The Last Illusion (39 page)

To capture them in that era, a still would do: a young couple, closed mouths, apart—in the same room, but their bodies so very apart—frozen in a New York City apartment. It was always Asiya’s apartment those days. She, suddenly in better spirits—they seemed in a perpetual seesaw of spirits, her down, him up, her up, him down—had ordered Chinese, a stir-fry that she claimed she had made, if only to make it more special. She had
meant
to make it, only she couldn’t sit still those days, not enough to focus on vegetables and measurements and cutting and cooking.

Something, she could feel, was happening. Hotter, closer, more than ever.

Zal was as pale as it was impossible for summer to render a human. He was sitting hunched over an empty bowl, chopsticks poised, ready for something that was not yet coming. The already cooked meal was cooking just a bit more in a pan, for authenticity’s sake.

Asiya watched him carefully. He didn’t know.

Zachary had moved back a few weeks ago, and, just minutes after they’d shown up at the house that evening, when Asiya was sure he wouldn’t be around, he had come in and seen Zal there. Zach shouted some profanities and threw a couch pillow Zal’s way, and then he left with a slam of the door. The whole time Zal had looked down at his bowl, on the same seat, same pose, same stupor.

If he knew, he wasn’t letting on. But he didn’t, she thought—how could he? Not yet at least.

She brought the steaming stir-fry over and scooped some on his plate with rice, and they sat silently, eyeing their food. Two sounds broke through the silence: the central air on an intense blast as it had gotten so very August, more than ever, in August’s final days; and the sound of Willa, laughing or crying, her soft voice somehow tumbling down the staircase to their table.

Asiya blocked it out, sure she was crying.

Zal tried not to hear it, sure she was crying.

It had been that type of August, a time of the bloodiest angst yet for all of them.

Asiya got up from the table and took a plate of food up to Willa, whose sounds stopped the minute she entered. There was nothing but silence up there, Zal noted, and the moment Asiya left, there was just more of it. No more sobs. But also, no clatter of silverware against ceramic, either. Willa had started to eat less and less, for reasons no one could pinpoint.

He could know, and what could he do with the knowing but pretend he didn’t know, she thought. She had done it, and that was that. It was all going to be over soon.

She took a bite, recoiling a bit at how hot it was, in temperature and in spice. She put her fork down and tried to meet Zal’s eyes, still on his untouched food. “Zal,” she said gently, a few times, and finally, less gently, “
Zal
.”

He had looked up slowly, ever so slowly, and suddenly she thought,
My God, he
does
know.

She shook off what she was going to say and faced what was in front of her. She looked away and said, with a harshness that was not intended, “And so what? It’s a good thing, you know. It could have been the end.”

PART IX

Once, the sky was free of hardware .
.
.

—Nostradamus,

on the early 2000s

Asiya, to Zal's amazement, never stopped believing in God. During those weeks from late August to early September, she talked about God more than ever. And in those same conversations, she admitted something she never really had before: She was terrified of dying.

And she knew that someone who believed in God should not be, and that made it all the worse. She was constantly, it seemed, having panic attacks, in the company of Zal or alone, and she was sleeping less and less, until it seemed like she didn't sleep at all. The extreme sleep deprivation led to more panic attacks, but also to hallucinations, more of what she thought might be valuable information about what was to come. She was constantly asking Zal how it was that everyone on earth wasn't preoccupied with death, the inevitable
it
. How did they eat their meals and have their sex and go for their jogs and cuddle their pets and watch their television and meanwhile, at any given moment, it could strike down upon them, take them or their loved one or all of them, without even the tip of a hat to logic or reason or rationality, not to mention decency or generosity or humanity. How did they keep going in the face of it all? Why was it like a plane in turbulence, every single man and woman feeling it, feeling it very strongly, and yet never raising their chins to look up from those
Condé Nast Traveler
s
or whatever they were reading, never risking actually admitting they were scared, perhaps worrying that acknowledging it would have a domino effect, that everyone else would be forced to acknowledge it, and then what? How could they possibly endure their fear, that perhaps the only thing keeping them going was that very denial, perhaps the only thing worse than cold black death was the facing of it, the looking it straight in the eye, not when it was near, but before it was—though it always was
before,
wasn't it? Reality was just one big prelude to the very end.

Why are you even thinking about it?
Zal would interrupt, sometimes sounding gentle but often sounding irritated, and then of course he'd almost instantly regret asking. He knew, of course. Asiya said it over and over:
We're this close.
And while she seemed also to insist they'd be okay, she felt like they were on the verge of not being so. And it was as if death was a sort of great black-winged visitor that would swoop down on them suddenly and soon, and while he would miss them, possibly reject them even, he'd cause all sorts of chaos in their vicinity and have his way with their community and claim them, if not their lives, by changing everything. That couldn't be avoided, Asiya declared. There was no getting around the fact that nothing would be the same after the first third of that month, September.

And when the police knocked on her door—one of those nights when she and Zal were apart, a fight night, an evening when the increasing tensions of that period had come to a boil and overflowed and left Zal wordlessly, almost silently even, in the face of her screaming, walking out, seemingly never coming back, and her, as in all fights of that era, eventually numb and mute—and told her she was being arrested for threats against Bran Silber and the World Trade Center, she didn't even blink an eye. Something had told her, even while writing the first draft of that letter, that this could come about, and that if this was all that came about, at least she'd have done her duty. The only thing that surprised her about the whole ordeal was that they kept asking her to spell her name over and over—something she was used to, to an extent, but never so many times—eventually getting to their real point, she supposed, in making her jump through those hoops: “
ASS-ya?
Is that right? Hispanic? Indian? A
Muslim
name?”

They had done their research, clearly. And she looked in their eyes, their light-narrowed eyes, and, as she imagined many other Muslim-named men and women had done throughout history, she channeled every bit of defiance, every bit of holiness she could muster—even if that self of hers was a past self—into a few syllables and snapped: “Absolutely.”

It wasn't Asiya who called Zal from police headquarters, but the police. “We have your girlfriend—Miss McDonald? Ass-ya?”

They called her “Ass-ya,” awful,
was his first thought. His second thought was:
Why wasn't she calling—in movies didn't they get a single phone call?

“She's debilitated,” Officer Something said, plainly. But what did he mean by that? “She's been—she's having a fit of some sort. We're having her breathe into a bag. She's been a crying wreck for the last half hour. She gave us your number. She said she has no real family.” No real family? Zal told him she had a brother and sister in the city, and parents in other states. “Well, I'd take charge, Al, and let them know. She's probably going to be held for a while.”

Held for a while. Z
al was horrified. He recalled vaguely that they had had a fight of some sort, but he couldn't remember what about. They were fighting all the time those days, it seemed. Or rather, Asiya was. He didn't have it in him to put up much of a fight in return. He would simply look away, swallow a comment or two, close his eyes, tune out, walk out. On their last evening together, he had walked out on her and imagined, as he did every time he left, that it could be the last time they ever saw each other.

And here it was. The officer had said she had made a threat against “a building.” How do you threaten a building? And then he knew, of course. The World Trade. It had to be. He hadn't forwarded her letter, and certainly she had taken matters into her own hands. It seemed too crazy even for Asiya.

He realized he had no cell phone number for Willa and of course not for Zachary, either. He had to do it the long way. He took a cab to their home and was met by a scowling Zachary at the front door.

“No, Zachary, there's no time for that—this is serious,” he said, struggling to get past his arm propped against the doorway. “Let me in now. I have news.”

Zach shook his head, staring at the ground. He had a criminal look about him, Zal thought. He should be the one in jail if they really needed a McDonald.

“Zach, please!” Zal cried. “It's about Asiya!”

“She's not here,” he said. “Get the fuck out, before I beat you again.”

“I know she's not here! That's why I came to see you guys!”

Zachary's hands started to ball into fists.

“Your sister is in jail!”

Zach looked at him and laughed, a dry bitter fake laugh. “You're out of your mind! Get out.”

“I need to see Willa, please! I have to tell her!” And then he remembered, with some shame, how he had been found with Willa. Zal understood anger—he'd done quite a number on Zach's world—but now was not the time.

Then, just like an angel answering a call for help, he heard Willa's voice in the background.

Zachary yelled back, “It's nothing, Willa. Just Asshole here, saying Asiya's in jail!”

Willa said something else he couldn't hear.

“Fuck you, Willa!” Zach shouted back, and slowly backed up, letting Zal in.

Zal nodded gratefully at Zach, but quickly got out of his sight by running up to Willa.

There she was on her bed. It had been a while. The last several times he'd been over, Asiya had said Willa was sick or not feeling well, and he hadn't gone up to say hello. But now he saw evidence that something had indeed been off. Willa did not look well.

Willa had lost weight.

Zal knew it couldn't be that much that fast, but she really appeared to be half her old size. She was lying on a bed she didn't seem to require. It was hard to look at her, the woman he had so adored for her abundance somehow whittled away, slowly impoverished of all that made her so
much.

His voice immediately softened as he saw her. “Hi, Willa. How are you?”

She smiled weakly and shrugged for a moment, and then a look of alarm darkened her face. “Zal, what is it?”

He had momentarily forgotten. He nodded and said, with urgency once again, “It's Asiya. They took her away. To jail.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. For threats. Against a building, the World Trade, I'm sure. You know her whole end-of-the-world thing, right?”

Willa nodded, looking embarrassed, as if inheriting her sister's shame. “I thought it was just the end of New York, but yeah, she's said some things. How did they arrest her?”

“I have no idea! I thought you might know. They must have come here!”

Willa looked dazed, he realized. “I haven't been feeling well lately. Sleeping a lot. I must have missed it. I can't believe she didn't make a sound, shout up to me, at least, let me know what was happening. Or even call after the fact.”

Zal nodded, also looking embarrassed, as if inheriting her misconduct. Here they were, the two people closest to Asiya, and at a crucial moment like this they could only be embarrassed of her, embarrassed by the association even. “What do we do?”