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When Louis stepped up to the building containing Lestat’s flat it was a regular evening, quite the same as usual, and yet not. Something was certainly amiss. Because although the rooms were thoroughly lit, bright like a beacon, a lighthouse with their luminosity shining through each opening, beckoning interest, and there was movement and color and music to be observed. There was no demanding lover come to greet him at the entrance and usher him swiftly inside like an escaped housecat. No silhouette of that man hovering in the yellow glow of a window, watching and waiting, having sensed his return. And though there was too no silence, there was also no familiarity in the songs that played, no voice, powerful and resonating without assistance, arguing or laughing or singing aloud. And it left Louis feeling uneasy and confused.
Lestat was here. He knew it. But where was he?
Louis stepped into the building and paused there for a moment at the buzzer he’d never used. He thought of what the slick plastic of that little white button might feel like under the pad of his finger, and yet he found he was disinclined to find out. But, still, the door was locked.
Just as he moved to ring the bell, however, there was a clicking sound, and it swung idly open. Louis had stopped, hand just above that button, and glanced up as though he might be able to see through the ceiling, but all he saw was the white, grey speckled tiles which hid the structure underneath. And he sighed and decided to take the stairs to Lestat’s floor.
When he arrived at the entrance of the apartment, the door hung ajar, and the music inside was streaming out like a fountain, flowing down the hall and soaking the carpet. Something old, classical, and wordless – it made all other sounds appear muffled, like there was water plugging up his ears. And he entered the flat with caution, not for fear of danger, but for fear of Lestat’s whims.
He might very well be in a rotten mood.
Nevertheless, Louis sauntered through the apartment casually, noticing, as he passed the salon, the sheets that began encompassing the floorboards in the hall towards the other rooms, rumpled and stained with color. He followed them, a flower petal path in the woods, only to find how fitting such an analogy was when he discovered their purpose.
There in the hall, the walls were painted floor to ceiling in a beautiful, picturesque fresco of greens and earthy browns and reds; a photorealistic rendering of a dense forest lined with large, towering oaks, and topped with a day’s blue sky, continuing on into every open doorway.
Intrigued, Louis traveled down that hall, peaking around corners to peer into rooms gutted and painted up as different scenes of life.
One, the recognizable streets of Paris, down to the details in the expressions on tiny, intricate mortal figures, and the minuscule insects peppering the flowers hung from windowsills in the summer heat – the distortion of that swelter, subtle translucent waves in all the imagery it touched.
The next held a castle made of old and grey stones, each covered in browning moss. Through the windows candle light shone, and then the figure of a woman with long, tumbling blond hair looking out onto a valley of green, opening but converging with that hallway forest near the door.
Then there was a swamp done in such painstaking detail, even more than the rest, that Louis could nearly smell the funk of Louisiana again. Too, he could make out the creatures in the water with so much certainty, could see the depth in the cypress trees, and the way they stuck up from the murky green like stalagmites, cutting the surface, sheltering the thriving life below those putrid waters.
Louis lingered there for a moment, stunned at how perfect a rendition it was – like a photograph, a collage of the most familiar parts of the swamps surrounding Pointe du Lac. This was something purely incredible to behold – a depiction of a memory so clean and precise that it nearly seemed impossible. Or at least it would’ve, had Louis not been looking at it now.
And with that he found Lestat in the final open room, standing at the far wall with his back to the door, hands working quickly and without apparent direction, like a printer flying across a sheet of paper, line by line, seemingly erratic until a letter comes out complete.
Here he was working on an even more familiar scene: the Rue Royale. And, admittedly impressed, Louis watched him paint, watched how he dipped into can after can without a glance, no need to check the colors. He was purposeful and engaged – entranced really – by the act. He was so focused, in fact, that if Louis hadn’t known any better, he might think he’d gone unnoticed.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” he said, breaking the silence after a while.
“Neither did I,” Lestat replied without turning away from his work. He was forming the lines of a window’s shutters and balcony at the moment, wrought iron and Paris green reflecting off sunlight so rightly, in a way which implied he’d seen such a sight before.
Louis, careful of the cans lining the floor, walked up behind him, trying and failing to follow the movements of his hands as he watched over his shoulder.
“Why?” he wondered.
Lestat’s expression tightened, but still he kept on.
“I saw vivid memories in my mind this morning, and when I awoke in the night, I knew I had to truly see them again.”
“So, you decided to paint them?”
“Yes,” Lestat said. “I thought, if Marius can do it, why can’t I?”
Louis smiled privately at that.
“Right,” he all but laughed. “Of course you did.”
Well, this manic artistry was certainly better than rage, in any case, Louis reasoned to himself. And without another word, he stood and watched Lestat bring his memories to life right before his eyes. And it was breathtaking, inspiring, and a little bit humbling. But Louis was glad for it. After all, Lestat was always surprising, but not all his surprises were so fun to look at.