in which I make Yusuf a Guy Ritchie character (it wasn't hard)
Eames the Liar: Chapter 3
Part 1
Part 2
I’m on the phone when Eames wakes up the next morning, and it’s probably what wakes him, though considering it’s after eleven I don’t much care.
“Right,” I’m saying. “No, no, I understand. Sounds like a better gig anyway.” She wishes me luck and I smirk a little and say “Yeah, you too.”
Eames lifts his head and watches me hang up. “Who’s that?”
“Ariadne,” I say. “She’s engaged, though, getting a lot of offers these days.”
“All grown up, eh?” he says with a sleepy smile. I’m already showered and dressed, or the temptation to rejoin him would be greater. I ignore him instead.
“So who does that leave?”
I shrug. “I really don’t know. Good architects are harder and harder to come by these days, and I’ve exhausted our short list of options.”
Eames rolls over and stretches languorously. “Wait, what about Nash?”
“Nash?” I turn to look at him, somewhat astonished.
“Yeah,” he says innocently. “Didn’t you and Cobb pull a few jobs with him back in the old days?”
I don’t like thinking about Cobb, and I hesitate, only for a second. “You seriously don’t know what happened to Nash?” He shrugs, and I tell him, “Sold us out to Saito back when we were doing work for Cobol Engineering. Saito turned him over to Cobol, who, I can only assume, gave him a nice place to sleep for the rest of his life.”
“Jesus,” says Eames. “Our Saito?”
“Kind of hard to remember he’s actually a merciless corporate god sometimes, isn’t it?” I busy myself with the case file, neatening it and obsessively straightening papers. “Anyway, Nash is dead, and a traitor besides. So he’s out. I guess at this point we just ask around, see if anyone knows anyone. Or I guess I could do it myself, if I had to.”
This gives Eames pause, which I can detect, I don’t know how, with my back turned. I look at him over my shoulder and he’s sitting up, frowning at me.
“What?”
“I was thinking…” he says with great care, fending off a yawn. “I was thinking I should be the dreamer.”
I look at him. There’s no reason for me to argue, really, and yet this is suspicious. “You were, were you?” I say.
“Yeah.” He climbs off the bed and dresses himself halfway. “If you don’t mind. I feel like I might be able to better replicate territory Mr. Quid might be familiar with.”
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, and I’m pretty sure Eames is just trying to stay in control of the situation (he is), but I decide not to push it. “Well, fine,” I say. “In that case we’re going to need an architect.”
“We’ll get someone,” he says. His eyes fall onto the file in my hands. “You read anything interesting last night?”
“Few things,” I say, glancing at it. “This guy’s up to his ears in everything you can imagine, lots of stuff not even on file. He used to be a total burn-out, until he went to rehab and got his act together… stop me if this is stuff you already know.”
He gives me a look and makes a vague, “carry-on” sort of gesture.
“It says he was pretty reasonable until about two, three years ago, when he started getting into some really heavy shit. Couple of jobs went wrong, fucked over some people he had working with him. This group called the Wild Bunch. Know anything about them?”
Oh, Arthur. If you could only see the way he twitches at that, the way he stiffens so imperceptibly. If you could only feel the way his stomach turns over.
“A bit,” he says, ruthlessly nonchalant. “You know, word-of-mouth.”
“It doesn’t say too much about them,” I say, naïvely pressing on, flipping through pages. “Bunch of guys with stupid names-you know, street names… the three in question were One Two, Mumbles, Handsome Bob. They were pretty small-time, I guess.” I look at him, searching for any signs of recognition. His face is a mask, expertly done. He shrugs.
“I guess Quid asked them to do something they couldn’t quite handle,” I say, skimming the page. “Not sure quite what. But afterward they split, and Quid kind of went off the deep end. Didn’t bail them out.” I double check the next page. “Says here one of them didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it meaning what?” he asks, and there’s only the faintest trace of tension in his voice.
“Meaning whoever it was out for revenge got a hold of him,” I say. “Meaning they killed him.”
Eames doesn’t say anything for just a moment. He crosses quickly into the bathroom, and I hear him running water and washing his face before he says, “Does it say which one?”
I check again. “No,” I say. “Just that one of them died and the other two haven’t been heard from since.” I look up toward the bathroom. “You sure you didn’t know these guys?”
“Like I always say, I know every gangster in London,” he says. “I’m just curious, that’s all.” He comes out. “I’m going to call Yusuf,” he says abruptly.
This gives me a bit of a start. “What?”
“Yusuf,” he says again, searching around for his phone.
“Why?” I ask. “We don’t need him for this job, it’s just one level.”
“Maybe he knows somebody,” he says, and finds his phone. He’s already putting the number in on the way out the door. “An architect, I mean.” And he’s gone, and I sigh heavily and look at the files in the empty hope that they’ll reveal something new.
Eames gets downstairs to where I can’t hear him before Yusuf picks up, sounding sleepy. “Yeah?” he mutters.
“Yusuf, it’s Eames,” he says, pacing. “Do you know what happened to One Two and Mumbles?”
Bewildered and not quite awake yet, Yusuf can only blurt, “What?”
“Is one of them dead? I only just heard one of them is apparently dead.”
“Jesus, Eames, I don’t know,” says Yusuf, suddenly alert. “I haven’t heard anything more than you have from anyone. What’s going on?”
Eames sighs. “Look, I’m in sort of a predicament.”
“Everything all right?”
“Not especially,” he says. “Look, I-Arthur and I have been hired to do a London job.”
Yusuf pauses, because he knows London almost as well as Eames. “Anyone we know?” he asks warily.
Eames has to steel himself a bit before he can say, “Archy wants us to extract from Johnny Quid.”
There’s a long pause, in the very back of which Eames can hear the distant mew of Yusuf’s cat. Eventually, Yusuf says, “What?”
Eames is a nice guy, and he and Yusuf go way back. After Yusuf drove that van off the bridge, an ordeal which was at least a little traumatic, for which he was barely recognized, and which took only seven seconds (during which the rest of the team experienced hours to bond over), Eames felt it was the least he could do to treat Yusuf to several drinks and a bottle of wine in Yusuf’s hotel room once the bar closed at four, by which time Eames had embellished the story to the point of Fischer throwing himself across his father’s prostrate form and issuing an agonized, drawn-out “Why?!”
“I think he’s gay,” says Eames, swaying slightly as he pours himself another glass.
“Fischer?” says Yusuf dubiously.
“Gotta be. Look at those cheekbones. He’s like a girl.”
“You think everyone’s gay,” dismisses Yusuf.
“No, I wish everyone were gay; there’s a difference,” says Eames. “And I never thought you were gay.”
“Well, good,” says Yusuf, grabs the wine and finishes it straight from the bottle. Eames watches him with a half-formed grin.
“Going down on that bottle isn’t helping your case,” he says.
“Shut it,” says Yusuf, then dissolves into a giggle, tumbling backwards onto his bed. Eames stretches out on the floor and gazes up at the ceiling thoughtfully.
“What about Arthur?” he wonders aloud.
Yusuf lifts his head enough to squint down at his friend. “What about Arthur?”
Eames raises himself up on his elbows. “Which team do you think he swims with?”
Yusuf feels momentarily lost, then drops his head back down with a heavy, drunken cackle. “What the hell kind of metaphor is that?” he manages to get out between uneven breaths.
“I’m bein’ serious,” says Eames with enough slur to make this a seriously doubt-worthy statement.
“Eames.” Yusuf sits up so quickly it surprises both of them. Yusuf takes a moment to steady himself. “Eames, you clearly want to shag the boy. Just do it and find out.”
“No,” mutters Eames.
“Come on, not like anything you haven’t done before.”
“No,” says Eames again, with an emphatic but ambiguous hand gesture.
“Why not?”
“Because I did that already,” says Eames, and he, too, sits up, hoisting himself by the bed coverings. “I mean that’s why he acts all smart with me and we pretend we hate each other, I mean, I pretend I hate him anyway because he’s a prat, that’s what, maybe he really does hate me, I don’t really know one way or the other, but he’s not man enough to tell me one way or the other, or talk to me ever again, so yeah, that pisses me off a little, but I mean really he’s just afraid I’ve told someone or I’m going to tell someone because I promised not to, and I haven’t, I didn’t, I never would tell anyone, I wouldn’t do that, I respect his privacy almost as much as I think he’s an inconveniently beautiful bastard. But I don’t kiss and tell, I don’t do things like that. I wouldn’t even tell you.”
“Tell me what?” says Yusuf, who’d gotten lost again.
“That I shagged Arthur,” says Eames. “I just told you that.”
“Right,” says Yusuf.
There’s a moment’s hesitation as they both nod to each other vaguely.
“Oh, wait,” says Eames. “Shit.”
“So, wait,” says Yusuf slowly. “Then… Arthur is gay?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” says Eames. “We were drunk. He wasn’t acting like himself.”
“Well, did he consent?” says Yusuf reasonably.
“Yes of course he did,” says Eames, and swats irritably at Yusuf’s hand. “Who do you think I am?”
“You never know,” says Yusuf, not taking the time to consider the irony of this statement. “Well if he went along with it, don’t you think he-”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know,” says Eames, lying back down. “He made me swear not to tell anyone. What does that say about him?”
Yusuf shrugs. “Closet case number one,” he says.
“Could be that,” says Eames. “Or not necessarily. Maybe he’s completely comfortable with himself, and it’s me he’s ashamed of.”
“What,” says Yusuf with high-pitched incredulity. “Bullshit.”
It is bullshit, and Eames knows it. The only person ashamed of Eames is Eames, because Eames knows that Eames is a dirty liar. The night Eames is referring to took place a good year and a half before now, and there was absolutely no shagging anywhere in it. This was the night Arthur became a stick in the mud, and Eames thinks he’s wrecked his little window of opportunity. Their first job together is over and it went well, and they figure a little celebration is in order.
Eames doesn’t remember much about that night, and he believes it’s because he wanted so badly to remember every last detail, to frame it forever in his mind, to have it endless and perfect. What he got for his trouble was a blur, half-remembered sentences he can’t be sure he didn’t invent, and Arthur’s smile, and, infuriatingly, the total of the tab. He remembers the darkness of the room Arthur dragged him into, remembers the deep, sexy laugh in his throat as he pushes Eames against the door and kisses him. He doesn’t remember the kiss. The kiss is the black hole.
What he remembers is Arthur smoking again, this time it’s a clove, sweet-smelling, poison-breathing falseness, lying to itself and to all young people that it could be better than the cigarette because of the simple superficial detail of taste. Masked cigarette, masked boy. Eames laughs.
“Don’t laugh,” protests Arthur, because he’s been talking about something or other that seemed dreadfully important at the time, and he has miles of insecurity to hide. “I’m being serious.”
“I’m not laughing at you,” Eames lies. “Just for the hell of it.” He reaches out and plays a little with Arthur’s hair, back when it still hung in his face. “You should be serious more often, it suits you.”
“Cute,” says Arthur. He tilts his head back. “You know you’re really sexy at this angle?”
Arthur’s been trying to seduce him all night and Eames isn’t having it. Eames doesn’t want the bad lie. Eames wants the bad liar. Eames wants him sober and wants him knowing who he is and what he wants. Eames has never felt like this about anyone before, almost.
“Shh,” he says.
“What do you want to do to me?” says Arthur, leans close, presses himself against Eames, thin, warm, lithe body, perfect little waist, Eames could fit his arm around it and hold Arthur in the crook of his elbow.
Arthur tugs at his earlobe, pinched lightly between his teeth. “What do you want?” he whispers.
Such fine little points, is Arthur. Teeth, nails, eyelashes, tapered fingers, trim waist, the fabric of his voice, the feel of his clothes tight beneath Eames’s fingertips. Does he even sweat? What noises could he possibly make, with his voice so taut and controlled? Arthur is every lovely detail Eames could ever have imagined, and every lovely detail he could ever want to know.
Eames remembers gripping his shoulders, gently extracting himself, pushing him away.
“Darling boy,” he says. “I would give anything to love you.”
Arthur looks at him, a blank slate, marble, unmolded. Eames wants to hold him, to kiss him again. He will not.
“But you aren’t who I want to know,” Eames says, and this is where it happens, this is where he sets it off. “You’re something else, something I don’t think you understand, and something I understand too well. And for as long as you think that’s acceptable, you will only be parts of a greater, unrealized whole.”
Eames leaves Arthur alone, stupidly, in that little room, swallowed up in the lung-blackening pool of spiced pungent smoke.
It is after this that Arthur gives up the lie: he becomes the stick in the mud that is the true Arthur, the Arthur who is at peace with being an uptight guy in a suit. Unfortunately, with the persona also goes the seductive attitude, the wanting looks, the innuendo. With the true Arthur comes the challenge of getting Arthur to admit he likes you, and getting him to admit he’s okay liking you, okay liking men, okay having any kind of sexuality at all. And sure, real Arthur doesn’t want anyone to know he and Eames shared a drunken smoke-filled kiss in the back of a bar over a year ago, and Eames thinks his window is gone, thinks maybe Arthur doesn’t want him anymore and it was all a missed opportunity. Their relationship becomes fraught with this unresolved sexual tension that has everyone rolling their eyes.
It’s a month after the Fischer job ends before Arthur drinks a little too much and calls Eames and says “Why haven’t we done it yet, you fucking douchebag?”
Of course, Yusuf can’t know that’s how it went down, because Eames and Yusuf go way back, and Yusuf likes thinking that he alone knows Eames’s deep dark secret that he and Arthur had a drunken shag one night long before they finally got their act together. Even after it finally does happen Eames decides to let Yusuf go on keeping that nonexistent secret. Eames is nice like that.
“You said no, right?” says Yusuf. “Tell me you backed out!”
“Well…” says Eames, which is all he really has to say.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” says Yusuf so shrilly that Eames has to pull the phone away from his ear.
“Look, it’s not as simple as all that,” says Eames, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “This is too big. One of my best friends in the world is dead and I didn’t even know. I haven’t even spoken to either of them since we all split. I have to find out which of them it was.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, we can figure that out in two day’s time,” he says. “Give me a few hours, I’ll make a few calls, no problem.”
“That isn’t the point,” says Eames, even though this is a shoddy defense and he knows it. “You know what Johnny cost me. I have to face him.”
“You do realize how dangerous this is,” says Yusuf. “How shit-stupid. Does Arthur understand who Johnny is, have you explained it adequately?”
It’s when Eames doesn’t reply that Yusuf says, “Oh my god, he doesn’t know about you, does he?”
“No, and he’s not going to,” says Eames. “This is between me and Johnny.”
“When is the job?”
Eames isn’t quite sure how to respond. “Uh-”
“I’m coming. Send me the information and I’ll be there to meet you.”
“No, Yusuf, it’s a one-level mission, it’s basic stuff,” protests Eames. “All we need is an architect.”
“Fine; I’ll bring one,” says Yusuf. “I know a guy, he’s decent, looking for work. But I’m coming too, whether you like it or not. I’m not going to let you be this stupid on your own. You’ll fuck it all straight to hell left to your own devices, and I’m not going to be the one held accountable for losing the best forger in the damn business to historical drama.”
And Eames smiles a little, because he and Yusuf go way back, back to a period when he wasn’t Eames at all but a shit-scared small-time gangster named Handsome Bob, and he shows up at the door of Yusuf’s apartment with nowhere else to go. Yusuf’s been a successful member of the drug scene, and now he’s getting out, retiring early, moving to Mombasa and getting into a brand new scene, something about dream-sharing technology, a field in dire need of crooked chemists. So he’s getting out of London; and Handsome Bob needs an out, so Yusuf takes him, and he goes from Handsome to Robert to Eames in a matter of days. Funny how easy it is to unravel a man’s identity like that.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll think of some excuse for Arthur. And you’re not telling him shit, so don’t get any clever ideas.”
“He couldn’t get Ariadne, I take it,” says Yusuf conversationally.
“No,” says Eames. “She’s doing quite well for herself at the moment.”
“Sort of a blessing in disguise, isn’t it?” says Yusuf. “If she was around, she’d be in your business until she had you and Arthur spilling every last dark secret to each other.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Eames, even though he knows it’s true. “Arthur hasn’t got any dark secrets.”
Yusuf laughs and says, “Send me what I need. I’ll see you soon, Bobski.”
Eames is a little bit frozen when he hangs up the phone, because it’s been so very long since Eames has thought about anything at all associated with that particular name.
More soon! Feedback and/or praise appreciated.
Continued here.
Part 1
Part 2
I’m on the phone when Eames wakes up the next morning, and it’s probably what wakes him, though considering it’s after eleven I don’t much care.
“Right,” I’m saying. “No, no, I understand. Sounds like a better gig anyway.” She wishes me luck and I smirk a little and say “Yeah, you too.”
Eames lifts his head and watches me hang up. “Who’s that?”
“Ariadne,” I say. “She’s engaged, though, getting a lot of offers these days.”
“All grown up, eh?” he says with a sleepy smile. I’m already showered and dressed, or the temptation to rejoin him would be greater. I ignore him instead.
“So who does that leave?”
I shrug. “I really don’t know. Good architects are harder and harder to come by these days, and I’ve exhausted our short list of options.”
Eames rolls over and stretches languorously. “Wait, what about Nash?”
“Nash?” I turn to look at him, somewhat astonished.
“Yeah,” he says innocently. “Didn’t you and Cobb pull a few jobs with him back in the old days?”
I don’t like thinking about Cobb, and I hesitate, only for a second. “You seriously don’t know what happened to Nash?” He shrugs, and I tell him, “Sold us out to Saito back when we were doing work for Cobol Engineering. Saito turned him over to Cobol, who, I can only assume, gave him a nice place to sleep for the rest of his life.”
“Jesus,” says Eames. “Our Saito?”
“Kind of hard to remember he’s actually a merciless corporate god sometimes, isn’t it?” I busy myself with the case file, neatening it and obsessively straightening papers. “Anyway, Nash is dead, and a traitor besides. So he’s out. I guess at this point we just ask around, see if anyone knows anyone. Or I guess I could do it myself, if I had to.”
This gives Eames pause, which I can detect, I don’t know how, with my back turned. I look at him over my shoulder and he’s sitting up, frowning at me.
“What?”
“I was thinking…” he says with great care, fending off a yawn. “I was thinking I should be the dreamer.”
I look at him. There’s no reason for me to argue, really, and yet this is suspicious. “You were, were you?” I say.
“Yeah.” He climbs off the bed and dresses himself halfway. “If you don’t mind. I feel like I might be able to better replicate territory Mr. Quid might be familiar with.”
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, and I’m pretty sure Eames is just trying to stay in control of the situation (he is), but I decide not to push it. “Well, fine,” I say. “In that case we’re going to need an architect.”
“We’ll get someone,” he says. His eyes fall onto the file in my hands. “You read anything interesting last night?”
“Few things,” I say, glancing at it. “This guy’s up to his ears in everything you can imagine, lots of stuff not even on file. He used to be a total burn-out, until he went to rehab and got his act together… stop me if this is stuff you already know.”
He gives me a look and makes a vague, “carry-on” sort of gesture.
“It says he was pretty reasonable until about two, three years ago, when he started getting into some really heavy shit. Couple of jobs went wrong, fucked over some people he had working with him. This group called the Wild Bunch. Know anything about them?”
Oh, Arthur. If you could only see the way he twitches at that, the way he stiffens so imperceptibly. If you could only feel the way his stomach turns over.
“A bit,” he says, ruthlessly nonchalant. “You know, word-of-mouth.”
“It doesn’t say too much about them,” I say, naïvely pressing on, flipping through pages. “Bunch of guys with stupid names-you know, street names… the three in question were One Two, Mumbles, Handsome Bob. They were pretty small-time, I guess.” I look at him, searching for any signs of recognition. His face is a mask, expertly done. He shrugs.
“I guess Quid asked them to do something they couldn’t quite handle,” I say, skimming the page. “Not sure quite what. But afterward they split, and Quid kind of went off the deep end. Didn’t bail them out.” I double check the next page. “Says here one of them didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it meaning what?” he asks, and there’s only the faintest trace of tension in his voice.
“Meaning whoever it was out for revenge got a hold of him,” I say. “Meaning they killed him.”
Eames doesn’t say anything for just a moment. He crosses quickly into the bathroom, and I hear him running water and washing his face before he says, “Does it say which one?”
I check again. “No,” I say. “Just that one of them died and the other two haven’t been heard from since.” I look up toward the bathroom. “You sure you didn’t know these guys?”
“Like I always say, I know every gangster in London,” he says. “I’m just curious, that’s all.” He comes out. “I’m going to call Yusuf,” he says abruptly.
This gives me a bit of a start. “What?”
“Yusuf,” he says again, searching around for his phone.
“Why?” I ask. “We don’t need him for this job, it’s just one level.”
“Maybe he knows somebody,” he says, and finds his phone. He’s already putting the number in on the way out the door. “An architect, I mean.” And he’s gone, and I sigh heavily and look at the files in the empty hope that they’ll reveal something new.
Eames gets downstairs to where I can’t hear him before Yusuf picks up, sounding sleepy. “Yeah?” he mutters.
“Yusuf, it’s Eames,” he says, pacing. “Do you know what happened to One Two and Mumbles?”
Bewildered and not quite awake yet, Yusuf can only blurt, “What?”
“Is one of them dead? I only just heard one of them is apparently dead.”
“Jesus, Eames, I don’t know,” says Yusuf, suddenly alert. “I haven’t heard anything more than you have from anyone. What’s going on?”
Eames sighs. “Look, I’m in sort of a predicament.”
“Everything all right?”
“Not especially,” he says. “Look, I-Arthur and I have been hired to do a London job.”
Yusuf pauses, because he knows London almost as well as Eames. “Anyone we know?” he asks warily.
Eames has to steel himself a bit before he can say, “Archy wants us to extract from Johnny Quid.”
There’s a long pause, in the very back of which Eames can hear the distant mew of Yusuf’s cat. Eventually, Yusuf says, “What?”
Eames is a nice guy, and he and Yusuf go way back. After Yusuf drove that van off the bridge, an ordeal which was at least a little traumatic, for which he was barely recognized, and which took only seven seconds (during which the rest of the team experienced hours to bond over), Eames felt it was the least he could do to treat Yusuf to several drinks and a bottle of wine in Yusuf’s hotel room once the bar closed at four, by which time Eames had embellished the story to the point of Fischer throwing himself across his father’s prostrate form and issuing an agonized, drawn-out “Why?!”
“I think he’s gay,” says Eames, swaying slightly as he pours himself another glass.
“Fischer?” says Yusuf dubiously.
“Gotta be. Look at those cheekbones. He’s like a girl.”
“You think everyone’s gay,” dismisses Yusuf.
“No, I wish everyone were gay; there’s a difference,” says Eames. “And I never thought you were gay.”
“Well, good,” says Yusuf, grabs the wine and finishes it straight from the bottle. Eames watches him with a half-formed grin.
“Going down on that bottle isn’t helping your case,” he says.
“Shut it,” says Yusuf, then dissolves into a giggle, tumbling backwards onto his bed. Eames stretches out on the floor and gazes up at the ceiling thoughtfully.
“What about Arthur?” he wonders aloud.
Yusuf lifts his head enough to squint down at his friend. “What about Arthur?”
Eames raises himself up on his elbows. “Which team do you think he swims with?”
Yusuf feels momentarily lost, then drops his head back down with a heavy, drunken cackle. “What the hell kind of metaphor is that?” he manages to get out between uneven breaths.
“I’m bein’ serious,” says Eames with enough slur to make this a seriously doubt-worthy statement.
“Eames.” Yusuf sits up so quickly it surprises both of them. Yusuf takes a moment to steady himself. “Eames, you clearly want to shag the boy. Just do it and find out.”
“No,” mutters Eames.
“Come on, not like anything you haven’t done before.”
“No,” says Eames again, with an emphatic but ambiguous hand gesture.
“Why not?”
“Because I did that already,” says Eames, and he, too, sits up, hoisting himself by the bed coverings. “I mean that’s why he acts all smart with me and we pretend we hate each other, I mean, I pretend I hate him anyway because he’s a prat, that’s what, maybe he really does hate me, I don’t really know one way or the other, but he’s not man enough to tell me one way or the other, or talk to me ever again, so yeah, that pisses me off a little, but I mean really he’s just afraid I’ve told someone or I’m going to tell someone because I promised not to, and I haven’t, I didn’t, I never would tell anyone, I wouldn’t do that, I respect his privacy almost as much as I think he’s an inconveniently beautiful bastard. But I don’t kiss and tell, I don’t do things like that. I wouldn’t even tell you.”
“Tell me what?” says Yusuf, who’d gotten lost again.
“That I shagged Arthur,” says Eames. “I just told you that.”
“Right,” says Yusuf.
There’s a moment’s hesitation as they both nod to each other vaguely.
“Oh, wait,” says Eames. “Shit.”
“So, wait,” says Yusuf slowly. “Then… Arthur is gay?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” says Eames. “We were drunk. He wasn’t acting like himself.”
“Well, did he consent?” says Yusuf reasonably.
“Yes of course he did,” says Eames, and swats irritably at Yusuf’s hand. “Who do you think I am?”
“You never know,” says Yusuf, not taking the time to consider the irony of this statement. “Well if he went along with it, don’t you think he-”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know,” says Eames, lying back down. “He made me swear not to tell anyone. What does that say about him?”
Yusuf shrugs. “Closet case number one,” he says.
“Could be that,” says Eames. “Or not necessarily. Maybe he’s completely comfortable with himself, and it’s me he’s ashamed of.”
“What,” says Yusuf with high-pitched incredulity. “Bullshit.”
It is bullshit, and Eames knows it. The only person ashamed of Eames is Eames, because Eames knows that Eames is a dirty liar. The night Eames is referring to took place a good year and a half before now, and there was absolutely no shagging anywhere in it. This was the night Arthur became a stick in the mud, and Eames thinks he’s wrecked his little window of opportunity. Their first job together is over and it went well, and they figure a little celebration is in order.
Eames doesn’t remember much about that night, and he believes it’s because he wanted so badly to remember every last detail, to frame it forever in his mind, to have it endless and perfect. What he got for his trouble was a blur, half-remembered sentences he can’t be sure he didn’t invent, and Arthur’s smile, and, infuriatingly, the total of the tab. He remembers the darkness of the room Arthur dragged him into, remembers the deep, sexy laugh in his throat as he pushes Eames against the door and kisses him. He doesn’t remember the kiss. The kiss is the black hole.
What he remembers is Arthur smoking again, this time it’s a clove, sweet-smelling, poison-breathing falseness, lying to itself and to all young people that it could be better than the cigarette because of the simple superficial detail of taste. Masked cigarette, masked boy. Eames laughs.
“Don’t laugh,” protests Arthur, because he’s been talking about something or other that seemed dreadfully important at the time, and he has miles of insecurity to hide. “I’m being serious.”
“I’m not laughing at you,” Eames lies. “Just for the hell of it.” He reaches out and plays a little with Arthur’s hair, back when it still hung in his face. “You should be serious more often, it suits you.”
“Cute,” says Arthur. He tilts his head back. “You know you’re really sexy at this angle?”
Arthur’s been trying to seduce him all night and Eames isn’t having it. Eames doesn’t want the bad lie. Eames wants the bad liar. Eames wants him sober and wants him knowing who he is and what he wants. Eames has never felt like this about anyone before, almost.
“Shh,” he says.
“What do you want to do to me?” says Arthur, leans close, presses himself against Eames, thin, warm, lithe body, perfect little waist, Eames could fit his arm around it and hold Arthur in the crook of his elbow.
Arthur tugs at his earlobe, pinched lightly between his teeth. “What do you want?” he whispers.
Such fine little points, is Arthur. Teeth, nails, eyelashes, tapered fingers, trim waist, the fabric of his voice, the feel of his clothes tight beneath Eames’s fingertips. Does he even sweat? What noises could he possibly make, with his voice so taut and controlled? Arthur is every lovely detail Eames could ever have imagined, and every lovely detail he could ever want to know.
Eames remembers gripping his shoulders, gently extracting himself, pushing him away.
“Darling boy,” he says. “I would give anything to love you.”
Arthur looks at him, a blank slate, marble, unmolded. Eames wants to hold him, to kiss him again. He will not.
“But you aren’t who I want to know,” Eames says, and this is where it happens, this is where he sets it off. “You’re something else, something I don’t think you understand, and something I understand too well. And for as long as you think that’s acceptable, you will only be parts of a greater, unrealized whole.”
Eames leaves Arthur alone, stupidly, in that little room, swallowed up in the lung-blackening pool of spiced pungent smoke.
It is after this that Arthur gives up the lie: he becomes the stick in the mud that is the true Arthur, the Arthur who is at peace with being an uptight guy in a suit. Unfortunately, with the persona also goes the seductive attitude, the wanting looks, the innuendo. With the true Arthur comes the challenge of getting Arthur to admit he likes you, and getting him to admit he’s okay liking you, okay liking men, okay having any kind of sexuality at all. And sure, real Arthur doesn’t want anyone to know he and Eames shared a drunken smoke-filled kiss in the back of a bar over a year ago, and Eames thinks his window is gone, thinks maybe Arthur doesn’t want him anymore and it was all a missed opportunity. Their relationship becomes fraught with this unresolved sexual tension that has everyone rolling their eyes.
It’s a month after the Fischer job ends before Arthur drinks a little too much and calls Eames and says “Why haven’t we done it yet, you fucking douchebag?”
Of course, Yusuf can’t know that’s how it went down, because Eames and Yusuf go way back, and Yusuf likes thinking that he alone knows Eames’s deep dark secret that he and Arthur had a drunken shag one night long before they finally got their act together. Even after it finally does happen Eames decides to let Yusuf go on keeping that nonexistent secret. Eames is nice like that.
“You said no, right?” says Yusuf. “Tell me you backed out!”
“Well…” says Eames, which is all he really has to say.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” says Yusuf so shrilly that Eames has to pull the phone away from his ear.
“Look, it’s not as simple as all that,” says Eames, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “This is too big. One of my best friends in the world is dead and I didn’t even know. I haven’t even spoken to either of them since we all split. I have to find out which of them it was.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, we can figure that out in two day’s time,” he says. “Give me a few hours, I’ll make a few calls, no problem.”
“That isn’t the point,” says Eames, even though this is a shoddy defense and he knows it. “You know what Johnny cost me. I have to face him.”
“You do realize how dangerous this is,” says Yusuf. “How shit-stupid. Does Arthur understand who Johnny is, have you explained it adequately?”
It’s when Eames doesn’t reply that Yusuf says, “Oh my god, he doesn’t know about you, does he?”
“No, and he’s not going to,” says Eames. “This is between me and Johnny.”
“When is the job?”
Eames isn’t quite sure how to respond. “Uh-”
“I’m coming. Send me the information and I’ll be there to meet you.”
“No, Yusuf, it’s a one-level mission, it’s basic stuff,” protests Eames. “All we need is an architect.”
“Fine; I’ll bring one,” says Yusuf. “I know a guy, he’s decent, looking for work. But I’m coming too, whether you like it or not. I’m not going to let you be this stupid on your own. You’ll fuck it all straight to hell left to your own devices, and I’m not going to be the one held accountable for losing the best forger in the damn business to historical drama.”
And Eames smiles a little, because he and Yusuf go way back, back to a period when he wasn’t Eames at all but a shit-scared small-time gangster named Handsome Bob, and he shows up at the door of Yusuf’s apartment with nowhere else to go. Yusuf’s been a successful member of the drug scene, and now he’s getting out, retiring early, moving to Mombasa and getting into a brand new scene, something about dream-sharing technology, a field in dire need of crooked chemists. So he’s getting out of London; and Handsome Bob needs an out, so Yusuf takes him, and he goes from Handsome to Robert to Eames in a matter of days. Funny how easy it is to unravel a man’s identity like that.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll think of some excuse for Arthur. And you’re not telling him shit, so don’t get any clever ideas.”
“He couldn’t get Ariadne, I take it,” says Yusuf conversationally.
“No,” says Eames. “She’s doing quite well for herself at the moment.”
“Sort of a blessing in disguise, isn’t it?” says Yusuf. “If she was around, she’d be in your business until she had you and Arthur spilling every last dark secret to each other.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Eames, even though he knows it’s true. “Arthur hasn’t got any dark secrets.”
Yusuf laughs and says, “Send me what I need. I’ll see you soon, Bobski.”
Eames is a little bit frozen when he hangs up the phone, because it’s been so very long since Eames has thought about anything at all associated with that particular name.
More soon! Feedback and/or praise appreciated.
Continued here.