5. [Dasius] 2003 - Mr. Fix It

Before Christmas, I went away to Boston on Laurent's own orders, and as soon as I landed, he called me saying, "Why? Why?' inconsolably, but when I said, "I will come back to you, just wait, I will be there soon," he was cold again then, "So what? Do not want it at all."


Marcellus was away in Europe, that year. He wanted to be in Paris for Christmas. I had already balanced my accounts for the end of the quarter, and still I went through my desk looking for work to do. I swept some things into a valise and turned around to get back into another taxi, back to Logan to get on a plane west again. 


When I arrived back in California, it was to Laurent looking pouty and saying, "No, I told you not to come," and when I wouldn't grab him and shake him, he touched lightly the starched collar of my shirt. He drew his hand down the straight, pressed line of buttons and smiled at me with his eyes.


"I've cancelled an appointment with Daniel to be here," I told him. Assets manager. 


"Hm," he said, walking his fingers back up my buttons. Deliberate, slow.


"And with Alain Park, and Etienne Morel," I said. Lawyers.


He took me by the lapels, sliding his fingers down. "Not with mushroom, surely?" he asked. Morel.


"Yes, him and Alain."


"What about Deacon?" he asked. Trustee.


"Matthew? I have him after the new year. He's coming to my office."


"Can I come?" he asked.


He liked Deacon, because Deacon was married, but liked Laurent better than his wife.


"You can, if you can get away."


"You will pick at me, if I come. And Marcellus will be there?"


"He'll be in France until the 3rd, and he does not like to come directly home. He will be in his own place in Boston for some time."


If Marcellus had been away for some time, he and I would keep separate residences awhile, visit each other like young lovers a couvert, until he felt it natural to come home. Circle each other, like rival wolves. As he had grown older, he had at first grown passive. Then, he had overnight decided to capture fire again. It was if he had brought me a mandate from hell. I loved it. We so often played cat and mouse. He had acquired a taste for both blood and for pain, which thrilled me, though as often saddened me, thinking of the man he still called "father".


"Listen," Laurent said, taking me by the tie.


"I am," I said, though his taking me like that made me feel a little dizzy.


"I think that you must tell Marcellus to come here. I think if I ask him he won't come."


"I don't understand."


"Ne t'inquite pas, mais, mais, il est important qu'il  vient ici. Tu m'entends?" Don't worry but, it's important that he comes. You hear me?


"Oui, mais," I said, fumbling for words.


He said that he had called his twins, Marcel and Pascal, but had not heard from them. He had recalled a minor lover from Riem, checked in with others I had never heard the names of, had even ordered Leis to bring Ellis Q. down, but that Q had refused the offer.


"Explain yourself," I said softly.


"I have started to feel very anxious. Lately, Leechtin is talking madness. He says that an Etruscan lion is stalking prey. He says that the situation has changed, that there is no reasoning now. He says that it seemed it would come to this. I cannot make out much but it seems clear to me that your place is here," he said. 


"Where is Nicky?" I asked, beginning to feel completely the anxiety he had been hiding. My fingers trembled. 


He was so good at composing himself, a product of his long cultivation of a gentleman aristocrat's manners. He had absolutely no tells. If he didn't want you to know he was nervous, the king of France would not have known.


"I do not know where he is," he said, letting go of me. "Do you?" 


"I've told him to check in with me if he can. If he calls me I will tell him straightaway to come."


He smiled faintly at that, and as I leaned forward for a good bye kiss on the cheek, he said, "You know I rather think that I could have done far better by you."


"Come to bed," I said, in the tone of an order, to hide my alarm.


"I think I will, to sleep."


Casually, he took my hand and twined his fingers with mine. I could have wept. 


**


In that year and in the previous years we had been fighting a cold war. Between us, there had been tension but no violence, as neither side could be certain of victory, and victory, what would it mean? 


Late in the year, of 2003, we seemed to be moving into detante. The boy, Marcello, had reached his majority, and in many conversations, tearful or otherwise, Laurent had whispered to me over the phone that it was the boy's desire to stay in California.


In me, I had a suspicion, more wounding than any other wound, that he meant to take the boy away from Marcellus as revenge, when in the first place the child had been a gift to ease tension between them. Children, it had lately seemed, had the power to ease Laurent's state of mind. Marcello could have been a bond between them. Marcellus spurned Marcello entirely. Marcellus had no instinct for children whatsoever, which had come as a surprise to me. Instead, it had often been to me the child would come, his eyes always dark rimmed and large in his face. I cannot even be honest to say that I regret my inability to properly love him, when love is so rare. 


Little lamb, looking in doorways. Little lamb, watching television with the volume turned all the way down. Lamb of God, eating slices of bread over the sink. Blond curls and a face to make angels weep, a port wine birthmark in the shadow of his chin. Laurent's Mallo, who worshiped from The Lancet and corresponded with me through little carefully written notes left on my desk. "Why does the patient feel pain in his lower back when it is his heart that is breaking?" 


When Marcellus could not stand the child to be around, he demanded boarding school. 


Which is all to say that I knew Marcello only notionally. I felt suspicious, uncomfortable. 


And when I had first arrived in California, that December, I had found Marcello languishing from undergoing the change, which had so riled me that I found myself unable to speak and only able to scream. He had bled the boy like a pig, slitting his throat and letting him faint dead away. I could see the scar, barely sewn, barely knit up. I cannot remember what I said except that Laurent met the utter loss of my senses with shut doors and various cruelties. 


I sewed my child's wound properly, I packed my doctor's bag, and I left. And now had returned forty-eight hours later. 


To my utter chagrin, Marcello was far more in the loop than I was or than Laurent was willing to tell me. Luckily or unluckily, Marcello's reaction to my presence was again complete prostration and worship, as had been the case since the age of four, when he had first climbed up on a stool and helped me stitch up a corpse. 


"Stuff's not great," he said, lying back delicately on the couch. 


"Your neck? Speak to me properly," I said.


"It is knitting itself well, Sir. I'm sorry, Sir. I told him he ought to tell you before he cut me, but he wrestled with me. He put the knife in."


"How old are you now?"


"I'm twenty, Sir."


I looked up and stiffened as a cadre of old ones crossed the room. They did not look at us. 


"Marcello, why are there so many here?" I asked him.


He told me what I now know to be true.


**


Middle December, Leechtin had gotten word that a former lover of Laurent's, Alois, who we had all thought odd but benign, had been running information from inside of our household. Relationships. Insecurities. Weaknesses. Secrets, in other words. We are without a hard currency, those are ours. Stealing information. For what reason? 


"Leechtin thinks it's to do with finding out his weaknesses particularly. The villain finds out that Leechtin cannot be killed or meaningfully wounded, and wants some other measure," Marcello answered.


This struck me cold. I searched my body for something to hold onto, finding my collarbone.


"Leechtin says that as long as we stay in the house this vampire will not attack us. He wouldn't dare. There's only one of him, even though he is far the older than any of us but Leechtin. Laurent says Leechtin murmurs that it's not this person's way to give up the cover of shadow. There is too much risk."


"Can he be killed?"


"Laurent says there's worse than dying on offer for those who unleash hell on Leechtin. No details."


I regarded my boy for a moment, quietly watching television. He supported his chin with his hand, so that his stitches wouldn't fold over. 


"How much blood did Laurent give you?" I asked.


Marcello looked at me and quickly cast his eyes down, "If you know what I know, too much."


"What do you know?" I asked.


"He has been acting strange. Forgetful. He doesn't have any energy. He's not lethargic necessarily, but he seems," he paused, "oddly serene. I know that he can be really mild when he's contented, but it isn't like that. His personality is different. He seems all normal but he's not."


"Passing through a quiet madness?" I asked him, as if to a junior colleague.


"No. He's lucid. He's not talking weird at all. Nothing physical except for the things you have pointed out to me, like the tautness of his skin and his slight translucency. I can't really put my finger on it. His mind is elsewhere but he's so present also, looking at everything. Wherever he goes, touching everything."


"Why now? Why is it dangerous now if Leechtin has known about a threat for so long?"


"I asked that, too, and Laurent says that forty years is not a long time. And now because something changed."


"What is there to be done?" 


Marcello shrugged, which rather than pique me, made me pity him, to know so little of the world. To know nothing of ravagers. To know only air conditioning and the news every evening on television, to never have had to listen to the night to know if you will be safe in your hay loft or should move on. To never know the danger of silence. I did not for a single moment think him lucky for this. How long could we stay in such a place? How long could we be secure and live in a world so modern? Even in former times, our ability to live at the height of available amenities had often been temporary. The world outside manmade comforts still existed, and very near, as if behind a veil. A little breeze. A danger? A glimpse of the outer life, of vigilance, of the ever-present threat of death just beyond the veneer. 


No tender feeling for the innocent. 


That evening I found myself looking out the kitchen window, the cool breeze blowing in over the sink. 


At one point, an old one, tall, dressed in a white overlarge t-shirt and faded slacks stood beside me, looking out as well. I did not look, did not speak. But I felt no danger from him, tucking my chin down. Did not feel any danger, even, when he touched my hair, the long queue I had braided back, him running his fingers down its piecework. Did not speak, closed my eyes when he turned me around against the sink, my lowerback cutting into the sharp edge of the granite countertop. Said not a word when his lips brushed against mine, or when his tongue softly touched mine, entered me. Silent while I clutched the countertop with both hands, let him tip my chin up and smell my skin deeply, said only, "Old one, no further, I have a knife." 


After he had gone, I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, trembling.


It had been nearly a week since I had arrived back to the house, and for all of that time, I had been unable to sleep. I could not savor being so near to those older in my bloodline, whose outlooks and histories I could not know. Would they have the same values as I? The same morals? The same lacks? Mini, receiving a phone call from Leonardo, announced to me that he was leaving for Amsterdam, and as abruptly departed. "I've my own interests," he told me, packing violently, "my own people." 


"You show your colors," I told him.


"I bleed blood not loyalties," he snapped at me, not yet interested in friendships, or peace, or sensitivity.


On the same day, controversy with Leis's arrival, and other dramas, Nicky afield and drunk with his own desire for life's mercies. "I'll stay here to see the sun set. If you wire, I will pick up the money for a ticket at Western Union," he told me on the phone.


"I can't get away to wire until Monday," I told him, it being a Friday night.


"Then I guess I will have to spend more time here in Tuscany finding myself," he told me, his jesting tongue tipped with acid.


And while I was on the phone with him, Laurent lay before me on the couch, quiet and turned toward its back, wearing only an oversized black t-shirt and hidden track shorts cut high. He lay outside of the small orange cast of my light, but it was light enough to see him. "Dove," I heard him say, quietly, causing me to hang up the phone.


I uncrossed my legs and sat forward in my wingback chair as Leis crossed the room, floating like a pale spectre and looking completely lost to the world. The lamplight caught his features as he went, illuminating the flyaways in his hair and revealing his pale blond eyelashes. Suddenly, more than anything I ached to close my eyes and relive the ungentle pressures of hands upon me, hands from behind, of being turned against the sink and kissed, to place him there, to make it Kitten's lips upon my lips, his tongue pushing itself into my mouth. For a moment I let my head dip down, unsurprised to find the fantasy so close to the surface of my mind, but impressed by its sudden strength.


"Dove," I heard again.


I crept to the couch and crouched down.


"Where are my babies?" he asked.


"I," I started.


"Dove, Alois was spying on me. Did you know that?"


"Yes," I started again.


"Leechtin says that there has been an old one here for years, decades, trying to do him harm. He sends one in here to figure out the weak spots. Dove, they want my children," he said, so quietly.


"How do you know that?" I asked him, gently, pressing my hand to his hair. 


"I know that," he said. "Alois used to ask me about them all of the time, you, and Leis, and the little ones. He was jealous of Bellamy and even of Marcellus. He would shake me and say, 'Tell me all about you and those you love, because you are so much to me,' but all of the things he knew, Dove."


"Sit up, my darling."


"Alois is going to find them, I thought, when Leechtin told me that he was a spy. I told Leechtin, what is Alois doing it for? And Leechtin confessed. He said, 'Aurantiaco mea, my orange, there are sharper teeth here, a boy who speaks without speaking.' He wants to hobble us. I want you near my breast so that they cannot pierce you, Dove, without piercing me. Now Leechtin says that he sent one to find him, to find Alois, but it has been all bungled, and someone else killed, and now it is all at a head, and I feel that I will be dying from the fear, I am so distressed. It will find my children, this one, and it will do it, what it wants. I cannot breathe."


"Laurent."


"Where are my children," he said, darkly.


"I have been calling them and calling them in Paris, both of your twins," I said, because it was them he meant, trying to get the words out quickly, "but there is no answer. Believe me, I am calling them every other minute, but there are other matters at hand, you have asked for me to find so many, to manage so much out of the blue," but before I could finish he had turned and slashed at me with the edge of his hand, which I avoided by losing my balance backward, but he kept coming, suddenly up, moving across the room. I tried to grab for him, foolishly, before finding my feet and pursuing him.


"Call them again," he said, heading toward the kitchen.


"Laurent I called them not even ten minutes ago," I started.


He turned on me then, the fury in his eyes taking me aback. I had still the idea that his behavior was irrational. It seemed so sudden because I had known nothing. What threat could there possibly be? So suddenly? To warrant this? A spy? So what? We were in the company of so many of us. Though I had clucked at Marcello for his naivete, I did not really believe in the danger until Laurent looked in my eyes with his own belief. 


"Laurent," I said, trying to comfort him, trying to touch him, my body tingling both with desire and with fright.


"You do not care about them," he said, his tone dangerously tremulous, and again, louder, "You do not care about them."


"Don't shout, I am calling them, I promise you, right now," I said, showing him that my cell was still in my hand, touching the button to make it light, and then suddenly he had knocked it out of my hand and he was shouting, screaming, hysterical, clawing at me and at himself, and I, utterly unprepared to face strength I had forgotten he had, cried, "Help me, God save us, somebody help me hold him!"


But for all of the people I had seen, all who had been near, there was no one, and I could not keep him from hurting himself and slashing at me, my entire body pressed against his, trying to free himself from me, wailing, out of his mind completely with fear and distrust, paranoia, enmity, producing a sound I had never heard him make before, from the bottom of his chest, a horrible baying for freedom, for anything but to be trapped, human, crippling, "Stop it," I wept, "you have to stop," begging him. Around the house, I could hear finally, stirring, voices, questioning, footsteps, and then Laurent reared back and hit me so hard with his forehead that the blow shattered my nose, and another blow that fractured the fingers that had flown up to cover my face, still, somehow, I managed to hold him, but he was beyond mad, and wrested himself from me, and then he was running out, and I was on the ground, on my hands and knees, trying to follow him, and feet passing me, pursuing him, who could not see for all of blood, and so did not see what happened, did not see it.


How Laurent had fled out of the kitchen door, for his children, to find them, to fly to them, and how in the darkness, lit only by porch light, an ancient none of us had ever seen had been there, waiting, drawn by the sound. 


And then something else, some other new horror, another sound, a cry that reached me through my body, in my head, in my bones, Leechtin, moaning a death knell, and then the blood upon the carpet felt more alive than I was.


And I think that ever since then, I have been living in that moment, and not in the after, not in walking outside. It is all in pieces in my memory.


I remember that his legs were bare. In the grass. His legs, his neat little toes. It seemed that all of the rest of him was covered in indigo silk, draped over his body, Leechtin, who I had only ever seen in glimpses.


"Leechtin, he's not dead," I heard another one saying, kneeling beside them, in the grass, "give him to the doctor. Leechtin, he's not dead."


Give him to the doctor, with blood soaking his neck and his collar, with his crushed fingers trembling, who could not hold him. 


I could not weep. I could not weep.


I closed my eyes, and suddenly the tears were in them, because when I closed my eyes I saw Leis's face, always there, and I wept like a child.


When they gave Laurent to me, when they put him in my arms, the one who had earlier kissed me whispered, "Compose yourself, Doc, go on and do your Mr. Fix-It. Go on," trying to be kind.


I did my best, I did my best, but when I touched him, when I tried to put his insides back inside of him, he whispered to me, with half the breath he needed, "If you touch me I will kill you, if you touch me again," startling me.


I sat down on the floor, out of the light I had trained upon Laurent's eviscerated body on the desk, and wept in the corner of the study, my hands trembling with his blood.

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