Kate says, glancing over to the table. Frankie blinks but doesn’t respond.
Julian smiles at Liz. “What kind of slapdash story would it be, Liz, if it wasn’t about love?” he says. “Yes. Every good story is about love.”
Now they really want to hear.
“Even the death at sea story?” Liz asks. A romantic tremble animates and beautifies her plain, freckled face.
“Especially that one,” Julian says. “Because that one is about the truest love of all. A love that just is, and asks for nothing back. It’s easy to tell a story full of sexy words about beautiful people loving each other in sunny climes.”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing that story,” Mia echoes, sounding like someone who’s rarely seen either.
Julian doesn’t dare look at her, lest he give himself away. He continues to address Liz. “But just try telling an imperfect story about ugly damaged people loving other ugly damaged people and see how far you get.”
With the Swedish flame burning between them and whiskey and nicotine burning their throats, Julian begins by telling his newfound friends about the frozen cave. Bound by grief, he embarked on a perilous journey to find the secret to eternal life. He tells them how long he walked along the river until he was blocked by a vertical cliff of ice, hundreds of feet tall and smooth like a sculpture, with no way to climb it or break it. No way in and no way back. He lay down on the ice and went to sleep, and when he woke up, the mountain was gone. It had melted into the river and refrozen. The only thing left from it was a small mound with a circular opening, like an icy halo. “It is called a moongate,” Julian says. “So I walked through this moongate and continued on my quest. This is before I knew,” he adds, “that the life I looked for, I would never find.”
“What did you really travel to the end of the earth in search for, Swedish?” Wild laughs. “It was some girl, right?”
Mia, Mia, my heart, my dearest one, you are the one.
“What do you call the cliff?” Wild asks when Julian doesn’t answer.
“Mount Terror,” Julian replies.
“Fuck, yeah!”
“Fuck off!” says Nick.
Finch scoffs.
Mia jumps to her feet. “Wait! Stop speaking, Julian.”
“What a splendid suggestion, dove,” Finch says.
“Your story is too good to waste on us wankers.”
“Thanks a lot, Folgate,” Wild says.
“I, for one, would enjoy hearing the rest,” Peter Roberts says in a measured baritone. “The man has finally got around to telling a real story. He began at the beginning and was continuing capably until you stopped him, Maria.”
“That wasn’t the beginning, Robbie,” says Julian. “Not by a long shot.”
“You’ll hear all of it, Robbie, I promise you,” Mia says. “Follow me. Bring your chair.”
Mia leads Julian and the rest to the escalator lobby where a hundred Londoners have collected for the night, spilling out onto both platforms. “These poor folks are starving for entertainment,” Mia says. “You saw how fired up they were last night. What do you say? Let’s give them a story. Some drama, some comedy, a fight. You’ll lift their spirits, make the time pass. What could be better? I wish we had enough drink for them. They would so enjoy a little sip of whiskey.”
“I’ll get some,” Julian says. “I’ll get some as soon as I can.”
“Sure you will.” Mia smiles, as if she’s heard a lot of promises men have not kept. “We’ll do it interview style, okay? I’ll ask you questions and in your answers you’ll tell them what happened.”
“Thank you, Mia,” Julian says, gazing at her, “for explaining to me what an interview is.”
She giggles. “You’re welcome, Julian.” She hops up onto the makeshift stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, come closer,” she yells, motioning the Londoners to her. “Gather round. Tonight, for your listening entertainment, we want to present our new series of tales. They’re called … what are they called, Julian?”
“Tales of Love and Hate.”
“Tales of Love and Hate!” she exclaims. “Tonight, we’ll start with the first of—” She glances at Julian. “First of how many?”
“First of five.”
“Tonight, we will start with the first of five, called ‘The Death Match at Sea,’ or the mystery of how Julian nearly lost his hand. I’m Maria Delacourt. Please welcome to the stage, my co-star in The Importance of Being Earnest, Julian Cruz.”
There’s tepid clapping.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for that smattering of applause,” an unperturbed Mia continues. “Rest assured, when you hear the story of this fight, you will be standing in the aisles.” She leans to Julian. “Am I overpromising?”
“Underpromising, I reckon,” Julian says.
“Why don’t we have a real fight instead?” a man in the back says.
“Yeah,” another man says. “Now that would be bloody entertainment.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be fair for me to fight Mr. Cruz,” Mia says. “He wouldn’t stand a chance.” She winks at Julian. “How about if we begin with a story, and then we’ll see what we see. Prick up your ears, give Julian your full attention. You won’t be disappointed.”
And they’re not.
Raptly they listen, gasping at the horror of being vastly outnumbered by murderous men with evil intent in the middle of an ocean, gasping even more at the girl’s shocking betrayal. Even Mia loses her put-on composure. “Did she really do that?” she whispers, wide-eyed.
“She really did,” Julian replies, studying her face.
“How could she do it? I thought she loved you.”
“She did. But she didn’t want to die.”
“Julian, why do you keep staring at me, as if I have the answers to my own questions?” she whispers. “Did you forgive her?”
“What do you think?”
“You fool, I think you did.”
Julian ends the story of his Valkyrie, the chooser of the slain, with Tama’s demise, not with the actual end, which is too cruel for this setting and these people. Probably too cruel for any setting. Ending it early makes it almost a happy ending. Masha at the Cherry Lane was lost and then was found, just as she had always dreamed of.
The crowd applauds with gusto. Wild cheers wildly. Even Peter Roberts claps, his face flushed and satisfied. The only one who doesn’t clap is Finch.
