Work Text:
“Did anyone ever ask Ganymede what he thought of being ripped into immortality to serve eternally as Zeus’ cupbearer?”
Intermission, New Orleans. A small theater this time, putting on an experimental new play of discrete scenes from the Greek mythos written by a local son.
Louis, stewing in his indignation over yet again being forced to play the valet, even among those who knew of their “business partnership” beneath the fiction, if not that that too was a falsehood hiding a deeper truth, glanced over, sipping at his Sazerac less to keep up appearances and more in memory of the comfort it once provided. Comfort now a pale shadow of a memory next to the ever-tempting thrill of the siren call of blood.
“Did you say something, Lestat?” he intoned circumspectly, the mon cher sacrificed on the altar of propriety palpable in the air between them.
“Oh, nothing. An idle thought, nothing more. Say, what do you think of the way they're reusing the limited cast of actors that they have? Each scene, they return in ways that call back to their previous roles, ways that sharpen and highlight the similarities, and even more the differences between each character. The sweet young but tragically doomed ingenue of Eurydice returns to play the old and childless but kindly hospitable Baucis, her husband Philemon returns as the ultimate betrayer of hospitality Tantalus, and on and on. No regard for age or body or typecasting, just skill and costume and makeup. Now that's what I call theater!”
Lestat’s voice bubbled on rapidly, and if Louis counted it all to excitement and not to the nerves of nearly betraying 120-year old buried fears and resentments, one must forgive him for the distraction of his relief that there would not be another tenor tonight. Not tonight.