Zal had been lying on the couch, snacking idly, pretending to read a magazine but overwhelmed by the ninety-degree heat all the air in the world couldn’t make up for. A jar of yogurt-covered beetles lay innocently on its side atop the coffee table — evidence he had always remembered to hide before his father visited.
Hendricks had immediately, after his routine bear hug, taken a seat on the couch, not even registering Zal’s usual antsiness with Asiya in the bathroom.
“It’s just relentless, isn’t it?” he was saying. “I understand why so much of the city gets out in August. I’ve had I-don’t-know-how-many Augusts here, and it still gets me every time. Anyway, how are you, my boy?”
Zal shrugged and nodded at the same time and sat on the floor. Suddenly his eye fell on the jar. He felt a beehive tip over inside him. There was nothing he could do now: reach out for it and Hendricks would notice; move him away from the table and Hendricks would notice; say anything, nothing, and Hendricks would notice.
“I’m doing really, really, really well,” Zal stammered, his eyes glued to Hendricks’s, which were already on the table and quite possibly right on target.
For a moment, everything was still. The air conditioner whirred obliviously, and Zal imagined he could hear Asiya’s quickened breaths behind the bathroom’s closed door.
Finally Hendricks leaned in and squinted a bit. He reached over and Zal nearly screamed, wondering if a seizure would be enough to distract his father. But it was too late: Hendricks’s hands were on the jar, the jar was being picked up, inspected, and, horror of horrors, unscrewed.
“Father, what are you doing?” Zal exclaimed as one of Hendricks’s fingers went in.
“What is this, pastilles of some sort? White chocolate?”
Zal shook his head, gulping furiously. “Yogurt,” he said. “Just yogurt.”
“Oh, nice,” Hendricks said, reaching in deeper.
“No! Not nice. They are quite gross!” Zal tried to grab the jar.
But Hendricks was already holding it up to his nose. “Strange smell.”
Zal nodded. “See! They are terrible!”
Hendricks smiled, amused. “Worth a try,” he said, and again he reached in.
Zal had had it. At that moment, he leapt up and karate-chopped the jar out of his father’s hands, the yogurt beetles skittering all over the floor. It was a small disaster compared with the one that had been averted, he thought.
“Zal, what on earth is the matter with you?” Hendricks began to pick them up.
Just the sight of his hands on the coated insects reminded Zal that he ingested, daily, insects. He shuddered.
“I’m having a terrible time!” Zal said.
“I thought you were doing really, really, really well?” Hendricks looked up.
Both men, on the ground, on their knees, gathering yogurt beetles, paused, looking into each other’s eyes.
Zal nodded slowly. “I’m confused, Father,” he said. “And if you want to know the truth. .” He took a deep breath.
“I do, son, trust me, I do.”
He closed his eyes as he said it. “Those, these, they’re yogurt-covered insects. Beetles.”
Hendricks didn’t say a word and just gave him a long, hard stare. He removed his hands from the candies and wiped them on his slacks.
“I eat insects, Father,” Zal confessed. “I’ve been doing it for years.”
Hendricks nodded slowly. “People do it, I suppose.”
Zal opened his eyes, but looked down. “Well, you know why I do.”
Hendricks paused and then nodded slowly. “I see.”
“But lately, I’m getting sick of it. Since I’ve been feeling, you know, more normal.” And Zal meant that — the yogurt beetles were one of only three insect snacks he had slowly reintroduced in the apartment, after a failed quit, as compared with the nearly dozen of a year ago.
“That’s good,” Hendricks said softly, a strange hurt look on his face.
Zal sighed. And if he’d gone that far, why couldn’t he go all the way?
“And one other thing,” Zal said. “Since, you know, I’m confessing.”
Hendricks held his breath for a moment. “Go ahead.”
“I’m still seeing Asiya. She’s in the bathroom. Asiya!”
For a second nothing happened, and he finally got up and knocked, and when the door opened just a sliver, he whispered something and led her out, by the wrist.
She smiled a watery, confused smile, relieved to be occupied with the mess of yogurt-coated insects on the ground.
“Hello!” Hendricks said to her, trying too hard to be cheerful. “How nice to see you!”
She said nothing, but managed a wave.
Hendricks’s eyes turned to Zal, who looked agonized.
“I just want everything in the open now, Father,” he said. “And here it all is.”
Hendricks rose to his feet and met his son’s gaze, still with a strange look.
“You’ve grown up, Zal,” he said. “That’s okay. You have your own life, things I’ll never know about.” His eyes turned to Asiya’s, which were still on the ground.
Zal nodded, more slowly, a sudden peace floating over him. “I think everything will be better from now on.”
And both Asiya and Hendricks looked to him for that promise, as if it were really true, as if it weren’t that August suddenly, as if things were really going to be different, as if he had all the answers — Zal, of all people.
Bran Silber’s phone was buzzing with calls and text messages — all Oliver Manning, of course — popping up again and again as “Papa Mans.” He did not like to be kept waiting, not now, of course, not with just a few weeks left. But Silber, as the date of the illusion got closer, was no longer one to dart up to his feet from bed after his usual 9.5 hours of beauty sleep. Instead, some days he’d linger in bed, having spent three of those 9.5 until his alarm went off fully conscious. He was wearing the same things every day, and not the metallic overalls, either, but just a black T-shirt and black jeans, his least Silberish look. He was avoiding his home and office gyms, his tanning booth, even the “products” for his hair, face, and body. He’d become one of those people who moved slowly, who took a while to answer a question if he did at all, who dreaded another day, who was often found by assistants — finally, after folks from cooks to Manning had needed him for hours, always needing something or other — hunched over his work desk, his face collapsed in his hands. When he’d finally look up, they’d shrink from the expectation of tears or some sign of anguish, but every time it would be the same: an expression of blandness, dead nothing, gold eyes that were suddenly just yellow.
Bran Silber was finally — on the verge of his most stunning spectacle — entirely depressed.
How did it happen? He didn’t know exactly. Was it when Manning started getting more and more difficult, bitching about the size of the “pillar in the pool,” the impossibility of media cooperation in airing it, his constant doubt about how to pull off the illusion perfectly? He didn’t think so. Was it the season of loneliness, now that all the lovers had been sent running by Silber’s work schedule and, worse, his lack of libido? It couldn’t be. Was it that he’d lost interest in magic, in illusion, in spectacle? He couldn’t imagine it. Was it all the interviews, the constant pressure for hints and winks and the usual Silberish razzle-dazzle drivel? Maybe, maybe not, but that felt closest. Because the one thing they — everyone who didn’t know him in particular but had followed his career — wanted to know was: So. . what does it all mean?