Chapter Text
Heartbreak was an atom bomb at twenty-one years old. Everything that preceded it suddenly became BEFORE, in big, brutalist capital letters. It was crazy, in the AFTER, how all of the landmarks that Alex once relied upon were suddenly gone. Maybe the speed of it was the worst part, like the smack of a fist when he’d never even thought to anticipate it. One morning he just woke up in his father’s house and found himself in ruin.
He survived it. Burned, broken, chewed up, but alive, somehow, in the end.
AFTER became Year One at twenty-two. Obliteration gave way to a clean slate. The forests sown throughout his confusing adolescence had already been sublimated. The trees he planted now grew deeper roots. They followed new boulevards arranged carefully in a neat grid. With hindsight, the old crooked roads they’d replaced were humble, if not a little sad.
Twenty-three. Alex learned the difference between finding truth for himself and being told what to think. He interred his political aspirations inside of a memorial constructed for BEFORE. Folded his LSAT scores into a paper crane and cremated them, threw in the urn for good measure. His own mother was a goddamned two-term president and the system still didn’t serve him. He wasn’t going to martyr himself for it. Or maybe it was what June always warned him about: self-immolation, narrowly avoided.
Each year the anniversary of BEFORE lost a little more of its fanfare. Coming out was agonizing. Alex kept watching his phone for a message that would never come, staring until he could trace the shape of his home screen with his eyes shut. Instead, one sixth of America told him that he was a monster. The larger portion pestered him with rumors until he gave up on his own disappointment and slept with an A-lister with a cock four months after the announcement.
His mom was proud of him; said so. He knew that what she meant was that she appreciated that he’d kept it quiet during the election. Sometimes Alex wished that June didn’t know their mother so well.
He spent twenty-four at the Laredo border crossing, spitting all of the venom he could muster into viral videos which crowded out the prime-time talking heads for weeks across all of the big news networks. His dad was proud of him; said so. He knew that what he meant was that Oscar felt guilty for kicking the responsibility to his own son when he’d turned his back for the compromise of a successful political career. Sometimes Alex wished that he didn’t know their father so well.
Life became less novel at twenty-five. Months began to accelerate like days, stretching into a grey blur distending between guest correspondences on CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, when he was feeling masochistic; June and Nora’s wedding dressed in the regalia of a best man for both sides; groundbreaking on the Claremont Presidential Library; three months in Nogales; six months in Brownsville; fourteen camped out in his abuelitos’ tiny living room in CDMX; a American Mosaic Journalism Prize with June for their essays on the disaster of the American immigration system.
Twenty-eight found him blacklisted from cable television after he called the Republican nominee for president a fucking goose-stepping fascist during a live panel debate. A few think-pieces bemoaned the demise of the Claremont political dynasty. His mom called him to talk about honey and vinegar and flies. He updated his handle on his social media accounts to Alex Diaz.
Thirty came nine years after BEFORE. It was the first time that Alex was able to look back at the last of those petrified ruins without agonizing over them. That’s when he realized just how strange it’d all been. No one was supposed to fall in love with a prince and be normal at the end of it, just like no one really got through the White House unscathed. But it also didn’t have to define him and somehow— although that legacy was still there, and always would be, traced in negative like a chalk outline drawn in black soot —it didn’t, not anymore.
That same year Vice News courted him for a six episode series on the truth between America’s immigration poltergeist and the people stuck in limbo on the border. He won his first Peabody. June clammed up. It took eight months for them to mend hurt feelings over his knack at somehow always overshadowing her, from PTA meetings to Pride parades to goddamned media awards.
Even then he didn’t have the guts to tell her that he was made from fool’s gold: that he hadn’t spoken to their mother in nearly two years and Oscar in maybe one; that the reason he was always absent from family holidays at her and Nora’s dreamy New England Cape Cod was that he couldn’t look at his baby niece without feeling pathetic about himself and his studio apartment and his romantic relationships, which were so transactional that they might as well’ve been escorts.
It wasn’t worth talking about. He was more than his empty, too-big heart.
Thirty-four welcomed his debut season on HBO anchoring a ruthless late night news show billed as satire only because he was young and his cynicism was so biting. Segments from the show began to leak backwards into cable news again, even though they still didn’t dare to invite him in for live commentary. He joked about having to compete with dragons for top billing with the network, but the fact of the matter was that for the first time in his life he felt like he was finally in control of what he did with himself.
That confidence faltered when he found his first grey hair at thirty six, amplified in HD on every streaming service across America. Nora bemoaned his early entry into silver fox territory while she fended off accusations of “aging gracefully” whenever she couldn’t be fucked with wearing foundation. Maybe that shocker of a wake-up call about his own mortality was what nearly got him married, until he and Liv, who was too young and too conflict-adverse for him, honestly, realized that they were about to make a colossal mistake by even moving in together.
And now he’s forty years old, sitting in a corner office crammed with awards, having conquered Game of Thrones and all of its bastard spin-offs to secure himself HBO’s top rating for prime-time late night without having to tap-dance for the honor. He’s got the big ass desk to prove it, decorated with his usual clutter and a silver-framed photo of Evangeline, called Eva, sent to him fresh from the presses last week by June after her daughter’s fourth grade picture day.
It’s late. His scalp itches. Two weeks prior he’d looked into his bathroom mirror one morning and had seen his father staring back at him; freaked out; shaved his head. It’s just starting to grow back, much to the chagrin of both his viewers and his executive producer. Knowing his luck it’ll all come back in grey. At least then he won’t look like a skinhead.
“Alex?”
He jumps, sending a loose cufflink skittering across the desktop when he turns to face the door. Neida stares back at him, her sensible cardigan wrinkled down the sleeves from another long workday. Guilt gnaws at the nape of his neck. He’s really got to start leaving the office earlier. He loves his staff, but they don’t understand that it’s only the captain who’s supposed to go down with the ship.
“What’s up?”
“Sorry for interrupting,” she says without meaning a word of it.
Neida’s always been good at threading the needle between calling out his bullshit and keeping herself humble enough to learn what he’s got to offer her. At twenty-four she’s lightyears ahead of him compared to himself at that age. That, along with her steel courage and incredible contemporaneous political analysis, was why he’d taken her on as a protege. He only wishes that his work-life balance hadn’t already rubbed off on her.
He’s gotta talk to her about it again.
“Ah-huh,” he replies. He gestures at his computer, the monitor long since blacked out from lack of use. He’s got a bad habit of sitting in here even after he’s run out of things to do. His empty apartment doesn’t help. Maybe he should get a goldfish. Shit. A Roomba, even. “Something I can help you with?”
“Thought we could talk about next month.”
He nods and waves her in. She plops into the chair opposite his desk and sighs, neck cracking when she tilts it from side to side.
He laughs, “Jesus.”
“This is your gig, boss. Get me a goddamned ergonomic chair.”
“Go home,” he counters. “Don’t you have a dog?”
She shrugs. “Nelly’s toilet trained. She’s basically autonomous. Thirsty?”
Alex clamps his hand down on the crystal decanter lurking at the far corner of his desk. “Nuh-uh. This thing gets paid more than you do.” He frowns. “Did you say your dog uses the toilet?”
Neida stands and snatches two rocks glasses from the bar cart drawn at the side of the room. Christ. He’s a terrible manager.
“Sure. She’s a miniature poodle. They’re smart as shit. Come on.” She slides one glass at Alex from across the desk and angles the other towards the decanter. “I’ve earned myself a promotion. I’ve got a scoop for October 20.”
Alex sighs before twisting off the stopper and tipping a finger of whisky into Neida’s glass. She raises an eyebrow for another and he empathizes, not for the first time, with poor Raf and everything he’d once put him through.
“For chrissakes, Neida, drink your whisky and tell me what you got.”
She tips her head back and takes the drink with it, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand once she’s done. “Hey, that’s good. Macallan?”
“Glenfiddich. You want a cigar, too, Winston?”
“I’ll take a refill,” she replies before finally breaking under Alex’s long-suffering stare with the duck of her head and a grin. “Fine, fine. So listen. October 20.”
He pours himself the drink that he’s probably stupid to pretend he doesn’t want and takes a sip. She sets her empty glass down on the desk and finally returns to her seat
“Yep,” he says, imagining the skeleton outline of the episode that he and Neida and the rest of the staff had sketched out a few days prior in one of the conference rooms down the hall. “UAW on the first half, update on the methadone safe haven bill in the second.”
Neida waves her hand to hurry him along. That’s probably something he did with Raf, too. Talk about karma coming back with a lockjaw bite. “And a tie in with some NIMBY shit. We can still fit it all in, but I’ve got an interview for you that you’re not gonna to want to turn down.” This time it’s Alex’s turn to signal at her to continue. Her grin grows ever wider. It makes him wonder if he’s starting to develop an ulcer. “So you know my girlfriend Samira.”
“I know she probably wants you home by now.”
“Nah, she’s toilet trained, too.”
Alex laughs and shakes his head.
“So she’s got a cousin in Birmingham,” Neida continues.
“Alabama?”
“England.”
“Famously the Alabama of Europe,” Alex offers. Neida groans.
“I don’t know why anyone listens to a word you say.”
He points at an Emmy on the bookshelf behind his head in lieu of a reply. Neida rolls her eyes, as if she didn’t play a part in winning it.
“Anyway, this cousin in Birmingham has this uncle— well, second uncle, if you’re getting precious about it —real impressive guy. Has worked for the Crown for his entire professional life. Close to the family. The Royal family proper, like, we’re talking the King of England.”
“I’m familiar with the British monarchy, Neida,” Alex replies dryly. “Does this have a punchline?”
“So this uncle reaches out to this cousin who reaches out to my Samira, because he hears that she’s in cahoots with the famous Neida Bautista.” She bats her eyes at her own name. Alex fights the urge to roll his own.
“Sure he did. So you’ve got some name recognition in London, kid. I’m not retiring just yet.”
“As if you’re ever gonna retire.”
“So this cousin,” Alex replies.
“So this uncle, Mr. Srivastava—”
Alex’s fingers twitch around his glass. “Wait. Srivastava?”
“Yeah. What? Come on, he didn’t already reach out to you, did he? I gave him my goddamned email twice.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Alex sets down his glass and twists his chair to the side, shaking his mouse until his computer monitor slowly hums to life. His brain does the same, neurons dancing through the long lists of all of the names he’s memorized throughout the years. “It’s just familiar for some reason. Srivastava… What’s the first name?”
“Shaan.”
Alex turns back towards her with the squeak of his desk chair. “No shit. Shaan Srivastava?”
“Yes,” Neida replies slowly, an incredulous look dawning on her face. “Oh, my God. Don’t tell me you already know him. How the hell do you know him?”
Another squeak of his chair. Alex quickly types a set of words into a search bar. He finds what he’s looking for and smirks, snatching at the mouse again to click on a photo, which he crops in tighter before he tilts the monitor in Neida’s direction so that she can see what he’s brought up.
“This him?”
A grainy image of a svelte, well-dressed man in motion stares back at her, his face drawn into grimace as one hand reaches forward into the air. Neida groans.
“Yes! What the fuck?”
“Shaan and I go way back.”
“No fucking way.”
Alex pulls the scroll wheel backwards on the mouse so that the pictures zooms back to full size. Neida gasps.
“Oh, my God, is that you?” She leaps from her chair and leans over the desk, nearly pressing her nose against the monitor while she inspects it more closely. “No fucking way. What is that? Is that cake?”
Something bittersweet swells inside of Alex’s chest. It’s been a long time since he’s thought about any of this, but he’d never imagined— certainly not when it’d first happened —that anyone would ever forget about his first international scandal. He purses his lips to reply, but is interrupted by: “Wow, he aged a lot better than you did.”
“Hey!”
He swats Neida away from the monitor and squints at himself in miniature. It’s at that moment that he realizes with a wave of horror that the woman was four years old when the picture was taken.
Fucking hell.
“I mean,” Neida continues stubbornly, “he looks identical.”
“So do I!”
“Uh-huh. Wait. Is that Prince Henry?”
“The very same.”
Neida’s mouth falls open. “You pushed Prince Henry into a cake?”
Alex gawps back at her. “No, he pu—“ Alex jams his thumb into the inside corner of his eyebrow and stops himself short. No need to resurrect this particular albatross. “It was an accident.”
“What even is this?”
“King Philip’s wedding,” Alex explains.
“O-oh,” Neida replies, stretching out the vowels. “Wow. Ancient history.”
“You’re definitely not getting that chair if you keep on insulting me.”
“Try it. I’ll go to HR. Triple protected class, you know; you’re fucked.”
“Have you always talked to your bosses like this?”
“You’re the only boss I’ve ever had,” Neida says with a shrug.
Alex harrumphs a perfectly-enunciated ugh. “I should’ve made you intern first.”
“Duh. Wow,” she echoes, sinking backwards into her chair, “and I should’ve looked this up first. I could’ve brought a cupcake or something, you know, set the mood.”
“Cute. So what’s the story, Neida? Hate to say it but this shit,” he jerks a thumb back over his shoulder at the computer, “already made the rounds.”
Something shifts in her face. He recognizes the predatory glint in her eye. “An exclusive,” she says.
“It’s eleven forty three. Cut to the chase.” Even Neida’s enthusiasm has a limit. Maybe he really is getting old.
“Jesus, fine. Your buddy is abdicating.” She tilts her chin towards the computer. “He’s prepared to give us the exclusive rights to break the story.”
Alex waits for the wrecking ball of Neida’s revelation. It would’ve come, once. At twenty-one it would’ve annihilated him. Now he just feels tired. He’s been wearing his suit for too long. He wants another glass of whisky but he knows it’ll just give him a headache on the subway ride home. That makes him worry about Neida going back to Brooklyn all alone, which is patronizing, probably, but he can’t shake it off. He’ll call her a car. Maybe he should call himself one, too.
“What’s the motivation?” he asks.
And that’s something, too, isn’t it? To ask what’s finally driven Henry to toss off the royal yoke, and direct the question not at the man himself but to a Filipina from Jersey who hadn’t even been born when Alex had first met the prince in Rio a lifetime before?
“I don’t know. Maybe he feels redundant,” Neida guesses aloud.
Alex supposes it’s as good an answer as anything. He’d known a Henry who’d looked at his proximity to the throne like a fraying parachute cord, but that had been BEFORE. Now, Philip and Martha have three sons standing between their uncle and the abyss. Who knows what Henry fears nowadays. Who knows what sort of man he is at all.
“Shaan didn’t share anything specific?”
“He seemed too spooked to say much of anything. Way I figure it, they don’t want the British press to get wind of it and spin the story wrong. Makes sense. King Philip has never polled well.”
“Yeah, well, Brexit hasn’t made the British heart fonder for the same old shit they’ve been shoveling for three hundred years.”
“Sure enough. And knowing what I know now, Shaan probably thinks you’re more friendly ground.”
Alex isn’t sure about that. Shaan’s loyalty had always been to Henry, the same that Zahra’s had always been to his mother. There hadn’t ever been much left over for him. That surely seems the case now, for neither of them to have bothered to reach out to him directly regarding this interview that’s more a favor to Henry than it is to him.
Shit.
He rolls the rocks glass between his fingers.
This is a rotten deal.
But his EP would be furious if he turned this down. It’ll be the biggest story that the show has ever broken, never mind the fact that it’s probably also the least consequential. He’s never wanted the show to turn into a softball interview hour— made that abundantly clear when he’d first signed his contract. No comedy, either; he wasn’t fucking Colbert.
He glances over at Neida, who’s so busy trying to look unflustered that she’s nearly fallen out of her chair.
The thing is, Alex isn’t in his early thirties anymore. The show isn’t what it once was, either; it's bigger, now, matters more. And when Queen Mary had died, the world had gasped in surprise when her daughter Catherine had refused her crown. Philip had strode forward to take on the mantle with such confidence that his mother’s abdication had seemed like an odd blip in an otherwise unbroken line, but if Henry follows suit, that odd blip becomes a serious crack in the monarchal foundations. Shit, it could be the beginning of the end of everything: eons of rotten imperial rule.
Not to mention a career-maker for anyone with aspirations to break the news. Forget the Emmys. This is history.
“You want it?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“The interview. Run with it. It’s yours.”
“No way,” Neida breathes. “It’s… It’s your show, Alex. And he asked for you.”
“Tough shit.” He smiles as warmly as he can manage to settle her nerves. It comes to him genuinely. “Your source, your interview. My call.”
“You mean it?”
“Sure. But it’s your baby if you take it; prep, handling, all of it, and I’m going to expect the usual caliber. This isn’t whiffle ball. You okay with that?”
“Aw, come on, now you don’t trust me?”
She grins. It’s a little wobbly, but it quickly settles into a confident smirk. That’s all the confirmation that Alex needs. Like him, he knows, Neida only needs a challenge to conquer just about anything.
“Alright, then,” Alex says. “God save the King.”
===
“See you later, Mr. Diaz,” his driver for the night says over his shoulder when Alex steps out onto the damp pavement outside.
“Goodnight, Frank. Thanks for the ride.”
Frank salutes with a goofy grin and then he turns, shoving the sleek black sedan into gear and easing it away from the curb. Alex is left alone to the midnight chill crawling down his collar. It’s been nearly fifteen years since his Secret Service entitlement expired. He still keeps in touch with most of them, but he can’t say that he misses the feeling of being watched.
Still, a little company wouldn’t hurt, from time to time.
He strides through the front lobby of his building. The hard heels of his oxfords click against the marble floors. The bellman nods at him between glances at his crossword puzzle. He’s making slow progress tonight. Alex waves and walks past him to make a quick stop in the mailroom, shoving a handful of envelopes under one arm before he finally makes it to the elevator. A number pad waits patiently beside it. He punches in his door code against the polished brass. The elevator opens. It’s another quiet, tidy, empty room. He presses the topmost button on the panel and looks down once the doors close to shuffle through his mail. Same old shit as usual.
The doors open directly into his flat. It’s dark inside. He tosses his mail onto a lacquered console table, slips the scarf from his neck and lets it fall in a pile on top. Gropes for the lights. They flicker on, already dimmed into a moody glow that suits the late hour.
Alex makes his way into the living room. He deposits his overcoat and then his sports coat along the length of one of the low, stylish couches that June had helped him pick out; the ones that he never really uses. There’s a lot of shit like that in this place. His shoes stay on despite the damp prints they leave behind on the floorboards. Whatever. It’s hardwood. It won’t melt.
He fixes himself another glass of whisky and wanders over to the kitchen faucet to add a splash of water to the mix— sacrilege, he knows, especially given the vintage, but it’s late, and he’s not in his twenties anymore. Afterwards he finally collapses into an armchair turned towards the tall wall of glass that makes up the better portion of the room.
The apartment’s skyline view is why he’d paid way too much for the place. Although he’s rarely there to see it, the panorama is gorgeous during the day. At night the recessed lighting above his head turns the windows into a mirror. He takes a long drink and then he looks into the reflection to see who’s inside.
It’s a man dressed in a pair of well-tailored navy dress slacks; dark socks, black shoes; black belt; white shirt, unbuttoned down the collar by a trio of open eyelets; a watch on one wrist, sleek, analogue; a short crop of black hair, dusted lighter at the temples and down the sides; dark eyes; faint creases at their corners which used to only show up when he smiled.
He tries to superimpose that picture from the royal wedding on top of the glass. He’d looked at it enough to remember the details. They bulge and bump around the edges of his reflection like two magnets forced together by the wrong ends.
“Shit.”
He rubs a hand over his face, taking the time to press his fingers into each curve of his skull.
Shaan Srivastava.
He’d really thought he’d never hear that name again.
His mom keeps in touch with Zahra, Alex knows, but he’d never gotten around to mending that burned bridge. It’s possible that his mom won’t let him. She’s never been the type of person to easily forget a grudge. He can’t remember who’s at fault, really, in the end. She’d done neither of her children any favors by running for president, but it’s not like she’d ever been disingenuous about any of it, either. He’d leaned in to his role as first son— and she’d let him—and he’d liked it. Until he didn’t, at least. But none of that had been her fault. She’d just been collateral.
The Bomb had been the problem.
He huffs a breath into his glass and takes another drink.
His mausoleum to BEFORE is starting to show its age. He doesn’t take such great care of it anymore. But it’s still there, cracks and all, and now, for the first time since it’s all happened, he’s got the option of opening it up again. He’d like to say that he doesn’t remember what’s inside, but that would be a lie. Even now he can close his eyes and see every inch of that old world as clearly as the city beneath him. Blond hair; blue eyes; soft, warm skin stretched across a strong thigh.
Now all of it is mummified.
So what’s he supposed to do with it? Brush off the dust and place it under glass, charge entry, play docent, master of his own personal Pompeii? Is he supposed to treat it like a grave?
“Fuck it.”
He stands, drains his glass, shoves it into the corner of the armchair’s bottom cushion. None of this matters. It’s late. He’s tired. He’s overthinking this. It’s not like he’s never done that before. Half of his professional catalogue came from the bottom of one of his rabbit holes.
He wanders into his bedroom and crosses the dark maroon ellipse of a rug to enter into the ensuite bathroom. Turns on the tap just to break up the silence. He untucks his shirt and pops open each button before shrugging it off his shoulders and tossing it at a hamper shoved behind the door.
He drums his fingers along the vanity top. “Okay, Diaz,” he says to his reflection, this time clearer in the mirror above the sink. “One good thing, one bad.”
Good Thing: Neida’s gonna kill this interview. It’ll give her the leverage that she deserves. By the time she gets a few more years under her belt she’ll be able to push the envelope that much harder. She gives a shit. She’ll make it matter. She’s a pain in the ass, but he’s fucking proud of her.
Bad Thing:
The water falling from the faucet drones into white noise.
Bad Thing:
His palm rasps across the stubble on his chin. He lets his hand drop to the black marks inked on his chest. It’s an old, finicky thing that he has to touch up every couple of years so that the fine lines don’t disappear. It’s been about eight months since his last session but the tattoo's shape is second nature to him even when it’s not so crisp.
He traces a finger along the dots and lines of Orion with the constellation’s figment sword drawn high. His heartbeat pulses against his fingertip.
Bad Thing:
“I dunno,” he admits to himself. “I dunno.”