Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

She shook her head so hard he worried she’d hurt her neck. Her face was blood red when she finally spit it out: “You’re gonna betray me, aren’t you?”

And before either of them could say anything, she had melted that statement into an avalanche of sobs.

“Asiya, you’re wrong!” Zal said over and over.

“I don’t mess this stuff up. Sometimes I know what’s in your head, maybe before you even know what’s in your head. I know what could happen, what will happen. .”

Zal remembered something. “No, you’ve been wrong! Just earlier you were wrong. When I said I was thinking about something I knew would never happen, you kissed me.”

For a moment, a cruel gash of a smile appeared on her face through that curtain of tears. “I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. You, on the other hand, want to fly.”

Zal swallowed his alarm and shook his head at her, even though they both knew she was right.

“Make sure you’re flying, not falling, though. They’re not the same thing. The earth pulls us down, not up,” she said through clenched teeth, as if the words hurt to utter.

The whole world filled with the rumbling of her inconsolable panic. Zal tried to focus on the ticking of the watch on his wrist.

It would be over soon. And when it finally was, neither of them would have the courage to bring it up, whatever it was.

He developed a taste for kissing, and soon it was anything but confusing and really not even a matter of wetness but rather another way for the flesh to explore other flesh, to get deeper, almost as deep as was permitted— almost to get a hint of what was inside others. No one had access to all the real insides of anyone else, much less themselves, the network of organs and blood and cells and muscles and fats and all that other fragile machinery and their continual miracles. He felt like those movie heroes, hungry for kisses, and when he went in, he really went in, making him altogether a different kisser from most people. Who knew it could hurt, she would half-joke. If anyone could do that, it’s you, Zal.

It was about to hurt her more than she could imagine.

It happened one very significant early summer evening, when the first breaths of humidity were just barely giving the city a taste of what was to come and people’s thoughts were turning more and more to water and naps and sand and sun and sunblock and skin. It was the night of Asiya’s big solo art show, also a monumental night for him. He later wondered if it would be the highlight of his life, even with its mistake, and he decided maybe the mistake had been just a casualty of the night’s greatness. That night he had felt better than normal; he had felt special. He had graduated from normal so suddenly and fully that at the opening people saw him as different only because they saw him as better than all of them. All of Asiya’s dozens and dozens of fellow artists, plus gallery bigwigs, critics, and passersby, had been staring at him all night, but in a way that he knew for sure was not bad — not that old look of shock or wonder at him as the mere fruit of an unbelievable story, but instead as a pure example of unshakable freakdom. He had been Asiya’s muse for months, here and there, almost casually, when she had film to spare, but soon it became apparent he was the subject of the best work she’d ever done. Two-thirds of a show she’d thought would be all dead birds simply had to be living bird boy, as she put it. In the end, even the one-third that were bird photos were different bird photos than she had originally envisioned; they looked almost animate, beating hearts and all even. A blurry bird silhouette, a “sleeping” bird in a human-built nest, flocks of birds in various formations, and of course the bird attached to strings and posed in artificial flight. It was as if her fascination with decay had simply melted away, while her fascination with birds had only been reinforced. When she realized it was all Zal’s doing, she began to focus her lens on him. She even re-created that very bird photo Zal loved, put him in black Halloween angel wings and attached him to thin wire hung from the plant hooks on her ceiling. It was the centerpiece of nearly a dozen blown-up prints and smaller oversize Polaroids. She called Zal “Angel” in her show All My Angels.

He was filled with pride. He had never been the most important bird. In all his time with his bird mother, Khanoom, and all her children, he was at the bottom by far.

He was also grateful that Asiya had found a way to skirt the bird issue— his bird issue — and yet pay homage to it at the same time. He liked the idea of angels. And he loved the notion of some genuine light seeping into Asiya’s steadfast night vision. Her world of angels, with him at its core, seemed to transport her slightly outside her dreaded realm of apocalypse.

Zal had even submitted to her styling for the show. He truthfully wasn’t that happy with the white feather boa slung around his neck— it’s angelic, not birdlike, I swear the feathers are fake, she had insisted and insisted — over the white plain shirt upon which she had scribbled a red outline of an angel with a halo, harp, wings, and all. She told him he looked edgy, hip, arty, like he was with her. An art couple, she had cooed. And for the first time, Zal saw Asiya in something other than black — she wore a white linen tunic and white flowing slacks, the outfit simple as ever but shocking on Asiya for its brightness, chosen to be in sync with her muse, her angel, her show, of course.

That night could have been the highlight of her life, too, it occurred to him too late.

In some ways it had all been overwhelming, the all-eyes-on-them as they walked in a bit late — Asiya had told him it was very important they be just a bit late — but once he had realized these were different looks than what he used to get, he fell in love with the attention. He was suddenly full of things to say and excited to shake hands and hug and even air-kiss and pose by his photos and even autograph one girl’s cocktail napkin.

If he had ever had a shot at smiling, that night was it.

And then finally there was that boy. The one with all the questions, mostly innocent ones.

“Who are you?” he asked, just like that.

“I’m fine,” Zal had said, mishearing who for how, several drinks into the evening. Since the night of Willa’s birthday those many months ago, he had developed a love-hate relationship with alcohol, locked, it seemed, in a cycle of regretting and indulging over and over.

The boy had chuckled. “Not too modest, huh?”

Zal had blinked, confused. The boy — freckled, thin, scrawny, in a cap, tank top, and jeans — was looking him up and down, in a way that was somehow different from all the other eyes on him.

“Is that you?” he said, pointing to one of Zal’s black Halloween wing portraits. “Are you the angel?” The boy was smiling, an oily smile; he knew the answer.

“I am the angel,” Zal said, and tried to make a joke to tag on: “But I’m no angel.”

The boy chuckled again, as if Zal were a masterful comic. “Oh yeah? You want to prove it?”

Zal didn’t say anything, just tried to follow those eyes that moved from his feet to his feathered boa.

The boy finally went for the least innocent question of all. “Do you want to go in there,” he asked, pointing to the restroom across the hall, “and kiss me?” Only one aspect of it had shocked Zal: the very idea that you could kiss someone other than the one you were supposed to kiss. The notion was absolutely revolutionary, and of course appealing — he had recently felt just a touch enslaved by Asiya and his boyfriendhood, and of course, at the same time, he had become such a kissing enthusiast that the idea of a new set of lips was stupefying. Before he could make a decision — after all, he knew giving in was the wrong thing to do, and, should Asiya find out, which he suspected she would, suspected in fact he might be the one to tell her, if not that night, well, one day, everything could very well be ruined — the boy had led him by the hand to the bathroom and gone in first. A few seconds later, through just a crack, he motioned Zal in with a big smile, and all that beautiful hell had broken loose.