The Tiger Catcher

by Paullina Simons

  “It’s just a stupid nickname,” she said. “I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t know which house you meant. There are lots of houses across the street. You weren’t specific.”

  “Yes, it’s important to be specific.” Julian took a breath. “Did I ever tell you I don’t like guns? Never have. It’s like holding death in your hand.”

  “Maybe what you don’t like is death,” she said, not smiling.

  “Here’s why I asked you who lives across the street,” he said. “Rock falling out of the sky while you’re hiking is not a foreseeable risk. But shooting by firearm is.” He paused. “Especially when you live in an area where collection, outrage, reprisal, and bloodshed is the currency by which the gangs barter out their lives.”

  “I don’t live here,” she said, “and you’re making a big deal out of nothing. Did rock fall on you when you were hiking?”

  Julian didn’t answer her. “He came to see you carrying a semi-automatic tucked into his belt and he asked for you by name.”

  “So? He’s Z’s friend. Sometimes we hang out, smoke a little. I told him I’d pay him for the weed and forgot. And he carries everywhere. You just said yourself he’s not safe.”

  “I didn’t say he’s not safe. I don’t give a shit about him.”

  “It’s nothing. Trust me—it’s less than nothing. Can I go get ready?”

  “Yes, JoJo. Go get ready.”

  That day was the first day they were less than perfect, less than what they were supposed to be and meant to be. Julian kept trying to recreate the magic moment, the warmest night lit by the brightest stars, the ideal spot at the most romantic restaurant for sitting under the most blooming of the jacarandas. They hadn’t returned to the hills of Santa Monica, hadn’t climbed the steep slopes, the crystal teardrop never left her bag again, never rested in the palm of her hand. He took out the stone once when she was sleeping and he was restless. Touching it made him feel heavy inside, unwell. An electrical charge buzzed through his body again, a low-level shock.

  They got going too late to taste the cakes. Or to pick out a wedding dress. They couldn’t try on the diamond ring she hadn’t worn yet, a ring he’d been carrying in his pocket since the first week he met her. They made up, but nothing could be perfect on a day when Poppa W was waiting for her to crawl under his razor wire and knock on his door.

  During their propulsive ardor, sometimes Julian was so overpowered it felt as if her virtue could harm him, but now he wondered if he was using the wrong word for the thing that might harm him.

  In her white arms and legs, he had found all kinds of promise, all good and equal to the gods promise. When his hand was under her head, she was more than California, more than America, more than the sea. She was just more. Everything she was, she was more than he ever wanted. He wasn’t going to walk away from her. No matter what, no matter how many times Poppa W knocked on her door. They were going to kiss without rancor and marry without scandal. She didn’t need her lover to play the lyre to get her out of hell. Her sweet husky voice could charm Hades himself into setting her free without any help from Julian.

  Josephine. Every clock that had ever been struck had her name on it. She was the bell that rang in every tower. She was the seventh day of rest in every week.

  Julian felt off-key but wouldn’t admit it to her, or to anyone. Smiling, he left himself hidden, waiting for her to make him feel better, to make amends. She never did. In the end, that made him feel better. There’s nothing for her to make amends for, he said to comfort himself and pushed on, waiting for her to get consumed by the details of shoes and jewels, of veils and flowers, by the color of the napkins and the order of the songs. That time couldn’t come fast enough, though the wedding was rushing up plenty fast. She stopped humming with pleasure when he was loving her, and he stopped drumming with joy on his wheel as he drove away from her to attend to all the things she was too busy to attend to.

  Julian started to notice all of his shortcomings, and every time he asked if anything was the matter, she said no, and he didn’t have the stomach for a fight, for a crumbling of his most intense and aflame life. The jacaranda bloomed outside as he counted the minutes until she would finally be his wife, but the jam they were in wasn’t fading or ending. One day he asked her to take a drive to Palm Springs, and she snapped at him. Are you crazy, she said, what about all the things I have to do, there’s mildew in the bathtub, two auditions to get through, the mass I must go to, to pray for my breakthrough, and Z wants to get a tattoo, who’s going to help her with that, you? Not wanting to hear I told you so and thus having no one to turn to, Julian cast it off as pre-wedding jitters and busied himself with the details, one foot in front of the other, one minute at a time, one task at a time, believing with his whole heart he and she were more than mere playthings of the gods, believing what she held in her hands were wedding rings, not grenade pins.

  15

  Charlie’s Dead

  EARLY IN THE MORNING ASHTON WAS ALREADY WORKING, helping an excited woman and her dogged husband load a large dining room set from Bonanza into the couple’s Escalade, when a dusty green Hyundai pulled up and out stepped Zakiyyah Job, officious like a principal. Even her wild hair was tightly wound into a bun. Ashton ignored her while he continued securing the table, but when he was finished, she was still there, standing stiffly next to her vehicle.

  Was he supposed to walk over to her? He wanted to stride back inside his store and let her take the lead. She was the one who drove up to his curb in her banger. Not even bothering to suppress his sigh, Ashton walked over to her, instantly regretting it when he saw her disapproving expression up close. A disgusted headshake was sure to follow. He was wearing his favorite gray T-shirt with the words FREE LICKS stamped on the front.

  “Hello,” she said formally.

  “Hello . . .” Ashton waved his hand in a circle, pretending to have forgotten her name. “Kaziyyah?” She wore a navy suit and low-heeled shoes. Her ruffled white blouse was up to her neck. On her face she had nothing but red lipstick and black mascara.

  “Not Kaziyyah,” she said, already through her teeth. “Zakiyyah.”

  “That’s what I said. What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you. Our friends are in trouble. We have to help them. I don’t know how much you care about your friend, but I care about mine.”

  What Ashton didn’t care for was her turn of phrase. Shielding his face from the morning sun blazing down the length of Magnolia, he lamented his lack of sunglasses, wishing one of his no-good parents could’ve taught him how to hide his impatience. “What’s going on?”

  Glistening from the heat, Zakiyyah fanned herself with a map guide of Disneyland and didn’t reply.

  “Would you like to come in—for a second?” It was promising to be another scorcher.

  “Fine,” she said. “But only for a second. I’m on my way to work.”

  “I’m actually at work,” Ashton said.

  Her slow blink was like a snort. Pfft, the blink said. You call this work? Playing with your toys? She marched past him. Inside his gorgeous store, she said nothing. She might as well have stood inside The Gap.

  As she leaned on the glass counter (for support?) and turned to him, Ashton knew it was already too late for a productive conversation. He was too ticked off. He judged all human beings by the way they reacted when they were inside his livelihood, because when they stepped inside, they were stepping inside Ashton, inside his treasure-hunting soul. So when they treated his riches as if they were nothing—the signed poster of a shining Bob Marley inscribed with his last words (“Money can’t buy life”)—they were treating Ashton like he was nothing. And nobody reacted well to that, least of all him, the most affable of men but with a lion’s pride.

  “Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to guess?” he said.

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  Zakiyyah raised her hand to stop him, which irritate
d him even more. He raised his own hand right back at her. She lowered hers. “Are you going to listen or bristle?” she said.

  “Why choose?” To put some distance between them, Ashton walked around the counter, pulled out his phone and began checking his email.

  “Did you know they’re planning to get married?” he heard Zakiyyah exclaim in a faltering voice.

  Her tone softened him slightly. She sounded like he felt when he’d first heard about it. Like he still felt about it, to be honest. But Ashton wasn’t going to admit that to her. He didn’t look up from his phone. “Of course I know about it. I’m his best man. Why are you acting as if you just found out about it yesterday?”

  “Because I did just find out about it yesterday.”

  “Ouch.” Ashton snorted. “The wedding’s in three days. And you just found out?”

  “You’re not getting it,” Zakiyyah exclaimed. “She didn’t tell me! I’m her closest friend, and she told me nothing about it. You think that’s normal?”

  With silent sympathy, Ashton put down his phone. “Look, I’ll admit, I was upset, too, at first,” he said. “But Julian is not a kid and he’s not my kid. It’s their business what they do. My job is to stand by him. So that’s what I’m going to do. What are you going to do?”

  “No way,” Zakiyyah said. “I have to stop them.”

  “Good luck with that. I can’t hold your hand through it, though.”

  “Am I asking you to hold my hand?”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking,” Ashton said. “But I’ve got a meeting to get to, so . . .”

  “If you really wanted to stand by him,” Zakiyyah said, “you’d tell him that he can’t marry her. That would be pretty friend-like of you.”

  Ashton studied her. Her huge brown eyes were about to overflow. Her red lips were trembling. He hated when women cried, even women he didn’t know. All his mother did for two years before she died was cry. He leaned his palms against the counter. “Can I tell you a joke?”

  “I don’t think you can, no.”

  “Charlie is dead,” Ashton said.

  “What?”

  “Never heard that one?”

  “And don’t want to.”

  “It’s a perfect time for it. You’ll see. A man walks into a bar—”

  Zakiyyah groaned.

  “A man walks into a bar,” Ashton continued over her objection, “and says to another man, ‘Charlie’s dead.’ The other man starts to wail. ‘Oh my God, not Charlie! We went to school together, played stickball together, he was my best man, my best friend, what am I going to do?’ A day later, a gorgeous broad with big boobs walks into a bar and says to the same man, ‘Charlie’s dead.’ And the man says, ‘Who is Charlie?’”

  After a star-studded silence, Zakiyyah opened her hands. “That’s a joke?”

  “Yes. On us. We are Charlie. You and me.” He winced as he said it. “The sooner you get it, the sooner you’ll get on with things.”

  “That’s honestly the least of what I’m trying to tell you,” she said.

  “I know what you’re telling me. You think he’s not right for her.”

  “No,” said Zakiyyah. “I think she is not right for him.”

  That took Ashton aback. Nonetheless, he plowed on. “She’s fallen in love, and you’re not part of it. Her impending marriage is the only important thing to her. Things are changing. They always do. You gotta work out your own shit. No one can help you.”

  Zakiyyah crossed her arms. “You sure you’re talking about me there, genius?”

  “Positive.” Ashton crossed his own arms. “I’m not coming to your kindergarten, am I, bothering you with my feelings.”

  “These aren’t my feelings, they’re facts!”

  “What are you yelling at me for?”

  “Because you’re refusing to get it.”

  “I’m getting it pretty loud is how I’m getting it.”

  “You’re not listening to me. Listen to what I’m trying to tell you . . .”

  “Stop line-topping me,” Ashton said. “You’re yelling down. I’m not your guy. You should be yelling up.”

  “This isn’t about me, or you—if you can believe anything in this world can be not about you,” Zakiyyah said. “It’s about them. It’s about her. Josephine is not—”

  “So go talk to her,” Ashton said, interrupting. “What do you need me for, permission?”

  “I did talk to her!”

  “Stop yelling.”

  Zakiyyah lowered her voice. “You don’t think I tried that first before coming here? Believe me, I tried everything first before coming here. She refused to listen. That’s why I need you to talk to Julian.”

  “No.”

  “Tell him that—”

  “No.” Ashton said it as forcefully as he could. He shook his head, raised his hand to stop her. “You have no right to tell me anything. Her secrets are none of my business. It’s not your place to tell me, and it’s not my place to hear it. You’re trying to put me in a bad spot, and I won’t let you.”

  “But—”

  “You’re about to tell me something I shouldn’t know and don’t want to know,” Ashton said. “And then I’m either going to have to keep quiet, which, as Julian’s friend, I clearly can’t do, or I’m going to have to daisy chain this conversation back to him. Something about Josephine that you’re passing on to me to pass on to him. Don’t you see how screwed up that is?”

  “But—”

  “If there’s something she needs to talk to him about, she has to do it. So stop wasting my time.”

  “She won’t listen to reason!”

  “Again, not my problem,” Ashton said. “It’s between them. Keep me out of it. If you knew what was good for you, you’d stay out of it, too.”

  “I can’t.” Zakiyyah put her face in her hands. “They can’t get married. I’m begging you, just talk to him. She is—”

  “No!” Ashton yelled. Ashton, who hadn’t yelled since he was twelve, who had never once raised his voice in three years with Riley, was shouting at a stranger. “I told you no,” he said, quieter, “and I meant it.”

  “Wow,” Zakiyyah said. “Just wow.”

  “Yeah, wow. Don’t you have to be at work or something?”

  “You are a terrible human being.”

  “Sticks and stones, lady.” Ashton walked around the counter. He was much taller than she was, and he didn’t want to come too close, he didn’t want her to think he was menacing her. Except he was, a little bit. He was menacing her. “Don’t insult me, just go.”

  “Can you really insult a man wearing a Free Licks sign on his shirt?” Zakiyyah said, glaring up at him, not backing away. “Is there anything you can say to such a man that could possibly debase him any further?”

  “Ooh, are you about to, as they say in the business, door-slam-exit?” Ashton said. “Can’t wait. But are you sure you’re dressed for that?”

  As she stormed out, Zakiyyah slammed the front door so hard, the Jeannie bottle from I Dream of Jeannie, and Marty McFly’s flux capacitor from Back to the Future fell over in their window displays.

  “And scene!” Ashton yelled after her.

  16

  Fields of Asphodel

  “YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHO CAME TO SEE ME THIS MORNING,” Ashton said to Julian later that day when the two men met outside the Brentwood Country Club to go over the floral arrangements. Julian knew a bit about local flora and would not let anyone else choose the flowers, not even the fake Mr. Know-it-All florist who was peddling yellow lilies to Julian as if he’d gotten them on an end-of-season sale or had never worked a wedding and didn’t know that yellow lilies symbolized falsehood. “Josephine’s friend.”

  “Zakiyyah?” After Julian had ixnayed the yellow lilies he got a mouthful from the wedding coordinator about yellow chrysanthemums. No yellow, Julian said impatiently. No daffodils, daisies, yellow roses, tulips, nothing. Then how about red poppies, sir? the man said. I have them on speci
al . . .

  Lord have mercy.

  Julian and Ashton strolled through the flowerbeds in the nursery adjacent to the country club. They waded through isles of delphinium while Julian tried to figure out where else he could go on such short notice to order his first choice for the wedding: asphodel, the eternal lily that grew in Elysian Fields. The asphodel was the forever flower. And this exasperating guy had none. Probably no one had it. Asphodel was rare and expensive. But it was worth a try.

  Julian half listened to Ashton, half examined the short-stemmed sunflowers (for adoration, he thought with tenderness). He decided to google some florists in Brentwood and the nearby Santa Monica. “Oh look,” he said. “Flowers With Love. Wait, what?” He glanced at Ashton. “Zakiyyah came to see you? Where, at the store? What did she want?”

  “To yell at me.”

  Julian smiled. “What did you do? Rather, what did you do now?” He opened his phone’s map app and keyed in the name of the florist. Only a mile away. Perfect.

  “I’m an angel,” Ashton said. “It’s her problem if she can’t see it.”

  “Hang on a sec, angel,” Julian said. “I have to make a call.”

  Ashton waited. Flowers with Love didn’t have any asphodel. Julian looked for other florists on his phone, barely lifting his head to his friend. “Ashton,” he said absent-mindedly, “you have to behave yourself. You’re going to be dancing with Zakiyyah at the wedding. Clinking glasses, giving a toast together. You can’t have maids of honor yelling at you all day long. You’ll upset my bride.”

  “I’m hoping the girl got all the yelling out of her system at my store, but—”

  “Wait, Ash, one sec.”

  Rococo Flowers also didn’t have any asphodel. Neither did Fleur in Santa Monica. They’re almost impossible to find, the woman told Julian. Tell me about it, Julian said. She knew of a place in Long Beach near the RitzCarlton by the marina that sometimes carried them. He didn’t want to travel that far. But what else could he do? Get boring old tulips? Or stephanotis, which every other couple had at their wedding? Roses, for God’s sake? Roses! “Ash, you feel like taking a drive to Long Beach?”