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The fellow Tom Hanks played peered into the bathroom.
His friend—Brad, or was it Peter? Francis never bothered to remember their names—was pressing an electric razor to his wrist in a pantomime of despair.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Tom Hanks.
“I’m slitting my wrists,” Brad replied.
“With an electric razor?”
There came, from somewhere to the left, a resounding belch, unashamed and followed by a snort. An hour had passed since the film began—Francis knew this because he had been stealing glances at his watch, counting the minutes.
“I couldn’t find any razor blades,” Brad added, his voice wet with pathetic complaint.
Bunny laughed again.
Francis shifted uncomfortably in his seat. That Brad character had already attempted suicide earlier—he’d tried drowning himself in the bathtub. Since that scene, Francis hadn’t moved at all, and now his backside had gone square and numb.
He was absolutely gasping for a cigarette.
Bunny, meanwhile, was shovelling popcorn from the oversized bucket Francis had bought at the kiosk.
Their meeting outside the cinema had been stiff, bordering on painful—Bunny had offered a casual hello but hadn’t extended a hand the way he often did with Charles, nor clapped him on the back the way he did with Henry.
He preferred not to touch Francis, and Francis, for his part, was entirely content with that arrangement.
Francis had spent the whole day and half the evening winding himself up over this. But like Henry, he had no real choice—he was beholden to Bunny’s whims. Refusal wasn’t an option.
“At least your wrists’ll be nice and smooth for kissing,” said Tom Hanks.
Bunny gave a sudden explosive snort.
Earlier in the film, it had become obvious that one of the characters had mistaken a transvestite for a woman and taken them to bed. A horrifying scene, but one that had apparently galvanised Bunny. He kept shooting Francis sidelong glances, mouth twisted into a crooked smile. The blue light from the screen flickered hideously on his glasses.
To distract himself, Francis began jiggling his leg without quite realising, and reached absent-mindedly into the popcorn bucket.
Instead of popcorn, he encountered a hand—warm, oddly soft.
Bunny flinched, yanked his arm back, and sent popcorn cascading to the floor.
“Sorry,” said Francis, dryly. “Didn’t see.”
“Right,” said Bunny after a pause. “It’s dark in here, after all.”
In the next scene, the protagonist discovered he’d slept with a man, and leapt into the shower in a frenzy of self-cleansing. Bunny was in hysterics.
Francis, meanwhile, was beginning to disintegrate.
“Oh no, he nailed him up the ass—” Bunny’s shoulders were shaking with laughter. “Jesus. What a goddamn nightmare. Imagine that…”
Francis felt ill—from the scene, from Bunny’s presence, from the pounding ache in his head and the pins and needles in his left arm.
Another gruelingly long half-hour, and the orgy scene began in a hotel suite.
Bunny leaned abruptly to the right, close enough that their cheeks nearly brushed, and murmured almost into his ear:
“Was that like that?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Francis, pulling away. His fingers trembled.
Bunny, despite his reputation as a buffoon, possessed a peculiar sort of selective knowledge. As it turned out, he knew quite a bit about Bacchanalia. He’d even taken part in a few attempted ones, though Francis preferred not to dwell on those incidents.
The teasing had begun earlier, in the queue outside, and had continued with the slow precision of an inquisitor's torment. Francis had gripped his own arms so tightly he’d left half-moon indentations in his skin.
In front of them stood two boys—short leather jackets, one with long hair, the other with a halo of tight blond curls. Bunny squinted at them, and his face broke into a savage, gleeful grin when the two clasped hands briefly.
“Sad, really,” he said, as if to himself. “The way they have to scuttle about like worms. Poor devils.”
Francis’s stomach turned.
He bolted from his seat the moment the credits began to roll, knees knocking the seat in front, and fled the cinema.
Bunny took his time, emerged a good twenty minutes later with a half-drunk Coke and the tail end of a chocolate bar.
Francis was on his fifth cigarette.
“So?” said Bunny, though he clearly already knew the answer.
Francis resisted the urge to punch him and muttered, coughing, “Bit rubbish.”
Bunny chewed, swallowed, tossed the wrapper behind him. Took a long slurp from his drink. Then he started coughing—from laughter this time.
“Jesus Christ,” he said between gasps, “slitting your wrists… with an electric razor… Who the hell slits their wrists?”
“Seneca,” Francis muttered.
“Oh yeah,” Bunny said, pushing up his glasses. “That’s right. He wasn’t Greek though, was he? Roman guy?”
Francis heard the sneer, but ignored it.
He finished his cigarette in three hard drags, found the bin, flicked the butt, returned rubbing his hands together, and pulled on his gloves. He tried to remember where he’d parked.
Bunny was watching him again—hadn’t stopped, really—and suddenly appeared at his side. With one exaggerated finger, he tapped Francis’s gloved hand.
The second seemed to last an entire year—some awful year, the sort that follows a death.
“You’ll want to wash that later,” Francis snapped. He hadn’t meant to say it—had wanted, in fact, to say nothing at all—but fatigue and a cold sort of sadness had won out.
To his surprise, Bunny didn’t get angry. He tilted his head, chuckled.
“You’re funny,” he said.
Francis blinked.
“You know,” Bunny went on, “I don’t see you as the warrior type. Henry—he’s a warrior. Charles too, in his own way. Even Camilla. But you…”
Francis closed his eyes. Here it comes.
“You’re more of a prophet, maybe?” Bunny concluded, uncertainty curling in his voice. Francis opened one eye.
“Living in some temple, muttering prophecies, taking blood offerings and all that.”
“Do you want a lift?” Francis asked, attempting a change of subject.
“Nah,” Bunny said, waving it off. “I’ll find my own way. Got a couple of pals to meet up with.”
Francis practically leapt into the car.
Just as he was about to start the engine, Bunny knocked on the window. Francis sighed and rolled it down. Bunny leaned in, almost falling into the car.
“And you’d look good in one of those wreaths,” he said, “with big red berries. Suits you.”
Then he laughed again—this time the laugh was gentler, even warm.
“God, I can’t—” he rubbed his eyes. “That damn razor scene… Who the hell tries to off themselves that way? Should’ve shot himself. Quick and clean. Slitting your wrists—too much blood, too slow. When you reached into my popcorn—”
“Your popcorn?” said Francis, outraged. “I paid for it.”
“Yeah yeah,” Bunny waved him off. “When you reached in, I thought—man’s got a delicate wrist. Even an electric razor might do the trick on you. Anyway. Later.”
He thumped the roof—hard—and Francis winced, slammed the car into gear and sped off.
The road was dark and empty.
Francis glanced down, just once, at the pale line of skin exposed by his badly fitted glove. Then, panicking slightly, he let go of the wheel with his left hand and tugged the glove up to his coat sleeve.