Chapter Text
Cast:
Interviewer- Daniel Molloy
Interview Subject- Louis de Pointe du Lac
Rashid- Armand
Interior- Dubai Penthouse- Day
It’s still early in the morning when Louis wakes up, but Armand has already been up for hours. He rarely sleeps for more than an hour or two these days, and there are always some little finishing touches to be attended to. A copy of Daniel’s memoir is placed on the coffee table. The tint of the floor-length windows is darkened just slightly. The tablet is placed on the desk in the back of the living room, fully charged. Any trace of dust on the living room decor is brushed away.
Louis comes into the kitchen, where Armand is rubbing a damp cloth over a barely perceptible smudge on the countertop. “Good morning, love,” Louis says, leaning in to kiss Armand’s cheek and then startling when he sees Armand’s eyes. “Didn’t realize you were already in costume.”
Armand smiles and raises a gloved hand. “How do I look?”
“Not like Rashid,” Louis says with a laugh. “But if I had never met Rashid, I would be fooled.”
“Excellent.” Armand had considered pushing the disguise further, and with the right makeup and haircut, he could have made himself into a near-perfect replica of the real Rashid. But the role is not Rashid Al-Bedwawi, the role is simply “domestic staff”. Rashid is just lending his name to Armand for the week. Brown contacts, black gloves, and plain clothing will suffice.
“Why are you cleaning?” Louis asks with a frown. “There’s nothing here.”
“That’s because I cleaned it up.”
“You cleaned the kitchen last night. After Maitha had already done it, if memory serves.”
“One more time can’t hurt.”
Louis sighs and squeezes Armand’s gloved hand. “You don’t have to be nervous. It won’t be like last time.”
Truth be told, Armand isn’t nervous. He’s fussing over the apartment a little, yes, but that was always his way before a show. Sweep the last traces of dust from the stage, inspect the set pieces and props for any minute damage that might have been overlooked the night before, make sure everything and everyone is in their proper places before the curtain goes up.
Still, Armand nods and sets the cloth aside. He can feel the anxiety radiating from Louis, and it helps Louis if he believes that Armand shares his apprehension. “We’ve got an hour,” he says. “Do you still want to finish that crossword?”
Armand does not particularly like crosswords, but Louis does, and he needs the distraction right now. His nerves are all sharp edges, and it’s Armand’s job to soften them in whatever way he can before the interview. When Daniel arrives, he needs to see confidence, composure, everything that Louis was not in San Francisco. It won’t be like the last interview. Armand will not let it.
Interior- Dubai Penthouse- Day
The door buzzer cuts through the silence of the penthouse and makes Louis jump, but when he stands up to answer the door, his mind is calm. Armand allows himself a small smile of satisfaction. Louis exits, and Armand pockets their pencils and slips the crossword into the stack of newspapers on the coffee table. He retrieves the silver tea set from the kitchen in the blink of an eye, and is just setting it down on the coffee table when Louis enters with Daniel at his side. Armand finishes arranging the dishes, and then retreats to the back of the room. Unnoticed. Unremarkable. Just as he had rehearsed.
Daniel sits down on the sectional, across the table from Louis. “I told my editor I was meeting with the, uh, most dangerous man in the world,” he says, and he may well be right, even if his fear is misplaced. “Gave him two choices. He came back with “Bezos. Putin.” He thinks I’m in Praskovéyevka.”
Louis chuckles. “You’ve grown old, Daniel.”
“Yeah, well, mortality beats a heavy drum.”
Armand sees the tremor in his hand, and knows it isn’t from anxiety. Parkinson’s , he thinks to Louis.
I know , Louis thinks back. Out loud he says, “I wasn’t sure you’d remembered me. Your book makes no mention of our prior meeting.”
Daniel shrugs. “Gritty memoir, drugs, humiliation, self-pity kind of thing. Mention vampires in one of those, readers tend to call bullshit.”
Louis takes a seat in his own chair, one leg crossed over the other. “You’ve had some health concerns of late.”
“Whole planet’s having a moment, I’d say.”
Louis delivers his next line with all the gravitas Armand had hoped for. “You have Parkinson’s disease, Daniel.”
A moment of tense silence.
“Yeah,” Daniel says sharply. “And you’ve got your own hangar at the airport, privileges on the Royal Meydan Bridge, and zero presence online.”
Armand does not look up from his tablet, but a sudden feeling of fondness rises up in him. The years since San Francisco have changed Daniel beyond the gray in his hair and the lines on his face. Armand knows this from his books, yes, but it is gratifying to see a hint of it firsthand. He’s become adept at finding out what people would rather keep secret, asking the right questions instead of simply listening to his subjects’ ranting. The bright young reporter with a point of view has become something more hardened, more intelligent.
More fascinating.
When Armand focuses back in on the conversation in front of him, Daniel is looking at the tinted windows. “That’s the sun out there. Where’s your coffin?”
“You’re standing in it,” Louis replies, and Armand can feel his satisfaction from across the room. It’s the very question he has been waiting for. He nods to Armand, who carefully lowers the tint on one of the windows with a tap of his finger on the tablet screen.
“I have to be very careful whom I let in,” Louis continues, walking over to the patch of sunlight. He rolls up the sleeve of his jacket and extends his arm into the light. Immediately, his skin begins to sizzle and flake away. Armand does not flinch or look away. Neither does Daniel.
After a few seconds, Louis removes his arm and pulls his sleeve back down. Armand restores the tint to the glass, expression still carefully blank.
Daniel looks unimpressed. “Yeah, well, things didn’t end well the last time, so forgive me if I’m a little nervous.” His hand goes to his shirt collar, pulls back the fabric and exposes, just for a second, the scar on his neck. As if any of them need further reminding, Daniel sets his tape player on the table and Louis’s voice from 1973 crackles to life.
“This, after all I’ve told you, is what you ask for, boy?” Even through the tape player, even from forty-nine years ago, Louis’s fury is evident.
Daniel’s voice comes next, younger and unformed. “Yeah, well, you don’t know what human life is like. I mean, you’ve forgotten, man. I mean, you don’t even understand the meaning of your own story!”
They all know what comes next. A crash, and then Daniel yelling “No! Hey, stop!” Another crash. Screaming- and then Louis is in front of Daniel, pressing pause.
“You were disrespectful,” Louis says, eyes blazing.
“I was high,” Daniel counters, sounding more annoyed than anything else.
“You were not worthy of my story then.”
He still isn’t, Armand thinks, but he keeps that thought to himself.
As if to prove his point, the next words out of Daniel’s mouth are “Maybe your story wasn’t worth telling.”
Louis holds his gaze for a moment, then goes back to his chair.
“You’ve got the tapes,” Daniel continues. “Hire a transcriber. I don’t do puff portraiture anymore.”
A diplomatic smile from Louis. “And yet, you got on a plane, with an auto-immune disease, in the middle of a pandemic.”
Daniel sighs, and Armand knows Louis has won. “All right.” He sits forward, reaches into his bag for his laptop. “That’s my voice, but I don’t remember it. I ask all the wrong questions.”
“Yes.”
“There’s contradictions in your story I never follow up on.”
“Yes.”
“The few good ones I do manage to get out, you steamroll over them.” He opens the laptop. “It’s not an interview. It’s a… It’s a fever dream told to an idiot.”
“Yes.”
“And you?” Daniel looks up at Louis. “Why again? What’s changed?”
Louis stands again. It’s making him look anxious, Armand notes, all the sitting and standing. Something to fix for the next session.
“The world, circumstances. Me, I’ve changed.” Louis sits back down in the second chair. “And I too find the tapes lacking.”
Daniel considers this. “So, a do-over.” He presses a button on his laptop. The recording starts.
“Truth and reconciliation,” Louis says.
A long, disbelieving look from Daniel. “I ask the questions, you answer the questions. Anything that can’t be verified, I send to my researcher.”
Armand stands up now. “No third parties,” he says. This is a factor he had not considered, and it seems so obvious in hindsight. He must be slipping. It’s been so long since he’s had a live audience.
Daniel ignores him, keeps speaking to Louis. “I write it. You get to see it before it goes to print. I get the final edit.”
Armand’s voice is sharper now. “That is not the agreement you signed.”
“And one more thing,” Daniel says, looking at Armand this time. “I do my best work one-on-one.”
I can handle this , Louis thinks. “Would you see to Mr. Molloy’s room?” he says to Armand, not turning around. “Have the chef prepare a meal for him. I think it best we start when our boy’s had a rest.”
That gets a rise out of Daniel in a way that nothing else has. “I am not your fucking boy,” he snaps. “I’m an old man with all the triggers that come with it. And I’m ready, so let’s do this.”
He fidgets incessantly with his reading glasses, Armand notices. A nervous tell?
Daniel glances at his watch, speaks into the microphone on the table. “I’m Daniel Molloy. It is 10:08 in the morning on June 14, 2022…”
Exit Rashid, stage right.