Hugh wakes, washed in cool light. Clouds blown away, the floating moon flows through uncurtained windows. Around the room, Mimi stands in various familiar poses. Her backless cocktail dress, glinting redoubling sequins laid over paisley, dazzling as his eyes sweep. The Afghani wedding dress, tiny mirrors making dabs of silver light. The strapless sheath she wore to the American Embassy ball with Trudeau. Hugh zipped it up for her, she bent and kissed you.
The room is full of Mimi, full of her. Her perfume, Joy. The indefinable other smell that is just her, her breath and body. Like her dreams, when she dreamed the house full of people and talked to them all night, only all of these are her.
Hugh sits up. Stares around the room, at each separate form and shape.
Not a dream. It’s real, it is her, it is—these are her clothes.
He slides out of bed. Ivy purrrps her lips, a baby’s noise, but does not move.
He pulls on his clothes. He has to go. Why has he been anywhere but her room, these last few weeks—he can’t remember. No, it’s Ivy who can’t remember. He knows why.
He does not want her to die. He wants her not to die, not ever, never to be gone, never to leave him. All his anger was just clouds, only love left now. He touches the sequins, the mirrored sleeve, the bow at the black sheath’s breast. He goes.
Behind the glossy hedge at the big grey condo building, in the shelter of the shadows there, Orion waits. The lights go on, room to room. The men walk through, they move from one room to another, first one and then the other. They pause, drink, one laughs and shakes his head. They speak to each other. He can’t hear words. They move back into the darker room.
He turns away, drops down the grey stairs, gets back on his bike and rides away again into the maze of streets.
That lead him once again around, around, around.
To pause without hope by the stairs again.
But Newell comes out of the stairwell, onto the road. “Beauty, grace, truth of the first water …” That’s from something, not Twelfth Night. Godforsaken Godot probably.
He walks ahead, down to the river path and in under the overhanging branches. “Intellect is subordinate to the body,” he says, waiting for Orion to dismount. And then, “I don’t know what to do with you.”
Orion feels his mouth breaking into a smile, too big. Too wide open. He begs himself: hold back! But how can he, with the only one?
The noose is no longer around Newell’s neck, but Orion’s fingers feel it still there, feel the welt it left under the black cord. He crows, sadly.
“That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth,” Newell says.