As Julian had suspected, Ashton didn’t return to work. The sabbatical was too long. “I’m enjoying my life way too much to work. You should quit, too, Julian. You should take the payout they’re offering, it’s a lot of dough. Take it, and let’s go traveling. Let’s go to China, or New Zealand, or Tahiti. I’ve always wanted to go to Tahiti. I realize besides America and England, I’ve never been anywhere.”
“Maybe before Tahiti, you should start with Paris,” Ava said. “Take Riley.”
And Ashton agreed! “But not Riley—I’ll take Julian.”
“No, you can’t make any plans with Julian,” Ava said. “With any luck, he won’t be coming back this time.”
Bottomlessly Ashton stared at Ava, before turning and speaking to Julian. “As I was saying—Paris in the spring?”
Julian stared down Ava and said, “Sure, Ash, absolutely. When do you want to go?” and he and Ashton started making plans to go to France when the weather got warmer.
After a month had passed, sometime in March, Ashton finally told Julian about Riley.
She had been suffering from gastrointestinal upsets, Ashton said, neurological problems like unexplained ticks and respiratory troubles. Sudden onset asthma, she called it. She became offended that her doctors were downplaying her symptoms. They said it was psychosomatic. But she didn’t think so. She took such good care of herself, yet kept coming down with colds, sore throats, odd rashes that wouldn’t go away. She gave up her apartment and moved back home with her parents, where she started sleeping in the backyard on her mother’s patio. She stopped drinking bottled water because the plastic was carcinogenic and started collecting rainwater in barrels and drinking that instead.
“You’re joking, right?”
Ashton said nothing.
“Rainwater in California? I think dehydration might be her problem.”
“It wasn’t dehydration. Riley diagnosed herself and concluded that overstimulation from continuous electrical charges was causing the worst of her symptoms. So she quit Whole Foods.”
Julian’s heart thumped with worry. It didn’t help that Ashton was reporting all this as if it had nothing to do with him, in a level voice of a neutral third party. “Riley quit Whole Foods?”
“Yes. She gave up her yoga studio, her online health food business, sold her car, donated her phone, her computer, her iPads, her Kindles, her blow-dryers, her televisions. Everything.”
Julian sat up on his couch. Ashton lay down on his. Julian peered into his friend’s face. Ashton covered his eyes.
“Ashton?”
“You wanted to know what I was doing between Christmas and New Year’s?” he said. “I was driving Riley to her new residence—a wellness compound in the middle of Arizona. That’s where she’ll be living from now on.”
“Where?”
“In the middle of Arizona. Near a town called Snowflake.”
For a few moments, Julian was too stunned to speak. “Riley sold her earthly belongings,” he said, “and moved to a place in Arizona called Snowflake?”
“She told me that my aftershave and deodorant made her vomit,” Ashton said. “She told me I sent her body into crisis. She literally vomited in front of me to show me how I was making her feel. And how apparently I’ve been making her feel for years.”
“Ashton…”
“She’s lost like thirty pounds. She’s probably a hundred pounds now. The doctors told her she was anorexic. She said she wasn’t anorexic, she was being poisoned by the chemical fumes from the paint on the walls of her family home. She insisted that was the problem. Her father is driving out to visit her next week. He’s bringing his construction crew. He’s building her a house in Snowflake, an unpainted one-room log cabin.”
“Why you didn’t try to…”
“No one’s allowed to say anything, or offer the remotest opinion, especially me. She feels mocked, misdiagnosed, hurt by the ridicule. Her father is building her a cottage so she doesn’t feel ridiculed, what’s so difficult to understand about that? She is staying with this other woman at the moment. The woman is in a wheelchair—a manual one of course—because she says her nerves had short-circuited from the electrical onslaught and paralyzed her.”
“How long has she been in a wheelchair?”
“Twelve years.”
“Oh my God.”
“Riley told me that was next for her,” Ashton said, “if she didn’t save herself and get out. She says once her father builds her a hut, she’ll be happier. She might even write me letters. But in lead-free pencil only, because pen ink has chemical dyes.”
“Write you letters.”
“Stop repeating everything I say.”
“I don’t believe what you’re telling me.”
“She no longer talks on the phone or watches TV or listens to the radio,” Ashton said. “There is no electricity in Snowflake. Do you believe that?”
“How do they wash their hands?”
“You don’t need electricity to wash your hands, time traveler, you should know that better than anyone.”
“You need an electrical pilot to light the gas to heat the water tank.”
“They don’t heat their water. They have a well.”
“In Arizona? Is it a drywell?” Julian was blackly unamused by his mordant wit.
“She told me she was tired of being emotionally dark,” Ashton said, “of living every day with migraines and nausea and the flu.”
“Is she better in Snowflake?”
“Hard to say. She says she likes being among other sick people who, like her, have retreated into the middle of nowhere to find peace. She says that must be how the pilgrims felt when they sailed here.”
“The pilgrims did not come to find peace,” Julian said. “They came to build a civilization.”
“Potato, potahtoe.”
“And those other people, have they lived in Snowflake a long time, like the wheelchair lady?”
“Yes,” Ashton said. “Sometimes they still need to enter a nearby psychiatric facility because they have mental breakdowns, even in Snowflake, and need therapy and meds. Their leader, Deborah, was just returning from such a place as I was delivering Riley into her care.”
“How long had Deborah been away at the psychiatric facility?”
“Two years,” Ashton replied.
“Ashton!”
“Why are you yelling at me?”
“Are you nuts? Why would you take Riley to a place like that?” Julian held his tongue from the next question on his lips. What’s wrong with you?
“I’m no longer allowed input into Riley’s emotional well-being,” Ashton said in a flat voice. “She wanted to go. She needed to go. She told me what I needed to do was validate her environmental illness by taking her there. So I validated her environmental illness. What choice did I have?”
“Clearly it’s a cry for help.”
“She says no.”
“I mean—a cry to you.”
“What am I going to do? I can’t move to Snowflake with her. Her dad would have to build me my own one-room house because I can’t stay in Riley’s. I make her vomit, or did you not hear that part?”
Julian swallowed the bitter air in his mouth, trying to hide his naked worry. “What about you moving back home?” he said carefully. “You mentioned you were thinking about it. Maybe what Riley needs is a steady dose of Ashton, and she’ll feel better.”
Ashton shook his head. “She took her beehive with her,” he said. “So she could continue to perform apitherapy on herself, continue to be regularly stung by bees to rid herself of chemical impurities and body electro-toxicity. How is my moving back going to help her with that?”
“Come on, man, she needs you.”
“She moved to Snowflake to get away from me, from everything having to do with me and her life with me. Her beautiful hair fell out in the back of her head. She is half bald. Do you know why? Because she kept sleeping on a bag of ice. She used the bag of ice as a pillow, Julian,
because she couldn’t stand thinking about me when she went to bed at night. She said thinking about me inflamed the lining of her dura mater.”
“Ashton…”
“It’s not all my fault, mind you, so that’s a relief. She told her parents it was their fault, too, because she could smell the odor of the chicken slaughter plant down the road from their house, and it’s been slowly killing her since childhood.”
“There’s a chicken slaughter plant near Riley’s house?” Julian had been to Riley’s parents’ house in Pasadena many times. He didn’t remember any such thing.
Ashton nodded. “Seventy-four miles away in Bakersfield. She says Pasadena is downwind from Bakersfield, where they use harsh chemicals to clean the abattoirs. In Snowflake, on the other hand, there is nothing for hundreds of miles. Not even ink pens to write to me with.”
“Have you talked to her parents?”
“Last week. They had just returned from visiting her.”
“She’s been in Arizona two months. Have her symptoms improved?”
“No.” Ashton studied his hands. “Her mother says a doctor in Phoenix suggested she cut gluten from her diet, so she cut gluten from her diet. Before you ask, it’s too early to tell. Though the scalp-burning sensation is apparently better.”
“Gluten makes your scalp burn?”
“Gluten and me, apparently.” Ashton turned his head. Miserably, he and Julian stared at each other. Neither one could think of the next thing to say. Julian pitched back and covered his face.
“It’s because of what I’ve put her through,” Ashton finally said. “If she hadn’t been with me, she might’ve remained herself.”
“She could’ve left you at any time, Ash. It was her choice to stay. At any time, she could’ve found someone else.”
“Like Z.”
Like Z, Julian wanted to echo and didn’t.
“It’s like I always say,” Ashton said. “If you love them more than they love you, it’s bad. But if they love you more than you love them, it’s even worse. Speaking of which, I forgot to tell you—Z got married.”
Julian wanted to walk across, cover Ashton with a blanket, pat him, comfort him, do something, anything but lie there impotently. Ashton’s face was blank. He was staring up at the ceiling.
Liquid silence fell like water drops from the loose faucet.
“I’m sorry, Ash.”
“Yeah. Some music teacher from Salinas.”
“Fuck. Why so fast?”
“You’re a fine one to speak, buying a ring after a week and proposing after three.”
“Yeah, and how did that turn out?” Julian said. “Everybody told me it wouldn’t last. I should’ve listened.”
Ashton almost smiled at that.
“What’s her hurry anyway?”
“You know how it is. Clock ticking, blah blah. Everybody wants a baby. Gwen’s about to pop out her second. Did I ever tell you the last words my mother spoke to me the day she knew she would die?”
“Ashton, yes but—don’t. This isn’t that.”
“I was late for school,” Ashton went on. “And she said, run along, my love.”
Julian groaned.
“Mom said run along. Z said run along. Riley said run along. And now even you are telling me to run along back to L.A.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. You know I don’t want you to go.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ashton said. “Run along, Ash, my only friend.”
They stopped speaking. Julian didn’t know what to say, what to do.
Ashton hopped off the couch. “I’m going to bed. Gonna get a drink first. You want something?” At the island, Ashton poured the Belvedere into his throat straight from the bottle.
“It’s going to be okay,” Julian said.
“Yes, Mr. Know-it-All. The good will end happily and the bad unhappily,” said Ashton. “That’s what fiction means.” He wiped his mouth. “In real life, everybody’s getting all fucked up. No point in talking about it now. One wedding too late. Whatever.” He brightened. “There’s another wedding coming up, though. Nigel’s brother Simon is getting married up in York next weekend. You in?”
“Am I invited?”
“Who cares. Come. We can celebrate your birthday there.”
“I’m not crashing a wedding.”
“It’s Nigel. It’s fine.”
“It’s Nigel’s brother and it’s not fine.” The wedding was a week before the March equinox. Julian couldn’t go. He had a lot to do to get ready.
“You know, the only moment in my life I regret, the only moment I wish I could change, the part that needs a rewrite,” Ashton said, still holding the bottle, “was back in L.A., five years ago. I knew how I felt about Z, but instead of breaking up with Riley like you broke up with Gwen, I let it ride. Instead of letting Riley have a chance at another life, I let it ride and ride because I didn’t want to abandon her like my dad ditched my mom. I didn’t know the future and was shit scared of making the wrong choice. And Riley rode my indecision all the way to Snowflake, and Z rode my indecision all the way to the altar with another man.”
On the outside Ashton was dressed to slay, his hair spiked and trimmed, his face with just the right amount of stubble, his gray suit dazzling, his white shirt spotless, his tie Gucci. Only his crystal blue persuasion eyes revealed the rampant anarchy inside.
“Hey, I’m sparring tomorrow before work,” Julian said. “Want to come spar with me, be my partner?”
“Always.” Ashton smiled. “But seriously, don’t change the subject, come to York with us. Nigel’s driving. You’ve never been to York.”
“Nigel driving is supposed to make me want to go or want to never go? I’m not sure.”
“Funny.”
“Stay here instead, Ash. It’s my birthday weekend.”
“You have a birthday every year, but how many weddings is Nigel’s poor schmuck brother going to have? Two, three tops?” Ashton laughed. “Plus I already said yes.”
“If you stay, we can go to that fancy new pub on Lancaster Road. You said you wanted to check it out. We’ll go for my birthday, drink, talk about the good old days.”
“You want to trade war stories about college, when everything was still ahead of us?” Ashton said, tipping back the last of the Belvedere. “To live like a crazy man is not enough for you? You have to talk about it, too?” He lined up the empty vodka bottle on the window sill next to the other bottles. “In the immortal words of both Samuel Beckett and Woody Allen, Julian, life’s too fucking short to talk about life.”
∞
Julian met Ashton the first day of orientation in his freshman year at UCLA. He was eighteen. His family was crowded into the small dorm room with him. His dad and oldest brother, Brandon, were putting together his bookshelf, Rowan was thumbtacking his posters to the walls, and his mom was making his bed. Tristan and Harlan were perched on Ashton’s bed playing their Game Boys with six-year-old Dalton. Everyone stood at attention when Ashton entered, a tall, skinny, hyper kid with an irrepressible grin and a mophead of blond hair.
“Are you Julian’s roommate?” Dalton asked.
“Yeah,” Ashton said, looking around the room. “Which one of you is Julian?”
Timidly Julian stepped forward. He had been helping his dad and brother with the shelf, and now put down the hammer and bumped Ashton’s extended fist. “Hey,” he said. He was guarded. He had never lived with anyone but his brothers, was barely friends with anyone but his brothers.
“I’m Ashton.” The kid smiled.
Ashton’s side of the room was pretty barren. The Cruzes had been talking about it, Joanne Cruz especially, being a mom and all. There wasn’t anything anywhere except a framed signed poster of Bob Marley, inscribed with “Money can’t buy life.” Tristan asked Ashton the question everyone was thinking: “Your folks already split?”
“Yeah,” Ashton said with a laugh, “you could say my folks already split. You could definitely say that.”
After everyone had left, Ashton said, “Nice fam you got there,” falling on the bed and casually crossing his arms behind his head. “You got five brothers? Wow. Lucky. I’m an only child. And both Mom and Pops thought even that was too many.”
Julian chuckled because he thought Ashton was joking. And to pretend he was joking, Ashton made a joke. “When I was a kid, we had a sandbox in our backyard that was filled with quicksand,” he said, grinning. “I was an only child…eventually.”
Julian laughed. To imitate Ashton, Julian fell on his bed, too, trying to casually cross his arms behind his head. “Sometimes all I want is to be an only child.” Julian said it, but he didn’t mean it. Being an only child seemed like hell to him. Not a metaphorical hell. Actual hell. He hated being alone, probably because growing up he wasn’t alone for a second.
“Yeah, we always want what we haven’t got,” Ashton said. “I’m trying to work on that. I want to be the guy who doesn’t want what he hasn’t got. Hey, Thunderpussy is playing at the Viper Room on Sunset.” He grinned. “Wanna go? I can get us in. I know a guy.”
“Some other time maybe. I got another thing going on.”
“Another thing like a…date?” Ashton’s smile was big.
Julian squinted, debating whether to reveal himself or not. “Actually…like a fight.”
“A fight?” Ashton’s smile got even bigger. He jumped off the bed. “So what are you lying around for? Let’s go see what you got, buddy.” He grabbed his jacket. “How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” he said to Julian as they were walking out.
“I’m Norwegian not German,” Julian said, “but I’ll bite, how many?”
“One,” Ashton said. “They’re efficient, and not very funny.”
Ashton forewent Thunderpussy, ducked out on his other friends, and went with Julian to the UCLA sports center to watch him battle a bigger opponent. Bigger, but not tougher. From that first freshman day, Ashton was at the ringside of every fight Julian had, first as an amateur for the university, training for the Olympics, and then without helmets and face guards as a pro, in dusty desert dives all over Death Valley, from Sacramento to Brawley below the Salton Sea. He was part of Julian’s entourage in every ring, next to Mancini, his trainer, and Lopez, Mancini’s son. Harlan and Tristan would drive hours from Simi Valley, lying to their unsuspecting parents, to come watch their brother fight.
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