Chapter Text
After Daniel touches down, having given his sandwich, and then his chips, to his seat buddy, having watched Dunkirk twice in a row—he still couldn’t tell you anything about it, other than that “heartthrob” singer Harry Styles was in the mix, roleplaying a soldier—he takes a taxi home. Real relief washes over him at the sight of his familiar, dingy, human environs. The tension doesn’t disappear fully—he’s not a boob nor is he in denial—but at least he can mentally torture himself, and maybe in the near future be physically tortured, in the comfort of his own stink.
He takes a shower, standing expressionless under the falling water just as they do in the movies. For crying out loud, he thinks, rousing himself and working the soap into a lather in his armpits. Rubs it across his chest, his pelvis, his legs. He even bends at the waist and washes between his toes, pretty graceful while holding on for dear life to the shower’s oh shit hanger. Must be my birthday. His birthday, in fact, is far in the future where it belongs.
Dead tired and feet clean, he still can’t sleep. His consciousness won’t fully relinquish itself; the mind careens somewhere and then his eyes pop open as if of their own accord. Adrenaline coats his veins. He leaps up—a distant approximation to a leap—because it’s better to stay awake and get back in the swing of this time zone anyways. No time quite like the present.
He fishes around and finds his sorry-ass toothbrush floating loose in the suitcase, half the bristles irrevocably bent like tumbleweed in the wind. At the bathroom sink he stands on top of his heap of stained clothes—there go the clean feet—and rinses the brush, turning it this way and that under the fluorescent light. Meh. Without ceremony he tosses the bristled thing into the can next to the toilet; the resulting ding is a sure sign it’s bagless. Well. No harm in forgoing brushed teeth or trashcans with bags. Really what it is is eco-friendly.
He studiously avoids the mirror, then tells himself to snap out of it. In the glass he sees damp hair and clouded, near sightless-looking eyes; a prominent sagging at the neck and jaw. Yeah, that’s his summation. A post-hit comedown horror. The drug, well, he can’t name.
Maybe he’ll call it old age and that will be that.
He grabs his clothes from the suitcase and the ones from the bathroom floor. He means to separate those washed by Real Rashid from the recently worn ones, but, in an erratic flurry, gathers them all up indiscriminately in his arms. The laundry is on the first floor of the building. He locks the front door to his apartment behind him—as if it will keep anyone nefarious at bay from gracing him with their presence—because some habits, if not most, die hard. His hands shake a little as he holds up over the washer the blue button-up he wore on that last day. Damn Parkinson’s. With his thumb he rubs a bit at the layer of cement dust. Eh. He plops it in with the rest. Not enough detritus to clog up the machine.
The normal order of things gives him some comfort. After turning the dial, he pats the top of the appliance like an old friend: even Dubai debris is defenseless against the centrifugal force of this 20-year-old wonder.
The apartment is the same as it has always been this last decade: inviting white trim; scuffed, real wood floors; shelves and tables covered with well-referenced books, stacks varying heights and colors. French doors separate the living room from the back of the place, and by his kitchen table the jade elephant greets him, resplendent atop a shelf that once held luggage on a 1950s British passenger train. The elephant’s skin catches and pronounces the afternoon light as it always has.
*****
Around evening he feels the first pangs of hunger. The packages of noodles in his cabinet look grim and unsatisfying, like he’s some college kid on scholarship, so he orders takeout. When given the option on screen, he clicks, with vigor, contactless delivery. The tacked-on fee is fucking absurd. The guy with $10 million in his account says it pains him to pay the delivery fee. That money is for his daughters, though, if they’ll have it. If they’ll have it, as if it’s blood money. Blood was only consensually shed for this money, don’t you girls worry. But maybe he’ll have to put it in a fake trust from a distant, recently deceased Aunt Mildred.
It’s nearly nightfall. For whatever reason, he couldn’t bring himself to walk the few blocks to get the food himself. Has he become a weenie in this post-Dubai age? He isn’t scared of dying or being scooped up. It’s something else. Maybe his hip hurts, who knows.
What he does know is there is no sense dwelling on the condition of his manhood while sleep and food and human deprived. He’s been awake for—he tries to count with his hands—well, uncountable hours. Emasculating himself can wait a full 24 hours after landing—alive, whole, successful—on American terra firma.
And when was the last time he took a shit?
He rifles through his mail on the counter. There isn’t as much of a build up as he’d expected. Maybe the Talamasca had been getting rid of junk for him. That would be a nice touch. They could have cleaned the sink or the toilet bowl while they were at it. Or stocked the fridge after the GET OUT OF THERE messages. Because once you get out of there, then what? You still have to feed. Eat, shit, and find ways to be merry within the knowledge that you can’t protect yourself from what happens next.
Life keeps rolling for now. He’s got a book to write, and it’s going to be damn good.
The laundry, he remembers dimly, is probably done by now. He trucks downstairs and retrieves it. He’s feeling positively youthful in fact. Back inside, he starts on the pants. Then, pressing down on the pants’ wily zipper, he sees a figure in his mind’s eye—the cheapest stage set there is—slumped in a stunned, mutinous heap, hemmed—by his own doing really—against a concrete wall. The eyes, somehow, both dull and shining.
He decides he doesn’t have the stamina, or patience rather, to fold the clothes and leaves them in a heap by his dresser. Folding can be done later, when his mind is working on ways to organize the beats of the story.
*****
The most persistent questions in his mind as he sits on the couch don’t necessarily revolve around what the mutinous heap (not the laundry—the other one) will do to him, how it will keep his promise to Louis while causing Daniel a crippling, immense amount of suffering. Rather, he’s thinking long and hard about the downgrade in quality at Sticky Rice, once his favorite haunt of the neighborhood. His tom kha is watery and lifeless. He scrolls through recent reviews online. Other regulars have noticed it and are pointing at the pandemic as the culprit. Daniel rolls his eyes: one "local food guide" says it’s the most authentic Thai she has ever eaten this side of Bangkok.
The display bar at the top of his phone remains empty of notifications. No return calls or messages from his daughters or Louis or his editor or apparently anyone in the entire world. Whoever wants to might as well break in now and be done with it. He gets up and actually unlocks the deadbolt on the door.
The night threatens to take a dangerous turn. (Eh, not really. It’s just another day in July in the city.)
The mostly eaten tom kha—he shoveled it down because food is just fuel, right—sits on the coffee table bleakly. Yeah, it’s bleak. A bead of moisture on the plastic, reusable container, slowly falling because of gravity. He rubs at the stickiness around his mouth with a too-crisp napkin. Like someone literally ironed the paper. He rubs his mouth harder, trying to push the napkin to conform to his face and actually soak something up like it’s supposed to. Keeps pushing. It’s basically a starched bedsheet at a hotel. He eyes the paper’s stains. Imagines for a moment, on the napkin, blood.
Is he becoming morbid now? Nah—he’s never thought of blood as particularly morbid.
*****
Sprawled out on the couch, stomach full but unsatisfied, eyes drifting away and then back to the door, he lets himself replay in fits and starts those raggedy-edged memories of himself in San Francisco, full body lock-jawed in a chair thanks to the mutinous heap, the vampire Armand. Thank you, Armand. The vampire’s name feels stupid in his head. Armand was the one who wasn’t that interesting. Transparent and, after awhile, predictable. Like everyone else on this earth, if you listen well enough.
Anyways, he gets up to use the bathroom and on the way back to the couch slides the deadbolt back in place.
What else did Daniel pick up on when he looked not at Armand, but at himself, shivering and high in that chair? A young, curious guy partly in over his head—or way over it—who flocked to those on the fringe with stories to tell that otherwise would be overlooked by the great sweeping wave of traditional history. A good listener with an unhealthily paltry dose of self-preservation; at that age he sucked at asking questions, but he had a semblance of being able to parse out cause and effect in a lot of mumbo jumbo and switchbacks and inconsistencies. But the residue of the image of a boy in that dark west coast apartment, the stuff that rings out with alarm bells to any self-respecting journalist or person who claims the power of any kind of observation, suggests, when all is said and done, a sad, clingy human, an all-around addict-derelict. He cringes at that. He is a zealot for the truth, and that’s the conclusion he draws from the scenes he has pieced together.
But he is, for now, setting all that aside into the blindspot. So sue him. Put him on trial. Burn him alive. He’s got a staggering work of nonfiction to arrange.
He grabs around for the remote, finds it under the couch of all places, and turns the TV on low. It is 2am and nothing of substance is playing; it’s anti-substance, a wormhole of meaning. He almost thinks his Masterclass commercial is going to pop up. Now that feels like another life. The noise of the city, while still physical and demanding to the common ear at this hour, isn’t enough to drown it out. (What is it, he can’t readily articulate, or won’t.) His ears long ago adapted to tuning out urban noise, just like the city’s poor, grizzled birds.
And now that it is night, there isn’t even the movement of light to remind him he’s part of a greater, shifting world.
Around 4am, he does feel a shift. He knows someone—something—is here in the apartment with him, near the French doors. He waits. Nothing happens. A half hour passes. And with a fucked up sense of near glorious surrender, or perhaps it is relief for the imminent outside light, he finally begins to drift on the couch, deep into the wordless black.
*****
The next evening, after a full day of writing—classic yellow legal pad and pen, his right hand cramping and curled up like a crab at the end—he opens a screw-top bottle of wine with his left (the indignity) and eases into the couch. He hopes, if anyone is spying on him, they enjoyed the pathetic show, including the current encore of washing down lunch and dinner (a sleeve of Saltines) with said wine in a coffee mug. The only person he had run into face-to-face was a neighbor on the stairs; he had been on his way to the laundry again, because he had the sudden idea he’d left a shirt (he hadn’t). He noticed immediately that plastic surgery had straightened out the heavy, characteristic droop of her nose. She was, if he remembers correctly, the daughter of the mother who crawled into her late husband’s coffin. Word got around.
Now he rests, cheap wine ensconced in the coffee cup in his left hand, reading glasses on his head. His low back is screaming from the previous wild night on the couch as well as the plane ride; he’s hoping the alcohol percentage of the wine screams louder. His stare hovers at the space where the living room changes into the hallway, leading to the unseen: his bedroom, bathroom, a guest bedroom, and a closet. In the mornings the living room is flooded with sunlight; its windows are the only ones in the apartment that face the street. The kitchen doesn’t have a window, but his bedroom does, looking out into the alley at the back of the building. No trees or wildlife there except for invisible rats. Mostly just wiring and a dumpster and asphalt. Pure city.
What came to mind today while sketching an outline was Louis’ first admonition to him in Dubai. Let the tale seduce you, he had instructed, fingers mimicking the seduction. In Louis’ estimation, Daniel had been in danger of losing the point right from the get go. The impatient, straight-shooting, mortal journalist, death at the foot of the stairs. He closes his eyes, putting a halt to the recollection in hopes of inviting sleep.
“You’ve missed your dose,” a voice says from somewhere beyond the hallway, in the darkest part of the house. “Yesterday and today’s.”
He opens his eyes. So much for blissful unconsciousness. Does he put on his glasses or give himself the gift of blurred vision for a few seconds? He sighs and slides them back down. He can’t make out anyone beyond the open French doors anyways. Just the intensity of a presence.
On instinct, he knows which one is in his apartment.
For a moment it hesitates, stutters, but like clockwork Old Friend Bravado surges in and takes over and fills the charged void. Daniel sends his eternal gratitude that Bravado hasn’t yet given up the will to carry on. “Thanks, but Fake Rashid and Real Rashid aren’t my nurses anymore.” He takes a long drink of wine from the cup. It’s almost empty and he has no other bottles in the pantry. Great timing. It’s lackluster le petit coup for him then, party of one.
Behind the lefthand French door a sliver of the vampire emerges, the bulk of him masterfully obscured, no stranger to a staggered reveal. As he had guessed: it is Louis’ lying, 500-year-old husband, or ex-husband now, compliments of yours truly. Amidst dark shadows the vampire is a darker, slim silhouette.
“At this rate you’ll be bed bound in, what, a year? Dead in two, if you’re lucky.” The curls of his hair materialize in the doorway. “Where will you find the energy to write?”
Daniel laughs to himself: Armand’s voice is deceptively low and smooth, as if he means to seduce him. “By all means, take a seat before you wine and dine me,” Daniel responds dryly. He really could use more wine.
Armand leans against the door hinge, slight as a crane. “I can hold you down and force the injections.”
“Be my guest.” There, the dip of a chin.
The chair across from him doesn’t make a noise as Armand settles into it. He almost sits down shyly (a finely rehearsed act, Daniel knows). His legs (long legs, but that fact is concealed by his posture) are crossed, his hands clasped on a knee. The fingernails are hard: plastic-looking, moon-like. How strange they’re organic, Daniel thinks, not for the first time, wondering again about the chemical composition. Something to look up later to add to Louis’ seductive tale.
“I didn’t know you were so invested in the completion of the book,” Daniel deadpans. He could shell out a crack about waiting with baited, non-existent breath, but the remark, smelling of amateur hour, dies on his tongue.
Daniel studies the creature. The apartment makes Armand look smaller. Armand is no doubt pleased with that. And he by far is the primmest thing in the place, a stark contrast between this setting and Armand, unlike in Dubai, where the penthouse—a replica of the city’s lifeless, cement poise—complemented and absorbed some of the vampire’s bearing.
It’s a combination of the clothes tailored to slightly oversized, the striking but delicately featured face, the refusal to draw himself to full height. It’s all in service of an intentional effect: the illusion of vulnerability. One must inwardly groan at the antics. Daniel knows the bastard’s frame is over 6 feet tall.
Armand seems to re-situate himself, though Daniel can’t be sure the figure in the chair actually moves. “Uh huh.” A few seconds limp by. He tries again, more direct. “So what are you doing here? Aside from being a patron of the arts.”
Armand looks as if he’s about to pitch himself forward. Into Daniel’s arms, right into the crook of his neck? Who the hell knows what this Man on a Mission intends. He is, assuredly, on some as-yet-to-be-revealed fucked-up mission.
The legal pad is safely tucked away in the bedroom, in the drawer of his end table. Safely, what a load of crap. He remembers one of his daughters had a diary she kept under lock and key. It is apparent now that what resides at the top of his list of needs is not a new toothbrush or trash bags or even groceries but a laptop so he can rely on more than a legal pad and his phone. He can’t bargain on the sanctity of the handwritten word around here.
“Armand,” he starts—the name sounds stupid on his tongue too—“I know a lot of people have fetishes for arguing, for… tension. You’d think the big recent scene would be enough to fill even you up, but here you are, biting for more. Maybe it’s because you’ve been deprived for decades.” Daniel charges forward, perhaps recklessly—but the uninvited, graceful, divorced thing in front of him in his apartment’s shabby chair doesn’t even require oxygen. Just blood, oxygenated by someone else. “Louis never cared about you enough to really argue, did he?” Here we go, Daniel thinks, probing and poking and in the process digging his own grave. He started digging it a long time ago, though, so why not add a few more shovels. He’s gaining momentum, and he likes the feel of it. “Whenever Louis fought with you, it wasn’t really with you. All the passion was for Lestat. Who cares what Armand’s saying or feeling or spinning when he’s not Lestat”—does Armand flinch in the chair? No, still passive and poised— “or if it doesn’t lead eventually back to Lestat. And it always did, didn’t it? Lead to Lestat. All roads from Paris to Dubai.” God, can he just bite his tongue? Might be what Armand eventually does, in fact. “That’s what kept Louis baited and on the hook for almost a century. Not you for yourself. Never cared to pursue anything that would just end up back to you. And that is tragic. But frankly, I’m spent. I did my job.” Ah, the denoument, the end.
Armand’s eyes look larger than life to Daniel, situated in Daniel’s apartment, strangers to the involuntary impulse to blink and moisten.
Wordlessly Armand regards him. The day's dark early hours, or perhaps his lack of sleep, or perhaps it is Armand--whose hair, in fact, looks windswept--transform the apartment for a moment into a wind instrument, oscillating, on the brink of some great pressure or collapse.
“Thank you for the insightful monologue on my tragedy,” he finally says in that airy way of his. Amber eyes soft, a visual poem.
And then the lens of Daniel's glasses are impenetrable with condensation, and in a too-fussy manner (he thinks), he wipes at them with his shirt. “Are you fogging my glasses?” At least it isn’t his actual eyes being coated over. He’s ashamed to realize his hand is trembling, so much so he tucks it into the fold of his sweatshirt. Armand, of course, has clocked it. Daniel just sighs. “Stop that, Armand.”
And to fuck with this darkness, he thinks, leaning over to turn on the lamp beside him, using his good hand. Light billows out, lining Armand’s delicate profile.
Armand’s profile stares pointedly at the container of day-old, sweaty tom kha on the table, that unyielding, fucking napkin, as if the lamp has suddenly highlighted the entirety of this unfortunate domestic scene for him. It’s not even unfortunate; Daniel paid good money for that soup and the delivery of said soup, and it has real—well, used to have—depth of flavor. “You looked like a neglected, tired houseplant when you first came to us in Dubai, Daniel.” Armand’s voice takes on that quality when he toys, and he shifts his gaze up toward Daniel. “And after a few days, you became electric. Filled with blood. I wonder why that was. Were you,” Armand says, pretending to guess, “getting off on the arguing? No, it couldn’t be”—he looks as if he is glowering at him—“that.”
Oh, for the love of God. He can’t deal with Armand talking about getting off right now in darkness or in lamplight or in any shade of the ROYGBIV spectrum. “It was probably all of those endangered species I consumed. Unfortunately it’s more environmentally friendly fare at Casa Molloy”—Christ, he’s really hammering home the eco angle since his return—“and I’m going to bed because some of us get jet lag. Let yourself out however you came in.”
Armand has leaned forward, elbow on knee, rubbing the dangling fingers of his right hand together. Those cold, amber eyes consider him, archly maybe, lanterns lit by someone else’s fire. Nothing but emptiness masquerading as substance. Actually, Daniel amends, they look honest for a moment about their great lack—all else excluded from their surface except an old brand of cruelty.
“What are you looking at?” he snaps, stupidly.
“You,” Armand answers, knowing he’s an idiot.
The clock ticks.
“Or you can stay for the day,” he acquiesces to a silent urging. An urge for this to be over and done with it. The nerve of this thing. “I don’t have a guest bedroom.”
Armand just smiles.
“Or…okay, I do. But…” He throws his hands up. “I’m drawing a blank here. Do whatever. Tidy up my apartment if you need a distraction from the break-up. Or if doing something with your hands helps you come up with a satisfying revenge scheme. I have at least two puzzles with all of the pieces. One is of a Botticelli angel that a long-time fan gifted me.”
“A first for you,” Armand congratulates, mockingly. He leans back into the chair. “Drawing a blank.”
“Pretty sure I’ve had a lot of blanks drawn for me thanks to a certain someone.”
Armand simply smiles again with what looks to be polite interest, as if they are discussing bits and bobs at tea time. “As a true over thinker, I’m sure you’ll land on something.”
With that, Daniel forces himself to stand; otherwise he’ll be here all night and day. Thank god he’s able to do it in a semi-fluid, confident motion. If he falters a bit, who’s keeping score? (Probably Armand.) “I’ll go gnaw over new hobbies for you to take up from the comfort of my bed. Stay here from now until doomsday.” He leaves Armand in the living room, blessedly not stubbing a toe on anything during the exit. Armand, for his part, allows him to pass.
“Good night, Daniel,” Armand calls out gently, once Daniel has reached his bedroom door. Daniel waves his hand invisibly in response.
In bed he can’t fall asleep. Go figure. Too stiff to toss and turn. After an hour he puts his glasses on and pads into the living room. Futile, futile. There’s the back of Armand’s head, right where he left him. The lamp still glows, and the soup and wine mug still sit. The grimmest still life in recorded, and unrecorded, history.
Daniel rubs a hand over his face. God, this guy. “Is there really nothing you could be doing…or reading?” Daniel peers around to get a view of Armand’s face. For the briefest moment Armand looks so wild-eyed and haunted that Daniel is nearly swept up in the performance. “Do you want me to make up a bed for you on the couch?” He glances at the window. “The window faces east. It’ll be pure unadulterated sunlight in the morning. The kitchen is more covered. Or the…closet.” Why doesn’t he just offer the god damn guest bedroom? It is, somehow, a gesture too far in this farce.
“The couch will be lovely. Thank you.”
Ever trotting out the courteous soul shtick, Daniel thinks, rolling his eyes.
For the second time his back is turned to Armand as he grabs a pillow and the skimpiest throw from the hallway closet. He pauses, then without conscious thought digs past one of his daughter’s old bike helmets and trades out the lackluster throw for the fluffy blanket his other daughter got him for Christmas years ago, never used. Hmm. Kill ‘em with kindness, so they say.
In the living room chair Armand’s knees are bent now, all the world like a kid home from college for summer break.
Daniel lays out the pillow and the blanket on the couch. Tries to straighten it to look more inviting. He isn’t Grandmother Goose for god’s sakes. What a fucked up skit he’s partaking in.
When he turns, done with this charade—aren’t there couches in Paris, New Orleans, Manitoba, Mexico City?—Armand springs up, nearly to his full height but not quite. Still making himself small. He is three feet from Daniel. They exchange glances. Daniel decides to change the subject, whatever the subject has been. He eyes Armand over his glasses in case he tries the fogging trick again. “Do you take any of the blame, or you’ve placed it all out at my feet as is your usual mode of operating?”
Armand considers him with those relentless clear orbs of his, then he is prone on the couch, atop Daniel’s blanket, a fallen dancer. He blinks up at Daniel like a bird. His slender chest rises and falls (at the bequest of his own warped psyche).
“Right. So it’s going to remain a mystery for the ages then.”
“No slight to your limitless self-regard, Daniel, but you have hardly any idea what you’re talking about.”
Daniel shakes his head. “You are petulant as a teen.”
“I was never a teenager. I went from child to—
“Child to washed-up immortal. Yep, got it. Hope that pillow is soft enough for your hard head.”
Armand fake swallows, dramatically. Can you believe this performance? As if he’s heard Daniel, he mimes removing glasses, then roughly rubs his hand across his face, pinching his brow as if in consternation. Daniel refuses to show his disbelief. He wonders if he should applaud, but Armand drops the imitation. “Electricity is radiating off you when you speak to me, Daniel. Your blood is absolutely singing.” Armand’s own voice is rising, almost musical in its pitch.
Time to nip this in the bud. “Don’t let my eyes brimming with mirth and joie de vivre deceive you, Armand, but I am actually—stick a fork in me, I’m done.” He doesn’t want to finish it there on an ominous note of his own end. "But I’m glad I’m no longer registering as Aunt Birgid’s wilting pothos.” He straightens to his full height, looking down over Armand. He is, actually, as tall as Armand. More muscular, in the conventional sense. For now.
“I’m saying you’re full of bullshit.” Armand’s voice shifts now, lowering to a whisper. “Take your infusion.”
“I’m a journalist. Of course I come alive when I’m getting a story.”
“Are you, currently, the recipient of a story?”
“And drop the Mother Hen act,” he continues, ignoring him. He whispers forcefully, unintentionally striving to match Armand’s tone.“Despite your apparent predilection and its various successes over the centuries, it really doesn’t suit you.” He pushes his glasses back up his nose bridge. Daniel has ten million dollars, peace and quiet in arm’s reach—he’s never understood men who couldn’t be single a day in their life—and a magnificently sprawling story to put down on paper. The writing world is his oyster, and he is alive and for all intents and purposes kicking. “Let me guess. You want me in my full faculties so I can luxuriate in all the pain you plan?”
Now the hint of Armand’s fangs are visible in his parted mouth. He rubs the corner of the blanket. “What a lovely textile,” he says as if in way of response.
Daniel frowns, tempted to try to smother the guy with said textile. “Pinch yourself—that blanket is all yours tonight.”
“Your human perspective, fraudulent all the way through,” Armand murmurs, feigning levity perhaps, still examining what is apparently the world’s most exquisite blanket, straight from TJMaxx. His lashes are long and dark as he lays there, soft, inspecting sight downcast. “Completely undeserving of Louis’ attention, of mine.” He snaps his wrist gracefully as if dismissing Daniel, as if these are Armand’s quarters, as if Armand isn’t laying there on a snowflake-patterned blanket with hair spilled out on a pillow covered with a maybe decades-old case. “Keep yourself a sweaty, dying man. Let your energy drain out like so much waste.”
“I’ve rattled you,” Daniel says lightly. “I rattled you in Dubai.” A hum of satisfaction goes through him, from toe to crown. He actually feels himself smiling. I’m an idiot.
“Bleh.” Armand sounds so human and childish that a laugh slips out of Daniel’s mouth.
“As Lestat got to you, years ago. But it doesn’t mean I’m gearing up for the part to be your new lead to brainwash and stalk. Just kill me. Or don’t. I have no interest in your theater. I saw enough acting with Harry Styles today.” Armand just stares, wordless again. So it’ll be death by a thousand paper cuts then, he gathers, apropos of—nothing really.
Daniel reaches down and grabs the tom kha to pitch and his mug to take to the dishwasher, because he’s an orderly man, and it’s time he himself gets a grip. Armand’s eyes follow his hands like two points of radar. Whatever that means. Daniel—unnerved maybe, tension yet to ever fully leach, he’s only human after all—takes a sip from the cup, realizing too late there is nothing left, not even a wisp of wine, but he swallows, pretending there is. He’s a regular Harry Styles too.
“Noticed anyone of interest circulating the area?” he calls out from the kitchen, perhaps to distract from that little performance of his. Boob and boober, a voice inside him chimes. Armand had shown up at his doorstep—or living room doorway—in less than 48 hours from Daniel’s departure. Couldn’t keep himself away. "Probably haven’t had much time to scout or take in the sights.” He can’t help but jab, rinsing out the container to reuse (someone should call Leonard DiCaprio about his verging on carbon-free lifestyle).
“I was sitting on the roof earlier and saw a very sad woman with a sad nose,” Armand says. “Like it had been hiked up against its will. I lost sight of her as she crested the hill.”
“Did you eat her? I don’t need you killing off neighbors.” Daniel realizes he feels no concern for the girl herself. But of course—he knows Armand knows better than to leave a trail of destruction that leads to Daniel.
When he returns to the living room, Armand looks plaintive as if he’s delivered a requiem. “Good night, Daniel,” he says, gaze fixed past Daniel’s head, seemingly dismissing a train of thought he’d started down, or simply dismissing Daniel, now turning his head toward the couch cushion. He radiates, Daniel thinks, his favorite brand of melancholy. Daniel has the distinctly unpleasant situation that, despite this scene, he is in fact losing, and he doesn’t know how or what. But no matter—he’s gotten Armand on the back foot before.
“Good night, Armand.”
Now it is time for bed, for an hour, maybe two, maybe three, of sleep.
Rest—it is a long time coming.