"I found your phone number," a voice said to me on the phone, having woken me from a dead sleep. "I just found it, OK, in Laurent's desk. Is this not cool?"

I lay blinking, trying to hear the sounds coming across from around this voice. The tinkling cymbal of a slammed dish drawer. His fist, lightly tapping against a table. I lay listening, from London.

"Don't your people have any sandwich stuff or anything?"

Of course. My child's child. Cuca.

"I know who you are," I said. "And I will come to get you."

"Huh?"

"I will come to get you. I am coming to get you, from now." 

"I don't know why all of a sudden it's all about killing, but I don't want any, OK? I want a sandwich. Your folks don't have anything. Not even any Spam. Do you know where they keep foodstuffs? I ate all the stuff I originally brought."

For some time, not so consciously, I had been thinking about home. Often, my sleep is dreamless, but it is the case that when I dream, it is always of Carolina. In me, as you know, there exists a certain tension. At times, I reckon with my understanding of what has happened in my life, and how I should live. I suppose that it is something we all have in common. For this, Laurent was my best, my most honest, ear. And yet I never dream of him. All I have is memory.

I cannot explain to you how angry it made me to know that Cuca was still alive, not like us, and twice as old as my child was. I feel nothing for other people who I do not love. I am coming to an age where I can say that without embarrassment, guilt, or confusion. I used to be so unhappy with myself, and with my lot. I am not anymore ashamed to feel those things, and to say what I mean.

Do not tell me, Cuca has had his own tragedies. I don't care. All of this about that he had seen what Laurent had made of Marcello, that Marcello needed protection to keep on living, needed a purpose found elsewhere but in himself. All of this about not wanting to fight to live, to lie in order to survive, I don't believe in it. That is all speculative nonsense. You can say to me, he had a love affair, a man he loved. I hear his name, Christian, who was ten years older than this baby, who came from New York with his sweet nature and soft voice. I am told how Christian begged Cuca to turn to the blood, so that both of them might have it. I have heard how Christian hanged himself with a leather belt from the U-bend in Cuca's private bath. I know. You say, after Cuca saw how the very promise and desire for the blood could do that, he swore himself away from it. Do you really suck from this story your ability to feel compassion? Do you really need it? Or do you repeat it to me hoping that I will think of Yuki when you tell it to me, and grieve my desire to see Cuca dead? Maybe you are worried that to do it, to kill him, harm will come to that hand in turn, but do you really fear so much for me? Give me a break and say honestly that you worry for yourselves what would happen if Leechtin's bandage, over the wound of Laurent's death, were whipped off. Say that this is all you ever worried about.

I do not need you or anyone to understand. Laurent did. He said, "What are you confused that you are wanting him dead? And not to kill me instead for murdering your son?" I visited him ten years ago. I went in secret, only to see him, and no one else. I went thinking that if I saw him, I could kill him for what he'd done to my son, to my Javie, or if I couldn't, that I would know for certain that I had become a monster who wants more children to die, more people to die, so that I could keep Laurent for myself, and not hurt him, and say, "This is only what a monster does." Because if I killed Cuca, as I wanted and could not explain to myself, it would be a monstrous thing to do.

But Laurent had consoled me, holding onto me with his trembling hands, because by then he was half of himself already. It was already clear that he had been hollowed out by a wicked sadness, a wicked sense of temporality, and that if I left him again, he would not be there when I came back. I wept because for all my confusion about other things, I knew that if I decided to kill Laurent, he would want it. 

He whispered to me, "Oh come close, darling. You will not cry alone. You are confused. Oh, we want to kill him badly. He reminds us of our son. Why should he live?" He pulled me in, he said cu cu. I called him a murderer, and his familiar lips kissed my ear. "Our heart says, 'What should we kill for? Because God says that is not for men to do.' And some wondering, 'Is this the heart of man that calls for blood? When it should call for the blood of murderers', like me. I did it. I know. Oh cry. 'Is it a man still, this body?' It is still confusing, and why does it forget what we want to remember most? If we do not want his blood, the man we love who killed our child, what do we want at all? It does not make sense. Shouldn't we love our son's child? Why does it seem right that he should be dead?"

Yes, I told him, without speaking, yes.

He told me the truth, that Leechtin protected Cuca, and he told me another truth, that if Cuca were to die, the master would simply be sad. He asked me not to fear revenge, but rather to be compassionate. He said that Cuca would never be one of us, Leechtin's "Saumana", which means blooming, and that Cuca would die eventually, and with that would go my memory of him altogether. I disagreed, but holding him, who I loved, how could I think about anything? He whispered to me about his love for me, about childhood, and the years of my youth that he longed to return to. He struggled for the breath to talk to me about those things.

I will not talk more about it. I should not talk about it. When I arrived home, this past swampy summer, the boy was not there, flown away with the certainty that my intentions were serious. I shake myself but it is still true. If he had been there, I would have wrung his neck. I would still do it today. Compassion or not. Is it impolitic to say so without a pretty flourish? Do you want gravity? He flew away like a terrified bird, without warning my "folks" of what was coming to their door. You see, did he need anyone to protect him? He knew how to run.

It's important to know that, when to run away. What am I doing here, telling anyone anything? I didn't realize what I was doing until I was home. I didn't realize I was coming home until the door opened, and my little, happy Q looked me in the eyes. He opened the door so fast, expecting solicitors or somebody else, and his face went still, and he closed his eyes, and then as if he had heard that I had died. He labored to stand, and so I put my hands upon him without thinking, both of my hands under his upper arms, to keep him up. 

"Let me die," he said, "just, let me die."

"Don't say that," I said, not understanding.

"I will never be happier," he wept. "Never."

**

We are none of us perfect. The first thing I noticed about Leis was his droopy eyelid. It is easier to see that he cannot open his right eye as completely when he is surprised. 

I didn't like to talk about some of these things before, but I am alone now. It is only me. Before, when we spoke, it was not so. Leis said, "It is hard to see some of the small things in those that you love, because it is all beautiful to you," and it is true, and true that when I came home, and looked on him with a mind's eye that could not quite remember his face, he was made new to me. Painfully new, so full of the familiar.

All that evening, while I sat with Q together and watched old movies, Leis was watching me. I could not read him. He sucked upon his fingertips. He sighed in that way he does, as if he means for you to ask him what's wrong, but he doesn't. 

"May I give you a present?" I asked Q.

"No," he said, stroking my hands idly.

"I bought it and I kept it for you, a long time ago."

"Give it to your Leis."

I saw Leis sit up a little. He cannot see as well in the dark, and his eyes lit with a precocious eagerness that disappeared immediately when he saw what I had. 

"It's a cool peppermint cream," I said, as he turned the box over and over, the type too small for him to read in English.

"For what?" he asked.

"It's a cold cream but it smells nice. It's supposed to be soothing."

He gave the box back to me a bit firmly. "This, I don't want," he said. "This, I cannot use it."

I had seen him behave that way before. He was being provocative. I looked at Q out of the corner of my eye.

"Don't look at him," Leis said. "He's half asleep. Don't look. He will wake up."

"Stop it. Behave yourself," I whispered.

"No. Come into the kitchen with me," he said. He had tipped his chin down. He was looking up at me. 

"Are you like this now?" I asked.

"Stop it. Behave yourself," he whispered, as if he were possessed by the devil.

"I'm too angry," I said, trying to stand up straight and move away.

He caught me by the wrists. "About what?" he asked. "About what what?"

"I don't want to talk about it. About that boy that was here."

"He calls you, and now you are here. Did not some good come of it?" he asked, holding onto me.

I slept that night in his bed with Q.  Still getting sleep wherever it found him, was Q. Leis told me he was feeling a little wanderlust and that he wanted to go walking in the misty acres facing the house. I tried to sleep but I could not. It had something to do with the sense of the familiar. It had a lot to do with the feeling that I had forgotten something important, that though I should feel secure, something was missing. Of course the missing thing was not really something missing, but rather that I had gotten older, and a little different, and so did not feel that I fit there. I didn't dwell on it, and yet the feeling was there in my chest. Because of that, I got up in the early morning, just before dawn.

I went into the kitchen. Even though I have not eaten anything for so long, the kitchen still feels like a comforting place to be. I didn't want to sit down. I didn't know quite what I wanted to do, and so I stood in front of the sink for a little while, looking out.

I had long stopped worrying about anything that might appear outside a window. Little dangers never troubled me. There was in the sky a little brightening, almost undetectable, and yet in such a light, the character of the night is different. The darkness is awkward at such a time, as if it knows it has overstayed of its tenure, and the eyes know this. I looked out.

So then of course came Leis, and I felt his hands touch me, taking my waist through my thin t-shirt. I let him do it, and let him turn me, ready to face him. 

In the intervening years, I had not yet been able to resolve what I should feel for him. "Should" is such a funny word. Perhaps it is only that I could not identify what I felt, and still can't. In the early years of the time I'd spent  away, the idea of intimacy had violently repulsed me. No longer.

"Don't do this to me," I said to him. "I feel weird about it."

He pushed me back against the counter, nearly painfully, my hips pressed against the counter's slate edge.

"Leis," I whispered.

He touched his nose to the delicate place just before the ear, and he breathed. It made me feel dizzy. I had not been touched in so long.

"Sir," I said, too softly.

"Now I have you close to me," he said, in high school French, all the French I had, "we can speak privately."

"Oh just kill me," I whispered. "I am so embarrassed by you. Why did you do this to me? Why can't you talk to me like a normal person?"

"It's not a normal conversation."

"Let me go. We'll go in the car."

I tried to push him away, but he only laid his head against my neck. Soft hair.

"I don't want to go in the BMW. It's Laurent's car. I'm upset," he said.

"Come on," I said to him softly, resting my head against his head.

"Sometimes, I lay my face against the bathroom mirror because it's cool, but you are cooler."

"Lay your head against your Mr. March. Your Quinn."

"Mr. March is harder than the mirror," he murmured. "He's too nice to me. He treats me like a little fool. Little fools are not charming. He is not charmed. He is so impenetrable. He feels sorry for me. He's not himself. I don't want to be pitied." He slipped his hands into the back pockets of my jeans.

"Remove your hands."

"No. Why do you give me peppermint cream? Why do you go to London and not Paris? Why do you break my heart like that?"

"Quinn likes the way peppermint smells. I suppose Paris has a long memory."

"I heard that when Laurent died, he said 'The same wind.' Do you know the meaning?"

"I don't," I said softly.

"I so wish to be comforted but I loathe it. I have a lot of photographs. Maybe we will look at them when we will come back. Come with me to California. They ask for me."

"Who?" I whispered, holding him. He has high shoulderblades that make the slope of his back look so long and so elegant. He carries himself in an intoxicating way, by accident. It is only the way his body looks. I stroked the curve of his spine, my hands running against the bones, as if stroking a cat very hard. Like a cat, he arched against my hand, lifting his hips briefly in a way that did nothing for me. "Put up your hair. You really are feeling hot."

"Old ones."

"Mr. Porter. Nataniellus. What for?"

"He did not want to say over the phone. He only said 'you are the one for this. Your face will be known'. What is it me? I did not know he knew me. He says come in a month. He would not say anything more."

"Not a normal conversation," I offered. "The one for what?"

"Touch me," he demanded.

"Command it," I whispered.

"If you talk to me like that I will tear you to pieces," he said, with all of the fury of a milk-soaked kitten, screaming and blind. "M'enfant," he said, weeping, "I have done such terrible things. Will he ever forgive me? I cannot touch Mr. March. I cannot touch him with these hands, m'enfant, tell me how I should live without anyone but myself."

Leis had been talking to you, Mini. It was after he made your tapes. He said making the tapes  made him feel hurt, feel different. It made him feel like he was old, and not sweet, and more lonely than he had ever been in his life. I held him. When I talked to you, he was still holding onto me, unable to let me sit alone because he could not be alone. The night that Laurent died, he had found himself in bed with Dasius, the horror of his life, and ever since, he had been doing that with Dasius. A small piece of comfort he had known. A counterfeit of Laurent's hand. A stain. He clung to me like a supplicant at the feet of the weeping Virgin. He is my body, too. I don't know. I'll say that.

But I did not tell you that then, and I did not say to you either that we had been summoned, or that it was a secret, or that we were going in a week.

I don't think that I would have done it differently. In any case, there are no more secrets. 

When we went to California, he was still reeling in that way. To many he seems mad with grief. He is mad with guilt.

**

He sat across from me in California, Leis, cupping a match in his hand. He lit his cigarette and shook the match out. It had been not even an entire day since we had arrived, and yet the house felt suffocating, and so we sat outside in the night. We had been sitting for some time in the cool air, and Leis had been chain-smoking. He sat back in the white-painted patio chair and smoked in the lengthening light of morning. It had reached that awkward hour of darkness, that temporary silence of day beginning again. The crickets had quieted, and yet no birds.

Until, "Do you hear that turtle dove?"

"Turtle dove?" he asked, and tapped off his cigarette on the side of the glass table between us.

"Tourterelle des bois," I said. 

"Silly. There's no tourterelle des bois here. Only in Europe. You heard a different turtle," he said, and made the sound I'd heard at me. Cu cu.

"Don't be so dismissive. I heard it. There, I hear it again."

"You are beautiful but you are wrong," he said, blowing smoke out of his nose.

"Leis," I whispered.

"Mais non, quoi? Tout d'un coup, il a un visage serieux." What is it? All of sudden, he has put on such a serious face.

"Look at me," I told him. For all of the hairs on the back of my neck had risen.

"Bien sur, je te regarde. Quoi encore?" Of course, I'm looking at you. Who else?

"Look at me," I said. 

"What is it?" he asked, and I could see that I had frightened him. I could see that his pulse was up. When he breathed, the cloud of his breath mingled with the cold air, with the cigarette smoke. I am sorry that I cannot tell it with more, I don't know. More presence. I don't know.

It happened too fast. I saw it coming. The white robes caught in the slight wind, billowing and catching upon his familiar body. And yet there was nothing familiar about him, and my body knew it, and I froze, unable to protect myself, or anyone.

"Stay still, love of my life," I whispered, taking Leis's arm from across the table and pulling him low.

But it came closer without seeing; its footsteps without sound, barefoot on the grass. Without passing its gaze over us, it went across the patio. The electric blue eyes that had always looked on me with love, even in my dreams, looked past, unseeing. It opened the sliding door with force, slamming it home in its runners. 

I had not thought to lock the door. I had not thought.

Able to move I followed it, holding onto Leis, who stumbled behind, forgotten cigarette in his hand. The chill of the evening, inside the body, stayed with me as I moved indoors. Leis, breathing as if he meant to say something, the furthest from words. Silent. 

I knew where it was going before it reached the stairs, leaning on the wooden rail, pulling itself up two flights . I didn't need to wonder that it might run out of strength before it got there, reaching the top landing still without acknowledgement of our presence.

The double doors slammed open, the ones that I had waited outside of so many times, for so long, so many years before, forgotten years.

Leechtin stood up to welcome his visitor, then recoiled in abject terror, the first time I have ever seen him completely without pretense. But by then all was frozen numbness, and me just parted lips and dead fish eyes, holding onto my maker for our lives. Nataniellus, in his bed, shouting, unintelligible curses, oaths, faint to ears far away.

Laurent, or his body, stood in the doorway for only a moment before making for its master. If there had been a weapon on the desk to strike his beloved ward with Leechtin might have reached for it, the look was in his eyes. But for the obvious futility of such an act he would have struck out at it. The hands reached out and the fingers closed around Leechtin's loon's neck, long, white, tightening, fingernails digging. The beloved studied its master with clouded eyes, blankness, seeking with its fingers life to rip away. There was no air in the room. Leechtin did not struggle, looking back, as if it were only another dream, as if all was kind pleasantness.

And then behind me the child appeared holding a brass jar.

The corpse turned round slowly.

Nicolas opened the urn, and then dropped it, spilling its treasure on the floor. It clattered on the hardwood, spilling the severed heart, the one that had been stolen, that he had been given by its thief in sorrowful apology. No one moved for a moment, and then the thing that had been Laurent made towards it, melting to its knees and gathering up the organ.

It pressed the heart delicately into raw and hollow wound, holding it there like a little dove. I heard the corpse breathing and realized that the sound had been absent previously. It sat like that on its knees with head bowed, holding the thing like it were a quivering bird.

And then the blood began to roll, pushing out through the corpse's fingers, pulsing past the hands and down the forearms, blood that shouldn't have been in a body that had been dead for nearly a decade. We watched it and could do nothing. No one but Leechtin, who couldn't stand to watch it, he came forward and went to the floor like he had always been meant to do it, cradling the thing that used to be alive.

And it began to wail, quietly, high pitched cries like a puppy being tortured, head hidden against Leechtin's chest. Nicky began to back away, horrified, and I know that Leis silently fell apart but I don't remember it. It is not long that it happened. There is part of me that is still crying out. Not in relief. Not in relief.

For an interminable amount of time it shuddered in Leechtin's arms, and then all of a sudden the corpse fell silent. In that time more had come to the door, drawn by the sound or by some indefinable sense of movement, those who had loved it when it was alive.

They were ignored just as I was. It had eyes only for Leechtin.

Leechtin lifted the quiet body, put it to bed, drew the curtain, and we went away because we had to.

In the morning, before the sun had risen, they were gone, the two of them. They left without a word and took nothing. In the bed, left behind, Cuca's body, who Leechtin must have dragged there, forgotten. The blood-soaked sheets that smelled of Laurent, the empty mausoleum that used to contain him, they are the only physical evidence of all that has happened. And now you know of it. Leechtin and the corpse he took with him. It was not him. It was not Laurent. You must tell it to all who may hear. I swear it to you. It was not him.

But it has been profoundly damaging. Don't you understand?

Now we are alone.

Now we are truly alone.

Oh, what will become of us?