“We didn’t mean any offense,” Marinetti started to say, but Paul’s grandfather drew himself up to his full, massive height. Marinetti didn’t recoil, but he seemed to think about it.
“They’re just doing their jobs, Zayde,” Paul tried to interject, but no one appeared to hear him.
“My son-in-law,” said his grandfather, “gave twenty years of his life to you police. He could have done anything, and that’s what he chose, god knows why. You drain every ounce of life from him, and then you have the gall to come in here half-cocked, treating his son like a goddamn criminal.”
Paul couldn’t bear to look at his grandfather, so he fixed his gaze on Benton, on the arc of tube lighting reflected on the surface of his glasses. He tried to look the way an innocent person might—a little defensive, mostly confused. But his face resolved into the stony blankness that it always did when he was desperate to conceal the truth. To an unfamiliar eye, it would look like defiance.
“We’ve cooperated more than enough,” his grandfather said. “Come back with a warrant.”
Benton didn’t even blink. Paul’s father wouldn’t have, either.
“Well,” said Benton evenly. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. Like I said—just tying up loose ends.”
“Our lieutenant,” Marinetti added, “doesn’t tolerate a single undotted i.”
“I can think of a number of things my son-in-law wouldn’t have tolerated.” Paul could all but hear the look on his grandfather’s face. “Is that all, gentlemen?”
Benton’s smile sent a shiver through him. “For now,” he said. “Thank you. We’ll find our own way out.”
Paul’s grandfather watched them leave from the doorway. He had his arms braced at either side of the doorframe, as if they might turn around and try to push back inside. Paul sat very still until they were gone, and then he lost the strength to hold his weight upright. His grandfather turned toward him, but Paul slid down in his chair and clasped his hands over his mouth. He could feel the slick mass of organs inside him; one might slither out if he parted his lips.
“All this for drugs,” said his grandfather with venom. “For god’s sake . . . Paul, come on, now. Sit up, let’s have a look at you.”
He tried to pull his spine straight. His grandfather lifted his chin to inspect his face, and his gaze was so absolutely void of suspicion that Paul had to shut his eyes.
“Pull yourself together,” his grandfather said kindly. “Don’t take it so hard, you aren’t in any trouble . . . Take a deep breath, think how ridiculous this is, all of us know better.”
Paul didn’t have any more lies in reserve, even silent ones. He could only open his eyes when he pretended he was dreaming. He accepted his own despair and his grandfather’s bracing impatience with the same resignation he would accept the chaos of a nightmare.
“Please don’t say anything to my mother,” he said quietly. He scarcely heard his grandfather’s reassurances over the rush of blood in his throat.
He should have trusted his grandfather to give his mother a prettier version of the truth. By the time the explanation reached her, it was trifling, even funny. Could they imagine their Paul getting mixed up in drugs? They couldn’t, either of them; he was a good boy, a nice young man, if anything too averse to rule breaking. It would blow over, and in a year or two it would make a good story. Of course neither of them were worried. He shouldn’t be either, but he was sensitive, easily shaken. It was a character flaw they had always made a point of forgiving, and this time was no different.
The telephone didn’t ring all evening, and Paul didn’t dare phone first. The police might be there when he called; even if they weren’t, Julian’s nerves would be at least as shaken as his. Paul had to get himself back under control, or at least shield himself behind anger. Until then—until he knew he could withstand whatever Julian said to him—he didn’t trust himself to endure what was coming.
His family demanded that he recover quickly, with all the warmth and kindness that made them difficult to disobey. The next day was Laurie’s birthday, and by early afternoon the house was cluttered with girls, each hallway a gauntlet of perfume and fringed-jacket elbows. Paul wended between empty corners and picked at the wax-paper mouth on his cup of fruit punch, and whenever his mother or grandparents glanced toward him he smiled, because he was supposed to smile.
Julian, as always, arrived late. Paul watched from a distance as his mother sidled through the crowd to greet him. He’d brought a gift wrapped in green foil, along with a pink pastry box from a French bakery downtown. He laughed at something Paul’s mother said before she’d finished speaking, and she beamed and squeezed his arm. He was ferociously cheerful and fraying at every edge.
When Paul approached, Julian smiled, unblinking, and caught him by the shoulder. “There you are, Pablo,” he said. “I have the funniest story to tell you.”
Paul’s mother bustled away to put Julian’s boxes in the dining room. The thrum of piping laughter and pop music was ruptured by a sudden, exuberant scream; Paul started, but Julian didn’t flinch.
“Upstairs,” said Julian. “Now.”
There were two whispering girls sitting on Laurie’s bed, heads bowed together, cross-legged in their matching white boots. When they caught sight of Paul and Julian one of them sprang to her feet to close the door, watching them gleefully through the narrowing gap until it clicked shut. Julian waited for her to disappear, then pushed Paul into the bathroom and locked the door.
Julian was round-shouldered and tense. There was barely any space between them, but Julian seemed determined not to touch him; he pushed his back against the wall opposite Paul instead.
“You didn’t warn me.” His fury was all the more lethal for how quietly he spoke. “I told you to fucking warn me.”
“I didn’t get a chance.” Paul’s voice was so wheedling and childish that he wished Julian would hit him. “You stuck to the script, didn’t you?”
Julian threw him a disgusted look and broke his gaze to lean over the sink. He fumbled for a cigarette and lit it, inelegantly, with one shaking hand.
“Julian.”
Julian exhaled a mouthful of smoke through his teeth. Then he straightened, and he met Paul’s gaze with eyes so cold and distrusting that the two of them might as well have been strangers.
“Of course I stuck to the fucking script.”
“So what went wrong?” His voice pitched with panic, and he tried to flatten it again. “Wasn’t it—”
“I wanted a chance to brace myself.” Paul almost didn’t notice Julian wasn’t answering the question. “That’s all I wanted. We’ve built everything else about this around what you need, around your fucking variables. You owed it to me to give me this one thing.”
There was a chime of little-girl laughter down the hall, muffled by the doors between them. Paul tried to decide whether he should cling to his defensive anger or swallow it. Julian looked away and flicked ash into the sink.
“How bad was it?” asked Paul quietly. He pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned harder against the wall.
“It’s not about it being bad.” Julian pronounced the word in a ruthless caricature of Paul’s accent. “For Christ’s sake! It’s as if you’re worried I’m going to tattle on you for shoplifting, it’s like it still hasn’t occurred to you that I’m part of this just as much as you are, and maybe I have a little more on my mind right now than reassuring you every goddamn second of your life—”
“Oh, poor you, it isn’t like I’m the one they’re actually asking about, I can’t possibly—”
There was a knock at the door, too soft and uncertain to belong to any member of Paul’s family. “There’s another one in the basement,” he called, more sharply than he intended, and the intruder scampered away.
Julian’s cigarette had gone out. He crushed it on the counter rather than relight it. “It’s both of us.” There was a crack of desperation in his voice. “It’s always been both of us, it’s m
utually assured destruction, that was the entire point. And it didn’t do me a damn bit of good, did it?”
Paul wanted to hurt Julian enough to make him angry again. It was only after he spoke that he knew he’d accidentally landed on the truth.
“It’s only mutually assured destruction if you think I’d drag you down with me.” His voice was slow and precise. “But I wouldn’t. You know that. I don’t even think you did it on purpose, but you’ve made sure of it. You survive this no matter what.”
Julian looked at Paul with something that could have been pity as easily as horror. At first it appeared he couldn’t speak, and then as if he’d decided not to try. Paul folded his arms and stared at the wall. As Julian brushed past him, he touched Paul’s hip with his fingertips, but Paul couldn’t bring himself to meet his eyes.
Julian left the door open to the hallway. Paul heard him pause at the head of the stairs and murmur something to himself over and over, trying a different tone each time, as if he were praying. Then he took a deep breath and descended, and when he spoke aloud, Paul realized he’d been rehearsing.
“Where’s the birthday girl hiding?” It was an imperfect performance, but the others weren’t primed to expect perfection, and they likely wouldn’t notice. “I need to give her her present . . .”
His family would notice his absence if he avoided them much longer. With meticulous care, Paul reassembled himself. He knew the reflection in the mirror was his, but it was only a philosophical understanding. When he made his face blank and straightened his back, he felt a distant surprise that the boy in the mirror was doing the same thing.
He didn’t see Julian downstairs, and didn’t hurry to find him. He drifted through the chattering chaos as if he were no longer attached to his body. When an aunt turned to address him or one of the young guests bumped into him, he reflexively smiled. He didn’t remember a word of his conversations; neither would anyone else. At long last, he didn’t exist, even to himself.
But his mother—she existed. She was in a good mood, flushed and cheerful, holding court in a flowery chiffon cocktail dress she hadn’t worn in years. She would catch Laurie long enough to scoop her into a kiss on the cheek, then let her go, laughing, and tell a teasing story that Laurie was meant to overhear. Paul recognized his mother now—not the phantom she had been for two years, but her. He had nearly forgotten her, and her return now felt so sudden and so fragile that he feared the slightest pressure might send her away again.
He imagined—forced himself to imagine—what might happen if she learned everything he was and everything he’d done. He imagined how the grief and terror would make her tentative colors fade again for good.
“Honey, I swear,” he heard her say. “The more you smoke, the less you seem to eat.”
His mother was talking to Julian, trying to ply him with a wedge of cake, split down the center by a bloody stripe of jam. As she was talking, Julian met Paul’s eyes, and the despair in his face was so naked that it felt impossible that she wouldn’t see it.
“Ugh, sorry.” His voice caught up to the persona faster than his face, but just barely. “I had a late breakfast.”
His mother followed Julian’s gaze and beckoned for Paul to join them. He and Julian stood two feet apart, the air between them snapping with static. If his mother could sense it, it didn’t show in her face.
“You’re getting so thin,” she accused, and when Julian wryly thanked her, she winced. She spoke more quietly then, as if to keep passersby from listening in; Paul wasn’t certain even he was intended to hear. “Did something happen with your parents? You’ve been so out of sorts lately.”
For the first time, it seemed possible that Julian couldn’t maintain a lie. “He’s fine,” Paul cut in, too tersely.
Even in the worst moments of that long shattering day in Maryland, Paul had never seen Julian look so on edge. He was the one who was never supposed to be a liability. If everything were to go wrong—and Paul had imagined it against his will beforehand, again and again, even in at the heights of their euphoria—if it were all to go wrong, Paul was supposed to be the one to fall apart. Julian was supposed to be rational and cool and ruthless, willing to put a knife between Paul’s ribs until the pain shocked sense back into him. He should never have let Paul doubt that he was in control.
Paul’s mother couldn’t make sense of it, and Julian tried not to give her a chance to. He pulled a laborious smile and finally accepted the plate; she watched him as he gingerly took a bite, then swallowed it as if it chafed in his throat.
“You’re so sweet to worry,” he told her. “It’s nothing dire. I’ll survive.”
They hung together as long as they had to, until his mother—less reassured than she pretended—wandered out of sight to attend to another guest. Julian let his face fall. He turned his paper plate upside down in the trash bin and pushed it down with his fingertips, until it sank between the napkins and gift ribbons. Then he fled into the crowd.
“Julian,” Paul tried to protest, but he was already out of sight.
Detail returned in a rush—crumpled eclairs and birthday candles and sugar-bright cake frosting, a glancing tang of heavily sprayed unwashed hair. Chatter and high laughter, the bass currents of his grandfather’s voice in the distance, the cat—never shy—chirping and complaining as it circled the visitors’ legs. The empty hanukkiah still sat in the window, forgotten in the chaos of party preparations; when Paul cut through the living room, he paused to return it to its box, so reflexively that he barely noticed he was doing it.
He wasn’t looking for Julian; all he wanted was cold air and quiet. But he found the front door yawning and the welcome mat dusted with snow. Julian’s satchel lay on its side, books and cigarettes scattered as if he’d shaken them free. He was sitting on the bottom stair, windbitten, shaking, drawing rapid gulping breaths. Snowflakes clung to his shoulders and his hair.
When Julian saw him, he didn’t even try to pull himself together. Paul reached for his arm, but he jerked away and Paul let his hands fall to his sides. Something like shame moved through Julian’s face, and he looked away into the street.
“I fucked up,” he said.
Paul reached down to pull Julian around by his shoulders. “What do you mean? How did you fuck up? Julian.”
Another inhale, sharp and deep.
“My lung is collapsing.” He spoke in a stuttering staccato, and Paul was afraid he might cry. “They told me I was high-risk, the fucking accident—I remember what it’s like, it’s like I’m caught on the barb of a harpoon, I can feel it—I can’t breathe, I’m going to fucking die—”
It would be better if Julian was right, and the problem was simple enough to solve with a few days in the hospital. The truth was worse; that was how Paul knew to believe it.
He became his father because he needed to be. He sat on the steps beside Julian and held his shoulders.
“Breathe out, then hold your breath,” he said. “Then breathe in slowly.”
Julian made a noise too pained and furious to be a laugh. “Fuck you. I need to go to the hospital, please, don’t you dare—”
“Do it.”
Julian shut his eyes and covered his face, but he did as he was told. There was no spasm of pain, either on the exhale or the inhale, though if Paul had mentioned this he knew Julian would have summoned one. He took the air in as smoothly as he ever had—there was the rasp of cold and pollution, the familiar imbalance in right and left, but he was healthy and strong and his body held itself together. He was the same fierce creature he’d always been; the difference was that he couldn’t remember it.
“You’re all right,” Paul said, but his voice was incapable of reassurance. He sounded as if he was trying to win a fight. “I get them sometimes, you’re just breathing too fast, it’ll go away.”
Julian looked at Paul and smiled.
“Of course,” he said. “You know how it sounds. How people breathe when they’re really dying.”
S
omething shuffled behind them, and they whipped around in unison. Audrey stood in the doorway, hand braced against the frame. The light was better behind her than in front of her, but Paul could see the shadow of a frown.
“What’s going on out here?” Her gaze flitted between them, but when it reached Julian it lingered.
“Just getting some fresh air.” Paul didn’t stammer. “We’re fine,” he said. “You can shut the door.”
A pause. Another long look at Julian. Julian set his jaw and said nothing.
“Well, come in before you freeze to the doorstep,” said Audrey. “I don’t want to have to chip you off with the shovel.”
“We’re fine, Audrey. Please give us a minute.”
The hinges wheezed as the door closed. Julian looked into the street and choked down a mouthful of cold air. Paul touched his back.
“Tell me what went wrong.” Resignation was nearly as good as calm. “Julian. Look at me. Tell me what happened. We can’t fix it if you don’t tell me.”
Julian sat up straight. For a long moment he shut his eyes, hands curled like the claws of a fallen bird. Then he turned to Paul. “‘What went wrong.’” His smile was ruthless. “I don’t even know where to start.”
He shrugged off Paul’s arm and flung himself up the steps, just long enough to gather his belongings. When he emerged, he kicked the door shut behind him and pushed a handful of the spilled cigarettes back into his satchel. Paul tried to follow him, but the look Julian gave him stopped him in his tracks. Julian’s wool coat was folded over his arm. His hands shook, but his spine was very straight. He was terrified and luminous with fury.
“I should never have let you convince me that this was what you needed from me.” He was cold and sharp. “Maybe that’s what went wrong.”
Paul didn’t speak; he couldn’t. Julian opened up the car and threw his bookbag inside.
“I want to be alone. Not that you ever care what I want.” Julian lit a crooked broken-necked cigarette and flicked the match into the gutter. “I’ll call you when I can stand the sight of you. Don’t hold your breath.”
These Violent Delights Page 33
