Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

“No more flying stuff?”

“The opposite, angel!”

Zal was amazed at how much anger he felt over this. He wanted to shout, but instead he just spit out what he hoped would hurt him: “It wasn’t real anyway.”

Silber did not sound even mildly hurt, throwing a stray chuckle at that. “What is this?! You want to have a philosophic debate on the nature of reality, or do you want to talk illusion and showtime? My time is more money than money, honey. .”

“I can’t help you,” Zal grumbled.

“Set me free, why don’t you, babe. Get out of my life, why don’t you, babe!” Silber sang obnoxiously, a song Zal did not recognize. “Terrif! Have a nice life — kiss the pets for me then!”

Zal dropped his head into his hands. “Yeah. Okay. One last question, may I?”

“Shoot, shitcake.”

Shitcake, Zal thought. It had come to that . Knowing he’d never have to speak to Silber again gave him even more courage. “So what’s the opposite?”

“The opposite? Oh, the new illusion?”

“I guess so.”

He cackled like a cartoon witch. “Dine with me and find out!”

Amazing, thought Zal, amazing, the man’s shamelessness. He stood his ground. “I won’t do it. What do you want from me anyway?”

“You want to know what I want? I want to pick your brain! Give me the fucking electric chair now! Crime of crimes!”

Zal snorted, like Asiya used to, the most perfect expression of human disdain, he thought. “The thing is, Bran, I’ve grown up a lot since you’ve last seen me. It’s not my story that defines me anymore.”

Silber punched his empty dartboard, which hurt more than he thought it would. “Swell!” he shouted, sucking his knuckles. “Okay, see you never, baby!”

“I mean, what is this new illusion, that you’d need my help for it? All about birds and cages? People raised by wolves? Snakes? Rats?”

“Ew, no,” Silber said. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with you, if you want to know the truth. Nothing! I wasn’t trying to use you or your precious story, kid. Look, I really got to go. .”

Zal let him go. He was part stunned, part gutted, part infuriated. Nothing whatsoever to do with you . Why would Silber want his help, his brain to pick, on something that had nothing to do with his story? Zal felt as though he’d made a mistake and insulted someone possibly not deserving of it at all. What if Silber simply wanted to know what he thought, man to man — normal man to normal man?

But why now, so long after they’d met? Why out of nowhere? Why was Zal connected to him anyway? Zal had sought him out, but, as was confirmed in that phone conversation, he had no future with Silber; he would never be able to be that right-hand man. Plus, Silber had moved on. He was not the guru of flight Zal had taken him for — flight had been a phase for Silber, apparently. And Zal was one of Silber’s phases, too, and didn’t feel the need to stick around for the guy’s roller-coaster ride, just a bag of tricks — yes, tricks —that added and subtracted nothing to the world but a moment, just a moment when things looked different than they truly were. Zal was — he had to be — done with Silber.

He swept the floor of the pet store and locked up, his most recent rank-risen duty for good work. For a while he just stood there on the sidewalk, in the dark, the big New York City bright darkness, and thought about what it meant to have no one, no one at all.

Meanwhile Silber, shaking off the shock of that bird boy getting so crazy with him, summoned Anastasia again.

“In my Rolo, there’s a bearded lady under b — or maybe under l: lady, bearded, whatevs — I forget her name. See if she’ll do dinner a week from Tuesday. Tell her Bran Silber loves her work and wants to connecticate! Then I think under lenny — or maybe lenny cruz? — there’s the Coney Island midget dude — maybe under coney — call him, too, and schedule something a week from then. . Then just go through the whole thing and see what there is. I want the wildest folks we got to have dinner with me, okay? And there is no no with me, Stas, got it?!”

In her head, Anastasia thought smugly, The wild women weren’t enough?

To her horror, he shot back as she walked out, “Keep it up and you might be next!”

He was done, truly done with everyone, every last man in his life: his father, Rhodes, and now Silber. Silber was, sure, barely physically in his life, but he had never left Zal’s thoughts. He was on a roll of shooting down every man that had meant something to him at some point. He had nothing, suddenly, but a woman who was locked up a hundred miles away, whom he wasn’t even sure he could handle.

He had received an e-mail from Willa letting him know Asiya would be back for the holidays, but she’d be with her mother first and then her father — her abandoners suddenly recognizing her on the brink of total disintegration, as good abandoners often redeem themselves — and then just in town for New Year’s.

Zal realized it was their one-year anniversary, her homecoming. How the hell had it been a year? He tried to see the poetry in that, some bit of beauty, and yet could not get over the big side of him that dreaded the whole thing, the very idea of her, especially now.

What would she be like? A medicated robot with no worries, but no feelings, either? A presto-chango overfed Willa-esque entity, but without the lovely, indescribable Willa-ness to pull it off? Or, worst of all, maybe herself, just herself, the self she promised she’d return to once she was back with him? That was, by far, the thing that scared him the most.

She had hit the bottom of the well, he had thought, which was, for the most part, considering everything, a relieving thought. But the possibility that her breakdown and hospitalization were not the bottom, or that the well was bottomless, made him feel like he couldn’t go on. Couldn’t go on with her, at least.

So he decided to immerse himself more fully in that soothing, dumbing thing: work. He paid attention to the store more than ever, compulsively asked patrons if they needed help — until one old lady complained, swearing she’d been asked at least a half-dozen times in the half hour she was there — swept, cleaned, folded, washed, and tended to every animal or human that he was supposed to tend to. He became a superworker of sorts and found a surprising amount of pleasure in that. It was simple, he was good, the contract was clear, the end.

There was one creature he took a special interest in, more and more so as Asiya’s return began to nag at his very soul. She was a tiny blonde, tiny but still voluptuous, round in all the right places. She was particularly feisty, quick, hot-tempered, and sassy. He was around her all day — she never left his sight. She’d sing once in a while, and it was the sweetest singing he thought he’d ever heard.

She was, he hated — downright detested, resented, abhorred — to admit, a bird. A canary, to be exact.

He. Could. Not. Help. Himself. Zal saw those words on his tombstone. And he knew it was certainly time to quit his job when he started to develop feelings for, of all things, a canary.

Luckily, he didn’t have to quit. He was fired, just ten days after he confronted his infatuation. He was given a warning for taking the bird out of the cage for no one but himself, then for unsuccessfully sneaking her in his pocket during his lunch break, then for attempting to take her with him to the bathroom. Zal, I don’t know what’s going on here, the manager had said, but I need your hands off the goddamn bird. If you want to buy it, it’s one thing. . He had considered it, of course, but he knew, like a former junkie before a free bag of heroin, that if he went there, it really would be the beginning of the end— Goodbye normalcy, goodbye new life, hello yesterday and all its infinite sicknesses. He said it would never happen again.