Chapter Text
The week passes like all the others. Louis makes deals. Headlines and news tickers all over warn of bad economic times, but Louis sees opportunity. They sell off bad assets and pick up undervalued ones. This will pass, for them, at least. Eternity makes it easy to endure a recession.
While Louis trades and negotiates, Armand burns through best sellers. A pile of paperbacks builds up beside the couch. Scarpetta. Outliers. Janet Evanovich's latest. A dozen more airport hits and Patterson pulps. Louis will throw them out before the weekend comes around again. He doesn't like the clutter.
Sunday comes as it always does. This week, Armand is on the couch while the popcorn is still popping and the credits from the last show are rolling.
Last week, the episode ended with Jane curled up in her closet facing fuzzy memories. He knows this is a two-parter. Degrassi has made a few of them. They save it for what the writers think are the most serious issues. Craig's dead shitbag father, Manny's pregnancy, and Rick's ramp up to a school shooting.
Louis brings the bowls of popcorn in. Armand takes them and sets each little sorting Tupperware out on the coffee table. Louis crunches a single piece of popcorn as Armand sorts a handful by their shape while they watch the credits for the previous show end.
The hour ticks over and Degrassi is on.
The show opens with Jane, curled up on her closet floor. She is asleep, curled into the crook of her arm, and the dream isn't written on her face. She looks peaceful, but then her eyelid twitches. The scene cuts to her father, murky and distorted in dream world.
"Now, be a good girl, okay, Janie-bear?" He looms over the Child Jane. The child actress closes her eyes tight.
Grown Up Jane's eyes open.
Armand's mind is whirring. Th scene is not over-acted, at least. It might even be underacted. He sorts a few pieces of popcorn into their proper containers.
Unilateral explosion of the kernel, bilateral, and bilateral again.
Jane talks to her mother. Her brother pours a glass of orange juice and her father, no longer dream-fuzzy and hovering, walks in. The actress plays the body language up, maybe, gritting her teeth and crossing her arms and rejects breakfast and a ride to school before the show cuts to the opening sequence. The disembodied voice, speaking for all of the Degrassi characters, Armand supposes, professes that they will make it through.
The sequence highlights all the current students. It is, Armand thinks, a valiant effort to remind the casual viewer of the absolute mess of the web of teenage drama about which characters are important this year, this season. He has no need of it, and neither does Louis. They have been with Degrassi for decades and they cannot grow out of it. They'll never been too busy to watch it, and he'll keep watching every week as long as Louis does.
He remembers the plot threads that led to the next scene. Jane's brother had impregnated Mia in one of the many teen pregnancy plotlines. The resulting child, Izzy, was beloved by both families, if somewhat neglected by Jane's brother. Jane had changed her name before coming to Degrassi High to avoid the association with her brother. Of course, that could only have lasted so long with Mia as one of the most popular girls in school.
They had watched all this drama unfold since Season 6.
Now, on screen, Jane and Mia chat. Jane is tense.
"How was Izzy after her sleepover?"
The relationship is tender. Izzy had been at the house. Jane's brother is trying to step up. Jane's implied concern is clear. Izzy over at the house with Jane and her mom and her brother is one thing, but another now that her father is back.
Be a good girl, Janie-bear.
Armand feels Jane's worry and fear. He shouldn't. The acting isn't that good. It isn't very good at all. The screen protects him from any projected thoughts, any actual waves of emotion coming off actors who have gotten too caught up in their roles. His skin burns hot as Jane tries to suggest gently, without ever saying too much, that Izzy should not sleep over. Mia snaps at her. It's unfair.
"Why? You still wanna be the baby of the house?" Mia asks.
He wants to freeze her. To stop the scene, to pull Jane out. To drain her father and dump him in an alley, and normally the screen is a protection from all of this, but these people aren't real and he has to sit with Louis and watch it play out instead.
A piece of popcorn crumbles between his fingers. He isn't sure what container it would have been sorted into anyway.
Armand brushes the crumbs of popcorn away and leans back into the sofa. He presses at Louis' mind, tiptoeing and quiet. Louis, next to him, is thinking about the show, about the B-plot, excited to see a controversial character from two seasons ago get some screen time. That is just the surface. He presses deeper. The thoughts are murky, like reflections in pond water. A cousin at a family gathering, a passing thought that tastes like an unnamed regret, and too-fast thoughts about the next property deal he's eyeing, all tangled. When he tries to pull at a single thread, all of Louis' thoughts scramble away, distorted, like reflections in a rippling pond and then they're gone entirely and he's just watching Degrassi twice over, on the screen and through Louis' eyes.
"Jane!" Spinner's shout echoes from where he watches in Louis' mind and on the TV screen. He's frustrated with Jane. "Fine. You know what? When you're ready to talk, you come find me."
It isn't what Spinner should say. He wants to take a red pencil and re-write the line. When you're ready to talk, I'll be here. Maybe. I'm listening.
But no, that's not right either. Spinner isn't that soft, isn't that emotionally intelligent, no matter how hard he wants to play script doctor for Jane's sake.
That isn't what Spinner would say.
It isn't what Louis would say.
He knows what Louis would say. He knows what Louis has said.
"Okay, let's wake the boy up and let's try you."
And then, a mocking rendition of Armand's own voice.
"I'm the vampire Armand and my daddy vampire groomed me into a little bitch."
A shudder runs down his spine.
Comparatively, Spinner is gentle.
"Vampires who murdered my daddy made me pretend I didn't have a dick!"
It is 2009 and it is 1973. Time has folded around him, and he is one spot on ink bleeding over onto both sides of a single page. He is slamming the boy to the ground, and the popcorn bowl hits the floor. White puffs go everywhere, scattering across the floor.
And he's back. Degrassi plays on. Girls debate fashion. The bad boy character makes an appearance.
Louis stands to walk around the coffee table. Armand is on his knees, scooping up the popcorn. Too many have been broken. The little soft bits, puffy and squishable between his fingers, lay apart from the kernel from which they came. The topology sorting is impossible now.
He dumps all the pieces into the same bowl.
"I'll vacuum later tonight, yea?" Louis drops a handful of white bits into the popcorn bowl.
"Okay," Armand nods. "Thank you."
Maître.
He only thinks it. It seems proper to be deferential now, maybe, he isn't sure. Louis doesn't clean, doesn't vacuum. He has people for that. He has Armand.
It is a kind offer. It deserves a nod, a thanks, submission.
He thinks it again. Maître.
If Louis hears it, he doesn't acknowledge it. He only fishes out a little bit of popcorn from between the carpet fibers and drops it in the bowl, brushes off his fingers, and returns to his spot on the couch.
Armand sets the bowl of unsorted popcorn on the coffee table and finds his place again. He turns back to the television set. Sad music plays over Jane. Echoes of her brother's harsh words.
"You and your damn backwards pajamas!"
Her dad, a different echo.
"Look at you, Janie-bear. You put your pajamas on backwards again. And daddy'll fix them…and we won't tell anyone."
Armand thinks he feels sick, except he doesn't, because he can't feel sick. He has not hunted in weeks, there is nothing to feel sick around, nothing for his stomach to roll around or desperately clench at. There's an ache in the back of his skull. He knows that this feeling should be in his stomach, or in his heart, but it has nowhere to go and there is not enough blood to carry it. His head pounds.
On screen, Jane calls her mom. She skips the big football game. She goes to the Dot, sits for a while at the coffee shop. And then, back at the Big Game, standing with Lucas, Jane puts herself between her father and Izzy and the whole teen drama reaches the climax.
Jane faces her father.
"How could you do that to me? I was just a little girl."
He sputters, denying it.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Janie."
Be a good girl, Janie-bear.
It doesn't echo in the speakers, but Armand hears it for her.
They go back and forth. The dad turns to Jane's brother. "Your sister's making up stories again."
"She's got it right," Lucas spits. "No one in this family ever wants to see your face again."
Jane gives a shaky sigh. Armand chews at his lip. This was a topic the writers thought deserved two episodes, instead of just the one. It is supposed to give enough space for it all, time for the plot to be real. Or at least close enough.
But it isn't right. Jane's family sides with her. They do not question her further. The dad can win no loyalty back, despite all he had.
This isn't how it happens, he thinks.
This isn't real. This is a glossy teen drama selling itself as real and gritty. The B plot plays on. Romance blooms, Ali and Johnny kiss.
The show cuts back to Jane.
Jane sits with Lucas and her mother in a therapist's office. The therapist is a bit part, surely never to be seen again. Things wrap up neatly at Degrassi High. The therapist leans forward.
"To start, I want to applaud Jane for being brave enough to share her story. The healing process isn't easy. But with all of you working together as a family, this is an important first step."
The first step is all the plot line needs to show.
The family leans together. They laugh nervously. The credits roll and the ending theme starts.
Louis stands and stretches.
"It's good," Louis says, "don't you think?"
Armand looks up at him. "Jane's happy ending?"
"That it's on TV at all." Louis shrugs. "Back in my time, folks didn't talk about it. I imagine it was quite the same…"
Armand nods, though that isn't right either. They talked about it plenty at the brothel. They talked about reveling in it, about buying and selling and trading it. In polite circles, they talked about pederasty and the enlightened practices of the great Ancient Greeks.
But the centuries turned and Louis was born and they didn't talk about it.
"So," Louis continues, "Maybe it's good, or it'll help somebody, now that it's all out there on the TV."
A beat passes. Armand doesn't know the next line.
Another beat. Another, far too many. Dead air between them. He doesn't try to fill it.
Louis breaks first.
"I have a call," Louis says, standing from the couch. "The property in St. Paul."
And then Louis is gone, off to work in another part of the house. The houses, their houses, are getting bigger. Louis says it is a sign of success, the smart deals he makes, the money they accumulate.
But it is creating more distance between them.
Armand watches him leave. The deal will be good. The economy isn't recovering yet, but people are desperate and downsizing. Louis will make a good deal.
He feels that ache in his skull again, the one that should be in his stomach but isn't. The ache is growing and changing and he wants to rewind the TiVo and reach through the screen and take Jane's throat and make her rest and drink the blood that tastes like a family sitting with you in a stale therapist's office because they want to be there and to feel her go free in his arms.
It's stupid.
It's stupid, stupid, stupid to be jealous of Jane. She doesn't exist. She isn't real. She is a nearly flat tomboy character played by a passable young actress on a rapidly produced teen soap opera.
He wants to fry the television set. He wants to but he needs it to watch Blade Runner on later. He wants to watch the screen crack and sizzle.
She isn't real and she has a family that wants to talk about it. She is just a middling actress. Jane, who is just a character on a television show he only watches for Louis, has a family that will talk to her about it and a brother that believes her even though he cannot understand.
He wants to throw the television out of the window and watch it smash into a million pieces. He wants to sit with it and watch Blade Runner until the image of Rutger Hauer burns into the screen.
He wants to talk about it.
They never talk about it.