The King of Infinite Space

by Lyndsay Faye

  The twins broadcast identical leers across the white porcelain side dishes Ben hasn’t even pretended to touch.

  Why the hell did I hang out with these pricks—oh yeah, because they were better at mathematical physics than anyone else in the program. It was the philosophy bit where they sucked goat balls.

  “Nothing major, dude.” Garrett takes a slug of champagne.

  “But we were at the Electric Room, right?”

  “And these French girls, I kid you not, they were absolute tens . . .”

  Ben’s lips quirk as the Marlowes describe getting hand jobs in the same coat closet. Not because Ben is enjoying this story, and not because he’s a prude, either. Horatio could crown himself Slut of the Year and Ben would be there with pom-poms, cheering.

  Horatio.

  He smushes that thought like a bug.

  No, Ben’s lips sit crookedly now because he’s got them.

  “Isn’t the Electric Room on Sixteenth?” he interrupts.

  “Uh, yeah, I think—why?” asks Rory.

  “Then how’d you end up at City Diner? Please don’t tell me it was for the coffee. You dudes are freaks, but I don’t think you’re into scat.”

  It only takes a fraction of a second for both men to pause.

  BUT BEN

  HAS THEM

  HE TRULY MOTHERFUCKING

  HAS THEM

  BY THE CAJONES

  “We were meeting these other girls at Ginny’s Supper Club,” Garrett replies too late.

  “Hotter than hot chicks we actually hooked up with in California, and—”

  “Guys, it was so good to catch up with you.” Ben throws down his napkin.

  “What?” says Garrett, paling.

  “Let’s say we, like, order some expensive crap we don’t finish again soon? Those, what was it, frog craw-stuffed burgers you told me about aren’t going to eat themselves, am I right?”

  “Foie gras,” corrects Rory nervously.

  “What the hell, Benny?” Garrett attempts.

  Ben is already in motion. He doesn’t care—he can walk to the offices from here, clear his head, and catch Horatio as he finishes up with Paul Brahms. The door swishes shut behind him, sending atoms and air molecules and dust and photons crashing around like Molly addicts at a rave.

  Entropy, Ben reflects as he enters the sunshine, sliding on Ray-Bans. Regrettable, but necessary for my purposes.

  Too goddamn much pussyfooting around in there, kid. But you made it in the end.

  I totally did, didn’t I?

  What I don’t get is why you didn’t confront those assholes, show a little authority for once.

  Because I don’t want them reporting back that I’m onto them till I know more. Especially not if it’s Mom. Let them think I’m bananas, a whole banana boat, as long as they keep playing their cards.

  You never did learn how to confront your peers, did you? And after all my advice. You are one sorry excuse for a son.

  Ben glances back at the steakhouse, eyes swimming. His entire being pulses with the memory of his irretrievable, unreachable father.

  “Bye, Dad,” he whispers aloud.

  * * *

  • • •

  Hope buds in Ben’s chest, straining through the soil. Everything is solvable. He doesn’t need infinite intelligence to know the wind is blowing north-northwest or to tell a pigeon from a power tool. Ben genuinely doesn’t remember the journey across midtown when the doors go swoooosssh and he’s in a building composed of sterile white light, sterile white marble, and enough filthy secrets to stuff a Chinese landfill, he’s convinced.

  “Benny!” Ariel is overseeing a pallet of deliveries, but his face rumples in a fond smile. “Been nice to see you around so much the past few days.”

  “Oh my god, I’m such a shithead!” Ben exclaims, making the older man frown in confusion.

  Ariel Washington. Why didn’t Ben think of consulting Ariel Washington? The best thing about Ariel Washington (other than Ariel being a fantastic guy and a sobriety counselor and a stellar guitar player in the style of Charlie Christian) is that Ariel is the second person—other than Paul Brahms—who has his fingers on every pulse point of New World’s Stage. Doormen are like that. They deal with everyone and everything that comes in and out of the door, after all. So they own a

  Certain

  Omniscience

  Entirely by default.

  “Sorry, long night. You’d be OK talking with me for a few minutes, wouldn’t you, Ariel?”

  “Sure thing. Walk with me—if I don’t get this mail room organized, Mr. Brahms gonna lose his shit.”

  “That happened, like, eons ago.”

  They stroll through the lobby, with its aggressive air-conditioning and its immaculate potted palms. Ben remembers his first tour of this place. His dad’s chin-jutted enthusiasm, we’re building a legacy here, son, and how somehow it made him feel smaller to be part of a legacy instead of larger. Like he wouldn’t measure up. The expansive mail room is just around the back of the front desk, and when they arrive, Ben grins in delight.

  “Leave it like this, oh please leave it like this.”

  It’s clearly crunch time for the benefit. Two days out, and the place looks like the 34th Street USPS on Christmas Eve, clogged with the staggering accumulation of shit that goes into hosting a charity gala with a silent auction element and legendary swag bags. It smells overwhelmingly of cardboard and chaos. Ariel taps his pen against his lip.

  “This some kinda side visit? You got business with Paul, I take it?”

  “Oh, well.” Ben shifts, realizing how sheepish this is going to sound. “I actually sent Horatio to do that.”

  “No kidding? That’s an eighteen-karat friend you got there. But why send him to see Paul?”

  “Paul has, shall we say, a very distinct take on my mental stability.”

  Ariel’s eyes nearly vanish when he chuckles. “Mr. Brahms got a very distinct take on everything, way I see it. So then what’re you up to? Coming from a late-night set or something?”

  “Ariel, you know I’m not really a musician, right?”

  “ ’Course you are.” Ariel makes a hah of discovery, moving two boxes to the opposite side of the room. “You got heart and brains. S’all it takes.”

  “Well, some would argue talent is also key,” Ben objects, though the compliment warms him.

  “Practice is worth fifty times what talent is. And practice requires stubbornness, and you as pigheaded as they come.”

  Suddenly enervated, Ben sinks down on a biggish box. Yes, he is stubborn.

  But.

  This is all so exhausting.

  He was hardly the mascot for good cheer before, but those struggles had to do with not mattering. Suddenly he matters a great deal due to his dad’s untimely end, and Ben feels like settling down in a warm laundry basket and sleeping till all of this is over.

  Is that how Lia felt with me? Like it was too much and not enough all at once?

  Ben shivers. Thank Christ after that disgusting panic attack at the townhouse, once the drugs and the hormones wore off, the nightmare itself flickered and fizzled. Ben couldn’t believe he thought for a few minutes that Lia was the unwilling assistant to their serial killer janitor. Absolutely ideal material for a bad dream. Absolutely absurd notion after waking up and smelling the coffee grounds. He doesn’t even know why he was so sure, only remembers that he was sure, against all rational sense, and that his mind can be a liar and a thief, and he hates it, and he should have brought Horatio.

  Horatio.

  OK, knock it off, that can happen later. Soon.

  “What’s eating at you, Benny?” Ariel doesn’t turn from his inventory, but he’s all attention.

  “Uh, I don’t really know what to say. Maybe you heard fr
om Paul or someone that my dad thought he was being . . . stalked, threatened?”

  “Mighta heard a rumor.”

  “Obviously I have to do something about it. And I have a pretty solid plan in place to learn more. It involves the gala and the part I’m to play in the, um, talent portion.” Ben drops his elbows to his knees. “You know as well as I do that thoughts aren’t to be trusted.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “So I need to find more proof, but. Everything is just so fucking weird since Dad died. Like there’s this horrible patina on the world now. Grime coating everything.”

  Ariel peers at a label. “You feeling paranoid, you mean?”

  “Well.” Ben lifts a shoulder. “Like they say, if you look around the whole bus and can’t find the crazy person . . .”

  “The crazy person is you.”

  “There’s something wrong,” Ben says miserably. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”

  Ariel lowers himself onto a box across from Ben. He has remarkable eyes, a mahogany brown, and suddenly the old friends aren’t in a cramped mail room stuffed to the ceiling with objects that will eventually crumble into dust. They’re in the back of a

  warm jazz club

  and the set is over and

  it smells like phantom cigarettes and white-hot notes

  the carpet is filthy the lighting is dim

  and everything

  is going to be just fine.

  “Like a smell you can’t find the cause for,” Ariel prompts.

  “Exactly, yes! Somebody put a dead trout in the trunk of the world’s car, Ariel, and it’s driving me insane.”

  Ariel straightens his nametag before speaking in his usual low, even tones.

  “Grief plays funny tricks, Benny. Make a man feel locked in a cage when he’s free as a cloud, make him feel alone with his loved ones. Grief is as inevitable as dying. It’s natural. But you’ve seen your share of it.”

  Ben passes a hand over his stinging eyes. “Listen, Ariel, you can—you can help. I think. There are these videos my dad made, claiming he thought Uncle Claude wanted to off him.”

  Ariel’s eyebrows swoop together, creating a picket fence of disbelief. “You gotta be shitting me.”

  “That would be, like, so incredibly amazing if this were one of my darkest jokes, but no. Paul Brahms claims to have recorded them himself. OK, so . . . here’s my dad waving these look out for fratricide flags. But then Mom tells me that Dad was neck-deep in prescription meds and paranoia, so I need some sort of evidence before I go and ruin what’s left of my batshit family.”

  Ariel’s mouth brackets. “So you got a plan, and the plan involves the benefit. You wanna fill me in?”

  Ben’s temples throb. “This plan involves the element of surprise.”

  “Better to ask forgiveness than permission, that it?”

  “Sure. Sounds about right.”

  “Then what questions can I help you out with?”

  Ben chews on his words before asking, “Was my dad mentally disturbed, in your opinion?”

  Ariel puffs out his cheeks. “Your dad, he sure wasn’t . . . settled in his mind. Mrs. Dane worried him. Business worried him. You worried him.”

  “I—do you mind saying that again?” Ben stammers.

  “Not being even a little bit stupid, you’d do best to quit acting the part,” Ariel advises gently. “Let’s say Mr. Brahms thinks that you’re crazier than a dog in a hubcap factory, and that I think you’re musically inclined. Mr. Dane? He thought you were his son, and his son had too many troubles. And it worried him something fierce.”

  Something in Ben’s chest judders like a tectonic plate.

  “I, um. What . . .” Ben clears his throat. “So he worried about me. Everyone does, I even do, so. And he worried about . . . what else?”

  “This theatre. Something terrible.”

  Ben sits forward, ready to lap up information.

  New World’s Stage wasn’t in trouble just before Jackson Dane died . . . yet. But Ariel Washington knew most of the things Paul Brahms knew, and Paul Brahms was fretting more than the usual. About major donors, about production costs. About box office. About the theatre’s investment portfolios. Meanwhile, Jackson snarled whenever it was so much as hinted that the family money would be of assistance. This is a goddamn production company, not a tin cup getting rattled on a street corner, he’d snap. How in hell do you ever expect us to be taken seriously, acting like weaklings whenever we need to make tough calls? And that was that. Paul paced from office to theatre to mail room to accounting department to publicity department and round and round again like a mouse in a maze. Muttering dire portents regarding the now-legendary Spider-Man budget and how all it took was one Beach Boys jukebox musical for Dodger Stage Holding to bite the dust.

  “New World’s Stage been too comfortable too long, is what Paul thinks,” Ariel concludes.

  “What do you think? Like, fall of the Roman Empire comfortable?”

  “Nah, not yet. American empire comfortable. And I think you miss Lia Brahms something awful. And I think that her not being here while you go through this—that it’s almost too much.”

  “It’s,” Ben rasps. “Yeah, it’s a lot. I’m—Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I known you since you was a kid. Lia Brahms too, back before she learned not to comb that hair of hers.”

  The last time Ben saw Lia, she was wildly, happily drunk. Passing shots to her art world friends at an East Village house party. Exposed brick, air festooned with weed, some junkie fixated on the ripple of television lights. Ben was drunk too, really drunk, but the difference was that he’d have a hangover the next morning, while Lia would have the shakes till she retrieved a shot of something from her sock drawer. The snow fell softly that December night, fell like fairy dust or like forgiveness, and as it happened Ben and Lia would no longer be a couple thereafter, and he wrote her a letter a few days later.

  Lia,

  When we first met, you were exploring the theatre where your dad just got a job, and I was hiding from a vicious kid named Jason.

  You found me in the upper balcony eating a turkey cheese sandwich. You looked like you were casing the joint, or like you might order new carpeting. You were eight, same as me. Jason was ten, ten and massive, and our theatre was the only place I could get into and he couldn’t. I never told you, but my ribs were black and blue, and my hip looked like it met a meat grinder, and I couldn’t breathe very well yet.

  Or express myself.

  But I wanted to. So I gave you half my sandwich and you said thank you, I’ve already eaten, but you ate it anyway. Because you knew I’d be hurt if you didn’t. Because that’s the sort of person you were.

  I loved you then. I love you now. I love you everywhere, and everywhen, and after what you did this time, I can never be with you again.

  How am I ever going to recover from something like that?

  If I could shatter time and go back, I would. Smash the whole clock’s face and wrench the hands in reverse.

  Enough poetry, nobody remembers poetry.

  You want to know what I’ll remember? I’ll remember that you smell like melons in the summertime. I’ll remember how much you hate that you can’t sing. I’ll remember what a truly shitty singer you were. I’ll tell myself that everything that ever has happened still exists if you look at Time from outside of Time. And so that day you wanted to watch the sun set from the fire escape, and after we undressed each other we left rusty handprints everyplace, that slice of time is always happening. Just somewhere we could only visit the once.

  The rust never did come out, not from either of our shirts. You left marks on me. I’m going to imagine, because it won’t hurt anyone, that I left marks on you, too.

  I’m sorry that I wasn’t eno
ugh to keep you. I tried to be. It was all I ever wanted, other than for you to be happy.

  Ben

  Ben smears away the tears from his cheeks.

  “Benny, you gotta feel how you feel.”

  “Not like this, though,” he snaps.

  “Why the hell not?” Ariel’s growl is fiercely protective.

  “Because I’m a suicidal-optimist and philosopher-detective and that’s already ridiculous enough.”

  Anxiety ripples across Ariel’s cheeks. “Lia was in a bad way. You gotta stop making yourself sick over it. Just because you can’t do for her anymore don’t mean you have to forget her, nor chew yourself up and spit yourself out, neither.”

  Ariel is an AA counselor, and Ben knows Lia used to attend his meetings. Ariel is sworn to complete privacy regarding them.

  He still wants to rip

  every particle of information from him

  with his bare hands.

  “You can’t tell me, can you,” Ben whispers. “About . . . about when you last saw her, I dunno when that was. What she was like.”

  Ariel shakes his head, lips a sealed envelope.

  Ben straightens. “I would always have wanted more time with her, I know I would, no matter how long it was. That’s the worst part.”

  “What is?”

  “Time. Time will fuck with you endlessly until you’re compost. You can’t hide from it. There’s no hiding from anything, and especially not endings.”

  Ariel nods, but they are interrupted. A shift in the light scuffs against Ben’s awareness, and he looks up to see Horatio practically filling the entrance to the mail room. His best friend looks like he just tripped over Ben’s hopelessly mutilated body in the middle of a ten-car pileup.

  “Benjamin. What’s wrong?” Horatio’s dark eyes are wide. “I was signing out just now, and I heard you.”

  The silence is as lengthy as it is awkward. Ariel waits for Ben to speak. When Ben opens his mouth, he finds there aren’t any words in it, empty as the day he was born. And too many days after that. Realization flushes Horatio’s face that he’s interrupted something intimate.