The Time He Desires

by Kyell Gold

  The Time He Desires

  Kyell Gold

  24 Carat Words

  Contents

  1. The Camera

  2. Doug

  3. The Tape

  4. Halifa

  5. Delivery

  6. Tanska

  7. Founders

  8. Gerald

  9. Doug and the Future

  10. Apologies

  11. Bridges

  12. Severance

  13. A Door Opens

  14. Semantic Reading

  15. Separation

  Epilogue

  About This Book and Islam

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  About Cupcakes

  Also by Kyell Gold

  For a cat who taught an old fox and wolf that it’s never too late to change.

  1

  The Camera

  In his younger days, Aziz stood at the pawnshop counter while taking his afternoon tea, proud of his store. But years ago he had suffered a strain in his back; now when the old grandfather clock chimed four, the cheetah sat at the end of the counter, poured mint tea out of the samovar, and luxuriated in his rest. The view out his front window, unlike Aziz himself, had gotten brighter and newer over the two decades he'd owned the pawnshop. Old brownstones had aged and crumbled, then been demolished and partially replaced with bright yellow brick apartment homes, and three years ago those had given way to a "modern living and shopping space," a six-story blue glass and chrome monster that sprawled across two city blocks. The Upper Devos Homeporium (a development of the Vorvarts group) had assured the merchants in the area "increased foot traffic in your neighborhood, bringing more business and property value to the area," and Aziz along with the others on the Upper Devos Business Council had voted to approve the development. They hated those yellow brick things anyway.

  But that had been five years ago, and as it happened, the people who'd lived in the yellow brick things, who'd been forced to find somewhere else to live when their buildings had been bought, they had been part of the neighborhood not easily replaced. The people who lived and shopped at the Homeporium generally stayed there, not venturing outside to quaint old Upper Devos, and when they did come into the pawnshop, distinctive in their clean, crisply cut clothes, they gawked about with the air of tourists visiting a historical monument. Aziz's business had fallen off; few of these people were hard up enough to have to pawn their possessions, or interested in buying someone else's memories. If he hadn't expanded into online sales years ago, he would have had to close this shop. Not everyone was so down on the new development; Vorvarts considered the Homeporium a smashing success and was planning to expand it. There were talks of a cineplex, a skating rink, a bowling alley.

  The door jingled. Aziz looked up to see a short red fox slipping into the shop, his light blue cotton shirt hanging open over a pair of khaki slacks. He held nothing in his paws, but strode purposefully to the counter as if he were bringing something to sell.

  The cheetah stood and frowned slightly, searching his memory. There were plenty of red foxes who had come into the pawnshop over the years, but not so many in the last few years. The red foxes who inhabited the neighborhood now were European, upscale, far too snooty to grace a pawnshop with their presence--the kind who wouldn't live in the Homeporium but would shop nowhere else. But this one was different, definitely one of the longtime residents of Upper Devos or the nearby towns, and yet Aziz did not know him. "Good afternoon, sir," the cheetah said. "How may I help you?"

  "Hi," the fox said. "I'm looking for a video camera, a Pawtic R400."

  "Of course." Aziz pointed to the back left corner of the store. "We have several on the shelves back here. Newer models than that one, too."

  "No. I'm looking for a specific one." The fox looked away and took a breath. "It would have been brought in about a year ago by a cougar named Gerald DeRoot. I have..." He dug into the bag at his side. "I have our marriage certificate so you know I'm his family."

  While he was laying the paper and the driver's license on the table, Aziz kept his demeanor calm. He'd run into married male couples before, and they always made him feel wary but with a vertiginous fascination. Of course, sexual contact with males was haraam, but the couples he knew weren't Muslim. Normally when he encountered a non-Muslim eating pork, for example, or drinking alcohol, or even cheating at cards, he felt only a sense of being other, and not one that bothered him. But back in his home country of Madiyah, homosexual behavior was punishable by death, often brutal and public. This had been an immutable fact of Aziz's life until he was past twenty and stepping off a plane in the States.

  Here he had found a different world. He read the newspapers and watched the increasing acceptance of gay people and couples with the memory of his uncle's flight always in his mind. And so, perhaps, he did not look for those people and couples in his everyday life. When the two female fennec foxes who owned the organic grocery store down the block had announced their marriage, he'd been surprised. "You didn't know they were a couple?" Halifa had said with amusement, and Aziz had responded stiffly that he didn't look for such things. But after that there were more marriages and he started to see relationships even outside the wedding announcements.

  And then there had been his son.

  "Sir?"

  Aziz looked down with a start. His paws felt tight. The fox had placed an id on the counter next to a piece of paper, so Aziz stretched his fingers as he examined both. The license identified the fox as Benjamin Tonnen, with an address over on Larchmont. And the piece of paper...

  This certifies that Gerald DeRoot and Benjamin Tonnen were joined in marriage on the 2nd day of April, 2011.

  The two male names, the joining in marriage...the cheetah's paw shook slightly as he laid the paper down. "You didn't need to bring this," he said. "Anyone may purchase anything in the store."

  "Yes, but that camera is really important. If someone else bought it, I was hoping you might let me know who. It's not even the camera. It's the tape. He sold it with the tape still in it." The fox--Benjamin--wrung his paws. His ears were flat and his tail curled behind him, drawn in on himself. "We didn't need the money that badly--do people do that often?"

  The descent and abrupt return from his monologue caught Aziz off guard. "Do people do what?"

  "Sell cameras with the tapes still in them. Do people buy them?" He gestured to the section of video cameras. "If I buy one of those and it has a tape in it, do I get the tape too?"

  "When we take an item, we take it as it is." Aziz kept his professional demeanor up. "And when a customer buys it, they buy it as it is."

  Benjamin's ears stayed down. He glanced at the computer. "So...can you check? Can you see if someone bought it, or if you still have it?"

  "Do you see it on the shelf?" Aziz didn't have to check the computer. No fox had brought in a video camera in the last two years, not to this store, anyway. Possibly on one of the days he hadn't been here, but those were few; possibly Benjamin had the location wrong and his--husband--had gone to one of Aziz's other locations. For that he could just text Naseeb, who worked at the store closest to this one.

  Benjamin trudged over to the shelf to look. The marriage certificate remained on the counter, open but bowing up along the fold. It remained crisp, so it had likely been put away somewhere and well cared for. Likely by the fox, not by his--his husband, technically.

  The paper drew Aziz's eyes again, and now he saw the species below the names. Benjamin Tonnen, red fox, and Gerald DeRoot--cougar.

  Oh. And now he remembered the fox saying that Gerald was a cougar and felt foolish for assuming he would have been a fox. Regardless, that changed everything. He knew which
camera it was now. And he remembered the cougar, too, large and sullen, in a stained white t-shirt and camo pants. He'd sold the camera along with an old VCR and a sewing machine, and he'd spoken barely a word. Aziz had given him the price and he hadn't complained nor tried to haggle, just put his large tan paw out and taken the cash. Off to buy alcohol, Aziz had thought, and he'd tagged the items and put them on the shelf.

  The fox came back shaking his head. "There's one that's the same model, I think, but there's no tape in it."

  "I am sorry," Aziz said. "I moved some cameras to one of my other locations because we had too many here. I will have it sent over if it is still there. The price should be the same as it is there on the shelf; fifty dollars, is it?"

  He waited for Benjamin to haggle, to tell him that the camera hadn't been sold in a year and had been moved to another store where it still hadn't been sold (if it hadn't been sold), to offer him a small amount for the tape without the camera, but the fox perked his ears and only said, "Yes, that's fine. Which location? I could go now."

  Aziz indicated the computer. "I will have to see if it is still there. I would hate for you to travel all the way to Cape Red for nothing."

  Benjamin's ears flattened again. Cape Red was a wonderful place for a pawnshop, but not so much for casual visiting, and it would be an hour away by public transportation. "I don't really mind," he said.

  "My store manager comes in every night anyway. I'll call and have her bring the camera. If it is still there." Aziz smiled. "And you can come back tomorrow and have it."

  "Well..." Benjamin's claws tapped the counter glass, which there was a sign asking people not to do, but Aziz let it pass. "Can you call him right now? I'd hate for someone to walk in and buy it."

  "Of course." Aziz smiled and picked up the phone.

  The manager at the Cape Red store was a young hyena named Jennifer, bright and energetic. Aziz described the camera and the tape, and she put him on hold while she went to check her shelves. A moment later she came back, slightly breathless, and reported that she'd found a camera of that model with a tape in it. He instructed her to put it behind the counter and bring it in that evening.

  "They still have it," he told Benjamin, who clearly had heard his conversation. His ears were up and he was smiling, his tail swishing behind him. "Video cameras don't sell so much anymore. One year is not unusual. Still, sometimes people want them."

  "I know it's weird," the fox said. "A year later. I knew he'd sold the camera, but I was looking for the tape and I found the box but the tape wasn't in it. And I asked him and..." And there his ears went to the side and his eyes went down. "Anyway, I figured it was in the camera, because the last time I remembered us using it was...that tape was in it."

  The cheetah nodded. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

  "Oh, no. So...tomorrow, I can come back...?"

  "I should have it first thing."

  "Thank you so much." Benjamin was all joy again, relief in his amber eyes, his ears upright and tail even wagging. "God, I'd hate to lose that tape. You know, we can buy another camera, but we can't make those memories over again, right?"

  Aziz allowed the fox's delight to bring a smile to his muzzle as well. "I'm very glad we still have it. I'll look for you tomorrow morning."

  "Yes, yes!" And the fox reached over and seized Aziz's paw, shook it vigorously, and then hurried out of the shop.

  The cheetah held his paw and watched through the window as the fox stopped on the pavement in front of the store and then lost himself in the crowd of people going by. It was nice to be able to make someone happy in this business, he thought. He was about to return to his samovar when the crowd thinned for a moment. Through the gap in the flow of t-shirts, skirts, and tails, the figure of Benjamin was visible doubled over against the charcoal-grey lamppost. The fox's paws covered his face and he appeared to be shaking.

  Was he sick? Aziz started around the counter, but a moment later, the fox straightened and rubbed his paws across his eyes. They left wet streaks that Aziz could see even through the glass. Naked emotion wrinkled the russet fur around the eyes and the white fur on his muzzle as Benjamin rubbed again, visibly composing himself. A moment later, a herd of deer in identical business suits crowded past the store window, and when they'd passed, Benjamin was gone.

  2

  Doug

  At five Aziz closed the store with the "back in 15 minutes" sign, retreated to the back for the asr prayer, letting go of his troubles. He focused on Allah and spoke the words glorifying Him. As he went through the ritual motions and spoke the familiar words, he felt the warmth of Allah's presence; not as strongly as when he would join his neighborhood mosque for the isha night prayer, but still present as He always was. He ended the prayer with the recital to his left and right, to the angel on his right that recorded all his good deeds and the angel on the left that recorded all his bad.

  The shop saw a stream of customers from when he reopened until about seven, when people went to restaurants for dinner. He closed again for the sunset prayer, then stayed open until 7:45, when he closed his register and tidied up the store. His hours said until 8, and in the first few years of owning the store, he had made a point to stay until eight o'clock exactly. In recent years, as the neighborhood shifted and there were fewer people out late at night looking for bargains in discarded memories, he had become a little more lax. Tonight he left at five to eight and arrived at the café Casablanca at five after.

  The main advantage of the café, Aziz and his friend Doug had decided, was that it sat directly below the large billboard atop the corner building, so it was the only place within a two-block square where a couple old friends could sit outside and not have to stare at whatever was being advertised this month. Last week the billboard had changed to an ad for Space Wolf, a movie made from a cartoon that had run twenty years ago. Aziz remembered Marquize loving the cartoon, but the movie was made using photorealistic characters rather than the charmingly drawn animation, and anyway he didn't want to think about his son.

  Doug wasn't there yet, so Aziz got a table and a small coffee and waited for the Prevost's squirrel to arrive. As he leaned back in the metal frame chair, letting his tail swing free, the cheetah scanned the coffee shop. Many of the customers he recognized, a few from his mosque, but a large part of the clientele changed from day to day. Two of the regulars were a pair of wolves, another two a dingo and an arctic fox, both gay couples. The wolves were demonstrative and had kissed in public from almost the first time he'd seen them, but the dingo and fox were shyer. It was only a few years ago that Aziz had watched them more closely and had seen the signs of a bond there.

  Tonight they sat over a pot of tea, smiling at a phone on the table. He wondered if they were texting to a mutual friend, or maybe looking at a photo album, or planning a trip together. Did Benjamin and his husband talk like that? In his experience, when one member of a couple sold a treasured possession, the pair was having problems. Might not even be together anymore. It was strange; though same-sex couples had been a part of the world around him for years, he'd never taken the time to imagine that their relationships might follow the same arcs as traditional marriages. Where he came from, husbands and wives didn't touch in public; even though here the customs were different, he had always viewed public displays of affection as sexual, and that was the only way he'd known same-sex couples to this point. Between that and searching on the Internet a few years ago, he had concluded that their pairings were mainly sexual arrangements.

  "Zeez?"

  Aziz had been staring at the fox and dingo for who knows how long. He hid his discomfort and looked up at Doug with a smile. "Evening, Doug."

  "Lost in thought?"

  "Something like that. We got the offer letter from Vorvarts today."

  "Finally. Was it what you expected?" Doug dropped his bulk into the chair opposite Aziz and straightened his t-shirt over reddish arm and chest fur.

  "About."

  "And
?"

  Aziz looked deliberately away from the dingo and fox. From here he could not see the Homeporium, only rows of old brownstones. Were it not for the strain in his back and the aches that traveled around his joints, he could almost believe he was sitting here twenty years earlier. "I have to talk to Halifa before we go to the meeting. It's difficult. I don't want to leave this area. Halifa says the area is leaving us."

  "You're telling me. I had three different people come in today looking for the Morey Tanderson book. Fortunately I also read that article in the Port City Review and had stocked a few dozen of them." He leaned in. "It's a terrible book, so self-indulgent. I knew all the millennials would want it."

  In general, the ages of the Homeporium residents fell onto a neat bell curve centered around thirty, but to Doug, a "millennial" was anyone under forty. Aziz smiled slightly. "Did you read it?"

  "I had to. People ask me about it." The squirrel shook his black-furred head. "The things I do for my job."

  "I had a customer come in looking for an item his husband had pawned." Aziz forced himself to say 'husband' and was pleased at how natural it sounded.

  "Ah." Doug signaled the waiter. "Familiar story."

  "With a twist." He turned his head casually back toward the dingo and fox, who were now talking, the phone still on the table between them. Aziz leaned forward to pick up his tea and stopped. Behind the dingo and fox, a cougar sat alone in a tight-fitting olive green t-shirt, his feet framing an Army duffel bag below the table. One paw held an iced tea, the other his phone, which he stared intently at.

  The memory was a year old, but could that be Gerald? Aziz narrowed his eyes, trying to see around the dingo, but at that moment the waiter filled his view.

  They ordered their simple dinner, and Doug ordered a chamomile tea. "So that's why you were looking at Michael and Panno."