A Beggar's Kingdom Read online

  “What is wrong with you!” was how their arguments usually ended, with Julian yelling this open question into Ashton’s closed face. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  And then one night, Ashton told him. “You want to know what’s wrong with me? I’ve been duped. And I don’t like being played for a fool.”

  “Who duped you, me?”

  “Yes, you. I always knew you wore a costume to reinvent yourself, hell, I helped you pick it out. I helped you put it on. Mr. Know-it-All, Mr. Substitute Teacher, botanist on the side, night class professor, Silent Partner. But now I see my own delusions, and who likes to come face to face with those? Now I know—I only saw what I wanted to see, not what was really there. I thought that under the disguise of a hapless nerd, you were the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, or, at the very worst, Deadpool. If only!” Ashton stood stone cold, his arms flung down. “But I’ve finally come to realize what you really are. You’re fucking Johnny Blaze. You are Ghost Rider. You’ve been deceived by the devil during your agony of grief. Oh, sure, you’ve been given inhuman endurance and the ability to travel between dimensions, and maybe even some power of regeneration, but in return, you’ve traded away your only life. And fuck knows what else. I can tell by your face there’s a lot you know that you’re not telling me. You’re doing the devil’s bidding, Julian, because you’ve allowed your soul to merge with a demonic force. And for that, what did you get? Fucking nothing. But you’ve doomed yourself to ride the night—a ghost in both worlds, this world and the other, over and over, ever and ever, forever.” Taking a breath, Ashton ran his hand through his hair. He looked so sick, so fed up, so busted. “Since I met you, you’ve been my ride or die. But I don’t want to be on your fucking flaming motorcycle anymore. I want out.”

  Julian gasped at the hurt of it, at the stinging truth of it. “You want out? Who’s keeping you? You don’t know where the door is? You don’t know where Heathrow is?”

  “And what are you going to do if I split?”

  “You think this is helping me?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Fuck you! What, you want to drive me away, too? Then keep going, Ashton, you’re doing great.”

  Ashton flung his glass to the floor and stepped toward Julian. For a black moment, they clenched their fists, they nearly came to blows.

  Words of anger and even hate can set things in motion in the human soul that cannot be undone. Julian knew this, had bitterly learned this. He unclenched his fists, took a deep breath, lowered his head, and backed off. Literally, backed out of the kitchen, raising his hands to placate, to surrender. After that night, he stopped asking Ashton what was wrong with him.

  They didn’t speak for days, then in monosyllables for weeks, and after that, talked only about the most impersonal shit. Will you pick up some beer. Did you pay the rent. That was their truce. They talked, but about nothing. Ashton went out without Julian, didn’t invite him to come along, and Julian wouldn’t have gone even if asked. In the mornings, Julian left before Ashton woke up, to go to the gym before work. At work, they remained professional, though without their usual banter, and after work, one man went one way and one another. By the time Ashton came home, Julian was in his room. On the weekends, Julian was at the gym or with Devi.

  Except one Sunday night when Ashton was still on the couch with the TV on when Julian returned late from Quatrang.

  “What are you doing?” Julian said. The TV was on so quiet, Ashton couldn’t have possibly heard it.

  “Nothing, what are you doing?” Ashton didn’t turn his head.

  Julian perched on the arm of the couch and stared at the screen for a few seconds and at Ashton’s glazed face.

  “Well, I’m going to bed,” Julian said.

  “Do you know anything, you fucking idiot,” Ashton said. “I don’t want to leave. What I want”—he covered his face—“is for you to stop leaving.”

  Julian sank into the couch. “Ash…what are you talking about? I’m right here.” They lay across from each other, old and wiped out.

  “I don’t see you right here. I see the Penance Stare you keep trying to shame me with. Don’t you know I’m like the Punisher? I’m immune to your stare because I have no regrets.” Ashton inhaled. “I don’t see you right here. I see your broken body that you’ve super-glued together and are now putting through the meat grinder again. I don’t see you doing anything that looks remotely like life. I see you training to go back into your gloomy portal—another skeleton ride of damnation and suffering. My God. Can’t you see what’s happening to you—you’re losing the momentum of your entire material being.”

  “Are you talking about me or you?” Julian got defensive again, raised his voice. Why did Ashton keep provoking him like this? “I’m not losing my fucking momentum. I have one life. This is it. There’s only one river that runs through the present and the past, and I’m on it, paddling. I’m trying to find her, I’m still trying to save her.”

  “That’s right,” Ashton said. “There is nothing else, certainly not here with me. But it’s not there with her either. Because there is no there there.”

  There is a there there, Julian thought defiantly, turning his head away. But Ashton wasn’t totally wrong. There was no there here.

  ∞

  A prime minister survived a vote of no confidence, and then was ousted by the electorate. A president was re-elected, and then lost his majority because half the policies he was proposing were hated by half the electorate. Gas prices went up. Then they went down. A film won an Oscar for best picture that many thought should not have won. Someone got nominated who shouldn’t have, and someone didn’t get nominated who should have. Interest rates went down, savings rates went down, mortgage rates went down, the price of butter went up, beer up, cigarettes up, taxes up, cars became lighter, more efficient, and more dangerous, then heavier, less efficient and less dangerous. It was cold, then hot, then windy, then not. In L.A. it was seventy-three. Except that one time when it rained, and that other time when the wildfires came. In London it rained and was 45ºF in the winter and rained and was 54ºF in the summer, same numbers, transposed. Someone shot up a burger joint, someone got real offended. There was desecration of tombstones, or perhaps just vandalism. Insurance rates went up, healthcare services went downhill. A business closed, another took its place. There were protests on college campuses. There was too much free speech, and not enough, too many hammer and sickle flags and not enough, too many babies and not enough, too many babies of the wrong color and not enough. There was too much diversity, too much rage—and not enough. There were too many guns, too many murders, too many arrests, too many people in prisons, too much crime, too much pollution, too much abortion by all the wrong people. Your favorite show got cancelled, your favorite singer hadn’t released an album in years, or released one just a month ago and it was underwhelming, or it was his best work yet. The computer in your hand got smaller, lighter, thinner, blacker, waterproof. It was a black box. Your life should’ve been made of what the computer in your hands was made of. What profit had a man of all his labor which he took under the sun? That which was crooked could not be made straight. That which was wanting could not be numbered. Your closest friend still made all the wrong choices, but now he made them drunk, and the girl you loved still died, and nothing you did made any difference, all that maddening outrage at your own irrelevance, and nothing ever changed and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

  “My advice,” Devi said to Julian when he heard his bitter lament, “when you fall into despair like this, is to remember she doesn’t have that luxury. In abandoning yourself, you abandon her. And not just her—but the one you call your friend. How has he been? Have you asked how he has been, have you even thought to care? Your despair turns a cold Judas back on you all.”

  ∞

  Julian tried to get more involved, tried to care. It wasn’t easy. The quantity of his available effort for others was a pound less than what any huma
n being required, even one as low maintenance as Ashton.

  “Have you heard from Riley?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Riley.”

  “Okay. Have you heard from Z?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Z.”

  “With me or with anyone?”

  “You specifically.”

  “Right now or ever?”

  “Ever.”

  But a few days later, Ashton threw at Julian a print-out of the email Zakiyyah had written him.

  It was brutal.

  Mr. Razzle-Dazzle,

  Stop calling me. Stop texting me. Leave me alone. Here’s your solo, and hers, and mine. I’m sure it still won’t be enough.

  For you, nothing is ever enough.

  Your hunger for love is so great and the hole so unfilled that everything gets swallowed up inside it.

  And yet on the edges of that black hole, you dance, drink, laugh, as if that’s everything. In order to appear capable of love, you seduce us all with your great boundless self. You act the part. You charm, sweep off feet, romance, make come, make weep. Oh—anything for applause. But when the real thing is before you, you flee, because intimacy, real intimacy, terrifies you. Yes, yes, I know—you love it when I watch you from the front row. As long as I don’t get up on stage with you.

  So sorry. You should’ve told me the razzle-dazzle was only there to hide your emptiness. You shouldn’t have left me to figure it out for myself.

  But finally I’m on my way. I’m off the stage, Ashton. I’ve given up on us. I’ve given up on you. You were my biggest mistake.

  Don’t worry—I’m sure you’ll have no trouble filling your Theatre of Longing with other hearts to break.

  Zakiyyah

  Julian folded and refolded the piece of paper, and tried to give it back to Ashton, who wouldn’t take it. “She’s being deliberately awful, she doesn’t mean it. She’s just mad, Ash. It’ll pass.”

  “Yes, she does, and no, it won’t,” Ashton said. Julian had never heard his friend sound so despairing.

  Julian’s was not the only inconsolable heart playing to an empty house.

  39

  A Mother

  JUST WHEN JULIAN THOUGHT THINGS COULDN’T GET WORSE, one Saturday morning in July, when he and Ashton were still in their rooms, nursing substantial hangovers, their elderly neighbor banged on the door. “Someone’s downstairs ringing your broken bell and swearing,” she said. “I’m going to start swearing myself. Either fix your bloody bell or tell her to pipe down before I call the police.”

  It was Ashton’s turn to traipse downstairs. He came back carrying a black suitcase. Behind him walked a huffing, stern, gray-haired Ava McKenzie. Julian used all his will to suppress a stunned groan.

  “How long did you intend to leave me standing there?” Ava said to Julian by way of hello. “Is that any way to treat your almost mother-in-law?” She was dressed like a cross-country traveler, in khaki everything, including a khaki hat. Her hair had gone completely white. She had lost a tremendous amount of weight, was almost unrecognizable, but otherwise looked remarkably spry.

  Her mouth was especially spry.

  Both grown men, barely dressed and dumbfounded, stared at her. It was Ashton who spoke first. “Did she send you here?”

  “I don’t know who you mean,” Ava said like she knew exactly.

  “Tell her we don’t need anything. We’re fine.”

  While Ashton was speaking, Julian ducked away and hid the rawhide necklace with the crystal deep in the bowels of his room. He was sure Ava had come to steal it. When he came back out, she was by the island and Ashton was handing her some water in a dusty glass. Appalled, she turned to the sink to scrub it. “First of all, you don’t look fine,” she said to them. “Both of you were out too late last night, drinking and carousing. You look like you need a scolding and a curfew. You have not been taking care of yourselves. Ashton, you especially. You are supposed to be watching over him, but clearly in your condition, that’s not possible—just look at him.”

  “Um, what condition is that?” said Ashton.

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” Julian grumbled—to which Ashton and Ava both scoffed!

  “Has he had a piece of fruit all year?” Ava said. “I don’t know how you two get up for work every morning. How you haven’t been fired is a miracle.”

  “I can’t fire myself,” Ashton said. “Though sometimes I’d like to.”

  “And we do get up for work every morning,” Julian said defensively.

  “Except for the two months a year you take some me-time, right?” Ashton said.

  Great, Julian thought. Now Ashton was on Ava’s side.

  Ashton and Ava sat on the stools at the island. Julian remained standing. “Actually, I’m in the process of selling the business,” Ashton said. “I’m thinking of moving back to L.A.”

  “You are?” That was Julian.

  “Yes,” Ashton said. “Where have you been that you don’t know that? Wait—don’t tell me.”

  “You definitely need to do something, young man,” Ava said to Ashton. “You’re a mess. All the more reason for me to be here. If you leave, who’s going to take care of him?” Ava was speaking as if Julian weren’t standing right there. He was afraid to sit down and accord the scene any normalcy. “I told you,” Ava continued, “I’m not here just for you, Ashton Bennett. I’m here for him. Not everything revolves around you.”

  “There it is,” Ashton said. “And you say she didn’t send you.”

  “You know who sent me? God. The way He sent Julian back in time to help my child.”

  “Oh, no.” Ashton groaned. “Not you, too, Brutus. I can’t take it. God, you say?”

  “As opposed to who?” said Ava.

  Julian wanted to groan himself. Why did Ava look like she knew way more than he wanted her to?

  “I know enough to be here,” Ava added, though no one was asking. “And you’ll fill me in on the rest. We have time before next March for you to tell me everything. Look, are we going to natter incessantly, or are you going to show me your famous Portobello Market?”

  “You’ve been here all of five minutes,” Julian said. “Are you sure you don’t want to rest first, freshen up?” Beat. “Let us help you find a hotel room?”

  “How can I rest? I bet there’s nothing in your fridge.” Unceremoniously she appraised the refrigerator’s contents—old butter and thirty bottles of beer—before clucking, nodding, and slamming the fridge door.

  “Market’s closing in an hour,” Ashton said.

  “Then it’s even more imperative we stop standing around like pods of salt. Let’s go get something for dinner.”

  Julian exchanged a glance with Ashton. “Who’s been talking to you?” Julian asked.

  Ava calmly adjusted the hat on her head and folded her hands. “I see. You need to know the chain of events that brought me here before you deign to take me to the market to buy food so I can make you something to eat,” she said. “Fine. Riley said the last time she was here, neither of you looked well. She was concerned. So she called Zakiyyah, who happened to be in Brooklyn visiting her mother, and Z came to see me. We had a long talk. So here I am.”

  Julian didn’t know where to look. “Riley called Zakiyyah?” he said quietly. Ashton said nothing at all.

  Ava gave Ashton a condemning glance before she picked up her square purse. “Zakiyyah is a saint. So is Riley. How you’re still in one piece, I’ll never know. None of my business. I have a job to do. Let’s go.”

  Julian stretched his mouth over his teeth. “How long do you think you can stay, Mrs. McKenzie?”

  “Why so formal, Julian? I’m not your second-grade teacher. Ava will be fine. How long can I stay? Until you go back in March, that’s how long. Let’s see what we can do to make you stick the landing this time, eh?”

  “I’m living in an insane asylum,” Ashton said. “I wonder if it’s contagious. Never mind. Look—it’s nice of you to
drop in, Ava, but we don’t have a third bedroom.”

  “I don’t need a bedroom,” Ava said. “The couch will do. Can we walk and talk? Oh, and where can I exchange my money? The rates at the airport were extortionate.”

  On the way to Portobello Road, walking briskly between the two men, so briskly, in fact, that Julian was having trouble keeping up, Ava wondered if “the boys” could find her a small place near them, “just a studio, nothing fancy. I can rent month to month, and then we’ll see. Of course, I’ll need a spare key to your place. I can’t be standing on the street, banging the door like this morning.”

  She didn’t ask “the boys” what they liked to eat or drink, nor did she ask them for money. She bought bread, vegetables, chicken, flour, butter, sugar. She bought tea and coffee and wine and club soda. She bought jam and pastries. They carried the bags for her, as she marched through the Portobello stalls, haggling for onions and lemons.

  Back home, she washed her hands, sneered at their lack of a suitable apron, and spent the rest of the afternoon wiping down their kitchen, throwing away old bottles and junk mail, deboning and lemon-marinating a chicken and putting it on to bake over rice and grilled onions. She asked them to set the table and when she saw their hesitation said, “Please, please don’t tell me that you eat on the couch or stand over the island like zebras. For shame, both of you. Set the table immediately, please.” She asked them if they had candlesticks, any clean silverware or clean plates. She asked them if they had any spare sheets, because if not, she would have to go buy some. “Are stores open in London tomorrow? There used to be a time when nothing was open on Sunday, when the only thing you could do on Sunday was go to church.” She wondered if she should buy a small cot to put in the corner of their living room by the balcony window, and maybe a privacy partition, “with some birds painted on it.”

  Over dinner, Ava kept the conversation going nearly single-handedly by asking Ashton a hundred questions about the news agency, and his former store in L.A., and whether he had a car, and whether he was planning on going out tonight, “since it was Saturday night and all,” barely waiting for his answers. She asked where the nearest Catholic church was so she could go to mass in the morning, and then finally addressed Julian. “So where is this Devi person? Why isn’t he having dinner with you boys?”