“I know nothing, but I don’t doubt it,” said Rhodes, looking at his folder of notes. “It’s been a while, Zal. Almost a month. Not good. You’ve been canceling and changing times all over the place. This, I take it, is still because of Miss Austria?”
“Asiya,” Zal snapped. Rhodes had to be doing that on purpose, he thought, at this point. He must have brought her up a hundred times at least.
“Oh, my bad again! AWE-see-ya.”
Zal rolled his eyes, and Rhodes wrote it down: eye-rolling. He had never seen that either. “Look, shall I just spit it out?”
“Sure, a good use of our time,” Rhodes egged him on, scribbling annoyance markedly heightened, bantering abilities also up.
“Rhodes, I did it,” Zal blurted out. “I did it with her. You know what I mean by that. And also I told her I loved her.”
“Is that all?!” Rhodes could not believe what he was hearing. He scribbled it in all caps, underlined. “I’m gonna use the recorder today, Zal, okay?”
“And she met my father.”
“Well, well,” Rhodes said. “That is a lot. Last time we met, you were being photographed by your girlfriend for her show. You had already kissed her, something you were participating in but only maybe enjoyed, but you were still ambivalent about furthering physical contact, and in fact the notion of lovemaking seemed a bit repulsive to you, which of course I assured you was more than normal, of course, considering.”
Of course, Zal thought. He did not want to deal with Rhodes today.
“And now you’ve done that, and also you’ve told her you love her. Last time, remember, I asked if you loved her, and you said you were not sure, but you did not think so. So what changed, Zal? Tell me, what happened?”
Zal paused. It was his tradition, almost, to tell Rhodes everything and anything. It was easy with Rhodes, a person he never really cared about, a person hired to serve him, he realized. And yet now the Lying Zal was born, and he didn’t believe he owed him the whole truth if he didn’t owe it to his father and his girlfriend.
“I changed how I felt,” Zal said, slowly. “That’s pretty human, last I checked.”
More sarcasm, Rhodes jotted, without looking at his sheet. “Sure, Zal, sure. But it doesn’t mean there is no root cause. Perhaps you did just, over time, fall in love?”
Zal shrugged.
“Or perhaps she demanded your love and wanted to make love and you gave in to it all?”
Zal tensed up. “Look, Rhodes, this is not a problem for therapy. It’s not even something I want to discuss today.”
“Okay, Zal. What would you like to tell me?”
Zal searched his head, his month, for something to eclipse any judgment of Asiya and their escalated status. All he thought of was the Mistake. Rhodes would be all over that, but what else did he have? “Do you want to know about the show?”
“Oh, certainly. How was it?”
“It was a wonderful night. One of the best of my life.”
“Tell me about it, Zal.”
Zal told him about it. “Really, a highlight, if not the highlight, of my life,” he said. “I was so normal, Rhodes.”
“Good. I’m amazed, Zal. Not at you being normal, of course, but your enjoyment of the event. I remember you had some dread surrounding it.”
“Well, it was all great. Almost all. And then I did something bad, something I suppose normal people might do in a night like that, but a bad thing nonetheless.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I made out with a man — a boy, really — in the bathroom of the gallery.”
“You did. I see. .”
“And the boy was Asiya’s brother’s friend.”
“Ah.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been drinking here and there still, Zal? No more than that?”
“I was a little drunk,” Zal admitted sheepishly.
“Any drugs?”
“No, of course not.”
“Any chance anyone drugged you?”
“Rhodes.”
“Any chance you had a dream or daydream?”
“Rhodes, this happened! I wouldn’t make it up!” Zal had noticed that since he had told Rhodes a while ago about kissing Asiya, Rhodes had acquired a new suspiciousness about his words. He jotted more things down, too. He had been so reluctant to believe Zal had even acquired a girlfriend; maybe suddenly he was wondering if the sex was made up, too.
For a moment, he was. “Zal, it’s just that I have to make sure. I have to admit to you that this is all very much above and beyond what I would have thought possible. Zal, tell me, how does making out make you feel?”
“Well, it’s great. I like it, I really do. Don’t you want to know about the sex?”
“Zal, I need to just make sure: how do you know it’s sex? Are you sure you’re having intercourse?”
Zal turned red, and Rhodes wrote registers significant embarrassment at idea of sex. “Look, I know some things! And so does Asiya, you know. If you don’t believe me, you should at least believe she’d know a thing or two.”
Rhodes sighed. “Zal, is she still having delusions about hellfire and all that?”
“No. I mean, sometimes. She is. But she’s not crazy, not crazy about everything, at least. She knew I’d betray her, for instance. Don’t ask me, but she did.”
Rhodes was silent, nodding away, writing things down, feeling very, very distant from Zal, even though just a desktop separated them.
“Tell me, did you feel real desire for the boy?” he finally said.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Do you feel real desire for your girlfriend during sex?”
“Maybe. Yes. No.”
“Which is it, Zal?”
He was starting to feel upset — at what exactly, he didn’t know, but the past few Rhodes sessions, sessions that used to seem essential to him, now seemed more and more like something he longed to skip, and did. “Can we stop talking about this?”
“Zal, you do understand that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to? You can still be normal, still be a man.” His words echoed Hendricks’s, from his debriefing phone call.
“I know that.”
Rhodes’s face softened a bit, and he put down his pen. Zal could feel his eyes, intense with scrutiny, intense with concern, drilling at Zal’s forehead. “Zal, you also know this: that you are asexual.”
He had known it was coming — it had come the last time, the time before that, and the time before that, when he had first mentioned Asiya and his newfound boyfriendhood. “I really am done talking about this.”
“Zal, you know you have to face that.”
“Things can change. You know that’s possible,” Zal murmured. “I’ve become things people thought were impossible.”
Rhodes nodded furiously. “You really have, Zal. But sexuality, that’s a tough one. You can’t face it. Tell me, how does it make you feel, making love?”
“I really can’t discuss this today. Maybe another time.”
“Did you tell your father?”
“No. Please don’t.”
“I don’t tell him things, Zal. What did your father think of her?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he was concerned.”
“Zal, would it surprise you to know I am concerned?”
“About what?”
“About your involvement with that girl. I’ve known you for a long time, Zal.”
“What’s so wrong with her?” He wondered what he had said to Rhodes to make him think Asiya was off. Or was it what Hendricks had said to him? All along, foolishly, Zal had thought Rhodes would have rejoiced — selfishly or for science — at these major developments in his life.