The Tiger Catcher Page 22

  Ashton: “I researched it for him, baby. Notting Hill—bars, nightlife, great food, music, shopping, a Saturday street market to die for. There is nothing wrong with the place, not one thing. Jules, surely we can find a Hermit Street for you in Notting Hill. You can’t be living on the only Hermit Street in London.”

  Julian: “Why do we need to find another one? I’m already on one.”

  Ashton: “Because I’m not living in Whoreditch or wherever it is you’ve been hiding.”

  Julian: “Highbury.”

  Ashton: “Same difference.”

  Julian knew he wasn’t worthy of Notting Hill with its princely terraces. To live there, he needed to be the kind of man who could lean against a posh black gate and sing “On the Street Where You Live.”

  “It goes without saying you’re not worthy,” Ashton said with his razzle-dazzle smile. “But I am.”

  After brunch, everyone but Ashton flew home. They all had to be back at work on Monday.

  Julian and Ashton spent the rest of the crisp and windy mid-March day together like it was the good old days in L.A. They walked around Hyde Park with about a million others who were grateful it wasn’t raining.

  They had dinner at Dishoom, the best Indian in Covent Garden. They waited an hour for a table, drank at the bar downstairs, ate late, and were fully in their cups by midnight.

  An exhausted Julian walked quietly by Mrs. Pallaver’s ajar parlor door on his way upstairs. She didn’t call out to him. Where you been, love. Frieda, look who’s home. It was just as well, though demoralizing.

  He was wiped out from the sun and wind, and from talking—Julian hadn’t talked so much since before Josephine died. He was showered and naked in bed—without Klonopin—unwell, dry-mouthed, and for the first time without her things to cling to. He couldn’t sleep. Tomorrow Quatrang. What would it bring?

  It was quiet in his third-floor walk-up facing the rear. His whole life here was like living in a dumbshow.

  Once in a while, back in L.A., Julian would stay with Josephine on Normandie. With no AC, they’d leave their windows open, and all night through the screens they’d hear music blaring, dogs yelping, cars on the freeway burning by. After hours of this, even wine didn’t help, and white noise became black noise, “Wrecking Ball” and “Dang” jangling against “Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” honking on Clinton, sirens on Melrose, bodega alarms, Kendrick Lamar flow-rhyming his life, dogs barking and barking, Julian humming “When We Were Kings,” wishing for ear plugs or drugs or a wife.

  If it wasn’t for her and her gentle face in their brief soliloquy, a face that didn’t belong across the street from a house fenced with razors, Julian would’ve never set foot in that hood.

  Yet now, when it was soundless every day and night in his monastic room with the fallen Christ, a room he rented from a sweet English lady out of central casting, all he wanted was what he would never have again. His nerves charged and his heart on fire.

  Then: grinding discomfort with being alive.

  Now: every silent minute longing to be electrocuted with life.

  29

  Zero Meridian

  ASHTON WANTED TO HAVE LUNCH BEFORE HIS FLIGHT ON Monday. What could Julian say—no? Can’t, Ash, I’m busy with a shaman? He said yes.

  He took off work, again—unconscionable really—and returned to Great Eastern Road first thing Monday morning, March 19. It was a brittle, gusty, terrible day.

  Inside Quatrang Julian was hit with a sharp smell of pungent incense, and other unfamiliar scents—chalky milk, fermented fruit, ashes.

  “Sit,” Devi said.

  “Am I eating?”

  “Too early.” Devi slid a goblet of murky water in front of Julian. “Drink.”

  Sit. Drink. Julian sat, drank. The dusty water looked unappetizing but tasted strong and sweet.

  On the counter between them, Devi laid out Josephine’s things. Julian watched warily. The crystal, the books, the playbill. Seeing the beret on display turned Julian’s stomach. There was no way to see it without seeing it on the street, rolled away to the curb where she would never need it again.

  “Tell me more about the light in the mountain,” Devi said. “What time was that?”

  “With her? Noon. Why?”

  Devi was mouthing something, touching the beret, the crystal. “What happened to the stone here? Looks chipped.”

  “It’s my fault,” Julian said. “I took it to a jeweler. I wanted to cut it in half and drill a hole in it so I could wear a small piece of it around my neck. But the crystal broke two of the guy’s diamond drill bits.” Julian kept the pieces of the chipped-off crystal in a glass jar by his bed.

  Devi nodded. “That’s the thing about crystal. Some crystals you can reface. And others you can’t. It all depends whether the crystal wants to be drilled into. Clearly this one does not.” He caressed the stone. “It has a very powerful chakra. Compressed energy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Her mother let you keep it?”

  “At first, she gave it to me gladly. Said it was cursed.”

  “Cursed why?”

  “It’s not obvious why?”

  “So why would you keep it if you thought it was cursed?”

  “My whole life is cursed.” Julian reached for the beret.

  Devi Prak, compact like a Derringer, disagreed. “You think you’re cursed?” He laid his hand on the hat. “Do you even know what that means? That someone has cast evil upon you. Like who?”

  “I don’t know, but—Devi, why do you keep touching her beret? What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing,” Devi said. “Her presence overwhelms it. It’s an ancient rite of many cultures to keep sacred the property of the dead because their spirit remains in the material things they’ve left behind. Their things become holy relics.”

  Julian took the beret from Devi’s hands.

  “I was wrong,” Devi said. “It happens so rarely that I freely admit when it does. From what you’ve told me about her and from her actions, I perceived her soul as new. But it’s not. Her soul is old. That’s unfortunate for her, but in some ways, it may be a blessing for you.”

  “Why unfortunate, why a blessing, what are you trying to do, summon the dead?”

  “I see you’ve read up on Hmong shamanism,” Devi said. “Just enough to be truly ignorant. No, she is far beyond that now. You need deeper magic than a séance.”

  “Like what?”

  “First tell me what you want, Julian.”

  Julian squeezed the beret in his hands as if he wanted to squeeze her life from it. What he wanted was to summon another sonnet for her out of the dust. He couldn’t put what he wanted into words.

  Watchfully, Devi took him in. After a few minutes he pulled up Julian’s shirt-sleeve and used an edge of a silver coin to scrape off a patch of skin on the inside of Julian’s left forearm.

  “Um—ouch?”

  “Hush,” Devi said sternly. When a few droplets of blood seeped from the skin, Devi applied a salve into the lesion.

  “You know,” Julian said without rancor, “if you didn’t peel me open, you wouldn’t need to apply the ointment.” He didn’t mind. Devi could do a lot to him. He felt a flow of unspoken compassion from the gruff cook that was intensely comforting.

  “If I didn’t peel you open, how would I release your toxins?”

  Devi and Riley were birds of a feather. “What’s the grease you’re putting inside me anyway?”

  “Tiger balm,” the man replied. “Stop fidgeting. You really do need another week or two, a month even, to rid your body of the poison you’ve been taking. Look at you.” It was true. Julian was unusually jittery, his fingers tapping on the counter, sliding back and forth, his shoe banging against the foot rest. He kept itching his elbow and the back of his neck. He was a ticking mess.

  “It’s not Klono, it’s you,” Julian said. “Just tell me what you want to tell me and be done with it.”

  “Turn your attention to the tremor
in your right hand,” Devi said. “Focus. Tense your fist, clench as tightly as you can, take a breath, take a drink, then relax. And repeat. While you do that, I’m going to make you food. But until tomorrow, I want you to eat nothing but warm white rice, boiled chicken, a little lemon grass and salt. Nothing else.”

  “What’s happening tomorrow?”

  “All in good time. No beer with your friends, no coffee, no donuts. No Indian food.”

  “Okay.” How did Devi know what he had to eat yesterday?

  “You don’t need to be Sherlock or a shaman to know you smell of chicken tikka, Julian,” Devi said. “Cumin is hard to hide.”

  Julian clenched his fist. As soon as he unclenched it, his right fingers quivered. Devi’s back was turned while he was at the grill. “You’re not focusing,” Devi said, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. “Clench, breathe, relax, repeat. And look around you. Because you’re only minimally observant, you think I have nothing but clocks on the walls, but do you even see my wallpaper altar? It’s in front of you. Take a moment to bow your head.”

  Julian looked up at the wall above Devi. There was a vague design. He thought it was blotched paint.

  Devi put the chicken and rice on a plate and poured Julian another glass of foggy water. “I feel the power of her red and formidable aura,” Devi said, backing away to the grill. “But I have to be honest with you, Julian, I also strongly feel the fading of her soul. I’ve pondered your dream and examined her spiritual situation. You are right, the dream is quite mysterious. Because you should not be able to see her, and likewise she should not be able to see you. Eat. Unfortunately her soul has remained in disharmony with itself to the very end. Disharmony causes suffering. And suffering makes us blind.”

  “I’m not blind,” Julian muttered, defensively rubbing his left eye. “I see her.”

  “Hence the mystery. Suffering separates us from love. During our life, it separates our souls from our bodies since the two are intimately connected. And after we die, it separates our souls from divine love. This girl brought great harm to herself and those who loved her. She spread anguish into every life she touched.”

  Julian lowered his head in pained assent.

  “Eat,” Devi said. “A temple cannot be healthy when its sustaining force is ailing.”

  Julian was sick in both body and soul. “Are you sure her soul is old? New would be so much better.”

  “Better for who?” Devi turned his back. “Some souls are brand new,” he said quietly. “Because the world is constantly being reborn even as we perceive it as old.”

  “How do you know so much about her?”

  When Devi spun around, impatience burned in his dark eyes. “Save your questions for the big things,” he said. “I know because of the intensity and desperation of her suffering that’s present in her life’s blood—and because when I reach for her in the spiritual realm, I cannot find her.”

  How could Julian eat when he was being told such things.

  “Here’s what I know,” Devi said. “Each of us has been given a soul, and we get several tries on this earth to bring that soul closer to the divine fate that was bestowed on us at birth. That’s the mystery and majesty of the grace that’s being offered us. Despite the pain we cause others, we are given a second chance, and a third, and a fourth. The struggle for our soul’s perfection is our main purpose in life—or should be. To bring it as close as we can to its ineffable glory, so that eventually,” Devi said, “we might have life and give life, and live well, and maybe, if we’re lucky, become citizens of paradise. When our souls are new, many of us don’t know how to do this. Like infants don’t know how to smile. But most of us learn.” Devi turned his head as if he didn’t want Julian to see inside him before the next obvious question. Did Josephine learn?

  “How many chances do we get?” Julian asked.

  “Some of us only need one.” Devi raised his eyes and regarded Julian, saying nothing. “And some unfortunately need more than seven.” He lowered his gaze again. “We never get less than one. And we never get more than seven.”

  Julian couldn’t bear to ask about Josephine. He held his breath.

  Devi told him anyway. “When you met her,” Devi said, “she was on the very last of her journeys. That was it for her.”

  For a few minutes, Julian wobbled miserably on the stool. “Devi . . .” he whispered, “please say you have the power to bring her back.”

  “I told you, I have no such power,” Devi said grimly. “No one has.”

  “But you told me there might be a way I could see her again,” Julian said. “Was that a lie?”

  “I do not lie.”

  “So what did you mean then?”

  Devi didn’t reply.

  Julian couldn’t take a breath.

  Devi pushed the plate forward, pushed the drink forward. “You need strength. Here.”

  Each grain of rice getting stuck in his throat, Julian ate and drank.

  “Do you want to change your life, Julian?”

  “Desperately.”

  “You will never change it unless you change what you do every day.”

  “What would you like me to do, get a hobby?” Julian said. “Perhaps eat more greens?”

  “Change what you do right now, and you will change your future. The consequences of every act are contained within the act itself.”

  Julian had no future. He didn’t want to say this to the diminutive shaman.

  Devi watched him for a few moments, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “And conversely, do things exactly the same, and guess what will happen? Let me tell you about yourself, Julian. Did you know that in the English language, there’s no such thing as future tense?”

  “Of course there is.”

  “You love to argue, don’t you. No, there isn’t. Our verbs describe the things we do and the things we have done. They describe our actions. There is present tense and past tense. That’s it.”

  “I came here Friday, I am here today, I will come here tomorrow,” Julian said.

  “You have no idea if you will come here tomorrow,” Devi said. “You might. Then again, you might not. All future tense is either necessity or possibility. We must do it, or we could do it. All action in the future is either implied or wished upon. What’s another word for action? Movement. And without movement, there can be no change.”

  Who was Julian to argue. He had been living as a catatonic.

  “The future is the one part of our existence that stands outside time,” Devi said. “Because without something that time can measure—like action or movement—time has no meaning. Julian Cruz, you of all people know this. Eternal London has swallowed you. Your inert grief has swallowed you. You’ve lost years of your life to the shapeless void. Two years have passed, but if someone told you it was ten years, you’d hardly be surprised. And soon, it will be ten years. And then twenty. It will be the rest of your life—unless you act. Unless you act now.”

  “Act and do what?”

  Devi waited, his black eyes absorbing Julian’s downward yet anxious demeanor. “Do you know what a meridian is?”

  “What does it have to do with what we’re talking about?”

  “Do you always answer a question with a question?”

  “It’s a line of longitude,” Julian replied. “It crosses a line of latitude. It’s a way to measure distance.”

  “It crosses many things,” Devi said, “and yes, one of the things it measures is distance. As in how far something—or someone—is from you.”

  “Someone?”

  “Yes. What else does a meridian measure?”

  “Well, time, I suppose.”

  “Be more certain, Julian, be precise in your speech. Does it or does it not measure time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. Because time and distance are inseparable.”

  “Okay?” It came out as a question.

  “In our universe there is a galaxy,”
Devi said, “and in the galaxy many stars, and one of those stars is our sun, and our sun has planets orbiting it, and one of the planets is earth, and on the earth there are oceans and continents and islands, and one of the islands is England, and in England there is a river called the Thames, and on the southern banks of the Thames there is a town called Greenwich, and in Greenwich there is a hill, and on this hill may lie the answer to the question you’re asking.”

  “What question?” He had so many. Or did he only have one?

  “Many years ago, the King’s best men built an astronomy pavilion in Greenwich to help British sailors navigate the seas, to discover the most accurate and reliable method of determining where they were going.”

  “Okay. What does it have to do with me?”

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  Julian shut up. Devi went on. “George Airy, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, built his famous telescope, and with it for many years he studied the path of the stars and the planets. He called the invisible line that his telescope pointed at the meridian, a word that means midday. And what’s another word for midday?”

  Julian tilted his head. “Um—noon?”

  “Why do you sound so hesitant? Yes. Noon.” Devi emphasized noon, as if he was teaching Julian a new word. “Airy observed the sun as it crossed the meridian at noon. Eventually, the line became known throughout the world as the Prime Meridian or zero meridian.”

  “I get it, Greenwich Mean Time is based on it, but . . .”

  “Another word for the meridian is transit line. That’s why Airy’s telescope is called the Transit Circle.”

  “Okay.”

  “And what does transit mean? No, don’t bother,” Devi said. “It means passage. It means journey.”

  “Okay.”

  “The Prime Meridian is a channel that separates how far everything is from everything else. It’s the grid, and all our miles and minutes are to the left of it or to the right of it. It measures how far Karmadon is from me,” Devi said cryptically. “And how far Josephine is from you.”

  “Who is Karmadon?”