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Paris. Dubai. San Francisco. Now here. It’d been two years since Louis saw him last. Seventy - seventy seven- seventy nine, now, was it, since that night in the park? His hair a little longer but, otherwise, the same. Still the boy masquerading as a gentleman.
Montreal. St Catherine’s street. Fairy lights strung over the patio where he was sitting and drunk twenty somethings retching in garbage cans and mass produced plastic pride flags fluttering in the night air. And him. Still the painter’s muse, with his long, slender neck and the angles of his face catching the streetlights. Motionless, a statue, while the world rushed by him. This century looked strange on him.
As if sensing him from across the street, Armand’s eyes flicked up as Louis watched him. He’d forgotten that particular shade of amber. He’d forgotten a lot of things about Armand since Dubai. Had to, or else he’d trip up in the middle of some important business, undone by the memory of a finger or a dark curl on the nape of his neck, and forget how unhappy he’d been, and do something stupid like call him.
Or answer the phone.
He could go. Should go. But that night he’d already dredged up so much of the wreckage of his life. What was another casualty?
He crossed the street.
“I didn’t think you would come,” Armand said as Louis joined him, pulling out a chair and settling down.
“Yeah,” Louis replied, “Me neither.”
The bar was blasting some tinny, vapid music, the kind Lestat used to play, before he got his shit together. Traffic in the distance. People sitting at a nearby table, laughing. And in a moment, when Louis looked across the table at Armand, it all quieted. They were alone. Back in their quiet, echoing home.
Louis watched as Armand took a breath and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a rumpled piece of paper. He cleared his throat. Once. Twice. His fingers were shaking.
“I have been enduring intense conversations with myself in the three years since our companionship ended,” Armand began, “And as part of that journey, I wish to say something from the deepest regions of my soul.”
He was putting on that accent again, the one that made him sound like a BBC radio host. He’d started doing it sometime in the late 50s. Somewhere west of New York City. After a boy and a fight and the usual accusations. Louis never remembered asking him to do it, but he…
“Two grievous lies, gross betrayals. The first is…”
He’d changed his voice for him, as if that would make things better, and Louis never…
“A well-trod pit of hot coals I blistered my feet on for 77 years…”
Louis never told him to stop because it helped, didn’t it, there was a measure of comfort to pretending that Armand wasn’t…
“I chose my coven over you, l…”
That Louis wasn’t…
“Lured you into a production of a play…”
That Claudia wasn’t…
Armand was still speaking but the words were garbled now. Louis couldn’t make them out. Couldn’t care to. Because Armand was saying something but all Louis could hear was Claudia, his Claudia, screaming for Madeline from the other side of the grave, still wearing that yellow dress, still fourteen, God, fourteen forever because of him.
Truth was, Armand was a kind of sunlight. The kind of sun that rose on Louis last day alive, that illuminated his brother’s body on the pavement, or the kind of sun that burnt his daughter, or the California sun he’d run into years ago. He’d kept Armand around for the same reason he kept her diaries. Sometimes it felt good to dig into a wound.
That’s why he’d finally picked up his call after the seance. He needed to feel it again. The knife twist of memory. How he’d betrayed her for a pretty face and a few good fucks and the feeling of someone wanting him again.
“I think I might be a room without walls, floors, a ceiling. An infinite nothing.”
Armand fell silent. He looked down at his hands and folded the paper back up, tucked it into his pocket.
An infinite nothing. And Claudia? Did he even think about her?
Armand had shrunk into his chair. He looked up at Louis, eyes wide and innocent, and Louis couldn’t help but feel revulsion form, slick, in the pit of his stomach.
“So?” Armand said, tentatively.
“So?” Louis echoed.
“Do you have anything to say to me?”
Louis shrugged, “Not really.”
“You have nothing you want to say?” Armand said, “Seventy seven years and you don’t have anything you want to apologize for?”
It was enough to make Louis laugh. Of course it came down to this. Armand was Armand was Armand.
“That’s why you called?” Louis asked “To twist some kind of sorry out of me?”
“Last time I saw you, you hurled me into -“
“- that was deserved -“
“- had to meet with your new paramour to divide up our assets. Do you know how hard it is to navigate a multi million dollar divorce when one of the parties won’t pick up the phone?”
“It was more than equal, Armand.”
Armand’s expression hardened.
“I had to think about you two every time I talked to him. How long did it take you to move on, Louis?”
“It’s just sex.”
Armand leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. Louis recognized it all too well. The tightening of his jaw. He could practically hear Armand’s teeth grinding together.
“Thought that was how one endures,” Louis said.
They used to be good at this. Quick rapport, a few insults, clothes off, face down in the coffin. A few years ago they would have fucked and fallen asleep angry. Then, the next night, pretended nothing happened, pretended and pretended until the next explosion. Start from the top. Take number I’ve lost count. This time with feeling.
But things were different this time. Louis was different now. Had to be. If he was ever going to become who he should have been all along. The kind of man he should have been, for her, a long time ago.
She was gone now. And he couldn’t make her forgive him. But he wanted it. Needed it. Some kind of redemption, even if she would never give it to him.
Louis sighed.
“Let’s do this again,” he said, “And cut the bullshit this time.”
A shadow of a smile passed over Armand’s face. He raised his hands in acquiescence.
“Alright,” Armand said, “No bullshit. I hate you, Louis. For leaving me the way you did. For never… never…”
Armand trailed off. His accent was gone, Louis noticed. Armand sounded like he did all those years ago, back in Paris . It was the voice Louis had fallen in love with and the sound of it jolted him back. A different night. A different city. I will not harm you, he’d promised. It was true for a while.
Armand rested his chin in his hands and closed his eyes and Louis could see the memories playing out on those delicate features of his.
He’d been the love of his life, once. They used to fall asleep together, the line of Armand’s spine pressed against Louis’ stomach. He’d memorized Armand’s idiosyncrasies, like how he liked to linger by the window in the last hours of the night time, his fussiness about the dry cleaning. He was wearing a loose shirt today, cinched at the waist like he used to do. The pressed collar. Probably still used the mousse he’d favoured back home. If Louis could call their penthouse that.
There’d been a lot of bad in those years. Some good. And between it all, Armand.
Armand opened his eyes. Blinked. Put on a half smile and waved his hand over his face as if brushing away his last show of emotion.
“I put the Fred Steins in your photo collection,” Armand said at last, “just to fuck with your head.”
Louis didn’t know what it was, but something about Armand’s confession made him laugh. It started deep in his chest, somewhere near his heart, and burst out through his throat, filling the air between them. Armand’s expression flickered. He looked hurt, then smiled. Then his eyes crinkled up and he was laughing too, a light, tinkling sound.
When he stopped laughing, Louis looked at Armand across the table. Properly looked at him. He liked Armand best when he could see the cracks showing through.
“Are you still a smoker?” Louis asked, pulling a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Armand, who tilted his head towards the no smoking sign on the patio.
“We live in such a restrictive era,” Armand said.
“Yeah,” Louis replied. Despite himself, he looked down at Armand’s chest, at his broad shoulders and the muscles, still well defined under his open collar. He bit his lip.
“Why don’t we go on one of our walks?”
Armand paid for his untouched drink and the two slipped out onto Saint Catherine’s. Outside the bar, Armand accepted a smoke and, for a moment, Louis breathed in the smell of him as he leaned in to light it. His familiar cologne; musk and wood and smoke. Used to get all over their pillows.
“First it was transit,” Armand remarked as they began to walk, “Then cafes. Then patios. Soon we won’t be allowed to smoke in public parks.”
“They’re installing floodlights in parks these days,” Louis added, “More than just smoking is going it of style.”
“Unbearable era.”
“Yeah. Well. There’s some good in it.”
They walked for a while with no destination in mind, like they did in Paris, although in Paris they usually wound up in bed. Louis snuck a glance at him every so often. His face ringed in smoke, a halo under the street lamps.
“Are you enduring?” Louis asked after a while.
“Enduring,” Armand echoed, “You could say that. I’m seeing someone.”
“That’s good. Is it…?”
Armand looked up at Louis, “We don’t need to talk about it.”
“No. No. I’m…” Louis thought for a moment, “Happy for you.”
He didn’t know how true that was. He was glad it wasn’t him, at least. Armand seemed to be able to move on. Better than Louis could, at least.
In Paris, Lestat had tagged along on their walks. Now it was Claudia, trailing along behind them, still in her yellow dress.
“I’m not doing well,” Louis admitted. He didn’t know why he was telling Armand this. Surely he didn’t deserve to know. Didn’t deserve any more of Louis’ heart.
And still, it all spilled out of him. Regina. Lestat. The seance. How the past few weeks had broken him open; how he didn’t know how to keep going on now that she was…
Armand was silent for a while once Louis finished talking. They’d made their way into a park now, quiet and empty, and the two of them sat on a bench, shoulder to shoulder. It was too much to look over at him.
“I am sorry, you know,” Armand said finally, “Any apology is self centred. I wanted you to know for my own gratification. But I am sorry. I wish things were different. I should have treated you better.”
He should have. Louis looked out into the nighttime. The moonlight was silver against the trees.
“I think about her sometimes,” Armand continued. Louis could feel Armand next to him. He was trembling. Or maybe Louis was imagining it.
“I didn’t know that.”
Armand opened his hands and looked down at his palms, “I was afraid, Louis. Always was. I never…”
The words, unspoken, filled the silence. Never acted bravely enough. Never gave Louis the love he should have gotten. Never grew up. Never stopped being that scared little boy looking trying to find someone who loved him.
“I’m sorry,” Armand finished.
Louis looked at him then, under the moonlight, and something broke in him. They’d loved each other. Loved each other. Neither knew how to do it. But that didn’t change anything. It was a biting, broken love, but it was love all the same.
“I never forgave you for Paris,” Louis said, “Used it to punish you.”
“And now?”
“No. Still no. But I -“
Louis took a deep breath. Armand was looking at him like his life was in Louis’ hands and Louis couldn’t stand it, just as much as he couldn’t look away.
“You have some reason to be dark-sided, Armand,” Louis managed, “You were sold by who you were sold by. Sold into what you were sold into. You and I didn’t talk about it much. ‘Cause I didn’t want to think on my own sins. Or picture you at twelve.”
Armand turned away and shielded his eyes from Louis. His face was crumpled. A shell of himself. Beneath the big boss, beneath the Maître, it was just him. And he’d been a child. And Claudia had been a child. And neither of them got the chance to grow up.
Louis’ voice caught, “twelve. You were twelve. Scared. Poor boy Arun. You need a love that will cradle you. You should have that. And I was never that for you. And I’m sorry.”
Louis felt the sting of tears behind his eyes. He let out a deep sigh, like he was letting go of something.
When Armand looked back at him, his expression was raw and open. Louis could see the memory of tears on his cheeks. It wasn’t Armand looking back at him. Not Amedeo. Not Arun. Just him. Someone Louis had loved, once.
“I saw good in you, for a while,” Louis finished.
A park bench. Montreal. Sounds of the city in the distance and the buzzing of the streetlights above their heads, and the weight of their memories behind them, the veil stripped back, the illusions gone. Just the two of them. Looking at one another for the very first time.