The Time He Desires Page 4

  If Doug had shown up at that moment, Aziz might not have stood and excused himself to the waiter who had come over to take his order. He might have watched Gerald's black-tipped tail flicking as the cougar walked out of the patio and onto the sidewalk, disappearing into the busy crowd as his husband had earlier that morning, and then put Gerald out of his mind as he talked to Doug. But Doug was a few minutes late that day, and by the time he would arrive, Aziz was already turning the corner behind Gerald a block away.

  The cheetah slid easily through the crowd, asking himself as he did what exactly he thought he was going to do. Follow Gerald home? This was spying, far beyond whatever he had done by looking at their tape in the pawnshop. If you already know you will be asking forgiveness for an act, should you not cease doing it? Yes, of course he should. He stopped and raised his nose to the sky. But what if I could make a difference in their lives? What if I could give them advice? What if I'm meant to give them advice?

  Benjamin had shared part of his life with Aziz. He'd been so desperate to recover the camera that if Aziz hadn't seen Gerald that day, he might've thought Benjamin was grieving his husband's death. So maybe they were separated. But Benjamin had shown how much he still loved his husband, and maybe, Aziz thought, maybe Gerald needed to hear that from a third party.

  So he would talk to Gerald, and he would only follow him until he found a convenient place to talk, somewhere the cougar would be after Aziz's evening prayer. Then it would not be so bad, following him. He would still have to ask forgiveness, but at least he would have made something positive out of his actions.

  Gerald and his swinging tail made their way toward Larchmont, and for a moment Aziz thought he might be going to the address on Benjamin's license. That would be a good sign and then he would not even have to talk to Gerald. But the cougar strode across Larchmont, past the quiet street of row house apartments and small community gardens, down past the small local branch of the bank and its glowing ATM, past the liquor store with the cacomistle in the hoodie slouched out front who reeked of rum. This was only six blocks from Aziz's store, but in the opposite direction from his home, and a neighborhood he didn't know well; still Upper Devos, but shading into Cottage Hill. Across from the liquor store was a small tea shop that smelled of pastries and herbal tea, where a matronly llama fed crumbs to a parrot perched on her arm. She seemed oblivious to the drunk cacomistle, and he to her, and the people walking by on the sidewalks--foxes, wolves, deer, rats, raccoons--ignored both the figures.

  The cougar, too, made his way through the neighborhood with confidence and purpose. He paused at the corner in front of a fur trimming salon, and Aziz hung back so as not to be too obviously following him. When the light changed, the cheetah crossed at the rear of the crowd, with Gerald at the front, but he was tall enough to keep his target in view as the cougar walked past a deli and ducked into a bar. Aziz stopped and looked up at the bar's sign: "Founder's."

  He made a note of the streets and then hurried back the way he'd come, back past the shop to Devos Musjid Al-Islam, arriving just in time to wash and kneel for the evening prayer. But even though he recited the words with everyone else, his mind found it difficult to surrender himself to Allah. At times in the past he had been preoccupied, but only once, during those terrible days when he and Marquize had been fighting, had he been so distracted that even the prayer didn't bring him solace. At that time, he'd taken comfort in the existence of a higher power who would watch over him, in the benefit that came from obeying Allah's orders to pray regularly. The company of all the others around him had comforted him: here were people with their own lives and problems, and yet they all came together in these prayers.

  Now he could not wrench his mind away from the fox and cougar, either the happy couple years in the past or the troubled couple of today. And why not? He and Halifa had maintained their marriage without passion for years; they had survived the betrayal of their son, where Aziz had seen such problems tear other marriages apart. Or was he trying to understand Marquize himself, that adorable little cub who had turned into a withdrawn teen and not only cut himself off from Islam by having sex with males, but repudiated his parents' faith by proclaiming his homosexuality to their faces?

  Aziz's paws shook; here, finally, was a thought that could drive Benjamin and Gerald from his mind. It had been three years since he'd spoken to Marquize, three years since his son had moved to the other side of the country to live with his lover. And here Aziz was, chasing after another homosexual couple to help them get back together? If he did, though, that would prove that he wasn't those names Marquize had shouted at him, that he was merely devoted to his faith. Homosexuality was...was fine, if your religion permitted it. His did not.

  Not that he would call Marquize and tell him. But he would know in his heart that he was following Allah's guidance, and that included reaching out to people in need, even if they drank alcohol, ate pork, or took lovers of the same gender. He spoke a short du'a asking for forgiveness for the manner in which he had determined a place to talk to Gerald. And thus relieved, Aziz rose from his prayer.

  6

  Tanska

  This evening, he didn't wait to make conversation with anyone at the mosque, but hurried out the door. He had gotten two blocks before his phone's alarm chimed. He looked down and saw a reminder for the Merchants Association meeting.

  He'd completely forgotten that that was tonight. The alarm continued to flash on his phone while he weighed it in one palm. He couldn't skip the meeting, even if he had been completely in agreement with Halifa about how to vote. Gerald would have to wait until after the meeting, or maybe tomorrow night, and if he weren't at Founders still, Aziz would talk to him the next time he saw the cougar at the café, no matter how many of his friends and acquaintances might see them. He'd promised to do that and now was obliged.

  The Merchants Association met in a classroom of the local elementary school, which Marquize had never attended; Aziz and Halifa had sent him to a private school, and when he'd shown more aptitude for tennis than anything else, they'd sent him down to a school in Pensa. Aziz knew this room more as a meeting space than a classroom, stuffy on summer evenings and chilly on winter nights, the decorations changing from month to month as the cubs practiced their letters and drew holiday pictures. Tonight, with school out of session, the drawings were about what each cub's family would do during the summer break: pictures of beaches and forests, one of Lutèce's iconic Koechlin Tower.

  All seventeen of the members of the Association had said they would be present tonight, some with their families, so the room was more crowded than he was used to. Doug waved to him from near the back, but he'd only taken two steps toward the squirrel when he saw Halifa at the front of the room, focused on her phone in the pre-meeting chaos that raged around her. She looked up when Aziz approached.

  "I held a seat for you." She indicated the chair next to her, picking up her handbag from it. "In case you want to go talk to Tanska."

  Aziz shook his head, glancing back. Tanska's tall form and boisterous voice dominated the hubbub behind them. She was currently bent over to yell in the ear of Horace Plancha, the eighty-year-old bandicoot who currently presided over the Association. He had made little secret of his desire to sell his dry cleaning business and retire to Chevali; some people said he had actually approached Vorvarts about selling their block, but Aziz hadn't seen that proven.

  Tanska had clearly given up her attempts to convince a majority of the membership and had chosen to aim at the head, but Horace was as stubborn as Tanska was loud. Even from the front of the room, with the rest of the members trying to talk over the large tiger, Aziz could hear her arguments. "This association is supposed to represent all of us." Horace's reply wasn't audible, but Tanska came back with, "So it's the tyranny of the majority?"

  The bandicoot walked away from her and up to the front of the room, calling in his raspy voice, "Let's come to order." Tanska trailed after him, but he ignored her, and she d
ropped into the seat beside Aziz, tail lashing. He kept his paws clasped together on his lap, preparing something to say should she turn to him, but she hunched over, staring down between her knees.

  Horace led them through the summary of the previous week's minutes, during which the silence between his sentences grew more and more tense. Finally he said, "No use beating around the bush. Let's talk about the sale. Here's how we're gonna do this: I'm gonna introduce the topic and then we'll have one speaker for and one against, three minutes each. There'll be ten minutes of open debate and then we're gonna vote." He sighed as Tanska's paw shot up immediately. "Yes? Is this a question of procedure, or..."

  "Will the vote have to be unanimous?"

  "I'm getting to that," Horace said. "That'll be part of introducing the topic."

  He went on to talk about the Vorvarts offers, to stress that nobody needed to reveal the particular amount of their offer, and to say that Vorvarts had told him they would prefer to have unanimous agreement on the sale, but that they could move ahead with their plans even if there were a few holdouts. "They didn't tell me if there were certain key properties they needed, but then, they wouldn't. They did say..." He paused to look down. "That if the entire block sold, they would be able to build a community center for general use."

  "Oh, that's great," Tanska said. "Bribing us. What good is a 'community center' if they're gutting the community?" She made air quotes with two fingers.

  "A lot, actually," Doug said. "A lot of us host community groups in our stores, and this would give them a place to meet. That's one question I was going to ask."

  "All right," Horace said. "Let's try to keep order. One speaker against, I'm assuming that's you." He gestured to Tanska, who nodded. "And for?"

  To Aziz's surprise, Halifa raised her paw. He didn't see who else behind him might have also volunteered, but Horace looked in their direction and indicated her. "All right."

  Aziz could feel Tanska's eyes glaring at the back of his head, so he didn't turn. But he couldn't avoid her stare when Horace called her up to the front to deliver her remarks. "I know very few of you agree with me. You think I'm arguing against progress. I know I can't hold back Vorvarts forever. I'm just hoping for another five to ten years. I love this community, and I look across the street at what Vorvarts did to our neighbors, and I don't want that to happen here. I miss my customers Marci and Jose, who like hundreds of others were evicted when their building was sold, and I don't want to lose Doug's bookstore or Angel's tea shop. I don't want to be the only holdout in the shadow of a great big glass monstrosity without any community around me. I don't have cubs, but I know many of you wanted to pass on your shops to your family. How will you do that now?

  "But it's about more than that. It's about culture changing. They have their Homeporium already, but they're not happy with that. They have to take over every corner of our world. If we stop them here, maybe we'll get known for it. Maybe we'll be able to hold onto our community, our friends and neighbors, and actually give people an appreciation for what we've had here before it's gone."

  As she got wrapped up in her own commentary, her attention drifted from Aziz to glare out at the whole crowd. There was a smattering of applause as she stepped down, in which Aziz joined. Tanska ignored him as she took her seat, staring straight ahead at the podium, not even raising her eyes when Halifa stepped up to it.

  Aziz leaned forward, as fascinated by what his wife was going to say as everyone else in the room. She started by surveying the room, met his eyes briefly, and then looked toward the back of the room. "My husband and I came to this neighborhood twenty-three years ago," she said, "and not everyone wished to welcome us in then. There were those who wished to preserve the community as it was. Now we are faced with a different choice. Yes, it is a very drastic choice. It is not the same as welcoming two immigrants to a neighborhood. But the world is changing. We miss the antique stores and coffee shops we've lost, but the new development also has lovely restaurants, a movie theater, and several independent stores. A new development here will allow new people to come in and move the neighborhood into the future. We have all received fair offers for our properties; if progress diverts around us, who can say whether that value will remain? By being afraid to step into the future, we may be dooming ourselves to live forever in the past.

  "As for our cubs." She did not look at Aziz. "What we've been offered for our businesses will more than ensure they will have prosperous lives in whatever manner they choose. They need not be tied to our choices."

  She stepped down and walked past Aziz's chair on the way to her own. Horace stepped back up and called people for debate, but Aziz didn't listen to them. He leaned over to his wife. "'Need not be tied to our choices,' eh?"

  "Aziz." She looked at him reproachfully. "I did not commit us to a decision. I simply spoke my feelings to the group, as I've spoken them to you. What's wrong with that?"

  "This isn't about the store," he said. "Have you been talking to him?"

  "We are here to vote on whether to sell the store. Nothing more." But the double meaning danced in her eyes.

  A response formed in his throat, but he caught it before it escaped. "This is not the place," he said.

  "No." She composed herself, looking forward. Behind Aziz, Tanska had stood to yell at someone in the back, and Horace was pleading with her to sit down. Aziz leaned back in his chair, also staring in front of him though his eyes weren't seeing the classroom.

  "Oh," Halifa said. "I am having a late dinner with Bea and Lapis. I expect we will discuss President's League business afterwards. I expect I'll be home quite late."

  "Fine." To forestall an argument about her speech, no doubt. That was fine. Aziz curled and uncurled his paws and then abruptly got up.

  Horace stopped in the middle of whatever he was saying. Tanska registered surprise and then a flicker of hope. Aziz couldn't meet her eyes. "I apologize," he said. "I have been called away. I leave the disposition of our store to my wife. I am sure she will make the correct business decision."

  Tanska looked as though he'd punched her in the stomach. Aziz turned, his tail wrapped around his thigh, and strode out of the meeting room.

  7

  Founders

  Outside, the air had cooled, or else it felt cooler on his fur than the air he was leaving. He stayed to the outside of the sidewalk to avoid the crowds that bustled through the neighborhood. It seemed busy to him until he turned back onto his own street and saw the crowds flowing through the spaces of the Homeporium. Well, soon enough they would have more space to walk. Vorvarts had shared some of their plans for the expansion, which included lovely pedestrian bridges across Nassau St. In practice, Aziz had been told by Tanska, the bridges would never look as good as the plans. They would have budget cuts or overruns and the artistic touches were the first to go.

  It was no longer his problem. He would sign the papers sometime this week, as would everyone else, and then they would take their money and scatter. Would he and Halifa stay in the same house? They were bound as husband and wife, but as important as those bonds had been in their homeland and the Upper Devos of twenty-plus years ago, they were both older now, and as Halifa had said, society had changed. Aziz knew three couples in his mosque who had divorced, and though they were not proud of it, neither were they shunned by the community. In all three cases, they'd explained quite reasonably that the marriage no longer benefited either party, and they had mutually agreed to end it (though Halifa told him that at least in one case that was not true).

  Perhaps that was where he and Halifa now stood. But again, Aziz did not know what he would do if he didn't go home to his wife every night. The prospect of doing the same routine with a different store, coming home to an empty house, felt hollow to him. He could find charities, he supposed, or some other cause, but the prospect fatigued him. He had worked hard to set up the routine of his life, and it would take a great effort to change it. In the end, he hadn't even been capable of making that d
ecision on his own; he'd left it to Halifa.

  Benjamin's emotion, both in person and on the tape, had also jarred him out of his routine. And he'd made a promise during the evening prayer that he had to follow up on, even if he wasn't in much of a mood to talk to Gerald. Although, he thought as he walked, striking up a conversation and guiding it toward marriages and problems would likely be easy for him right now.

  After one wrong turn, he got out his phone and looked up Founder's, and three blocks later saw the tea shop and liquor store. From there he had no more trouble. At the door, though, he hesitated. The rainbow flag decal: he knew what that meant. It wasn't a surprise for Gerald to have come in here. But what if someone he knew saw him going in? How could he explain that he'd been fascinated by the love between Gerald and Benjamin that he'd seen on a private tape, that he wanted to understand it and perhaps help restore it?

  As he hesitated, the door swung open and a young lion just growing out his mane came out in a burst of conversation and beer smell. "Oh, sorry," he said, holding the door. "Go ahead."

  "Thank you," Aziz inclined his head. Because the door was open, he stepped past the lion and into the bar.

  For a moment, he expected the conversation to stop, all eyes to turn to him, like in an old Western movie. But nobody took any notice of him. The patrons were exclusively male as far as he could see, paired at high bar tables or sitting in groups of three, four, or five around lower round tables. The wood-paneled walls hung with old black and white pictures, many of which seemed to be of parades or riots or both. Over the bar, a rainbow flag hung suspended from both ends, and rainbow streamers bracketed it on both sides.