The King of Infinite Space

by Lyndsay Faye

  “And you sure what she say was he gonna kill her?” Moma repeats, a midnight gleam in her eye.

  “Completely,” Lia assures her.

  “And this Jessica called on God, help me, what I gonna do?”

  “Yeah, I was standing right there.”

  “What good’ll God be to that poor sweet girl?” Moma laments with growing glee.

  “Not one little bit,” Mam’zelle trills.

  “She sound like she need help in this here and now, not hereafter, you feel me, my sister?”

  “Ma chère sister preaches truth, sure enough.”

  “Oh, this man of hers sounds mean.” Moma smiles without using her mouth, wrinkling her nose like a rabbit.

  “I think he sounds sick,” Mam’zelle agrees with visible delight.

  “Up to no good no how.”

  “A snake in the grass, chère, as I live and breathe.”

  “Reap the harvest,” Maw-maw proposes, wielding her spray bottle on high. She’s back.

  “All right, chouchou, allons-y!” Mam’zelle claps her pretty hands together. “Maw-maw, you throw wide that door!”

  Maw-maw budges the door open, grunting. Lia beckons to Jessica, who now weeps in little hitching coughs on the hewn bench.

  Jessica startles to her feet. Then she wobbles indoors, hazel eyes wide. She isn’t pretty, but she’s expensive-looking, and that sometimes counts for more.

  “Welcome to the Three Sisters’.” Lia smiles.

  “Thanks for letting me in. Jesus,” she breathes, clutching a wet Kleenex to her breast. “It’s a fucking rain forest. Are there toucans?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t put it past them to install a koi pond.”

  They walk to the gilt-adorned leather desk nestled in the corn palms, where Mam’zelle beams at the arctic light of her computer screen.

  “Bonjour et bienvenue!” The proprietress offers a queenly hand palm down, as if Jessica is meant to kiss it. “I hear tell that you’re in need of our services. Bien! You sit right here, and my sister Moma will bring us some coffee with good thick cream, and you tell me every trouble you been suffering.”

  At the opposite end of the long countertop, Lia watches Moma and Maw-maw’s mouths stretch into carnivorous grins.

  “I don’t even do dairy.” Jessica seems mesmerized.

  Lia strides alongside Moma for the coffeepot and the mini fridge, straining to hear all that Jessica has to say. This is the perfect distraction to prevent her from letting loose a floodgate of anxious text messages and possibly even voicemails.

  Anyway, Ben loathes voicemails.

  Sometimes, the Three Sisters’ Floral Boutique sells wedding packages. Sometimes, they sell by the stem. Sometimes, they send out deliveries to restaurants and hotels and private clients. But every so often—for a price, a very high price Lia suspects—the bouquets get just plain weird. And the people who order these always do so with a shocking level of urgency.

  “Thank you for this,” Lia says to Moma, pouring Ronnybrook cream into porcelain covered in cabbage roses.

  “How I’m gonna say no to this face?” Moma runs fingers over Lia’s chin. “Anyhow, two years you done been here and it’s high time you helped me. Every step with this one, let’s get those artist’s hands of yours dirty again.”

  “You’re kidding.” Excitement flits down Lia’s spine.

  “Cross my heart, baby girl.” Moma lifts the steaming cups onto their mirrored tray. “Now we go and listen with all our might.”

  Back at the client desk, Jessica is in full swing. It turns out that she’s a hand talker, so Moma delivers refreshments with care. It also turns out that Jessica was absolutely right to demand entrance. Lia wouldn’t have faulted her for employing a battering ram.

  Jessica has an ex-boyfriend named Jeremy, whom she met through their work at the Wall Street hedge fund Two Sigma. They dated for three months before deciding in a whirlwind of romance to move in together. She delivered her things to Jeremy’s place on Central Park South, where the sunsets trailed fire across the horizon and the trees rustled Americana ballads. Her father was overjoyed she wasn’t “out in some warehouse wasteland” any longer (Williamsburg was in fact a mecca of double-digit sandwich prices). Her mother was thrilled she was “finding herself” (she’d actually found a boyfriend). Jessica was delighted that she was no longer living solely with Mr. Marbles (her cat). A storybook ending seemed on the horizon after she got promoted to sector head, and eventually portfolio manager.

  There was only one problem.

  “Whenever I wanted to go out with my girls, he went insane,” Jessica says. “Don’t you care about us, don’t you love me? At first I thought he was just being romantic—and that he would mellow out. But then months went by, and it didn’t get any better.”

  “Seems really lonely,” Lia offers.

  Jessica gnaws her lip. “I missed my crew from when I was an associate. We used to have these sprees, we’d wear Prada and get bottle service and just dance till our feet were bleeding. We all came up at the same time, you know? So finally I thought, what the hell, I’ll plan a ladies’ night. They were shocked I even texted. We were all so excited.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Lia observes.

  “It should have been wonderful. It all went wrong, though.”

  Jessica shreds the tissue into sad confetti. A few minutes after having finished her makeup, two minutes before the Uber would arrive, Jeremy smashed her iPhone on their “cute” exposed brick wall. Then he said she looked sexy as hell and she was such a dirty girl and she didn’t have to play hard to get and he pushed her into the bedroom, where they had sex. Very rough sex.

  “I didn’t even know whether—if I wanted to.” Jessica’s eyes are soft and glittering. “I was really scared after the phone thing, you know? He must have thought it was hot, I guess, the drama. Maybe I figured it would get sexy if I played along. Or I thought if I didn’t fight, then . . . then nothing that bad could be happening to me.”

  Mam’zelle stirs sugar and cream into her coffee, smiling like a saint about to give a benediction. “Eh, la la. I know the feeling, à la lettre.”

  Lia does not. Not precisely. As always, she finds herself reflecting, and the reflections splinter into cutting edges.

  Nothing ever really happened to you. Not really. Only pictures.

  Nothing like this.

  Pick a card, any card . . .

  There are still no excuses for the things that you’ve done.

  Lia snaps herself out of it, annoyed. “What did you do?”

  Jessica left Jeremy after he started reading her texts and hacking into her email. The same group of girlfriends from her first hedge fund showed up one morning when Jessica was pretending to work from home. The five dumped all her belongings in boxes, revved up the U-Haul, and escaped. Jeremy required a restraining order, Jessica became a new roommate with her girl gang back in Brooklyn, and the skies seemed to clear.

  “Then last night I was out on a date, and . . . and Jeremy was at the club,” Jessica wails. “When he saw me, he punched Arthur—that was my date, Arthur, he’s in environmental law. Poor Arthur! And Jeremy said he was going to kill me, and I’m too scared to go back to my place with my friends. A coworker of mine said that her fiancé used to hit her sometimes, and she sent me here. She said you fix things. What am I going to do?”

  “Oh, we have just the tonic, pretty pet,” Mam’zelle coos. “Moma, chère?”

  “What you said, my sister?” Moma appears at her side.

  “I’m thinking that Miss Jessica here owes Mr. Jeremy an apology.”

  “I . . . excuse me?” Jessica says.

  “Oh, you couldn’t be more right,” Moma agrees.

  “A bouquet would go a long way toward mending what’s broken,” Mam’zelle muses.

  “Surely would
settle that poor man’s troubled spirits, and a man with troubled spirits is a plague on all the land. I’m thinking something nice in white clover, me.”

  WHITE CLOVER: Ends hexed conditions, guards against hostile forces, brings about closure.

  Jessica frowns, confused.

  “Now, this bouquet would come with a Three Sisters’ Floral Boutique binding money-back guarantee that your relations with your ex petit ami will be nothing but amicable henceforth.” Mam’zelle produces a single-sheet contract and a stiff card edged in gold leaf. “You, Miss Jessica, need only pay us our fee, sign this document, and personally inscribe your signature on the note that’ll accompany the delivery. The aforementioned delivery will be made by us to you, but you must deliver it into Mr. Jeremy’s hands yourself. We’ll take care of the actual message, ne t’inquiète pas. Only the freshest, choicest flowers, herbs, and our signature pure aromatic oils will be used for your gift to Mr. Jeremy. We ask in addition to our usual rate only that you recommend us to others.”

  “And how much is the usual rate?”

  Mam’zelle taps a Montblanc pen against a line in the contract. Lia’s jaw drops.

  Jessica slaps her credit card down with a clack.

  “Oh, baby, we gonna have such fun with this order, I can’t hardly wait!” Moma pecks the top of Lia’s brow.

  The sudden touch warms her scalp. Lia can’t help but feel that this transaction marks a significant shift. She coaxed the sisters into allowing Jessica inside, and now she’s been invited to assist with their peculiar art form. It’s a stepping stone of some kind, or a marker, and those always ring Lia as if she’s a bell in a church tower.

  “Reap the harvest,” Maw-maw repeats in an approving rasp.

  “What does that mean, Maw-maw?” Lia wants to know.

  But Maw-maw doesn’t answer. She has a broom now, wide-headed and scraggly, and she smiles with her teeth but not her eyes as she pushes it past Lia, dragging a dustpan tunelessly behind her.

  Mam’zelle gifts Jessica a small purple crystal in a velvet bag for lagniappe and tells their new client to keep it close as she departs. The sisters make murmured comments, consulting. Lia is about to ask Moma when they plan to start work on the bouquet when the door flies open without a knock and a man darts inside—perfectly coiffed, designer suit, white-haired, and wearing an expression as if he’s either about to emcee a six-year-old’s birthday extravaganza or murder a puppy. The showroom lights flicker, frizzle, then glow once more.

  “Why good lord above us, if it isn’t Robin!” Moma exclaims darkly.

  “Merde, look what’s washed ashore at high tide,” Mam’zelle says in a low growl. “How are you faring, cher? Step into the light, let your old friend have a look at you.”

  “Well met indeed, my dulcet darling duckies!” the man cries. He’s extremely short, with the burning yellow eyes of a jungle lizard, and a similarly posh accent to her dear old friend Horatio’s. The thought makes her heart twinge. “How come our crops for this season? Berries plump? Fruits groaning? Lambs well-suckled?”

  Lia stares. The sisters hoot, raising praise hands. Thank god Jessica is gone, or she’d have been thunderstruck. Yes, that’s exactly the word, this is a thunderous entrance, because the air hops and thrums with static.

  “Harvest full to busting,” Maw-maw announces.

  She lifts the dustpan reverently, like a ceremonial urn. Tipping it, she pours it over her head, bits of dust and ribbon and leaves and hair and other dead things fluttering as they anoint her brow.

  HORATIO

  My words have become fractures as of late;

  splintered bones, dark skeletons of lost poems and journeys home

  from places where love sinks beneath the floorboards.

  —Shinji Moon, “Fragmented”

  Horatio appreciates the alarming distraction of Benjamin’s uncle Claude, he of the perennial golf attire; otherwise Horatio would be drowning in nostalgia just seeing their flat again. They haven’t talked about it yet, not really. Referenced it yes, but discussed, far from it. We might never talk about it. Would that in fact be better? As matters stand, he’s quietly observing, ready to leap in if Benjamin should need him.

  It’s incredible you made it so long in London without practicing your life’s vocation.

  “Hey, I just figured you’d prefer I drop these off in person.” Claude spreads his hands. “I had to wait because I don’t know what kind of schedule you’re keeping, you get me?”

  “The dig about being presently underemployed? Yep, I get you, it wasn’t subtle.” Benjamin makes a tiny circuit, two or three steps toward the leather sofa they bought at Housing Works and arrowing back at the chipped granite countertop dividing the kitchen from the sitting and dining area.

  “Hey, hey, kiddo, offense is not my goal here. We’re family, OK?”

  “I might be your family twice over, but I’m not your fucking kiddo. That’s offensive in and of itself. Goal failed.”

  “Wow, what’s with the walls?” Claude juts his chin at the cheap wooden panels screwed into the drywall, the scrawled quotations from grad school days crammed into every corner in various penmanships.

  “They’re anecdotes.” Horatio bites his lip at the reams of multicolored Sharpie devoted to their grad school witticisms.

  “They’re snapshots from parties you weren’t invited to,” Benjamin hisses.

  Benjamin has been this toxic for over ten minutes now, but Horatio doesn’t wonder why Claude lingers. He’s always had the patience and placidity of a friendly cow. The man appears to find insults genuinely clever. Absolutely everyone on earth likes him with the exception of his nephew.

  What might be still more relevant to avuncular lingering: Claude Dane is now wed to Trudy Dane, and Trudy is positively obsessed with Benjamin. Horatio shouldn’t be surprised if her new husband had been given his marching orders and instructed to report on Benjamin’s status in full, juicy detail.

  Claude is strikingly unlike Benjamin’s late father. Jackson Dane was decidedly Texan—large personality, large head with a large mane of leonine hair, large goals. Claude is quite small, a half-brother from another marriage who grew up in Florida and listens with the incredible attentiveness of a successful businessman. As if he’s both memorizing your wife’s taste in wine and studying your tax return. He sports khaki pleated shorts in the heat, khaki pleated trousers in the cold, and when he’s undecided about temperature, he actually ties a pastel cashmere sweater around his shoulders. Claude sells lavish New Jersey properties in places like Alpine or New Vernon, Horatio can’t recall. He is very handsome in the way all real estate agents tend to be and has blue eyes like Benjamin and his lost father. But where the elder’s were coldly keen and the younger’s like a clever stretch of sky, the brother’s are flat and self-satisfied and caring. Horatio suspects that Benjamin detests Claude because he isn’t even the slightest bit introspective. He likes action films. He likes specific sports teams.

  Not everyone needs to conduct inquiries into their own mortality six or seven times a day, mate, Horatio thinks with a rare flash of pique.

  “I get why you feel so hostile toward me right now.” Claude’s exaggerated patience sounds like a person bragging about charitable donations, but Horatio expects it’s entirely sincere. “Everyone loses their parents eventually, but none of that matters if it’s your loss we’re talking about, Benny.”

  “Sooooooo, one of all, you will never ever again call me Benny, because we’ve had that conversation, like, half a dozen times. Two of all, yes. It is completely understandable that the sight of you gives me hives.”

  “Under other circumstances I’d have mailed this old stuff.” Claude crosses his arms over his polo shirt, aqua today. “But I wanted to check in. Your mom—well, of course I mean your mom and I—miss seeing you, especially during this difficult period.”

  Aha,
Horatio thinks. You are merely the emissary. Got it in one.

  Benjamin drags his hand through his hair. “Somebody had to actually make mortuary arrangements other than Paul Brahms. He’s already loco over the benefit gala.”

  “And we deeply appreciate it. All the care you took. You really stepped up to the plate there, Ben. Trudy was just . . . beside herself.”

  “No, she was beside you,” Benjamin corrects sweetly.

  “But my brother can never be replaced, and his family has to move on. He’s buried—buried the way such a great man deserved, with the utmost respect, thanks to you. He’s at peace. We’re past that now.”

  This, Horatio thinks. This is the sort of unromantic pragmatism that will set Benjamin whizzing like an arcade game.

  “Yes, and I am so happy for you!” Benjamin rubs at the heavy leather bracelet. “Sorry I missed City Hall, but I wasn’t invited. Did you pick out, like, a pattern for fucking salad tongs?”

  Claude’s neck reddens. “Listen, you are in a very hard place right now, but remember that Jackson and I lost our father, too. And our dad lost his dad.”

  “Are you aware that the number of mammalian heartbeats—no matter the size of the animal, it makes no difference because shrew hearts beat suuuper quickly and elephant hearts really slowly—in a lifetime is always approximately one point five billion in number? Isn’t that cool? I hope my dad cracked a billion, the thought makes me feel better. Anyway though, there were not enough.”

  “I’d never argue with you there, son. Tragedy is a fact of existence.”

  “How many salad tongs will you be needing exactly? I’m good for at least five.”

  Wincing, Horatio does what any steady-nerved friend would do under the circumstances; squeezes Benjamin’s ropey biceps and goes to make them all a cuppa. The beloved red kettle waits on the stovetop. He unearths a stack of half-crushed tea boxes, black and green and chamomile that all smell like dust, and clicks on the gas. It splutters, shocked out of a deep hibernation. Horatio resolves with a fresh jolt of guilt to buy groceries. By the time he turns around, the Danes are scrapping over living arrangements.