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“Miles!” Julian’s face lit up as he opened the door. “I’m so glad you’re here! I can’t believe you actually came all this way!”
“Oh, well, it wasn’t just for you, you know.” Miles stood uncomfortably on the front walkway. The scars from the war were still evident everywhere he looked; piles of rubble still adorned the streets, and everything newly constructed was flimsy and small, his friend’s house included. From the outside he guessed there couldn’t be more than three rooms, and it looked like it had been made out of the Cardassian equivalent of plywood. His cheeks burned; it was hard to picture Julian living this way.
“Yes, yes, I know. I am honored to be in the presence of the first human guest-lecturer ever invited to Kardasi’or University. I hope you appreciate what a big step it was for them reach out to you.”
“I hope they appreciate what a big step it was for me to accept.”
“I’m sure they do! Please, come in!” Julian said, his smile shining. “I’ll give you the grand tour!”
Miles stepped into the relative cool of the dark house. It had been scorchingly hot outside and it was a relief just to be in the shade. “So this is the kitchen, and dining room, and our primary sitting-room sort of thing. We spend most of our time here.”
The room in question was as stark as Miles had feared it would be. A plain table sat in the center with three mismatched chairs around it - one for a guest, he supposed. A wide window in the far wall was the only illumination. Miles noticed a candle in the middle of the table, and no other obvious ways to light the place at night. He fought a sigh. Oh, Julian. Two closed doors stood at one end of the room, and two large, blocky metal objects stood in the opposite corner. They looked vaguely familiar, but Miles couldn’t place them.
“What are those?” he asked, pointing.
“Oh, our range, and refrigerator. They look a little shoddy, I know. Garak made them. Oh! I’m not trying to disparage his work! It’s only that we didn’t have very many good materials on hand. Everything had to be scavenged. It’s been generations since anyone made anything like this on Cardassia, but there isn’t enough power to run a replicator in our district, at least, not a personal replicator.”
“Oh, I see.” Miles’ mother had had a range and a refrigerator. They weren’t that different, now that he understood what he was seeing. He supposed mechanical designs for cooking and keeping food were fairly universal.
“It took some getting used to, but it’s all right, actually!” Julian said. “Garak’s a good cook. Of course he is. And I’m learning! Oh, here!” Julian’s lanky frame crossed the room in three steps. He tapped one of the closed doors with a fingernail and said, “That’s the bedroom. You probably don’t need to see–”
“Nope.”
“Right. Well, you’ll like this!” He opened the other door, beaming with pride. Miles walked over cautiously and peered in. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with real books. Some looked replicated, others tattered and old. One ratty armchair sat toward the back of the room, placed carefully before another wide window. No lights in here, either.
“The library!” Julian said. “We don’t have access to much power here. We use our alotment for the kitchen. Not enough to spare for a PADD. So we’ve been collecting bound books over the years.”
“Where do you get them?”
“Oh, we just find them, generally. In collapsed houses. So they’re mostly Kardasi. It’s ok though; I’ve learned to read it pretty well. Cardassian literature does grow on you, if you read enough of it. And I do have my own collection of human literature, too. Whenever I get off-world, I replicate as many as I can carry from the Federation database.”
Julian held out his arms. “So there you have it. Home, sweet home! It’s not much, I know, but it’s a lot better than the tool shed we lived in when I first came here.”
Miles grunted. He wasn’t sure what to say. He’d braced himself for this visit. He’d known it would be sad, that Julian would be chipper to hide his misery. He’d been prepared to pity his friend, but now that he was here it was even harder to school his features, to stop himself from grabbing Julian by the shoulders and shaking him and saying, “What the Hell are you doing here?”
He met Julian’s eyes. To his credit, he actually looked happy. He wondered if Garak had taught him how to hide his feelings; Julian’s face had always been an open book before. “It’s very nice,” Miles said. “I know you both like your books.”
Julian laughed. “We do. Can I get you anything? We have a little red leaf tea here, and some verukt. It’s a sap from a succulent, a cactusy kind of plant. It’s kind of like a thicker, sweeter milk. It’s lovely in tea.”
“Oh, um.” Miles couldn’t bear the thought of taking anything from his impoverished friend. “No, I’m all right.”
“Garak will not let me hear the end of it if I let you leave without drinking something. Cardassian hospitality.”
Miles felt his cheeks redden again. Cardassian hospitality. Two words that didn’t go together in his mind. He needed to get away from this topic of conversation. “So… where is… where is your… um… Where is Garak?”
Julian laughed. “Oh, he told me that if you asked about him, I was to tell you that he was doing something top secret that would so horrify you, you would never recover. His version was more complicated than that, but you get the idea. He’s actually in the back garden, playing with the dog.”
Miles didn’t think he’d heard that right. “You have a dog? A real dog? Not some giant Cardassian vole that you call a dog?”
“Oh yes. It was a nightmare. So much paperwork. A ninety day quarantine. A thousand vaccines for us and the dog. Three different scans to confirm that he’s neutered. But I always wanted a dog. He’s a little piece of home. It was worth it.”
Julian brought Miles to the window gestured out. Miles leaned forward and peered out into what Julian called the back garden. It was a narrow strip of sandy dirt, walled in by carefully arranged piles of rubble. Four years out, and rubble was still the primary building material available on Cardassia.
Sure enough, Garak was out there, leaping around like a child with a large, shaggy, black dog bounding around him. As Miles watched, Garak stooped down and snatched up a stick, which he threw to the farthest corner of the little area. The dog streaked off to snatch the stick from its landing place. His prize attained, the dog took off at full speed around the perimeter of the wall with Garak in hot pursuit, his sleek black hair fanning out behind him.
“Now, that does horrify me,” Miles said. Julian rolled his eyes.
“Garak was very skeptical. He didn’t really understand the concept of keeping an animal in the house that served no real purpose, but he indulged me. Now he’s out there every day throwing sticks around and the damn dog barely pays me any attention at all.”
Miles couldn’t take his eyes off the scene playing out the window. He’d never spent a lot of time with Garak, and the time he had spent with him had often been… less than pleasant. He’d always tried to get along with him, for Julian’s sake, but he’d never understood what Julian saw in him. Julian had always been so innocent, so eager to have fun, and Garak had seemed so heavy, so hard, so dangerous.
“You just don’t know him well enough!” Julian would insist. “He’s a child at heart, believe me.”
Miles had never believed him, and when Julian announced that he was moving to Cardassia permanently three years earlier, Miles had felt nothing but dread and pity for his friend. He didn’t think Garak would kill him, probably. Probably. But it couldn’t be a pleasant life.
Or so he’d thought, but here was Garak, frolicking like a boy. As Miles watched, Garak dove at the dog and wrested the stick away from him. He was laughing.
“So what’s your dog’s name?”
Julian laughed sheepishly. “Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” The name rang a bell.
“Garak named him. He said he should have a human name, so he named him after the only character from human literature that he admires. Or so he says.”
“Oh, yes!” Miles said. “That old book. The Big Gatsby.”
“The Great Gatsby. Did you ever read it?”
“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”
Julian shook his head. “Then it’ll be lost on you. I’ve never actually been able to figure out if Garak really admires him, or if it’s a long con he’s pulling just to annoy me.”
Miles watched his friend as he spoke. Julian was staring out the window the entire time, a delighted smile permanently affixed to his face. With a start, Miles realized that it wasn’t a show. Julian was happy.
Through the window, Miles heard Garak’s faint voice as he shouted, “Stop, Gatsby! Down!” The dog was leaping on him, trying to snatch the stick from his gray hand. Julian was watching, enraptured.
Miles crossed his arms and drew a steadying breath. All of his preparing had been in vain. Julian didn’t need his pity after all.