by Amy Fecteau
“I’m sure.”
“Look at me.”
Goddamn, Matheus thought as his stare snapped to Quin’s. He blamed the connection, but it went beyond that. Quin knew how to command, and if Matheus’ father had forced one thing into him, it was how to follow.
“I’m sure,” Matheus repeated, exhaling as he realized he hadn’t made of liar of himself. “I don’t want to go to anyone else. Granted, there are lots of reasons why I want to bash your face into a brick wall, but that isn’t one of them. And I don’t want you to send me away.”
“Good.” Quin resumed his walk, although his gait remained stiff.
Matheus waited, keeping silent as the tension ebbed away. The ornate Liberal Arts building of Bayhill University stood in his view, its windows dark, marble steps lit with old-fashioned gaslights retrofitted for fluorescents. Opposite towered the ten-story dormitory, a depressing building of cinderblocks and concrete. A cheery red banner hung over the entrance, doing little to hide the fact that the dorm looked like a relic from a Soviet era re-education camp. Matheus had lived there for two years, and every morning he woke up disappointed a tornado hadn’t destroyed the building while he slept.
“It’s the connection, isn’t it? That claiming thing?” Matheus asked.
“I don’t know,” said Quin. “It’s not very flattering to me, if it is.”
“Oh, dear, have I bruised your ego? Gosh, I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to hang around the psychopath who murdered me.”
Quin rolled his eyes. A group of students dressed in club gear milled around the entrance of the dorm. One of the boys attempted to climb a lamppost while his friends shouted out insults. A subgroup of girls stood to one side, pretending unsuccessfully to ignore the boys.
“Get over it,” Quin said.
“Get over it? You fucking killed me!”
The boy fell off the lamppost as the students nearest Quin and Matheus turned to stare at them. Quin smiled and gave them a wave. He moved closer to Matheus, lowering his voice as they passed through the crowd. The shouts and loud jokes rose up around them again.
“Share it with the whole world, why don’t you?” Quin said. “You know, someone killed me too, but I didn’t whinge on about it.”
“Right. I’m sure you gave him a great big hug.”
“No, I killed her. Eventually.”
“So you’re saying I should kill you, too?” Matheus asked.
“Well, I’d rather you didn’t,” said Quin. He stopped at the crosswalk, the only place where a tall, wire fence didn’t separate the two sides of the road.
Between the buildings, Matheus could see the river. A small mall stretched out behind the Bayhill building, with the rowing sheds beyond that. A tarred path ran along the top of the embankment, passing the Edwards Bridge all the way down to the harbor. Bicyclists and runners ruled the path in the daytime, and college students searching for a cheap date took over at dusk.
Quin faced the bit of river for a moment, absently smoothing a hand over his head.
Matheus opened his mouth to ask if Quin was lost when he started across the street. Matheus groaned and followed him. People invented taxis and public transportation and buying things online for a reason: blisters. A small farm of them had sprouted on Matheus’ feet.
Quin cut through the mall to the path along the river, slowing his stride as Matheus started to limp. He spoke as he walked, with the same offhandedness he used to brand all his past.
“Akantha decided to turn me after seeing me fight,” he said. “She wanted a bodyguard. Why she needed one, I don’t know. As an accessory, maybe. One of my perks was that she agreed to share my bed.”
“But you’re—”
“I know. It wasn’t optional.” Quin sighed. “Things were different then. There wasn’t this idea of being gay. I could have handled it. Sex is sex, after all, even if it’s not who I would have preferred. But Akantha liked pain.”
“Oh,” said Matheus, watching the river. The air was damp with the smell of salt and fish. A short distance away, Edwards River fed into the harbor.
“I don’t mean rough sex, with ropes and smacks and biting,” Quin continued, looking at Matheus. “I mean real pain. Knives and broken bones and humans to play with.”
“Oh, God.” That explained a few things about Quin. Especially the insistence that humans were food and nothing else.
“So, I killed her.”
Matheus swallowed hard, trying work some saliva into his mouth. A touch of dizziness blurred his vision. The narrow path meant that he bumped against Quin every few seconds. He wished for a bench or rock to sit down on.
“Is that where you got your scars?” The question slipped out before he thought.
“Some of them.”
Matheus nodded, realized after thirty seconds he was still nodding, and forced himself to stop. He had no idea what to say. Boy, that sucks just didn’t seem good enough. He had discarded a half-dozen ideas when Quin tapped his fingers on Matheus’ forearm.
“It was a long time ago,” Quin said. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t.”
They started over the bridge, a remnant from the time of the city’s founding. Hand-carved grey stones fitted together without mortar, decorated with a pair of stern-looking angels on either side. Occasionally, people brought up replacing it with a modern bridge, but those plans never reached the development stage.
“It’s horrible,” said Matheus as they reached the apex of the bridge.
“Yes,” said Quin. “That’s the shoe store up there.”
The lights were still on in the small shop, much to Matheus’ annoyance. Any decent cobblers should be in bed, letting the elves get on with their work. Unless, Matheus thought with some alarm, elves were who Quin brought him to see. Being a walking corpse had completely screwed with Matheus’ sense of reality. If he existed, who was to say that elves didn’t? Hell, maybe Saint Nicholas really did live at the North Pole.
“I don’t need shoes,” Matheus said.
“You can’t wear sneakers all the time. Besides, yours are disgusting.”
“They’re fine. They don’t have holes in them.”
“If that’s your criterion for footwear, you need help,” said Quin. He wrinkled his nose as he looked down at Matheus’ sneakers.
Matheus felt a sense of déjà vu expanding in his mind. The clothes, the shoes; next, Quin was going to tell him to cut his hair, stop failing math and learn some responsibility. Not very different from most teenagers’ experiences, but his father went to special lengths, enough to make Matheus break out in hives at the thought of being called into his father’s study. Matheus thought of being sixteen and scolded like a dog that peed on the carpet.
“I don’t need you to buy me stuff,” he said, the muscles in his jaw tight.
“There’s nothing wrong with having nice things.”
Matheus thought about every time his father smoothed over a conviction or paid off his teachers to give him a passing grade. Even as a child, Matheus knew his father acted not out of love or affection, but self-interest. There was an image to maintain, and his father planned to keep it intact whether Matheus cooperated or not. Every expensive gift tied another rope around Matheus’ neck. Matheus took years and a lot of pain to work that out.
“There is when you don’t earn them yourself,” he said. “It’s your money. If you want to get thousand-dollar suits and shoes handmade by artisans in Florence for yourself, that’s fine. But just handing someone everything they want isn’t kindness. It’s a slow rot.” He plucked at the suede jacket he wore. “I didn’t buy this. I didn’t work for it. Why should I value it? So what if it gets ruined? What have I lost? You’ll just buy another one, right? Being spoiled makes people lazy and stupid and selfish.”
He glared at Quin, daring him to argue.
Quin shrugged. “So pay me back,” he said.
“What?”
“Get a job and pay me back. It might take a while, but that’s not
a problem, is it? I’ll even charge you interest, if you like.”
“Where the hell am I supposed to get a job?” Matheus demanded. “The all-night diner on Reed Street?”
Quin made a slashing motion with his hand.
“There’s plenty you can do. Work from home. Start an online business. Take up pickpocketing. It isn’t the seventeenth century anymore. People can work all hours.”
“So, you think I should get a job to pay for the stuff you forced me to get? How is that fair?” Matheus thought about chucking the clothes straight into the river, but he was afraid of what Quin might do. Probably throw Matheus in after them. Although, he knew Matheus could swim, so he might break his arms and legs first, then throw him into the river. Matheus would float out to sea and be eaten by a shark.
“No, what I think you should do is pull the tree branch out of your ass and let me buy you the damn clothes. You’re the one fixated on earning them.”
A shark would have been more comforting company, Matheus thought. Quin had entered the door-crashing-down, screwdriver-throwing kind of mood. And now Matheus gave him a poke.
“I’m not getting shoes,” he said.
“You’re getting shoes,” said Quin.
“I’m not.”
“Sunshine, stop arguing. You’ll get the shoes and you’ll wear them.”
“Will not.”
“Will.”
Matheus got the shoes. It came to a choice between letting the salesman measure his foot and having Quin snap off his toes like fleshy peapods. The unwanted footwear now resided in a pair of bags dangling from both of Quin’s hands. Dress shoes, casual shoes, sneakers and sandals, a brown and black pair of each kind, because apparently black did not go with everything despite being the one fashion rule on which Matheus thought he had a firm grasp. They stayed in the bags, neatly wrapped up in white tissue paper, snuggled into their respective boxes, because Matheus refused to wear them. Any of them. Especially the sandals.
This created a problem, since, to no one’s surprise, Matheus’ old sneakers had mysteriously vanished. He walked home in his socks. The thin silk tore quickly, ragged runs riding up his ankles.
Quin stalked beside him, his anger a physical presence between them. Matheus named it Bob, and addressed imaginary questions to it to distract himself. He had to fight the urge to sprint as far away as possible. Although he owed less to outright bravery, and more to the fact that running down a city sidewalk in bare feet while carrying a metric ton of clothing raised the bar on insanity. The closer they walked to Quin’s house, the more Matheus worried about hypodermic needles. Sheer stereotyping, but if someone squatted in an abandoned building, they probably weren’t going to be the next face of the Above the Influence campaign.
Quin dropped the bags of shoes in the foyer, then disappeared up the staircase. Matheus heard a door slam a few seconds later.
Matheus left the shoes where they laid, a future monument in his war for control. He walked down to his room, piling the clothing in the middle of his bed. The dresser was empty. Matheus shoved the last drawer shut with a violent slam. He considered searching the dumpster for his old clothes, but his finicky nature vetoed that idea right away. Sighing, he picked up a handful of clothes and crammed them into the drawers until he had to use his whole weight to close them. Then, he opened the drawers, pulled out all the clothes, then folded them the way his nanny had taught him.
Matheus thought about setting fire to the whole lot—just having a big bonfire in the backyard. The crackheads could roast marshmallows and hot dogs, like a picnic. On the downside, the bonfire plan left Matheus without clothing. He could make a toga out of his sheet, or really drive his point home and go around naked. Although, he worried Quin might enjoy that too much for Matheus’ point to get across properly. At least, the point Matheus intended. So, he wore the clothes and fumed, plotting vengeance.
The shoes remained in the hall for three days. Plainly, Quin was not going to move them, and Matheus refused to accept them, so the bags gathered dust in the foyer. Quin might have thought to wait Matheus out, but Matheus had a plan.
“Where are my things?” Matheus asked, speaking to Quin for the first time since the incident.
“What things?” Quin sat at his desk in the study, survey maps spread out over the surface. Red circles dotted the paper, some with lines crossed through them. A few indecipherable notes had been scribbled down in blue pen. Matheus knew a couple of scholars desperate to get their hands on samples of common Latin, the everyday stuff not found in poetry and plays, and here was some, scrawled on a modern city map in ballpoint. Impossible to cite academically; modern examples of dead languages written by native speakers didn’t technically exist.
“The stuff you took from my apartment,” Matheus said. Quin leaned forward, folding his arms over the map.
“You’re not getting your clothes back,” he said.
“Everything else.” Matheus knew there had to be other things. His apartment had been sparsely decorated, but he owned some things.
Quin gave him a long look.
“The attic,” he said. “In a box to the left of the door.”
“Thank you,” said Matheus and walked out.
The attic was dusty, but empty. The few boxes left appeared to have belonged to previous owners. One container looked as though a family of mice had taken up residence. The box with Matheus’ things was much newer, the cardboard still stiff and tan.
Matheus pulled open the flaps, sighing at the meager contents. There was a framed Mondrian print, a handful of books that he hadn’t gotten around to bringing to the used bookstore, his laptop, his old watch, which never keep the correct time, his cell phone, which did, and a copy of Dr. Strangelove on VHS. And his wallet.
Matheus flipped it open, counting the few dollars it contained. The fake leather had started to peel in one corner and he’d lost the little picture booklet, but he never understood why people carried pictures in their wallets anyway. Matheus only carried what he needed to survive: State ID, work ID, health insurance card—not something he was likely to need now, some cash, and his ATM card.
Ha, thought Matheus.
The 7-Eleven six blocks away had an ATM. Matheus nodded to the cashier without bothering to remove his sunglasses. He walked up to the machine and punched in his code. He keyed in the maximum withdrawal amount, five hundred dollars.
The machine beeped at him. Insufficient funds.
Matheus frowned. He had almost five thousand dollars in his account.
Then it hit him.
That Goddamn shit-eating bastard.
Matheus sprinted the entire way back from the 7-Eleven. He burst through the front door and up the stairs to the second floor.
“Where is my money?” he demanded, slamming open the door to Quin’s study. The heavy wood bounced off a bookcase, knocking over a collection of clay figurines that, if real, were worth close to ten thousand dollars apiece. They rolled over the hardwood floors, rotating in individual circles. Matheus ignored them, accidently kicking one under the couch.
Juliet reached down to retrieve the figurine, placing it carefully on the corner of Quin’s desk. She perched there, like the Girl Friday of a nineteen-forties movie, leaning over to look at the marked maps.
“Hello, Pet,” she said. “You clean up nice.”
Matheus ignored her, stomping over to the desk. He slammed his palms onto the map, paper crinkling as his fingers clenched.
“What did you do with it?” he asked.
Quin frowned at Matheus’ hands.
“I moved it,” Quin said, tugging the edge of the map.
“You moved it?” Matheus straightened.
Quin smoothed the wrinkled paper, then carefully folded the map along the set lines.
Juliet’s gaze moved between the two of them. Matheus wouldn’t have been surprised if she pulled a bag of popcorn out of her purse and began munching.
“To a bank account overseas. I didn’t steal it
.”
Clearly, Matheus and Quin had differing definitions of stealing.
“Put it back,” Matheus said.
“It’ll get better interest rates and you won’t have to pay taxes on it.”
“I don’t care. It’s my money. You don’t get to decide where it goes.”
“You don’t need it,” said Quin.
“I’m not being kept like a…a…a….”
“A pet?” suggested Juliet.
“Yes,” hissed Matheus.
Quin looked at Juliet for a second, then turned back to Matheus. He hung a patient expression on his face, the kind usually seen on people who talked about releasing your anger and surrounding yourself with good feelings while writing off anyone who disagreed with them as unenlightened.
Matheus wanted to cram a pen up his nose.
“Why waste your money?” Patient Quin asked. “I have plenty.”
“I don’t want your money.”
Juliet scooted forward a bit, a wide grin stretched over her face. Matheus knew a word for women like her.
“Matheus, be reasonable,” said Quin in a voice glinting with razors. So much for being patient. He stared at Matheus, his hands folded on the desk, a hard set to his lips.
The boarded-up windows weren’t stained glass, the room was too cluttered, Quin too dark and too young looking, but the details didn’t matter. The moment held the same soul and it crushed down on Matheus with the weight of a long, silent decade.
“I’m not your son!” he yelled.
The moment ended. Quin raised his eyebrows, his lips parting a fraction.
Juliet let out a low, breathy exhale that could have been a sigh or a laugh.
Matheus pressed his fingertips into the edge of the desk and thought about holes and how they were never around when you needed them.
“I know that,” Quin said.
“I meant,” Matheus said, speaking with rigid calm, “I’m not a child. I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself.” He paused, forcing resin into his vocal cords, depositing each word like a handmade, Baccarat paperweight onto Quin’s desk. “You have no idea what I’ve gone through to get where I am. I don’t care how long you watched me. You have. No. Idea. You are going to put the money back and you are going to do it today, even if you have to blow every goddamn person in Switzerland to do it.”