Work Text:
"χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά.
Beauty is harsh."
And during these nights at Francis’s house I’d be able to get the best sleep I’ve ever gotten—possibly the best sleep I’d ever be able to get, because even sleeping pills did not work fairly well on me anymore—but it was this particular weekend in early October that insomnia clung to me all the way from Hampden to the country. I searched for pills in the drawers of a dark, empty bedroom out of my damned, frazzled mind. The musty air clouded my hungover thoughts and it was not long until I gave up. It was nearly four in the morning, anyway, so I thought: might as well just stare out at the window until sunrise, or laze around at the kitchen sink with a cup of coffee. Which I did, dilly-dallying and so forth.
After sobering up, I headed down to the porch during the ungodly hour, soon to be five A.M., grabbing my bathrobe (it was actually one of Francis’; I was merely borrowing it); it was a summer-like October, but I fretted over the lack of sunlight. Much to my chagrin, as soon as I opened the door to the porch I was hit with a humid, warm air that settled around me in stillness, not even swaying one bit to give me a breeze of greeting. I flung my bathrobe onto the chair.
I always admired the country: how pretty it seemed in the pictures, it became even prettier to the naked eye; the untouchable feeling I often received just staring at the tall, looming willow trees, as if they were something out of a legend, a magical fairy tale that if I was even near them for a moment, they could vanish before me in a second, and if I looked far enough, I could see a glimmering reflection of the sky in the lake, swirling like an illusion. These were mornings I fell in love with: the tranquility, the contempt, the comfort of being alone. These mornings, I felt like I finally understood Henry—his nature of choosing to rest and work in solitude, dreading the moment when the others would start filing in like baby ducks looking for their mother.
It was not long before the first duck had come: it was none other than the Devil himself, already dressed smartly in neatly ironed trousers and a crisp, white button-down rolled up to his elbows. We were often the first ones up. Henry and I and our silent mornings, something I’m sure only ever happened between us (the silence, I meant). We dwindled in our mutual quietness, occasionally having small talk, but rarely. However, if my mouth ever slipped out something Henry perked up at the sound of (I was always careful to never mention anything Greek, unless it might’ve been about homework), the silence would immediately be replaced with a passionate monologue, spiraling out of control without an interruption from me—for I was always neutral, never quite rude enough to intrude. (The only way out was my tremendous ability to space out, but only if I tried hard enough. It seemed to me that when Henry talked with such emotion, it caused me to hang onto every word, even if I didn’t really want to). Henry’s deep, philosophical rants would go on and on, dragging the seconds longer until someone burst onto the porch, anyone have breakfast yet?
“You’re up early,” Henry sounded politely surprised when he saw me. He took his place at his study table, scattered with books and papers and his Montblanc pen rolling about, left uncapped in the middle of the night.
“I never went to sleep in the first place,” I said.
Henry acknowledged my comment with a small noise of sympathy. He, like me, suffered from the abundant lack of sleep, too. Without saying another word from either of us, I watched Henry light a wax candle and start writing from the other side of the porch, brows furrowed in concentration as he furiously scrawled onto the paper. What neat handwriting he had, I thought idly, and a flurry of images, glimpses of Henry’s Greek essays came to my mind. The way he handled his posture when he wrote, too, was fascinating. The slight lean of his hand, how he pointed the pen so flawlessly, so effortlessly. As I continued to stare off distantly, focused on the lines of fences, or maybe trees, or houses—I can’t recall, really—maybe sleep had started to stir inside of me. The lights in the street lamps slowly dimmed, and the sun made its first climb over the horizon, sending shadows through the dozens of trees, shedding light onto the newly fallen leaves.
Almost two hours had passed when Henry and I both heard the clattering of silverware and the sleepy voices with accompanied footsteps inside the house. The sky was beginning to clear of dark blue, and sunlight had hit the porch. Henry put his cigarette out in the full ashtray, letting out a little sigh. It was usually a sign that he would be done with his work for now.
“Henry! Richard!”
It was no other than Bunny, singing our names with a teasing glee as he opened the door to the porch, not quite stepping outside; he was barefoot and the wind from the previous night had blown woodchips around and onto the porch. His hair was still wet from a morning shower, and water dripped onto his glasses.
“Care to join breakfast?” said Bunny.
“Sure.”
“I‘ll be right there,” said Henry, still looking down at his work. He shuffled the last of his papers into one stack. For good measure, he reached for a large, heavy German poem book as a paperweight, so there would be no sheets for the wind to steal.
Breakfast was, as usual, quiet during Saturday mornings. Camilla was making coffee, and Charles at the toaster, asking if anyone knew where the butter was. Francis came down the stairs as we entered the kitchen, yawning. Bloody Mary’s were served with coffee, and coffee was served with burnt toast and butter. There wasn’t enough butter for the six of us; Bunny ended up taking the most, nearly half of it all. Charles and Francis both shouted at him in unison, each hitting his back in a petty attempt of revenge. I laughed through my butterless slice. Even Henry had cracked a wicked grin at Bunny’s exaggerated cries.
We spent that morning in the library: Charles on the piano, playing a lazy, on-the-verge-of-drunk rendition of “Harmonies poétiques et religieuses” (he preferred to play more jazz and modern type of pieces, but Francis had insisted on Frank Liszt) as Camilla leaned on his shoulder, facing the opposite direction of the piano, her restless feet kicking along with the beat of the music while finishing the lasts of her brother’s Scotch in tiny sips—her throat when she swallowed was so mesmerizing, how could that be?, I wondered—and the kicking of her legs was so princess-like, dancing along with her long, white sundress; there was Francis sitting at the windowsill, staring outside at the decaying leaves of autumn with slender hands on his chin in contemplation, French novels left untouched right beside him, its pages fluttering with every movement he made; Bunny lounged in the sofa chair, indulging himself in a plate of fruit pastries (“Apple pie!” His eyes lit up when he saw the neatly sliced tarts, “back at home, there's always apple pie for dessert on Sundays, but these small things have nothing up against Aunt Janie’s—”), occasionally disrupting the piano music or light conversation or comfortable silence with a horrible uncle joke once too many times. And Henry, sitting at the table—the small, circular one, which reminded me a lot of the one in Julian’s office—on one end and me on the other, my head in my arms as I listened to him read to me, (Earlier, he had opened his book, crisp white pages, and began to read as soon as we entered the library. I sat with him, reading my own book—Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray —but eventually I got a headache and put the book down, rubbing my eyes and setting my head down.
Henry had raised an eyebrow when he looked up from his book, “Richard?”
“Just a headache,” I assured. It must’ve been because I had not slept at all since Thursday afternoon. I was trying to finish all of Julian’s assignments before we went to the country, since last weekend I had gotten so drunk I wasn’t able to finish the composition due on Monday. I was still sick from the amount of liquor we drank yesterday night as well. It was also a bad decision for me to drink all morning, especially when there wasn’t an inkling of recovery in me. I had brushed it all away with the ignorance of a child, though. Then, I had felt bold at the sympathetic furrow of his eyebrows, “read to me?”
He nodded as I watched his Adam’s apple bob, and looked back at the book, “ Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere …”), his rough, cool voice not loud enough to sound over Charles’ music, but enough for me to hear the Latin words coming out of his mouth—soothing, foreign, and lulling me into daydreams of cigarette smoke and round glasses on a night table.
It was an hour or so before lunch when all our drinks only had ice melting in them left and Charles had finished playing–he was probably now annoyed at Francis’ rapid suggesting of songs, which interrupted him in the middle of every piece–Camilla rose up with a spring to her ballerina-like steps and her dress flowed along with her like river water following the current. She was as energetic as ever, her feet restless, and the dusty sunlight glowed upon her blonde hair: “Let’s take a walk down the lake. I don’t think I can bear sitting here any longer.”
Francis uncurled from his position, limp by limp, making it look like watching a flower bud unfurl its petals in time-lapse, and wordlessly got off the sill, placing his books back on one of the shelves, while Bunny jumped up, chit-chatty, nearly knocking the plate in his lap over. It clattered loudly back on the coffee table, and I hissed as I got up, holding my head; the sound wasn’t all that loud, but with my migraine, it was painful. The pounding on my skull had only gotten worse. My soft cry had seemed to render the attention of all of them, and Charles touched my shoulder, “maybe you should stay inside, Richard. Take a pill or two. I’m sure Henry has some.”
They all turned to Henry, the book now closed in his hands as he stared at me. Noticing their gazes, he shrugged, voice monotone as ever, “I’ll stay inside, too. I have to finish some translations, anyway.”
And just like that, with an elaborate parting gesture from Francis, the rest of them left the library in quiet but happy spirits, careful not to disturb me, but Bunny’s hollering and Francis’ mocking laughter at the end of the hallway didn't go unheard. Henry sat me down on the sofa chair Bunny had been sitting in and went to go fetch some of his medicine for me.
No matter what position I put my head in, whether it was against the chair facing the ceiling or in my arms’ hold, the pain would not subside and all I could hear was the hammer against my skull, and my swollen brain against it: thud , thud , thud . I closed my eyes, praying for deep sleep so I wouldn’t have to feel the throbbing pain in my head, which felt like could burst at any moment.
Soon Henry came down with a bottle in his hand and a glass of water in the other, and I listened to his footsteps as my eyes were closed, searching for something to distract myself with. When I opened my eyes, he was closer than I thought he had been, and if it weren’t for my slow reactions from my sickness, I would’ve jumped at how I could feel his breathing bristling against my hair. My hands, cold and shaking, reached for his closed fist of medicine, but he shook his head and motioned my mouth to open, and he fed me the pills instead, and watched me gulp the water with intense eyes. It was oddly intimate, how close we were, one large hand against my shoulder, his eyes on my mouth and throat. A breath caught in my lungs when Henry pushed his forehead against mine, our noses almost touching, holding gazes for longer than we should have. But it was only a moment, and I could’ve imagined the emotions that passed through his glance, and in a second Henry was pulling away after feeling my fever, tsking quietly and muttering something about my body’s affinity for illness, which, wasn’t very true at all but it had seemed to be, for my time in Hampden were also the times I was the most sick.
“I’m from California, after all,” I said, trying to muster a smile that looked more like a grimace, and Henry raised an eyebrow. “The winters there might as well be hotter than the summers here.”
He nodded, but did not say anything to attest to that as he set down the glass of water I finished. It’s not like he could anyway, because I accidentally banged my head against the tall lamp behind the chair, the metal swishing as the light flickered and my ears ringing. I let out another hiss. He rushed up to me, and in a swift motion, placed his palm under the nape of my neck, cradling it like a mother would to a baby, and he said, with a lilt of almost teasing to his voice, “let’s head to up your room. I reckon it’s safer there.”
He made his way to lift me, and I almost barked out a laugh if it weren’t for the pounding headache. I lightly pushed his arm away, “I’m fine, Henry. I can walk.” Henry sent me a look of disbelief, but didn’t argue. Instead, he held a strong grip on my arm as we slowly ascended the stairs and into the bedroom. On the stairs I had faltered slightly, yet I still refused him to carry me; then he had grasped my waist, with another hand, firm-fitting as we continued up.
Henry stayed with me, leaning at the doorway as he watched me, dazed and dizzy, set myself on the bed gently. The look in his eye was intense with concern again, but also touched with something different, and I might’ve mistaken it for something of fondness.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Richard?”
His manners were impeccable. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, feeling as though I was reassuring him rather than Henry reassuring me. He leaned closer, noticing the new gleam of sweat that covered my forehead, “how about a sleeping pill?”
I nodded weakly, and he quickly left the room to find more pills and another glass of water to fill. I already felt quite tipsy from drinking, and the fever wasn’t doing it any better; I figured that sleep would be best, despite the fact that lunch was coming soon, and I probably wasn’t going to take just a short nap. Yet I wondered what the others could be up to in an envious sort of fret. Maybe they had taken out the boat, and already I could see the ends of Camilla’s hair tracing the water as yellow-birch leaves fell on her ethereal face; maybe they had ventured far from the lake and had a little adventure, one with Bunny hiking ahead of them, pointing at higher grounds with child-like excitement; maybe they were chasing each other in the grass barefoot, drunk and faces flushed radiant, with Francis’ new silk robe left discarded on the porch with a tray of whiskey glasses left untouched. It was foolish of me to want to be with all of them during my state, wishing to play together with the kind of delight and ignorance that was found in movies, yet I could not help it. It seemed to occur to me now that all five of them, as a whole and taken apart individually and then placed back together, I was in love with, completely obsessed with, really, and spending my moments with them had become an unhealthy addiction, watching them, predicting their movements and always thinking about them, as if they were my favorite characters in a book; wondering about how they would react to this or that, and becoming fascinated by the tiniest of their quirks or bad habits, had become a sort of entertainment to me, a hobby in which I was merely thrilled at the thought of being with them, and almost perverted at the thought of being a part of them.
Henry sat in the corner of the room, discreetly watching over me as he scribbled in his notebook after I had taken the pill, and soon I began to feel drowsy in a matter of half an hour. Though the liquor was pretty much out of my system already, I still felt heavily drunk. Before I knew it, the others were calling Henry and I down for lunch, which made him promptly leave the room to explain to them about my condition, and when he came back, he told me so.
“I’m close to sleep soon,” I said. “Just head downstairs and have lunch without me, Henry.”
He nodded, but he advanced toward me anyway, and then (to my surprise, which almost left me gaping like a fish if it weren’t for the fact my mouth was quite occupied at the time) pressed his lips against mine. At first, I froze, but Henry didn’t pull back, and I had the sudden urge to kiss back, but whether it was out of desire or the habit of kissing back I did not know. It was too long to be a peck, but too short to be a full, deliberate kiss, as if he had been deciding between the two and decided to split it right down the middle. I had never imagined his lips to be so soft; it felt like how I believed Camilla would kiss, lulling like a dream and drunkenly slow, yet the taste was entirely different–of parchment ink and cigarette smoke, of whiskey and black coffee. Before I realized I was kissing Henry, Winter, Henry Winter, the very Henry Winter who I thought would be the least of all people who would want to kiss me and maybe even the least of all those I wanted to kiss—he pulled back, expression unreadable, and turned.
“Wait,” I said, my voice faltering, and my right arm brushed his wrist to catch it. He looked down at me once again, conflicted, expecting. As darkness began to override me, and my eyelids slip shut, I mustered what came out to be a whisper, “don’t catch my cold." (When I look back at this very moment, I have an inclination to imagine that Henry had smiled when I said that. It is a rather a peculiar thought to have, but it happens so often I could not keep it to myself.)
I heard the faint steps of him leaving the room, caught a fainter voice that said ‘sleep well, Richard’, and fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.
Henry had told me the sleeping pill was quite strong, so it might have given me aftereffects of delusion and hallucination, or maybe just odd dreams during sleep. I thought what had happened was one of those two, but it turned out, I had woken up. Yet I didn’t know at that time, didn’t realize—it felt like a dream, things blurred on the edges, nothing feeling very real. It was a dream, I was so sure, and that was all, I thought.
The lights outside the bedroom door were on, and I saw a sliver of light enter my room, and shadows moving along with them. I heard hushed voices outside my door, and careful, nervous footsteps, but it was no other than them, but what they were doing, I had no clue. Quickly, I got up, not even thinking about turning my lamp on, satisfied when I noticed my head did not hurt anymore, and made way to open the door, ready to join them.
They must’ve heard my footsteps, because they immediately stopped moving, and there wasn’t even a whisper I could hear. I wanted to laugh. I was confused and stupid, stupid enough to assume that they thought they had heard a ghost, and did not know it was actually me. If I had known better, I would’ve soon realized it was clearly me they had been trying to avoid, but it was not me then at that time, foolish and drugged enough to believe I was in a dream.
I turned the knob and pulled the door open, ready to burst out on the tip of my toes, but I couldn’t, for a tower of flesh and bone stood before me, blocking my way and my view. I looked up, and was delighted to see that it was Henry, dressed in a white tunic that suspiciously looked like it was made of bedsheets, and a wreath of tree sticks and leaves adorning his hair, messy and distorted and riled up at different angles. There was dirt and mud all over him—was that a bruise?—, and I was about to joke how I’ve never seen him in such an untidy state, but I stopped before I could when our eyes met; I had never seen a chilling gaze like that of him toward me, as if he had been caught in a disastrous surprise that he did not like at all.
I gulped and cleared my throat—light from the hallway glowed around him like an aura, yet it also made him look like a shadow, a monster hiding the sun—and as light-hearted as I could, said, “Henry, you’re much more frightening in my dreams than when I’m awake.”
A well-hidden epiphany flickered across his dark face, and a wicked smile, soft yet manipulative, a predator in disguise. “You should get back to bed, then, shouldn't you?"
And with that, he took a step, arms outstretched, taking me in his hold, and walked me back to the bed with an urgent pressure. When I was laid down, I noticed the shadows following him was the rest of the five, their faces unseen but their bodies and movements unmistakable. Yet, Henry did not seem to notice their presence, and if he did, he ignored them easily. His full attention seemed focused on me, or perhaps, more focused on making sure I fell asleep again. He gently placed two of his fingers on my eyelids, one on each, and slid them down over my eyes. Then I felt something press against my left eyelid, then my right. They were a pair of lips, and like magic, the abyss of sleep welcomed me once again.
I never questioned whether it was a dream or not I had experienced until the night I found out so. A few hours later I woke up, blinding sunlight was streaming into the room while I sniffed the waft of breakfast cooking that flowed up the stairs, and then I was up, walking briskly, too starved to think about anything besides the smell of Francis frying eggs in the kitchen. When they heard me staggering down the stairs and into kitchen, the conversation and clinking of silverware paused, and even the sound of cooking had seemed to grow faint. As soon as I entered the room I saw Bunny upon me, bright with a lopsided grin, greet me with a beam.
“Dickie boy! Glad to see you awake,” he said.
“Oh dear,” said Camilla. “You must be starving, Richard, take a seat.”
I sat between Henry and Charles. The former sipped his coffee quietly, book in hand, without sparing me a glance, while the latter gave me a sympathetic smile to which I meekly returned, and turned back to his chat with Bunny and Camilla. It was something of a debate on whether ice cream floats or prairie oysters were best for nausea, and oh! we should have a picnic today, the weather’s quite nice, isn’t it? As much as Francis tried to interrupt on how he was most definitely not going to let it happen—I can’t cook so much in a few hours and you know that, Charles—the other three ignored him and continued on. I must’ve still looked pale and sickly, because they didn’t bother to ask me, as if I might vomit before I spoke a single sentence.
“Good God, Richard, you look like hell,” said Francis when he dished an enormous amount of scrambled eggs onto my plate. At least someone was honest enough about it to tell me upright. I took a sip of tea Charles made, the steam misting my face.
“You don’t look too hot yourself,” I said jokingly, then paused, taking a glance at all of their faces. They all looked fine enough, but they could not fake the ghastly exhaustion at the bags of their eyes, and slumps of their shoulders. “Actually, none of you do. What were you all up to yesterday?”
I felt them tense around me, though my tone of voice had been amused rather than suspicious. My eyes narrowed, about to ask them what was wrong, but they were quick to cut me off.
“We were drinking ‘til our livers were ready to combust, that’s what,” said Bunny, exaggerating a frown as he patted a hand over his stomach. “But it was fun! Quite like a Christmas party! We should do it again, with Richard this time. How’s that, old man—”
“No,” Henry said quite curtly, looking up from his book.
“Let us never play another round of drinking games again,” mourned Francis. Drinking games? I wanted to ask; we seldom did such, it was mostly something done at the college parties we avoided at lengths. All we did was just drink: no rules, no penalties, but the real challenge, perhaps, was knowing when to stop before we could regret it in the morning.
“It’s only because you lost every time,” Charles mused, then turned to me, winked, and mouthed I won .
Camilla only shrugged, “I wouldn’t mind doing it again. But Christ, Bunny should never be the one carrying the liquor—”
“It was only two bottles,” insisted Bunny.
“ Only two bottles,” Francis mocked, then turned to me, voice rising with every word. “They were both from the wine cellar, and untouched for years . Each decades old, imported from Sicily. I’d like to know the names, too, if it weren’t for the fact Bunny had dropped them on the way up.”
“The year read ninety twenty-seven,” said Bunny helpfully.
Charles shook his head, “it was disastrous. Looked like murder on the stairs. Luckily it hadn’t been on carpeting or broken anything. Would’ve been harder to clean out.”
“Drunk or not, he probably would've done it anyway,” said Henry, face stern again.
“Oh,” said Camilla, grinning madly at the bickering—when the twins smiled mischievously it looked exactly identical; they both had a boyish, youthful quality to it, that no matter how much trouble it looked like, it was oddly enticing and innocent, “he's got you, Bunny.”
“Alright, alright,” said Bunny. “I might've screwed up, but that’s beside the point, really—”
Francis made a face, “please keep your mouth shut, Edmund Corcoran. For the sake of all our humanity today, please do.”
Bunny let out a whine and then promptly clamped his mouth shut when Francis sent him a look, and Camilla burst into a fit of laughter, the sound like singing of blue robins, and just like that, we eased back into routine, and I forgot why I was worried about anything in the first place.
If only, I think now, if only I had known better.
That night, when Henry told me everything, I felt oddly calm. The puzzle had finally been solved, things coming back in place, though a bit jaggedly, as if some parts had been ruined along the way, albeit still all together, though I might've expected myself to rise from the chair, pacing in disbelief, and shout oh! oh! oh! when it would hit me, the car slamming into the tree, explosions and everything falling apart with it, a rain of sparks and a forest fire for things to spiral out of control.
But that was the thing about Henry, per se—whatever he did, whatever he said, it was never rushed, never urgent, never quite worried, words flowing with a chilling calm that tingled the back of my spine, so articulate like he was reciting equations rather than speaking of murder; all the time in the world seemed to be in his hands, in his hold. The way he spun out the story made the realization come slow and steady to me, placing layers on top of one another until it was at its final state, and before I knew it, he had told me everything, and I had not fidgeted one bit at the monotone of his words; if anything, I had been agitated at how long he drawled things out, and how he always seemed to be at the verge of a tangent.
Francis had retired early for the night, which left only us two and a fine deck of Tiffany cards. We had been done playing games for a while, from bezique to solitaire, and which I all lost—I wasn’t even the least bit upset about it, it felt like a fact that whenever anyone played cards with Henry they lost, and it was only a matter of time that they would have to accept so. Instead, Henry had begun doing magic tricks, each getting more thrilling the next. His steady hands shuffled the deck, so flawless the cards moved like flowing water. His pale, smooth hands and clever fingers. It was like an art watching him, his hands dancing in such a way I’ve never known.
He laid the cards in front of me. “Pick a card.” Then, with a tiny smile, he added, “any card. Then place it back.”
I did so, and he made a show of closing his eyes, too, to which I rolled my own at. I sneaked a quick look at it—five of hearts—and slid it back into the deck. He opened his eyes, took the cards, and shuffled them expertly, and I wondered if he had ever spent any time in casinos. If he did, he must’ve done it discreetly, because we never saw him do so, and he never mentioned anything of gambling, just poker. Then, he took a card out and placed it before me, a king of spades, “is this your card?” I shook my head, corners of my mouth turning up in amusement at his disappointment. He shuffled the deck of cards again, and placed a seven of diamonds, “how about this one? No?” Henry sighed, and laid the cards face up in front of me, “guess I’m not as good at this as I thought. Which one’s your card?”
I searched the cards as Henry lit another cigarette. He had smoked so many tonight, I was sure he was halfway through his second pack of Lucky Strikes since we ate at the diner. My eyes were close to watering with the abundance of smoke swirling around us, yet I was so used to it my eyes didn’t feel as irritated anymore. I frowned, still looking, “the card’s not in here. It’s missing—”
But he wasn’t listening, taking a long drag of his cigarette before releasing a particularly huge cloud of smoke, and when I squinted, there was a flash of sky-blue between his teeth and my eyes widened.
“No.”
Henry raised an eyebrow, taking the roll of paper out of his mouth, and after opening it, smiled and handed it back to me. It was the five of hearts. “Is this your card?”
I stared at it, looked up at him, then laughed in delight, “how’d you—”
Henry waved a finger at me and blew out another plume of smoke, his eyes seeming to glitter for just a moment, and he chided me like an adult to a child would: “A magician never tells his secrets, Richard.”
Later, when we were finishing the whole bottle of Famous Grouse, I asked him, my voice on the edge of a quiver but not quite–I was beyond drunk but not wasted enough to fall asleep–, “why’d you kiss me, that day?”
Henry blinked once, then twice, but I knew he knew exactly what I was referring to. Then, to my surprise, he sent me an amused, pitying look, as if I was asking him the simplest of things. As if he couldn't quite believe yet that I was questioning such. I braced myself.
“Because I wanted to.”
I did not know why I did what I did after that, but it was something that I wonder why I had not done before, when there were better times—late nights in the library, early mornings spent together in the country, or even during my winter break hospital shenanigan, when I stayed with Henry in his apartment. I turned to look at him, though it felt like I was viewing his face through a filter of the smoke in Francis’ living room. But I did not need to see him; all I needed was to feel him. I shifted closer, took the cigarette out of his hands, and kissed him right on the mouth. A rush of passion and the craving of wanting pumped adrenaline into my veins, and though I felt my heart pumping erratically and the sudden energy to run miles, and while our first kiss had been nothing of emotion, short and fleeting, this one was slow and sensual, sweeter than I ever would have imagined. I sighed in his mouth, and he drank it with pleasure. I did not know how long we were in each other’s hold like that, but when we pulled apart, we were both breathing irregularly, and I stared at Henry’s lips, red as cherries, thinking I did that, I did that— and his eyes! The ones that always seemed cold did not look so much like so at that moment. They were red too, from smoke, but it did nothing to hide the brilliant blue of them, and all I did was stare at them as we fell back onto Francis’ couch—I hadn’t even realized we were moving, Christ—, both thinking to ourselves, good God, what a night .
“Should I leave?” I asked, when we were on opposite sides of the cushion and nothing had been said for what seemed like hours. It was getting too late, too late to stay awake and think about what just happened. I watched Henry’s hand twitch as he placed another cigarette in the full ashtray, nearly flooding with burnt cigar butts. “No, stay. You’re too drunk.” He got up to leave, muttering something about a blanket, but I stopped him. “It’s fine, Henry. It’s hot in here, I’ll be fine on the couch without one. Head upstairs and go to sleep.”
But he didn’t. He stayed with me, drinking Scotch at the desk as I laid on the lumpy sofa, eyes still open, and the lamp still on. Henry sat on the armchair with a regal-like grace (a king, I thought dazedly), legs folded and a hand on his chin, eyes hard behind his glasses and brows furrowed ever so slightly that few wrinkles formed right above them. He caught me staring, and, unlike what I usually did, I only hardened my gaze instead of averting it. He was the first to look away, with a sigh, and I felt oddly victorious. We had not exchanged any words yet, and though I wasn’t itching to do so, I let myself wonder what was on his mind.
“Why’d you kiss me?” Henry soon asked, though he knew the answer quite well himself, he wanted to hear it from me. And I obliged, but not before missing a beat, spinning out the silence, playing it out with the faintest delight.
“Because I wanted to.”
In the dim light, I saw a flicker of a smile. Henry placed down his glass, stood up, and turned off the light, the living room becoming enveloped in darkness, night’s curtain veil falling over us. I listened to his movements, each one becoming louder and louder. I sensed him hovering over me, and he whispered, “close your eyes,” and when I did, I felt his lips touch each one of my eyelids. I did not say anything, I did not do anything. There was nothing to tell him, and I let him trudge the stairs without a single word said. And like magic, a rush of déjà vu, I fell into heavy, dreamless sleep.
Many years later, I still sit in frozen trances, staring at blank walls, eyes wandered off, distant and unfocused, thinking about it all: the murder, the funeral, us before Bunny, us after Bunny, me before Bunny, me after Bunny, but mostly, Henry.
Sometimes he appeared in the corners of my eyes, leaning against a wall smoking a pack of Lucky Strikes, on my couch flipping through the pages of a yellow-paged torn copy of the Iliad ; other times he was in my dreams, right in front of me, nonchalant stance and intelligent eyes, his eloquent words of melancholy, so clear in my head as if he was right next to me in real life, pressed against my side and his mouth against my ear. And no matter how much I looked at my reflection in the mirror, blotchy red face and tear-streaked cheeks, telling myself feverishly that he’s dead, Richard, he’s dead Henry’s dead he’s dead dead dead— it never quite hit me, and I still find myself believing he was still alive, expecting him to knock on our doors any moment and ask us where we’ve been all this time.
“Richard, please don’t,” said Camilla, her hand in mine when I asked her to marry me once more. We were all together, again, Francis and Camilla and I, for Francis’s much-dreaded wedding. It had been at a cathedral in central Boston, all grey and rainy that day, dreadful as could be, quiet and very few guests. All three of us had ditched it as soon as we could without anyone noticing, calling for a taxi and getting wasted at a dingy bar. When I had gotten the invitation, a beautiful creamy white card outlined in gold (Francis had written it personally himself to us two in Greek, which took me an hour to find my old lexicon I knew was somewhere—I hadn’t used Greek in years—; the letter was quite morbid itself, Francis mocking his own marriage and throwing in quite vulgar phrases, but it made me smile all the same), I had felt relieved that I would see them once again, that Francis was still alive, and that Camilla was well, too.
It was the day after the wedding, and Camilla was to leave right away; her grandmother’s condition had only worsened, and Camilla was already distraught at attending the wedding in the first place without anyone to take care of her grandmother. We were at the train station once again, just us two, gazing at the other. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still an ugly grey color with no sign of the sun, and it made it all the more depressing. Francis couldn’t come; he was to prepare for the honeymoon in France next week, which he dreaded less than the wedding, but still was irritated about spending weeks with Priscilla (“The last time I was there,” he had said with distaste, looking down at his wrists, the scars still there, “I was happy. Now… I would rather kill myself. I don’t feel very alive anymore.”
“ Francis ,” Camilla said, worry caught in her throat, yet ethereal as ever. She was broken, but she was beautiful—always would be, no matter what, I believed. I looked at her, her eyes filled with tears, sliding down her cheeks.
Francis looked up at her, and cradled her cheek with one hand. “Don’t cry, darling. You’re too beautiful for that. If my grandfather had given me a choice, I would’ve asked to marry you, Camilla. You were the only woman I ever loved.”).
“Camilla,” I called her name once again, staring into her eyes, the starling grey of them. “Marry me. I love you, Camilla. I’ll always love you.”
“I told you,” her voice was not angered, nor was it irritated, but soft, like petals of a flower. “I love Henry. I can’t.”
I couldn’t argue with her; I had loved Henry, too, though maybe not as much as I loved her, as I was so keen on believing. A buried memory flashed into my mind: before Henry shot himself, he had kissed Camilla with careful hold and pulled away just as gently and said I love you , so full of love and regret, with the saddest of smiles, and then what came after— the morbid sound of his blood hitting the wall, and Camilla’s cries along with it.
Her train had arrived, and Camilla looked at me one last time. I placed one hand under her chin, and kissed her. She was as sweet as I always imagined, the nectar of honey, though it tasted a little bitter, too, as if a part of her had died. I think a part of all of us, after Bunny, had died that day. I could still smell the hyacinths in her golden hair, fresh as spring. I kissed her with all the love I could, and when she did not kiss back, I only pressed harder, a possessiveness taking over me I did not know of. This, I thought, this is what Charles must’ve felt like. I felt embarrassed with myself, and pulled away, disappointed to feel that my gaping heart was still empty, and if anything, hurting more than before. When we separated, her cheeks were flushed red but she remained motionless, and I said her name again, with all the emotion left in me.
“ Camilla .”
But she only stared back at me, and only took my hand again to squeeze it, and bent over to lift her luggage. “Goodbye, Richard,” she said, though it sounded like she did not want to leave, it did not sound like she didn’t want to leave me, either, and in a second, she was gone, the ghost of her lingering only for a moment before leaving me, too.
It would be the last time I would ever see her again, for a long, long time.
I had gone to say goodbye to Francis, too, before he left, but unfortunately, Priscilla had been in the same room with him, so the goodbye was quick and gone in a moment. I had kissed him, too, but it was rather business-like, on the cheek, a short peck without lips puckered. He stared at me, and though he had been hiding it all this time, with bitter grins and cold laughs, I saw the vulnerable pain in his eyes, hurting so horribly. We held each other a little longer, then.
I stay in my apartment, most of the time now. I do not sleep, do not go out; the routine seems to be that I drink, work, and drug myself unconscious. Graduating school had meant nothing to me, work could not stop me from thinking, and I resorted myself into isolation. It’s funny, that Francis and Camilla believed I really had a life ahead of me—a few days before the wedding we had lunch together and Camilla had said, almost wistfully to me, “I’m glad that one of us was able to move on to something better,” but frankly, it was far from true. My life was not my life anymore, my body felt like a trap. And on the worst of nights, I thought of Henry.
Last night, I had a hallucination. It was not a dream, for sure; everything felt surreal and nothing seemed quite faint to my memory, though it was not completely real either. I was washing in the bathroom, and when I got out, the mirror above the sink was fogged. Out of habit, I suppose, I wiped my palm over the fog to clear the glass, and for some odd reason, I was not shocked to see that instead of my reflection, I saw Henry, staring right back at me. There was a hole in his head, blood dried on his temple where he shot himself.
“Henry,” I said. “What are you doing? Get out of there.”
“But I can’t.” He raised an eyebrow, looked around. With a whistle: “I’m stuck, as you can see. I just wanted to see how you were doing, though I'll have to leave soon.” When I saw him beginning to fade, I stopped him, “wait!”
“What is it, Richard?” His tone was annoyed, but his gaze was expecting. I did not know why I called for him, exactly, but the image of Camilla, saying But it’s not enough came to me all of a sudden. I took a deep breath.
“I love you, Henry.” Words had never left my tongue so easily.
He sent me a look, one that reminded me of when we first met, cool and rude, of chill distaste, yet his voice was amused. Pleased, almost.
“No, you don’t, Richard.” He paused. “You’re in love with beauty, all things beautiful, but— you do not love me.”
As I watched him turn around and fade, I faced my reflection in the mirror. How broken I looked that it felt like I was staring at a stranger, and I wondered when Henry had ever been wrong.