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"You know, I have a daughter who's about your age."
Arthur lazily turned his head to look at Miles. He'd been staring out the open window, at the Paris street three stories below, for far too long. He blinked away the colored spots that swam across his vision.
"Yeah? I didn't know you had kids."
Unlike Arthur, Miles was wisely sitting away from the window, in the shade. He nodded, studying Arthur in that way of his that made Arthur feel like he was less Miles's lover than a subject of his curiosity.
"Just the one. That doesn't bother you?"
Arthur smiled. "What, that you have a daughter?"
"That I have a daughter. . .and that I'm old enough to be your father."
Arthur smiled, shook his head, and turned his gaze back to the window. "If I was bothered, I wouldn't be here, would I?"
"No, perhaps not."
Arthur didn't care if Miles had a daughter, for two reasons. One, he was in love, or he felt like he was. If Miles told him he was secretly a bank robber in his spare time, Arthur would probably have abandoned his better wisdom and agreed to drive the getaway car. Two, he was in love, but he wasn't stupid. He knew how things were. He wasn't anticipating any awkward dinners with Miles's family. He hadn't even met any of his colleagues or friends. And if he ever happened to, Arthur knew he wouldn't be introduced as a boyfriend or even a good friend. At the most, he was just the American ex-soldier who'd tracked Miles down because he wanted to learn more about dreamsharing.
That was all. Arthur was okay with that.
"We've known each other for some weeks now, haven't we?" Miles said.
Arthur murmured in agreement.
"You haven't wondered about these things? You haven't wondered if I'm married?"
"Well, are you?" Arthur asked, impatient.
He didn't really care about that, either. If that made him a bad person, he didn't dwell on it.
"I was," Miles said. "For almost twenty years."
"So what happened?"
Miles didn't answer. Instead, he stood and bent over the coffee table, where the PASIV still lay open. He closed the case, picked it up, and walked off with it. To put it away, Arthur supposed.
Arthur wished he hadn't. It was a miserable, abnormally hot afternoon in late July, and Arthur felt like he was being baked alive in Miles's apartment. His linen shirt stuck to his skin and he was beginning to get a headache. Arthur would have liked to hook them both up to the PASIV until the sun went down. If he concentrated, he could make it springtime. At least until the external stimuli of the sun bearing down on him made the illusion too difficult to maintain.
But Miles had warned him about using the PASIV too often. He'd said it could disrupt normal sleep and dreams after a while. Arthur wasn't concerned about that, but Miles was, so they only went under a couple times a week at the most.
Arthur could have gone back to his hotel and used his own device, but he wanted to stay.
Now, he heard Miles rummaging in the kitchen, and the clink of glasses.
"By the way," Miles called out, "how are the architectural studies going?"
"There's a lot to learn."
Three weeks ago, Miles had given him a pile of old textbooks. Almost every day since, Arthur had read them.
"If it were simple, I wouldn't have a job. You haven't been dissuaded?"
"No. No, not at all."
Arthur wanted to build. Not in real life, but in dreams. Some knowledge didn't hurt. There was a reason architects got involved in dreamsharing. Arthur didn't want to be an architect; he just wanted to be good.
And whatever affection Miles had for Arthur, it didn't stop him from speaking up when Arthur got some detail wrong.
"What if I'm not trying for realism? What if I want to do the impossible?" Arthur had asked him once.
And Miles had said, "You can't be a rebel if you don't know what the rules are."
Presently, Miles came back into the room, carrying two glasses of rosé. He handed one to Arthur and sat back down.
"You should move out of the sun, Arthur," he said. "You're already getting red."
He was right. Arthur could feel his skin burning, like he was an ant trapped under a magnifying glass. Deciding the view wasn't worth it anymore, he pulled his feet off the ottoman he'd been resting them on and stood up. Turning his back to the window, he stretched his legs, took a sip of the cool pink wine Miles had given him, and hummed with relief.
"Would you like to stay tonight?" Miles asked. "Or do you need to return to your hotel to justify the expense?"
"I'll stay if you'll have me."
"You know I always will. At least until you move on to bigger and better things."
Arthur looked at him and pondered while he took another sip of his drink. "You don't really believe you're too old for me. I'm twenty-five. That isn't so young."
Miles smiled wistfully. "No, but it feels a lot older than it is."
"I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm just saying I'm a grown man, and I'm old enough to know what I want."
"Like when you joined the army?"
"Now that –" Arthur shook his head. "That's not fair."
"My point," Miles said with a sigh, "is that I don't want you to feel like you must stay. When I was your age, I was still trying to convince myself that I loved my wife the way I was supposed to, and that what I truly wanted was just a compulsion I could ignore. When I was finally honest with myself, it still took me far too long to do anything about it. You asked what happened to my marriage."
Arthur blinked, and took another drink. "So," he started, not sure if he should ask, "you were never with a man?"
"No, I was. But I might have made things harder than they really had to be."
Arthur couldn't help feeling little ashamed, because he couldn't quite relate to what Miles was saying. He'd always more or less accepted that he liked men, ever since he realized at fourteen that his fascination with his history teacher counted as a crush. And he was interested enough in women that he could be happy with them sometimes, and that feigning heterosexuality during his time in the army wasn't as big a struggle as it might have been.
But he thought he knew what Miles really meant. Arthur wasn't hiding out in Paris, but he'd opened up enough for Miles to come to that conclusion.
Arthur frowned, and Miles stood, depositing his glass on the coffee table. He walked over to the window and shut it, and then drew the blinds. The room darkened, and the sounds of people and traffic all but disappeared, but the suffocating heat remained. Miles walked over to Arthur and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Now," he said, "I don't want you to think I’m trying to be rid of you. I know when I've been lucky."
Arthur downed the rest of his wine and kissed Miles on the lips.
Miles took the glass from him. With his left hand, warm and soft, he stroked Arthur's cheek. Arthur knew his right hand was also soft, but had calluses on the thumb and forefinger from years of writing and sketching.
This was just one detail Arthur knew. There were others, like the way Miles carried a book with him almost everywhere he went, and liked to write with a fountain pen that left splotches of ink on his skin and clothes when he was careless.
These were details bought with devotion.
"In fact, if you wanted to stay here," Miles said, "forget this hotel business, you could."
Arthur shook his head. "I'd be in the way. I'd drive you crazy."
"When my classes start, I'll hardly be here. It doesn't matter either way to me, but I must discourage you from staying in that hotel much longer. I avoid them at all costs."
Arthur chuckled. He didn't share Miles's feelings – he loved hotels, actually. Always had.
But then, practicality and cost were an issue. Soon, it wouldn't be affordable to stay like he was. He'd have to come up with more permanent plan soon, and that would require him to decide if he wanted to live in Paris.
Miles had told him he fell in love with Paris the first time he saw it, when he was twelve and on holiday with his parents. Ever since then, he hadn't wanted to live anywhere else.
Arthur had no such confidence.
Miles's bedroom was a touch cooler than the rest of the apartment, thanks to the curtains having been drawn all day. Arthur peeled off his shirt and lay on the bed, embracing the coolness of the quilt under his back. He closed his eyes, and only felt Miles sit on the bed beside him.
"I was thinking we could go under again tomorrow," Arthur said. "I wanted to show you some more things I've been working on."
"All right. Though, I must say, Arthur, I'm not sure I have much to teach you when it comes to dreaming. Your architecture needs work, certainly. In regards to everything else, I have little advice to give."
Arthur smiled, and Miles continued, saying, "Now, don't let that go to your head. It's just that there's only so much you can teach someone about dreamsharing. And you already have the knack for it."
"Then I'll have to find other reasons to stay with you, won't I?"
In the army, when he'd been chosen for the PASIV training program, everyone had been impressed with how quickly he picked it up. One of the fastest ever, they'd said.
More recently, when they discharged him, he'd gotten the impression his superiors thought the experience was to blame for his growing inadequacy as a soldier.
Perhaps it was, though for different reasons than they thought. That was another thing Arthur didn't care about.
But maybe he did. He'd spent too much time Miles everything, including how he'd gone AWOL for a while towards the end. Miles was the only person whose reassurances meant anything to him.
"Do you regret getting married?" he asked Miles.
"I regret nothing, because everything I've done has led me here, and I'm happy. When you get to be my age, you can look at your life as the sum of things."
Arthur nodded slowly, his doubts about his own life temporarily quashed.
"And you're right," Miles said. "I know I'm not too old for you. I'm just realistic." He kissed Arthur on the edge of his mouth, just above his chin. "And I know you're aware of what you want. You want to dream, just like I once did."
It was true. Until the first time he saw a PASIV, Arthur hadn't known what he wanted to do with his life. In high school, he'd been the kid who did a lot of things but hadn't really excelled at any of them, so that his college application made him look like someone who'd racked up extracurriculars just to seem impressive.
"Since I've been here," Arthur said, "The whole world's felt like a dream."
"Do I detect saccharine, Arthur?"
"No, I don't mean it like that. I mean, it's like there's no world outside of this, here."
"I hate to disappoint you, but when my classes start –"
"I'll hardly see you. Yeah, I know."
"And the outside world will have to see a little more of you, or you'll bore yourself to death."
Yes, Arthur knew. This whole thing felt like a dream, and like with all dreams, he'd eventually wake up.
"My daughter and her husband are coming here in a few weeks," Miles said. "It'll be the first I've seen them since the wedding. I think you should meet them."
Arthur nodded, not putting any more into the suggestion than there was. Instead, he took one of Miles's hands in his, and held it while he dozed off, tired from the heat.