Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

“What are we doing with our lives?”

“Indy, stop it.”

“Just look at this place.”

“Indy, you don’t have to be here. But it’s an honor for me, so snap.”

She sighed, loudly, almost a groan. “This thing sucks.”

“What thing?”

“The Towers thing.”

“The Fall of the Towers.”

“Whatever.”

“I think it’s going to be beyond .”

Indigo tried to nod. “He got some girl arrested and everything. Thanks to me.”

“Oh, come on! He had to. She was a maniac! Oliver says it was a terrorist letter! Did you want all those innocent people getting McVeighed all over the place? Shit!”

“The letter was. . confusing, but I don’t know if it was like that.”

“I wonder what that freak is like.”

“What freak?”

“The girl who wrote it.”

Indigo shrugged. “Who knows. This city is filled with crazy people. He attracts them all!”

“Silber? Yeah.”

“Remember Bird Boy?”

“How could I forget?”

And amazingly, just hours after he’d come up, “Bird Boy” appeared on Silber’s AIM screen, with the words Bran Silber, please help me.

She had opened her mouth to call him, but then stopped herself. Did this warrant an interruption? Did this warrant a gist-ing? What would Bran, knee-deep in illusion, want her to do?

Whattup, buttercup, she typed. Got to be quick, because I gotta be like jam on toast with this illusion, know?

Zal, meanwhile, was amazed. Silber sounded friendlier than he had in ages. No cold shoulder, no hint of feud, no memory of a diss, it seemed.

And Zal, who had gone a full day with Willa’s directions in mind, home and just home alone, frozen, no idea what to do, had turned to the only other authority he had ever come close to, other than Hendricks, whom he just couldn’t risk bringing into this: Asiya the criminal on top of Asiya the crazy and Asiya the anorexic — no way. A man of magic seemed like just the person he’d need. And there was always the chance he knew about this, given his proximity to the building. He wanted to at least complete the connection.

So Zal told Silber everything.

And the answer to her question earlier that day magically unraveled itself for Indigo. The girl was linked to Bird Boy. The freak to the freak. Holy crap, she thought, that was Bird Boy’s girlfriend.

Just then, Silber shouted from the opposite end of the Silbertorium, “Indy, I need you to run to Brent’s for more WZ0s, please! Call Brent first for twenty yards at least, at sixty, like he promised!”

But Indigo didn’t hear.

Insane, kiddy-kad, insane, she was typing back to Zal.

Zal — impatient with all the Silberisms and yet weirdly comforted by them, so alone he felt in his dark apartment with nothing but the buzz of a half-broken cheap air conditioner to console him — wrote back, You don’t even know the half of what my life’s been like this year. This is just the logical outcome of it all, you could say.

Uh-huh. Hey, Zalz, can you hold on a sec? Indigo needed to answer Silber as much as she needed a second for her thoughts.

“Indy, what are you, deaf, pet? I need action, girl!” Silber had been humming the theme song to Flashdance all day long, singing only the words Take your passion, and make it happen! He did it in a foreboding way as he goose-stepped his way over to her.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” she stammered as he walked up to her.

“This is no time for online dating or porn or whatevs,” he snapped. “But you have more color to your face. Done mourning Queen Latifah yet?”

She shook her head slowly, looking from laptop to Silber, Silber to laptop, gulping hard. News like this could set them back a whole day, knowing Silber’s state recently. And yet he seemed better, too. On the other hand, so much of this had started when she told him about the letter in the first place. But she’d have lost her job if she hadn’t. And yet, was that such a bad thing?

Angels and devils danced on Indigo Menendez’s shoulders.

Silber, weirded out by her indecision, grabbed the computer from her hand and, still humming the Flashdance song, read and read and read.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Indigo said. “I didn’t want to bother you. I’m really sorry—”

A slow smile spread across his face. “Not to worry. This is actually kinda great news.”

Indigo raised her eyebrows, but Silber’s eyes were still glued to the screen.

“Zal and that Asiya girl are linked: amazing,” he said. “What could be better?”

Indigo blinked blankly.

Zal wrote, Are you still there? Please, I feel desperate.

Silber told Indigo to go on the errand or make Lionel do it, but she could be excused, and he focused on the screen. Finally he wrote the words: I’m sorry for what has happened to you and your girlfriend. He realized it sounded not Silberish enough after Indigo’s perfect Silberisms. Anyway, ding-dong! (Ding-dong? Even he was surprised.) I know more about this than you think. She contacted us. We called it in. Not me so much — it’s a long story. But one I will tell you, don’t burn your lil’ bird heart out! I’ll tell you and I’ll help you. . but I want something too.

Zal was in shock. Could she have? Would she have? He didn’t know if he was writing friend or enemy, if she was even friend or enemy. He was so full of questions, he didn’t know where to start. Shoot, he typed.

There was a pause.

Zal tried to clarify: Anything.

Silber’s smile turned wider and wilder as he wrote, I’m really intrigued by what she saw in all this. Can we begin there? I mean, she threatened us, which is crazy and all, but why us? What did she know about this? What did she think about this? I guess I’m asking you — and don’t get me wrong, I know the answer, on my part, that is — what she thought it all meant, you get me?

Zal nodded to no one but a dark room and tried to remember, tried to conjure every illogical word, every insane instant. And slowly, but surely, he began to type.

But something was going to happen first, before it all came down. Zal had for days stayed inside his apartment, pacing its perimeter, contemplating his computer and cell phone at times, and usually finding solace only in naps that never quite got him to dream state. They were thick, unsatisfying, fever-like spells of sleep. He’d wake up in sheer alarm, convinced that everything was on its head again. He started to feel consumed by fear, fear not unlike what Asiya had felt those last weeks: death panics, expiration fixations, existential terrors. His own apartment started to feel foreign to him, hostile even, and he felt desperate for company.

He felt, he imagined, the way many must have felt the night before the clock struck 2000, the year many thought they’d never live to see. And yet, back then he had been calm. Not only had he been full of life, but he had suddenly found love. The love he had lost. He had become a man, and now what was he? Not man, not bird, not. .

Anything?

He just didn’t know. He was dying to call Rhodes, his father, anyone, but he couldn’t. Once in a while he’d e-mail Silber, and Silber, so overwhelmed with the labor of his upcoming miracle, could barely attend to him, even when guilt steered him to.

Zal was destroyed by how absolutely alone he felt.

So, still resisting the chaos that connection with his father could cause this time around, he went to that other family, never ones he could call close to his own, but they were people he knew and trusted. What was there about even Zachary not to trust? His anger was justified. Zal knew that then, and he knew it now. And especially now. It was strangely Zachary, of all people, who was on his mind when he walked over to the McDonald residence one early September twilight evening.