The King of Infinite Space

by Lyndsay Faye

  Next, Benjamin got a text from Rory Marlowe. That wasn’t unexpected. But it did provoke a certain HULK SMASH urge.

  hey man! wanted to check in on you after that lunch went down, make sure everythings cool

  Garrett Marlowe texted him too, because the Marlowe twins are total asshats.

  sup Benny can’t wait to see you at the gala! maybe we could swing by your place beforehand, get our pre-game on

  There was so much nothing in these texts compared to the texts Ben yearned for that the nothing sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

  Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ventured nothing gained, we can only know that we know nothing. Zero was particularly repulsive to medieval scholars.

  If God is all-powerful, he can do anything;

  if he’s all-good, God can do no evil.

  Therefore, since there’s nothing God can’t do,

  evil is nothing.

  Needlepoint that on a fucking doily and hang it on your wall.

  Ben took his first searing gulp straight from the bottle. This led to Ben curled underneath the coffee table as if it were a fallout shelter typing:

  you don’t undrstand you and me together were a supernova doyou get it both one half the supernova and I want tofix it but you keep LEAVING

  And lastly:

  I’m sorry I’ll stop only please come home

  Now he sits on his bed as the dawn floods his room like water on the Titanic, cradling his 1954 Sunburst Gibson. He doesn’t play it often. An unholy combination of lucidity and despair is required for him to grind out chords on a guitar with this level of acoustic resonance in a seventeen-inch body. A blade of daylight slits across his bed as a riff off “19th Nervous Breakdown” oozes from his fingertips.

  It seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years

  And though you’ve tried you just can’t hide your eyes are filled with tears

  The roof of Ben’s mouth is lint-dry. But he needs to concentrate now that all the leftovers have been put away (he ate a stuffed mu shu pancake and two pieces of avocado sushi, he was good, he was responsible) so he just takes

  one-quarter racemic amphetamine aspartate monohydrate,

  one-quarter dextroamphetamine saccharate,

  one-quarter dextroamphetamine sulfate,

  one-quarter racemic amphetamine sulfate,

  which most people called Adderall.

  The trouble is, he doesn’t know what to concentrate on. These Rolling Stones chords that keep leaking out? That weird troll Robin Goodfellow? What Norway and Fortuna told him? How very little he knows, especially about how to get Horatio back?

  Stop it stop it stopitstopit.

  This is not about him—it’s for Horatio, to fix it for Horatio, because while Ben gleefully cuts down the ignorant and hypocritical, the notion of hurting his friend this badly sends machetes through his belly.

  If you broke his heart, you shouldn’t be trying to get him back.

  Fiddling with the original Kluson Deluxe tuners, Ben finds that the Adderall isn’t latching him on to anything useful. He can name every song in the Stones’ catalogue alphabetically, but he can’t remember how many days it’s been since his dad died, or the names of the seven little girls he saw in the police photos. Curling up on his black duvet with his guitar, Ben closes eyelids that tremble like the starlight seen through Earth’s corrupting atmosphere.

  ZZZZZZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

  Ben flies out of bed so quickly at the downstairs buzzer that he lands with a faceful of carpet. He scrambles up. A peat bog has rented out his mouth. Horatio is back. Ben will offer him a selection of international cuisine. But why wouldn’t he use his key? Horatio was drunk, he lost the key in a cab, at least he’s all right, at least he came—

  Rap rapraprap rap

  Vincentio stands on the other side of the door holding a garment bag. No makeup this early, but he’s painted on designer skinny jeans and wears a batik scarf over his low V-neck.

  “Que lo que, Benny. Wow. I’m thinking right-now is maybe a bad time?”

  Ben sighs, turning around. “It’s not like it can get any worse.”

  “Oh, well, please and thank you.”

  “Shut up, Vinny. Coffee?”

  “Certainly.”

  “It’s down the street, Bernardo Brothers, theirs tastes the least like it’s brewed in a vacuum cleaner. Scotch?”

  Ben pours two shots and clinks the ceramic. Vincentio’s dainty eyebrows twist, but he downs the liquor.

  “Breakfast of champions. How the hell did you finish Horatio’s tailoring so fast?”

  Vincentio says something in Dominican.

  “Dude, please buy me a Rosetta Stone for Christmas.”

  “This is your tuxedo, shit-dip. Final fitting, it is on your calendar you said yesterday, you swore on the Holy Cross. Strip.”

  Ben shuffles to the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he returns in his briefs, just to make a point, the tailor throws a button-down and a pair of trousers at his head.

  “This mountainous amigo of yours, he is asleeping?” Vincentio surmises with pins between his lips.

  “Wherever he is, I hope so.”

  Air puffs out of the tailor’s nose. “Te gusta estar bien con Dios y con el diablo.”

  “Vinny, I truly will punch you. Not fire you, but. The punching.”

  “You like to please both God and the devil, which is impossible. That one? He is good. I’m thinking you pick him, I do wedding tuxedoes.”

  “You are waaaaay ahead of the game. He hates me.”

  “Bullshitting me again.”

  “And I’m not even gay, I think, just Kinsey-ish with a sprinkling of demisexual.”

  “And I am seeing how you look at this man. Think very-much harder.”

  Benjamin walks abruptly to the linen drug box. Yes, he loves Horatio and has for many years. Yes, Horatio fell flat for him about six days into grad school and Ben’s been ignoring it because he was ass over tits for his childhood sweetheart. He cannot be expected to untangle this, not in this slice of time, not now. Ben shakes

  Chemical Name:

  5-(2-chlorophenyl)-7-nitro-1,3-dihydro-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one

  Molecular Formula: C15H10ClN3O3

  Molecular Weight: 315.7

  into his hand, returns to the scotch bottle, and invites Klonopin to shut Vincentio up since there’s no shutting Vincentio up by natural means.

  The tailor marches Ben to the full-length mirror in his bedroom (they’ve danced this house-call tango before). Ben squints morosely. Vincentio insisted on velvet, saying it was much the thing. Trousers and jacket are a plush steel color. Ben’s too thin, but it fits him perfectly, and his eyes shine electric blue.

  “Perfection. Giorgio Armani, please to be the father of my children,” Vincentio says, looking smug.

  “I don’t think it anatomically works like that.”

  “But never-can you stop me from trying.”

  Ben sheds the tuxedo and dons Columbia sweats as if to say I give up. The tailor is likewise quiet as he zips the garments into their bag.

  “What’s on the agenda today?” Ben asks when he can no longer stand himself for how dickish he’s being.

  “Fittings. Meetings. Your uncle is at two o’clock with their piece-of-shit event planner.”

  Ben discovered Vincentio many years ago, but the entire male wing of the Dane family followed suit after the premiere of their Tony Award–winning adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale starring Lupita Nyong’o, at which Ben looked stunning. So Uncle Claude’s appointment isn’t a surprise. The title event planner, however, wedges like a dull knife through Ben’s brain.

  “Robin Goodfellow, you mean?”

  Vincentio’s face scrunches. “You’ve met, then. Wash your hands and pray to Belie Belcan,
who I think Americans are calling Saint Michael.”

  “Why?”

  “Everyplace Robin goes, the ground opens up. Be careful. I’ll have both suits to you tomorrow. Your friend, his will not have time for a final fitting, but gracias a Dios I am a genius.”

  “Wait, wait a sec.” Ben pursues Vincentio to the door. “Why do you say Robin’s bad news?”

  Vincentio adjusts his scarf. “Last time I worked a wedding with this Robin, five days later the bride, she jumps off a balcony. He did a private bat mitzvah once, six figures, and the daughter turned out to be pregnant. People hire him because his events are beautiful, but among professionals he has a cocked-up reputation. We have an expression in Santo Domingo, curarse en salud.”

  Ben gestures in exasperation.

  “Cure yourself when you are still healthy, not when you are already fucked. Until tomorrow, Benny.”

  Ben lets the Earth’s mass pull him back onto his bed. It’s still ridiculous o’clock in the morning and everything feels filthy. The light yellows like a sweat stain. He knew Robin Goodfellow was ominous even apart from the strawberry scarf (which must surely have been a coincidence). Anyone who rubs Horatio Patel wrong can’t possibly be right.

  Horatio, there is no geodetic North without you. There’s only grid north and magnetic north, and I’m equally shit at navigating those.

  KRR

  KK         ZZZZ

  aaaaa     CKKKKK

  The front door opens.

  With a key, with a key, with a key.

  Before Ben can even push himself upright, Horatio is in the bedroom frowning.

  “Benjamin, are you spooning a guitar?”

  Oh Thank Baby Christmas Manger Jesus

  I Love You

  Glory To God In The Highest

  I Thought I’d Never See You Again

  Messy waves fall to Horatio’s shoulders, and the hollows under his eyes have formed ripples like a pond struck by a pebble. Meanwhile, Ben feels the stone blocking the tomb entrance rolling away. He’s tearing off yards of funeral shrouds. He’s tossing shreds on the cave floor like so much confetti.

  “Well . . . yeah?” he answers. “It . . . does appear that I’m spooning a guitar?”

  “The Sunburst? Really?”

  “It was pretty bad. Worse for you! But bad.”

  Nodding, Horatio directs his eyes at the wall.

  Please don’t look like that. If you break it, you buy it, I’ll buy it, just tell me how.

  “I’m not staying long.”

  “Oh,” Ben says. It’s all he can come up with.

  “Though I’m taking a shower first and eating something.”

  “OK.”

  “But I may be back, um, depending.”

  Ben’s pulse hares off into the underbrush. “Yeah, cool, totally, whatever you say. Depending on what?”

  “Tell me what you meant,” Horatio requests hoarsely.

  “Yeah . . . sure, which bit? What did I say?”

  “Supernovas.”

  “You’re in your inner citadel,” Ben notes.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “The Stoics. Then later Boethius, who had this rad life and fortune and family and everything and then, like, got screwed by the king and tossed in prison to rot. SparkNotes version is retreat to your principles when going through the sausage grinder, because even destiny can’t take away your honor.”

  “Cracking good observation.”

  “Sorry, I’m sorry! What was the question?”

  “You texted me, while clearly out of your tree, that we were each half of a supernova. What does that mean, Benjamin?”

  Ben makes a supreme effort to, by some miracle, become sober and lucid.

  Do. Not. Fuck. This. Up.

  “A particular type of supernova.” Ben sits, crossing his legs. “They’re called type one-A. And we’re not exactly a supernova yet, I was reeeeally drunk, we’re actually two stars caught in a mutual gravitational pull, in a configuration called single degenerate progenitors. One of them is a white dwarf, and that one’s this ridiculously intense wee bastard of a star—obviously that’s me—and very often, the other one is a red giant. Shit. OK, this is not meant to sound as racist as it does when actually coming out of my mouth, this is pure cosmology, so ignore the, like, accidentally racist aspects?”

  Horatio crosses his arms, waiting.

  “Right yep, so the white dwarf sucks gas out of the red giant, slurp slurp slurp stealing all this energy. But at a specific threshold, the white dwarf gets too dense and hot, and then it goes supernova, boom, very big boom, and that is one kind of type one-A supernova, and I think we’ve, uh. Crossed the tipping point.”

  Horatio meets Ben’s eyes. The pain is buried, but Ben can feel it, pulsating like the heat from a dying sun. “I need to know whether you actually give a piss about me.”

  “Nope. It’s super more intense than that, the pissing. I’m not expressing myself well. What I mean is, you’re geodetic North.”

  “And that means?”

  “I’d be lost without you.”

  Horatio rakes his hands through his hair and exits. Seconds later, Ben can hear the shower running.

  Better than it could have been.

  Water pounds angrily into the tub. Ben stumbles into the kitchen. Even if he guesses wrong, the act of heating the food will count. When the microwave beeps he retrieves a plate of falafel and pizza, adding a few avocado sushi pieces and forkfuls of cold noodles for luck.

  Horatio returns fully dressed, his hair in a damp knot and his eyes hooded. When he spies the plate, they widen in surprise. He spears a sushi roll with the fork.

  Ben squashes a fond smile that will be very much misinterpreted.

  “So,” Horatio says after consuming most of the plate. “True north, that’s . . . considerably more important than I’ve felt of late.”

  Ben’s lungs ache. “You’re all that matters.”

  “Now you’ve lost the more important bits? Terribly complimentary, cheers.”

  “No, you’re everything, you’re the kindest, smartest, most—”

  “Don’t big me up like that, it’s unfair,” Horatio snaps.

  “Uh, excuse me?”

  “Flattery is cheap.”

  Benjamin blinks, genuinely stumped; he never flatters anyone, let alone his closest friend. “Why the hell should I flatter you?”

  “Because—”

  “No, think this through,” Ben insists, anger percolating. “What could I possibly have to flatter you about?”

  Horatio’s eyes flash. “Right, daft of me, apologies.”

  “Shut up, Horatio. You don’t have any money, so I don’t want any. In fact, how much are you still in the hole? Because I could make that go—”

  “Stop it,” Horatio hisses.

  “OK, sure. You don’t want my money. If money is power then I’m, like, waaaaay more powerful than you. I don’t need you to cheat on tests for me, or introduce me socially, or get me a job. I’m rich and brilliant. Flattery is currency for getting something, and you have nothing whatsoever I need.”

  “Then I’ll be looking at flights back to—”

  “No no no no, sorry, wrong, you have nothing of material value I need.”

  “What the fuck do you need, then?”

  “You. That’s a hell of a reason to compliment you. I need you.”

  Ben can’t look at his friend, so he looks at the kitchen floor. Its pattern repeats in interlocking stars and diamonds, the black and white tessellation unbroken save for where the decades-old tile is cracked. Three-dimensional space fades in and out, the foreground shifting to the background. He’s as exhausted as he would be racing up and down M. C. Escher’s impossible staircases.

  “What’s next?” Horatio asks qu
ietly.

  “You mean with the investigation or with us? Anything could happen. I could get kidnapped by pirates and it wouldn’t even, like, surprise me.”

  Horatio’s mouth wants to smile. “Is there anything you’re actually certain of that I should know about?”

  Ben walks a few paces closer.

  “I don’t know whether you’ll forgive me tomorrow, or next week, or twenty years from now. But I know that I’ll work as hard as I can, spend as long as it takes, to make that happen. If it’s even, you know. Possible.”

  Horatio’s eyes search his face. Then he closes the gap, takes Ben by the shoulders, and kisses him. Softly, just below his hairline. Lingering for several seconds before pulling away.

  “It’s possible,” he says as he walks out the door.

  Ben sways momentarily and then

  d

  e

  f

  l

  a

  t

  e

  ssssssssss

  like a punctured balloon.

  Oh, Christ on a Ritz cracker, that was excruciating.

  Shivering, Ben forces himself upright. He touches his brow.

  It might be glowing, is it glowing?

  He can’t tell. There are too many loose ends swirling through his addled mind—now that Horatio has been addressed, and nothing more can ameliorate that problem save time, he needs to dive back into Whac-A-Mole.

  Lia was tied up in some sadistic nightmare with Jórvík. And never told me. And drank herself senseless.

  You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a cold case in the vicinity of New World’s Stage, according to Norway and Fortuna.

  Rory and Garrett are spies. Really bad spies.

  Robin Goodfellow is a walking curse.

  Dreams come true.

  As do nightmares, apparently.

  knock knock knock