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"Never took you for a municipal affairs guy," Daniel says, sliding along the blue-carpeted bench to saddle up beside Armand. "But now that I, y'know, hear myself say that, do you care about the big stuff, either? Thought the threat of nuclear war would be water off the back of a cockroach like you."
Armand crosses one knee over the other. "Funny."
Daniel scoffs and checks the clock. Three hours down on the existential matter of bike lanes. It's nearly enough to make him crazy, how trivial it's all become. It's not the most fucked up thing, but it's harrowing. Five decades of a career filled with shit that'll now pass in the blink of an eye. Enough to send a shiver down his undead spine.
Armand opens and closes his mouth four times from the corner of Daniel's eye until Daniel nudges him, eyebrows raised behind his tinted specs to say, Go on.
"It's… interesting. To me. Councils. Politics." His bottom lip purses, wrinkling his chin. He looks down the length of his nose and deigns to turn his head a measly few inches to Daniel on his left.
And that's all she wrote—Armand turns back to the sea of wonks and explains nothing else. It's familiar, oddly. A book falls off the shelf somewhere in the annals of Daniel's history, but it's swiped up in a flash, like code rewriting itself.
He adjusts in his seat, spreads his knees, crosses his arms and lets the leather squeak. "Well then. If we had reporters like you, I would've never won my Pulitzers."
Armand rubs his thumb and forefinger together in thought, then says, if slightly amused and bitchy, "A vampire clinging to human tokens."
A voting bell alarm drowns out Daniel's dry Wow, and he turns again to face Armand more fully. At least partially in his periphery. At least some recognition.
"Those prized De Romanuses weren't painted post-turning, were they?"
An eye twitch. The slightest little wrinkle under those stove-top eyes has Daniel drooling for more.
It works, somehow. Armand is easy to redirect and he lacks Louis' grace in meandering back to where he started. That flaw is penned in character notes shoved in a safe in his Brooklyn apartment. There has to be a phobia for the fear of forgetting. He wonders how many vampires suffer the affliction.
Rather than answer, Armand gestures to the bald man in the far row who speaks with a nasal-tone befitting only of civic-level fame.
"That one," he says, "is vying helplessly for Council leadership. For a second time. Do you care to know his name?"
"Hit me."
A pause. Then, as delicate as dew: "Bradford Bradford."
And, in chambers akin to the whispering galleries of Europe, Daniel must laugh too loud, doubly as touched by Armand's joke as he is by the sheer stupidity, that the man in question turns to them, light reflecting off his shiny, bald head. You could fry a mean egg on that motherfucker.
"Is there something funny you'd like to share with the rest of us?"
Apparently, "fuck no," is less acceptable in Canadian politics as it is in America, so Armand and Daniel are escorted out to the lobby. They descend to the PATH from there, Daniel still giddy with laughter and the new ability to hop down stairs without little gongs of pain ringing in his knees.
Armand strides a step behind, hands shoved in his coat. In this underground tunnel, his boot heels click and echo all around them, filtered only by dull hums of waiting room televisions and muttering head-hangers with nothing better to do downtown at dusk break than watch themselves step one foot in front of the other. Armand and Daniel walk with their heads high and they say nothing. Amongst shuttered shops like cavity-wrung teeth, Daniel grows bored quicker and quicker these days.
He breaks the silence less than ten minutes in.
"Where to next, boss?"
"Don't call me that."
"You're right. We're in Toronto. Where to next, bossman?"
"Turning made your crasser." They take the next corner and the six-foot-ceiling storefronts shoot up into crystalline windows, and his nose itches from the boozy floor cleaner. Armand steps onto an escalator that climbs a mile high. He turns around to Daniel, a few steps below him. His gaze fixes on some point above Daniel's head. Chandelier lights glimmer over him, and the effect is terribly angelic. Daniel lowers his glasses.
"I'd hoped for a moment you might smooth out."
"Why?"
Armand hums, claw picking at polythene handrails. "Why indeed? You fit the city's folksy style."
But not elsewhere. Not with me, it goes unsaid. But it is felt.
Daniel clears he throat and tastes iron. Sucks it off his tongue before he says, "Buck-a-Beer Molloy."
Armand turns again and scales the few remaining steps, and when Daniel follows, his gait feels like deja vu, and he nurses the feeling until they reach a hotel lobby, alight by mirrors and recessed bulbs, made cozy by the darkened sidewalk outside. The sun has set, so they make for the door.
"King Street, nice." Bankers toddle along, briefcase in one hand, phone in the other. One by one by one. There's a special, gauzy silence to Canadian cities that he's never experienced elsewhere. Cars do pass, people both chitter and scream, but it's all bandaged up with a heaviness like stormclouds, muffling. Dulling. The Hip must've wrote about it, must've documented the reverberation of silence off the face of the Canadian Shield, rippling in return along Lake Ontario. There's a part of Daniel that wants to show off to Armand, just to get his eyes on him, a childish look what I can do, but in this stagnant night air, his voice falls short and weak. Instead, he jogs a beat to catch up to Armand. Equally remarkable to him, and likely to him alone.
"Why here? Trying to fit in with the rest of the sugar babies? No one's judging us, sweetheart."
"No one is looking at us."
"So we're just, what, exploring? Having a jaunt?"
"You're the one who accosted me. I was watching the Council."
"I saw you in a screenshot. On Bluesky. Watching fucking City Council like you give a shit about speed limits or tree permits."
"Why does this bother you?"
"It's like finding out mom is cheating on dad cause I saw her on Tinder, what do you mean, why does it bother me? I'm not even getting fucking child support out of this. You're here, and you didn't tell me. I don't even have your e-mail."
"You have the sales revenue. I could have burnt every bookstore display until selling your work became financial suicide." They stop at an intersection to wait for the light. So pedestrian. "I could have killed you while you wrote it." That gets them a screwed-up look from a stranger, a side glance and a bag tugged closer to their chest. "I didn't."
The crosswalk chimes.
"Why didn't you?"
"Don't ask me to now."
He'd never. Daniel hasn't begged for death since that k-hole in '97. He's going to live forever now. "It's probably the only way I could get Louis to talk to me again."
Armand softens at the name. The wind slows. Forks clink on ceramic as they pass through on-street patio season. Diners seem perfectly happy getting flecks of asphalt in their Bolognese. Crazy how the smell does nothing for Daniel anymore. A bloodhound with a nose for only one thing. He's been wondering how this'll affect the documentary.
"How is Louis?"
"Louis is Louis."
Armand sighs, all Pollyannish and gross. It churns Daniel's gut.
Redirect. Switch to camera two.
"Lestat hates it here. Called the skyline vainglorious homogeny."
"I like it."
"Yeah? You thinking of setting up shop for BloodBankTO?"
Armand says nothing. Must've not watched Council too closely.
They make a left and pass handsome Neo-Classical faces of buildings built the same century Daniel was born and it's now that the baby-powder charm of Toronto smacks him across the face with a cloud of dust. Staring down the barrel of immortality condenses the timeline of all things. Maybe the silence in this city comes from its swaddle. Or from the desperate, pillow-to-face suffocation the whole country holds on anything that came before the Hudson Bay Company.
If there were ever a place to know his maker in, it would be here, in a city untouched by both of them, where Armand, knowing or not, is stripped of his ancient portico and painting story-tethers, where the history here speaks to neither of them, and has no interest inviting two more bloodsuckers into its belly of ravines and buried streams. Daniel sees it. Just for a minute. Armand, hoping Daniel gets all of this, that the tape is rolling, to please see the blank backdrop of Toronto for what it is, but no—Daniel looks to his side and sees Armand's hands are still shoved in deep coat pockets. No fingers outstretched. Not reaching for a hand to hold.
Armand tucks a lock of hair behind his ear and it curls over his cheekbone. Glorious. Pretty fucking doll.
Then his expression tightens around his cheeks like a bit-back smile, and Daniel wants to call him out for it, but he can't.
They instead make it to a subway opening and Armand descends into the diesel-suffused hole in the sidewalk, and Daniel follows behind once more, a nail chipping the tiled walls.
Watching the back of Armand's head, Daniel can too easily imagine following it for the rest of days.
They hop the fair gates and wait for the train. A city of ridiculous wait times, that's what really grinds Daniel's gears. Block runs of young people in line, arrivals dragging. Cars stalling, cordoned entries. Construction ripping up pavement and pinning it open, surgery on pause. Nothing moves when Daniel wants to run.
Does Armand want to slow down? Is that was this is? Have a baby, then settle in?
"I'm not looking to immigrate," Daniel says, eyes ahead on sans serif St. Andrew. If asked, he could imagine himself here, but he won't. And Armand won't ask. There's a whole world to see and catalogue, and he's pretty sure a daughter of a daughter is tucked away in a suburb here.
Armand gives him nothing in return, so it's a little embarrassing. A little humble flush on the tips of Daniel's ears, some heat under his chin.
He goes for something more familiar. "Someone's been giving Lestat outdated information." He rocks on his heels and digs his hands into his jean pockets. "Van's parked out on Cherry Street. Guy's under the impression it's still in its heyday of crime. Told him to stay off Substack—we're a block away from a kid's playground."
"Done away are the times of cruising, too, as you called it."
"City's gayer than a three-dollar bill, but in a sterile sort of way."
"No rotten cracks for your fingers to sink in."
Daniel pivots on his heel. The television tells him they've still got five minutes. Enough time to avoid being pushed onto the tracks. "Been thinking about my fingers sinking in, huh?"
Armand finally looks at him. Finally. And all Daniel can think is he kind of wants to take that cute face and crush it with his bare hands. Iron clamps on marble. See who's stronger between mother and child.
Armand breaks contact first. "The next train will arrive in thirty seconds."
"Is that another gift you held out on me? You're really gonna have me rely on Google Maps?"
Armand toes the yellow line with his heavy boots, then says, "Goodbye, Daniel," and hops onto the tracks. The station breaks out into mumbles of passive worry and no one makes a move to yank Armand back up to safety. The train lights fill the entrance tunnel with foreboding glow. Armand strolls past the departing brick and out of sight. Gone. For how long, he won't know. Can't ask anyone. Can't ask Lestat. Armand knows the power of immortal loneliness and it's the first secret he's deigned to share with Daniel. Lesson one in the new parent's handbook. Daniel gives a what can you do shrug to a man on the phone who glares at him with a furrowed unibrow. Because, really, what's Daniel gonna do about it? As far as he knows, the impact would've painted the station Rocket red and his hands still shake if he lets them.
Everyone's just glad their commute is still on schedule.
Daniel clambers onto the train and takes up two blue seats.
Who gives a shit?