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It is important to consider the specifics of a request when you make it, and doubly important if that request happens to require a great deal of patience and effort from someone who has no particular reason to grant it. This is simple common sense, and therefore the petitioned need not concern himself unduly with defining the exact details – if they mattered, the petitioner would have mentioned them.
This being the case, Armand had been able to step into Daniel Molloy’s bedroom serene in his conscience – the man is safe, tolerably healthy, and well cared for; if Louis had wanted him to be comfortable and happy as well, he would have said something to that effect, surely. If not, well, that is unfortunate, but secondary to the fact that it would be best for all parties for Daniel to leave as soon as can be arranged.
The bedroom itself is a nice touch – the windows on this side never go fully opaque, and the long, narrow layout gives one the impression of a viewing gallery. Daniel had spent an amusing half-hour on his first night attempting first to figure out how to adjust the opacity from auto to manual, and then to drag the furnishings into a configuration that would let him believe in his own privacy. Happily, the spare design of the wardrobe and presence of a security camera prevent him from being successful in the least.
The window situation does mean that Armand is somewhat more visible than he would like as he lingers by the door, but the results of Daniel’s most recent optometry appointment indicate that his macular degeneration, while not severe, is sufficient to keep Armand decently hidden. He hasn’t noticed anything yet, anyway, and Armand has already done this twice since dawn.
He reaches out the faintest tickle of power into the man’s body, waits, increases, waits. It takes almost ten minutes of this for Daniel to wake, chest heaving, gasping, pawing helplessly at his throat.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he croaks. He rolls over, pecks unsteadily at his phone, tosses it back on the nightstand with a clatter that makes Armand wince. If you don’t take care of your things, you ought not to have them.
Daniel attempts sleeping on his side this time, which is a nice thought, but the position is new and uncomfortable, and as he slips back into sleep he once again rolls onto his back. He’s already snoring when Armand picks up his still-lit phone for a look. The notes app is open:
Why this shit keeps happening
- Sleep apnea
- Lung cancer
- Dry air
- Asbestos (Emirati building codes?)
- Black mold
Black mold. A brand new, excellently maintained concrete building, and the man thinks his respiratory difficulties might be caused by black mold. Behold, the man to whom Louis has decided to entrust his life’s history. Marvelous.
Because no kind impulse is ever rewarded, Armand finds that Daniel’s phone screen isn’t sensitive enough to register dead fingers as human flesh. With a sigh and a brush of the mind gift to push the man further into sleep, Armand sits down on the side of the bed and picks up Daniel’s limp hand, using a finger as a stylus to change ‘lung’ to ‘sinus’ (more plausible for airway obstruction) and add ‘malevolent spirit’ (the correct answer) to the list. He plugs the phone in, turns the screen off, and places it carefully in the position where Daniel ought to have left it, so that the cable isn’t twisted. He sits a while longer, studying the ruins of the young reporter that Louis was so briefly fond of, that Louis has invited to gently decay in the space that they share.
It's quite sad, really, he thinks, climbing fully onto the bed and straddling Daniel for a closer look. New and unbecoming hills and valleys formed by the breakdown of collagen and redistribution of fat. Minuscule capillaries squirming away from cherry angiomas like tiny roads branching out from tiny cities. Skin dried into a texture not unlike the plates formed by sun-dried mud. How terrible, to think that this would have befallen Louis had he not been turned. What a mercy, to know that Armand would have been spared in any case – death by violence is surely to be preferred to this awful creeping rot. Black mold, yes, but you brought it in yourself.
“Bridge, c’mere,” Daniel mumbles, and with a start Armand realizes he has neglected to maintain his focus on Daniel’s consciousness and hold it at bay. “Bridge?” He fumbles weakly at the neck of Armand’s shirt, pulls him down.
Lying rather stiffly against Daniel’s chest, Armand dips into his mind and spreads out a handful of surface thoughts in the hope of figuring out what on earth this is.
A slight build, fine features, curling hair. The libidinous sort of insomnia. Come on, I have a meeting with my editor tomorrow morning. Oh, so now you meet your editor on time? Bullshit, you can give me ten minutes. Long nails forcing an awkward grip on the pen as she signed the divorce papers. A few nights together afterwards, which he didn’t regret but thought she might. Well, no – he had said some things that ensured she would regret them.
“I believe,” Armand whispers, “that Bridget might dislike you even more than I do at present. You must be another one with a way about him.”
A snort that might have been an abortive snore, or a groggy laugh. “Sure, sure. Now shut up.” He shuts up.
Ailing or not, a living man generates more heat than a dead one, and Armand can feel it working its way through their clothes, into his skin, beneath his skin. It’s an odd sensation when uncoupled from the desire for blood, but Daniel’s blood is not terribly appealing these days. There’s no urgency, then, apart from the distant itch of knowing he’s missing calls. There’s a hand on the back of his neck.
It might be an interesting project, he muses, to sculpt Daniel into a person who is less of a chore to exist with. Not now, obviously, but he’ll want something else to occupy his time once this nonsense about a book is over with. Assuming Daniel doesn’t oblige Armand to kill him, that is. Louis, with an infinity of days spreading out before him and a sincere desire to follow his better nature, tends to follow good sense when it’s presented to him properly. Daniel, a recalcitrant braying ass of a man who will certainly not last another five years, presents an entirely different challenge. Something to think about.
He has time to think. He’s already arranged matters so that nothing urgent should arise this week. He may as well stay here and siphon off a little more heat, since Louis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning contractor hasn’t done much else for Armand so far.
No gentle hand for Daniel, then – despite his occasional self-deprecations, his pride would be wounded at the observation of another that he lives a lonely, bitter life with little hope for improvement or reward. He needs something to brace himself against, something to lend a shape to his days and a purpose to his life. Quiet smothers, peace binds. Some people simply don’t know how to live without a little suffering.
First, the worthless nostalgia. Shuffling through Daniel’s mind these past few days has revealed a museum dedicated to people who no longer love him, if indeed they ever did. The daughters in the photographs have the small, weak smiles of someone waiting for an embrace to be over and done with.
Daniel is unlikely to part with such miserable keepsakes willingly, so the most effective strategy here is to burn his apartment down. This has the added benefit of making him available for a placement of Armand’s choosing. Too much history on both American coasts, better to settle him down somewhere away from the edges. A old friend dying with loose ends to tie up, perhaps, and no other loved ones to do it? Certain to pique Daniel’s sense of tragedy, but possibly a bit messy to arrange, especially if Armand must find an old friend, move them to Chicago, isolate them, and then kill them. It’s just a bit much. Daniel might not even have enough friends for this to be a viable solution, anyway. Table the rehoming issue pending further information, then.
This sort of thing flows much more smoothly with a tablet, but Armand left his on the end table by the door and still doesn’t feel inclined to get up yet. He runs a hand through Daniel’s hair, idly. Coarse, but not unpleasantly so. “You’re a highly inconvenient man, even asleep,” he informs him.
The more important issue is one of life purpose. The most traditional options are immediately out of the question due to Daniel’s enormous pride in his own iconoclasm. Service to another is an excellent way to distract from one’s own unhappiness, and it will probably not be too difficult to turn his accusing sanctimony inwards. A few well-placed barbs about his ego, the feebleness of words when compared to action, and so on, and so on. One of the staff will have to do it, since he is clearly on edge around the person he refers to as Rashid and will therefore pay him no mind.
“There’s a wealth of literature about addiction, and the nobility of the struggle against it,” he suggests. “And you’ve had some experience yourself in that vein, if you'll excuse me. Do you suppose you could interest yourself in some sort of sponsorship program? If not, perhaps you could mentor troubled youth. It might allow you to pretend that your age is only an ill-fitting garment, and that young people can recognize you as a member of their species, still.”
Armand pauses, imagines the horrendous things Daniel would say in response, smiles into the man’s neck.
That wraps him up nicely, though. It wouldn’t take more than a year or two to accomplish, depending on how Armand chooses to deal with the notion of the book. Very likely this is no more than a castle in the clouds, a story awaiting its ghost. Just something to play with when nothing is keeping his hands busy. Louis would be so happy, though, to see someone he cares about doing well. Does he care about Daniel? He’s so hard to read, these days.
Time is passing, though, and if he stays here any longer he’ll regret it. Armand peels himself away, turns from the bed, and notices a glass on the antique lacquer table, situated as a striking ornamental touch in the middle of the concrete wasteland. A sweating glass, forming a halo of water around the base, the base which rests on the table without a coaster.
Armand manages, with some effort, not to turn around and gouge Daniel’s eyes out. An astounding lack of consideration for one’s hosts, the casual ruin of something beautiful and fragile, is not widely agreed to be a killing offense, or even a maiming one. He can be of no use in restraining Louis if he neglects to restrain himself; if nothing else, it erodes his credibility. The back of his neck is still warm where Daniel’s hand was.
He draws in a deep breath, wipes away the condensation, moves the glass to the steel coffee table that has been placed there for actual use. He takes his tablet and goes to sleep in his study, not feeling quite up to facing Louis’ indifference to his presence or absence.
He’ll burn down Daniel’s apartment either way, Armand decides. Whether Daniel will be inside or not is something yet to be determined.
*
Someone is doing something with clinks and rustles and irritable sighs, somewhere over to the right. Priss, Daniel thinks drowsily. A priss then and a priss now. Who? Somebody. That guy he knows from somewhere. It’s too warm now. He kicks off the sheets and falls fully back to sleep before the door clicks shut.