Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

For things to be — if you could call it this — back to normal.

But he always came back to the same nagging thought: what was he waiting for? What was it? What on earth was normal ? He knew he was further away from it than he had been, or perhaps thought he’d been, all along. But the times did not feel normal, even without Asiya there to highlight it all, to announce the undercurrents of bad in the air, to footnote the feeling of uneasiness he felt not just in his heart, but in the entire city’s.

It was at this point that he caught himself thinking, like Asiya, that he knew it had gone too far. That it was time to turn himself in.

So on September 4, he packed up more than just a week’s stuff. He took almost everything, in fact, and showed up at the doorstep of the only thing he still had in this world — not a small thing, either, but the man who had saved him from some other abnormal once upon a time and who had promised a life that would get as close to normal as possible, and had delivered, until Zal had wrecked it back to anything but. He went to his father.

Hendricks had been more than worried, but since he himself had been counseled by Rhodes again lately, he had realized that it was essential that he let Zal live his life. He would make mistakes, but everyone did — it was not just part of growing up, but of being human. So in spite of the bad feeling he got every time Zal grew more and more distant, left calls unanswered and e-mails hanging, he decided to honor his son’s autonomy. He considered that it might just be hard for him. That perhaps Zal was out having the time of his life, his days so filled to the brim with happiness that there was no room to remember his father. After all, even if Asiya had been a badly bruised girlfriend, his son had managed to find one. And jobs. And he’d maintained his own apartment. He had gone to Vegas and back by himself, gone out, met celebrities, done things maybe that Hendricks couldn’t imagine. He had to be first and foremost proud of Zal’s independence, and he had to assume that the freedom equaled happiness.

Hendricks struggled, of course, to take it all in properly when Zal appeared without warning that evening, with several bags, looking as though he hadn’t had rest in weeks.

“My boy!” he exclaimed, and immediately Zal dove into his arms. It was less an embrace than a need to be hidden inside someone else’s flesh, shielded from this wretched place they all had to inhabit.

When they went inside, Hendricks made Zal some tea and toast, and there they were again. Stories to tell, truths to divulge, much that had been concealed to reveal. Just as Zal had explained Asiya’s theories on the forthcoming end to Silber, there he was explaining all that and its parallel real-life narrative to his father. It was exhausting, all this storytelling, all these men to unload his life upon, his larger-than-life life, on to all these nodding and hmmm ing patriarchs, whom he adored and worshipped and truly loved. The only thing he had left.

Hendricks mostly said nothing. He shook his head at points, he sighed at points, he rubbed his eyes at other points, and once — at the news of Willa’s suicide, even though he never knew of her — he put his hand over his mouth. When Zal was done, he just gathered his son in his arms and rocked him back and forth.

“My, what you’ve been through,” he finally said. “What a life you’ve lived in just this year and a half. What an entry into adulthood, what a coming of age. I’m so sorry, Zal.”

Zal shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s like for other people,” he said, a sentence he used to utter when Hendricks would express some sort of pity over the limitations of his condition, back when his entire existence was a conglomeration of his limits.

Hendricks nodded. “It’s not like that, not quite like that. It doesn’t have to be so hard, Zal. You got involved with the wrong person.”

Zal shrugged again. “I felt love with her. I miss her, and that. That feeling.”

Hendricks shook his head. “No, that needs to stop, Zal. You need to let go of that. I demand that.”

Zal was shocked to hear Hendricks demanding anything, and in that tone. “I’m an adult — we just said that. And you never got to know Asiya. There are things I could tell you that might make you think twice. The world just might not be what it seems, you know!”

“I don’t want to hear it. I’m stepping in, Zal. You’ve come here, and I’m giving you the help you need. You are never to see that woman again.”

Zal squinted his eyes, as if suspecting that it was his sight that was failing, not his hearing. “You can’t tell me that. I can’t promise you things like that. And I didn’t come here to be given demands.”

“I’m stepping in, Zal,” Hendricks kept saying, red in the face now. “There is no way. I will not allow it. I won’t let you kill yourself. You mean the world to me. I simply love you too much. I will not allow you to see that woman anymore. If I have to keep rescuing you from insane women my whole life, I will.”

And they argued back and forth and Zal made decent points and Hendricks repeated the same I will not allow you over and over, even as Zal tried different angles. Zal cried and Hendricks shouted and Hendricks cried and Zal became silent and Hendricks became silent as well.

And finally Zal realized it was no use anyway — he didn’t need Hendricks to approve. He had become a man, a human man. Men could do anything they wished if they weren’t afraid of the consequences.

And so the next day he took a cab to the Bryant Hill Correctional Facility for Women. It was a huge white sprawling building not unlike some college campuses he’d seen.

He was, luckily, there within visiting hours. He went through a large metal detector with a few other visitors, and a gum-smacking officer who smelled strongly of tobacco received him on the other side. He demanded Zal’s ID and presented him with papers to sign and a stern list of rules. Only a few stood out to Zal: An inmate has a right to refuse a visit. It seemed unlikely to Zal that Asiya would deny him, or so he hoped. A visitor and inmate may embrace and kiss at the beginning and end of any contact visit — brief kisses and embraces are also permitted during the course of the contact visit — however, prolonged kissing and what is commonly considered “necking” or “petting” is not permitted . It depressed Zal, though he doubted he had it in him. This made him saddest of all: A visitor and an inmate may hold hands as long as the hands are in plain view of others. All he wanted was to not just hold Asiya’s hand, but to hold her out of the view of the overbearing, hypervigilant world, if only for a minute.

The officer told him he’d be taken to a visiting room when she was “located.”

“But I want to see her room.”

“Her room?”

“Her. . lodging?” Zal didn’t know the word.

“Her cell,” the officer corrected. “You ever seen movies with jail in them?”

Zal thought about it and realized he hadn’t, actually. He shook his head, which the officer just ignored.

“It’s like that. Cell blocks, cells. Nothing to see.”

But when he turned to open the door and get another officer to then, presumably, get Asiya, Zal saw down the hall.

He was horrified at what he saw.

Row after row of cages.

His heart began to race and his body began to tremble. He glanced back at the entrance, which was also an exit. He realized he couldn’t do this; he felt paralyzed by his allegiance to both her and his oldest fears.

When the officer came back, he had on a small smile — a pitying smile more than anything. “She’s not taking visitors.”