The King of Infinite Space

by Lyndsay Faye

  I bow down to those who have reached omniscience in the flesh and teach the road to everlasting life in a liberated state.

  I bow down to those who have attained perfect knowledge and liberated their souls of all karma.

  I bow down to those who have experienced self-realization of their souls through self-control and self-sacrifice.

  The rest of the conversation rolls over him like a thundercloud. And then as abruptly as they came, the wine is gone, and the twins are taking their leave.

  “Yeah so, again—totally amazing seeing you.” Garrett slaps Horatio’s back and grips Benjamin by the hand.

  “I’m fucking floored. Tomorrow is going to be awesome.” Rory repeats the gestures.

  I hate the Marlowe twins, Horatio decides with clean satisfaction. They get on my wick like absolutely no one in the continental United States.

  The Greek family departs likewise, and for several seconds, a bleary bustle occurs. Goodbye, goodbye, thank you, come again, thank you. Benjamin is waving and Horatio copies him, just to be polite.

  “Um,” Horatio attempts, turning back round, “what were we—”

  “Something’s rotten, and it’s not tonight’s fish special,” Benjamin announces, scowling in thought.

  Horatio closes his mouth, raises an eyebrow. His friend taps an odd syncopated rhythm with his fingertips. Nearly a minute drifts into the aether, lost for good.

  “Yeah, nope, this doesn’t add up,” he declares. “For them to want the cannabis seed moisturizer or the weekend in Barbados or whatever Gwyneth Paltrow–approved horse puckey Mom put in the gala bags this year, sure, I buy it. For us to run into them in the city? Sure. For us to run into them here? You, me, Lia, we all used to wind up at City Diner. Rory and Garrett used to end up at Rose Bar convincing Victoria’s Secret models to blow them in bathrooms. No way in hell were they like hey, you know what I’m really feeling? A Denver omelette.”

  Benjamin is right. He might firmly believe in coincidence, might even be said to deify disorder, but there’s such a thing as probability.

  “You think they want something?”

  “Nah, I didn’t say that.”

  “What, then?”

  “I think my mom always wants something,” Benjamin says slowly.

  Horatio is beginning to think Trudy Dane might be the craftiest soul he’s ever encountered. It’s the mirror opposite of his own experience. Once upon a time in mid-April, Horatio’s mum found a copy of Gay Times magazine tucked in a padded coat (in the pocket further from the wardrobe door, no less). She’d been trying to determine whether Horatio needed new winter wear because she could get it more cheaply off-season. Horatio had completely forgotten the magazine existed and still recalls the helpless quake in his limbs before his mum threw her arms around him and started crying first.

  “You can’t meet up with us for lunch tomorrow,” Benjamin declares.

  For an instant, Horatio is hurt. But his friend has a calculating air, the one he gets when he’s mastering a lick on his guitar. Benjamin reaches for the empty wineglasses and begins arranging them like a general who’s moving pieces on a war map.

  With entirely too much enthusiasm.

  “I,” he decrees, shuffling his forces, “will rendezvous with the Marlowe twins for lunch. Kiiiinda want to feel those guys out. You,” he continues, sliding one glass away from the other three, “are going to the theatre offices and surprising Paul Brahms, because he’ll say different shit to you than he will to me. And then you’re going to my tailor in the Garment District, Vincentio—I’ll find the address, I have an account there—and getting fitted for a tux. You’ll love him.”

  Finished, Benjamin surveys his plan of attack. He looks quite chuffed with himself. He fiddles with the cuff on his wrist as Horatio’s hackles rise.

  “So, er. You just . . . decided that, then?”

  “Yep.”

  “Without, you know. My input.”

  “We did skip that part, yeah.”

  “Since when do you order me about?”

  “Since we’re investigating my dad’s murder.”

  “Well, yes, not to downplay that at all, but who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Here’s what good actually came of my little matronly escapade.” Benjamin leans forward, pale brows darting like sparrows. “I so happened to be under the piano when that sploot of gastric juice Uncle Claude was taking his leave.”

  “You . . . sorry, you happened to be under the piano?”

  “Exactly. And as he left, he said he was going to see Paul about me, because Paul told them that we’d watched the tapes. But Paul likes you—everyone likes you. And he trusts you—everyone trusts you. And Paul knows seriously everything. So you’re gonna go ask him questions and then get fitted for a penguin suit while I have a shamefully expensive lunch with the Marlowe twins.”

  “And what if I’ve no bloody intention of allowing you to dress me up like a Ken doll?” Horatio demands.

  “C’mon! You’ll be, like, a spy. And get outfitted for a tux by the Vincentio, dunno his last name. You’ll be the Gujarati James Bond.”

  “Kindly shut it, there’s a good lad.”

  “Please do this for me.” Benjamin is using his I’ve whole oceans in my eyes and you haven’t any life preserver routine, and none of it is remotely fair.

  “No. There are limits, Benjamin.”

  “Pleeeeeease?”

  “Sod off.”

  “It would be so good of you to do this for me.” Benjamin angles his head. “You would make Jina for sure, my man.”

  “Oh, bloody hell.”

  “Dude, you would so escape the life and death cycle it’s not even funny. This would clinch it completely.”

  “Do you know, I rue nothing more than I rue the occasion that I ever made you acquainted with the religious beliefs of my ancestors.”

  Benjamin does his classic head toss and barks a laugh. “Does suffering help with the total consciousness thing too, or is it just about being awesome?”

  “Suffering can’t hurt. So to speak.”

  “See, so this is also perfect in that way, then. Well, not like I want you to suffer unduly. I promised you a hottie chorus boy, an entire Whole Foods produce department of carefully selected male—”

  “Benjamin.”

  The tone is far too urgent, and his friend scrubs his face with his palm once, twice.

  “What?”

  “Er, that’s not . . . Hang it, that isn’t why I’m here.” Deliberately, Horatio relaxes. The smile he offers must look molded from plastic. “Let’s . . . whatever else we may do, or not do, I’m frankly a bit preoccupied by the task at hand.”

  “The murder investigation?”

  “No, not precisely.”

  Benjamin chews his lip before fully comprehending.

  “That task being, to put it bluntly, me.”

  Horatio can’t trust himself to speak. So he doesn’t.

  Blue irises gentle. “Which don’t for a single instant think I fail to value beyond . . . like, half my inheritance. Whatever that is. Hell, the entire thing. So. That means you will do it, then? Or you won’t?”

  Horatio sighs. The waiter of mysterious origins drops the check, and Benjamin has his card slapped down before he can even fish his wallet out of his trousers.

  This bloodsickness condition you suffer from? It’s fixated on an absolutely irresistible total prick.

  “Fine,” Horatio concedes.

  “Excellent!” Benjamin leaps up, all focus and angles again, lost puppy demeanor entirely forgotten. “Let’s get some shut-eye. I’ll find Vincentio’s address in the morning. It’ll be a super rush job, but this dude is used to handling people like Jared Leto, I win Customer of the Year awards by comparison. He’ll get it done. He’s amazing.”

  “I
’ve not the slightest doubt.”

  “Horatio?”

  He pauses as he slides out of the booth. “Yes?”

  Benjamin’s eyes are icicle points. “Then we’ll get it done. We’ve got this, you and me. Just watch.”

  “One question.”

  “Yep?”

  “Supposing that we do find out that your uncle Claude was in fact, well . . . Hang it. Your father’s killer? What are we to do about it if he is? Your mother . . . I mean to say, this is all very complex.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “But what’s the plan of action if it’s true?”

  “I dunno. Good question. I murder him, save all those legal expenses?”

  Benjamin slouches his way toward the door before Horatio can begin to process whether he was joking.

  The air is too clear to be anywhere else but aboveground, on the gum-scarred streets. So they walk home. A beggar with a cat on a leash whimpers and Benjamin hands him a fiver. A rat scurries by, sleek and beautiful and muscular, while an emaciated woman in a sequined mini-dress sobs on a bus stop bench.

  They reach their building and trudge up the stairs. But they don’t go to bed at all. When they’ve flicked on the lights, Benjamin decides George Harrison is in order and pours whiskey and pulls out his guitar. Horatio doesn’t object, can’t object. It’s practically all he ever wanted, watching Benjamin cradle the Silvertone Teisco shark and coax rasping purrs from its body, if only Horatio didn’t also want so very, very much more. Flashes from the street flicker white, then red and blue, back to white again. Emergencies surging and fading like the sudden leaps of his pulse.

  “You’re well knackered,” he observes, swirling the ice in his glass. “God knows you ought to be. You don’t have to entertain me, you realize.”

  “Sure, I do.” Benjamin’s mouth tilts up. “Just. Our dinghy on the stream of time is sailing faster than I’d like it to.”

  Two o’clock drifts into the past, and then three, and then god only knows when, until it occurs to Horatio that his friend’s guitar isn’t the only one gently weeping. Even though none of the tears are visible.

  BENJAMIN

  An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

  —Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

  The next day starts off—as is now to be expected—unbelievably shitty.

  Ben had stupidly forgotten how often he nibbled smoke-tender meats in the identical corner booth at Keens with his own dad across the table. Sitting still and small and awkward. Like a frozen rodent. Judgment radiating down from the dead-eyed portraits and equally dead deer littering the dark wood walls.

  Just walking through the door was a full backhand to the face with grief. Ben reels with it. Not to mention shame and a sensory download dump that could fill a hard drive the size of a car. Humans have no one particular organ devoted to the passage of time, which he finds odd—just a brain to record a jumbled amalgamation of the other five senses, smeared with watercolor emotions and stained by subsequent data. But here he is, at Keens again, and the movie reel won’t stop playing.

  You all right over there, son?

  Yeah. M’good.

  Well. How’s the situation at school, then? You standing up to people, letting ’em know they can’t push you around?

  “There’s no way in hell.” Rory scoffs, glaring at his twin.

  “A law degree is a natural career path for philosophy students,” Garrett argues, flicking a napkin onto his lap. “God, I missed this place.”

  “So is getting some cush think-tank gig.”

  “You really think we can land jobs sitting on a rock growing our beards out?”

  “Not a rock. An ergonomically sweet office chair.”

  “What about you, Ben?”

  “For work? I was teaching,” Ben answers.

  “You always were a bleeding-heart liberal,” Rory teases as the waiter pours champagne.

  “Yeah, I was trying to staunch the bleeding, actually. Cauterize it with meaning.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “Poorly.”

  Are you trying to figure out their angle right now, or are you showing them your updated Useless Douchenozzle CV? Make them feel comfortable, idiot.

  Ben ignites a smile like a bonfire doused in lighter fluid.

  “Enough about my craptastic attitude, guys. Weave me tales of sunny California and garlic festivals.”

  The twins oblige. Ben feels his shoulders sink in relief. There are

  too many past forks scraping

  too many past napkins refolding

  forcing their way into the present like

  sociopaths in a schoolyard

  too many of

  these dropped spoons these yes another, thank yous these no, just the checks these a few more cubes, pleases

  Eight-year-old Ben clumsily forking mashed potatoes into his mouth. Jackson Dane checking his Rolex, reading The Wall Street Journal. Rubbing fingers still strong and splayed from his stint as a Longhorns quarterback against his Texas slab of a jaw.

  Thing about bullies, Ben, is they’re the world’s biggest cowards. One push and the whole act crumbles. But you gotta push first, right?

  Benny? You push anybody yet, like I told you to?

  And push ’em real hard?

  The problem with these attempts at happy healthy hale fatherly family fun time was that Jackson Dane was godlike. He was a fossil fuels millionaire on the cover of Forbes and of American Theatre. He’d done guest spots on CNBC’s Squawk Box and on NPR’s Fresh Air. Power, wealth, fame, a crooked cowboy’s smile while his eyes glinted like a senator’s.

  Jackson had everything. Except for a common language with his only son.

  Jackson tried to talk sports, and it was laughable. Jackson tried to talk theatre, and it was nearly as ridiculous. Ben tried to talk music, and math puzzles, and space exploration. This was before Ben had any knack for talking at all; his selective mutism as a child was anxiety-based. All mangled up in the ADHD and the general terror of BEING ALIVE and thus MAKING MISTAKES and thus LOSING EVERYTHING. But his silences, those revolting gaps in his speech, still made him look stupid and feel harrowingly alone.

  And it is

  F

  U

  C

  K

  E

  D

  U

  P

  to be sitting at Keens like some blue-shirt stockbroker enjoying the legendary mutton chop. Ben never gave a damn about food in his life.

  You fucking moron, you’re supposed to be investigating. Concentrate.

  “So then he says no, I put the sock in the microwave,” Garrett concludes, grinning.

  “It was the only thing left from the laundry that wasn’t dry!” Rory protests.

  “Dumbest shit I’ve ever seen.”

  “Hey, I wanted that sock dry, dude, and time is money.”

  Ben huffs. “Time’s nothing whatsoever like money. When have you ever been refunded time, or saved it to spend later?”

  Rory and Garrett flicker like ghosts as they blab doggedly on about cars and parties until Ben interrupts an anecdote about Megan Fox to blurt, “So when did you guys land?”

  A glance is exchanged. Meaningful, for sure, but not decipherable to anyone who isn’t a Marlowe twin.

  “Night before last,” Garrett answers.

  “Right, made it in half an hou
r early,” Rory choruses. “Good thing too, we had Google meetings in Chelsea.”

  Ben feigns a pout, aware it’s unconvincing. After all, he only pouts for Horatio. “And you weren’t gonna text me? What with everything that’s been going on? Harsh, man.”

  “New phones,” Rory explains apologetically. “We were going to shoot you a Facebook message.”

  “Cool,” Ben returns, freshly suspicious.

  “Hey, don’t be like that,” Garrett says. “We’re really so sorry about your dad, Benny. We’re not good at this shit—”

  “At all,” Rory adds.

  “But we’re here for you now, no question.”

  The twins start talking memories of Jackson Dane, and now Ben’s about ready to slice himself open and ask if the chef would like to serve a rare variety of tartar this evening. Jackson might as well be the fourth man at the table. Six foot two inches, sandy-haired, sharply grey-eyed, leonine brow. Taking up half the air and all the atmosphere.

  “He was legend, you know? You want that last piece of bacon?” Garrett asks.

  “Knock yourself out,” Ben hears himself saying. “Do not allow that poor delicious animal to have perished in vain.”

  Benny, hey there, kid. Miss you.

  We never did see eye to eye on much, did we?

  Shutupshutupshutupshutup, Ben thinks desperately.

  But I swear to God, son.

  Here I told you that my brother killed me in cold blood, and you’re playing your fucking grab-ass games with your grad school buddies?

  “Right, she might have been the hottest thing going,” Rory admits, “but she was also obsessed with my feelings. Sometimes I’m not having any, you get me?”

  “Heh,” Garrett agrees.

  “You’re both single right now I take it?” Ben prods.

  “As the lone pine,” Garrett replies.

  “Get any last night? Gimme the full monty. You two were always a menace at the clubs, don’t tell me you haven’t tapped anything yet, it’s been, like, almost forty hours.”