Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

“I don’t know who else to tell. Willa suddenly won’t talk to me, and Zachary moved out. .”

“He did?” For a second, it made Zal contemplate going back there. If only to see Willa. He wondered if that was why she mentioned it, a trap of sorts.

“Yeah, he’s a mess. I think he’s doing something illegal. And Willa — I’m worried about Willa.”

“Why?” He heard a different type of urgency in his voice.

“I think she’s not well. I mean, I know she’s not well like us, but all bound up in that awful bed, I feel like she might need to break free, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“I’ve been having dreams, Zal.”

He felt the urge to hang up, but then he remembered she had just moments before thought he was going to do just that. He was not going to let anything she said come true, not as long as he could control it. “Is there any reason to really worry about her or not?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to say, really. I’m afraid for her life.”

“Aren’t you afraid for all of our lives? Isn’t that your point?”

“I have just been having some intense stuff. .”

“What do you mean by stuff ?” He knew exactly what she meant, still well-versed in Asiya lingo.

“You know. . the stuff. Not just the dreams, the nightmares. But the. . visions.” She said it very quietly, as if embarrassed, or, more likely, as if someone eavesdropping could pick it up.

“Asiya, are you not taking medication?”

“That’s the thing! I am! And still. .”

“Maybe it’s the wrong one.”

“I’ve tried them all. This one has been the best. But it’s not stopping the visions.”

“Now you’re going to tell me about it, aren’t you?”

“Zal, can I?”

“Asiya, I can’t do this.”

“I’m only asking for you to listen. I just need one more person to know is all!”

“What would that do?”

“Well, if it is truly something to worry about, then you could tell someone. The authorities or something.”

“Tell the authorities that the world is ending, Asiya?”

“No, nothing like that. That’s silly.”

“That’s silly?” Zal was amazed. She had been predicting the end of the world for almost as long as he’d known her. This had to be good.

“Zal.”

“Asiya?”

“Zal, in six months, half a year. .”

“It’s coming?”

“Well, yes. Something is.”

Zal groaned. “Wow, only half a year till the world ends.”

“Stop saying that,” she snapped. “I mean, for some people it will, yes. But not the world. Just us.”

“Us?!”

“I mean, New York.”

“New York?”

“Manhattan only, actually.”

“Asiya, what are you talking about?”

“I think something is going to happen here .”

“Any specifics?”

“I can’t talk about it on the phone. Do you think we could leave within six months?”

“We?” He didn’t bother to tell her, Actually, Asiya, the one fantasy that has kept me going these days is the one where I leave New York for good. She would interpret that as a sign and suddenly he’d find himself married to her.

“Zal, can you meet me? Anytime soon?”

“No, Asiya,” he said firmly, thinking of everything — where he’d been, where he was now, where he was going. She was, he realized, what they called a sinking ship. He couldn’t blame it all on her, but he knew she had played the biggest part in the best and worst year of his life. He had no choice but to move on.

“You don’t love me?”

“No, Asiya.”

“Really?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But what about that stuff? You want to live, no?”

“Asiya,” he sighed. “If you had seen me lately, you wouldn’t be sure of that. Let it come. Let it get Manhattan, whatever it is. You won’t see me stopping it.”

And, for very different reasons, they hung up at that exact same moment, each thinking they had done the final cutoff. If a curtain could ever drop with true definitiveness, that was a way, one good way.

When Hendricks gingerly entered the room again, he was surprised to see Zal giving a thumbs-up sign, as if he were a scout who’d just received another badge. They went on with their routine, their daylessness, their hourlessness, their vacuum of father and son, father and son and love, and pretended the call and its message had never even interrupted it.

It was the summer of 2001, a strange summer Zal would always remember; Hendricks, Rhodes, and Silber, of course, and even Asiya would remember. June and July felt endless with odd news: there was the Nepalese royal massacre on June 1, with Crown Prince Dipendra killing his father, the king, his mother, and other members of the royal family before shooting himself. Ten days later, in Terre Haute, Indiana, Timothy McVeigh finally was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing. The next week, Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her children in a bathtub and was sentenced to life in prison. A month later, the Tamil Tigers attacked Bandaranaike International Airport, in Sri Lanka, causing an estimated $500 million in damages. There were more shark attacks than usual in the United States. Chandra Levy, a Federal Bureau of Prisons intern, disappeared in D.C.

Asiya had decided to keep sleeping to a minimum. The visions tended to come to her in her sleep. And they were coming too fast. Sometimes she didn’t think she could take them and she wished they would just go away forever. But the minute they were gone, it felt as though she had hidden in the closet of a house in which a murderer was loose — any second he could fling open the closet door, but she’d never know when. She was the type of person who’d have to run out and announce herself and get it over with rather than hide and wait. If it was coming, it was coming — there was no point in being blind, or in denial, or in feigned invisibility, or in wishful thinking. So for the sake of maximizing time, conscious time, she just cut down on sleep, and on top of that, fearing that they might send her away again — and then who would know? Who could know? — she started talking about it less. Willa wouldn’t hear it anymore anyway, and Zachary was mostly gone.

That left Zal.

In July, in spite of Zal’s better judgment, in spite of Asiya trying her hardest to respect him and stay away, they had found each other in bed again, in each other’s arms and kisses and tears also. The first thing Zal had thought when he bumped into her on the street — just like they had met, nowhere really, but sans dead bird this time — was that this was it, this was not going to be a happy ending.

But the man in him gave in to her completely, went home with her, got in bed with her, and it was all over, all over again.

“Father, I’m moving back downtown, to my apartment,” he announced later that month.

Hendricks, blindsided, did not feel ready for this. He sensed trouble. “But, Zal—”

“But nothing, Father. I’m fine. Everything is fine. Better than ever. And thank you.”

They argued and he moved.

And time tried to turn back its clock to where Zal and Asiya had left off.

This was the love of the old movies, Zal told himself, that came back and back and back even when people didn’t want it too. He tried to see the best in it, tried to find ways to live with it. As for Asiya, he learned some things about her, small things. For instance, when she got that worried look in her eyes, all he had to do was run a finger over her face or, even more effective, place his lips over hers, and she’d remember to stop.