43: The Boy and the Boatman
Chapter 44: Josephine and the Flying Machine
Chapter 46: Consequences of Happiness
Chapter 48: Side Effects of Electrocution
Chapter 49: The Lady, or the Tiger
I SHOULD HAVE KISSED YOU. JULIAN LAY NAKED ON HIS BED, clutching the red beret, staring at the ceiling. I should have kissed you the last time I saw you.
After half a night passed like this, he gave up on sleep, jumped up and began to get ready. He had a lot to do to be in Greenwich by noon. Don’t dawdle, the cook told him. You have very little time. You have a picosecond inside of a minute. And don’t get stuck. Where you’re going, the opening is wide enough for one man, but not for all men.
And what was Julian’s wise response to this?
“How long is a picosecond?”
“One-trillionth of a second,” the exasperated cook replied.
Julian dressed in black layers. He shaved. He slicked back his unruly brown hair and tied it up so it didn’t look like what it was—a bushy mane on a man who long ago stopped giving a damn. Julian was square-faced, square-jawed, straight-browed, granite-chinned, once. His hazel eyes looked gray today, huge, sunken into his gaunt cheeks, the dark bags under his eyes like somebody clocked him, the full mouth pale. He had lost so much weight, he had to punch a new notch in his belt; his jacket could’ve fit two Julians inside.
It took him a while to get out; he kept forgetting this, that. At the last minute, he remembered to text his mother and Ashton. Nothing too alarming—like I’m sorry—but still, he wanted to leave them with something. Jokes to make them think the old Julian wasn’t too far away. To his mom: “I used to feel like a guy trapped in a woman’s body. Then I was born.” To Ashton: “You can’t lose a homing pigeon, Ash. If your homing pigeon doesn’t come back, what you’ve lost is a pigeon.” But he did leave a separate note for Ashton on his dresser.
As instructed, Julian left his cell phone at the flat, his wallet, his pens, his notebooks. He left his life behind, including the words he had written just yesterday called “Tiger Claws.”
What do you ask of life
At night the world you can’t change
desire drunkenness rage
Flies by
While you lie flat on your back
Under claws and lizards
In the purple fields.
He brought four things: a fifty-pound note, an Oyster fare card for the tube, the crystal on a rope around his neck, and the red beret in his pocket.
At Boots at Liverpool Street, he bought a flashlight. The cook said he would need one. And then the trains were slow like he was slow. Julian waited forever for a change at Bank. At Island Gardens, he looked down into his hands. They had been clenched since Shadwell. Lately he’d been staggering, foundering, drowning. Without time, his wandering life had filled up with nothing but watery impressions, his days were without architecture, without frame or matter, a muddle, a madness, a dream.
But not anymore. Now he had purpose. Lunatic, foolish purpose, but hey, he was grateful something was being offered to him instead of nothing.
In Greenwich, the flat landscaped park below the Royal Observatory is lined with crisscrossing paths called Lovers’ Walks. Deep inside the park, on top of a steep hill with a wild garden, for centuries the British astronomers have studied the skies. Today, on a blustery day in March the garden was nothing but bare branches whipping about, blocking the view of what Julian was climbing to the top of the mountain to find.
He felt idiotic. Did he buy a ticket? Did he loiter until the appointed hour? The cook told him to find a telescope called the Transit Circle, but the Observatory was home to so many. Where was this enchanted spot where all impossible things became possible? Julian caught himself scoffing and felt ashamed. His mother taught him better than that, told him never to mock the thing you were about to fall on your knees in front of.
“Which way to the Transit Circle?” Julian asked the cashier behind the table.
The pretty girl smoothed out her hair. “George Airy’s Transit Circle? Right through there. I can take you, if you like. Will it be just one ticket for you?” She smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “And no, that’s fine, I’ll find it. Do you sell pocket watches?”
“Yes, in our gift shop. Do you need a compass, too? Maybe a tour guide?” She tilted her head.
“No, thank you.” He wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t meet her gaze.
With the girl hovering nearby, Julian bought a watch in an unopened box. She wanted to test it to make sure it worked, but he said no. He didn’t want her touching it, imprinting his brand-new timekeeper with her own spirit.
“You won’t be able to return it if something’s wrong with it,” she said.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m not coming back this way.” Whatever happened, he wouldn’t be coming back.
“That’s a shame.” She smiled. “Where are you going?” When he didn’t answer, she shrugged, a friendly girl marking time. “Look around,” she said. “Take your time.”
Julian
