything besides my water to drink?” Devi asked. “I have some sparkling sake.”
“I’ll try it.” Hair of the dog and all that.
“Very good. But drink the water first.”
Julian obliged, despite the floating particles. “What kind of water is this? Not regular water.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t give you regular water,” Devi said. “You need something stronger. This water has minerals in it. Calcium. You look as if you could use some of that. Some sinew.”
The sake appeared in a crystal shot glass, and the man disappeared behind the curtain. Julian noticed he walked with a slight limp.
While Julian waited, he surveyed the surroundings, the side walls painted black and green. The only decorations on them were clocks. A Simpsons clock, a navigational clock, a digital clock with blood red numbers screaming it was 13:02, a pendulum clock whirring and ticking.
There was no calendar or other trinkets, no Asian fans, or photos of ancient temples or little grandchildren. In the ten minutes Julian was there, no one else had entered. The glass door behind him remained closed, blocking out the noise from the busy street.
The salt and pepper calamari was delicious. It was spicy and salty and tender, and there wasn’t enough of it. Julian devoured it while the man watched. “Good, right?”
“Very good.”
“I’m pleased. Maybe you will come back. More sake while I start on you
r pho?”
The pho was also good. The bowl wasn’t big enough; Julian wanted more. But after he finished the last of it, he felt full and a little sleepy. Weirdly he wondered if there was a cot in the back. What an odd thing to wish for, a bed to nap in at your luncheonette.
The man brought Julian some red bean ice cream, “to cleanse the palate,” and continued to study him alertly from the other side of the counter. Alert was certainly not a word to describe Julian. He was stuporous, nodding off into his empty bowl, the whirring of the clocks, the hum on Great Eastern Road, the unfamiliar combination of vinegar, lime, garlic, and coconut hypnotizing him.
He heard the man’s firm voice. “What brings you here? I know it’s not my food. You don’t act as if you’ve tasted Vietnamese food before.”
Opening his heavy eyes, Julian slowly explained about the old woman and the card. The man nodded with approval. Julian circled his hand around the tiny eatery. “The card said acupuncture.” Not calamari.
“Yes, I see,” Devi said, as if not seeing any discrepancy between the text of the business card and the reality on the ground. “Would you like some acupuncture?”
“You serve lunch and stick me with needles? No, needles are not what I need.”
“Yet this card you speak of but can’t produce promised acupuncture and you still came. Why?”
Julian tried to think. Yesterday was a liquid blur. “The woman thought you could help.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Is she your mother?”
“Will it help you to know that? Frankly, Julian, in your state,” Devi said, “you should be asking questions on a strictly need-to-know basis. What did the business card say that intrigued you?”
“It wasn’t the card. It was the woman. She told me a riddle I couldn’t decipher.”
“What riddle?”
“You’re not a bartender,” Julian mumbled. “I shouldn’t be telling you my troubles.”
“Did I not serve you sake? Twice?”
“Well, all right. But it’s lunchtime.”
“Do the things that trouble you go away at lunchtime? You’re a lucky man. Most people who come to me stay upset right through supper.”
Julian reached for his wallet. “Are we done?”
“We are not even at the beginning,” the cook said.
Julian left the wallet where it was.
“You seem unusually tense,” Devi said. “Like you’re hiding despair inside, panic, agitation. You feel unremitting anxiety. Your fears are crippling you. You feel actual physical pain from your worry, in the center of your gut, a hole that feels hot to the touch. You have a burning ache in your esophagus that is unbearable. At the same time, your melancholy has weakened your bones, drained the blood from you. You’re a mess, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Julian was mute. Who was this man who saw inside him?
“How stressful is your life?” Devi asked. “Unquestionably your chi is not traveling across the necessary meridians. It’s as if there is a ravine between what you should be feeling and doing and what you’re actually feeling and doing. You are out of balance.”
Julian bobbed his head. “Can you help with that? A doctor in Peckham couldn’t.”
“Did you pray for him? I’m joking. It’s a Peckham joke.”
“So, you’re a comedian yourself.”
“Perhaps you chose the doctor unwisely,” Devi said, motioning him inside. “Come with me.”
“The doc didn’t help is all I’m saying,” Julian muttered, sliding off his stool and following the cook.
“I heard you the first three times you said it.”
Julian didn’t think he’d said it even once.
He found himself shirtless in a back room on a narrow table, face down, wearing only his boxer briefs. His eyes were closed. He wondered if the real reason he agreed to enter this claustrophobic closet and allowed himself to get half-naked in front of a stranger and be stabbed with sewing tools was because he was so hopelessly tired. What was in that water?
While a hundred needles judiciously pierced the chi points on Julian’s body, Devi urged Julian to confess his stories, to whisper to him tales of the living and the dead. To Julian it felt like trying to talk under a sea of ice. The mouth was frozen, the body numb, the lungs heavy with fluid. All his pointed sorrows suddenly began to feel toothless.
There was a climbing pain in his neck and down his trapezoid, pain in his forearms, in the meat of his calves, in his fingers, his brows, his cheekbones. Before Julian could react, the pain disappeared and everything else vanished, too, the troubles, the burning, almost all feeling. It was better than Klonopin. Nothing was left except a tingle in his veins.
Josephine, crystals, Ashton, inventions, Poppa W, Mia, Z, and Moses Jackson, marriage, projectiles, San Vicente, insanity, Volvo, Mr. Know-it-All, mothers on balconies, Fario Rima, blood in the street, mountains, lovers, drumbeats of grief.
***
He blamed himself. Josephine broke up with her fiancé—because of him. Zakiyyah called Ava—because of him. The morning she died, she had a fight with her mother—about him. Because of this fight, she was high-strung and upset. When she ran out of the house to meet Julian at Coffee Plus Food, she stopped to talk to Poppa W because she was crying. Poppa comforted her. He hugged her goodbye. A few houses up the street, a car pulled away from the curb and began to roll toward them. She barely even glanced at it, but Poppa W was an old hand at cars rolling by and slowing down. In his gut he knew something was wrong. His intuition gave him an extra half a second to react, and the instinct saved his life. Thinking the short barrel of the Glock 9 through the half-open window was meant for him, Poppa shoved Josephine down to the pavement and turned sideways. Three shots rang out, two for her and one for him.
He lived.
Poppa was heavy, because he never left his compound without a piece, and despite his bloodied right arm, he yanked out his Ruger and fired four times at the screeching, speeding-away car. The injured arm trembled, the aim was for shit, and he didn’t shoot straight. But he still managed to blow out the rear window, pierce a tire, puncture the gas tank—and clip the driver in the neck. The car careened, crashed into a palm tree and caught fire. As Josephine lay dying, two trapped men burned—the ill-fated driver and Fario Rima, her cuckolded overbuilt lover, whom Julian called Moses Jackson. The night before, Fario had taken her betrayal stonily but not well. He thought he was coming to California to bring his intended home to New York, not to take back the ring he had given her, yet another ring Josephine never wore. Mistaking a hug for a clinch and Poppa W for her new lover, Fario aimed to kill them both. Ava told Julian later that through the years, Fario kept repeating that he couldn’t live without Mia, and no one believed him.
They believed him now.
***
When Julian opened his eyes, he was no longer face down. Pants on but still shirtless, he was slumped in a wooden chair in the corner and the man was on the floor in a lotus position in the diagonal corner, studying him with sympathy and curiosity.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Julian said, groggy and torpid.
“Why can’t you find any consolation?” Devi replied. “Why are you treating your God-given life as if it’s the greatest of evils?”
“What have I told you?”
“I don’t know,” Devi said. “Everything? Half of nothing? Answer me. Do you want to be pulled up by your roots and destroyed? Then keep living as you are.”
Julian had no reply.
“You’re suffering.”
“Well, it’s no secret.”
“You believe that your suffering is punishment.”
Julian crossed his fists on his chest.
“You think that you killed her. You think everybody killed her,” Devi said. “According to you, her death has a dozen pairs of hands. You blame them all, yourself first. You fault her mother, her best friend, the man across the street who tried to save her, the getaway driv
er. The only one you seem to have a relatively small amount of enmity for is the man who actually pulled the trigger.”
Julian had no good answer for that. Was it because he understood the pain of betrayed passion? Or was it because Fario Rima was also dead?
“You feel that you’ve pushed her into a marriage she could not enter into, and that her death is punishment for your obsession. Julian, look at me.” Devi shook his head. “None of this is true. It’s your ignorance talking.”
“Is ignorance another word for conscience?”
“Ignorance of the Divine Law. You think you’re being punished because the God you don’t believe in is displeased with you?” Devi tutted in his corner.
“Who says I don’t believe in God?”
“You do. By your despair. To live without hope is to reject the possibility of God’s mercy.”
Julian thought about that a long time. The words tolled and resonated and finally faded. “I don’t see much mercy or hope here, Devi Prak, whoever you are.”
“There you go again, proving my point. When you wallow in self-pity, you wander away from God. How can He help you when you’re this far?”
“I don’t need help.”
“You’ve literally been begging strangers for help.”
Julian stayed quiet.
“Do you know what one of your problems is?” the cook said. “You’re deluded. Not just you, of course. Many men.”
“You?” Julian thought he was being clever.
Vigorously, Devi nodded. “Very much so. I know what it means to blame yourself. I learned the hard way. Harder than you.”
The Tiger Catcher Page 20