The Last Illusion

by Porochista Khakpour

  “Six hours,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “Till what,” she corrected. “New Year’s, of course, 2000. Are you ready?”

  Zal nodded. He was, he supposed. But he knew everywhere people were losing their minds over this one.

  “What are your plans?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I had a party to go to, but I don’t want to go.”

  She took this as a line, a flirtation, and turned a bit red. As if it were bait, she bit. “I have some parties, too. And I don’t want to go.”

  Zal took this as a problem. They were both without a plan. “We could treat this as any other day. Eat, sleep, you know.”

  She was almost shocked by his attitude—he seemed entirely unfazed by the possibility of the world ending, or at the very least all financial systems collapsing.

  “That’s what I would like to do,” she said, sighing a bit. “But, you know, this one could be different.”

  Zal paused. “You mean the world ending and all that? Computers going crazy? Bombs launched?”

  He wasn’t making a joke, but it sounded like one. Asiya laughed with her eyes.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It is probably silly of me. But I have to say, I’ve been having these . . .” She took a deep breath and stopped.

  “What?” Zal asked.

  When she opened her eyes—it took a second—she shook her head, gently, peacefully, as if hushing a newborn. “No, nothing. I guess I just want to do something different.”

  “Really?”

  She thought about it. “Yes. Even if it means hiding.”

  “Hiding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hiding from what? Oh, that stuff ?”

  “No. But, you know. Anything. Isn’t it fun to hide? Didn’t you play hide-and-seek as a kid?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve heard of it, though.”

  She squinted her eyes. “Where are you from?”

  He sighed. “Long story. Mostly here.”

  She nodded. “You had crazy parents or at least a crazy life then too. I didn’t play hide-and-seek either, but it sounds fun.”

  Zal nodded, looking down at his soup. “Yes, I had a crazy parent, I guess you’d say, and a crazy life.”

  She wanted to hold his shaking white hand that was working so hard to balance the contents of his spoon on the way to his mouth. She wanted to hold it and maybe kiss it. He reminded her of something, but nothing of other men. For a second she thought maybe he reminded her of the birds she photographed, her lifelong project of birds in their various states of decay. She couldn’t tell him that, of course—you resemble a bird in the initial stages of decomposition!—but she thought that for a second. Or maybe they had met before. She wasn’t sure, but the anxious/clairvoyant new side of her told her he was important, that with him she’d be safe, that this meeting meant something more.

  “Hiding could be fun, I suppose,” he finally said after their longest silence of the evening.

  “We don’t have to hide, exactly,” she said, and she hoped it wouldn’t sound like it sounded to add, “We could do what you want.” And yet a part of her hoped it did.

  He took another spoonful of soup. He couldn’t remember the last person who had said that to him, who had in fact asked that of him with a statement like that. Rhodes questioned for other reasons, and Hendricks demanded, and Silber fell in the category of those who were so awed by his freakdom that they had absolutely nothing but questions. But no one really ever asked him what he wanted.

  “If you’re asking me really,” he began, “I guess I would like to go home.”

  She had a fallen face already, but even a face like that had some distance further to fall. He replayed his sentence over in his head and caught himself.

  “I mean, I would like it if we went to my home now that we’re done eating.”

  Her eyes seemed to brighten a bit, and she turned red again. She did not expect him to be that forward. “I don’t know.”

  This time he turned red. “You don’t have to. Come, I mean.”

  Pause. “I’d like to,” she said slowly, after a long silence.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Good,” she said.

  She pushed her soup toward him and he noticed it was barely touched. He finished it for her.

  The bill came, and Zal put down his portion and she put down hers, and he went to the bathroom and she went to the bathroom, and they walked out.

  “Nobody, other than my father, has ever been to my apartment,” he said as they walked over.

  She didn’t believe him, but didn’t say a word.

  “Nobody, other than my father, has ever been to my apartment,” he repeated, after the many flights up, outside his door.

  Asiya nodded. “Extraordinary day for extraordinary moves.” She was being sarcastic, but he didn’t get it.

  Zal opened the door and looked at it with her, as if for the first time; he had no idea what an outsider would think, but consoled himself with the idea that his father had set it all up and hung out there and certainly would not have created an abnormal environment for Zal, his son, whom Hendricks so badly wanted to grow up as normal as he could, considering.

  It was a studio, almost a perfect box, he thought, with one wall that had two large windows, with the shades drawn as they faced out just over the other shades-drawn windows of another apartment just some feet away. It was a little dark, maybe just a little too dark, maybe. There was a bed—made, thank goodness, he thought, as recently he had skipped a day here and there in spite of what Hendricks had always reminded him about proper grown men and made beds. The sheets were dark blue and plain—a reasonable choice, he thought. There was a desk, bare except for a computer and an alarm clock and, it appeared, some receipts—the true extent of disarray, really. Of course, underneath it and the bed were those coffee tins with the insect snacks, but they were not visible, he thought, not in a way to arouse suspicion anyway. There were small weights and physical therapy resistance bands lying in one corner of the room, a boom box, a small chest of drawers, and a trash can. There were two plain plastic chairs and a matching coffee table, enough really for one. The walls were bare except for two framed photos Hendricks had put up—one of Hendricks and his wife, Nilou, when they were very young, smiling hard, in a way that Zal often thought must hurt the face to do. The other was of Zal, young, in the arms of Hendricks—it was one of those very early ones, but, unlike some of them, one in which he did not look so deformed at all. He looked half his real age and pale and skinny, but nothing he thought that would look abnormal to this stick figure black-and-white girl.

  “You just moved here, right?”

  “Sort of,” Zal said, which wasn’t entirely untrue.

  She was looking at the photos. “You are very close to your father.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m not,” she said, “close to my father. What does your dad do?”

  “He’s an analyst,” he said. “Specializes in children.” He thought of Hendricks—was he abnormal in any way? Behavioral analysts everywhere had to have kids, he thought.

  There was silence. What did Rhodes say to do when silence makes you feel bad?

  Echo.

  “What does your dad do?” he asked her.

  She sighed, very audibly. She shook her head. She sighed again. She sat on a plastic chair. “I don’t see him at all. But he works for Boeing.”

  He nodded absently. It meant nothing to him. There is nothing wrong with asking questions, though, Rhodes would also say. “What is that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Bing, did you say?”

  “Oh, Boeing. You don’t know? Oh, um, they make planes.”

  They make planes. Airplanes, he thought, the giant roaring aluminum-alloyed birds that he did not like one bit. “Oh, I don’t know about those.”

  She looked at him funny. “You’ve flown.” It refused to be a question.

  He shook his
head. “No.” He paused. “Actually, once, when I was little. But I don’t remember.”

  She nodded. “I don’t know how I knew that, but I somehow knew you had never really flown. I mean, I know you didn’t know Boeing, but that’s not really a tip-off. Lately I just know things.”

  Zal nodded. He had no idea what she meant. “What would you like to do?” he asked. “And how do you say your name again?”

  “I don’t know what,” she said. “AWE-see-ya.”

  “AWE-see-ya.” He pretended to dust his counters with his hand, as Hendricks sometimes did.

  She was bored. “I don’t know what we could do. Weird day. Probably will be crazy out there. We could?. . .”

  And just then he saw it on the fridge: a note. Z—Must have missed you, will be back later, will bring the TV, we can watch the pin drop at Times Square—happy 2000! Love, Pops

  Zal immediately panicked. Any minute his father could come home and see him with this strange woman whose name he could barely say. And on the flip side, any minute this woman could meet his strange father who held the keys to his entire strange past, that he would no doubt somehow manage to unload on her, not considering Zal’s investment or feelings or anything, just thinking Zal probably hadn’t done it, just thinking it was probably best he do it, that it would be best to have all the facts, the whole damn story, out in the open, so she could go ahead and treat Zal the way everyone else did: extremely carefully. He would once more find himself in one of those special-considerations relationships, where his story would eclipse him—and them, even—swallow them up and spit them out, and once again leave Zal the loneliest man on earth.

  He could not allow the two of them to meet. Not yet, at least. He would maybe have to have a talk with Hendricks soon—if, that is (and he knew he was jumping all guns), she or any girl, really, was going to be in his life, but if she wasn’t, he had no idea why she was there, why she was tolerating him, why for hours—had it really been hours?—she had followed him and asked what he wanted and mirrored his food selections and not made him feel stupid for not knowing the B-something name of airplanes and still didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to leave, wouldn’t want to leave, until of course the thing to end all dates—what was a date exactly?—would burst through the door: a parent.

  “We have to go,” he said as he crumpled the note. He quickly uncrumpled it and desperately grabbed a pencil on his desk and wrote on the back: No, Father—Hendricks alone called himself “Pops,” and only in those notes he left—I cannot do that. With a friend. Will be back at a later time. Do not worry. He paused and added, for extra normalness, since he knew his father would be suspicious something bad-extraordinary had happened, Happy 2000 too.

  “Where to?”

  “We have to go now,” Zal said. “Sorry. I don’t know where.”

  “Right now?”

  “Now! I mean, now. Yes. I mean, now would be good.”

  She squinted her eyes at him. “Uh, okay.”

  “It’s just that this place will be filled with . . . noise. And . . . my father.”

  She nodded. “Of course, your father,” she said, in a tone he was too panicked to even attempt to read. “Well, we could walk to my apartment. It’s uptown.”

  “That sounds nice!” He tried to sound very excited, but really he was panicked.

  “But my little sister and brother will be there,” she said. “Definitely my little sister.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He grabbed a coat and opened the door and, like the gentlemen of old movies, he said, “After you.”

  He thought he heard her snort as she brushed by him and out the door. He thought he saw Hendricks—it was possible it was just another of the many Santa Claus-y older gentlemen of New York, but he could not afford to properly look—as they speed-walked to a subway going uptown. He was still in the clear, he thought: normal, or thereabouts.

  She, too, gave him a disclaimer outside her door: “It’s depressing as fuck in here, know that.” He felt somehow alarmed at the word fuck on her lips—it seemed too heated a word for the odd, cold girl, fuck having that equal and opposite effect on him as, say, laughter would have on her. She did not wear it well.

  They both took a deep breath and went in.

  If you asked Zal what a nice apartment was, he would have told you, well, his father’s or Silber’s. He was usually not so impressed. But this was unlike the dusty book-filled old loft of his father’s, or Silber’s ultra-edgy minimalist townhouse. This was old New York, as he had seen in photos. It was huge, a whole brownstone. Chandeliers, floral wallpaper, bits of gold and marble and pearl and shiny woods of sorts he’d never seen, sculptures and china that all looked like it belonged in a museum or on a cake.

  “Depressing,” she said. “I hate it here. My parents’ since forever.” She was a bit red and suddenly seemed annoyed, possibly embarrassed to the point of irritation.

  Zal felt uncomfortable. “I would rather live here,” he said, honestly.

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “I think I would. I don’t find it depressing.”

  “No,” she said firmly and walked around, checking out rooms. “It’s a mess, and my brother and sister are both home, so, well, here you go. This is all so weird.”

  “It is,” Zal had to agree.

  “Little over four more hours,” she said, waving her watch at him. “What do you think is going to happen anyway?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Zal said. “Probably nothing, is what my father says, though.”

  “A lot of shit could hit the fan,” she said, grabbing an apple from a large bowl holding apples in every color they came in, it appeared to him. There she went again—shit—cursing. Shit and apple contradicted each other so thoroughly, he thought he went deaf and blind for a moment. It appeared in her own home she suddenly fell into this cursing self. He tried not to be bothered by it. “I mean, I know I don’t know you, but get ready—I will probably be a pain closer to midnight.”

  “A pain how?”

  “OZ!!” came a shout from upstairs, echoing the way it would in a concert hall, Zal imagined.

  “My sister,” Asiya explained, looking more annoyed. “One sec.” She stomped—really drove home her annoyance with that stomp—upstairs into another room.

  Zal seated himself on one of the many large white couches, of a material he had never felt, the skin of something soft and almost mythical-feeling, maybe not even real, like a unicorn or pegasus or something. He felt like he was in a painting. He looked up at one of the many actual paintings, this one of a young woman in a blue dress and pearls with silver hair. It looked from another time, another place. The background was yellow and blurry. It was hard to say if she was young or old. He wondered if she had ever existed, really.

  Asiya came back minutes later, still with uneaten apple in hand, and stared at Zal. “TV?”

  “What about your sister?”

  She simply shook her head.

  “Do I meet her?”

  She shook her head again. And then again. “I mean, I don’t care. You could. I don’t even know you.”

  Cursing and suddenly saying that all the time. It was true, they did not know each other, but somehow the stating of it felt hostile to Zal.

  “I don’t have to,” he told her, trying to say it more gently than he had ever said anything in his life. He wanted so badly—in a way that even surprised him—to get along with this abnormal, normal girl.

  “I don’t care,” she said again. “You want to? You have to go to her.”

  Zal nodded and did not move still.

  “You know why?”

  Zal shook his head.

  “You been to a freak show? Like the one in Coney Island or whatever?”

  Zal shook his head again. Freak show. He had not been, but he knew about them. Freak was a derisive word some had used for him in his life, and he had even been told to go back to the freak show where you belong by a cruel and
stupid neighbor child who had caught wind of his story, back when he lived with Hendricks. It was difficult for him to hear it, ever. He worried for a moment if she suddenly knew or was somehow about to attack him.

  “Well, get ready,” she said. “My sister is a fucking freak.”

  Fucking.

  Freak.

  She did not even lower her voice, in the echoing home.

  “How do you mean that exactly?” Zal said, still in a quiet voice, fighting hard not to get upset by her subtle but disturbing transformation.

  “Why don’t I show you?” she snapped, loudly. She seemed angry.

  “I really don’t have to meet her.”

  “OZ!!” as if on cue, the freak called again.

  “Just in time!” Asiya said, eyes huge, in an expression of exaggerated annoyance. “Let’s go, why don’t we!”

  She held a hand out to him, the hand she had not held out when they hadn’t shaken before, the hand that had for a second ordered him to relax at the sight of the dead bird.

  He took her hand.

  It felt cold and bony.

  They walked up a set of spiral stairs and through a hallway filled with those types of paintings of very unreal-looking people of ageless, placeless identification, and suddenly they were at a very large, dark bedroom with no door, just an empty archway where a door obviously had been removed at some point.

  Inside: nothing but a very large bed. On the bed: nothing but a very large human being, the largest human being Zal had ever seen in his life, larger than he thought possible.

  The freak.

  “My sister Willa,” Asiya—no doubt red, though in the lack of light it was hard to tell—said, back in her usual whispery voice. She raised it a bit for the sister: “Willa, a friend I made today. Zal.”

  He reached out a hand.

  “No, Willa can’t get out of bed, so you have to go to her,” Asiya said. “Willa, say hello this minute, please.” She talked to this large human like a mother, an angry mother, Zal noted.

  “Hello,” came a voice from all that flesh, a thick, husky voice padded by lots of heavy breathing. “Oz, can you flip the lights on? I can’t see him.”

  Asiya sighed and turned the light on. “Here you are, Willa,” she said. “Or should I say here you are, Zal?”