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His new patient could be a Renaissance muse, if Botticelli or Raphael would’ve been inclined to make angels from fawn-eyed young men who arrive at the doorsteps of prospective psychiatrists without even bothering to complete the intake form.
The boy standing at the edge of Hannibal's waiting room is South Asian, slim, his narrow face framed by voluminous curls. He’s applied kohl to his lower lash line, Hannibal is fairly certain. A mere visual balm shouldn’t be enough to nullify Hannibal's earlier vexation, but to be honest, he has always been uniquely susceptible to the sensuality in which he regularly douses his eyes and nose and tongue. So he can’t quite muster up surprise for the sense of calm that nonetheless washes over him, like a soothing hand on his shoulder.
“Armand de Pointe du Luc?” he greets, opening the door further. “Please, come in.”
With Brenda’s admittedly timely disappearance, it’s nice to have a fresh face filling in this time slot – a final course, so to speak, to round off the evening.
Herding the boy in, Hannibal grabs his notes from the small glass table, though they are mostly for appearance’s sake. Any pertinent information has already been shelved in the halls of his mind.
After initially receiving the boy’s intake form, Hannibal had checked and rechecked the sender address, finding himself slighted and intrigued in equal measure. Some sections had been unequivocally abandoned, others elegantly and nonsensically scrawled over in red ink then scanned in a high resolution and emailed to Dr. Lecter’s business address alongside a cool but pleasant enough salutation. Its peculiarity warranted attention, Hannibal had decided alone in his office at night. He very much would like to peel back the layers of this boy’s madness.
Of course, some kind of practical joke isn’t yet out of the question. The boy-angel standing in Hannibal’s waiting room doesn’t quite look like he eats “once per week, variably.” Hannibal certainly would not place his birthdate any earlier than the millennium.
The boy smiles. “It’s good to finally meet you, Dr. Lecter. I apologize for my tardiness.”
His voice is sleek and uninflected. A British accent, but the consonants ring out softly, syllables rhythmic.
“Would you like a glass of water?” Hannibal offers.
“No, thank you. Your office is lovely. Do you mind if I have a look around?”
Hannibal gestures at the space. “This time belongs entirely to you.”
The boy takes this to be the permission that it is and turns away, drifting to the bookshelves where he runs his knuckles over old cloth binding, tilting his head at a ninety degree angle to read the titles. He traces his index finger along the phrenological bust that Hannibal keeps on the adjoined desk to amuse himself, and glides over the arch of the brow, caressing the porcelain almost lovingly until he presses his thumb into the eye.
With a gait so smooth that he might as well be floating, the boy then proceeds to the nearby wall to stare rapt at Hannibal’s modest art gallery, this particular cluster of diagrams and reproductions and original paintings sourced largely from the same Veronese estate sale. He’s beautiful, the boy. Hannibal has given up on ignoring this fact. It’s a beauty that invites him to assign depth of character, moreover, as if the great storyteller God has written this creature to incarnate a holy rhetorical device of sorts, a didactic symbol of lost knowledge and art harkening back to some distant, golden age, now neglected in modernity to the detriment of life itself. The baroque suits him better, Hannibal decides in a flurry. Reni and Caravaggio, the simple and teasing seduction of an aptly placed shadow.
Hannibal enjoys these thoughts before boxing them away. Stirring as they are, the boy is just a boy as far as he ought to be concerned. There’s no need to go digging for divinity yet.
It has been at least four minutes since he last spoke. His new patient is still staring at a small frame on the wall.
“A small-scale replica of Manfredi’s Cupid Chastised,” Hannibal narrates, stepping forward. “I acquired this piece many decades ago in Florence.
The boy’s throat bobs. He says, very softly, “A beautiful city.”
“Indeed it is. I lived there for some time as a young man.”
“And I in Venice. Have you been?”
“Briefly.”
“As a connoisseur of the arts, you ought to revisit,” says the boy-angel. “Linger. The Venetian school tends to be less mulled over than the schools of Rome and Florence, but I prefer it immeasurably. What are Roman mathematics to the sensual and lascivious brushstrokes of Venice? The mastery of Michelangelo to the dreams of Giorgione?”
A man of the arts! Hannibal holds back a smile. “The era of feuding communes might have passed us by, but I’m still rather disposed to defend my flag. All this mathematical juggling of anatomy and light and perspective, a third dimension in two–” with this he gestures to an adjacent architectural print, the phenomenal work of Niccolo Matas – “they make masterpieces as surely as the divine care of the artist. And due to the increasing neglect of these principles – if I may venture – contemporary works can–”
“Look like the artist got sick on the canvas?”
“I was aiming for a tenderer phrasing,” Hannibal says, delighted.
“With my occupation, one’s mute geniality can only withstand so many such blights. Modernism scarcely fares better. Tachisme, action painting, abstraction and abstraction and abstraction,” says the boy in what can only be described as a whine. “My companion rails at me for my complaints.”
My companion. “You deal in art,” Hannibal notes.
“We do. Although my companion is the one with the business sense. I’ve been told that I am too easily… brought to heel? In such negotiations.”
Again, the mysterious companion! Hannibal beckons to the seating area with no small regret. “Engrossing as this conversation is, Mr. de Pointe du Lac, I don’t wish to whittle away your hour with small talk. I’d love to further discuss your work once the opportunity presents itself. Would you like to sit?”
The boy settles daintily into the proffered chair, legs crossed. Hannibal mirrors his posture.
“You mentioned in your intake form that you’re here at the behest of your companion,” says Hannibal, glancing down unnecessarily at the page.
“My boyfriend. Will that be a problem, Dr. Lecter?”
Hannibal has had sex with more men than women in his lifetime. “I assure you, it will not. Unless, of course, this means that you don’t want to be here.”
“It’s necessary for me to be here. “
“Are these your words? Or your boyfriend’s?”
“My companion believes that I have fumbled my way into possession of some… what was his word? Emotional baggage. I’m not adverse to the concept.”
“Is this ‘emotional baggage’ a recent acquisition?” Hannibal ventures.
At that, the boy outright giggles, a shockingly childish noise placed beside the crispness of his pronunciation. “Not quite. No, I don’t think you could say so, Dr. Lecter.”
“The notion amuses you.”
“You’ve read my questionnaire. Thoroughly, I imagine.”
Hannibal has been waiting to steer them obliquely in this direction, but he’s not adverse to the direct course. “This brings us to another item. I’ve read your form, yes, and there are a number of stand-outs, as you’re suggesting. Before we continue today’s session, would you mind clarifying a few matters for me?”
“Not at all.”
“I appreciate your patience, Mr. de Pointe du Lac,” Hannibal says, and riffles through the stack of printouts to find the relevant sheet. “Regarding the date and location of your birth, my information seems to have been restricted to the words ‘early sixteenth century.’”
“Fifteen-oh-eight, to the best of my knowledge. I didn’t think it would make a difference. I can show you my passport if you need it, but it’s a forgery.”
Hannibal considers himself an expert in the art of comprehension, picking through obfuscating tone and word choice to get at the brittle bases beneath it all, but he isn’t quite certain what to make of that. “Am I to alert the authorities?” he asks, good-naturedly.
”I’ll explain soon enough. Anything else?”
It’s the earnesty, the utter relaxedness in the boy’s language and posture. No discerning hint of uncertainty. Hannibal briefly contemplates pushing a few more buttons, but he’ll be dragging them back to this line of thought later, anyway, so he continues, “You claim to have been with your current partner for sixty-four years, and recorded the most recent domestic dispute to have taken place three years ago, over the matter of ‘cleaning.’
“That is correct.”
The paper rustles as he flips it over.
“Under the ‘Health’ section–“
The boy raises his hand, an implicit request for silence. The next words instantly die on Hannibal’s tongue, as if he has swallowed them by accident.
“Dr. Lecter,” he says, “I did not record any of this incidentally. Each word on this form which you are pretending not to have already memorized has been selected above all others by a conscious process of the mind. There’s no need to recount every one of my responses.”
Hannibal blinks, shifts in his seat. The boy’s tone carries an easy confidence at odds with his youth, a condescension to which Hannibal can’t quite bring himself to take offense. “Excellent,” he says easily, re-tuning his approach. “Then with the previous context in mind… tell me, Mr. de Pointe du Lac–“
“Armand, please,” interrupts the boy.
“Tell me, Armand. Do you believe in reincarnation?”
The boy-angel named Armand yields a lilting grin. “An intelligent guess, Dr. Lecter, if your intention is to pinpoint my brand of apparent delusion while playing at half-belief. I suppose it’ll be quicker to simply tell you that I am what you would refer to as a vampire.”
“I see,” Hannibal says.
“You don’t seem to believe me.”
“What you're claiming requires a leap of faith, you do understand. I must confess to some degree of skepticism.”
“A psychiatrist lacking trust in his patients… how fare your other clients, I wonder?”
“We’re not here to discuss my other patients. We’re here to discuss you.”
“That is precisely what I’m attempting to do. I believe that I am a vampire because I am a vampire,” Armand insists. “Please, Doctor, if you would like to conclude our acquaintance here, I would appreciate you simply saying so. I can afford to waste my time; you, on the other hand, cannot.”
What does that mean? How much of the implication, rather, is meant? “As a psychiatrist, I am obligated to critically examine all information presented by my patients.”
“Yes, you have a scientific mind. Structured.”
“Structure can be soothing,” Hannibal agrees. “Labels, both real and imagined, help us to make sense of the world around us. Surely you’ve laid claim to some of your own.”
In response, Armand tilts his head and says, “Your foyer is the Capella Palatina, I think, in Palermo. I’ve visited only thrice in all my years, but I remember the same golden tiles, thousands of shards everywhere you turn, luminescent like small suns. What I cannot seem to recall are these hallways, however, branching north and south from the altar. Those are your construction. You have a remarkable memory, Dr. Lecter. It is difficult to maintain a mnemonic device of this size.”
What, Hannibal barely manages to bite back. Armand’s eyes bore through the plates of his skull, halfway the nasal bone and glabella he tenses at the intrusion, and without warning his suit has tightened, the room feels tight, that’s it, he needs to leave, to gouge out those huge, unblinking eyes and slice deep into the abdomen of a boy-angel-creature.
But Hannibal remains locked in his seat, and what slips out is, “The method of loci dates back to the fifth century BC. It was later recounted by the Romans, most notably Quintilian in his instructory treatise Insitutio Oratoria.“
The vampire’s smile grows mocking. “All manner of oddity stashed along your hallways. Ah… a fondness for the Caravaggisti… the sleek black hair of your aunt draping the Venus of Urbino…! But this is only outside of your immediate consciousness, of course…
“Currently you have lodged yourself in an unquiet wonder,” Armand murmurs, words tumbling over each other in a torrent, dragging Hannibal downward, downward into a bleak and fathomless void. “Yes, yes, anybody could have told you that — even a creature as dull and insipid as Franklyn Froideveaux, whose departure this morning left you… irked, let’s say. Allow me to express my commiseration. Venture further into the sprawling municipality that is your mind and we will find my present likeness flickering beside Verrocchio’s David, a statue that once stirred your passion, the germinating passions of a boy suddenly afloat in the intellectual and artistic opulence of the Italian Renaissance. I can relate, albeit firsthand to your second. Even now you are filtering through Caravaggios, Botticellis, and… hmm.” Armand inclines his head. “Very perceptive, Dr. Lecter. We can return to that if you’d like.”
Dazedly, Hannibal catalogues his thoughts. His voice is remarkably steady when he says, “The painter Marius de Romanus. Now a footnote to the common eye, but his surviving works are rendered with striking skill, frequently distinguished for their eccentric and imaginative composition. Is there a significance to the name?”
Armand’s wide-eyed gaze darts away. A point, Hannibal thinks, and files away this information for further examination.
“Patience, Dr. Lecter. Not yet. You’re still wondering whether I’ve somehow managed to stumble past the elephant in this room. I assure you that I haven’t.” Armand uncrosses his legs, leans forward. “In your palace you display your vices like the Colossus of Nero, utterly unabashed by your own ostentation. Since I entered your office, you have oscillated between fantasies of fellating me in this chair and carving me open. You want to taste my bone marrow.”
The danger hangs taut in the air. Vividly, Hannibal sees himself flayed neck to groin, the flaps of his skin yanked unceremoniously to the sides, and he could probably pull his hands free, couldn’t he? Could he? But instead he waits, rapt watching the monster press its thumb to his rapid heart, murmuring rest, murmuring, don’t you want to see?
“It’s impolite to peer into locked houses,” he scolds.
“A placid veneer. Yet you roil within, already submerged beneath the rising tides of your doubt.”
“Your point is proven,” says Hannibal, although he cannot be entirely sure what he is affirming beyond his own detachment from an intelligible reality. Then, halfway back into his senses, he thinks: QUO USQUE TANDEM ABUTERE CATILINA PATIENTIA NOSTRA QUAM DIU—
“Currently I am imagining a sentence, a meaning.”
QUO USQUE TANDEM ABUTERE CATILINA PATIENTIA NOSTRA QUAM DIU ETIAM FUROR ISTE TUUS NOS ELUDET QUEM AD FINEM SESE EFFRENATA IACTABIT AU—
Armand just looks amused. “I’ve disregarded ancient vampiric law to gift you a glimpse of your reality, and you respond by quizzing me like a schoolteacher.”
“Please, indulge me."
“You’re quoting the first line of Cicero’s First Catilinarian, and you’re doing it so loudly that it would’ve been more difficult to avoid your thoughts. Etiam his verba stultissimus puer in palatio domini mei agnovisset. Visne hoc colloquium Latine pergere, Doctor?”
Classical pronunciation, impeccable as far as Hannibal’s expertise stretches. “No need, but thank you for the offer. If I may note, Armand, vampire mythos doesn’t tend to congregate about mind-reading capabilities.
“A subject worthy of academic inquiry, I’m sure.”
“Do you ingest human blood?”
“Yes,” says Armand. “Do you?”
Against his better judgment – should such a concept have ever held a tangible bearing on his actions – Hannibal makes a choice.
“If you intend for us to continue this session, I must ask that you stay out of my mind.”
Armand gives a small, amused huff. “Is this a threat, Dr. Lecter? Are you to impale me on the fearsome scalpel up your sleeve?”
“Therapy is a collaborative effort. Should you continue to perceive this conversation as a mere clashing of wits, I’m afraid I won’t be any help to you. And,” Hannibal tacks on, understanding that this will be the deciding piece, “you’ll need to find a new therapist to believe you.”
Armand hesitates before conceding, “Very well.”
And that’s that! How tidy. His thoughts are unsafe, other bloodsuckers roam the night, and infinity is synchronously incomprehensible and livable. The premise of science itself, the haughty assumption of intelligibility in the universe, has been tangibly and irreparably violated, perhaps for as long as there has been matter from nothing.
Or maybe Hannibal has finally lost it, as the layman says, whatever shape “it” might have assumed to begin with. Insanity is not entirely disagreeable.
Another cliché, then: go with the flow. He leans back in his seat and recrosses his legs, observes the wool tugging at his knees.
“Today I’d like to get to know you,” Hannibal says to an ancient vampire. “I’ll ask you some questions with the aim of understanding how each year — each decade, perhaps — in your life has led to you being here, at this moment. Is there anything you’d like to add or change?”
“That sounds fine.”
Hannibal spreads open his hands. Lay your cards on the table, let’s see them. “A broad opening, for you to answer as you see fit. Why is a vampire sitting in my office?”
“Louis believes I’m sick,” Armand says after a beat.
“Your… companion.”
“My companion, yes. “
“How did Louis go about diagnosing this sickness?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand.”
“What preceded this judgment, then?”
“We quarreled.” Hannibal watches Armand’s throat bob before he announces, decidedly, “I am not good at telling stories.”
“I don’t need you to be,” Hannibal says, in the same tone he might use to console a hiccupping child. He feels somewhat comical doing it, offering gentle encouragement to unliving proof of the preternatural, a creature of whose physiology even he cannot begin to claim comprehension.
“You don’t understand me. I can tell you what happened a year ago, a century ago. Ask me whether it rained. I can tell you that.”
“Did it?”
“No. Not in Paris.”
“Did it rain the night you quarrelled with Louis?”
“Not that night, either. The air was wet and warm. There was a red automobile very close to me, which I nearly walked into because I was reading the Reviews section of the Chicago Tribune, and I was disappointed to find that they had given Inception three stars. I had been very excited to see it. The reviewer compared it to Blade Runner.” Armand pauses, mouth hanging slightly open, and says, “I think I know where to start the story.”
“Only if you feel ready,” Hannibal soothes, and again the boy smiles.
“I do. I should first tell you about what I am.”
Dr. Lecter, given your thorough study of the human condition, I suppose it shouldn’t be difficult for you to imagine that the Undead, like mortals, find solace in hierarchy. Likely to an even greater extent, as it can be far easier to bury oneself in the whims of a secluded master than to stand unblinking in the midst of a rapidly metamorphosing world.
Imagine all the tokens of this era gone, the food and language, the clothes that you so love. I’m not brave, Dr. Lecter. Unlike many of my dearest friends, I’m easily cowed by change and circumstance.
For centuries we have organized ourselves into covens, each possessing a coven master charged with discipline over his flock. We referring to blood drinkers, vampires, there is no word that fully corresponds. Understand that, despite the term’s universal applicability, covens are not homogeneous in disposition nor function and often conform to the temperament of their master. For that reason my first was ascetic and lifeless.
When Louis and I first arrived in Chicago, I sought out the city’s coven within a week.
A rare few of these collectives welcome the vagrant immortal with shelter and amiable conversation. But more commonly, just as one begins to acclimate to unfamiliar surroundings, to the glimmering new city that at first stirs such foolish hope, one will gradually become aware of unseen probing eyes, an acrimonious suspicion emanating from the shadows. Warnings. A kindness, I think you will understand, as ultimately it is wisest to kill your intruders. We can be savage creatures.
The Chicago coven, they were wise in this manner. My Louis has a reputation. As do I, I suppose.
“That’s rather foreboding,” Hannibal says lightly. “How might you describe his reputation?”
“Louis’?”
Hannibal waits.
“The whispers passed between vampires don’t comprehend the... the man whom I know. How could they? But my beloved has killed many of his kind, that much is not untrue.”
“And yours?” Hannibal ventures.
“My reputation? I am an unliving angel. I am cruel and gentle and a child who understands nothing. What does it matter?”
“You mutate as you are observed,” Hannibal notes. He is tempted to tack on a tidy witticism like Schrodinger’s vampire to cushion his tone, but when it comes to the bounds of vampiric education, he finds himself lamentably lost. It’s aggravating. Every phrase a guess, every observation a gamble.
If Armand has again penetrated his mind, he yields no indication. “Not entirely. Never met someone who didn’t find me beautiful.”
“That wasn’t a judgment, Armand. We all present different versions of ourselves to varying social situations.” And then, Hannibal’s coup de grâce: “You know I’m not in a place to critique you in that regard.”
“Oh, yes. I liked what your psychiatrist said, the matronly blonde. Hannibal Lecter, you are wearing a very well-tailored person suit.” Armand pitches his tone to match Bedelia’s slow, deliberate cadence, to an uncanny effect. “One could say that I am wearing a… vampire suit.”
The last bit is likely intended to be a joke, Hannibal realizes when a shy little grin blooms across Armand’s features, and he feels the corners of his own mouth twitch up in turn. This monster is charming. He likes him, truly likes him, and perhaps against his better judgment, but since when has Hannibal been a wise man?
And then Armand’s eyes snap back into focus, and Hannibal once more finds himself with a hazy sense of being caged, a zoo animal put on display. It’s not altogether an unpleasant feeling.
“But we stray, Dr. Lecter,” the vampire chides gently. “I’ll continue now, if you’re done with your questions.”
Early into the second evening of our stay, Louis and I found that we could not resist the temptation of the city’s parks, least of all the park named after the third millennium which marked a new era, even for me, albeit springing from an imaginary divide. To think that it’s consumed half of your life, Doctor!
We drifted through the gate and along groomed walkways, reminiscing. The tranquility in this moment was such that we even spoke tentatively of past wrongs, the rarest of topics between us, and kissed tenderly in the desolate square. I’ll remember this night for as long as I live for many reasons, this among them.
But it wasn’t long before I became aware of somebody else behind us, trailing us covertly. And brushing up against its mind, I could instantly sense that it was another creature of the dark, an immortal presence flickering weakly in the dark swath of the night. If Louis noticed this, he hid it well, but I doubt that he did. My mind, being older, is more sensitive than his.
It seemed to ogle us for hours, following always from the same precise distance as if fearful of discovery but not so wary that it could bear the thought of us escaping for even a moment. Only when Louis began to cajole me back to our apartment, desperate to make good use of our last few waking hours, did I sense our mysterious shadow curving away. With the first true privacy of the evening came a restful lightness of the mind.
Still, disquieted by my curiosity and rising apprehension, I reached out with my thoughts to follow the interloper dipping south, then moving further still, headed vaguely toward Chinatown.
I paid close heed the following nights as Louis and I explored the city. Good that I did, because it was doggedly present, observing our private comings and goings with a tireless eye. More than once, I thought to send it away. Likely I would have if it weren’t for my dread.
I’ll spare you the further minutiae, Dr. Lecter.
What you need to know is, I found them eventually, and it took me a week, more or less, as I underwent great pains to evade the suspicion of my beloved. I did not wish to risk disturbing our modest and easy peace. I preserve my companion's happiness even when he cannot or does not.
They ran a souvenir shop in the older Chinatown. Gaudy keychains, refrigerator magnets, the unlikely sort of treasure that mortals often cling to with all their sentimental might. And it was mortals who ran the shop, I should have said, while the vampires plucked at their marionette strings from the basement. I went after them without telling Louis, early into our seventh or eighth night there.
It was not raining then, as I have told you. The building’s blinds were drawn, but the door had been left cracked open, as if to invite the curious wanderer within.
I stole in silently. And cowering before me in the darkened store, huddled between dangling plastic trinkets and tubs of cheap silverware, were a dozen or so vampires, frozen with cards in their hands and blood sloshing in wine bottles to gawk at my unfamiliar presence. To be clear, Doctor, I’m certain that this wasn’t all of them, most definitely not in a city of millions. There’s another coven, I think, taking up residence in the north. I cannot be sure, even if I probably knew at the time. It simply never mattered to me very much.
From the back of the store emerged another vampire who was clearly their leader, although what her leadership might have achieved continues to elude me. She wore a red blouse which I remember well, fashioned from costly velvet and tapering into a bishop’s sleeves.
“You must leave our city,” she told me at once. She was polite about it, but firm.
“Will you let us join you?” I asked her, out of curiosity. “For even a few nights? We’re weary from travel, and we mean you no harm.”
She smiled at me, indulgently, with the confidence of a vampire who has perhaps seen beyond the nineteenth century. “Not you, certainly. We’ve heard enough from Cairo and Athens and San Francisco regarding the cold ancient who once ruled the Theatre des Vampires, eternally bearing the smooth-cheeked beauty of a Botticelli.”
Wherever I travel – oh! Dr. Lecter, I would very much like it if you didn’t take this next bit personally — wherever I travel, whispers always trail me of Botticelli, of cupids and cherubs plucked straight out of a Caravaggio. Riveting, this adulation! Do vampires know more than two painters, I often find myself wondering? It’s vexing. There was a time when I might’ve reveled in even the palest of flattery, but that time has long ago passed, before even Caravaggio’s birth, and now it all just vexes me.
So of course the brave leader’s words, possibly an ill-conceived attempt to soothe me, only propelled me to see the meeting to a close. I moved further into the room, acutely aware of two dozen vampiric eyes on my body.
I responded: “Surely you must know my power, then. I’ll be your ally if you’re kind to us. Call to Armand, wherever he is, and your friend will come to your aid.”
But she waved me off and barreled on, as if I’d said nothing at all, “Now because I don’t like to turn away the wanting, the other one can stay. He’s young enough to not be any harm, I think. Hmm… maybe not no harm, but we must draw the line someplace, don’t you agree? We can’t let in everybody who comes knocking.”
To this I took grave offense. “What do you think I’ll do?” I demanded. “Simply because I possess a boy’s countenance, I will throw a boy’s fit, that’s it, set fire to your shop in an outburst? Or is my sanity fleeing in my old age?”
“I mean no insult, really,” she said, appearing cowed.
“Maybe I will remain with my beloved, and we will plant ourselves in your city like great redwood trees.”
“That’s fine. The younger one can stay and we’ll leave him alone,” she said again, a tremble appearing in her voice. “But you must leave or we will kill you.”
Well, I could leave, but I could not leave him, of course. That is what I thought. Moving slowly, I closed the door behind me.
There’s not much else to say about this evening. The air was wet and warm. I had determined that they meant us harm, so I killed them all. And I returned to Louis with a sweet smile.
“Where were you?” he asked me, an uncharacteristic urgency in his voice. The sky had been lightening, beckoning forward the dawn.
“A lonely stroll," I answered. “Why do you care?”
“You shut me off. I was trying to reach you. I was thinking we could do something together when you got back, another walk. I don’t know. Catch the movie you wanted to see. I’m liking the Windy City a lot, Armand.”
By now, I’d promised him honesty many times already. So to his words I felt a ponderous, burdensome regret, and tried to atone with my enthusiasm. “I’m sorry. Could we go tomorrow? Can we see Inception? The Chicago Tribune christens it ‘Nolan’s labyrinth,’ and they compare it to Blade Runner, very briefly but you know how I adore—”
“Where did you go tonight?” he interrupted me mercilessly.
“I was out, Louis.”
“That’s not an answer. I need you to tell me the truth.”
I hesitated. But I stared into his hard, lovely eyes, and in the end I could not lie to him. “I sought out our kind,” I said, readying myself for his anger. “They have been watching us since we arrived, and they had meant to kill us if we remained.”
“What did you do? Did you slaughter them?”
“They have been following us, Louis, gathering our weaknesses to use against us.”
“So we’ll leave. So we’ll pack up our stuff and find somewhere else, like we’ve done half a dozen times before.”
“Why must we allow ourselves to be driven out by a coven of fledglings?"
Louis looked weary. “I know, I get it. I’m not sitting here to champion their right to boot us out. It’s just not worth the fight, that’s all. I don’t like looking over my shoulder any more than I have to.”
“Louis, ever the sentimentalist!” I sighed, not believing him for an instant. “I spoke to them, you know. And their leader was a child, younger than you, even, sermonizing like she knew right and wrong and had learned to stand tall beneath the centuries. They were immortal in name but no more. Had I given them another century, they would’ve walked into the fire, one by one, as surely as you and I rise every night.”
My companion wasn’t happy, and paced and muttered to himself to show it. “Alright. Can’t go back on it now. That’s fine.”
He wields his disappointment with a blunt carelessness, my Louis, a carelessness that can strike you quite painfully. It’s difficult to describe in its entirety, but please know this much, Dr. Lecter. Understand why I, regrettably, struck back.
“Sure,” I said. “Fine. Use your words, Louis.”
“Come on, take a peek inside my head. You’re a goddamn virtuoso, isn’t that right.”
“I have no wish to invade your mind.“
“You really think I’m buying that?”
“Louis—” I tried.
"You want to know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking it’s about time you got off your high horse.”
“Louis, I won’t—”
“What makes you special among us, gives you the right to trail behind me dictating who lives and who dies? I’m not gonna pretend to cradle the secrets of the universe in my palm, but I know enough to know you sure as hell don’t, either.”
“But you used to care, Louis, remember when—”
“Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, sprouted right here in the Savage Garden’s smallest, stuffiest, most suffocating apartment. May we self-flagellate at the altar of the ancient vampire! May he grant me salvation from my ignorance!”
Finally, I understood what this was about. The point of no return very likely occurred here, in hindsight. Louis’ maker is a sore subject for both of us.
“I see. I see. Your maker told you nothing and I am at fault. A teacher dragging his students into whorehouses, gallivanting through–”
“My maker ain’t got nothing to do with this,” he said stormily.
“Five hundred years to your hundred and thirty!” I exclaimed. I can be haughty, you see. “To his two hundred! And yet you cling to him like an infant, to the gifts and knowledge he kept from you.”
“I didn’t even say his name.”
“You were thinking it, Louis. Will he ever not darken our doorstep?”
“I won’t invade your mind. You just said that. You’re a liar, Arun.”
“But you’re screaming it, my dear, I didn’t even have to try. Would you like me to narrate your babbling subconscious? Please, he didn’t mean it! He flung me from the sky but I love him, father!”
“Like your daddy loved you, is that it?”
“He hurt you but I love him, daughter!”
“My daddy touched me in the bathtub and it’s fine ‘cause I liked it!”
In my agitated state, I allowed this barb to derail me, to set askew the line of my logic. “On this day Louis de Pointe du Lac, our shining champion of modern justice, shall formally condemn Marius de Romanus,” I spat, “for the crime of statutory rape! A villain! The devil himself, most certainly! Let children lie innocent of sensuous pleasures, quoth the Lord, and let children become men in the single tick of a clock, the brief, momentous instant when seventeen becomes eighteen, that immeasurable bound in maturity!"
“You’re sick, Arun.” Louis was trembling, a plucked bowstring. “You’re fucked in the head.”
“I know, Maitre,” I said.
“You would’ve been better off following your daddy vampire into the fire.”
“Yes, Maitre,” I agreed. “And instead I’m here with you.”
Not much else happened after this, Dr. Lecter. We made a mutual and valiant attempt to continue our squabbling, but the anger soon drained from us both. He held me, and I held him, and he took me from behind on the couch. I think he couldn’t bear to look at my face.
And afterwards, before we could return to normal as we always do, he pulled me aside and said, You’re sick, Armand. He said, I can’t go on like this, repeating ourselves over and over. I love you, but need to get help, Arun, or I’m leaving.
“And now he is in Dubai, overseeing construction,” Armand says miserably, “and I am here, getting help.”
