Re: [misha & jude: the capital]
[He'd come a dozen times without Oliver cleaved to hip or divorced from it, a shell split in half with the pink, soft meat spilling naked in the abrupt absence of other half. Jude came for business, brisk trade in books and tea and tiny fluffy things for cats to bat about and the kind of art supplies that came in expensive boxes stamped with trade names before Oli made friends with the art store. Rarely for pleasure, if you please, except pleasure had undone itself like a shoe-lace between one moment and the next and Jude wasn't sure if teeming city spilling over with delights was business or pleasure anymore even if sole purpose was seeking the latter out and ignoring case for the former.
He didn't long for the museum. Art was art and objects were expensive little treasure-troves and Jude had lost the taste for it in the transient way people stopped smoking, when the scent of singed tobacco would remind them of all the reason why to, instead of not. Museums were business and this was pleasure and he put his back to the museum deliberately in looking for Misha in a general way that took in the hordes.
Misha he didn't remember seeing over a handful of times. Misha who had been singular, self-assured presence at Oliver's side, or a fiddler in a swirl of showmanship in the ring or Misha who had been the fault-line between one version of Oliver and the next, a factor to multiply or divide by but never the bottom line. Jude had a handful of memories rather than a face and real, living boy in front of him was startled reality. And if the shine had knocked off a touch from Jude, the carrying about a bit what should really have lasted a handful of days before storm brewed over, it was an air rather than visible fingermarks.]
Hi, sunshine. I've been taking in the view. [Jude's smile was slow but bright and he looked in at the presence of the fiddle with a degree of interest.] Have you been playing? [Jude's piano had been sorely missed.]