Chapter Text
In the bathroom Daniel lets out a long, boring, hot pee. He wipes the build up of sweat at the nape of his neck with a rag doused in cold water. The heat of August in the city is hitting him. Next, he thinks, he'll be dotting his forehead with a handkerchief throughout the day (though it was not necessarily a harbinger of age; it was commonplace even among the young in Japan). He drapes the rag over the faucet and brushes a comb through his hair.
At the end of the hallway he notices the door of Armand’s bedroom (the guest bedroom, actually) is ajar. Curious—Armand is out, feeding maybe—Daniel glances inside. On the floor at the end of the bed is the snowflake blanket with various foreign items placed on top, as if Armand was a corvid and this his nest of gifts. The jade elephant stands, imperiously, in the middle of the tableau. Toward the edge closest to him lays an ornate, bronze outlet faceplate.
“Okay… no,” he announces aloud, shutting the door behind him, then opening it again, approximating how it was.
*****
Fuck it, he finally says at the end of a long night: a blown outlet, done, spent, buried, burnt, dead, decapitated, shaved to nothing. He’s booking a hotel. Armand is staring at the TV like he’s deep in conversation or wants to set it on fire. He thinks of his first car in Modesto, how he’d turned it on one day and all the warning lights had blinked on, and when he popped the hood he saw a bouquet of chopped and chewed wires. The mechanic had said rats liked to feel the vibration of electricity.
Nuances of the Dubai story essence or whatever fucking hangups he has be damned. He isn’t stripped of his agency, his bravado.
He waits until Armand leaves, and then out he goes too, packed satchel on his shoulder, complete with his new laptop. Yes, Armand will find him in two seconds. But when he steps outside for the first time in weeks, his lungs usher in such a voluminous tug line of breath that he nearly sways into a passerby who snarls at him in warning. A clear warning, yes! All senses rush back ecstatic--starch, urine, flowers, milk, crust. It is as if he’s ripped off the gown and IV collar and absconded from the hospital.
He works in the lobby of the hotel; it’s pretty swanky, but also cozy, and the coffee is—well, it's not great. Still, one must relish the ambiance.
*****
Three days and he hasn’t seen Armand in the hotel. Probably somewhere near. Or maybe he has finally grown bored with the despondent and tossed Betty Homemaker routine. He smirks at Armand, at himself; Daniel isn’t that interesting when it comes down to it.
As he drinks his lukewarm cafe au lait, spilling some on his shirt (do the injustices ever end?) he wonders if Armand’s obsession and devotion to Louis is, in fact, as slippery as the rest.
Behind Louis, the confluence of all roads—always Lestat.
And there, even beyond Lestat: the need to believe in something.
*****
Really he hates all of them, even Louis. Lestat—never met the guy—but no doubt would hate him. Raggedy James or whatever his name is—human, but also hated. Real Rashid and the doctor who "was never there" were yokels.
Armand: the worst.
*****
Weird, how his ear has started to expect a voice to interrupt, chime in, annoy.
Sometimes, all of New York tuned out but for the voice of one bird in the isolated clearing of his mind. A soft, predatory one.
To take the edge off the burnt flavor of the coffee he imagines the tiramisu on his tongue--how funny, that the human brain can do that. The word was Italian for something like... a pick me up. He wonders how it compares to a noble's blood.
In that moment, he pictures himself outside of himself: a man alone at a covered table in a richly carpeted hotel lobby, with the face of a beech marten in reverie, recalling, maybe, a strange sort of affection.
Hadn’t he likened Armand to a slow gas leak in a house where the inhabitant is never made aware, keeling over one day and that’s that? Deep in his work and preoccupied most of the time--but in the quiet moments in the hotel bedroom, alone, he sags.
*****
A glorious Thursday. Daniel's schedule is becoming near impeccable; he's up with the birds like a wholesome farmer; he hasn't had a drink since his arrival. A woman with a clef palate in the breakfast line recommends to him the vegan bakery next door to the hotel. She even promises to get him a baked good after her afternoon meetings. How much more healthy can he fucking be?
And then, across from his table in the hotel lobby, across the expanse of his books and papers and people milling about with suitcases and bell boys pushing luggage racks, there he is. Dark, faintly wet hair, he turns toward Daniel. Unforgiving eyes are covered by sleek shades.
Do his own shoulders relax in relief? Armand approaches him. He is nearly sauntering, liquid and untouchable among the crowd. He pulls out the chair across from Daniel. The legs drag muffled against the carpet.
“Hello, Mr. Molloy.” Rolled up to the forearms is a crisp, collared shirt, white. Daniel thinks of the napkin from Sticky Rice that failed to do its job. Really, they aren't alike. This shirt pools like fluid; he bets it's name brand. “I’m a representative for Meryl Streep, beloved actress. She is looking to make the transition from cinema to the field of journalism." Armand pushes a sheath of papers aside, then places his elbow on top of a book. "She read about you and your illustrious career, and I wondered if I could ask you a few questions on her behalf.”
Daniel raises his eyebrows. Nowhere to retreat. Does he want to? He thinks, with regret, of the baked good that had been promised to him, that was soon to be in his future (but vegan? It'll taste like a boiled shoe, or more likely and arguably worse, boiled air. At least a shoe has some heft you can hang your hat on). “Oh yeah?” He puts his pencil down and crosses his arms: a cautious capitulation. “Anything for Meryl.”
“First question.” Armand lazily moves his hand around at the wrist, fingers lank like he's hearing music. His nails absorb the light rather than reflect, and Daniel wonders weirdly if his toenails are the exact same; well, of course they are. Hurry that thought out of your mind before Armand picks it up and thinks you have a foot fetish. “How do you ensure a story doesn’t relapse back into the inevitable limbo of disinterest?”
He clears his throat. “I don’t think you can ensure the opposite of anything that is inevitable… Did Meryl write these?”
“A different question then. What attrition of selection led to you being chosen to write the story of the great vampires?”
“Pure dumb luck. Or, my own stupidity and luck.”
“Hmm,” Armand hums. He tilts his head as if he is taking in the room. “So Lady Luck has been fished out from the depths of the Hudson.”
Daniel narrows his eyes.
“Will you write it under your name or a pseudonym?”
“I’m in my later years now, as Meryl is, so I think I’ll go for broke.”
“One more. Which character,” Armand rubs his fingertips, turns the shades toward Daniel, Daniel's grey-browed, human face in the reflection of the lens, “have you found yourself most liking as you gather material and shape it into a text?”
Christ, there it was. He had had one brief nice thought of the tiramisu—not even of Armand, the tiramisu—and now this.
“Is this about the tiramisu?”
Armand looks genuinely puzzled. “What?” He drops the Meryl act and pushes the sunglasses onto his head. “Did you want me to make more?” His eyes are startling; they look washed themselves.
“No, no. Just—never mind.” He waves that all off. He starts wiping at prints on his glasses with his shirt for something to do with his hands. He is probably just spreading the smudges or creating micro-scratches.
“You look terrible. This hotel is not good for you.”
“Thanks, I’ve slept these last few nights like a babe in its mother’s arms."
Armand shifts his gaze off to the side (his profile is really quite striking). "Your hulking bulk of a washer destroyed my clothes,” he accuses. “So I had to get a few new things.”
Daniel ignores the heavy air of discontent and looks him up and down with mock appraisal. “You look well-clad.”
“Daniel." It hangs there. Armand waits for Daniel to return eye contact; he's carefully composed an open expression on his face, a softening at the corner of the eyes. He has treaded carefully, and now he is approaching the heart of the matter, all the before, Daniel concludes, a theatrical prelude. “I’m not going to kill you, or your daughters, or your daughters’ daughters if they ever have any, or your editor, or your researcher; I’m not going to destroy all of your work, paper or in the Cloud. You can finish your book.”
“How gracious of you.”
Armand gives him an injured, adolescent look. “I, however, want to continue living with you until you publish it.”
"Is that what it was--you've been living with me?"
"I believe so, yes. What would you call it?"
“It sounds like a terrible idea. Bad. Terrible. Like a coffee enema.”
He frowns. “What is a coffee enema? Is this what you want me to make with leftover grounds instead of tiramasu?"
Daniel cracks out a laugh like a whip and a woman beside them looks over alarmed. “Yeah, and then maybe we can do them together lying down face to face. Listen, you staying sounds different, but equally grave, to the other buffet of things you listed.”
Armand goes dead still: all ease and false, good-natured grace drained out. "Having me in your home is the same as me killing one of your daughters. Did I get that right?" The panes of Armand’s eyes, unrelieved by blinking, emote so blankly that Daniel wonders if everyone around them has been frozen. Armand's whole being rings out like the invisible creases tucked around a tarantula's joints.
Daniel stares at him, this non-human, such a fathomless (well, is it?) part of himself wanting to divine Armand and all he is, over and over. But his brain--messed with, fucked with. And Dubai. Really, Daniel hasn’t felt human since Dubai. Like some other sort of creature. Not like a Furry; he had interviewed a Furry back in 2011 and it had been a very enlightening experience, but no, not like that. Had he ever felt human? Or maybe he feels more human than ever now, the aspects pronounced by these vampires.
If you put his apartment under a black light, there would be more than a scant trail of fingerprints and hands; smudges would shine brightly everywhere in his living cornices and beyond. But would you see Armand’s? A concentrated glow of him, or nothing at all? It’s a little fucked up, isn't it, that he doesn’t leave any skin cells in his wake. But vampire skin heals; do the damaged cells not slough off?
“I once met this man,” he tries again, carefully. “A centuries-old man,” he clarifies, “starved for meaning. Okay, never mind, I’m cutting my own crap. I’m not gonna fill the lacunae of you, Armand”—here he goes, ad libbing the word lacunae—“I’m not Louis II. Or better yet, Lestat III. I’m not a religion either. I’m an ornery guy with Parkinson’s with one lifetime who needs to write this book before he dies—.”
“You’re trembling.”
“Yes, as I said…. ornery guy with Parkinson’s. “
Armand rolls his eyes. He seems to consult something in the recesses of his mind. He looks stricken. Then he smiles every so slightly. “You’re impossible.”
“You were hedging your bets at the trial,” Daniel says evenly. “You’re hedging them now.”
Armand’s mouth almost seems to curl. “Betting which one would stay with me? Louis or the coven? Always looking for a replacement for Lestat, Armand’s real hero.” His eyes are flashing, and Daniel wonders again, too scared to check, if the room around them, the entire hotel, is frozen. “Is that what you want to hear? Lestat, Marius, Lestat, Marius." His voice lilts upward, sing-songing. "Crazy, angelic boy Armand with his daddy-maker issues.”
“Who is—never mind.” He jots Marius down in his head. “Whoever would stick with you in your fight to fend off eternity. That is who you’d choose.”
“Is it so ludicrous that I would want a companion, or, failing that, company? A system of belief. And what exactly is journalism to you if not all of these things? And you’ve been around for 70 years. Imagine 500.”
It’s true. The belonging and elevation bestowed by doctrine. It could be brought about in endless ways: Marxism, widowhood, war, cults, motherhood, orthodox Judaism, Wicca. Daniel thinks of his neighbor’s mother, trying to crawl into the casket with her husband’s corpse.
Armand searches Daniel’s face, his neck, his shoulders. Daniel feels it. “I can create visions, gardens, and transmit them to you. I can bring you into it, and we can be there, together. Away from all of this.”
“Can every vampire do this? Older ones only or—”
Armand’s face darkens. “We are talking about you and me.”
Daniel senses a trap; is it or is it not? “Armand,” he wagers, "if I said give me a one-way ticket to those shared visions, you’d resent me, always telling yourself that I’m only hanging out with you (what a euphemism… but for what?) for the palatial gardens. Tell me I’m wrong.” This isn't important, he reprimands himself. "No, what I mind is this. If I told you to leave me alone, would you?"
"Would you mean it?"
"Doesn't matter. Answer the-"
Something catches the corner of Daniel’s eye. Replacing the napkin holder and little candle at a table tucked away in the corner is the jade elephant. Daniel blinks once, twice. “Armand, what is my elephant doing here?”
Armand just looks at him. Then he leans in and whispers, darting his eyes over to the jade statue. “He followed me.”
“What?” Daniel instinctively recoils. “Are you high? Did you drink some executive who’s on a steady regimen of bath salts and take his shirt?” He can feel the blood in his temples beating, Armand's stare. He tries to parse out what's happening, then slams his book shut, pencil flying into the air, decision made. “Okay… you know what, never mind. Sure. This coffee sucks and the rooms are overpriced. Let’s go home.” He checks his cellphone—still time to keep working at the apartment. "Bring the elephant back. Or make sure he follows you…” He drills his eyes as best he can into Armand’s forehead.
Armand seems to be taking all of this in seriously. Then, out of nowhere, a peel of laughter rises up from his throat, tipping his head back and erupting the air, white teeth glinting up the ceiling. He looks like a boy and a chandelier and stonework all at once, the laugh so bright and fresh and unexpected, such a smooth, cool roar that Daniel just stares, dumbfounded, mesmerized, really, at Armand’s neck taut and the laughter like bubbles trilling. What can he even say? Armand brings his face back down, and the laughter trickles out in soft fits and starts, his face hidden by curls of hair, tucked in the crook of his arm like a boy.
A decorative reservoir discharging laughter and blood. A fountain of youth. Daniel finds himself absurdly grinning ear to ear, head resting in hand, looking down at his own stupid lap, blushing.
They make it back home by 6pm.