Devi said. “By all means live out your days in bitter pity for yourself while your life passes you by.” He stood up, gathering his hat into his hands and left.
After Ashton came back from Valentina’s with some precooked chicken and rice and found Devi gone and Julian back in his room, he banged on the bedroom door. “Food’s here.”
Julian sat on the sofa, Ashton across from him.
“So the man left?”
“The man left.”
“They took him back?” When Julian said nothing, Ashton said, “Who was he?”
“A cook from Great Eastern Road.”
“Cook. Great Eastern Road. Really. Well. Thanks for clearing that up.” When Julian offered nothing else, Ashton pressed further. “Is he the shaman you were asking me about a year ago? Some Hmong man who summoned the dead?”
Julian half-nodded.
“Does he have anything to do with what happened to you?”
Julian half-nodded.
“Jules, I can’t play twenty questions. I’m not Socrates. I’m going to start throwing shit by the next question. Talk to me. What happened to you?”
“Forget it, Ash. Honestly. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s in the past.” Julian clenched and unclenched his hands. “And you don’t want to know.”
“Like hell I don’t. And it’s not in the past. It’s the fucking here and now. Julian, you left home in the morning and by the afternoon you were in an ICU with smoke inhalation and electrocution burns. Does that sound like the past to you?”
“If I tell you, you won’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
For interminable minutes, Julian stared at Ashton. “Short or long?”
“Short. Elevator pitch. Two sentences.”
“Devi showed me a way to go back in time to find Josephine. And I’ve gone twice.”
“Go back, like astral projection?”
“Go back, like body and soul.”
At first, Ashton was without words. “It’s a terrible pitch,” he said finally. “Based on that, I won’t be able to produce your script, I’m afraid. It’s not even remotely believable and you’ve left too many hanging questions. Have you got anything else? I’m serious now. Anything else.”
“The first time I went, she died,” Julian said. “And I was blasted back into my present life. It was just before you moved here. I went again a month ago. I thought I was leaving London for good. If she hadn’t died, I’d still be there with her. But … here I am, so.” He took a breath. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what, Julian,” Ashton said slowly. “How am I looking at you?”
“Like I’m nuts.”
“No.”
“I leap into a wormhole,” Julian said, “and float for a long time down an underground river, and when I come out on the other side, she lives.”
Ashton draped himself over the couch. “Okay,” he said. “I guess it’s time for the long version.” He shot up. “Wait!” From the kitchen he brought a bottle of Grey Goose, two glasses, some ice, and some soda water. He made the drinks, gave one to Julian, didn’t clink, and gulped down half of his. “Go.”
Julian spoke for a long time. Meridian, crystal, the Transit Circle, tear in the fabric of the universe, future tense, moongate, river, dead queen, Wales, Mary, Lord Falk, the Silver Cross, Mallory, Fabian, Margrave, murder, gold, the Fire. Body immolating and reforming at the speed of light. Correction: at the speed of light, squared.
Ashton reached over and swallowed Julian’s untouched vodka.
“I know how it sounds,” Julian said.
“Oh no, my friend. I don’t think you do.”
“Do you remember the dream I used to have of her? Where she is walking toward me, happy and smiling? Devi says it could be a vision of her and me in the future.”
“Well, if Devi says … You mean in the future that Devi just finished telling you doesn’t exist, or some other future?”
“Everything you’re thinking of, Ash, I’ve thought of,” said Julian. “Yet here it is. I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not lying. There is a difference.”
“Oh, a huge one. If you were lying, it would mean you were sane.”
In silence the two men sat in their open sunny flat. Julian was oddly comforted by the shellshocked look on Ashton’s normally placid face, as if his friend didn’t know how to begin to begin to figure out how to help him. You can’t help me, Ash, Julian wanted to say. You can’t help a husk whose fruits have fallen and rotted on the ground.
“Explain my injuries,” Julian said.
“I can’t explain them,” Ashton said, “but you entered a triathlon event without my knowledge. You spent a year growing a sick beard without explanation and shaved it off without explanation.”
“I shaved it off because in 1666 men didn’t have beards.”
“Oh, that’s why. You’re boxing, caving, fencing. I can’t explain any of those things. 1666. Is that when you became a landlord in a brothel?”
“Yes.”
“You, Julian Cruz, son of a professor and a principal, were a caretaker in a house of women who got naked and had sex for money?”
“Yes.”
“I’m supposed to believe this?”
“That’s the part you find unbelievable? Not wormholes and—”
“Frankly, yes. Okay, from the top. You fell in love with a girl, but then she died.”
“Yes.”
“And you found a charlatan who showed you how to travel back in time to find her.”
“A shaman, but yes.”
“Potato, potahtoe. You traveled into this past.”
“Yes.”
“Not once but twice.”
“Yes.”
“And you found her, and fell in love with her again, and she with you, and both times, she died.”
“Yes.”
