Jules knows Violet is a (ex_haint987) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-01 20:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | superman, violet harmon |
Who: Jules and Daniel
What: Piano playing for the drunken rake
Where: Casino → Turnberry Place
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: None
In the whole of it, even Daniel had been temporarily silenced by the appearance of Superman flying around Las Vegas. He was not the kind of person that was easily impressed by the mad chaos that had erupted in the city, more interested in the micro studies that characterized his novels and the implications of human nature than mass destruction, yet he had been struck, along with everyone else, just how powerful Clark could be. It was probably a good thing he was such a disgustingly moral stick in the mud; otherwise he could easily kill them all in a casual stroke “for the greater good.” It happened all the time.
Himself again almost immediately after the hotel dark resolved, Daniel took a cab back to Turnberry and stayed there for a good twenty-four hours. He was planning on getting drunk and staying that way for as long as possible, and he was still seeing the world through a successful medium haze when he departed again to find a felt table that wasn’t in pieces. The night was lush and quiet except for the soft rumble of construction machines repairing the indescribable damage, and Daniel took in the bizarre, apocalyptic sight with a concentration that did not come easily to him.
Jules had run himself out of Passages come first light, but the hissing in his shoulder and the near unbearable aching in his chest had turned him right around, only a few steps out from the place he was starting to hate more than he hated conservative folks, the kind who thought they had a right to decide on everyone’s life. At Violet’s urging, he’d slipped back in that dead door, and he’d healed up like nothing had ever taken claws or razors to him. Despite the girl’s desire that he sit a spell and wait for Tate to come around, he’d left near after. Being in that place, even in Violet’s mind, gave him the chills, and his own mind was going too wild to slumber just then and let the dead girl be.
Heavy footsteps led Jules home, his mind trying to make sense of the night before, and he was back in the welcoming quiet of his tiny apartment without even knowing how he’d made the journey. He stood in the middle of the living room a second, and he thought on staying in, cooking until he couldn’t think no more. But he wasn’t in the mood for being alone with his own thoughts. He showered up, washing all that blood off himself, and he changed into a narrow sheath dress over leggings, the kind of thing he shouldn’t be able to pull off near as well as he did. The sleeves were slim, and the collar was high, and it hid his slight adam’s apple away like something the Lord never did give him. He brushed his long blond hair like it gleamed, all pale and near-white and, after finding some sweet boots, he set off to find someplace to sing.
The city was a wreck, but Jules didn’t mind all that carnage. He’d rather it looked like hell, because it reminded him he hadn’t imagined the whole damn thing. He picked the nearest casino that had a piano bar, and he ducked into the sweet neon and let the dinging music of the slots swallow him up whole. Better than being alone, and the dim lights added to the illusion of him being what he felt like being. He wove his way ‘round the machines, heading for the abandoned piano toward the back of the large room filled with the bodies of folks hiding from what had torn Las Vegas all asunder.
Daniel was not in the mood for company, but Daniel was never in the mood for company. He felt better with a wall at his back and as long as nobody tried to engage him in exciting conversation, he was content to sit at one of the hastily repaired blackjack tables near the piano and bleed chips all night. He was drinking a disgustingly cheap but adequate Jack and coke, and he was on his third or fourth when he watched the skinny blonde wander past. Daniel’s type was not blond or skinny, but he watched to have something to watch while the dealer shuffled the next three decks, not having the benefit of a table companion or a smoking habit.
Daniel was in just about the same shape as most of the people here. His blue-near-white jeans were as dusty as the black designer jacket he wore like it was worth a tenth of its real value. His hair and eyes completed the picture of a habitual night owl, if even more scruffy and red-eyed than strictly necessary. His weight was heavy on one arm that he left on the table, and he turned his wet glass in his free hand.
No one cared about the piano this time of night, and no one in this crowd cared about music, and Jules wasn’t counting on a whole lot of trouble. He knew places like this. Heck, he worked in one that was near similar, and no one cared about him banging on the keys there either. Folks only pitched a fuss over those things when the playing was terrible. If you knew which keys to press, then they assumed you were getting paid by someone to push ‘em. It was the way of things in Las Vegas - don’t ask, don’t tell - and it suited Jules just fine most days.
It was nothing but coincidence, Jules walking past that blackjack table, and his gaze dropped to the chips the scruffy man had piled, and not to the man himself. Cards next, and it was a lean and a whisper against an ear when he was almost beyond the table. “Don’t go hitting on that,” he recommended, before moving on to the piano, which was on a slightly raised platform.
Jules dragged his hands over the keys, not pressing on any of them yet, just a smooth caress, the kind that was real reassuring after a week where the world went plum crazy without anyone thinking to stop it. He played a chord, then another, real soft, before starting in on a simple hymn, soft enough to fade into the music of the slot machines without calling a whole lot of attention to itself. It switched a few minutes in, though, to something that was improvised Love Me Tender, with enough changes thrown in that it wasn’t being played near the sheet music at all.
These days Daniel was used to being by himself, and the exceptions tended to be willing brunettes that were gone within the hour, and at the latest, by morning. He was not accustomed to people getting willingly into his space without him knowing about it, and he leaned away (in a huff of stale air, whiskey and chemical sugar from the soda) when the blonde leaned close. He turned to glare after her when she departed, drunk enough to be both easily annoyed and easily pleased, depending on the turn of the cards.
He hit just to be stubborn, and naturally lost. The dealer looked at the ceiling, as if praying for patience. Daniel shot him a hound dog glare in return, and pointedly asked when he got a break. He got one within the next minute, and the new dealer was smaller, deadpan, and absolutely without interest in anything around him. Daniel liked that better, and focused on the cards for another hand or two before looking over his shoulder at the piano. The floorman, the dealer, and the pit-manager both looked too. Daniel had been sitting there for two hours and spent five figures. Where Daniel looked, they looked.
Jules wasn’t real interested in getting up from that piano, not when he’d walked a few blocks in the Vegas night to claim the thing, but he didn’t need to go staring at the keys to play. He wasn’t an amateur, and he wasn’t a novice, and his long pale fingers danced on the ivory like lovemaking. Love Me Tender drifted into a Nocturne, and then it came back around to some Sinatra; My Way, and he stuck on that a spell longer. He would have preferred an accompanist, someone to play while he wound his fingers ‘round a microphone, but there was no way he was dealing with a karaoke bar this close to last call. If he had to listen to five rounds of drunken Lady Gaga just for a chance to sing, he might go all catscratch on someone, and that wouldn’t be near pretty.
Old Blue Eyes faded away, and the piano accompaniment nearly did too. There was just enough press to the keys left, just plain old chords, that kept the chant he started in on from being acapella; he watched the crowd while he sang. Pale blue eyes, kohl-lined black, kept going back to the scruffy player, the one who’d hit like a damn fool when he shoulda stayed. A quirk of a perfectly arched brow, and a knowing look at the cards gone sleepy in the card player’s hand as he turned to look at the piano. Then he glanced back down at the keys, waiting to see what the player did next, smile ghosting ‘round the corner of his mouth.
Daniel barely looked over when the dealer pointed out a push, and he rolled back on his seat. The dealer was the nice and indifferent type, but the floorman made an abortive move in his direction, as it looked for a moment like he was going to fall over backwards and break his neck on the carpeted floor. Yet he righted himself, if slightly delayed, and slid off the high seat to standing. He leaned on the table, glanced again at the dealer and said, “I’m taking a break.” The dealer nodded and the floorman moved forward to schmooze, but Daniel waved an imperious hand, and he broke off the approach.
Daniel left his chips (an incredible faux pas that spoke of equally incredible arrogance) and wavered over to the piano. It was actually fairly impressive that he didn’t fall over or run into anyone--not that the traffic was exactly thick at one in the morning. He half-sat, half-collapsed on the end of the piano bench in a blossom of warm whiskey fumes and slept-in clothes. He rotated, glass in hand, and eyed the piano keys in front of him as if the blonde was not even there. “You going to play something worth hearing?” he asked, lifting the glass.
“You wouldn’t be standing there if you didn’t think I already was, honey,” Jules replied, voice soft enough to pass for female, and not looking up from the keys. He’d seen all that near falling, and he’d seen the arrogant dismissal of the chips that branded the man as being rich as them folks in Tennessee with houses like Graceland and baby boys that thought they had Elvis beat. They couldn’t give the King a run for their money, those boys, and Jules’ money was on the fact that this man couldn’t neither. His fingers changed course, taking in what he’d noticed about the man at the table, and he switched to something slow and jazz, before turning right around and going for something older, a requiem, and he finally tipped his head back to look at the drunken thing that had come for him.
A sweep of pale blue eyes from head to foot, and Jules didn’t flub one note. Playing was clearly something he did enough of not to need a whole lot of sheet music for things that were comfortable as old shoes, but then keys and singing had been with him since he was just a wee thing, and that showed in his confidence on the piano seat. He scooted over slightly, enough that his feet could still reach the pedals. “You gonna sit yourself down?” he asked, his accent a thing of old moss and sweet tea and better times, slower times. His invitation was more of the same, like he was offering biscuits and something cool to drink on a big old white porch, a fan in his long, pale fingers.
Undisturbed by the long stare (what could the blonde see that Daniel couldn’t on his own?) Daniel looked down and to either side. He thought he was sitting, but now that he looked, it did seem as if he was about to melt into a disgusting puddle to one side of the bench. He put his free hand back in an unintentionally exaggerated motion, and then supported himself long enough to get all the way onto the bench. He hit a low B as he did so, and withdrew his elbow with a somewhat sodden curse.
“And you’re wrong,” Daniel said, volunteering the information as if it was the end of a sentence he had not actually spoken aloud. “You haven’t played anything worth hearing yet. I’m here because you could.” Even on glass four and the prodigious amount he’d had over the last day or so, Daniel was still managing articulate, though he wasn’t coming near eloquent.
Jules managed to stifle a laugh at that low B. Man was drunk as a skunk, but that didn’t scare Jules none. It was the sober ones that were scary. The ones that could hold themselves up straight and clutch a knife so well it never wobbled. This one was too drunk to hold his own pecker when he pissed, Jules thought, and it was a real pity. This close, the man looked like he might be kind of something when he was put together right. “Why don’t you make a request then?” he asked, looking over at the man at his side, a bump of a thin, fabric-covered shoulder against Daniel’s upper arm. “Seeing as I can’t do nothing that pleases you.” He sounded like pleasing, in this case, was entertaining. “Piano ain’t my talent, though, honey. Best be upfront with that.”
Daniel was definitely not put together at the moment. He was all pieces floating in alcohol. Yet he still turned and gave Jules a long stare that wasn’t like the hound dog one he’d given the dealer. The blue rings were streaked with red and he had his brows all the way down to shadow their intensity so he could see through the buzz. It was like watching a shark swim under thick ice. “No Liszt, then.” It wasn’t really a question. The Hungarian flowed off his thick tongue like he was a native, even though he knew absolutely no Hungarian, and simply made it his business to make the final flow of consonants work. He swayed a little under the bump, and his eyes moved to the shoulder and then to the high neck collar. His eyebrows jumped about a millimeter above his eyes. Not blonde; blond. “Uh huh. What is your talent?” Daniel looked away and put a hand on the ivories. He had unmarred, easy hands, with blunt edges on the pink nails and ballpoint ink on the inside of his right index finger.
Jules didn’t know a lick of Liszt, but he pulled his iPhone from his pocket and let his fingers do some typing on the phone’s screen. A few seconds later, he set the phone on its side against the piano’s fall, and he let the virtual sheet music app do the rest. He didn’t get the tempo just right until a few bars in, but eventually, he got it smooth as silk. Not knowing the notes meant he had to keep watching the cellphone, though, and he couldn’t look over at the man beside him, hands on the ivories and whiskey on his breath. “Singing,” he answered, easy as taking candy from a tot. “Playing just comes along with it,” he admitted, though it was clear he liked the sound of the music near well as anyone from the subtle sway of his torso and the way he played with the composition, testing it for flavor instead of playing it straight. “How about you? Sure ain’t cards, and sure ain’t drinking, or you’d be better at standing while you were drunk as a skunk, honey.”
Daniel watched the managing of the iPhone and the app with a kind of distant fascination, not having one of those himself and even lacking the real understanding to work the one he did have. He leaned over to squint at the sheet and his expression wiped into delayed surprise. He whipped his hand off the keys so fast the ice sloshed in the drink he had in his other hand. His eyes flicked once to the blond’s carved face, but only once, and the rest of the time he watched the keys. He did not interrupt, and he did not even open his mouth until the blond paused in what he was doing. When he did, it was not to reply. He put the blue eyes on the blond’s face again and waited until they focused clearly. “Are you working?” he asked, very intentional with the question.
“Right now?” Jules asked, a smile in the asking, despite not looking away from the keys. He’d stopped watching the phone’s screen, though the sheet music just kept on going, popping up key by key on the screen, as if it thought someone was paying it mind. “This don’t look like a kitchen to me,” he said, plain and easy and without a hint of shame. “Figure I got a good fifteen minute hike to get to Caesars, and I ain’t inclined to do it on my day off. Why? You think they’d let me play this kind of thing if I worked here?” He looked up from the keys, where his long fingers were moving with graceful control and precision, and he looked over his shoulder at the gaudy casino, with its loud noises and its garish atmosphere. “Honey,” he said, looking back at the man at his side. “If I worked here, they’d have me playing I Will Survive in something glittery that showed off a whole lot more than my piano skills.”
Daniel let his stare stay for a few seconds before flicking back to the phone’s screen. That wasn’t what he meant, and he thought it somehow likely that the boy knew that, but the answer was fine with him. He made a faint, guttural sound in response to the other’s final opinion, and it sounded like a bear fighting with bees to get at honeycomb. I Will Survive indeed. “I can’t hear you well in here,” he said, eyes overbright but pupils unmoving and rough face serious. “The fucking pinball machines are too loud.” He dismissed the maze of million-dollar slot machines in one clink of ice cubes against his glass. “Come and play for me. Like you did.” He pointed his free hand at the iPhone, annoying little things they usually were. He approved of the moving music.
Daniel turned his head about two inches and caught the eye of the floormanager. He hauled ass over, and Daniel told him that he wanted to cash out. Promptly. The floormanager hurried off.
Jules didn’t know the drunken gambler had made him as male, but it didn’t matter to him none either way. He didn’t like gender roles, and he liked gender lines even less. He wore what he wanted, and the whole rest of the world could go holler at the top of its lungs for all he cared. He’d gotten a hell of a lot of bruises throughout the years to earn the right to be who he was, and that was all there was to it. Plain as anything.
“You gonna pay me?” Jules asked, fingers on the keys slowing and body turning slightly to see if the man was being serious. Drunks said things all the time, Jules knew, and it didn’t always count for a whole lot. And though he didn’t get any feeling that this man was the sort to go slicing someone up in the desert, he liked being sure. He was still too trusting by far, but even that was a whole lot less trusting than he’d been before Las Vegas. These days, he wouldn’t hitch himself across the country for nobody, didn’t matter how pretty their smile was. “I gotta tell folks if I’m going where you are. It’s been a real strange week, and I’m skittish of folks that might be hiding knives somewhere.” It was blunt, but anyone who wanted to harm wouldn’t want their address going all over, was Jules’ reasoning.
Daniel held his reply for a little while, tipping the drink up and swallowing what was there before turning to trade it for a gold casino card that the floormanager respectfully handed over. It was as if Jules was not even there. Daniel stuck the card in his inside jacket pocket, and then nodded. “I’ll pay you, whatever it’s worth to you. By the hour, if you want. I just want to fucking hear it right. I’m at Turnberry Place, you know where that is?” He gave the apartment number.
Daniel wasn’t stupid, casual, or foolhardy; he simply didn’t care who knew his address, his name, or even Clark’s name. Clark thought this was verging on suicidal, and Daniel told him it wasn’t his fucking business, and Clark subsided into his usual cloud of disapproval. Daniel wasn’t prejudiced, either. Daniel didn’t give a fuck if people thought he was taking home a date or a pet. The blond could be a pink hippopotamus for all he cared, and if he could work out Listz like that, he’d take him home all the same--though there might be issues with the elevator.
If Jules was ornery at being ignored, it didn’t show. But, when it came right on down to it, his clothes were cheap as could be, and he’d never had nothing like the rumpled suit the man beside him wore. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, once the floormanager had scooted off. His hands slid off the keys, and he turned full on the bench to look at the man beside him. “Week’s been near as hell as a week could be, and I live in a studio that still has smoke damage all over from that fire a few months back. Give me a place to sleep tonight, one where there’s security and a real soft pillow to rest my head on, and you can keep your money for bad hands of cards and liquor that’s worse than moonshine,” he said, already tucking his phone back into the front of his dress (after texting the address to Loren) and getting all ready to stand. “You got a piano, honey?” he asked, because he didn’t need one for singing, but he needed one for playing. Course, near as he could tell, Turnberry Place had everything. Probably had a full orchestra tucked away inside its innards somewhere. He grinned. “Got a wife gonna look at me funny?”
It was a logical question to ask, because Daniel’s expression was suffused with sudden anxiety and hesitation at the suggestion that his proposition buy more than a couple hours’ music. He seemed to realize quite abruptly that the invitation brought someone into his space, and he didn’t like the idea of the entire night being promised away so he could not force the pianist out again. He had allowed the glass that occupied his hands to be carried away, and now worked his thumb over his knuckles, thinking on it with obvious worry in the cloud of his blue eyes. Slowly, they cleared. If something happened that he didn’t like, or he got tired of the judgment he thought he detected in the commentary about bad card hands and liquor, then he could still find the pianist a room, it just wouldn’t be in his apartment. “Fine,” he agreed.
That resolved, Daniel concentrated on rising, which was definitely not as easy as it looked. “Yeah, there’s one there. Came furnished... I don’t know if it’s tuned.” This seemed to trouble him for a little while, his head turning, bird-like, over the sea of flickering lights and green tables as he thought of it. “I think they said before I moved in...” Then back at the blond. He laughed. Daniel had a laugh like his growl, the sound contained under his ribs and not quite pleasant except for the temporary glow of his eyes that accompanied it. “No wife. I look that stupid?” Without waiting for a reply he set out toward the exit with surprising confidence, obviously expecting the blond to follow.
Jules had known so many men from Memphis to Vegas that there wasn’t much good hiding reactions from him. Men were as different as the days were, true, but anxiety looked plenty similar on all their faces, regardless of how handsome or plain they were. “Don’t worry, honey. I’m not looking to outstay my welcome, and this ain’t an attempt at crawling between your sheets, and I don’t want you to entertain me all night. I just want someplace safe is all, someplace the nightmares might not be so bad.” And maybe that was all kinds of warnings and complications in one fell swoop, but Jules was the kind that came at things straight on, no hiding his intentions up his sleeve or in his skirts. His pale gaze dropped to the thumb that worked against that knuckle, and then it danced right back up to the man’s scruffy face as he stood. “Do I look like the chattering kind to you?” he asked, and that might have been a trick question, because he could chatter just fine if he felt inclined.
“As for whether or not it needs tuning, we can see. I did plenty of tuning at the church. Won’t be a problem either way,” Jules assured, watching the man’s balance and footing like he wasn’t watching at all. “I can’t tell if you look stupid yet. You’re taking me home, ain’t’cha?” he asked, following without any additional need for invitation. He thought, as he walked, that he should clarify some things, just on account of them being important, but they were nearing the doors and that made Jules go real quiet. Outside, the city was knitting itself together, and seeing it made Jules shiver some in the cool night air. Pretending was all well and good, but being out where leftover things could jump out and claw, well that was harder. The knowledge that the one thing he’d thought would keep him safe was just as dangerous, that was a mite bit harder to swallow. “Calling a cab?” he asked, hoping walking wasn’t on the agenda.
Daniel did pretty good considering he had more whiskey in him than anybody had any right to have and still be connecting whole thoughts together like they meant anything. He still had a tendency to drift toward the right or to the left, but the casino was good about making clear pale patterns in their carpet, and even drunk Daniel knew the direction of the exits from the farthest blackjack tables. “Yes,” he said, in answer to the question about the cab. And then, as if he was simply picking up conversation from minutes before next to the piano, he said, “You chatter a lot.” He sounded worried about it, but he tried to interject some annoyance into there, too. He imagined he would get tired of the chatter later, and imagined having chatter that annoyed him trapped in his apartment with him. His thumb worked against the side of his first finger as they made it up the escalator--he managed to do this while only tripping once--and then as they stepped out into the cool night air.
Las Vegas was darker than usual. The damage to the Strip had been enough to make the shadows very long and dark, indeed. Daniel blinked until his eyes adjusted, but they didn’t have to wait, since there was a string of cabs and doormen that hopped to Daniel’s tune without him even noticing they were there. Only the cabbie gave Jules a sideways look, and Daniel didn’t notice, because he was trying to get in without banging his head on the roof. His fingers were getting slightly more frenetic rather than less.
Jules might have argued about chattering, but the world outside didn’t make him inclined to fuss and, truth be told, he wasn’t the kind of man that went talking when folks didn’t want to hear. Maybe it was something born of all those silently pious church folks, but he was as comfortable in quiet as with talking, and he just went hushed as he watched the man (Daniel, the gold card had said) rub his thumb against the side of his finger again. He took note of the nervous tick, blue eyes smarter than some might think right off, and he stayed close without crowding, even when Daniel tripped.
Outside, Jules wrapped his arms tight around himself, careful of the soreness that still radiated from his chest, where there wasn’t a bruise that should have been there, and he slid into the cab and returned the cabbie’s look with something that resembled defiance. He figured it didn’t count as chattering if it wasn’t directed at the man beside him, and he leaned forward without giving the driver a chance to ask Daniel where they were heading. “Turnberry Place,” Jules told the man, smile and smug and pleasure in saying it. “And I’m not going there to suck on his cock, ‘case you were wondering. And there isn’t near enough money in this world to make me suck on yours either,” he explained, voice clear as a church bell and near as sweet. He sat back, crossed his legs at the thighs, and wound a strand of long blond hair ‘round one finger.
Daniel, who, quite visibly, had totally forgotten about needing an address, turned his head from where he had been focusing out the window and let out a big bark of a laugh. It wasn’t a kind sound but it was more honest than the one he’d growled out about the prospect of a wife. Slumped in a long curve and poured into the seat almost sideways, he thought the look on the cabbie’s face was absolutely priceless, and he issued a second laugh, this one a symphonic chuckle that rippled. This final laugh was the only expression of amusement that had any musical or pleasant quality.
Forgetting his anxiety for the time being, he let it die off on the back of his tongue as the cab pulled away. He didn’t think the cabbie deserved any of his conversation, and when it pulled to a stop (without a word from the cabbie the whole way), he simply dropped a bill over the seat after Jules was clear from the back. He gave the cabbie a show of teeth in the rearview and poured himself out into the shadow of the glistening apartment tower. The curb jumped out of nowhere to grab his toe as he tried to step over.
Barring a few minutes of humming, Jules stayed quiet until the cab stopped, and until he climbed out of the car. He’d spent the whole ride over watching the city pass on by, wondering about the folks who ended up dead, or the folks who ended up having to deal with nightmares they didn’t have no understanding of. At least he understood what had happened, and he knew why it had happened. Didn’t make it any better, and it was a battle not to curl on up around himself and just leave this pretending to be alright behind.
Jules waited for Daniel to join him on the sidewalk, and he tipped his head back to look at the tall building the man just poured out of the cab called home. It was a sight, even from down on the sidewalk. Glass rimmed balconies and windows big as life. He looked over Daniel, and he smiled. “Maybe you ain’t that stupid after all,” he admitted, because not having a wife with enough money to afford this place? That had to be some kind of accomplishment. Plus, the man had some pretty baby blues, bloodshot or not, and Jules knew better than to think a drinking problem served as a deterrent for money grabbing little girls.
“You leading the way?” Jules asked, a grin over his shoulder. Then, without waiting, he did the honors himself. The doorman seemed real disinclined to let him in, but Daniel’s presence behind him, Jules figured, would set all that right in a blink.
It took Daniel a little more time than he would have liked to resituate himself in an upright position, but the doorman knew him very well and the portly man’s demeanor seemed to imply he’d waited much longer even later before. He wavered up to the front doors and passed through, blind to the man, the building’s distinctly modern beauty, and even the underlying implications of Jules’ question. Yet he passed close enough to make sure that Jules went through the door like he wanted him to, not herding but giving him a bleary look out of the corner of his eye until he crossed the threshold. “I could still be stupid,” he informed him, crossly.
The elevator was big enough to park a European car in. Daniel narrowly missed cracking his head open on one of the mirrored surfaces, and then propped himself up on a stretch of brass railing molded into an antique style. It clashed horribly with the attempt at modern glass panes. Daniel intentionally avoided his reflection with the ease of long practice, letting his eyes half-close and listening to the cables haul him upward. “What do you do in the kitchens?” he asked, without warning.
Being cross wasn’t going to get Jules worked up, and he didn’t even acknowledge Daniel’s comment about maybe still being stupid. No chattering, right? And he reckoned Daniel would be regretting saying that a little ways in. Folks said they liked quiet, but Jules found most of them were real uncomfortable sharing their quiet with another breathing body. Not Jules, though. Too much time in hushed churches packed tight for that kind of thing. He followed into the pretty elevator, taking note of the keys required for the floors. Must be nice, living in a place that had an elevator drop you off inside your apartment without having to look at no one else, if you didn’t want to. Might make someone a cranky recluse too, though, he thought, glancing over at the man beside him in the brighter, more tellingly reflective light. Definite potential, he decided a moment later, shame it was all wound tight in a bottle. “I cook,” was the real non-chattery response to the question, and a smile turned up the lips of a young mouth, one real accustomed to smiling.
Daniel had been alone for long enough that he was cross without even realizing he was cross. He certainly put no effort forth to smooth his words, though one might surmise that even if he had, they probably would have said the exact same thing in a different way. He turned his head, focusing on the willowy figure off to one side somewhere, reflected into several more on all sides so that Daniel felt that he might have suddenly been plunged into a small crowd of ethereal blonds. “Cooks are supposed to be fat,” he said, faintly disapprovingly. The elevator lurched, and without further comment, Daniel swayed out into his apartment, glad to be away from the mirrors.
Daniel had said before that the apartment had come furnished, and it was obvious that was the case, because the place had the air of elegance gone to seed, as if ten months ago Daniel had stepped into it and closed every window, curtain, and door, moving in without bothering to alter a single thing. The air was stale and close, dusty without scent, and the small yellow lights did little to alleviate the relative gloom, shrouded with Daniel’s whiskey torpor just like everything else he touched. If there was any question that he was a habitual drinker, it was immediately alleviated by the sticky glasses littered about the room and the open bottle visible on the kitchen counter from the doorway. The large open living room had furniture that suited Daniel like stripes on a leopard, puffy cloth-covered things in black and teal stripe. All the furniture was ebony and black mirrored surfaces, though there was not a silver looking glass in sight despite a tellingly empty wall off the entrance. Daniel’s only addition to the apartment were the books, stacks of them piled on their sides, spines out, as if shipped straight from a local garage sale. The previous owners had not been readers, and there were no bookshelves. The dusty baby grand had been pushed off into a corner to make way for the round kitchen table. Newspapers in several languages littered the table, chairs, and floor surrounding, and Daniel’s laptop was opened in their midst. He swayed over, moving more confidently in his territory, and in one movement, closed the laptop and picked up a glass he’d left next to it.
“I wouldn’t be near as pretty if I was fat,” Jules replied, a whole lot of confidence in the telling. He watched Daniel walk out of the elevator, and he wondered if Daniel didn’t like looking at himself because he didn’t think he was worth looking at, or because Daniel didn’t like what he’d become. He settled on the latter, because the man had too much entitlement in that drunken carriage to point at someone who’d been a wallflower all his life long. Decision made, Jules walked past Daniel into the space, smelling of verbena and spice, and he stopped in the middle of the tomb.
Because that’s near enough what the opulent apartment was to Jules. Looked like his own house after his momma learned his daddy had died, like she just hadn’t had the strength to go fussing with anything. Jules was real sure Daniel’s bedroom would come with mussed bedsheets and more of the same, but at least the books looked touched, so it wasn’t like the man was sitting there on his lonesome staring into a bottle all day long. Still, Jules knew a fixer-upper when he saw one, and he reminded himself that those were a whole lot of trouble, and there was never any fixing ‘em in the end. Things had to want to fix themselves; no one could do that for Daniel, even someone real pretty.
The piano in the corner, dusty as it was, was a whole lot sweeter than any of the ones in the casinos around town, and Jules approached it with a slow whistle as he kicked off his boots. He popped open the top, long fingers being real careful with the lid, and he glanced down at the strings before experimentally pressing on some keys. It wasn’t too far off tune, which meant whoever had lived there before the dust had taken over things had played, and Jules slid a loving hand along the dusty black before turning to the man in the room. “Got a shirt I can borrow.? Tuning in a dress ain’t the easiest thing.”
Daniel made no attempt to tidy up the room, and he was watching the blond with a trace of stubborn, hit-on-18 defiance, as if he was intentionally disregarding the inevitable disapproval of his place. It came, of course, but then just as quickly went, which removed an excuse for Daniel to backpedal and order the blond to go away. It turned out he had only picked up the glass on the table as an excuse to go back into the kitchen, where he set about turning on a large 10-cup coffee maker. It purred pleasantly, and the thick, mealy bitterness of fresh coffee pervaded the air.
Returning to the living room and appearing, incredibly, to be slowly sobering, Daniel gifted the blond with a sour stare. “Don’t you need tools and things to tune it?” he asked, betraying a total lack of knowledge in the care of a musical instrument and the obvious expectation that others would do that for him if he wished to hear it. He gave the blond’s dress a critical and yet undisguisedly curious once over before grumbling off into a nearby bedroom to find a clean shirt. It ended up being a surprising amount of work, from the sound of it.
Daniel wasn’t halfway through the question before Jules started pulling open the the piano bench, lifting the top and tugging out the perfect box of tuning tools hiding inside. “Not as sweet as the professional kind, but it’ll do,” he said. “Piano’s close enough that it’ll do,” he explained, watching Daniel give his dress a once over and shaking his head, blond hair going all tumble over his shoulder. He had no idea what this man thought he was, and that entertained him some. If he’d been trying to get into Daniel’s pants, his reaction would have been a whole lot different, though. Men who thought they were getting a woman tended to react real bad to not getting a woman.
Jules slipped into the kitchen once Daniel disappeared on his hunt for a shirt, and he found a mug in a cupboard and poured himself some of the coffee. He didn’t sweeten it, and he didn’t make it light. He took a pleasured sip, both hands on the mug as he walked back on out into the living room and wandered to a dusty window to look on out at Las Vegas before sun-up. The city wasn’t particularly pretty, and it made Jules long for Tennessee's rolling greens. “You hurting yourself in there, Daniel?” he called out after a few seconds, a grin in the question and the use of the man’s name. Ornery thing, he decided, not minding it. All kinds of men were fine, long as you accepted them for what they were and didn’t try to go changing their stripes.
Daniel had only ever looked twice at women, and his behavior, too, would have been different if his intent had been anything other than what he said it would be. He was not interested in anything other than the blond’s musical talent, at the moment, and in his usual fashion after he’d had this much to drink, he didn’t think too far beyond that. He returned from his bedroom sans jacket with a t-shirt dangling in one fist. The t-shirt was wrinkled down the sides, as it had been folded clean and then compressed and tossed aside on various occasions for other garments. It was as bland as blue could possibly get. He dropped it in a heap on the bench and moved away toward the bottle in the kitchen, still grumbling under his breath--something about his closet and handouts. The label said hand-wash only, probably par for the course considering how much it cost, and Daniel had, appropriately, probably thrown it in a dryer at one point. Here, he had no hesitation about shouldering the blond aside if he was in the way of the coffee maker. He filled a chipped mug that had come stock with the apartment and added a not insignificant dollop of whiskey into it.
Jules didn’t say a thing about the whiskey. He just turned his back to Daniel and looked over his shoulder. “Go on and help tug on that zipper?” he asked of the zipper that lined the dress from neck to hip. “Figure you’ve had some practice,” he added, because drunkard or not, he was guessing this particular man had a wake of a whole lot of women who hadn’t been able to get him dry or get him hitched.
Daniel glanced over his shoulder, thought about it, and then meandered over with his coffee. He was steadier on his feet, both because he was sobering up and because he was walking shorter distances. He made a sound in between “hmph” and “hmm,” simultaneous thoughtful annoyance. It was a distinctly Daniel sound, because anyone else would have sounded stupid even trying it. He put four fingers into the blond’s loose hair at the nape of his neck, scraped it off to one side in a surprisingly gentle movement, and then shook the locks free to tug the zipper down in two or three smooth movements. He was quite good at it, even if he didn’t go out of his way to drag a knuckled down the spine that was revealed in his wake. He tipped his head and stepped back. “You make a decent woman,” he said. It was possible that he was under the impression he was giving a compliment.
Jules laughed, unoffended, his back bare of everything save skin and birthmarks. “I wasn’t trying to be a woman, honey,” he assured the man over his shoulder. “If I was, I’d go trying to have tits, and I’d be tucking things I don’t bother tucking,” he explained, slipping the dress off his shoulders and letting it fall onto the dusty carpet. The leggings he wore underneath were thick, black and he moved forward and tugged that blue shirt over his head before turning to regard the man who knew his way around a zipper real well. “Spend a lot of time helping women out of dresses?” he asked, freeing his hair from the fabric, his smile genuine as he chuckled and turned away. “Anyway, I just like wearing what I like wearing, honey. It’s got nothing to do with being a woman.” Because, in truth, he didn’t look much like a man, either, not with those cheekbones and that willowy frame.
Daniel lifted his mug to his lips. He hadn’t even put it down. He got away with not answering the return question by following his line of questioning with observation, a journalistic tactic. “Why do you like wearing women’s clothes--which is what you’re wearing. Isn’t it?” His voice sent small ripples over the top of the coffee, and he simultaneously drank while turning away, not lingering on the sight stripping in the middle of his living room. He held the mug up to protect it from the impact of the striped couch as he slumped into it.
“I like wearing what I like. What’s gender got to do with it?” Jules asked, opening the tuning kit and setting to work. “If I like a shirt, and it happens to come from the men’s section of the store, then I buy that. If a skirt takes my fancy, then I get that instead. Doesn’t matter, honey. Not to me, anyway,” he explained, wondering if answering Daniel’s questions counted as chattering. He plucked at strings, turned the tuning fork and played a scale and random chords, and he kept at it until he liked the sound of it. “Go on and label me,” he said with a smile that said he’d heard it all, and there wasn’t much Daniel could bring to the table that hadn’t been brought there before him.
Daniel ignored that. It was a challenge, and people liked to throw gauntlets to get him to follow their path. It was like telling him not to hit on eighteen. Even when it was reverse psychology, it tended not to work unless he was quite drunk. He was sober enough to gloss right over that, and then: “Men and women wear different types of clothes to emphasize different aspects of the human figure, things that typically appeal to the opposite sex. So you like what you like, but why you like what you like is gender, and that’s what it’s got to do with it.” He got through that whole statement without slurring once, bloodshot eyes mere slits under heavy lids and a thick shock of casino-greasy brown hair.
“Then why is there just as much of one as the other in my wardrobe, honey?” Jules asked, letting the piano lid close carefully. He sat himself on down on the bench a moment later, leggings and the shirt loose against elegant collarbones, and he tested the keys and his distance from them. He adjusted the bench, and he tested the pedals, and he glanced over at the man on the couch. “Feel like requesting something, seeing as you’re subjective about what you think’s got merit?” he asked, playing the intro to Hallelujah without glancing down at the keys. His expression turned on a dime, going serious, all that smile melting away like it’d never been. It reminded him of the hotel, of the ache in his chest, of what he’d done. He started singing without waiting on Daniel’s answer, soft, then growing louder. If his Listz was impressive, his voice was phenomenal. He obviously had some good training from someone, but the talent was innate. He was pitch perfect, closer to a contralto than a tenor, and he sounded like a little bit of Heaven. His expression mirrored the voice, ecstasy and all too pale to be real, adding to the illusion of something ethereal, more than human.
Daniel was brewing his answer, obviously forgetting his previous anxiety about being stuck with a chatterer, as the blond settled himself on the heretofore ignored baby grand. He had his knees at angles and he was so deeply ensconced in that couch it was obvious he spent a great deal of time there, so much that one had to wonder that it was hard on his back. You could easily imagine the blackjack table in front of him, and only the gentle listing of the mug back and forth between his two hands was different. At first, before the boy caught himself enough air to really make himself heard, Daniel was surprised at the presumption that his voice could compete with the piano, so mathematically exquisite with its fine matching keys and notes. Then he heard it, and Daniel had been seeking out good music his whole life, separate entirely from the ups and downs of fate and chance. He stopped to listen, the way he always did, and everything about him softened and stilled.
The song faded, but Jules’ fingers kept moving on the keys, and he looked over at the forgotten man on the couch, ‘cause he’d forgotten about anything but the music for those minutes. It was always like that for him when he was singing. Not so much when he was playing, but definitely when he was singing. “You didn’t tell me what you wanted to hear, honey,” he said, as if he hadn’t put the entire span of a song between the asking and the repetition. He tried to push off the memory of the hotel and all that sticky sweetness, and his fingers moved along the keys, Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte playing real slow and mournful. It fit the mood of the song that had come before, and Jules thought it was real fitting in the dusty tomb with the man that looked like he was set on becoming part of that couch. “You got a name for me?” he asked curiously, looking back down at the keys and watching his hands on the ivories.
Daniel still had his mug, but he hadn’t lifted it. The couch seemed to have lost its squidlike hold on his spine, and while his expression was still slack and without alert attention, all his focus was on one place. He liked the Ravel, deeply, the impressionist prickings of pine needles falling in water, but he did not immediately say so. He had more respect now for the blond’s musical aptitude, even if he showed no deep understanding of the things Daniel felt called to the soul. He thought about getting up, and then decided against it. “Why, you don’t like yours?” He was still formulating a response to the music.
“I ain’t given it,” was Jules’ response, and he gave Daniel a smile that was nothing like the angel he resembled moments earlier. His fingers kept dancing over the keys, deviating from the Ravel here and there to go wherever he felt they should go. Just like with his clothes, he didn’t stay on any path just because someone had said he needed to. It was his respect for the music that kept him from deviating too far, and a sideways glance at the man on the couch left him wondering if he was passing this test or failing it. Jules wasn’t much for tests, once it was all said and done, and he slid right on over to Suspicious Minds without warning. He didn’t have Elvis’ voice, too church-taught and hymnal for the smooth velvet of the King, but he sure felt the words, and it came across in the pristine notes that he was sure would drive the man on the couch halfway to throwing that mug. “You ain’t asked.”
The random transitions to wherever the tickling fingers went jolted Daniel sufficiently from his admiring (though relatively undetectable) trance. He was not a fan of the King, or American music in general, but at least the voice was smooth, and Daniel had little to contrast it with, since he never turned on the radio. He made a faint scowl with his face, a very deliberate action and clearly wrought. “Okay. What’s your name?” He still hadn’t taken another drink, and was now shifting his weight forward over his hips to lean closer and distinguish the boy from the shirt. A split-second later, without warning, he said, “Play something classical. Please.” It was a softer, devastatingly honest phrase.
Jules considered Listz, and he considered more Ravel, but in the end he went with something a little more modern, but that he felt real sure would fit the bill. He wasn’t sure if Daniel was familiar, if he’d heard all the pieces strung together to illustrate the title of the song, but it didn’t matter. He could play the entire set without needing a hint of music, on account of playing it in pieces at nearly every piano he could get his fingers on recent. It spoke to him, and it showed, and he didn’t chatter or make a peep as he moved from one piece to the other. In truth, getting to play at this piano was more payment than any bed in this dusty place could be, but he wasn’t going to say as much. Whoever’d lived there before must have liked playing real well, because even the acoustics in the room were deliberate and meticulous. He didn’t bother giving a name, because it didn’t really matter, and he knew that just as well as he knew anything. This was as much catharsis for him as it was for the man on the couch, a balm after the hotel and the things going on around them. It wasn’t soothing as singing, but that devastating plea had been plain as the Vegas heat midday.
Indeed, Glass was not Daniel’s idea of classical. He liked the raw emotion of some of the more modern artists, but their style did not appeal to him the way the lilting pieces of the musical Impressionists did. He had heard it before, however, though not through popular media, and he liked it, even if he didn’t feel as soothed by it as he might like. It was commentary, a nod to the past, and it cycled in a way that had some merit to his ear in a way the horrific electronic sounds popular today did not. He didn’t say anything even when the song was complete, refusing to pursue his question about the name, though he wanted to know more than he would allow. Daniel took a drink of cold doctored coffee and slid back into the curve of the couch, appearing for all the world as if he was asleep, his eyes low and heavy.
Jules relented and played one more Listz as he watched the man seemingly sleep. He was too trusting by nature, despite Las Vegas’ real concerted effort to change that as of late, and he believed the sleeping to be real. He kept the playing quiet, even when it should soar, and he pushed away from the piano once it was done. Thinking Daniel in a slumber, he took the coffee from his lax fingers, not wanting it to go spilling all over, and he picked up his discarded dress on the way.
Daniel violently jerked out of a doze as the cup came clear of his fingers, his eyelids coming clear of clouded amber. He gave the blond a wide-eyed look of absolute incomprehension, his slack expression without recognition, and he tellingly relaxed slightly before he even recognized the strangely angelic face. He blinked again and remembered who he was, curling his fingers around one arm and shifting to get his shoulders free of the couch. “Missed the end,” he complained, pressing his lips together and rubbing sand from one eye.
Jules had slept with countless men across the country, falling in love with every damn one, and then falling out just as quick, and he’d never had anyone look at him like that, like they didn’t remember who he was or what he was doing in their apartment. He tipped his head, a curious pale bird, and then he dragged two fingertips along one of Daniel’s cheekbones, beneath all that fur and scruff. “You go on and sleep. I’ll wake you with it come morning,” he promised. Come evening, really, because the sun was already waking, and neither of them had found and sleeping. He kept the cup in his hand, and he tossed the dress over his blue-covered shoulder, wandering into the kitchen without waiting on confirmation from the man on the couch.
“Don’t get up early enough,” Daniel said, but it didn’t come out clearly, more like dongeprnuf. Even with quite that much drink in him, the touch made him arch one eyebrow intently, but he didn’t comment on it. He lurched up to standing, steadied himself with really impressive effort, and then departed the room toward the hallway. “Can let’cherself out. Come back whenever.” He didn’t bother to explain himself or pause for a reaction, disappearing out of sight. The bedroom door gave a final, solid slam.