Chapter Twenty Four
In which we meet Oz, and Sam is too cowardly to write the nightclub scene priests are antagonistic.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Oscar was brushing his teeth that evening when Portia, who had been doing some of the more tedious computer drafting in his room, appeared in the mirror over his shoulder.
"I have a wicked idea," she said.
"I'm not talking to you," he answered. "You owe me a new shin."
"It's a beautiful bruise for you to paint!" she teased. He spat into the sink and rinsed out his mouth.
"What's your great idea?" he asked.
"I think you should come clubbing with us tomorrow night," she said. Oscar turned and leaned on the counter of the bathroom, crossing his arms.
"Why is this a great idea? I'll be unhappy, I'll annoy you, and then you'll be unhappy."
"Come on, Oscar, you used to go out sometimes in New York."
"For a drink. You know I was never into the nightclub scene."
"Which is a shame, because man, did you miss some good times," she replied. "But wait, you haven't heard the entirety of my cunning plan."
"You have a cunning plan?"
"Like a very cunning thing."
"I'm not going to like this, am I?"
Portia considered. "Actually, I think you might. I think you'd get a kick out of it."
"Fine, let's hear it."
Oscar listened as Portia explained the finer points of the cunning plan, and he had to admit that it was an entertaining idea. Painful, but it might be worth it, especially as a nice send-off for Félix before he had to go back to Paris. When she finished, he rubbed his jaw.
"You'll have to help me, though," he said. "Whenever I try to do that I always get it in my eyes."
***
"Almost ready?" Félix asked, through the door adjoining Portia's room and Oscar's. He was sitting on Oscar's side, wearing some new club gear he'd picked up in London, and waiting on Portia, who was apparently trying on everything in her wardrobe.
"Just about," Portia called with a laugh. "Hair up or down?"
"Up," Félix answered. "Where's Oscar?"
"Oscar has left the building," Portia replied.
"Hey, were you in my room this morning?"
"No, why?"
"There was a shirt I wanted to wear tonight and I couldn't find it."
"Don't know. Maybe the maid took it. Good Catholics don't wear nylon mesh, you know."
"That's not true," Félix laughed.
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm a good Catholic, and I wear nylon mesh."
"That's circular logic," Portia answered, appearing in the doorway. "What do you think?"
"I like it," Félix said, admiring the short silver dress and black heels. "Goes with everything."
"Even you," she said, as he stood. Portia had made him throw out most of the leather trousers he owned, but he'd saved one rather good-fitting one from the purge, and had stolen one of Luc's white sleeveless shirts to wear with it, along with an obscene amount of small-grade chain around his neck, wrists, and hanging off his belt loops. "And of course I had to coordinate with the other boy on my arm tonight."
"Other boy?" Félix asked. "Luc's not coming, is he?"
Portia grinned, and pulled him into her room.
Just beyond the doorway, out of sight until Félix entered, Oscar was leaning against the dresser.
"Meet Oz," she said, beaming. Félix stared. Oscar looked selfconscious.
They weren't a perfect match, but most of Félix's clothes would fit Oscar, at least across the shoulders; the shirt that had gone missing, red silk with a high collar, hung on Oscar as if it belonged there, tucked into Oscar's own battered black jeans.
"Are you wearing eyeliner?" Félix asked incredulously. "What's in your hair?"
"Portia did it," Oscar said, raising a hand to his face and rubbing at a corner of one eye. "It's, uh, spray-on dye? She says it washes out."
Oscar's normally sandy-blond hair was now black, with only spots of yellow showing through here and there. He ducked his head, shyly. "It's like Hallowe'en," he mumbled. "I like Hallowe'en..."
"Me too," Félix said, still staring. One of his leather cuffs was on Oscar's left wrist.
"So, uh, should we go?" Oscar asked, rubbing the back of his neck. Portia slid one arm through his and one through Félix's, and beamed.
"I think we should," she announced.
***
Félix flew back to Paris on Sunday, and the church seemed much quieter without him; Luc brought in a gas-powered generator to run some lights and the laptop with, and Oscar and Portia spent much of their time walking around the space, discussing how it might be altered. Oscar was unsure what his employer precisely wanted, but he thought turning the central crossing into a ballroom might be nice, and Félix seemed the sort who would get good use out of a ballroom. The area under the window was to be his bedroom, so Oscar assumed they would wall off at least that much; they could get building stone to match the rest of the church fairly cheaply, and Portia knew of someone who might be able to antique it for them with a sandblaster. The central aisle of the nave would do nicely as a corridor into the ballroom, with the area now taken up by the remains of the pews managed into kitchens, dining rooms, guest rooms, and such.
"It has great accoustics," Oscar said, sitting on the steps up to the altar on Tuesday afternoon, eating a sandwich Luc had brought back from a lunch run. He stood and walked to the centre of the crossing, underneath the dome. "Listen -- S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse, A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Quest fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo, Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo."
"If I believed that I would be answering someone who intended to return to Earth, this flame would move no more. But because no one from this pit has ever returned alive, if what I hear is true, I can reply with no fear of infamy," said a voice behind them. Oscar turned, startled, and Portia sighed.
"We have to start putting locks on the doors," she said, in French.
"Father Wright," Oscar said, in a formal and not entirely friendly voice.
"Dante's Inferno, book twenty seven," the priest said, with a small smile.
"You speak Italian?"
"No, and neither do you. It's quoted at the start of TS Eliot's Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock."
Oscar nodded, mutely. Wright glanced around him as he came down the nave, the fingers of his left hand drifting out slightly, as if to touch the pews that had once stood there.
"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each; I do not think that they will sing to me," he said softly. "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown -- till human voices wake us, and we drown."
"What brings you to our humble church?" Oscar asked drily.
"Enid, actually. She said you'd pulled down the bricks in the window, and that the window was still standing." His gaze moved up to where light shone through the stained glass. "I see she was right. I imagine your young employer will want to tear it out."
"No," Oscar answered. "We're in touch with the church over restorative measures to take. Our crew foreman -- if we had a crew," he said, a little more sharply than intended, " -- Luc, has been cleaning the last of the mortar off the outside."
"Ah yes, I see him at services on Sundays," Wright answered.
"He's a devout man."
"And you aren't."
"Did you come here to review the argument we've already had?" Oscar inquired.
"No," Wright said, gently. "Enid saw something which frightened her. I can't say that I blame her. Did you know we have a strong masonic tradition in town? Not the organisation," he added. "Some of the finest stonemasonry in the country was once done in St Thomas. He's the patron saint of builders and architects, you know."
"And skeptics," Oscar added. Portia was watching with interest.
"I prefer to think of it as inquirers," Wright replied. "Those who base their inquiry on faith, not their faith on inquiry. Two generations of men, according to my research, dressed and carved the stone for this building. It takes a long time to build a church, when you haven't any power tools or cranes. The decorations are -- were, once -- some of the finest examples of the craft, before they began to erode."
"I'll bear that in mind. It's too bad none of the modern-day workers choose to be a part of the renovation of the church," Oscar answered, vaguely aware that they were now involved in some kind of diplomatic negotiation. What the stakes were, he couldn't quite see, but he had the feeling he might even be winning.
"Touche," said the priest. "I don't think they'd enjoy trimming down the stone to fit your specifications, however."
"I'm not running around with a sledgehammer madly knocking the heads off gargoyles," Oscar retorted. "I'm a restorationist, you know. I preserve things for a living."
"Yes, I did some research on you after our last meeting."
Oscar heard Portia swear under her breath.
"The last building you worked on burned to the ground."
"Yes, well, this one won't, will it? Good solid stone," Oscar joked, weakly.
"It was destroyed."
Oscar regarded Wright for a moment, then turned and walked to the laptop on the table in the crossing, where the screensaver endlessly rotated a digital model of the Piazza Armerina. He tapped the touchpad a few times, quickly, and called up a folder that required a password to access. Wright followed him more slowly, peering at the screen.
"This is the Hotel L&L," he said. "Look at it. Go ahead."
He kicked out a chair, and the priest seated himself, cycling slowly through a series of photographs and renderings. Luc came in through the window about halfway through the slideshow, and stopped in his tracks when he saw Oscar, face betraying his fury, bending over the priest with an angry set to his shoulders. Luc glanced at Portia and crossed himself, but he stayed where he was.
"I painted these," Oscar said, in a low, tense voice. "I lived in that room. I drank wine from that cellar. I bought that paint and drew those plans. I lived for that hotel. I heard her speaking to me, I protected her, and when she caught fire I was inside her. I watched her fall piece by piece to the ground and felt every minute of it in my heart."
"But you couldn't stop it from being destroyed," Wright replied, calmly, turning his face up to Oscar's. He gave the architect another small smile, rose, and left. There was silence for a moment, and then Oscar, in one swift movement, fetched up an empty coffee cup from the table and threw it at one of the church walls with an angry bellow. It shattered, deafeningly.
"Dammit," he said, when Portia and Luc flinched. He took a deep breath and walked across the intervening space, touching the white smear of dust on the wall where the mug had impacted and disentigrated. "Luc, would you bring me a broom, please?"
"Oui," Luc said, looking worried. He ducked down the nave to the entryway, and into a side corridor that led to a series of small storage rooms, returning shortly with a dustpan and a hand-brush.
"Thanks," Oscar said, and began sweeping up the coffee cup. Portia rose and walked to the laptop, advancing through a few images.
"I didn't know you kept any of these," she said. "I thought they all went onto that storage disk for the insurance people."
Oscar, quietly, continued to brush up the shards of mug.
"You can't listen to him, you know," she said.
"Of course I can. He didn't lie at any point, did he?"
"He doesn't understand. We do."
"Sometimes I wonder."
Luc cleared his throat. "He is a priest, Portia."
"Since when are priests all knowing and always right?" Portia asked. "He's a petty little man who's upset that we're going to be turning this ruin into something worth seeing and so he's told the whole town not to help us. He's a bully."
"He might be right," Oscar said, head bent over the dustpan. "My track record -- "
"You are Byron Oreglia's chosen son and you once worked for the best architectural firm in New York City," Portia snarled. "So shut the fuck up, Oscar, and go back to your drafting."
Oscar nodded and carried the dustpan outside, dumping it in the small trash bin wired to one corner of Luc's truck bed. Luc sidled up to Portia and wrapped an arm around her waist, letting her rest her head on his shoulder.
"What are we going to do about him?" she asked, quietly.
"It isn't our place."
"He's going to rip himself up over this church."
Luc smiled and ruffled her long hair. "Better artists than he have survived worse. I have faith in him, and in Félix."
"Oscar said he heard the building talking to him. It never talked to me. Do the buildings ever talk to you, Luc?"
"They don't need to," Luc replied. "My job is the easy part."
Also our fortythousandwords are pasteded on yay.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Oscar was brushing his teeth that evening when Portia, who had been doing some of the more tedious computer drafting in his room, appeared in the mirror over his shoulder.
"I have a wicked idea," she said.
"I'm not talking to you," he answered. "You owe me a new shin."
"It's a beautiful bruise for you to paint!" she teased. He spat into the sink and rinsed out his mouth.
"What's your great idea?" he asked.
"I think you should come clubbing with us tomorrow night," she said. Oscar turned and leaned on the counter of the bathroom, crossing his arms.
"Why is this a great idea? I'll be unhappy, I'll annoy you, and then you'll be unhappy."
"Come on, Oscar, you used to go out sometimes in New York."
"For a drink. You know I was never into the nightclub scene."
"Which is a shame, because man, did you miss some good times," she replied. "But wait, you haven't heard the entirety of my cunning plan."
"You have a cunning plan?"
"Like a very cunning thing."
"I'm not going to like this, am I?"
Portia considered. "Actually, I think you might. I think you'd get a kick out of it."
"Fine, let's hear it."
Oscar listened as Portia explained the finer points of the cunning plan, and he had to admit that it was an entertaining idea. Painful, but it might be worth it, especially as a nice send-off for Félix before he had to go back to Paris. When she finished, he rubbed his jaw.
"You'll have to help me, though," he said. "Whenever I try to do that I always get it in my eyes."
***
"Almost ready?" Félix asked, through the door adjoining Portia's room and Oscar's. He was sitting on Oscar's side, wearing some new club gear he'd picked up in London, and waiting on Portia, who was apparently trying on everything in her wardrobe.
"Just about," Portia called with a laugh. "Hair up or down?"
"Up," Félix answered. "Where's Oscar?"
"Oscar has left the building," Portia replied.
"Hey, were you in my room this morning?"
"No, why?"
"There was a shirt I wanted to wear tonight and I couldn't find it."
"Don't know. Maybe the maid took it. Good Catholics don't wear nylon mesh, you know."
"That's not true," Félix laughed.
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm a good Catholic, and I wear nylon mesh."
"That's circular logic," Portia answered, appearing in the doorway. "What do you think?"
"I like it," Félix said, admiring the short silver dress and black heels. "Goes with everything."
"Even you," she said, as he stood. Portia had made him throw out most of the leather trousers he owned, but he'd saved one rather good-fitting one from the purge, and had stolen one of Luc's white sleeveless shirts to wear with it, along with an obscene amount of small-grade chain around his neck, wrists, and hanging off his belt loops. "And of course I had to coordinate with the other boy on my arm tonight."
"Other boy?" Félix asked. "Luc's not coming, is he?"
Portia grinned, and pulled him into her room.
Just beyond the doorway, out of sight until Félix entered, Oscar was leaning against the dresser.
"Meet Oz," she said, beaming. Félix stared. Oscar looked selfconscious.
They weren't a perfect match, but most of Félix's clothes would fit Oscar, at least across the shoulders; the shirt that had gone missing, red silk with a high collar, hung on Oscar as if it belonged there, tucked into Oscar's own battered black jeans.
"Are you wearing eyeliner?" Félix asked incredulously. "What's in your hair?"
"Portia did it," Oscar said, raising a hand to his face and rubbing at a corner of one eye. "It's, uh, spray-on dye? She says it washes out."
Oscar's normally sandy-blond hair was now black, with only spots of yellow showing through here and there. He ducked his head, shyly. "It's like Hallowe'en," he mumbled. "I like Hallowe'en..."
"Me too," Félix said, still staring. One of his leather cuffs was on Oscar's left wrist.
"So, uh, should we go?" Oscar asked, rubbing the back of his neck. Portia slid one arm through his and one through Félix's, and beamed.
"I think we should," she announced.
***
Félix flew back to Paris on Sunday, and the church seemed much quieter without him; Luc brought in a gas-powered generator to run some lights and the laptop with, and Oscar and Portia spent much of their time walking around the space, discussing how it might be altered. Oscar was unsure what his employer precisely wanted, but he thought turning the central crossing into a ballroom might be nice, and Félix seemed the sort who would get good use out of a ballroom. The area under the window was to be his bedroom, so Oscar assumed they would wall off at least that much; they could get building stone to match the rest of the church fairly cheaply, and Portia knew of someone who might be able to antique it for them with a sandblaster. The central aisle of the nave would do nicely as a corridor into the ballroom, with the area now taken up by the remains of the pews managed into kitchens, dining rooms, guest rooms, and such.
"It has great accoustics," Oscar said, sitting on the steps up to the altar on Tuesday afternoon, eating a sandwich Luc had brought back from a lunch run. He stood and walked to the centre of the crossing, underneath the dome. "Listen -- S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse, A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Quest fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo, Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo."
"If I believed that I would be answering someone who intended to return to Earth, this flame would move no more. But because no one from this pit has ever returned alive, if what I hear is true, I can reply with no fear of infamy," said a voice behind them. Oscar turned, startled, and Portia sighed.
"We have to start putting locks on the doors," she said, in French.
"Father Wright," Oscar said, in a formal and not entirely friendly voice.
"Dante's Inferno, book twenty seven," the priest said, with a small smile.
"You speak Italian?"
"No, and neither do you. It's quoted at the start of TS Eliot's Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock."
Oscar nodded, mutely. Wright glanced around him as he came down the nave, the fingers of his left hand drifting out slightly, as if to touch the pews that had once stood there.
"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each; I do not think that they will sing to me," he said softly. "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown -- till human voices wake us, and we drown."
"What brings you to our humble church?" Oscar asked drily.
"Enid, actually. She said you'd pulled down the bricks in the window, and that the window was still standing." His gaze moved up to where light shone through the stained glass. "I see she was right. I imagine your young employer will want to tear it out."
"No," Oscar answered. "We're in touch with the church over restorative measures to take. Our crew foreman -- if we had a crew," he said, a little more sharply than intended, " -- Luc, has been cleaning the last of the mortar off the outside."
"Ah yes, I see him at services on Sundays," Wright answered.
"He's a devout man."
"And you aren't."
"Did you come here to review the argument we've already had?" Oscar inquired.
"No," Wright said, gently. "Enid saw something which frightened her. I can't say that I blame her. Did you know we have a strong masonic tradition in town? Not the organisation," he added. "Some of the finest stonemasonry in the country was once done in St Thomas. He's the patron saint of builders and architects, you know."
"And skeptics," Oscar added. Portia was watching with interest.
"I prefer to think of it as inquirers," Wright replied. "Those who base their inquiry on faith, not their faith on inquiry. Two generations of men, according to my research, dressed and carved the stone for this building. It takes a long time to build a church, when you haven't any power tools or cranes. The decorations are -- were, once -- some of the finest examples of the craft, before they began to erode."
"I'll bear that in mind. It's too bad none of the modern-day workers choose to be a part of the renovation of the church," Oscar answered, vaguely aware that they were now involved in some kind of diplomatic negotiation. What the stakes were, he couldn't quite see, but he had the feeling he might even be winning.
"Touche," said the priest. "I don't think they'd enjoy trimming down the stone to fit your specifications, however."
"I'm not running around with a sledgehammer madly knocking the heads off gargoyles," Oscar retorted. "I'm a restorationist, you know. I preserve things for a living."
"Yes, I did some research on you after our last meeting."
Oscar heard Portia swear under her breath.
"The last building you worked on burned to the ground."
"Yes, well, this one won't, will it? Good solid stone," Oscar joked, weakly.
"It was destroyed."
Oscar regarded Wright for a moment, then turned and walked to the laptop on the table in the crossing, where the screensaver endlessly rotated a digital model of the Piazza Armerina. He tapped the touchpad a few times, quickly, and called up a folder that required a password to access. Wright followed him more slowly, peering at the screen.
"This is the Hotel L&L," he said. "Look at it. Go ahead."
He kicked out a chair, and the priest seated himself, cycling slowly through a series of photographs and renderings. Luc came in through the window about halfway through the slideshow, and stopped in his tracks when he saw Oscar, face betraying his fury, bending over the priest with an angry set to his shoulders. Luc glanced at Portia and crossed himself, but he stayed where he was.
"I painted these," Oscar said, in a low, tense voice. "I lived in that room. I drank wine from that cellar. I bought that paint and drew those plans. I lived for that hotel. I heard her speaking to me, I protected her, and when she caught fire I was inside her. I watched her fall piece by piece to the ground and felt every minute of it in my heart."
"But you couldn't stop it from being destroyed," Wright replied, calmly, turning his face up to Oscar's. He gave the architect another small smile, rose, and left. There was silence for a moment, and then Oscar, in one swift movement, fetched up an empty coffee cup from the table and threw it at one of the church walls with an angry bellow. It shattered, deafeningly.
"Dammit," he said, when Portia and Luc flinched. He took a deep breath and walked across the intervening space, touching the white smear of dust on the wall where the mug had impacted and disentigrated. "Luc, would you bring me a broom, please?"
"Oui," Luc said, looking worried. He ducked down the nave to the entryway, and into a side corridor that led to a series of small storage rooms, returning shortly with a dustpan and a hand-brush.
"Thanks," Oscar said, and began sweeping up the coffee cup. Portia rose and walked to the laptop, advancing through a few images.
"I didn't know you kept any of these," she said. "I thought they all went onto that storage disk for the insurance people."
Oscar, quietly, continued to brush up the shards of mug.
"You can't listen to him, you know," she said.
"Of course I can. He didn't lie at any point, did he?"
"He doesn't understand. We do."
"Sometimes I wonder."
Luc cleared his throat. "He is a priest, Portia."
"Since when are priests all knowing and always right?" Portia asked. "He's a petty little man who's upset that we're going to be turning this ruin into something worth seeing and so he's told the whole town not to help us. He's a bully."
"He might be right," Oscar said, head bent over the dustpan. "My track record -- "
"You are Byron Oreglia's chosen son and you once worked for the best architectural firm in New York City," Portia snarled. "So shut the fuck up, Oscar, and go back to your drafting."
Oscar nodded and carried the dustpan outside, dumping it in the small trash bin wired to one corner of Luc's truck bed. Luc sidled up to Portia and wrapped an arm around her waist, letting her rest her head on his shoulder.
"What are we going to do about him?" she asked, quietly.
"It isn't our place."
"He's going to rip himself up over this church."
Luc smiled and ruffled her long hair. "Better artists than he have survived worse. I have faith in him, and in Félix."
"Oscar said he heard the building talking to him. It never talked to me. Do the buildings ever talk to you, Luc?"
"They don't need to," Luc replied. "My job is the easy part."
Also our fortythousandwords are pasteded on yay.