The Musician and the Monster

by Jenya Keefe

  Lily shook her head, eyes wide.

  “It’s, um. It’s difficult. He— It feels, it feels really—”

  She was still shaking her head. “I don’t think I could have done it,” she whispered. “I don’t think I could touch him.”

  It feels incredible. How could he explain—to anyone—that the problem wasn’t how much he hated it, but how much he didn’t? “I’m sorry. I’m trying to get over it. I know it’s not good. It’s immature and whatever. But today—I’m going outside.”

  “The sun’s starting to go down early. Come in before it gets dark.” She smiled at him. “Don’t make him worry!”

  “Okay. Thanks.” And he escaped outside.

  He came back in the autumn twilight, in time for dinner. As he was hanging up his coat, he could hear Lily laughing in the kitchen. He followed the sound and found her stirring soup and chatting with Oberon.

  “Oberon was asking about Halloween in Vietnam,” Lily said, her dark eyes shining. “But I don't know. I'm from Los Angeles. I don't think they do Halloween over there.”

  Oberon turned his eyes to Ángel. "Do they do Halloween in Cuba?"

  “Never been there.” Ángel made a stab at relaxing in the kitchen doorway, an arm’s-length away from Oberon. “It’s the eve of All Saints’ Day if you’re Catholic. When we remember all the saints and martyrs, and those who have died.”

  “For most Americans,” said Lily, “it’s really about children and candy.”

  “You’d like it,” said Ángel. “The neighborhood kids come and ring the doorbell, dressed up in different costumes.”

  “I would love to see that,” Oberon agreed, gravely. “I’ve only seen it in movies. I understand that it’s customary for the children to threaten me with property damage unless I provide them with candy?”

  “That’s right,” said Ángel. “Do we get a lot of trick-or-treaters up here, Lily?”

  “Not so many.”

  “Of course we don’t,” said Oberon, not picking up on the joke. “We are miles from anywhere. And my security team has always kept children away from me, unfortunately. I think children are very interesting.”

  Something clicked. “Wait, today is Halloween?”

  “October thirty-first,” she said.

  “Oh.” Ángel’s mood fell straight down into sadness.

  He hadn’t gotten any email in several days.

  Lily didn’t seem to notice. She was saying to Oberon, “There’s no special dinner, like other holidays—no Halloween foods, except candy. You give out candy all evening, and then you eat what’s left over until you feel sick.”

  And then you dress up and go out with Marissa and Jason and Trina and Tonio and Lindsey. And you drink weird Halloween-themed shots, and check out the hotties but you don’t ditch your friends for them, and you dance and dance and dance.

  “Do you like Halloween, Ángel?” asked Oberon.

  “I do,” Ángel said. “It’s my favorite.”

  Ángel couldn’t sleep that night. The clock said 11:15, and he was as awake as if it were noon.

  His brothers and their families were probably in bed, since it was a weeknight.

  His friends were probably out celebrating. Because it was Halloween, not because it was Ángel’s birthday. Which they’d all forgotten.

  Stupid that it bothered him so much. Oberon had gone without news from his home for three years—hadn’t been in the presence of another member of his own people for over eight years, and his people communicated by touch. How painful would that be? Ángel had only been away from home for two months, and was so lonely and so angry about it he wanted to punch a wall.

  Hell with this. He put on a pair of shorts, tied his hair back in an elastic, and headed down to the gym. Starting his “Dancy Dance” playlist, he turned up the volume, dimmed the lights, and began to run on the treadmill.

  The gym, with its mirrored walls and ceilings, had the worst acoustics in the house, a loud cube of contentious echoes. It reminded him nicely of some of the dance clubs he’d been to.

  He ran hard on the treadmill through the first few songs on the playlist—Duran Duran, Shakira, the Black Eyed Peas. After a minute and a half of Elvis Crespo’s “Suavamente” he rolled off the back of the treadmill and started dancing.

  He danced for over two hours straight, bouncing to Daft Punk, voguing to Madonna, swirling gothily to Siouxsie and the Banshees, breaking out his rudimentary hip-hop moves for Kendrick. “Dancy Dance” was heavy on gay club songs—Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Scissor Sisters—but he’d been steadily adding anything he liked to it. He danced to “Animals” by Maroon 5, remembering the way Marissa would flip her hair and roll her hips to this song, yelling over the noise, “We really shouldn’t like this! It’s totally problematic!” He jumped around to House of Pain, spun around to Dead or Alive, and lost the elastic in his hair during an exhilarating three-song Lady Gaga streak. When he got to the end of “Ray of Light” by Madonna, he was swaying with exhaustion.

  Sweat dripped off the loose tips of his hair. He groped for the tablet and, panting, switched to his “Interesting Acoustic Guitar” playlist. “Cover Me Up” by Jason Isbell began to play; he stood still, letting the soft, sad, undanceable song help cool him down.

  “Ángel.”

  He startled. Oberon was leaning in the doorway to the gym, hands in his pockets, watching him.

  Ángel grabbed the tablet and turned off the music. “God, I’m sorry,” he said, wondering for the first time whether the gym’s soundproofing was proof against Oberon’s excellent sense of hearing. “It’s the middle of the night. I’m not keeping you awake, am I?”

  Oberon didn’t answer this. Instead he said, “When I saw you on the monitors I thought you were dancing for joy. But now that I’m here . . .”

  “I’m— No, I’m okay,” said Ángel automatically.

  And then he thought, God, enough; it’s not like he could pretend. This whole room probably reeked of his emotions, pouring out of his body. He amended, “No, I’m not really okay. Just feeling sorry for myself, I guess. But I feel better now.”

  “It’s because no one emailed you on your birthday?” asked Oberon.

  Surprised, Ángel said, “Yeah. You knew?”

  “I should have said something.”

  Ángel shrugged, uncomfortable. “I haven’t been talking to you. My own fault.”

  “But I misjudged the importance of the day.” Oberon shoved off the doorway and came into the room. “It’s your custom to go dancing on your birthday?”

  Ángel mopped sweat off his face with his shirt, avoiding Oberon’s eyes. “Do you, uh, do your people dance?”

  “We do,” said Oberon, approaching slowly. “We dance for celebration. We dance to perform magic. And we dance meditatively, to help process our emotions, as I think perhaps you do. But when we do it, we are not so radiant as you.”

  Whatever response Ángel might have made to this dried up in his throat when Oberon stepped up to him and lowered his face, as if to kiss him. “I wish you were not so sad, Ángel,” he said gently, his lips a breath away from Ángel’s.

  Ángel’s entire body went rigid.

  Oberon did not move, just stood close to Ángel. His breath was cool on Ángel’s hot face. It might have been nonsexual and unthreatening from anyone else, but from Oberon it was awfully, shockingly erotic. Ángel was hard, motionless, paralyzed on the knife-edge between Please touch me and Please don’t.

  “I’m not helping, am I?” Oberon backed away.

  “’S’okay,” Ángel said, his voice a little rough. Heart hammering, he walked around him, out of the gym, toward the stairs. “Night.”

  Not running away, not fleeing, he climbed the stairs and went to his bedroom. He closed the door behind him, but didn’t turn on the light. In the darkness his shaking hands pulled down his pants.

  Couldn’t even wait to get to the bed.

  He hissed with relief as his palm found his rigid cock, let his head fa
ll back against the door. He pumped himself hard. Harder. He needed to come so desperately. His mind was full of the memory of Oberon’s scent, his body, his skin, his hands.

  There was no sound in the room except Ángel’s breathing and the slap of his hand, fast and urgent. He was deliberately ungentle, his left hand chafing the weeping slit in the end of his cock as his right hand yanked. Almost painfully. If these were Oberon’s hands on him—if Oberon were here—

  He came so hard he stopped breathing, saw sparks of light behind his closed eyelids.

  Cupping himself now protectively, Ángel slid down the door and sat on the floor. He rested his forehead against his knees, his body quivering with ecstasy and satisfaction and shame.

  I’m okay. He talked himself through his tangled emotions. His life was fine. It was not so bad. He was safe, he had enough to eat, he had music to listen to, music to play. A friend in Lily. Oberon, who would not touch him unless he requested it.

  But he had to stop wanting Oberon. He had to find a way to stop.

  He got up late, and when he went down close to lunchtime Chandler was there. She and Oberon were in the dining room under the gigantic chandelier, discussing some matter of security. Ángel quietly prepared a pot of coffee in the kitchen.

  His mind was a little clearer this morning, and he was trying to think rationally about last night. He obviously could not go on like this for four years—wanting Oberon and hating himself for wanting him. It was cruelly unfair to Oberon, for one thing.

  What would it be like to know that your very touch revolted people? To come from a culture where touch was a basic form of communication, and to find yourself surrounded by people who found touching you repellant? Like being struck blind— Or, no. Like being surrounded by people who preferred to be blind rather than to look at you?

  How lonely that would be.

  Not that Ángel could honestly claim to be repelled. Once he had seen a picture of the president of the United States shaking Oberon’s hand—hadn’t he? He wasn’t sure. It seemed unlikely that Oberon’s touch affected anyone else quite the way it affected him. Unless the president, after shaking Oberon’s hand, had been compelled to beat off too.

  Ángel snorted with laughter, pouring coffee into hot sweetened milk.

  At that moment the sound of his own name caught his attention.

  “—messages for Ángel?” Oberon was asking. Ángel eavesdropped while he sipped his coffee.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot,” said Chandler. “The DOR forwarded a package a few days ago from his friend. I’ll have someone bring it up today.”

  “Chandler,” said Oberon, and the change in his voice was electric—all the grave courtesy had gone out of it, and it was glacier-cold.

  Ángel’s head whipped around. He saw Chandler's response: her back straightened, her chin went up. Military attention, shoulders back. Perhaps an ingrained reaction to authority.

  Oberon, in that quiet but brutal, arctic tone, asked, “Is there a reason you disobeyed my orders?”

  “I—”

  Ángel put down his coffee and went into the dining room.

  “I told you not to interfere with communications between Ángel and Marissa Sommers.” Oberon’s face was as blank as always, but he had weaponized his voice—activated some musical tone that went straight to the fear center of the brain and flipped a switch there. It was aimed like a pistol at Chandler. “You chose to do so, delaying his package several days, and in doing you caused Ángel pain. Tell me why.”

  Chandler was pale, her wide eyes fixed on the wall, knees locked to keep from swaying. She looked like she were being screamed at by a drill sergeant. Ángel felt ill with shock, and he was only getting backsplash from the voice. “I’m sorry, sir,” Chandler managed to say. “I didn’t realize it was important.”

  “That is a lie,” said Oberon, voice bloodcurdling. “I told you it was important. I believe that you prefer annoying Ángel to following my instructions.”

  “No, sir.”

  “John Va will take over the security team from now on. You will return to the DOR—”

  “No,” said Ángel. “No. Please don’t do that.”

  Oberon turned his leopard eyes on Ángel, and Ángel shrank back. But the envoy’s voice was slightly gentler when he said, “The position of chief of security is one of trust.”

  Ángel’s mouth and throat were dry as he said, “And you can trust her. To keep you alive. That’s her real job. Not forwarding my mail.”

  “Her malingering made you think that your friends forgot your birthday, and as a result you felt abandoned and estranged. Do you deny this?”

  “No. I just— Don’t fire her, Oberon. It’s not that big a deal.”

  The air smelled dry and hot, like burning salt. Chandler audibly swallowed. Oberon said softly, “You and I both know that isolation is a big deal. I would minimize yours as much as possible. I can’t do that if Chandler is deliberately undermining my wishes.” The last sentence came out like the crack of a whip, snapping across Chandler’s face, and she flinched.

  Ángel clenched his teeth. He forced himself to reach out and brushed his fingertips to the back of Oberon’s hand. “That’s too much,” he said. “Oberon. Let it go.”

  Oberon went perfectly still at Ángel’s touch. Ángel ran his fingers down over Oberon’s knuckles, squeezed Oberon’s fingers, very gently, and then let go. “Bring it down. Please. Chandler’s sorry. She won’t do it again.”

  “I require that she do as she’s told,” Oberon said, but much of the power of his voice was now leashed.

  “Remember the riot at the Tiepolo Ballroom?” asked Ángel. “She had a plan. She kept calm. She kept you safe, evacuated the building, kept the place from burning down. Only seven injuries, right? She’s really good. The thing with the package is not as important. Let it go, Oberon.”

  Oberon stared at him for a long moment. The only sound was Chandler’s trembling breathing; she sounded like she was trying not to cry. Ángel kept his eyes averted from her, not wanting to witness her humiliation.

  “You are the one injured by her actions, Ángel,” said Oberon at last, “so in this instance I will let you decide. But if anything like this happens again—”

  “It won’t,” said Chandler softly.

  “No.” He gave her one last glare, infused his voice with glinting steel. “Go back to the gatehouse, then. The package from Marissa will be here soon?”

  “Immediately, sir.”

  “All right,” growled Oberon.

  Chandler threw a fast, wild-eyed glance at Ángel and escaped.

  Oberon and Ángel stood there in the dining room for a while after the front door slammed behind her. The air around Oberon hummed with tension, smelled like chalk dust and ozone. Weirdly, Ángel was worried about him, rather than afraid of him. Bring it down, Oberon.

  In a light tone, Ángel said, “Well, holy shit. That was scary as fuck.”

  He went to the kitchen, fluttering his hands at the ends of his wrists, rotating his shoulders, trying to shake off the tension. He poured a cup of black espresso for Oberon—he didn’t really like coffee, but he liked it better without milk and sugar—and brought it along with his own cup back into the dining room. He dropped into a chair, and after a moment, Oberon sat across the ivory-and-gilt table from him, touching his cup but not drinking.

  “Scary?” said Oberon, in an absolutely neutral tone. “I am unarmed. She has no need to actually fear me.”

  “If you talked to me like that I’d piss my pants.”

  “Is that a metaphor?”

  “No. Literally. That thing you did with your voice was . . . You were blazing at her like the sun; I could see scorch marks on her forehead.” Oberon stared at him, and Ángel added, “That was a metaphor. Not really. But I don’t think you understand how you affect people, Oberon. Couldn’t you . . . couldn’t you smell it? How you were frightening her? Or feel it, or whatever you do?”

  Oberon lifted the espresso cup t
o his nose, inhaling the aroma. “I could, actually, but . . . I was annoyed.”

  “Yeah, that came across,” said Ángel. “I was about to start singing ‘Let It Go’ to distract you.”

  Oberon took a deliberate sip of his coffee. “I hardly think that would have made me less annoyed.”

  Ángel laughed, some of the tension in his chest loosening. “I used to like that song, but then I played a Frozen-themed birthday party and we sang it over and over again. Imagine three dozen six-year-olds all singing along, all missing that high e-flat at the same time.”

  “Why did you do that to yourself?”

  “A favor for a friend.”

  They sat companionably for a few minutes, drinking coffee. Ángel’s fingertips still tingled slightly from where he had—voluntarily, of his own free will—touched Oberon’s skin. Oberon seemed relaxed, willing to sit companionably with Ángel. Above them, the mirrored chandelier cast motes of light around the room.

  They were almost finished with their coffee when the front door opened and John appeared with a USPS priority mail box in his hand. “Good morning, sir,” he said pleasantly to Oberon, coming into the dining room and handing the box to Ángel. “Here we go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is Lily in the kitchen?”

  “I think she’s upstairs cleaning the bedrooms.”

  “All right if I run up to see her before I head back?”

  “Of course, John,” said Oberon.

  John disappeared up the stairs. Ángel glanced nervously at Oberon, then applied his attention to his present. The tape holding the box closed had, naturally, already been slit, the contents searched by Chandler and her goons. Good thing Marissa hadn’t bothered with pretty wrapping paper.

  Inside was a card, signed by the whole gang; a handmade braided leather bracelet embellished with one of Ángel’s favorite picks—a Gravity Gold—and a used thrift-store T-shirt from the first professional venue Ángel had ever played, the long-extinct Manatee Bar, which featured a peeling pink aquatic mammal and the cursive word Chillin’.

  It was a totally Marissa gift—not expensive, but highly personal. It was clear that she’d searched for something that he—and only he—would like.