Page 26 of Gifted & Talented

22

When Arthur awoke in a haze sometime in the late afternoon, he found he couldn’t move his legs. Or his arms. Or lift his head. Or move his fingers. Alarming. He was unsure whether he could actually find the means to panic, though it did appear his lungs were theoretically within reach. He considered screaming and didn’t. The energy for it, usually conjurable under these or any circumstances, simply did not arrive. He awoke to his thoughts in a sequential way— I’m awake, it must be afternoon, oh shit, my legs— before they began to creep outward, weblike and familiar, per Arthur’s usual patterns of thought. He began to have several thoughts at once, about the well-being of unborn Riot and the loss of his father and the drowsiness that accompanied a post-orgasmic haze. He still had not heard from Gillian, although in fairness he seemed to have fallen asleep. He would check his phone as soon as motion returned to him.

He did not, at the time, doubt that it would, and this faith was rewarded when eventually a sticky pins-and-needles sensation crept around from his spine to his toes, radiating outward. He did not feel confident that he would be able to stand, but did manage to turn his head toward the alarm clock sitting there on the nightstand, a totem of his youth. It blinked 12:24, which meant that was not the correct time. Arthur impressively moved his pinky.

“There you are, Brother Slothful,” said Meredith, bursting into his room just as Arthur summoned the feats of strength to lift his head. “Did you get the email from the lawyers? Absolutely ridiculous. Did you bring a suit? I’m assuming Gillian brought one for you… I don’t see it. Ah, there it is.” She was riffling ineffectually through his wardrobe. “Can I ask you something?” she remarked into the custom armoire, a question presumably directed at him.

“Mm,” said Arthur inconclusively.

“How hard would it be to have someone, you know, eliminated?” Meredith turned to look at him then.

“In a squash tournament? Very simple,” said Arthur.

Meredith squinted at him. “Is this you being funny?”

“Not successfully, it seems.” Arthur became aware of a cottony feeling in his mouth and pondered whether Meredith might procure him some water if he asked nicely or flatteringly enough. (For purposes of theoretical exercise: “Sister Murderous, you have never looked so righteously vengeful, might you grant me a libation, please?”)

Meredith looked thoughtful.

“It’s funny,” she mused, “I don’t really want to kill him, but at the same time I feel like he’ll respect me less if I don’t at least try.” She glanced down at her hand, where apparently her phone was buzzing. “It’s Ward again, the little weasel. He’s going to have a meltdown and call the Feds himself at any moment, I swear to god. Anyway, forget about the assassin, it was really just a whim. What now?” she barked into her phone, and thankfully was gone.

She had pulled a suit out of the wardrobe, which did bear markers of Gillian’s handiwork. Arthur had forgotten to ask why he’d be needing a suit for whatever occasion Meredith seemed to know was on their agenda for today, though he supposed it didn’t matter. Meredith had set it out for him, and so he put it on.

At this very moment, since I’m sure you’re dying of curiosity, Gillian Wren was in the woods, woolgathering. By then it was nearly three, a solid eight hours since Yves had offered her a bit of medicinal chocolate, theoretically long enough for Gillian to regain some sense of her usual executive mastery, though it was well into the hike before she realized she wasn’t wearing the proper shoes for such an outing. They were a pair of black ballet flats, which of course were filthy now, all soiled around the toes. She had also been thinking in silence for almost forty minutes before Yves said something to her.

“Hm?” Gillian said, blinking to cognizance. Something was wrong with her, she deduced. And not just the drugs, although yes, drugs.

“We will have to go back soon, I’m afraid,” Yves repeated. “There is a gathering this evening in honor of your father-in-law.”

Gillian faintly remembered that Meredith, upon returning to the house at some point midday, had spoken to exactly one grieving pilgrim (a friend of Thayer’s from primary school) before throwing her hands in the air and saying there would no longer be any allowances for coming and going—anyone who wanted to grieve would do so at one time, conclusively. “Where the balls is Eilidh?” Meredith had added, before stomping off muttering something about Daddy’s little princess.

At which point Yves had turned to Gillian and suggested they go for a walk. “You know, I sense I could teach you something,” he said, “if you were interested in the matter of sensuality we discussed earlier.”

Gillian hadn’t the faintest idea what Yves was talking about. She was discovering that there were some holes in her memory of the day, not unlike the time she’d torn her calf playing lacrosse in high school and had been forced to take a muscle relaxant. She had spent the day with her high school boyfriend, and had later received a message online that he was sad she felt that way and hoped they’d be friends even though she’d apparently made it clear to him that she didn’t want to be. She didn’t have any idea what she’d said or why she’d said it, though mixed into her distress was some tiny, glowing ball of relief. Her father had always liked that boyfriend. Gillian thought he could be a bit of a bore.

“Okay, a walk sounds nice,” said Gillian. Some of the lethargy was beginning to fade by then, and so the menstrual pain that she’d forgotten about for a while had returned. Still, she felt a kinship with Yves that hadn’t been there before, as if whatever he’d said that didn’t make any sense actually did make sense if she really thought about it, though when she thought about it, she just found a sort of big empty space, so a lot of this was really just a feeling. “But I don’t want Arthur to worry.”

“Oh, Arthur is fine, we will not be gone long,” Yves assured her, shutting the front door behind him in a way that Gillian realized meant they had already begun to walk, descending the long staircase from the house’s front door to the private drive below. “Chocolate?” Yves offered again as they wound their way downward, withdrawing some from the small pouch he’d been wearing earlier.

Gillian glanced at the unfamiliarly marked bar of chocolate with the feminine sense of danger she’d been unwisely lacking earlier, when Yves had first offered it. “What’s in that?”

“Only a little recreational marijuana,” said Yves, “as well as some mild intoxicants. You needn’t worry, I have a very good mixologist. He has almost all the licenses.”

“Am I on drugs?” asked Gillian then, wondering why she wasn’t more bothered by having to ask such a question.

“Oh, no!” Yves laughed. “Or yes, depending. They are really more like herbs. Would you like more?”

“I’m okay, thanks,” said Gillian. Then she became curious what Yves had meant by the “matter of sensuality” they had apparently earlier discussed, noting privately the irony of descending literally into temptation as they disembarked the house’s stairs. “When you say, um, teach me something, did you by chance mean—?”

“Oh, you would like to start now? Well, let’s see, I suppose as a baseline we will need to establish your comfort level. How is this?” asked Yves, coming to a sudden halt to face her, placing both hands firmly on her waist.

“Oh. Uh.” Gillian looked at his hands, which were objectively very attractive hands. They were big and masculine but artful, as if he could do many magnificent things with them. She imagined them hunting a very large animal or gathering vast amounts of wheat. She tried to picture them painting or sculpting and found that she could do that as well. Then she tried to imagine him undressing her with them and she suddenly felt very cold. “I don’t think I like that.”

“Wonderful. How is this?” Yves shifted one hand to her face, stroking her jaw with his artful thumb. It was very intimate. Gillian was forced to look him in the eyes, which despite the heavy precision of his brow were lovely, very lovely. His eyes were a very interesting shape, and they were an extremely dark brown, almost black, set back within the shape of his eye so that she could see the entire circle of his iris. They were very unlike Arthur’s. Arthur’s eyes were a cool, grainy amber he had gotten from his father, and they had the effect of appearing larger, softer. Less penetrating, but more unearthing.

“I don’t really like this,” said Gillian, squirming. It was strange, as she was sure she felt some kind of philosophical attraction to Yves, and certainly she liked him a great deal. She also did not feel any sort of moral guilt, since she knew Yves had done all of these things to Arthur and therefore there was nothing inherently wrong with being touched. It was more of a fundamental wrongness, like oil and water—like her feelings of attraction sat on top of the feeling of discomfort, instead of relieving or dissipating it.

“Yes, okay,” said Yves cheerfully, and leaned in.

Gillian immediately withdrew, turning her head so sharply that she was sure it had to read as repulsion. “I’m so sorry,” she said, though she didn’t turn toward Yves again until he had fully retracted his sudden closeness. “I don’t mean to act like… like you disgust me or anything, it’s not that —”

“Oh, Gillian, I am only finding your edges,” said Yves, his mood undiminished. “I have to learn before I can teach. Although in this case, I do not think there is any teaching to do.”

“Oh,” said Gillian, who was hearing that she was a hopeless case, which was what she had already sort of understood about herself. “Right, okay.”

“Would you like to keep walking?” said Yves. “We don’t have to touch. I can stay this far away from you,” he said, leaving a space of about two or three Arthurs between them, “or perhaps this far,” he attempted, squeezing in an additional Arthur.

“I think here would be fine,” said Gillian, excising the fourth Arthur, which seemed excessive. Arthur had very broad shoulders, broader than Yves’s.

“Excellent,” said Yves, popping a bit of chocolate in his mouth. “And now, we walk.”

It was about four by the time Arthur later regained the motion with which to partially dress, unaware that his wife had been out with his boyfriend in an attempt to explore the constraints of her sensuality. His girlfriend, however, had reentered the room in time to join him at the mirror.

“Oh, I’ve always thought it would be so romantic to tie a man’s tie,” said Philippa, slipping an arm around his waist. “Unfortunately, I haven’t the faintest idea how.”

Arthur chuckled as Philippa folded into his embrace with an ease that would have filled Gillian with longing, for reasons entirely unrelated to the presence of another woman. “I could teach you now, if you wanted. We could make quite a portrait of domesticity.”

“As tempting as that would be, I think adventure suits us more.” Philippa smiled up at him and Arthur bent to kiss her neck.

“Well, I suppose that adventure is about to change, isn’t it? A very domestic adventure, such that tie-tying might not be totally out of place.” His lips traveled to her clavicle, to the place she wore a locket with a filigreed M, for Mouse. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Having so much time,” said Arthur, winding his hands into her hair, which Philippa currently wore loose and windswept and golden. Arthur’s father’s death had created an interesting pocket universe where time no longer mattered and everything felt suspended, hung low and swaying on an existential breeze.

“I suppose we’ll have more of this soon enough,” Arthur realized. He could certainly afford a few months to bond full-time with Riot, and surely Philippa would want to continue her charity work, so perhaps it would make more sense for Arthur to stay home. “What do you think about me taking a year off, or maybe more than that, when the baby comes?”

“Ouch,” said Philippa, withdrawing to look up at him with a little pout. “You stung me.”

“I did?” asked Arthur, confused. Normally he was more aware when things were going awry. “Like a static shock, you mean? I’m sorry.” The electrical malfunctions had been confined to work situations up to then, a slip for which he felt a genuine guilt. “I suppose it’s my father’s death—everything’s just a bit off.” Even more so than usual, and the “usual” of the past few weeks had already been less than ideal. “You know, when I woke up this afternoon I couldn’t even move, like one of those weird paralytic dreams,” Arthur remarked, before recalling, “Where were you, by the way?”

Philippa was plucking lint from his collar. “Oh, I was just—”

“Brother Indolent,” announced Meredith, bursting once again into the room. This time she wore a black dress that looked some years off trend, her hair in severe, precise curls that she had pulled into a ponytail, and at her side, with one hand tucked into hers as if he were a prop, was Cass. “Do you intend to conduct your indecencies in a public way,” Meredith asked Arthur, “or would you like to track down your wife?”

“I’m here,” said Gillian in a small, efficient voice, bustling past Meredith in the clothes she’d been wearing that morning. Arthur moved instinctively to let go of Philippa, then realized Philippa had already withdrawn from him, busying herself with her hair. Gillian met Arthur’s gaze in the mirrored surface, pausing him for a moment. She was looking very intently at him, more so than usual. Gillian had the most remarkable eyes, thought Arthur. He supposed as a practical matter they were brown—that was what it said on Gillian’s passport, brown eyes, brown hair—but there was something of an earth-shattering quality to looking at her, a burst, like watching a flower bloom before his eyes in an effervescing time lapse.

“Are you all right?” Arthur mouthed to her.

Gillian turned her gaze from his in the mirror. “Fine,” she said in her usual perfunctory way, reaching up to untie his tie with characteristically brutal efficiency. She had taken offense to his usual Windsor, as she often did, but this time, as she began tactically reconstructing the double Windsor that was, to Gillian, as significant as the Oxford comma, she hesitated a moment, for the first time ever doing so that Arthur could remember, and simply paused there, as if she were temporarily confused—no, the opposite. As if she’d had a revelation.

Then her eyes lifted sheepishly to something over Arthur’s shoulder, an odd expression alighting on Gillian’s cheeks with a flush that Arthur had never seen before.

From the mirror, Arthur caught Yves’s insouciant presence in the doorway. Then he spotted Philippa’s narrowed gaze, which lingered on Gillian’s back.

From where they rested uneasily at his sides, Arthur’s knuckles tensed. Overhead, the lights resumed flickering, one bulb sharply burning out.

“Hello?” said Meredith in a voice that was pure infuriation. “Did I not make it clear that you’re all running late?”