by Lyndsay Faye
“Cracking great embarrassment, what?” Robin shakes his head. “Sincerest apologies, ladies all. On my way! No rush, may as well conduct my own affairs with the sisters when I’ve not just put my foot in it. Toodle-oo and congratulations on what’s sure to be an unforgettable bouquet!”
Mam’zelle soon has Jessica at her ease again, and no one fakes unflappable serenity like Moma. But for Lia, the meeting passes in palette-knife blurs. She injects meaningless approvals into the conversation, nods and frowns, and seethes over Robin Goodfellow.
What the ever-loving hell does he think he’s doing to the Danes?
She shivers at the knowledge Jessica’s bouquet will be delivered at the gala. It ought to be shocking but seems right somehow—like chords in a great orchestra, crescendoing to an inevitable conclusion.
Somehow, Lia knows, she will be there, too.
HORATIO
Make up something to believe in your heart of hearts
So you have something to wear on your sleeve of sleeves
—The National, “Mistaken for Strangers”
In the Garment District, a cracked Formica countertop faces 37th Street next to a glass door strung with bells. Inside, a halal joint called Royal Smile Taxi Terrace features redolent Arabian spices, a cone of shining meat, and a smiling bearded purveyor (but no terrace). At the back of the eatery lies a white door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY in Sharpie.
Horatio has learned that behind this door and up a flight of stairs flecked with white sprinkles of primer lies a wholly undiscovered country.
“What am I going to do, Benny, you calling me out of the no-place like this, only two days to fit him? Deja esa vaina!” the tailor snaps, swatting Horatio’s hand away from the waist of the tuxedo slacks.
Vincentio hails from Santo Domingo. He is nearly as tall as Horatio and as thin as Benjamin, an incredibly posh gazelle. His hair is close-shaved, green eyes lined in charcoal and flicking over Horatio’s body like an absinthe-addled fairy godmother. Horatio feels naked, standing there in a white ribbed undershirt, arms tingling in the air-conditioning.
I am free from the four Kashäyas. Anger, ego, deceit, and greed have no place in me.
“Vinny, dude, I told you it was an emergency,” Benjamin groans.
“It is every-time an emergency with you!”
Benjamin winks wearily at Horatio. “Is this, like, your favorite speech pattern or what? Vinny never ever met a pair of English words he couldn’t smoosh into a portmanteau.”
Vincentio mutters something, yanking Horatio’s inseam.
“Um. Must you?” Horatio wonders helplessly.
“You see your friend over there?” Vincentio indicates where Benjamin is smeared over a leather armchair, a champagne flute in quivering fingers. “Never has he ever-once come in, said ‘Vinny, take your time, make me look like the prince I am,’ this tiny sonofabitch looks like Kurt Cobain but with good hygiene. Now he brings you, you are magnificent, and ‘day after tomorrow,’ he says. Toy adelante, but Jesus Christ.”
Vincentio’s warehouse is the entire floor, its ancient parquet the color of silt. Between the iron posts, oases of overlapping carpets host sofas, clothing racks, designer chairs. Light from the former sweatshop’s huge windows ricochets off the brass bar cart. Horatio downs the remainder of his Perrier-Jouët. Maybe it will stop him feeling so immensely narked off.
“Please tell me what had you in such a froth about Robin Goodfellow?” Horatio requests again. “Other than the fact he, you know. Is helping with your mum’s wedding soiree.”
“I could ask you the, like, identical question. But interrogating people seems to be your job this afternoon.”
Horatio links his fingers behind his neck, willing himself to be calm. Granted, Robin’s appearance thoroughly put his wind up. But Benjamin had seemed shattered with Ariel, then perfectly normal with Robin, then completely crackers again as they took their leave. He hasn’t even grilled Horatio yet about Paul Brahms. He’s all edgy elbows, and Horatio has had just about enough of it.
“More champagne? Yep, that’s the ticket, more champagne.” Benjamin lurches to his feet like a cougar, and the fresh bottle emits a satisfying thop. From the set of Benjamin’s shoulders with his back turned, he’s popping another pill.
“Which is it this time? Klonopin or Adderall?” Horatio calls.
“Heh. Wow.”
“Might as well top me up too, there’s a love.”
“My pleasure, here.”
“Ace, ta very much.”
When Benjamin pours the Perrier over Vincentio’s hunched back, a petit roar emerges.
“Vete pal carajo que te sorte en banda!”
“Sorry, no, that did not land with me. One more time?” Benjamin stalks back to his chair.
“I am never-more dealing with your cock-shit ways.” Standing, Vincentio levels a finger at Benjamin. “I’m going to explore dinner jackets because I am no-way fitting a full tuxedo on this stunning man shaped like a pyramid you bring to me. Bullshitting me, that is what you are doing right now, Dios dame fuerzas.”
Benjamin sighs. He pours a third flute for the tailor who stands pointing like a Dominican Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
“I’m sorry, Vinny,” Benjamin says. “Sip this while you look at dinner jackets, yeah?”
Vincentio slinks off like a miffed tomcat. Horatio could swear that he hears mother-shitting cock-fuckers.
They are left alone, and Horatio opens his mouth.
“I’m sorry to you too, even though you’re probably sick to death of it, the sorry-ing.” Benjamin taps their glasses, producing an icy clink. “This Robin guy’s cravat thingy reeeeally resembled that scarf Lia always used to wear as a belt or tie her hair back with. It wasn’t the same, obviously. And it had leaves on it and hers didn’t.”
Horatio’s chest compresses. Lia has been coming up in their conversations far, far too often. Two years ought to be enough.
Would it be enough for you, losing him? You would petrify.
You’d be nothing but a stump, the whorls of the years that you had him.
“And before that? With Ariel?” Horatio urges recklessly.
“That epic train collision was mostly, um, about my dad. I am super adept at going off the rails, let’s see what junction I’ll crash through next today. Maybe it could be about the Grateful Dead being the most overrated band of all time. Keith Richards once said that what Jerry Garcia did was poodle about for hours, and that is the most fantastic verb ever to verb.”
Horatio pinches his nose. Benjamin’s opinions about music are multifarious, strident, and subjective. So he simply allows them to drift past.
“Why were you so weirded out by Robin, though?” Benjamin questions.
“Um. We met on the flight, as I told you. He said the oddest things, presumptuous even. There’s no reason for me to make it sound so ominous, and I didn’t mean to be a berk about it.”
“So he just sort of . . . rubbed you wrong?”
He told me I was bloodsick, and I think he was right.
“Rubbed me wrong expresses it.”
Benjamin waves his glass in a zigzag. “Yeah, me, too. We’ll keep an eye on the dude. He’s in cahoots with my mom after all, so we’re adding him to our list. The list. Persons of interest.”
Benjamin, when not skittering over one’s skin like static electricity, is uncannily energizing. He’s a battery, either zapping you or powering you, and Horatio decides to be grateful they’ve moved into the latter category.
“Anything else to get off your mind?” Benjamin sings.
“Well, I, um, don’t much fancy being here.”
“But you’re going to the prince’s ball and Vincentio is your fairy godmother.” Benjamin peers up through flaxen eyelashes, completely unashamed of making this horrid remark. The absolute wanker.
“I’m not
meant to be wearing swish togs at all!” Horatio is being a bear with a sore head right now, but he doesn’t care. “Humility in all things.”
“You’re not meant to add disharmony to the world either and you’re enabling me.”
“God help me.”
Benjamin grins, sudden and hard. The warehouse may be empty, and maybe it’s the intoxicant, but the atmosphere sparkles like gunpowder. Horatio is acutely aware of the defensive cock to his own hip. There could be a hundred phantom seamstresses in here, all stitching and stitching and slowly going blind, and it wouldn’t feel as crowded as it does now.
“So, anyway, what did Paul tell you?” Benjamin asks.
Horatio reties his hair, leaving the ends tucked in. “Nothing whatsoever. But by inference, something rather odd?”
Paul had been in his cramped office—the same office he took when they first moved in, as unassuming as the man himself. Slick light from the fluorescents painted his bald head in an arc like a sickle moon, and Horatio had a barmy urge to pat it. To his left were a mass of ledgers and spreadsheets, as hodgepodge as a stew. To his right were a telephone and a photograph of Lia, fourteen or thereabouts, laughing at something off-camera, corkscrews cradling the curve of her cheek.
“I tried to approach everything delicately.” Horatio and Benjamin settle into the armchairs, leather squeaking. “I implied that I needed to reassure myself of your well-being.”
“Gee,” Benjamin drawls. “That sounds really hard for you to pull off.”
“Will you shut it?”
“Sorry, sorry, you’re a superspy. We’re getting you a signet ring with a poison stabby bit.”
“If we’re kitting me out like a superhero, then I want a sword cane.”
“Oh my god, done. I’ll have one for you by the gala. You probably think I’m kidding. So what was Paul like?”
Horatio lifts his shoulder. “He was himself, spinning like a top. He said that he had to go see to the parking garages.”
Benjamin’s lip quivers with mirth. “Please tell me you just said ‘parking garages.’ ”
“Yes, yes, I did. He’s been measuring the parking spaces and asking the manufacturers of luxury vehicles how wide the, well, the wingspans of the doors are, to see whether the stalls are too narrow.”
“Too narrow.”
“He needed to see how long it would take to repaint all the lines.”
Benjamin laughs with neck-lolling abandon. Horatio doesn’t savor mocking Paul Brahms the way his friend does. It’s like pointing at someone who slipped on an icy patch of sidewalk.
“He did talk to me, though,” Horatio continues. “He said a great deal actually, just nothing very much to the purpose.”
Paul appreciated that Horatio was concerned about Benjamin. Then he mentioned statement vases, fretted whether the guests might be allergic to particular flowers. Which shifted into discussing whether the attendees should sign epilepsy waivers, since flashbulbs would be used. After which he got preoccupied by the possibility of service animals.
“He’s always like that,” Benjamin moans. “Like a guillotined chicken. The Marie Antoinette of chickens.”
“Yes, but how can that possibly be?” Horatio objects. “How does he occupy such a central role in the theatre without being, well . . . competent? Everyone says your dad trusted him with everything. For heaven’s sake, he took those videos.”
“Are you saying Dad’s trust was misplaced?”
“Actually, quite the opposite. I’m saying that if your dad’s trust wasn’t misplaced, then how can Paul Brahms spare the time for flashbulb waivers and parking lot demarcations? Even someone who used twenty-four hours in the day wouldn’t have the wherewithal.”
Benjamin’s brow scrunches as Horatio recalls more of Paul’s fits over the years: the meltdown about commercial floor cleaner causing cancer, the brouhaha over serving veal to the board of directors. Through all of this randomly dispersed energy ran a strong undercurrent of both dedication and of aching sorrow. Laura Brahms, née Laura Caruso, passed away long before Horatio’s time. But he had seen a few of Lia’s photos with Laura, as a baby, and he knew Lia herself intimately, so he could easily picture her mother—a Hasidic profile, mad hair, olive skin, a full-lipped smile. She would have been creative and affectionate, pointed and beautiful, just like Lia.
It took a mad multimillionaire obsessed with the secrets of the cosmos to net Lia. How the hell could the likes of Paul attract such a remarkable spouse if he weren’t alarmingly intelligent?
Horatio itches to ask Benjamin which particular qualities Lia inherited from her respective parents. But bringing up Lia is as good as whacking Benjamin in the dial with a two-by-four. Anyway, he can see some of the lineage himself. Paul isn’t artistic, so that’s maternal; Paul must be brilliant, so that’s paternal or likelier both. But Lia was also manipulative—well-intended but scheming, the way he’s come to understand all addicts operate without necessarily meaning any deliberate harm.
Horatio wonders with a thrill of disquiet whether Paul might be that way, too.
“How’d this little tête-à-tête end?” Benjamin questions, pensive.
“Paul said he was thankful I was kipping with you.”
“Heh, that makes two of us.”
Sensing his face about to heat, Horatio deflects. “Apparently I should encourage you to play the guitar. Something along the lines of soothing the savage beast?”
Ben yaps a laugh. “That’s kinda cute, actually. I’ll whip out some Cat Stevens later if you ask pretty.”
“He did have a point,” Horatio realizes. “Your sensibilities do rather bleed into your playing, obviously. If there’s a more emotional art form, I’ve yet to encounter it.”
“Actually, musicianship is a conscious act of math,” Ben answers with enthusiasm. “Pythagoras, ultimate boho cult guru, figured that one out by mucking around with monochord strings, although a waaaaay cooler legend states that he passed a blacksmith’s shop and realized that the sizes of anvils that were compatible divisibly also gave off the sweetest clangs when struck together. There is no more purely scientific art form than music. Which is fine if you’re talking about Radiohead’s In Rainbows record and slightly less awesome if you’ve got Smash Mouth stuck in your head, but either way music is fractions and—”
“Here’s Vincentio coming back,” Horatio observes softly.
“Copy.”
“You know, I always rather wondered why you weren’t studying music rather than philosophy of physics?”
“You’re hilarious. If I were about twice as intelligent, I miiiiight scrape by with an undergrad degree in music theory. Not graduate level and never at Columbia, it would break my brain.”
Dinner jackets hang over Vincentio’s willowy arm, silks and velvets and one alarming metallic paisley. “You are finished now with arguing, please tell me, because I have never-ever seen a more useless lovers’ quarrel, hand to god.”
This time Horatio does blush. His friend tilts his champagne a fraction too abruptly and a drop spills out the side of his mouth. Horatio does not think about licking it off. Vincentio lobs a tiny wink in Horatio’s direction, and the Londoner longs to seep down, down, down through the floorboards.
“Yep, we’ll behave now,” Benjamin replies brightly. “Whatcha got there?”
“Lanvin, the Row, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford, and Kingsman for luck.”
“Sweet titties.”
Horatio barely suppresses a groan over the concept of a stranger and the love of his life running commentary about his physique. He’s rather proud of his physique (it’s spiritually cleansing to improve it daily). And Benjamin is rather meticulous (aesthetically speaking). His friend might look like a man wearing ragged jeans and a band shirt—today’s reads SEAWOLF over paint splatter that looks like an undiscovered constellation—but the jeans will not have cost l
ess than two hundred quid, and the body underneath resembles a whippet’s.
Stop, stop, stop, stop.
“Why don’t you lot just . . . choose for me?” Horatio suggests as Vinny muscles him into a sapphire velvet coat with a black satin collar.
“Ha ha,” Vincentio does not laugh.
“I wasn’t ribbing you, I don’t see the need for me anywhere in this process.”
One kohl-lined eye arcs over to his friend. “Oye ni por un de million hago yo esta vaina.”
“No habla, dude,” Benjamin notes again.
“Never-way are you paying me nearly enough for this shit.”
“Oh, cut it out, yes I am, you adore me. If you want more, just say so. I’ll make it rain. How many private islands do you want, exactly? Hey, I like that one. What do you think, Horatio?”
“How much is it, please?” Horatio begs.
Benjamin rolls his eyes. “What do you think, Vinny?”
“Nítido, but no-how do we choose this. The undertone of the blue is wrong, never-kind of way I am making this bronze god look sallow. Right, we are trying the Tom Ford black-on-black satin camo print.”
Benjamin whistles as Vincentio produces a gorgeously detailed silk tux jacket. This coat could doubtless pay for a few months’ worth of Horatio’s student loans. He tries it on. The fabric feels solid but airy, like wearing a mantle of black wings.
“Ay Dios mio,” Vincentio says approvingly.
“Jesus, Vinny, you’ve been holding out on me! You’ve never showed me anything like that. Christ almighty.”
Benjamin’s eyes are alight with mischief and absolutely nothing else, Horatio vows to himself. His friend approaches, his eyes shards of sky through a window. The midsummer light has shifted as the afternoon progressed, faded and worn like antique porcelain. He’s not going to reach out and start fiddling, is he?
Please do not brush those guitar-cracked fingerprints over any fabric, I’ll be unraveled entirely.
Please.
Benjamin is opening his mouth when his mobile buzzes repeatedly. His expression freezes over the screen.
