Page 68 of Gifted & Talented

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Also, I might be taking liberties with what the medical examiner actually said to Arthur. There may have been less of a political agenda than what I interpreted, having heard the story secondhand; some of this is paraphrased. Anyway, I promised to tell you about Yves. I said he could read minds, which was slightly hyperbolic on my part. It was just kind of a shorthand at the time, because we had other things to worry about then.

The longer story is: Yves Reza began experiencing seizures when he was very small. Except Yves’s seizures weren’t normal seizures, because whenever they happened, his consciousness would bounce around in time and space and he would see the insides of a person, their thoughts and hopes, and the outsides of them as well, where they were and what they were doing. Initially his mother thought it was demon possession. But then they discovered it wasn’t a demon, or at least not a demon they could cast out (they tried), and Yves had a very strange knack for predicting things, which was very helpful for the rest of the village, and indeed the entire family. Both Yves’s mother and his father’s wife both agreed he just needed a hobby, something more appropriate to focus his attention on.

Yves ended up doing a lot of what most cultures call “women’s work,” or fine motor skills performed for long periods of time like weaving and embroidery, because methodical consistency kept him relatively centered. They kept him in the present most of the time, instead of jumping into other people’s futures arbitrarily to see what they would be eating for dinner or what they’d become in ten years. Later, Yves realized that things that required him to focus or die achieved even greater success in this regard, given the stakes. Driving a car at top speeds with tangible risk of peril, for example, was a hugely more effective way to remain mindful in the moment. Also, Yves discovered drugs, which is important to the story. If you haven’t already, you’ll soon see why.

Fundamentally though, Yves’s Yves-ness was unharmed by the circumstances of his… let’s call it profound neurodivergence. He was an exuberant person, one who didn’t typically give into the darkness of other people’s doom. He had a frighteningly short attention span, so that was probably part of it, but also, he had a way of capitulating to the whims of the universe that made him a less damageable type of person.

Which was a pure, indefatigable authenticity that irritated Lady Philippa Villiers-DeMagnon very much over time, grating on her increasingly as she realized it was not an act, and that Yves was not, in fact, a dark and complex person masking his pain with joyful cravings for waffles. Which isn’t to say that Yves is not complex, because loving a world for the existence of waffles is a very impressive thing to do when the oceans are frankly just lying in wait for the chance to swallow us up. But Yves is not, himself, dark, and Philippa craved darkness because she wanted to feel needed; she wanted to be necessary to someone’s happiness, but Yves would be happy with or without her, because Yves was a happy person. Yves was what Meredith Wren had promised everyone they could have, which in that context is absurd. Presumably you don’t need me to expound on that.

But Yves did have his low moments, like when he knew that Arthur was going to believe Philippa’s cry for attention, or when he knew that Philippa was going to die. He saw it the day before, when he and Philippa were alone and she was delivering her own ultimatum—not the one Gillian had suggested, about telling Arthur the truth, but a more predictable one about marrying her or else —which would necessitate the ending that Yves had known in a less psychic way was soon to come.

Still, Yves had thought there would be more time, given the literal darkness in his vision. He felt Philippa’s impatience, her certainty that Arthur would come for her soon, that she could successfully pry Arthur away from his life, and instead of warning her about what he’d witnessed—he never warned people; there was no point in it really; did it really make it better to know what was coming? almost never, no—Yves had simply said darling, please don’t do it. Just leave poor Arthur alone.

“What about me? I’ve been abandoned, ” Philippa shouted at him. “Don’t you care about our family?”

“Arthur is our family,” said Yves, who believed this.

“Yes, but our baby —”

“We don’t have a baby.”

Philippa ignored him. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course we do—”

“Pippela. My darling Mouse.” Yves rose to his feet and took both her hands. “Would an orgasm make you feel more inclined to honesty? The throes of passion do have a way of lightening your mood.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Philippa said in a tone of devastating frustration, though she gave in almost instantly with a sigh, flouncing onto the bed. “Why did you want to come here, anyway?” she muttered to herself, propped up by her elbows as Yves divested her of her cashmere sweatpants. “I hate this house. It’s dreadful. I can’t stand Gillian.”

“Gillian is a lovely woman,” said Yves, kissing his way up Philippa’s thigh.

Philippa threw herself backward, ragdolling onto the duvet. “Don’t tell me you love her now instead of me,” she said with utter misery.

“Oh, I do love her,” Yves said guilelessly. “I would woo her myself if she wasn’t madly in love with her husband.”

“Is she?” asked Philippa, frowning.

“Oh, yes,” Yves said. He kept meaning to have a talk with Arthur about it. “I worry Arthur is unaware of the extent of it.”

“Why should you worry about that?”

“Because they love each other very much but don’t know how to say it in a way the other can understand. I think it’s fixable,” said Yves, “though perhaps once it’s fixed Arthur will have no further use for me.” He deflated slightly, then brightened. “But it will be okay, because then they’ll be together, and Arthur will be happy.” Joy returned to him like a flame of righteousness. “He won’t need us anymore, but that will be fine.”

“Maybe for you, but what about me?” demanded Philippa, propping herself up again to frown at him. “If we leave them to each other, then what does that mean for you and me?”

This was when he saw her. Her last moments, her sense of entitlement to love, her certainty that she deserved it even when it was stolen. Yves reached for a bit of chocolate in his pocket, carefully selecting a small square before returning to the conversation.

“Oh, Mouse, I can’t marry you,” he said, popping the medicine in his mouth. “Not because I don’t love you,” he added, though that love had taken on a very different form, the kind that needed periodic windows of distance, or that could only be felt from afar, or perhaps exclusively in retrospect. “Your family is riddled with debt and your hobbies err slightly hypocritical, and I am beginning to suspect you enjoy thinking of me as a simpleton.” It saddened him to say those things aloud. “May I focus on your erotic regions now?” Yves asked optimistically.

“Yes, fine.” Philippa lay back again, then sat up, abruptly changing her mind. “Wait, you never answered the question. Why did you come here?”

The answer: because Yves was in love with Arthur and wanted to get away from Philippa, though there seemed no productive outcome to saying so out loud.

“Arthur needs us,” said Yves. “You know how difficult his love for his father has been. He has countless feelings and nowhere to put them.”

“Fine,” said Philippa in a voice that was too compliant, so Yves decided she had likely pieced together some kind of sinister plan. But then he remembered the rest of his time with her would be limited, and so he did his best to pleasure her as expertly as he knew how, and when he noticed that she was gone the next day, he realized that he would miss her.

Although not, per se, right now.