A Season to Loneliness (Part 2)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3
Chapter 3
Morning.
It is already morning, yet the room is still dark, my body aches. It is a strange, guilty ache, but it’s not the first time I have felt it. The first time is years ago, years and years and years, almost another lifetime ago. When I finally open my eyes, I am in Jared’s room, his bed is not fit for two people but somehow we still manage to fit. His arms are curled loosely around my waist and his breath is moist, warm against the back of my neck.
Outside, I hear the sound of rain, thudding gently against the glass.
I think he is awake, but I do not want to disturb him if he is still asleep. So I lie still, against him, keeping my eyes closed. I stare at his room, it’s as pathetic as I remember from last night.
“Jared?” I say.
“Yes, I’m awake.”
Jared does not say anything after that. He does not move either, I wonder if he is trying to wait until I say something. Slowly, I turn around to face him. He looks beautiful in the morning, with his hair tousled and his eyes a hazy green. I almost forget I should be repulsed by him and everything that we have done. “It’s raining outside.” I cannot think of anything else to, I seem to be that way around him, permanently.
“Good, I like the rain,” Jared leans in an inch and kisses me. It is captivating, and I never want to leave. “It is all the more reason for you to stay here with me.”
I feel like I am drunk all over again, “Do you want me to stay?” I touch his face, his skin is smooth, and it is getting easier and easier to do. I am terrified.
“I would like that very much, oui.” His lips trace along my jaw, “I’ll have to resign myself to reading Baudelaire after you go away.”
I close my eyes and inhale deeply, “I hate poetry.” Most poets do not try hard enough to make sense. Jared is kissing my shoulder.
“Really?” His head is an assuring weight on my chest, I run my hands through his hair again, “And here I am, thinking you’d be the next Rimbaud. I suppose I will have to put my faith in someone else. I’m a helpless romantic.”
“Why Rimbaud?” I crane my head to look at his bookshelf, as if the answers are there.
“Rimbaud was very handsome.” Jared grins. “As are you. I don’t understand half of his poetry, to be honest.”
I laugh, it’s funny, in a strange way. Rimbaud is handsome, is that it? “I prefer stories.”
Jared touches the side of my face, his fingers are warm and adoring. “Tell me a story.”
I heave a long-suffering sigh, “I have no stories.”
He snorts inelegantly, “I thought you said you were a writer.”
“I am,” I probably sound a bit too defensive. “Just not a very good one at the moment. If I get desperate, I suppose I can write about this very handsome pianist that I met in a bar. Although I don’t know that much about him.”
Jared reaches up to kiss me, his mouth gentle, soothing. I never want to leave this room ever again. My heart is thrumming in my chest, thudding almost painfully against my ribs. “But you do, you already know everything this is to know about me, Jensen.”
I suddenly hate it. All of it. The way he looks at me, begging me to take him far away from this horrible, horrible place.
His eyes are too wide and too honest. I quickly look away and push him off of me, “I think I’m going to go.”
He watches me fumble with my clothes and lights a cigarette. And though I almost want him to, Jared does not stop me. He merely smiles, and blows smoke towards the ceiling. Jared probably will not miss me, I sincerely hope he won’t, because he will never see me again.
I avoid going out for the next week. The rain is equally unrelenting, so maybe that is an excuse. I don’t go to Madame Sophia’s, I don’t go to Jared’s room, I don’t call Jeffrey, I hardly eat.
There is another letter from Danneel, this particular letter is a full six pages long, describing various sights and wonders in Barcelona in meticulous detail. The people are friendly, her Spanish is improving, and she is making a lot of friends. She says she is collecting fresh stories for me to tell, the locals are an intriguing bunch. She is currently fascinated with a photographer named Riley, who she met in a cafe. He has been all over the world, even wondrously exotic places like Athens. Spain has beautiful cafes. She thinks that she has gained weight from being too self indulgent.
She asks me how I am doing. I cannot really tell her that I have slept with a man in her absence. And that I can’t stop thinking about him. I don’t know what to write.
I can’t write to her. I can’t. Even after three shots of scotch, my head is swimming, but I can’t. What am I doing? The only good thing is, I’ve started writing again, putting my confusion down on paper is reassuring, somehow.
I don’t even know why Jared wants to trust me like that. He has no cause to trust me.
When Jeffrey does finally call me, I am mostly relieved. Because he is endlessly generous, he figures that it is just about time that I’ve frittered a cheque on some frivolous mademoiselle. He offers to buy me dinner, as long as I don’t mind Louis coming along.
As long as a free dinner is involved, I don’t much mind. I will just probably try to spend most of dinner not looking up.
This time, we agree to meet at Le Grenier Voyageur in an hour, some bistro I have never heard of. I take twenty minutes to make myself halfway presentable, ten to wonder whether or not it is a good idea to go, five to hunt for my shoes, and another fifteen for the cab ride. I am used to having drivers give me strange looks now, it is sort of odd this one doesn’t even look at me when I give the destination.
A first for me, I end up being early. Although I am not a wine connoisseur, the waiter is kind enough to cover for my shortcomings to bring me a bottle of something before Jeffrey and Louis walk in the door. Louis turns heads, but then, all of Jeffrey’s boys do.
“You’re...not late.” Jeffrey says, by the way of greeting.
“Apparently, I’m having an off day,” I shrug. “Bonsoir, Louis.”
Louis does not look amused, “What are you doing here?” I have met him only once, and it turned out to be a horrible meeting. He hasn’t forgotten either.
“Jensen likes to spend his money on girls,” Jeffrey says. “If I don’t take care of him once in a while, he would probably starve.”
“Well, you should let him starve. That way he will learn.” Louis crosses his arms and frowns pointedly in my direction.
I wonder if he knows what Jared thinks he knows, I keep my eyes trained on my wineglass.
“Louis,” There is nothing but fond affection in Jeffrey’s voice, “you promised me you would behave.”
Louis just crosses his arms and looks sulky.
Jeffrey says, “Don’t mind him, he is throwing a tantrum.”
I just shrug, it’s no business of mine. Jeffrey samples his wine and I can’t read his face, so I suppose the waiter did save my skin. I might have to slip him an extra tip later. “Your cheque is mostly safe, it went to rent. I didn’t have anything else to spend it on.” Not to mention no one. And even though I have already paid my rent, my landlady can smell poverty, she hates me.
“I’m surprised that you didn’t send anything to your beloved mademoiselle in Barcelona. Did you forget about her already?”
“You can’t just forget about someone like that,” I say. Well, that is not quite true, I’m sure Jeffrey can, but I can’t. “No, I haven’t. Danneel can handle herself, and she has plenty of money.”
Jeffrey raises a mildly curious eyebrow, “She wrote you?”
“Twice,” I nod.
“Did you write back?”
“Once,” I hedge. Her other letter is under my mattress, along with the unopened letter from my father, and my notebook. I am still not writing. “There isn’t much to say. She sounds like she is having fun.”
“She probably is, because you’re not there,” Jeffrey concedes with a knowing nod of his head. “And she’s probably thinking about having an affair.”
That...might hold some truth. After all, Danneel does dedicate a full page and a half of her letter detailing Riley’s exploits, and how all of his photos are absolutely breathtaking. But that doesn’t make things any less complicated for me. The guilt does not go away, “You’re disgusting.”
“Am I, now?” Jeffrey doesn’t look offended at all, he never does. The question is left hanging there in the air for a moment as the waiter comes back to take our orders. When I think he is smiling at me, I smile back. I don’t exactly know what Jeffrey has ordered, but he is paying so I am not so worried.
“You are. And you’re insufferable.”
“Louis suffers me.”
Louis is an idiot. But I don’t tell him that, it is a bit pointless, so I only roll my eyes, “I’m sure he is an angel.”
“Isn’t it good for you though? If she has an affair?”
I suddenly stare very hard at my hands. “What’s that supposed to mean? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jeffrey looks entirely too smug. I am sure Louis doesn’t understand half of what we’re saying, but he too, looks smug for no reason, maybe because he doesn’t like me much. “Jared.”
My face warms in warning and I keep my head down. “What about Jared?”
“You went back looking for him, didn’t you?”
“I enjoy his company, that is not a crime.” When I am sure my face is no longer going to betray me in all ways possible, I look up at him. “Besides, I’m not interested in men. You know that. You’re disgusting.”
It is a long time before he says anything, Jeffrey sips quietly at his wine, still looking smug. “One day, you’ll be a disgusting old man like me, it probably won’t take as long as you think.” He pauses, “Does Jared know that you hold no such interest in men?”
I refuse to look at him again.
He just laughs at me, “You did, didn’t you?”
“Did what?”
Jeffrey can’t stop laughing, and Louis looks rightfully perplexed. “He seduced you, and you slept with him. It is all over your face.”
I do not think it (whatever ‘it’ happens to be) is all over my face, but just in case, I still don’t look at him. “I...”
“Jensen.”
When he speaks to me like that, I have to look at him. I hate it. “Look, I don’t need this. I really don’t.”
Jeffrey’s expression is unreadable again, “Jared is not a bad person, he is an eager lover. Love him and let him love you, it is not so horrible. He might even be good for you, and he won’t be so quick to leave you for Barcelona.”
I say, “I thought you want to sleep with him.”
He only shrugs to that, “You’ll learn eventually once you’re an old man, that it is impossible to get everything that you want. Perhaps that is why you young men think us disgusting. We dream about such impossible things, and you don’t have to.”
I leave dinner early, with my filet half eaten; the food itself is not bad, but I am suddenly not hungry anymore. Though Jeffrey is bothered to see me go, Louis can’t wait for me to be on my way.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
For once, I think I’ve told Jeffrey the truth. I don’t know where I’m going, outside, it is still raining and cold, and there are not that many people around. When I see them, everyone seems in a hurry to get somewhere. Everyone knows where they are going. Everyone except me.
I wander around for a long time, until every part of me is numbed with the terrible cold. I truly do mean to go home, but when I get inside the cab that stops at the lonely corner where I stand, I give him the address to that despicable alley. I slip the driver extra before he thinks to ask.
The ride is long, long, but not nearly long enough. I can’t feel my feet at all by the time I make it to Madame Sophia’s. She doesn’t look nearly as imposing as last time. There is the tinkling of piano keys coming from the inside, it must be well after midnight by now.
Yet Jared sits there serenely in his corner at the piano. I don’t know the melody he is playing, but it seems to me, just as tempting as any siren’s song. I tiptoe into the bar, which is empty, and listen.
Finally he stops, I know he knows that I am there, though he does not look at me. “You have the habit of crawling in here like a drowned rat. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. What are you still doing here?”
Jared lights a cigarette, “I like to play when no one else is around. You hardly ever seem to know anything.”
“That’s your fault.” I say.
Now he turns to me, there is an ugly black bruise near his jaw and I take a step back. “Of course, things are always my fault.”
“What...happened to you?”
“Accident.” Jared dismisses it with a wave of his hand, “you have not been around me nearly long enough to notice, but I’m clumsy.”
I doubt that, but when he turns back to the piano, I touch him on the shoulder, and then I sift my hands through his hair, it’s comforting, and he lets me. “Sorry.”
He tips his head back to rest on my shoulder, “For?”
“I’m not sure.”
This time, Jared smiles, with the bruise and tired eyes, he still looks altogether intoxicating. “You’re complicated.”
“Not really.” Our mouths are very close--too close. I brush my thumb over his bruise. He closes his eyes, like he is savoring my touch on his skin, as if it is some delicate wine.
“If you were simple...” Jared trails off briefly, “You probably wouldn’t. Or maybe it’s just you being American, I wouldn’t know.” He tilts his head slightly so he can blow smoke in another direction other than my face.
I resent that, slightly. “You’re complicated.”
“Moi? Pourquoi?”
Because he has to go and ask me something as ridiculous as why, when I don’t have an answer. “I don’t understand you, if I don’t understand you, then you’re complicated. How is that complicated?”
“It just is,” Jared leans into my hand, plants a kiss on my palm. “And you want to kiss me. That’s very complicated, especially with your fiancee. If I am as tempting as you say, then it is just going to get worse.”
“Why do you sound so happy about that?” I can be a bit suspicious. “And she’s not...exactly, only a girlfriend.” As if that makes things any less awkward.
He studies me for a long moment, “So you lied to me.”
I feel strangely horrible as he sits up straight again, inhaling deeply from his cigarette. Even the thin wisps of smoke leaving his lips in the next moment seem angry. I let my hands fall back to my sides. “Jared--listen to me. You don’t know what you’re asking of me. You can’t just expect me to have an affair with you.” I really hate that word, only because Jeffrey’s entirely too fond of it. “Besides, it’s illegal.”
“This is Paris.”
Paris. I hate Paris.
Jared stands, and even though he is taller and looks down to me, I think his eyes are vulnerable. Vulnerable and honest. He takes my hands and holds them, too tightly. “Do you know what I think?”
“I don’t know,” my throat is so dry. I can’t even swallow.
“I think...” he smiles, “that if I were a woman, you would have the affair with me. You wouldn’t think about her at all.”
Whatever has given him that idea, I don’t even know. “Why do you even have to keep calling it that?”
Jared blinks, “An affair? That’s what you call it.”
“I thought you hated my Americanisms, why indulge in them now?” I think they have a kinder word in French.
“Because they’re endlessly amusing,” His thumbs rub my wrists. It is a little bit comforting. Jared leans very close to me, breathing over my mouth, I taste smoke. “You should kiss me now.”
I probably should kiss him, Jared is much too close to me. But I--I take another step back, he let me, although he does not let go of my hands. “What you said...that has nothing to do with it, all right? It is not because you’re...not a woman.” Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. I just don’t want to think about it.
“I have to say, I’m very confused.”
I swallow hard, it hurts. “Don’t make me do this. Please.”
Jared threads his fingers through mine, “I don’t think I am making you do anything that you don’t want to. Why is it so hard for you to kiss me? Don’t you want to? You want to.” His voice is low and inviting.
Ten years ago, things had been different. And things could have been different now, here with Jared, except--I couldn’t. I couldn’t even look at him. I look down at our hands locked together instead.
“Chad was right.” I say.
He laughs, but it’s a surprisingly bitter laugh, not at all suited to Jared. “You must be possessed to listen to Chad. What is he saying now?”
I swallow again, “He said...that you were dangerous.”
Jared winces, and maybe it is only my imagination, but I think his hands tighten in mine. “Why do you believe him?”
“I don’t really...” His head is a heavy weight on my shoulder when he leans forward. “It’s just that you,” Jared what? I scarcely know. I am not sure I want to. “I haven’t ever been...with a man, not before you.” It sounds convincing, to me anyway. He doesn’t ever need to know.
I think he is laughing at me again, the sound muffled against my neck. “A man can love just as well as a woman. Don’t tell me you doubt me on that account.”
Maybe Jeffrey has lied to me. After all, he wouldn’t know that Jared is a good lover if he hasn’t already been with him. “You want to steal me away from my girlfriend. Do you hate women that much?”
There is a brief silence,"Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know? - and they can be that shallow. And that dirty." He stops, as if to reach for his next words. I just wait.
"I perhaps don't like women very much, that's true. That hasn't stopped me from making love to many and loving one or two. But most of the time - most of the time I made love only with the body...that is despicable to me.”
It is despicable to me too, but for another reason entirely. I want to tell him that he is disgusting, no better than Chad or Jeffrey, but I stay quiet.
Jared continues again, since I don’t say anything. “You don’t love her enough. Maybe you don’t love her at all.”
These observations bother me, because I have to wonder if they’re true. I can’t just dismiss them. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I only know what I see, this is what I see.” He is whispering in my ear, “You’re lonely, even when you’re with her, you’re still miserable.”
Tentatively, I touch his shoulder. “I’m not miserable.”
“Plenty of people who are miserable never know they are. They don’t want to know these things.” He sounds so convincing, maybe Jared is one of these unknowingly miserable people. It’s not a far cry, I don’t think.
When I finally do shut up and kiss him, I taste thick, bitter desperation, it’s more bitter than the cigarette smoke that clings incessantly to his mouth. He is clinging to me like he has nothing else to hold on to. Like he is drowning without me. His fingers are fisted in my shirt, threatening to tear the fabric apart. After a short pause for air, we are kissing again. Again. Again.
I have him pinned against the wall, and Jared looks dazed.
“We should go.” He says.
“I don’t want to go,” I lick at his bruise, he moans for me. “Why do we have to go?”
“Chad lives upstairs, we don’t want to wake him.” Jared takes my hand and smiles a tempting smile, leading me like a lamb to the slaughter.
I wake up for the second time in Jared’s room. There is still no sunlight through the dirty curtains, but this time, I feel oddly content. I still think about ten years ago and another room, but I am not as terrified as I should be. The other half of the bed is empty. Jared is already awake, dressed, sitting at his piano, plunking out another haunting melody. All of his melodies are oddly melancholy.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, it’s just cold in here.” I say.
Jared looks at me, his eyes are surprisingly warm. “The heater has been broken for a long time. I’m sorry.”
He is sorry, his eyes seem unable to lie. “It’s not your fault. Really.”
“This time, it is my fault,” Jared shrugs. “If I paid more rent, maybe I can get the heater fixed.” He leaves the piano briefly to sit beside me, stroking my hair with his long fingers. “Are you going to leave again?”
Jared’s room is just as pathetic as he is. “I’m not going anywhere,” I say after a moment of silence, glancing up at him, the worried wrinkles on his face immediately smooth out and he looks like a young beautiful boy again. The bruise from last night has faded away. “But you should lie here to convince me anyway.” After a moment, he does, stretching out warm and solid above me. Even his deep laugh is reassuring.
I close my eyes.
“Tell me what you’re thinking about,” He urges softly, “You look like you’re thinking too hard.”
“I’m not...” I wrap my arms lazily around him and he nuzzles his nose against my neck. It’s pleasant. But my thoughts don’t go away so easily, he kisses slowly, everywhere, all over my body. “I’m not thinking. You’re thinking too; unlucky for me, you’re better at hiding things than I am.”
“Sometimes, you give me too much credit, it’s kind of funny.” Jared’s fingers scrape soothingly against my scalp. “I’ve told you before, I have nothing to hide. Look around you, I can’t hide anything in this room.”
Perhaps he is right, or maybe he wants to convince himself that he is right. “If you’re talented enough, you can find anything.”
“You say the most ridiculous things,” Jared says with a mysteriously beautiful smile and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Are you hungry? I have bread and coffee. Not much, but I don’t eat breakfast.”
I am not particular hungry, but coffee and bread for breakfast means that I have more reasons to stay around Jared. “Sure.”
He gets up, and again, I fumble with my clothes, and he laughs at me. “You could take a shower, since you’re not in any hurry.”
That’s true, I’m not in any hurry, so I stretch and watch his back, Jared suddenly doesn’t look so old. My clothes do feel sticky, but if I don’t have clothes to change into, it feels pointless. “I don’t have any clothes.”
“I have clothes, considering this is my room.” Jared tosses back over his shoulder. “Which you’re welcome to since you’re not going anywhere, right?” He gestures to a rickety closet shoved next to the piano. “Just help yourself.”
Jared’s closet is thoroughly disorganized, and I grab the first few things that I see. Clean shirt, clean pants, “Do you do this often?”
He crosses over to hand me a steaming cup, “Only when it needs to be done, which, thankfully isn’t very often. I’d run out of clothes that way.” When I take the mug from him, he clinks his cup against mine, like a toast. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I say, returning the gesture, although something is still nagging at me.
Jared’s washroom is a cramped affair, and there is no warm water. I have to wait before something other than ice gushed from the ancient spigot. Standing there after that makes me feel very strange. I stare into the mirror for a very long time before reaching for his shirt. Very slowly, I wipe away the gathering fog on the glass and pull the shirt over my head.
Suddenly, I can’t help but grin like an idiot.
Chapter 4
I don’t particularly believe in dreams, but the next few days flitter away from me like some ridiculously blissful thing. I only go back to my hotel twice, mostly for clothes and other necessities. Since I look happy, alive, and relatively nourished, she has no cause to worry about me.
In fact, when she sets eyes on Jared, she promptly forgets about me. And by the time we get up to my room, Jared is laughing so hard that I thought his stomach would burst. To recollect himself, he leans heavily against my door, trying to catch his breath again. “She looks like she is starved for gentlemanly attention, that one.”
I glance at him, “...Do you blame her? Young men don’t make a habit of frolicking around here. It’s dismal.”
He pauses briefly and smiles at me, “to be fair, except you, and now me. I mean. Your room is nicer than mine.”
Which would explain why he can afford his room and I can’t afford mine, I pull a couple of shirts from my closet. “Well, it’s not going to be my room much longer, you know. Wheedling is absolutely not an acceptable profession, or so Jeffrey has told me several million times.”
Money -- or the lack of it, always sobers people up fast. Jared is one of those. He walks behind me and holds me. “I have a room, Jensen.”
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds nice and promising. I grin back at him, tilting back my head, “My room is nicer than yours, you just said so.” After a moment, I turn easily in his arms and kiss him. That is getting easier too, although I’m not quite sure what that says about me.
“Besides, I’m the one with the bigger bed.”
Jared hums noncommittally, “You’ve never complained before, I don’t need a big bed.”
“I do, I’m old.”
He licks around my mouth, making me shudder. His arms brace me, which is fine because I feel like I’m melting. “You are not so old as you think. Are you so eager to grow old so soon?”
“It’s not about that.” He rocks idly against me, I suddenly can’t get the words to form correctly. “Jared, stop.”
He does, and I’m almost surprised.
“Just...the heater is not broken in my room,” I say, wrapping my hands around his wrists to placate him. “Why not my room?” I am afraid of his room, the power that it has over both of us. He will never realize it.
“I can’t just move my piano,” Jared’s voice is soft and measured, like he was preparing for an argument with an unreasonable child. “I like my room, you don’t seem to like yours much.”
“I like my room just fine,” I say, although I don’t think he is telling the truth. “Besides, what am I going to tell Danneel if I did move out of here?”
Jared pauses, and his lips twitch, probably deciding whether or not to frown, “She’s in Barcelona, distracted by a fine young Spanish gentleman, you don’t have to tell her anything.”
“She writes me, I’ll obviously have to change my address.”
It is not the first time we have had this conversation, and each time, I think I have somewhat gracefully dodged the subject. But Jared is not stupid. “You don’t need to, unless you are writing back to her. In any which case, you can just say that you’ve moved into a place with a new roommate. If she is a naive little girl to leave you behind, then that’s her fault.”
“Look...you keep painting it out to be some horrible thing,” I throw up my hands in exasperation, waving the shirts around with me in a whirl of cotton. “It’s not, all right? You’d never understand!”
“There are plenty of things I don’t understand,” Jared snaps back at me. For a moment, I wonder if it is going to hit me, he doesn’t. “I’m not stupid, you know. I don’t have to understand everything to be happy.”
Jared is always accusing me of something, I don’t know what he’s accusing me of now. I have done everything that he has asked of me. When he is working I try not to go too crazy thumbing through his copy of Baudelaire. I try to write some, too, but as usual, that doesn’t seem to work well. For some strange reason, I still can’t work my way through Rimbaud. I wish he had something more lighthearted, like Twain, or Oscar Wilde...who is lighthearted to a point.
“Tell me what I did,” I say. “Please?”
He kisses my fingers, “You’re not doing anything,” Jared smiles faintly at me, “It’s just me.”
I look at him a moment, and let it go. There is a now a thick pile of letters from Danneel under my mattress. Each letter feels thicker than the last, and I wonder if she spends two pages detailing Riley’s exploits this time. I throw them in my suitcase, bundled up with my shirts. Jared picks up one of the envelopes and stares at it for a long time.
“You...haven’t opened any of these letters.” He is surprised and pleased. He should be. “Why not?”
I hate to admit it, but I don’t exactly have an answer to that. I quickly change the subject, “You can open them, if you’d like.”
“Does she write about how much she loves you?” Jared is doing it again. He closes my suitcase with a firm snap.
“She might,” I just shrug, “I haven’t opened them, so how would I know?”
Jared drags my suitcase to the door, probably out of good will -- it is more likely that he just wants to leave, more telling is the way he shifts impatiently from one foot to another. “Don’t be like this,” he shoots me a disarming smile over his shoulder, as he is so fond of doing. “After we go back to my room and drop off your things, we can go for a drink?”
My landlady is mostly neutral about letting me go, I don’t blame her. I’ve never been very good at this ‘getting rent on time’ business, and she thinks that my keeping to myself so much scares away the other tenants of her hotel. But she does squint her eyes at me and ask:
“Does the Madamoiselle know?”
She is fond of Danneel, mostly because she actually makes an effort with the French, and I think she had a daughter or two. Jared saves me from further embarrassment when he gives the woman his most winning smile ever, and tells her that non, the madamoiselle doesn’t know yet, but Monsieur Americain here will write soon, so she doesn’t have to worry about it so much. Just for convenience's sake, he’ll still be back here once in a while to check his mail.
And then just like that, Jared slips his arm around me and escorts me out the door, looking much, much too proud of himself. “That was easy.”
I give him a look, “She looked ill, you could have kept quiet.”
“Don’t think too much about it. Besides, I just helped you out of something potentially embarrassing, so don’t you think a ‘merci, Jared, for being so gentlemanly’, is in order?”
“You are insufferable,” but seeing the street was empty, I lean over and kiss the shell of his ear, “Merci, Jared, for being so gentlemanly...happy now?”
His smile is beautiful and speaks more than volumes.
Jared has a penchant for drinking, I think it comes from him working in a bar for far too long. Drinking seems to be his solution to absolving almost everything. And why shouldn’t it? It mostly works. Since Jared seems to know the Parisian backstreets like the back of his hand, we rarely frequent the same bar twice. Many times, we stumble out of there, as drunk as anything. A few times, we’ve even come close to being arrested, for indecent things that I don’t remember doing. For whatever reason, Jared thinks it’s beyond hilarious.
Sometimes, when we finally fumble our way back to his room, he collapses on top of me on the bed and says the most ridiculous things --
Things like “je t’aime” and how much he loves me between sweaty kisses against the back of my neck. How he’s never loved anyone so much in his life, that he would die without me. I just kiss him, fleeting kisses that don’t hold any promises. These kisses keep him quiet, and I wish he wouldn’t say those things.
Maybe he said those nonsensical things so often because he already knows, he knows that I will leave him one day.
“Why don’t you ever tell me that you love me?” Jared’s fingers graze soundlessly against the keys, his head settled on my shoulder. He is supposed to be practicing, but isn’t...really.
On some days, I’m so sure that I love him. On some days, I loathe him. Because he professes not to be trapped by this room, but he’ll never leave it. He claims to know nothing, but he knows everything. But tonight, I love him. More than I’ve ever loved anything. I hope I will feel that way tomorrow.
“I do love you.”
His eyes meet mine. I suppose I look honest enough because he smiles a beautiful smile and leans in to kiss me. “Good.”
A silence passes between eyes, and he reaches to light a cigarette, Jared has actually been smoking less and less, once in a while, when he has nothing else better to do. “Jared.”
“What?”
“Tell me why you do this.” I rub his back, “You don’t have to do this.”
“What am I doing?”
I gesture around the room, dark and foreboding. “You don’t have to work for Chad, you don’t have to stay in this room. There’s so much for you, here in Paris. You don’t even have to stay in Paris, you could go anywhere. Rome, Venice, even strange, exotic places like Athens. Why do you have to stay here?”
Jared looks surprised, “And suddenly, you’re being a romantic.”
“Hardly,” I look away. “I’m only saying, you don’t have to be here. Look at you, you...you don’t have to subject yourself to this. You say you hate him, and yet you stay.”
“You people have no sense of propriety, I owe my life to him. We’ve talked about this before.” He nuzzles my shoulder, almost thoughtful, “Where would I go?”
“Anywhere.” Just not here, he would rot here, although he doesn’t know it yet. “You can go anywhere you want. Not that you should feel obligated to follow me everywhere, but I’ve always wanted to see Venice.”
“Venice? I’ve never been,” Jared blinks. “Consider me obligated just this once, then.” His other hand curls possessively around mine and holds it tight, so tight that I think my bones are about to shatter. We have made a nonsensical promise for the future. Although it probably will not ever amount to anything, I feel lightheaded and giddy.
“Done,” I squeeze his hand and stand, “Let’s just go to bed, all right?” But we lie there and he keeps blowing smoke towards the ceiling, I can’t fall asleep.
“Jared.”
He tilts his head towards me, eyes barely open. “What is it?”
“If I want to go home, would you come with me?” I don’t think he will. I’m not even sure why I am asking. Maybe I just need to hear him say no.
“But this is home, cheri.” He has been around Chad far too often, but I almost like the way that ‘cheri’ sounds when he curls his tongue around it.
No it isn’t. This place is nothing but a prison. I reach for his hand and play with his fingers, “I meant...back to New York, back to America. Things are not really as horrible as you make them.”
He takes a moment to answer, “I don’t like New York...besides, I don’t think you want to go home.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean?”
Jared leans over and kisses my jaw, “I think...you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: one day I will go home."
I want to tell him that I don’t understand, but I cannot. Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn’t. But Jared stretches himself over me, warm and soothing, forgiving. “You’re thinking too much again. Just go to sleep.”
Somehow, it’s inevitable, like a Shakespearean tragedy. I suppose that is why I never enjoyed them much in school.
“So the two of you are going to go off to Venice and live happily ever after for the rest of your youthful lives?” Jeffrey very nearly spits out his wine and Chad looks a mixture between horrified amusement and disbelief. Jared sets his chin stubbornly and I just look down at my wineglass. Why did Jared even need to bring that up? It isn’t like dinner is not already insufferable.
Part of me wonders why we bother, maybe it’s because Jared is a bartender and I’m a writer and both of us will still jump at a free meal without a second thought. It’s sort of pathetic. But even more pathetic, for Chad and Jeffrey to bait us with it.
Or maybe it’s useless to point fingers here.
Jared puts his hand over mine and I almost flinch, “Is that such a bad thing?” He asks with a nonchalant tilt of his head.
“Of course it isn’t,” Chad’s voice is practically dripping with sarcasm. “But I thought you would have gotten over being romantic by now, considering the mess with your mother and all.”
I look between the two of them; Jeffrey mostly seems to be off somewhere else. Jared’s mother? It is more or less an unspoken agreement between the both of us. I don’t ask him about his mother, and he doesn’t ask me about my father, so far, it’s worked. Jared’s nails dig painfully into my palm.
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother that way, she’s done nothing to you.”
Chad shrugs, “I suppose not, but she’s done plenty to you, enough for the both of us, hasn’t she, mon cheri? And you’ve paid her in full.”
Jeffrey feels it even before I do; he may poke fun, but he has reason, at least. “Chad.”
“What?” He waves his hands around, like he’s gone mad, somehow. “We’re among friends here, and we all know. It’s not as if this is some big government secret--” He breaks off abruptly then, because he has just noticed me. “Oh, except for you, Monsieur Americain, of course. Because he loves you, you’ll leave, as soon as you find out how despicable he is. So of course he doesn’t tell you, for you, Jared is an absolutely saint.” He spits the words like some bitter poison. A speckle of his spit lands on my cheek and I hurriedly reach for my napkin.
“Fuck you.” I say. I don’t dare look at Jared.
Chad just laughs, it’s a bitter laugh, “You know nothing about him, Monsieur Americain. You like nothing more than his bed and his body, and how much he enchants you with his European charm! That is all. How can you profess love for a man you know nothing about?”
I bite down hard on my tongue, and he just smirks at me. Like he already knows everything.
Yes, it does irk me that Chad knows more about Jared than me, but it’s not as if he knows anything about me--although that’s not supposed to be a comforting fact by any means. “You--”
It takes me another moment to realize that Jared has thrown his wine into Chad’s face. His glass is suddenly empty and Chad’s face is a sputtering angry red. Jeffrey looks like he can’t decide between shock or approval.
Jared stands, “I’m leaving.” He doesn’t even sound angry. I watch him walk out, and then I realize that I probably should get going too. I nearly trip over my chair trying to get up too fast.
Chad just laughs again; although between dabbing his face with a napkin and the fact that his shirt is ruined, he doesn’t look nearly as imposing. “You’re going after him, then? After all he has kept from you? I’m beginning to think that Jeffrey was wrong about you. You’re pathetic.”
I bite down on my tongue, “You’re despicable.”
He shrugs, “I’ve been told that before.” And...it doesn’t bother him, apparently.
“It bears repeating.” I say between gritted teeth and storm out. Maybe Chad is laughing at me.
Jared has not gone far, only around the corner and then some. He is smoking, puffing violently on a cigarette. “Jared.”
When he finally turns to me, he looks so lost and forlorn that I can do little else but hold him. He all but collapses against me, like a completely helpless child, and I stagger backwards into a wall.
“If I didn’t have you to love, I don’t know what I’d do,” Jared is gripping my shoulders so hard, like he is determined to drag me down with him, whatever hell that he is destined for. “Chad didn’t tell you any lies. I just--”
I run my hands through his hair, “I don’t care. Jared, I don’t care.” I don’t know if I’m telling the truth for myself or not, but I can feel his lips curving into a smile against my skin. That is enough, isn’t it?
His shoulders are still shaking, but it’s not from the cold. I tuck him into the bed with the warm blankets and he curls against me like a frightened child on a dark night. The nights have never before been so dark. I hold him tight. Jared might be crying, but I don’t dare ask.
“Jensen.”
“Yes?” I stroke his hair.
“I...I want to read your girlfriend’s letters.” Jared doesn’t look at me, “Can I do that?”
Jared wanted...to read Danneel’s letters. I don’t know what that means. It takes me a long time, but I nod anyway.
Yet another chasm has opened between us, I feel as if it is a schism that grows wider every day, no matter how much he tells me that he loves me. I wonder if he knows it too. He must have known it.
It takes Jared another two days to get up and go to work. For me, I wouldn’t have ever gotten up again. I admire his courage. If he has read any of her letters, he doesn’t give any indication, except that we will start renovating his room when he returns from Chad’s bar that night.
Jared never gets visitors, and since he’s made himself out to be more or less a misogynist, the last person I expect to see is a prim young woman with a gentle smile. She looks surprised to see me too. She says, “This...is Jared’s room?”
I nod, “Yes...this is Jared’s room. May I help you?”
Her smile suddenly turns nervous, “Well, I’m looking for Jared, but it’s obvious that he isn’t here right now...do you know when he will be back?”
Jared comes home when Chad lets him, which makes for thoroughly erratic hours. I just shrug, “I don’t know, he is at work.”
She looks me over, “And you don’t work?”
I hate the way she says that, “I’m a writer.” That statement is truer than it had been before. I’ve at least attempted a few times and the notebook sits proudly next to Jared’s much beloved copy of Rimbaud.
“I see,” still, she does not look wholly convinced. “Are you visiting? Or do you live here now? I’ve never seen you before.”
Now it is my turn to look her up and down for a long time, her eyes do not waver from me. I suddenly wonder, as a knot forms in my chest, if Jared has ever spent time with her in this room. “I...moved in, not that long ago.” Probably against my better judgement, I offer her my hand. She shakes it hesitantly. “I’m Jensen.” Because I really cannot think of anything else to say and she doesn’t seem to want to leave.
“Sandra,” she says. Peering past me into the room, she nods, as if that one glimpse has already told her everything that she ever needed to know. “So if...you live here, you must be Jared’s new petit-ami?”
My mouth is dry. “I--”
She laughs at me and touches my shoulder, “Jared keeps this room for me, that is all, really.” Her words are deceptively simple.
I suddenly don’t know what to say at all, so I wring my hands and look away, the first thing that came to mind was merely, “...Has the heater always been broken?” I’m not a natural conversationalist.
Sandra shrugs, she shifts her bag from one shoulder to the other, “Oui, I haven’t found anyone to fix it. But I don’t think Jared minds much.” And then she looks at me, “...You haven’t answered my question.”
I don’t want to answer.
Of course Sandra does not know this and waits for an answer, and I really don’t have one. I suppose we are, but I can’t say it. Saying it would mean admitting that I really am... “We are, yes.” And I wonder if my face looks pained, as if admitting that I love Jared is such a terrible thing.
This baffles her, apparently. As I keep staring at my bare feet, her eyes are on me, as if she can just look at me -- look through me, and know. “Many people in your position wouldn’t hesitate to admit to that. He is lovely.”
Obviously, I agree with her, but I can’t say anything. The words leave her mouth so easily, “Have you told him that?”
She laughs at me, as if I’ve just said something utterly ridiculous. “That I love him? Yes, I have.”
But she’s a woman, she can say those things. Jared can accept them, and say them back.
“What did he say?”
“What did you think he’d say?” Sandra shrugs.
I shrug. I just want her to leave. Now. Finally, she gets it, and meanders towards the door, still too slow. She turns and smiles at me. Part of me wonders what that even means. “...Oh.”
“You will tell him I dropped by and said hello, won’t you?”
“Of course.” I taste bitter bile in my mouth and my tongue feels much too thick, trying to form the words.
She leaves, and I wait until the footsteps have faded down the hall before crawling back into his bed and burying myself in the thick pile of blankets, rich with Jared’s scent. The room is cold, colder than it has ever been.
When Jared returns home that night, he sports another red bruise near his jaw, but I don’t say anything. He tells me that he has had a good day at work, and some patrons at the bar had insisted that he play the piano for them. He also told me, between bites of gray potato mush, that he wanted to carve out his wall to make room for another book case.
“But Jared,” I say. “We already have a bookcase, that one’s not even filled yet.”
“I know, but see, you’re a writer,” Jared’s spoon clangs loudly against the side of his bowl. “We’ll need plenty of space to house your works when the time comes. We’ll also need to find room for Pulitzer Prize trophies when you get them.”
He still doesn’t know that I have not published anything. “But we don’t have to do it now. There’s plenty of time for this sort of thing later. And Pulitzer Prizes don’t have trophies.”
“I don’t like to do things later,” Jared says, getting up to carry his bowl over to the sink. “Doing things later makes us unbelievably lazy.”
“It’s almost midnight,” I say. “You must be exhausted,” he must be, either that or he is drunk. Jared is not making any sense. “There is plenty of time to think about it tomorrow.”
Jared just blinks at me, “Is there any reason we can’t start tonight?”
He frightens me. I want to get out of this room and never come back again. But still, I go to him and hold him. Every part of his body is cold. “I have no idea what you are trying to do. But please stop it.” Mentioning Sandra is probably not a good idea right now. “Jared, you have nothing to worry about.”
His hands cover mine, and for a long moment, he doesn’t say anything.
“Jared, please say something.”
I feel him take in a deep breath and let it out. “I love you.”
The words feel like a prison, but I am an all too willing prisoner. I tighten my arms around him. We are bound together, we can never escape. “I know, I know.”
“I don’t care about anything else,” he says. “Only you. I’m so tired.”
My heart is suddenly heavy, like a stone anvil stuck in a crack and refusing to budge. “Come to bed. We can start on the bookcase tomorrow. I’ll help you.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
That night, a dull thunking against the wall wakes me. The other side of the bed is empty, the sheets are cold.
I stare at the wall for a long time, debating whether to get up as the dull thunking continues. It sounds so very desperate. Finally, I don’t get up and close my eyes.
We work on the bookcase for the next two days. I already know it is helpless. Jared seems to have contracted a limp from somewhere, when I attempt to ask him about it, he just smiles and tells me that it’s nothing I should be worrying about.
Jared is staring idly at the piece of the wall that he had just chipped off when he finally says, “I read her letters.”
“And?”
“She writes about a man named Riley a lot, perhaps she is having an affair with him.”
I do not think so, Danneel would be the last person on earth to have an affair, though I do not know what her devotion says about me. “I don’t think she would do that to me.”
“So you want her to continue to love you,” Jared’s eyes are accusing. “Even though you are no longer in love with her. You’re cruel.”
For a moment, I confess, I thought he was going to strangle me with his hands. But he drops what he is holding to touch the side of my face. I cannot look away. “I’m not cruel.”
His only answer is to kiss me.
Jared’s second visitor is not unwarranted, but I still despise him. I have never despised anyone so much with my whole being. Chad just smirks at me and acts like he doesn’t care. He probably doesn’t. He wouldn’t have any reason to, I’m fairly positive that he has heard every insult around thrown at him once.
To me, that is not anything to be proud of it, but then, Chad is nothing like me. It is probably a good idea to close the door in his face, but I don’t do it.
“You have no business here,” I say, mustering a glare at him, hiding halfway behind the door. “What do you want from me?”
“From you? Not a thing, I doubt you have anything valuable you’d want to give me.” I watch him as he lights a cigarette and blows smoke in my face. I should really close the door. “However, what I want with you is another story altogether.”
I bite down hard on my lip, Jeffrey would have told him, ‘you’re a fucker’ but I’m not anything like him either. “Go away.” To further prove my point, I close the door and latch it shut. I wait.
Maybe it is paranoia, but I think I still smell smoke. Chad isn’t going away. “Don’t the words ‘go away’ mean anything to you at all?” I say, after a few moments have passed.
Chad laughs, I hate it when he laughs. “Apparently, they don’t mean anything to you either, Monsieur Americain, what’s the expression that you have?--the pot calling the kettle black?” If I close my eyes, I see him wearing that insufferable smirk, so I keep my eyes open.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I sink down against the door. Is it so hard to get him to go away?
There is a heavy silence on the other side of the door. “Of course you don’t, you’re pathetic.”
“Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black,” I say dryly, concentrating on the hole in the wall.
“Is it?” He sounds amused, maybe this whole affair is nothing but mindless entertainment for him. “Now I’m confused.”
“Good.” I probably sound much too pleased; there really isn’t much to be pleased about.
A long silence passes between us, and then Chad says, “How much do you love him?”
To my own surprise, I have no answer. On some days, I love Jared, on some days, I want nothing more than to leave this room and never see him again because I hate how he clings to me, as if I am the only thing that keeps him from drowning.. It seems ridiculous, that my love and loathing for this man could live side by side, nurtured by the same kisses and the same desperate things he whispers into my ear at night when he thinks that I am asleep.
“That’s none of your business.” This conversation seems familiar.
“It is every bit my business, cheri.”
I bite down hard on my tongue, “I love him enough. I’m not your cheri.”
There is another too long pause; I think I hear laughter, though I can’t exactly be sure. “Do you, now?”
“Yes.”
There are footsteps, growing fainter and fainter. He is leaving. I heave a sigh of relief, but my throat catches again, when he says, “I hope Jared knows that. Au revoir, I’m leaving now.”
I don’t move until the footsteps have completely faded away.
Chapter 3
Morning.
It is already morning, yet the room is still dark, my body aches. It is a strange, guilty ache, but it’s not the first time I have felt it. The first time is years ago, years and years and years, almost another lifetime ago. When I finally open my eyes, I am in Jared’s room, his bed is not fit for two people but somehow we still manage to fit. His arms are curled loosely around my waist and his breath is moist, warm against the back of my neck.
Outside, I hear the sound of rain, thudding gently against the glass.
I think he is awake, but I do not want to disturb him if he is still asleep. So I lie still, against him, keeping my eyes closed. I stare at his room, it’s as pathetic as I remember from last night.
“Jared?” I say.
“Yes, I’m awake.”
Jared does not say anything after that. He does not move either, I wonder if he is trying to wait until I say something. Slowly, I turn around to face him. He looks beautiful in the morning, with his hair tousled and his eyes a hazy green. I almost forget I should be repulsed by him and everything that we have done. “It’s raining outside.” I cannot think of anything else to, I seem to be that way around him, permanently.
“Good, I like the rain,” Jared leans in an inch and kisses me. It is captivating, and I never want to leave. “It is all the more reason for you to stay here with me.”
I feel like I am drunk all over again, “Do you want me to stay?” I touch his face, his skin is smooth, and it is getting easier and easier to do. I am terrified.
“I would like that very much, oui.” His lips trace along my jaw, “I’ll have to resign myself to reading Baudelaire after you go away.”
I close my eyes and inhale deeply, “I hate poetry.” Most poets do not try hard enough to make sense. Jared is kissing my shoulder.
“Really?” His head is an assuring weight on my chest, I run my hands through his hair again, “And here I am, thinking you’d be the next Rimbaud. I suppose I will have to put my faith in someone else. I’m a helpless romantic.”
“Why Rimbaud?” I crane my head to look at his bookshelf, as if the answers are there.
“Rimbaud was very handsome.” Jared grins. “As are you. I don’t understand half of his poetry, to be honest.”
I laugh, it’s funny, in a strange way. Rimbaud is handsome, is that it? “I prefer stories.”
Jared touches the side of my face, his fingers are warm and adoring. “Tell me a story.”
I heave a long-suffering sigh, “I have no stories.”
He snorts inelegantly, “I thought you said you were a writer.”
“I am,” I probably sound a bit too defensive. “Just not a very good one at the moment. If I get desperate, I suppose I can write about this very handsome pianist that I met in a bar. Although I don’t know that much about him.”
Jared reaches up to kiss me, his mouth gentle, soothing. I never want to leave this room ever again. My heart is thrumming in my chest, thudding almost painfully against my ribs. “But you do, you already know everything this is to know about me, Jensen.”
I suddenly hate it. All of it. The way he looks at me, begging me to take him far away from this horrible, horrible place.
His eyes are too wide and too honest. I quickly look away and push him off of me, “I think I’m going to go.”
He watches me fumble with my clothes and lights a cigarette. And though I almost want him to, Jared does not stop me. He merely smiles, and blows smoke towards the ceiling. Jared probably will not miss me, I sincerely hope he won’t, because he will never see me again.
I avoid going out for the next week. The rain is equally unrelenting, so maybe that is an excuse. I don’t go to Madame Sophia’s, I don’t go to Jared’s room, I don’t call Jeffrey, I hardly eat.
There is another letter from Danneel, this particular letter is a full six pages long, describing various sights and wonders in Barcelona in meticulous detail. The people are friendly, her Spanish is improving, and she is making a lot of friends. She says she is collecting fresh stories for me to tell, the locals are an intriguing bunch. She is currently fascinated with a photographer named Riley, who she met in a cafe. He has been all over the world, even wondrously exotic places like Athens. Spain has beautiful cafes. She thinks that she has gained weight from being too self indulgent.
She asks me how I am doing. I cannot really tell her that I have slept with a man in her absence. And that I can’t stop thinking about him. I don’t know what to write.
I can’t write to her. I can’t. Even after three shots of scotch, my head is swimming, but I can’t. What am I doing? The only good thing is, I’ve started writing again, putting my confusion down on paper is reassuring, somehow.
I don’t even know why Jared wants to trust me like that. He has no cause to trust me.
When Jeffrey does finally call me, I am mostly relieved. Because he is endlessly generous, he figures that it is just about time that I’ve frittered a cheque on some frivolous mademoiselle. He offers to buy me dinner, as long as I don’t mind Louis coming along.
As long as a free dinner is involved, I don’t much mind. I will just probably try to spend most of dinner not looking up.
This time, we agree to meet at Le Grenier Voyageur in an hour, some bistro I have never heard of. I take twenty minutes to make myself halfway presentable, ten to wonder whether or not it is a good idea to go, five to hunt for my shoes, and another fifteen for the cab ride. I am used to having drivers give me strange looks now, it is sort of odd this one doesn’t even look at me when I give the destination.
A first for me, I end up being early. Although I am not a wine connoisseur, the waiter is kind enough to cover for my shortcomings to bring me a bottle of something before Jeffrey and Louis walk in the door. Louis turns heads, but then, all of Jeffrey’s boys do.
“You’re...not late.” Jeffrey says, by the way of greeting.
“Apparently, I’m having an off day,” I shrug. “Bonsoir, Louis.”
Louis does not look amused, “What are you doing here?” I have met him only once, and it turned out to be a horrible meeting. He hasn’t forgotten either.
“Jensen likes to spend his money on girls,” Jeffrey says. “If I don’t take care of him once in a while, he would probably starve.”
“Well, you should let him starve. That way he will learn.” Louis crosses his arms and frowns pointedly in my direction.
I wonder if he knows what Jared thinks he knows, I keep my eyes trained on my wineglass.
“Louis,” There is nothing but fond affection in Jeffrey’s voice, “you promised me you would behave.”
Louis just crosses his arms and looks sulky.
Jeffrey says, “Don’t mind him, he is throwing a tantrum.”
I just shrug, it’s no business of mine. Jeffrey samples his wine and I can’t read his face, so I suppose the waiter did save my skin. I might have to slip him an extra tip later. “Your cheque is mostly safe, it went to rent. I didn’t have anything else to spend it on.” Not to mention no one. And even though I have already paid my rent, my landlady can smell poverty, she hates me.
“I’m surprised that you didn’t send anything to your beloved mademoiselle in Barcelona. Did you forget about her already?”
“You can’t just forget about someone like that,” I say. Well, that is not quite true, I’m sure Jeffrey can, but I can’t. “No, I haven’t. Danneel can handle herself, and she has plenty of money.”
Jeffrey raises a mildly curious eyebrow, “She wrote you?”
“Twice,” I nod.
“Did you write back?”
“Once,” I hedge. Her other letter is under my mattress, along with the unopened letter from my father, and my notebook. I am still not writing. “There isn’t much to say. She sounds like she is having fun.”
“She probably is, because you’re not there,” Jeffrey concedes with a knowing nod of his head. “And she’s probably thinking about having an affair.”
That...might hold some truth. After all, Danneel does dedicate a full page and a half of her letter detailing Riley’s exploits, and how all of his photos are absolutely breathtaking. But that doesn’t make things any less complicated for me. The guilt does not go away, “You’re disgusting.”
“Am I, now?” Jeffrey doesn’t look offended at all, he never does. The question is left hanging there in the air for a moment as the waiter comes back to take our orders. When I think he is smiling at me, I smile back. I don’t exactly know what Jeffrey has ordered, but he is paying so I am not so worried.
“You are. And you’re insufferable.”
“Louis suffers me.”
Louis is an idiot. But I don’t tell him that, it is a bit pointless, so I only roll my eyes, “I’m sure he is an angel.”
“Isn’t it good for you though? If she has an affair?”
I suddenly stare very hard at my hands. “What’s that supposed to mean? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jeffrey looks entirely too smug. I am sure Louis doesn’t understand half of what we’re saying, but he too, looks smug for no reason, maybe because he doesn’t like me much. “Jared.”
My face warms in warning and I keep my head down. “What about Jared?”
“You went back looking for him, didn’t you?”
“I enjoy his company, that is not a crime.” When I am sure my face is no longer going to betray me in all ways possible, I look up at him. “Besides, I’m not interested in men. You know that. You’re disgusting.”
It is a long time before he says anything, Jeffrey sips quietly at his wine, still looking smug. “One day, you’ll be a disgusting old man like me, it probably won’t take as long as you think.” He pauses, “Does Jared know that you hold no such interest in men?”
I refuse to look at him again.
He just laughs at me, “You did, didn’t you?”
“Did what?”
Jeffrey can’t stop laughing, and Louis looks rightfully perplexed. “He seduced you, and you slept with him. It is all over your face.”
I do not think it (whatever ‘it’ happens to be) is all over my face, but just in case, I still don’t look at him. “I...”
“Jensen.”
When he speaks to me like that, I have to look at him. I hate it. “Look, I don’t need this. I really don’t.”
Jeffrey’s expression is unreadable again, “Jared is not a bad person, he is an eager lover. Love him and let him love you, it is not so horrible. He might even be good for you, and he won’t be so quick to leave you for Barcelona.”
I say, “I thought you want to sleep with him.”
He only shrugs to that, “You’ll learn eventually once you’re an old man, that it is impossible to get everything that you want. Perhaps that is why you young men think us disgusting. We dream about such impossible things, and you don’t have to.”
I leave dinner early, with my filet half eaten; the food itself is not bad, but I am suddenly not hungry anymore. Though Jeffrey is bothered to see me go, Louis can’t wait for me to be on my way.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
For once, I think I’ve told Jeffrey the truth. I don’t know where I’m going, outside, it is still raining and cold, and there are not that many people around. When I see them, everyone seems in a hurry to get somewhere. Everyone knows where they are going. Everyone except me.
I wander around for a long time, until every part of me is numbed with the terrible cold. I truly do mean to go home, but when I get inside the cab that stops at the lonely corner where I stand, I give him the address to that despicable alley. I slip the driver extra before he thinks to ask.
The ride is long, long, but not nearly long enough. I can’t feel my feet at all by the time I make it to Madame Sophia’s. She doesn’t look nearly as imposing as last time. There is the tinkling of piano keys coming from the inside, it must be well after midnight by now.
Yet Jared sits there serenely in his corner at the piano. I don’t know the melody he is playing, but it seems to me, just as tempting as any siren’s song. I tiptoe into the bar, which is empty, and listen.
Finally he stops, I know he knows that I am there, though he does not look at me. “You have the habit of crawling in here like a drowned rat. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. What are you still doing here?”
Jared lights a cigarette, “I like to play when no one else is around. You hardly ever seem to know anything.”
“That’s your fault.” I say.
Now he turns to me, there is an ugly black bruise near his jaw and I take a step back. “Of course, things are always my fault.”
“What...happened to you?”
“Accident.” Jared dismisses it with a wave of his hand, “you have not been around me nearly long enough to notice, but I’m clumsy.”
I doubt that, but when he turns back to the piano, I touch him on the shoulder, and then I sift my hands through his hair, it’s comforting, and he lets me. “Sorry.”
He tips his head back to rest on my shoulder, “For?”
“I’m not sure.”
This time, Jared smiles, with the bruise and tired eyes, he still looks altogether intoxicating. “You’re complicated.”
“Not really.” Our mouths are very close--too close. I brush my thumb over his bruise. He closes his eyes, like he is savoring my touch on his skin, as if it is some delicate wine.
“If you were simple...” Jared trails off briefly, “You probably wouldn’t. Or maybe it’s just you being American, I wouldn’t know.” He tilts his head slightly so he can blow smoke in another direction other than my face.
I resent that, slightly. “You’re complicated.”
“Moi? Pourquoi?”
Because he has to go and ask me something as ridiculous as why, when I don’t have an answer. “I don’t understand you, if I don’t understand you, then you’re complicated. How is that complicated?”
“It just is,” Jared leans into my hand, plants a kiss on my palm. “And you want to kiss me. That’s very complicated, especially with your fiancee. If I am as tempting as you say, then it is just going to get worse.”
“Why do you sound so happy about that?” I can be a bit suspicious. “And she’s not...exactly, only a girlfriend.” As if that makes things any less awkward.
He studies me for a long moment, “So you lied to me.”
I feel strangely horrible as he sits up straight again, inhaling deeply from his cigarette. Even the thin wisps of smoke leaving his lips in the next moment seem angry. I let my hands fall back to my sides. “Jared--listen to me. You don’t know what you’re asking of me. You can’t just expect me to have an affair with you.” I really hate that word, only because Jeffrey’s entirely too fond of it. “Besides, it’s illegal.”
“This is Paris.”
Paris. I hate Paris.
Jared stands, and even though he is taller and looks down to me, I think his eyes are vulnerable. Vulnerable and honest. He takes my hands and holds them, too tightly. “Do you know what I think?”
“I don’t know,” my throat is so dry. I can’t even swallow.
“I think...” he smiles, “that if I were a woman, you would have the affair with me. You wouldn’t think about her at all.”
Whatever has given him that idea, I don’t even know. “Why do you even have to keep calling it that?”
Jared blinks, “An affair? That’s what you call it.”
“I thought you hated my Americanisms, why indulge in them now?” I think they have a kinder word in French.
“Because they’re endlessly amusing,” His thumbs rub my wrists. It is a little bit comforting. Jared leans very close to me, breathing over my mouth, I taste smoke. “You should kiss me now.”
I probably should kiss him, Jared is much too close to me. But I--I take another step back, he let me, although he does not let go of my hands. “What you said...that has nothing to do with it, all right? It is not because you’re...not a woman.” Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. I just don’t want to think about it.
“I have to say, I’m very confused.”
I swallow hard, it hurts. “Don’t make me do this. Please.”
Jared threads his fingers through mine, “I don’t think I am making you do anything that you don’t want to. Why is it so hard for you to kiss me? Don’t you want to? You want to.” His voice is low and inviting.
Ten years ago, things had been different. And things could have been different now, here with Jared, except--I couldn’t. I couldn’t even look at him. I look down at our hands locked together instead.
“Chad was right.” I say.
He laughs, but it’s a surprisingly bitter laugh, not at all suited to Jared. “You must be possessed to listen to Chad. What is he saying now?”
I swallow again, “He said...that you were dangerous.”
Jared winces, and maybe it is only my imagination, but I think his hands tighten in mine. “Why do you believe him?”
“I don’t really...” His head is a heavy weight on my shoulder when he leans forward. “It’s just that you,” Jared what? I scarcely know. I am not sure I want to. “I haven’t ever been...with a man, not before you.” It sounds convincing, to me anyway. He doesn’t ever need to know.
I think he is laughing at me again, the sound muffled against my neck. “A man can love just as well as a woman. Don’t tell me you doubt me on that account.”
Maybe Jeffrey has lied to me. After all, he wouldn’t know that Jared is a good lover if he hasn’t already been with him. “You want to steal me away from my girlfriend. Do you hate women that much?”
There is a brief silence,"Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know? - and they can be that shallow. And that dirty." He stops, as if to reach for his next words. I just wait.
"I perhaps don't like women very much, that's true. That hasn't stopped me from making love to many and loving one or two. But most of the time - most of the time I made love only with the body...that is despicable to me.”
It is despicable to me too, but for another reason entirely. I want to tell him that he is disgusting, no better than Chad or Jeffrey, but I stay quiet.
Jared continues again, since I don’t say anything. “You don’t love her enough. Maybe you don’t love her at all.”
These observations bother me, because I have to wonder if they’re true. I can’t just dismiss them. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I only know what I see, this is what I see.” He is whispering in my ear, “You’re lonely, even when you’re with her, you’re still miserable.”
Tentatively, I touch his shoulder. “I’m not miserable.”
“Plenty of people who are miserable never know they are. They don’t want to know these things.” He sounds so convincing, maybe Jared is one of these unknowingly miserable people. It’s not a far cry, I don’t think.
When I finally do shut up and kiss him, I taste thick, bitter desperation, it’s more bitter than the cigarette smoke that clings incessantly to his mouth. He is clinging to me like he has nothing else to hold on to. Like he is drowning without me. His fingers are fisted in my shirt, threatening to tear the fabric apart. After a short pause for air, we are kissing again. Again. Again.
I have him pinned against the wall, and Jared looks dazed.
“We should go.” He says.
“I don’t want to go,” I lick at his bruise, he moans for me. “Why do we have to go?”
“Chad lives upstairs, we don’t want to wake him.” Jared takes my hand and smiles a tempting smile, leading me like a lamb to the slaughter.
I wake up for the second time in Jared’s room. There is still no sunlight through the dirty curtains, but this time, I feel oddly content. I still think about ten years ago and another room, but I am not as terrified as I should be. The other half of the bed is empty. Jared is already awake, dressed, sitting at his piano, plunking out another haunting melody. All of his melodies are oddly melancholy.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, it’s just cold in here.” I say.
Jared looks at me, his eyes are surprisingly warm. “The heater has been broken for a long time. I’m sorry.”
He is sorry, his eyes seem unable to lie. “It’s not your fault. Really.”
“This time, it is my fault,” Jared shrugs. “If I paid more rent, maybe I can get the heater fixed.” He leaves the piano briefly to sit beside me, stroking my hair with his long fingers. “Are you going to leave again?”
Jared’s room is just as pathetic as he is. “I’m not going anywhere,” I say after a moment of silence, glancing up at him, the worried wrinkles on his face immediately smooth out and he looks like a young beautiful boy again. The bruise from last night has faded away. “But you should lie here to convince me anyway.” After a moment, he does, stretching out warm and solid above me. Even his deep laugh is reassuring.
I close my eyes.
“Tell me what you’re thinking about,” He urges softly, “You look like you’re thinking too hard.”
“I’m not...” I wrap my arms lazily around him and he nuzzles his nose against my neck. It’s pleasant. But my thoughts don’t go away so easily, he kisses slowly, everywhere, all over my body. “I’m not thinking. You’re thinking too; unlucky for me, you’re better at hiding things than I am.”
“Sometimes, you give me too much credit, it’s kind of funny.” Jared’s fingers scrape soothingly against my scalp. “I’ve told you before, I have nothing to hide. Look around you, I can’t hide anything in this room.”
Perhaps he is right, or maybe he wants to convince himself that he is right. “If you’re talented enough, you can find anything.”
“You say the most ridiculous things,” Jared says with a mysteriously beautiful smile and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Are you hungry? I have bread and coffee. Not much, but I don’t eat breakfast.”
I am not particular hungry, but coffee and bread for breakfast means that I have more reasons to stay around Jared. “Sure.”
He gets up, and again, I fumble with my clothes, and he laughs at me. “You could take a shower, since you’re not in any hurry.”
That’s true, I’m not in any hurry, so I stretch and watch his back, Jared suddenly doesn’t look so old. My clothes do feel sticky, but if I don’t have clothes to change into, it feels pointless. “I don’t have any clothes.”
“I have clothes, considering this is my room.” Jared tosses back over his shoulder. “Which you’re welcome to since you’re not going anywhere, right?” He gestures to a rickety closet shoved next to the piano. “Just help yourself.”
Jared’s closet is thoroughly disorganized, and I grab the first few things that I see. Clean shirt, clean pants, “Do you do this often?”
He crosses over to hand me a steaming cup, “Only when it needs to be done, which, thankfully isn’t very often. I’d run out of clothes that way.” When I take the mug from him, he clinks his cup against mine, like a toast. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I say, returning the gesture, although something is still nagging at me.
Jared’s washroom is a cramped affair, and there is no warm water. I have to wait before something other than ice gushed from the ancient spigot. Standing there after that makes me feel very strange. I stare into the mirror for a very long time before reaching for his shirt. Very slowly, I wipe away the gathering fog on the glass and pull the shirt over my head.
Suddenly, I can’t help but grin like an idiot.
Chapter 4
I don’t particularly believe in dreams, but the next few days flitter away from me like some ridiculously blissful thing. I only go back to my hotel twice, mostly for clothes and other necessities. Since I look happy, alive, and relatively nourished, she has no cause to worry about me.
In fact, when she sets eyes on Jared, she promptly forgets about me. And by the time we get up to my room, Jared is laughing so hard that I thought his stomach would burst. To recollect himself, he leans heavily against my door, trying to catch his breath again. “She looks like she is starved for gentlemanly attention, that one.”
I glance at him, “...Do you blame her? Young men don’t make a habit of frolicking around here. It’s dismal.”
He pauses briefly and smiles at me, “to be fair, except you, and now me. I mean. Your room is nicer than mine.”
Which would explain why he can afford his room and I can’t afford mine, I pull a couple of shirts from my closet. “Well, it’s not going to be my room much longer, you know. Wheedling is absolutely not an acceptable profession, or so Jeffrey has told me several million times.”
Money -- or the lack of it, always sobers people up fast. Jared is one of those. He walks behind me and holds me. “I have a room, Jensen.”
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds nice and promising. I grin back at him, tilting back my head, “My room is nicer than yours, you just said so.” After a moment, I turn easily in his arms and kiss him. That is getting easier too, although I’m not quite sure what that says about me.
“Besides, I’m the one with the bigger bed.”
Jared hums noncommittally, “You’ve never complained before, I don’t need a big bed.”
“I do, I’m old.”
He licks around my mouth, making me shudder. His arms brace me, which is fine because I feel like I’m melting. “You are not so old as you think. Are you so eager to grow old so soon?”
“It’s not about that.” He rocks idly against me, I suddenly can’t get the words to form correctly. “Jared, stop.”
He does, and I’m almost surprised.
“Just...the heater is not broken in my room,” I say, wrapping my hands around his wrists to placate him. “Why not my room?” I am afraid of his room, the power that it has over both of us. He will never realize it.
“I can’t just move my piano,” Jared’s voice is soft and measured, like he was preparing for an argument with an unreasonable child. “I like my room, you don’t seem to like yours much.”
“I like my room just fine,” I say, although I don’t think he is telling the truth. “Besides, what am I going to tell Danneel if I did move out of here?”
Jared pauses, and his lips twitch, probably deciding whether or not to frown, “She’s in Barcelona, distracted by a fine young Spanish gentleman, you don’t have to tell her anything.”
“She writes me, I’ll obviously have to change my address.”
It is not the first time we have had this conversation, and each time, I think I have somewhat gracefully dodged the subject. But Jared is not stupid. “You don’t need to, unless you are writing back to her. In any which case, you can just say that you’ve moved into a place with a new roommate. If she is a naive little girl to leave you behind, then that’s her fault.”
“Look...you keep painting it out to be some horrible thing,” I throw up my hands in exasperation, waving the shirts around with me in a whirl of cotton. “It’s not, all right? You’d never understand!”
“There are plenty of things I don’t understand,” Jared snaps back at me. For a moment, I wonder if it is going to hit me, he doesn’t. “I’m not stupid, you know. I don’t have to understand everything to be happy.”
Jared is always accusing me of something, I don’t know what he’s accusing me of now. I have done everything that he has asked of me. When he is working I try not to go too crazy thumbing through his copy of Baudelaire. I try to write some, too, but as usual, that doesn’t seem to work well. For some strange reason, I still can’t work my way through Rimbaud. I wish he had something more lighthearted, like Twain, or Oscar Wilde...who is lighthearted to a point.
“Tell me what I did,” I say. “Please?”
He kisses my fingers, “You’re not doing anything,” Jared smiles faintly at me, “It’s just me.”
I look at him a moment, and let it go. There is a now a thick pile of letters from Danneel under my mattress. Each letter feels thicker than the last, and I wonder if she spends two pages detailing Riley’s exploits this time. I throw them in my suitcase, bundled up with my shirts. Jared picks up one of the envelopes and stares at it for a long time.
“You...haven’t opened any of these letters.” He is surprised and pleased. He should be. “Why not?”
I hate to admit it, but I don’t exactly have an answer to that. I quickly change the subject, “You can open them, if you’d like.”
“Does she write about how much she loves you?” Jared is doing it again. He closes my suitcase with a firm snap.
“She might,” I just shrug, “I haven’t opened them, so how would I know?”
Jared drags my suitcase to the door, probably out of good will -- it is more likely that he just wants to leave, more telling is the way he shifts impatiently from one foot to another. “Don’t be like this,” he shoots me a disarming smile over his shoulder, as he is so fond of doing. “After we go back to my room and drop off your things, we can go for a drink?”
My landlady is mostly neutral about letting me go, I don’t blame her. I’ve never been very good at this ‘getting rent on time’ business, and she thinks that my keeping to myself so much scares away the other tenants of her hotel. But she does squint her eyes at me and ask:
“Does the Madamoiselle know?”
She is fond of Danneel, mostly because she actually makes an effort with the French, and I think she had a daughter or two. Jared saves me from further embarrassment when he gives the woman his most winning smile ever, and tells her that non, the madamoiselle doesn’t know yet, but Monsieur Americain here will write soon, so she doesn’t have to worry about it so much. Just for convenience's sake, he’ll still be back here once in a while to check his mail.
And then just like that, Jared slips his arm around me and escorts me out the door, looking much, much too proud of himself. “That was easy.”
I give him a look, “She looked ill, you could have kept quiet.”
“Don’t think too much about it. Besides, I just helped you out of something potentially embarrassing, so don’t you think a ‘merci, Jared, for being so gentlemanly’, is in order?”
“You are insufferable,” but seeing the street was empty, I lean over and kiss the shell of his ear, “Merci, Jared, for being so gentlemanly...happy now?”
His smile is beautiful and speaks more than volumes.
Jared has a penchant for drinking, I think it comes from him working in a bar for far too long. Drinking seems to be his solution to absolving almost everything. And why shouldn’t it? It mostly works. Since Jared seems to know the Parisian backstreets like the back of his hand, we rarely frequent the same bar twice. Many times, we stumble out of there, as drunk as anything. A few times, we’ve even come close to being arrested, for indecent things that I don’t remember doing. For whatever reason, Jared thinks it’s beyond hilarious.
Sometimes, when we finally fumble our way back to his room, he collapses on top of me on the bed and says the most ridiculous things --
Things like “je t’aime” and how much he loves me between sweaty kisses against the back of my neck. How he’s never loved anyone so much in his life, that he would die without me. I just kiss him, fleeting kisses that don’t hold any promises. These kisses keep him quiet, and I wish he wouldn’t say those things.
Maybe he said those nonsensical things so often because he already knows, he knows that I will leave him one day.
“Why don’t you ever tell me that you love me?” Jared’s fingers graze soundlessly against the keys, his head settled on my shoulder. He is supposed to be practicing, but isn’t...really.
On some days, I’m so sure that I love him. On some days, I loathe him. Because he professes not to be trapped by this room, but he’ll never leave it. He claims to know nothing, but he knows everything. But tonight, I love him. More than I’ve ever loved anything. I hope I will feel that way tomorrow.
“I do love you.”
His eyes meet mine. I suppose I look honest enough because he smiles a beautiful smile and leans in to kiss me. “Good.”
A silence passes between eyes, and he reaches to light a cigarette, Jared has actually been smoking less and less, once in a while, when he has nothing else better to do. “Jared.”
“What?”
“Tell me why you do this.” I rub his back, “You don’t have to do this.”
“What am I doing?”
I gesture around the room, dark and foreboding. “You don’t have to work for Chad, you don’t have to stay in this room. There’s so much for you, here in Paris. You don’t even have to stay in Paris, you could go anywhere. Rome, Venice, even strange, exotic places like Athens. Why do you have to stay here?”
Jared looks surprised, “And suddenly, you’re being a romantic.”
“Hardly,” I look away. “I’m only saying, you don’t have to be here. Look at you, you...you don’t have to subject yourself to this. You say you hate him, and yet you stay.”
“You people have no sense of propriety, I owe my life to him. We’ve talked about this before.” He nuzzles my shoulder, almost thoughtful, “Where would I go?”
“Anywhere.” Just not here, he would rot here, although he doesn’t know it yet. “You can go anywhere you want. Not that you should feel obligated to follow me everywhere, but I’ve always wanted to see Venice.”
“Venice? I’ve never been,” Jared blinks. “Consider me obligated just this once, then.” His other hand curls possessively around mine and holds it tight, so tight that I think my bones are about to shatter. We have made a nonsensical promise for the future. Although it probably will not ever amount to anything, I feel lightheaded and giddy.
“Done,” I squeeze his hand and stand, “Let’s just go to bed, all right?” But we lie there and he keeps blowing smoke towards the ceiling, I can’t fall asleep.
“Jared.”
He tilts his head towards me, eyes barely open. “What is it?”
“If I want to go home, would you come with me?” I don’t think he will. I’m not even sure why I am asking. Maybe I just need to hear him say no.
“But this is home, cheri.” He has been around Chad far too often, but I almost like the way that ‘cheri’ sounds when he curls his tongue around it.
No it isn’t. This place is nothing but a prison. I reach for his hand and play with his fingers, “I meant...back to New York, back to America. Things are not really as horrible as you make them.”
He takes a moment to answer, “I don’t like New York...besides, I don’t think you want to go home.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean?”
Jared leans over and kisses my jaw, “I think...you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: one day I will go home."
I want to tell him that I don’t understand, but I cannot. Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn’t. But Jared stretches himself over me, warm and soothing, forgiving. “You’re thinking too much again. Just go to sleep.”
Somehow, it’s inevitable, like a Shakespearean tragedy. I suppose that is why I never enjoyed them much in school.
“So the two of you are going to go off to Venice and live happily ever after for the rest of your youthful lives?” Jeffrey very nearly spits out his wine and Chad looks a mixture between horrified amusement and disbelief. Jared sets his chin stubbornly and I just look down at my wineglass. Why did Jared even need to bring that up? It isn’t like dinner is not already insufferable.
Part of me wonders why we bother, maybe it’s because Jared is a bartender and I’m a writer and both of us will still jump at a free meal without a second thought. It’s sort of pathetic. But even more pathetic, for Chad and Jeffrey to bait us with it.
Or maybe it’s useless to point fingers here.
Jared puts his hand over mine and I almost flinch, “Is that such a bad thing?” He asks with a nonchalant tilt of his head.
“Of course it isn’t,” Chad’s voice is practically dripping with sarcasm. “But I thought you would have gotten over being romantic by now, considering the mess with your mother and all.”
I look between the two of them; Jeffrey mostly seems to be off somewhere else. Jared’s mother? It is more or less an unspoken agreement between the both of us. I don’t ask him about his mother, and he doesn’t ask me about my father, so far, it’s worked. Jared’s nails dig painfully into my palm.
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother that way, she’s done nothing to you.”
Chad shrugs, “I suppose not, but she’s done plenty to you, enough for the both of us, hasn’t she, mon cheri? And you’ve paid her in full.”
Jeffrey feels it even before I do; he may poke fun, but he has reason, at least. “Chad.”
“What?” He waves his hands around, like he’s gone mad, somehow. “We’re among friends here, and we all know. It’s not as if this is some big government secret--” He breaks off abruptly then, because he has just noticed me. “Oh, except for you, Monsieur Americain, of course. Because he loves you, you’ll leave, as soon as you find out how despicable he is. So of course he doesn’t tell you, for you, Jared is an absolutely saint.” He spits the words like some bitter poison. A speckle of his spit lands on my cheek and I hurriedly reach for my napkin.
“Fuck you.” I say. I don’t dare look at Jared.
Chad just laughs, it’s a bitter laugh, “You know nothing about him, Monsieur Americain. You like nothing more than his bed and his body, and how much he enchants you with his European charm! That is all. How can you profess love for a man you know nothing about?”
I bite down hard on my tongue, and he just smirks at me. Like he already knows everything.
Yes, it does irk me that Chad knows more about Jared than me, but it’s not as if he knows anything about me--although that’s not supposed to be a comforting fact by any means. “You--”
It takes me another moment to realize that Jared has thrown his wine into Chad’s face. His glass is suddenly empty and Chad’s face is a sputtering angry red. Jeffrey looks like he can’t decide between shock or approval.
Jared stands, “I’m leaving.” He doesn’t even sound angry. I watch him walk out, and then I realize that I probably should get going too. I nearly trip over my chair trying to get up too fast.
Chad just laughs again; although between dabbing his face with a napkin and the fact that his shirt is ruined, he doesn’t look nearly as imposing. “You’re going after him, then? After all he has kept from you? I’m beginning to think that Jeffrey was wrong about you. You’re pathetic.”
I bite down on my tongue, “You’re despicable.”
He shrugs, “I’ve been told that before.” And...it doesn’t bother him, apparently.
“It bears repeating.” I say between gritted teeth and storm out. Maybe Chad is laughing at me.
Jared has not gone far, only around the corner and then some. He is smoking, puffing violently on a cigarette. “Jared.”
When he finally turns to me, he looks so lost and forlorn that I can do little else but hold him. He all but collapses against me, like a completely helpless child, and I stagger backwards into a wall.
“If I didn’t have you to love, I don’t know what I’d do,” Jared is gripping my shoulders so hard, like he is determined to drag me down with him, whatever hell that he is destined for. “Chad didn’t tell you any lies. I just--”
I run my hands through his hair, “I don’t care. Jared, I don’t care.” I don’t know if I’m telling the truth for myself or not, but I can feel his lips curving into a smile against my skin. That is enough, isn’t it?
His shoulders are still shaking, but it’s not from the cold. I tuck him into the bed with the warm blankets and he curls against me like a frightened child on a dark night. The nights have never before been so dark. I hold him tight. Jared might be crying, but I don’t dare ask.
“Jensen.”
“Yes?” I stroke his hair.
“I...I want to read your girlfriend’s letters.” Jared doesn’t look at me, “Can I do that?”
Jared wanted...to read Danneel’s letters. I don’t know what that means. It takes me a long time, but I nod anyway.
Yet another chasm has opened between us, I feel as if it is a schism that grows wider every day, no matter how much he tells me that he loves me. I wonder if he knows it too. He must have known it.
It takes Jared another two days to get up and go to work. For me, I wouldn’t have ever gotten up again. I admire his courage. If he has read any of her letters, he doesn’t give any indication, except that we will start renovating his room when he returns from Chad’s bar that night.
Jared never gets visitors, and since he’s made himself out to be more or less a misogynist, the last person I expect to see is a prim young woman with a gentle smile. She looks surprised to see me too. She says, “This...is Jared’s room?”
I nod, “Yes...this is Jared’s room. May I help you?”
Her smile suddenly turns nervous, “Well, I’m looking for Jared, but it’s obvious that he isn’t here right now...do you know when he will be back?”
Jared comes home when Chad lets him, which makes for thoroughly erratic hours. I just shrug, “I don’t know, he is at work.”
She looks me over, “And you don’t work?”
I hate the way she says that, “I’m a writer.” That statement is truer than it had been before. I’ve at least attempted a few times and the notebook sits proudly next to Jared’s much beloved copy of Rimbaud.
“I see,” still, she does not look wholly convinced. “Are you visiting? Or do you live here now? I’ve never seen you before.”
Now it is my turn to look her up and down for a long time, her eyes do not waver from me. I suddenly wonder, as a knot forms in my chest, if Jared has ever spent time with her in this room. “I...moved in, not that long ago.” Probably against my better judgement, I offer her my hand. She shakes it hesitantly. “I’m Jensen.” Because I really cannot think of anything else to say and she doesn’t seem to want to leave.
“Sandra,” she says. Peering past me into the room, she nods, as if that one glimpse has already told her everything that she ever needed to know. “So if...you live here, you must be Jared’s new petit-ami?”
My mouth is dry. “I--”
She laughs at me and touches my shoulder, “Jared keeps this room for me, that is all, really.” Her words are deceptively simple.
I suddenly don’t know what to say at all, so I wring my hands and look away, the first thing that came to mind was merely, “...Has the heater always been broken?” I’m not a natural conversationalist.
Sandra shrugs, she shifts her bag from one shoulder to the other, “Oui, I haven’t found anyone to fix it. But I don’t think Jared minds much.” And then she looks at me, “...You haven’t answered my question.”
I don’t want to answer.
Of course Sandra does not know this and waits for an answer, and I really don’t have one. I suppose we are, but I can’t say it. Saying it would mean admitting that I really am... “We are, yes.” And I wonder if my face looks pained, as if admitting that I love Jared is such a terrible thing.
This baffles her, apparently. As I keep staring at my bare feet, her eyes are on me, as if she can just look at me -- look through me, and know. “Many people in your position wouldn’t hesitate to admit to that. He is lovely.”
Obviously, I agree with her, but I can’t say anything. The words leave her mouth so easily, “Have you told him that?”
She laughs at me, as if I’ve just said something utterly ridiculous. “That I love him? Yes, I have.”
But she’s a woman, she can say those things. Jared can accept them, and say them back.
“What did he say?”
“What did you think he’d say?” Sandra shrugs.
I shrug. I just want her to leave. Now. Finally, she gets it, and meanders towards the door, still too slow. She turns and smiles at me. Part of me wonders what that even means. “...Oh.”
“You will tell him I dropped by and said hello, won’t you?”
“Of course.” I taste bitter bile in my mouth and my tongue feels much too thick, trying to form the words.
She leaves, and I wait until the footsteps have faded down the hall before crawling back into his bed and burying myself in the thick pile of blankets, rich with Jared’s scent. The room is cold, colder than it has ever been.
When Jared returns home that night, he sports another red bruise near his jaw, but I don’t say anything. He tells me that he has had a good day at work, and some patrons at the bar had insisted that he play the piano for them. He also told me, between bites of gray potato mush, that he wanted to carve out his wall to make room for another book case.
“But Jared,” I say. “We already have a bookcase, that one’s not even filled yet.”
“I know, but see, you’re a writer,” Jared’s spoon clangs loudly against the side of his bowl. “We’ll need plenty of space to house your works when the time comes. We’ll also need to find room for Pulitzer Prize trophies when you get them.”
He still doesn’t know that I have not published anything. “But we don’t have to do it now. There’s plenty of time for this sort of thing later. And Pulitzer Prizes don’t have trophies.”
“I don’t like to do things later,” Jared says, getting up to carry his bowl over to the sink. “Doing things later makes us unbelievably lazy.”
“It’s almost midnight,” I say. “You must be exhausted,” he must be, either that or he is drunk. Jared is not making any sense. “There is plenty of time to think about it tomorrow.”
Jared just blinks at me, “Is there any reason we can’t start tonight?”
He frightens me. I want to get out of this room and never come back again. But still, I go to him and hold him. Every part of his body is cold. “I have no idea what you are trying to do. But please stop it.” Mentioning Sandra is probably not a good idea right now. “Jared, you have nothing to worry about.”
His hands cover mine, and for a long moment, he doesn’t say anything.
“Jared, please say something.”
I feel him take in a deep breath and let it out. “I love you.”
The words feel like a prison, but I am an all too willing prisoner. I tighten my arms around him. We are bound together, we can never escape. “I know, I know.”
“I don’t care about anything else,” he says. “Only you. I’m so tired.”
My heart is suddenly heavy, like a stone anvil stuck in a crack and refusing to budge. “Come to bed. We can start on the bookcase tomorrow. I’ll help you.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
That night, a dull thunking against the wall wakes me. The other side of the bed is empty, the sheets are cold.
I stare at the wall for a long time, debating whether to get up as the dull thunking continues. It sounds so very desperate. Finally, I don’t get up and close my eyes.
We work on the bookcase for the next two days. I already know it is helpless. Jared seems to have contracted a limp from somewhere, when I attempt to ask him about it, he just smiles and tells me that it’s nothing I should be worrying about.
Jared is staring idly at the piece of the wall that he had just chipped off when he finally says, “I read her letters.”
“And?”
“She writes about a man named Riley a lot, perhaps she is having an affair with him.”
I do not think so, Danneel would be the last person on earth to have an affair, though I do not know what her devotion says about me. “I don’t think she would do that to me.”
“So you want her to continue to love you,” Jared’s eyes are accusing. “Even though you are no longer in love with her. You’re cruel.”
For a moment, I confess, I thought he was going to strangle me with his hands. But he drops what he is holding to touch the side of my face. I cannot look away. “I’m not cruel.”
His only answer is to kiss me.
Jared’s second visitor is not unwarranted, but I still despise him. I have never despised anyone so much with my whole being. Chad just smirks at me and acts like he doesn’t care. He probably doesn’t. He wouldn’t have any reason to, I’m fairly positive that he has heard every insult around thrown at him once.
To me, that is not anything to be proud of it, but then, Chad is nothing like me. It is probably a good idea to close the door in his face, but I don’t do it.
“You have no business here,” I say, mustering a glare at him, hiding halfway behind the door. “What do you want from me?”
“From you? Not a thing, I doubt you have anything valuable you’d want to give me.” I watch him as he lights a cigarette and blows smoke in my face. I should really close the door. “However, what I want with you is another story altogether.”
I bite down hard on my lip, Jeffrey would have told him, ‘you’re a fucker’ but I’m not anything like him either. “Go away.” To further prove my point, I close the door and latch it shut. I wait.
Maybe it is paranoia, but I think I still smell smoke. Chad isn’t going away. “Don’t the words ‘go away’ mean anything to you at all?” I say, after a few moments have passed.
Chad laughs, I hate it when he laughs. “Apparently, they don’t mean anything to you either, Monsieur Americain, what’s the expression that you have?--the pot calling the kettle black?” If I close my eyes, I see him wearing that insufferable smirk, so I keep my eyes open.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I sink down against the door. Is it so hard to get him to go away?
There is a heavy silence on the other side of the door. “Of course you don’t, you’re pathetic.”
“Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black,” I say dryly, concentrating on the hole in the wall.
“Is it?” He sounds amused, maybe this whole affair is nothing but mindless entertainment for him. “Now I’m confused.”
“Good.” I probably sound much too pleased; there really isn’t much to be pleased about.
A long silence passes between us, and then Chad says, “How much do you love him?”
To my own surprise, I have no answer. On some days, I love Jared, on some days, I want nothing more than to leave this room and never see him again because I hate how he clings to me, as if I am the only thing that keeps him from drowning.. It seems ridiculous, that my love and loathing for this man could live side by side, nurtured by the same kisses and the same desperate things he whispers into my ear at night when he thinks that I am asleep.
“That’s none of your business.” This conversation seems familiar.
“It is every bit my business, cheri.”
I bite down hard on my tongue, “I love him enough. I’m not your cheri.”
There is another too long pause; I think I hear laughter, though I can’t exactly be sure. “Do you, now?”
“Yes.”
There are footsteps, growing fainter and fainter. He is leaving. I heave a sigh of relief, but my throat catches again, when he says, “I hope Jared knows that. Au revoir, I’m leaving now.”
I don’t move until the footsteps have completely faded away.