Page 21 of Farkas: Gothika

Graves, who sat behind an enormous oak desk—empty but for a pipe, blotter, and telephone—looked up at Lee with a smile. “Mr. Farkas gave a very positive report of your work, Harker.”

“Thank you.”

“Very positive indeed.”

If there was some hidden meaning there, Lee was too tired to parse it. He didn’t even bother to wonder how Vincent had communicated with Mr. Graves. Was there a phone in his mansion after all? Did he have his driver deliver a note? Hell, maybe he had carrier pigeons, for all that Lee knew.

“I did my best, sir.”

“Yes. Well, you’re coming up for partnership review soon. This will weigh heavily in your favor.”

Lee didn’t feel any relief at that, but he nodded anyway. “Thank you, sir.”

A heavy silence fell. After a moment, Mr. Graves cleared his throat. “I imagine your other tasks have piled up while you were gone.”

“I’ll get to them right away.”

Mr. Graves made a dismissive grunt, and Lee strode out of the office without even a glance at the expansive view. He descended the stairs to his own office, three floors below. All he could see through his window was Pershing Square and more buildings. No mountains. No steep ravine. No sounds of coyotes howling.

Lee sat down to tackle paperwork. Everything was entirely predictable. At lunchtime he joined two other associates at a diner they often went to; his coffee and hamburger seemed tasteless. The conversation was the same as always: the unreasonable clients, the stupid opponents, the girls who worked in the steno pool. Lee let it all wash over him. Then he was back at his desk, writing up a sales contract for a rooming house on Figueroa. Lee’s firm had convinced the city to condemn the place. The tenants had already been forcibly relocated to Christ knew where, and the landlord had to sell to Lee’s client for almost nothing. A victory. The partners would be pleased.

He stayed late, as was his habit, and had dinner at the same diner, this time alone. On a whim, however, instead of walking back to his apartment, he took the Angel’s Flight funicular to the top of the hill. Although a lot of the decaying old mansions had already been razed—leaving nothing but dusty lots—a few remained, and some of the ratty apartment buildings were still occupied. He saw lights on in windows and caught snatches of radio music and conversations in several languages. The few other pedestrians, no matter their age, looked stooped and worn.

When he finally returned home, he unpacked his luggage. He put away the suits first and then turned to the worn wooden trunk that Vincent had given him. It was old and the decorative painting had faded, but it was clearly of excellent quality. The lock worked smoothly and the hinges didn’t creak when he opened the lid. Inside were the strange outfits Vincent had given him, along with several others that Lee hadn’t seen before. There was a heavy floor-length coat of soft fur, several pairs of finely crafted boots, and a shining sword in a jeweled scabbard. The trunk also contained the German book that Vincent had read to him.

Unsure what to think about these gifts, Lee packed them all away and closed the trunk, which he left in the middle of his living room. It definitely looked out of place among his modern furniture.

Holding a tumbler and with a bottle of whiskey on the table beside him, he sat in his armchair and wished he had some of Vincent’s wine. Hell, wishing he had Vincent. To talk to. To listen to. To be fucked by.

It was late when he finally stripped and went to bed. The next day was Saturday, and although he often he went to the office on weekends, he wouldn’t this time. Maybe he’d just stay in bed all day.

His dreams that night were fractured things, with looming faces he didn’t recognize and distant voices calling words he couldn’t understand.

* * *

He ended up sleeping very late, then made himself some toast and an egg. He wasn’t hungry and ended up throwing most of it away. His coffee tasted extremely bitter even after he added extra sugar, so he dumped that too.

Lee spent most of the day wandering the city on foot with no particular destination. He ambled around Bunker Hill and down among the buildings near his office, which were quiet on the weekend. He strolled through Chinatown, alongside the dry Los Angeles riverbed, through Union Station, past movie theaters, around the stalls in Grand Central Market, and through the rooms of the public library. He sat for a time on a bench in Pershing Square. He felt no more connection to the people than he did to the pigeons, and nobody gave him more than a passing glance.

It was a particularly smoggy day, and maybe that was part of the problem. The grayness had seeped into his brain, clouding his thoughts and emotions.

He drifted into a movie theater where he watched Jimmy Stewart catch a murderer despite a broken leg. But today Lee found that he couldn’t care about the characters. What were they anyway, but light and shadows cast upon a screen? There was no substance to them. They weren’t real in the way that Vincent Farkas was, in the way that Lee had been during those desperate, ecstatic times they’d spent in bed.

He walked out of the theater feeling as gray as before. By then it was dark and he should have wanted dinner. He’d eaten nothing all day. But the complaints of his empty stomach seemed unimportant, so he ignored them. He went to the bar at the Biltmore instead.

Sometimes men frequented the Biltmore in lieu of cruising Pershing Square across the street. Lee had been to the bar before. It was respectable enough that he didn’t worry about being seen. It still wasn’t entirely safe—God, nowhere was safe—but the vice squad tended to ignore it in favor of easier pickings. If a man was so inclined, he might catch another man’s gaze, and they might subtly arrange a rendezvous in one of the hotel rooms above. Lee had been brave enough to do this only a few times before.

But tonight it wasn’t lack of courage that kept him staring at his drink instead of looking carefully around the barroom. It was lack of interest. Some of the men were handsome. Some of them were likely wealthy. But none of them were Vincent, and they didn’t stir his blood.

Blood.

Feeling drunk despite the consumption of only a single whiskey, Lee paid his tab and shuffled out onto the street. The slightly chilly night air did nothing to clear his head. If anything, the breeze made him giddier, bringing with it the scents of every person who had walked on Olive Street that day, as well as the faint sweat of the sailors and hustlers and businessmen trolling the park across the way. He was certain that if he concentrated hard enough, he’d hear their heartbeats.

“I’m going crazy,” he said out loud to nobody, nearly proving his point.

He ran home in a dead rush, tore off his clothing so violently that he ripped his shirt, and in the center of his living room—with every light on and the curtains open—he jacked himself so violently that pain and pleasure were completely interwoven. Were, in fact, one and the same.

He climaxed with a roar and then collapsed to his knees, sobbing into his sticky palms.