Notes: All the usual stuff about characters being copyrighted to Marvel, blah, blah, blah… Lyrics from Natalie Imbruglia, Bic Runga, Beth Orton, Badly Drawn Boy and poetry by Charles Baudelaire. And I took the title from ‘The Matrix Reloaded’, so sue me.
Wasn’t thinking of a time period for this when I wrote it, but if I had to choose, it’d probably be after Gambit #16.
Cause and Effect, My Love
‘You live your life; you live like an island,
surrounded by water and silence. Mmm,
there you go – you make it look easy. I
bet you laugh at yourself; are you laughing at me?’ (Everything Goes, Natalie Imbruglia)
‘Anytime that you laugh you know that I’ll be laughing
too – but it’s not funny anymore. Come on now, where’s your soul – is that it
crumpled on the floor? Is this blame on
me? Delight, delight, delight, delight,
delight, at least we know it’s name.’ (Delight,
Bic Runga)
It begins with the woman: Parisienne, raven-haired, olive-skinned,
smooth-limbed, a seductress of seducers.
Over dinner with her husband, she looks over at him, lone diner, dapper,
elegant, blasé; he looks back at her; they look at one another: the contract is
made.
And as always, all possibilities distilled
from that single, insoluble moment lead, inevitably, to the same conclusion.
Later, she
comes to him as he stands at the bar, all shoulders and arms and hips and long,
long legs, feline precision, Chardonnay in one hand, Sobranie in the
other. His mouth twists as she
approaches him, wry yet somehow self-deprecating – he had not expected this, he
had not expected that she would make the first move. He shifts, easily, fluidly, his eyes upon the rows of insidiously
coloured bottles on the shelf behind the bar, the bottles glistening liquidly
in the hazy light of the smoke-filled room.
Tonight he feels trapped, cornered, hunted by something both very real
and very invisible; something all at once palpable and yet intangible, achingly
so. He avoids asking the question, he
avoids asking what that invisible something is – he knows, he thinks he knows
already. Instead he glances down at the
gold Rolex on his wrist; he thinks: I have a job to do, and it’s getting late,
and I shouldn’t – but I still have a little time; yes, I still have a little
time to kill……
He is
being uncharacteristically indecisive.
He downs the remaining pool of bourbon from the bottom of his glass, as
if to draw strength from the pungent, acrid taste of the liquor.
“Got a
light?” she asks. Throaty, honeyed,
like trailing a spoon through a pan of hot, bubbling treacle. He thinks she is one of the very few women
who would be able to wear velvet and pull it off. Midnight blue velvet.
Perhaps. She is wearing black
chiffon, as if it were a second skin.
Up until
this point, he has appraised her only out of the corner of his eye. Only now, drawing the antique gold lighter
from his pocket, does he slowly turn to face her, eased, relaxed as if the
intention had never crossed their minds –
No, as if the intention had never lodged in their minds and stayed
there, from the very first moment they had laid eyes upon one another across
that softly-lit restaurant.
He finds
that, having glanced at her once over the dining room, and having gazed at her
approach through the corner of his eye, it is enough. He smiles un-self-consciously, seductively, lights the Sobranie
for her.
“Your
accent,” he begins, laid-back, natural as if he has always known her; “Parisienne?” He pauses. “With just a
hint of Cambridge?”
She
exhales smoke, a corner of her mouth upturned, half in amusement, half in
surprise, dark brown eyes assessing.
“Oui,” she replies after a moment, the
smile playing, curving, baring just a hint of straight white teeth, before she
briefly locks scarlet lips around the cigarette in a gesture loaded with both
lewd suggestion and unbridled defiance. “Indeed you are very perceptive, Monsieur…”
“LeBeau.”
He passes her the card, the key that had gained his access into this place.
“Entienne LeBeau.”
She takes
the card, feigning interest in the information contained therein, out of
nothing more than polite formality and –
No, out of nothing more than performing the necessary ritual of the
hunt, of the chase. But her soft brown
eyes scan the glossy paper briefly, and after a moment she frowns, as if she
has seen something misplaced.
“Entienne
LeBeau… You are an art dealer?” Her eyes flicker back to his face, brow
furrowed, questioning. “But my husband does not know of…”
“If I may
be so bold t’ say it, Madame,” he
interrupts lightly, allowing himself to smile at her suavely, confederately.
“Dere are many t’ings your husband does not know, non?”
She raises
a well-pencilled eyebrow, her expression a mixture of both outrage and
curiosity at his audacity. “Quoi?”
she demands incredulously.
He smiles again,
turns back towards the bar, orders another drink from the bartender with a deft
flick of the hand.
“Your
husband does not know dat when a man possesses a beautiful woman, he must do
everyt’ing in his power to keep her, n’est-ce-pas?”
Hypocrite!
As he says the words he keeps his eyes upon
the row of liquor bottles for a moment, just a moment, brooding, meditating
violently upon the myriad colours… It’s not the lying, the lying comes
naturally, he could do it in his sleep… It’s not that he can’t do this, he’s
done it a million times before, it’s just that – His gaze settles intently on a green bottle, half-filled with
the musky, viscous contents of blood-red Cockburn’s port; only then does he
raise his liquid eyes to hers again, flash her a brilliant smile as naturally
as if it really belonged to his face.
Her breath
catches, her pupils dilate, her knees crumple, just like a hundred women
before… … She, Madame, seductress of
seducers, bends her will to his own in a paltry matter of seconds; see how the
tables have turned, how the conquest is made, so imperceptibly! She doesn’t even have time to think how
unfair it all is because she was the
one who had started it; just as he has as little time to change his mind,
because he doesn’t have time for this little diversion at all and – No, because… …
He downs
the rest of his drink in one go. She
offers her name without asking, but he doesn’t bother marking it in his mind –
he knows he will forget it later; he wants
to forget it later. He buys her a
drink, lights another two cigarettes, one for him, one for her; they talk, they
stare, they flirt, and she blushes like a schoolgirl; she’s never felt so happy
in all her life. He, on the other hand,
laughs like he means it – but the drink has gone to his head now, and he can’t
tell the difference anymore, maybe he does
mean it… …
The band is playing acid jazz in the
background. The music and the wine has
made him giddy. No, not only that, but
also… It’s stupid really – he finds
himself glancing back at the emerald green bottle on the shelf as though
expecting it to give him a sign, as though it were to animate itself and tell
him that running away wasn’t going to get him anywhere, because –
Fuck
it! Merde! Let it go, dammit! Just let it go…
“Madame.” He plucks the woman’s gloveless
hand between his own, kisses the tips of her naked fingers. “Would you care to
dance?”
She
laughs, deep, rich, the kind of laugh that would intoxicate any man’s senses.
“You are
not French,” she remarks, allowing him to lead her to the dance floor.
“But of
course,” he grins. “Why bother pointin’ out what’s so obvious?”
“If you
were,” she grins back slyly. “A man such as you would not have persisted in
calling a woman such as me Madame for
such a protracted period of time.”
He doesn’t
even know whether he frowns or smiles at her comment. At times such as these, inebriated, lost in the depths of the
music, of his own maudlin thoughts, of emerald eyes and that indescribable
scent… Of hair, of – Dieu, he didn’t know what, he could no
longer even disconnect his real emotions from his feigned ones. He would get sloppy; sometimes two
contradictory emotions would shroud his face, like a mask half-slipped to
reveal the horrible thing lurking on the other side, something burnt, something
scarred… …
“My poppa
always told me,” he begins, his voice slightly unsteady, but she doesn’t notice
it, “He always told me…”
What did poppa say?
“He told
me never t’ treat a lady wit’ disrespect,” he finishes, almost too proudly, like
a child relieved that he hadn’t blurted out the wrong old adage.
…Never t’ let the woman you love go, not
least without tellin’ her you love her first.
Ah. Yes.
Jean-Luc LeBeau, sentimental? He did
that sometimes. He’d cry sometimes when
he thought no one was looking. He’d
light candles in the chapel, he’d kneel in the small, dark, gilt-decorated room
heavy with the unendurably overpowering stench of frankincense; he’d do it,
even when he didn’t believe in it, in any of it. Sometimes, he’d even get out his rosary.
Je vous salut Marie, pleine de grâce, le
Seigneur est avec vous…
The clink
of beads, the flickering of candlelight, the muttered prayers, the stifled
weeping…
Perhaps,
of all the things he remembered from his inane, eclectic and reckless
childhood, it was this memory that unsettled him the most.
No man is an island.
An’ nothin’ lasts forever.
Her smile
is coy, yet dangerously evocative, insinuating itself into his pores, into his
veins, and he finds himself reciprocating, without remorse. He knows, but doesn’t say it – he is dealing
in fool’s gold. She presses herself
against him as they dance to the frenetic, syncopated rhythm of the music with
passion, with slaughter, in their eyes and in their tearaway movements. Whirling like mad things, weaving, in and
out of the two-toned dancers, the dancers in monochrome, black and white, like
an old movie embossed and replayed under tawny lamplight. Nothing sedate, nothing refined about this –
this is shared madness and shared closeness, and he needs it, he needs it
badly, the wantonness, the violence, the intimacy, the primitiveness of it all…
Here: this
is where the rich and powerful come to play, to forget themselves, to leech off
the small pleasures that this world can offer them.
But his
needs are simpler – all he needs is closeness.
His
fantasy is that he dances with another.
That her hips press against his urgently, that she pants with more than
just mere exertion. That her heart
plays upon his own like a drum, faster, wilder, dissonant, grating, grinding,
less rhythmical and yet more so; music written off the sheet and into other
passions entirely, the chthonic, the primeval.
Hands on hips, in hair, there is arousal, there is savagery, pain,
murder, anguish…
He throws
her to the ground, sinks his teeth into her, draws blood; to the agitated
rhythm of the music he loves her, he kills her, he kills himself in the
process…
He laughs,
unable to help himself, with ecstasy, with joy; and in his fantasy, she laughs
with him too, lips bleeding scarlet from the place were he kisses her.
Yes: he
would lose himself inside her, become her, and her him; they’d meld with the
music, with the heady tang of the alcohol, with the lights, with the nebulous
spectres of blue and brown and black and burgundy, with the scent of her hair,
with their blood, with the frenzied onslaught of touch…
The woman
thinks his laughter is for her. As the
song ends, she clasps him briefly to her; through the fine sheen of sweat on
her breast, on her collarbone, she feels his heart pounding through his white
shirt and thinks it is all for her.
“Do you
want to – ?” she asks.
“Yes,” he
replies.
Reflected
car lights slide across the dimly lit room, air thick with the memory of skin against
skin; his body is alight with it, raw as if sand-papered down to bare bones and
dank, decaying, pulsating organs.
Too much
has left him with an empty, hollow hunger.
He pulls
on the black Armani trousers, does up his shirt, bottom-up – he can’t remember
the last time he’s felt so exposed, so horribly corporeal.
She
watches from the bed, raven hair dishevelled; machiavellian, voluptuous as a
black widow peering out from the centre of its silken web, cigarette poised
obscenely between two long fingers. She
refuses to sleep. She is his
doppelganger; for every move he makes, she mirrors it with exquisite and brutal
sadism.
She’s done
this before. Then she should know that
de two of us, we –
“You don’t
have to go,” she says, flat, passionless, matter-of-fact, breaking his
insensate train of thought. “My husband…
He will not be back until the morning.”
So her
true nature reveals itself. No
foreplay, not even the intimacy of kisses, yet she asks him to stay. She plays the game almost as well as he
does. He stands upright, turns, stares
at her, wordless. The lights from the
street play across her face, unmasking the harsh contours of her brow, her
aquiline nose, the petulant, irascible mouth.
She is suddenly less beautiful under the harsh glare of the city and
away from the soft pink lights of the dancehall and the restaurant. The corner of her lip twitches. Her eyelids hood her gaze from him; suddenly
her expression is artfully coy, hiding amusement, disguising shame.
“There’s a
woman, isn’t there,” she states, feigning indifference, nevertheless injured,
bleeding on the inside – in time the wound will become just another scar
amongst many.
He looks away, jaw tensed – the light of
the bar across the street is a pallid, off-white green, sour, accusing… … He says nothing, he says everything.
She
flushes, her pale skin caught in a shimmering erubescence, not from desire, but
from sudden shame. Despite everything,
she has allowed herself to reach out, to crawl into that space inside his heart
– only to find that there is nothing there, nothing that she recognises,
nothing that she can grasp. And as he
walks towards the window she catches his profile as the car lights glide along
his features like oil through water; the next moment his face is once more
shrouded in darkness – she perceives, without willful, conscious comprehension,
that he is protean, a kaleidoscope of variegated colours and textures; each
skin he wears is as disposable as the next.
He throws open the doors to the balcony as she stares at him, and in
that gesture he is a chrysalis transformed, crawled out if its cocoon; a
butterfly that cannot be pinned down.
The ash
from her cigarette drops, unheeded, onto the edge of the
sweat-scent-sex-stained sheets.
Having shed
his skin, Remy stands on the balcony, looking down and out over the city, coat
tails flapping implacably in the wind.
He is five stories up. Five. He has already forgotten the woman’s name,
but her room number remains clear in his mind.
He looks left, then right; he makes a quick calculation in his
head. Satisfied of his bearings, he
climbs up onto the railings of the balcony with measured precision, his
expression one of practiced concentration.
When he straightens himself into an upright position, it is only to find
himself caught in a sudden, violent updraught of cold, easterly wind. He stumbles, almost losing his balance – the
city spirals like a rush of blood to the head, the oscillating image
momentarily pounds through his brain like wildfire through a camera obscura. His arms spread out, a reflex action – is he
steadying himself, or is he embracing the inevitable fall?
No: not
inevitable. As soon as it comes the
breeze is stripped away from his teetering frame, and, as the gale howls round
the corner of the building and away; as his heart pounds, as his head spins and
his vision blurs, as he regains his balance, as the city remains calm before
him, oblivious, lights twinkling, blinking, winking… A sudden epiphany comes
over him.
That
Rogue, had she been able to touch, would give herself to anyone in order that
she no longer be afraid to love.
And that
he – he too would give himself to anyone in order to believe that such a thing
as painful as love did not exist.
It was so
simple, so laughable, this – the dichotomy of him/her, you/I.
He is suddenly elated, exhilarated; he
wants to defy the world, to shout obscenities to the city and everyone in
it. He wants to rip up tonight’s little
diversion; he wants to crumple it up, throw it onto the fire, stamp on the
ashes that remain. His body, slow,
sore, scraped to within inches of secret inner self, is all at once
invigorated. He feels reborn again. His love is bigger than that, bigger even
than his self. He can’t help it. He must go on. Even if it’s only for her.
And besides, he has an appointment to
keep.
Now he ignores the city, he ignores the
forty-five-foot drop. Calm now, he
pirouettes to the right, feeling the railings buckle beneath his sudden shift
in weight. He bounces, once, twice,
thrice, testing the metal’s resilience.
Then, suddenly, without warning, he breaks into a run. Tilts forwards. Braces himself.
Springs. Jumps.
In mid-air, suspended in the middle of
the night like a pawn misplaced, his mind is oddly disconnected from every
second of this action of running, of jumping, of flying, of falling, of every
fluid, interconnected instant of motion.
Instead he thinks of eyes the colour of a half-emptied bottle of port,
of hair the colour of cinnamon streaked white, of scent the colour of lilac,
and he asks her:
“Why d’you still want me, chere?”
And she will say:
“Because you don’t believe in love, an’
yet you love me – and that’s the kind of love Ah want.”
But only in his dreams.
He lands on the balcony one floor and one
room down with a feline grace. Had the woman watched his suicidal stunt, she
would have seen him jump off the balcony railings, she would have seen him
vault through the air like a fledgling launching itself to certain death, (she
would not, however, have seen the expression on his face – the one that
betrayed the fantasy that encompassed that entire vault); and then… he would
have disappeared. Into darkness. Into shadows. She would have thought him a conjurer, a magician. Or else a creature of the night, that
demonic spirit that visits young women in their sleep and ravishes them – the
incubus.
The woman will close the windows firmly,
lock them tight, draw the curtains to with a single, clipped motion; she will
shudder now that she has bolted out the chill of the night. Those
red eyes, she will think, I should
have known when I saw those big, red
eyes…
As if possessed by the memory, her breath
will catch, her pupils will dilate, her knees will crumple, just as they have
done for so many women before……
Remy stands in the inky shadows of the
balcony, where the glare of the streetlights finds no foothold. He waits a moment, both out of habit and of
a lingering sense of the necessity of waiting.
The glass doors to the room within are closed, but the curtains are not
drawn – inside, all is dark. He
frowns. He is already late. And there is another woman he has to deal
with. He doesn’t like it.
Gently he presses down on the gilt door
handle. The door is unlocked. He is not surprised. He edges himself into the bedroom with an
insinuating air, as if every move, every word, every glance he makes is born
from some inherent charm, as if his whole body was made to cajole, to
captivate, to bewitch, even lonely old hotel rooms. But there is something predatory too, underneath it all; he
strolls around the room, innocuous as a sheep, as a lamb; only the fire in his
eyes gives him away – that it is the wolf that lurks within.
The room is uncharacteristically sparse,
even for a hotel room. The bed sheets
are slightly rumpled, but only as if someone had been sitting on the edge of
the bed, not sleeping in it. He pauses. His left hand runs along the bedside table,
with the same languid delicacy with which he imprints his touch along the
woman’s thigh, before he kisses her, before he bites her, before he puts his
mouth on her and – There is something
hard, metallic. He nudges the thing with
the joints of his fingers, knowing better than to place his prints upon it, than
to probe any further than he has already.
“I think that’s quite far enough Mr.
LeBeau,” says a cold male voice from the corner of the room. “Don’t you?”
There are very few people in the world
that can outsmart the Cajun thief. This
person is one of them. Sitting in its
corner by the door, the shadow makes itself known, pouring its form into the
darkness like molten sugar onto a cake, cooling, settling, solidifying. It is spindly, spindly as a spider, all legs
and no body, thin and sprawling as elegant, flamboyant calligraphy. Remy still doesn’t know how the man managed
to keep him unaware of his presence until that very moment. But he does not make his surprise known. Instead his hand drops to his side
neutrally.
“You’re late,” the man says, almost
peevishly, voice like reeds; reeds frozen, encased in ice.
“An’ you’re unarmed,” Remy notes. He doesn’t once look down at the pistol on
the desk.
“A token of my goodwill,” the man replies
brusquely, but coolly. There is a
certain amount of distaste in his voice, as if the very act of talking to Remy
makes him want to wither up, long-legged, in the corner, and die. “It is
absolutely vital that my daughter receives this gift.”
Remy’s eyes are becoming accustomed to
the dark. The form of the shadow almost
takes on features – balding hair, hooked nose, an austere mouth; the suit,
almost malformed, too big and ill-cut to give any true definition of the
stringent figure within. A face, a form
worn as if to pass unnoticed through the world; and yet the eyes betray the
true nature of the man, just as Remy’s expose his – cold, cruel, sadistic,
malicious, eyes that glitter with some unholy light; they glitter now,
brightly, reconstructing every preconception the dark may have given to this
man’s character. The rangy frame, the
wrinkled flesh – all nothing more than a florid disguise. Like someone wanted to have a joke at the
expense of the ignorant and uninformed.
“An’ why do I have to be de one t’ do dis for you?” Remy asks, wishing he was
one of the ignorant or uninformed. The
man unsettles him, and not many men can claim to unsettle him.
“My daughter trusts you,” the man
replies, after a moment.
Remy stifles a laugh. It comes out as a grunt – whoever hears him
laugh?
“Hah.
Dat’s a new one. Truthfully,
what woman ever trusts me?”
There is self-reproach thinly veiled
under the sarcasm. The man ignores it,
steepling his thin, gangly fingers before his face, giving the impression of
knotted latticework. The malicious eyes
are tapered, narrowed with the guarded stance of a snake about to shoot venom.
“As foolish as she may be, as much as she
may deny it, and as little as you deserve it… Believe me, she trusts you. Too much for her own good. And more than she could ever trust me.” There is bitterness in the man’s voice. Irony.
He wants to call himself a fool, for wanting his daughter’s love. For getting nothing in return. In that, he and Remy are not so different.
But Remy lowers his head.
“Why don’t you go see her yourself?” he
mutters through gritted teeth. Outside,
a clock strikes across town.
Midnight. He thinks momentarily
and abstractly of Rogue lying in bed, eyes on the moon, a circle imprinted on
her gaze as if frosted on a windowpane, pondering the tides upon which her body
is irrevocably tossed, onward, outward, cold, so cold… Oh somebody touch me, save me!
He wants to run away, to and from
her… But his summons lie
elsewhere. He has another woman to deal
with. Here. He wants to run, to and from her…
“My daughter hates me,” the man replies
calmly, collectedly. This time there is
no inkling of bitterness, nor resentment.
“How is dat any different from what she
t’inks of...?” he begins.
“She loves you,” the man snaps, as though
rebuking a small child for suggesting that birds can swim, or pigs can fly.
“Besides which,” he continues, after a moment, calm again, “how am I supposed
to get past the security systems?”
Remy says nothing. He has no answer to that. Instead he silently bends his will to that
of the older man.
The older man senses this. He makes no effort to gloat. He is too impatient now.
“Come here,” he orders peremptorily.
Remy does so. It must be understood, he is not a man who takes orders from
others lightly: but tonight is different, and he feels obliged to do as the man
says; the man is one who does not have his orders disobeyed lightly – this Remy
knows. When he stands before the man,
the man rises. He is as tall as Remy, inch
for inch, not as broad, but just the right height for Remy to be forced to look
him straight in the eye – such contrivance!
Remy hates him. Loathes
him. Abhors him from the very depths of
his soul. He wants to shudder as if the
man had encroached into his soul and filled him up with hate.
The man opens up his suit and pulls out a
long, thin envelope, its features indistinct in the darkness. Remy takes it, hesitant, surprised. He is suspecting something different,
something meaningful, significant, coded – a trinket, a diary, a ring, a painting,
a jewel (emeralds?); a parcel, a disc, a keycard, a weapon, an unknown
contraption… But of course, what could
be more coded and personal than writing?
He asks no questions. Questions
are not for thieves, nor are they for murderers, just as they are not for
scoundrels, or creatures of the night.
Now the two of them, they are even.
There is no need to say anymore, there is no need in stating what is,
already, obvious. Their business is
concluded, the transaction complete. If
only all relationships were as simple and uncomplicated as this!
Remy slips the envelope inside his dinner
jacket. The man gives a knowing
half-smile; his pencil-thin nose wrinkles; he sniffs derisively.
“You stink,” he remarks, half in
amusement, half in disgust. “Lily-of-the-valley. L’eau d’Issey.” He
pauses, white teeth glinting in the dark. “Been moonlighting again,
LeBeau? My daughter will not be
pleased…”
A light chuckle, somehow malevolent… The
timbre of the man’s voice changes subtly, then reforms itself, almost wilfully,
of its own volition. The gleam in his
eye tells Remy: ‘it is worse for you than it is for me. You just can’t let go…’
Remy turns back towards the balcony. The acid cackle continues on into the night,
like a broken record, like a memory replayed……
Any other day, it would not have mattered
so much, but for the feeling inside him; and he can’t explain it, the envelope
feels heavy in his breast pocket, like a deadweight, like the final fall of the
executioner’s axe. He knows he should
be delivering the letter. But instead
he wanders the streets of the city, aimless, invisible as a revenant, slipping
in and out of nooks and crannies unseen, toujours
discret, like he grew out of the shadows one day, like the city had spilled
him out of its womb one cold night and had possessed him of the ability to
slink right back into it ever since.
He avoids his final destination.
It is closer to dawn when he finds
himself sitting atop the clock tower, looking out on the world, gulping down
the last vestiges of wine from a bottle he’d purloined from somewhere he
couldn’t remember now. He is cold;
terribly cold in his suit, exposed to the wind and the early morning chill –
colour is seeping back into the sky, turning the horizon into a thick, viscous
shade of indigo, illuminating the inky contours of the clouds. He’s drunk; downright drunk. Wine always goes to his head fastest. The night has taken all the violence and
passion out of him; now he feels disconnected; he does not want to go
back. The sunrise unfurls in a glorious
eruption of taste and smell and colour.
Plum, orange, lemon – the dawn breaks, and he can taste it – He can
taste it! Sitting there, facing the
daybreak, he is suddenly caught in the grip of a wild, delirious synaesthesia,
and the last time he had felt that
was when… was when –
Cinnamon and lime and lilac. He stifles a chuckle, remembering. But the memory pacifies him, quietens him at
the same time as it elates him. He
takes out the envelope and turns it over in his hands, pondering. He’s not so afraid now. This night, last night, he had thought he
was happy, he had thought he knew the meaning of delight, on the dance floor,
in the Parisian woman’s bed… But this morning – this was delight.
He slips the envelope back into his
pocket, pats it gently, almost fondly.
“I want to repair your desire/ and call
it a gift/ that I stole from just wanting to live/ Now I see the vision through
your eyes/ Your innocence no longer fuels/ surprise…”
He murmurs the song with the voice of
Donald Fagen, raw, wry. Whatever had
happened last night, it was over, done with.
LeBeau, he thinks, you are a fool.
A couyon. All you need to do is take care of dis
letter. Den it’s all over.
The clock strikes; he hears the sounds as
he would through seashells, obscure and far away. Five o’clock.
He jumps down.
“Je
préfère au constance, à l’opium, au nuits,
L’élixir
de ta bouche où l’amour se pavane;
Quand
vers toi mes désirs partent en caravane,
Tes
yeux sont la citerne où boivent mes ennuis …”[1]
What the hell was the matter with him?
He had left the whole business with the
envelope too late, that was what. He
strolls through the mansion grounds seemingly without purpose, jacket slung
over his shoulder, muttering poetry to himself as drunkards are prone to
do. But he isn’t drunk. Not anymore. He is tired – but not drunk.
The new morning is too bright, too rosy. Everything has taken on a brilliant, dazzling quality, causing
his bleary eyes to smart. He pauses
beneath the bay window of her room, looks up.
The old, familiar action. He
ruminates for what seems a long while.
The window is open, and the curtains are still drawn, except for a
slight parting in the middle – inside the room is still dark.
Still sleepin’, ma chere? he thinks to himself.
Dat ain’t like you.
He imagines a sliver of morning light,
sliding through the gap in the curtains to rest tenderly across her sleeping
face, and his heart suddenly aches with that same old, empty longing. Damn the light! Damn it all! He wanted it! He wanted to touch her face again… He wanted it all: to love her, to kill her, to kill himself in
the process… And then it would all be
over, the whole damn, stupid thing…!
Making his mind up, he begins to scale
the wall madly, like a thing possessed, obsessed… Until he reaches the window, pries it open wider, and leaps
inside the room as he’d leapt onto the hotel balcony only a few hours before,
quiet, unruffled, the revenant haunted by the day, seeking refuge in the dark –
weightless, formless.
He stands there a moment, back to the
window, rearranging the curtains behind him, feeling childish and irrational
for doing so. It isn’t that he doesn’t
want to leave a mark of his presence.
It is that he wants the room to be the way it had been before he had
entered, to see her the way she had been before he had broken into her inner
sanctum.
She is lying on her side, facing
him. The pillar of light that shines between
the slightly open curtains does not reach her face at all; it merely grazes the
top of her head, illuminating shiny cinnamon curls in the sunlight. Again the wave of irrationality comes over
him. He feels giddy, as if at once
numbed and stirred by the effects of opium.
Dieu, he thinks, I want her; I
don’t care if it kills us both.
The epiphany he had had, standing on the
balcony railings the night before, feeling as if the world were about to greet
him, as if gravity would lose him… It all seems to ebb away upon a tide, and he
wants to show her, he wants to show her what it would be like for them to fall
together, for them to die together, for them to taste each other’s blood, for
it all to be over…
He cannot bear to see the light cross her
face. Better make this quick. He crosses the room quickly, silently, and
kneels down beside her. This close,
this close and the resolution almost goes out of him. So close he can almost feel her breath tickle his chin. She is so calm, he almost doubts whether she
is truly asleep. But she doesn’t
stir. Not once. He finds himself resting his elbows upon the
edge of the bed, cupping his chin in his hands, watching her with the studied
concentration of a cherub in a Renaissance painting. He wonders what she dreams.
He wonders whether she forgets about him in her dreams, or whether she
only forgets that they had said to one another: ‘It’s over.’
And if she were to open her eyes now,
would it still all be just a dream, as much for him as for her? Would it be both their dreams for her to
wake up and to see him there, for him to look into her emerald eyes, to feel
the way he did when they made love, to remember that it feels like love, that
it feels like death, that it feels like dying and being reborn all over again……
‘Tes
yeux sont la citerne où boivent mes ennuis …’
He rests his head on the empty space beside her, both wishing her
into wakefulness and willing her to stay asleep; he wants to see her eyes, for
her to watch him watching her, for the both of them to say nothing. In this single fantasy, this chimera of all
his dreaming and waking hours, the insatiable lust to violate her, to kill her
by a single touch is slowed, stilled, crystallised, shattered. The scent of her hair imbues her pillow with
the lightest shades of violet, lilac, purple.
The scent of her hair on the pillow.
This is the closest he will get to her.
This is the closest he will ever get to her.
He can’t end it, not the way he wants to.
The sunlight has begun to brush against
her forehead. The luminous quality of
her skin jolts him out of his reverie.
He sits up, blocking out the shaft of light, suddenly feeling foolish,
awkward and embarrassed. I must still
be drunk, he thinks. Must be. He picks up his dinner jacket, catches the
stale odour of cigarette smoke, of wine, of the L’eau d’Issey, of –. Merde.
When she wakes up she’ll be able to smell dat I –
He levels out his irregular heartbeat
with an effort. Slips his hand inside
the breast pocket of his jacket, pulls out the cream-coloured, rectangular,
unmarked envelope.
Go on.
End it. Just put it there and
you won’t have to talk to her, look at her, touch her, kiss her, make love to
her, ever again.
This is the way he should end it…
He raises himself onto his haunches and
places the envelope neatly on the pillow where he had rested his head just a
moment before. The sunlight slices
across the envelope and over her forehead.
He frowns in distaste, raises a hand, submerges it into the dusty,
watery ray of sunlight. The shadow of
his hand brushes her brow, tenderly, self-consciously; he knows he’s taking too
much enjoyment out of something so simple, so trivial, so childish. He sighs heavily. Why doesn’t she stir, jus’ to let me know she senses I’m here…?
No point in staying. Job done.
It’s all over and done with. Dieu, it’s all over and done with…
The end, when it does come, is final,
brutal and swift, all the more so for the fact that there are no tears, no
drama, no harsh words exchanged, no violence.
He leaves the way he comes, quickly, not once looking back, scuffing his
shoes and ripping his shirt in the process; he can’t remember the last time he
was so eager to make his get-away. As
he reaches the bottom, the sun crests over the tops of the trees on the hill,
bathing the mansion in its syrupy warmth.
That’s when he looks up, once.
The sunlight should be on her face by now… Maybe it’ll wake ma beauté de sommeil up, de lazy femme.
He chuckles, slinging the jacket back over
his shoulder, swaggering away, whistling the tune of the song he’d been singing
atop the clock tower.
Mission accomplished.
Now what?
Sunbathing and a cigarette, that was
what. Down at the boathouse. It really was a glorious day. Made a man feel like…
What did it make a man feel like?
Like love, like death, like dying and
being reborn all over again………
Up in her room, when the light floods
over her face, she stirs, only once, yet doesn’t awaken – her dream, whatever it
may be, whatever she yearns for; it is all subtly thwarted.
But the envelope, dislodged by her sudden
movement, teeters on the edge of the pillow, unwilling to lose its place by her
side. Then, quietly, unnoticed, it
slips, and flutters down to rest behind her bedside table – lost, gone as a
thief in the night.
- END -
09-04-2004
[1]{‘To
fidelity, opium, the night, I prefer,
The elixir of your mouth where
love dances a pavane;
When my desires set out for you
in caravan,
Your eyes are the well at which
my troubles drink…’}