Yeah, they packed up and laid prone in glass coffins so they could play Snow White together forever. Sad thing is, I can't get the glass off to smooch them back to life.
Well fuck. What's with this place, for God's sakes? It seems to me the only kind of screwed anybody's getting around here is over. I'm sorry, Richie, losing somebody's a pill but someone from your own world's the kind of pill you could choke on.
Matter of fact I was up paying respects to the other guys that went back to sleep. Don't suppose you ever met a Steve Trevor or Diana? Or even a pretty ghost in a green glass ball, name of Sandra?
[It does and it doesn't feel foolish to him to type it out any longer. Her situation had grown steadily more familiar to him as she grew into a close confidante, but explaining it to other people only reminds him of how incredulous he had been when the crystal ball started speaking to him in Thesa's kitchen, giving him shit for letting his bolognese boil over. But they were all strange, and perhaps Prior had met stranger folk yet.
No, there were other things making him bristle now. Giving the real number of losses makes him look like a real hound dog. Just a-cryin all the time. Not what he'd had in mind when he messaged Prior at all.]
It's a hard pill sure, but I'm swallowing all right. Bevvie's safer sleeping. Thinking of her or any of the gang going through this shit has my testes shrinking back up for shelter.
A noble concept, if not image. And nonsense, of course. There's no storm that can be improved by bravely weathering it alone. For all we know they're
[Dead already. Byerly used to think so. And Prior, for his part and given his strange ability to know such things, is acutely aware it isn't true. It's whether living in that state is worth anything that begs the question.
Oh but he's desperately maudlin. Of course he's starting to sound like By.]
Well, anyway. I knew Diana. [A queen should be aware of her competition - they ate ice cream together.] And the - the glass ball? I met her too. My doctor went, before all this. You'll have known him from work: John Watson. My, it really has been a cull. We're practically decimated.
[There, put it in perspective. His small desolations don't matter at all in the scale of things.
I had wondered if the doc abandoned the post for better pay or just better sleep. Never got to chat with the fellow, but I'm sorry to hear it all the same.
Yeah, it's a bloody swathe all right. The new kids are piling in but the old guard is dwindling all the same. I wonder how the numbers skew now.
Well they're dead ringers for big time G-O-Ds even if they insist that's not the game. Here to work every miracle except the ones you need and the ones you ask for.
Oh, as if real gods are that involved. They're not gods, these things. They're micromanagers if anything, any greater force is far beyond the pay grade they're on.
I'd just like to know why, I suppose. Am I supposed to be lonely? Did I do something terribly wrong?
didn't take you for a religious fellow. You're not hoping for a real divine intervention, are you? I'd say the time for it came and went myself.
Like what? Next to the rest of us a guy like you is a bonafide saint. If you're getting personal punishment what's coming for us hooligans and bad eggs?
And sodomites don't get to be saintly, you should know that. Balanced at the edge of the fiery pit, we lure others to its depths, that's all. Sirens, not saints. But I'm curious - for a bad egg I haven't detected a hint of sulfur. What is this fad for self-loathing? It's just not like me to be behind the trend.
But you went looking anyway. That's more faith than most.
[Ah yes, this old yarn. Something you could subscribe to as a pint-sized choir boy, but made less and less sense the more life you lived. The wonderful thing about eschewing God was doing away with all those archaic don't-you-dares. And he'd...well, not with Byerly, but with girls, sure.]
There's far worse sin in this world than a little ass poking, you should know that.
That's a mystery for you to solve, my sulfur is secret and close to my heart.
Or maybe just more need. For the fabulous, of course - stow the divine. When it comes to that I've generally considered myself a WASP with a silent P.
[And, through everything, the wages of sin theory is not one Prior ascribes to. Calculated, perhaps, but he raises the point to test other people's moral quandaries, not his own. 9 parts theatrics to a single measure of caution. Richie's passed the test more than once already, still: force of habit.]
So you're saying I should get close to your heart to find it?
Ours is a disillusioned generation. I left the Methodist in me behind as a withered husk on the Midwest plains a long time ago. And now it's gone up in smoke like the rest of planet Earth.
I'll imagine that's a euphemism and neglect to ask what for. It's a terrible habit, by the way.
[And he finds himself missing smoky breath. Though as to the other thing-
Well, there could be someone. He could ask Dorian. Maybe through some unfortunate happenstance he'll have been left equally abandoned and - mm. No, things are still new there, a balance he's not ready to tip. For all the better days he has, he's still sick. It's not the most romantic of prospects to live with.
Though that's also no reason to inflict it on Richie.]
I answered: no plans yet. Though your pity is appreciated by we the pitiful - are you sure you know what you're asking?
It's my literal ash tray, get your head out of the gutter you nasty boy.
[It really is terrible. He ought to quit, but it's just a very difficult time and a very difficult place for it. His nerves are always on high alert and nothing soothes them down like a long drag on a slim stick.
Prior's reminder does have him hesitating. Yes, it's not ideal. Richie types Nevermind, but deletes it immediately. He'd had the one scare. Survived it just fucking peachy. Then he'd had a much worse scare that involved no kind of AIDS or leprosy or any other such knowable disease, and the motherfuckers brought him back from the grave.
So perhaps there's something to be said for the atmosphere around here. Or it's the protection of the Orbiter's investments. Micromanagers indeed.
[Theres a drawn out pause in the response. The truth is, he should turn this down. Infectious or not, living with the dying is no kind of party, and Prior's been lucky in finding one person to not only tolerate it but do so with care. Prior's alone here now, again, and if he wanted to be fair on anybody he'd leave it that way. But he's just so terrible at being alone. Already the distraction of a few scattered texts has his body curled in round the phone like the screen light's something he could photosynthesise.
[He could guess the obvious, but he gathers that "You were doing el tango horizontale" isn't going to fly.
The second obvious retort is one that chills him a little more considerably, but a moment of rational thought has him backpedaling. No no no, Byerly wouldn't be hustling under Shades Darker's roof if Koralle suspected deathly, incurable illness passed through sex and blood. Sharing an afflication can't be the reason either.]
I was assigned a house when I got here. Everyone else got roommates but me: I got all the space I could wish for without the wish ever being made. Creaky floorboards and silent, impenetrable dark. I posted on the network that night, because I was lonely, and my leg was fucked up and I couldn't get off the bathroom floor.
He came over with a picnic. Apple turnovers and not-terrible wine and an invitation he wouldn't let me turn down. And after that I wouldn't let him let me go.
[So maybe this will backfire one day. But if he's telling truths? It's not just for Prior's own health he made the offer.
Things have been too quiet lately. He's never thrived in silence, and he can't crash on Red and Boxer's couch like it's his vacation cottage whenever the deafening nothing bears down on him. Can't keep pestering the kids. Can't keep strolling among the pods and mooning over Big Bill and Haystack and Eds, Mikey.
Beverly.
Fucking Beverly. It had only been weeks. Not even a full month, he'd had her smile and her fire and her goddamn laughter, too generous for how shit half his jokes were. They were only friends and never lovers, but that didn't erase what having her meant to him.]
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Well if you need a pad in the interim, I'm flying solo again too. The extra bed throws off the feng shui when it's sitting empty.
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What a typical sob story, am I right?
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You found Byerly when you were looking for her?
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[It does and it doesn't feel foolish to him to type it out any longer. Her situation had grown steadily more familiar to him as she grew into a close confidante, but explaining it to other people only reminds him of how incredulous he had been when the crystal ball started speaking to him in Thesa's kitchen, giving him shit for letting his bolognese boil over. But they were all strange, and perhaps Prior had met stranger folk yet.
No, there were other things making him bristle now. Giving the real number of losses makes him look like a real hound dog. Just a-cryin all the time. Not what he'd had in mind when he messaged Prior at all.]
It's a hard pill sure, but I'm swallowing all right. Bevvie's safer sleeping. Thinking of her or any of the gang going through this shit has my testes shrinking back up for shelter.
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[Dead already. Byerly used to think so. And Prior, for his part and given his strange ability to know such things, is acutely aware it isn't true. It's whether living in that state is worth anything that begs the question.
Oh but he's desperately maudlin. Of course he's starting to sound like By.]
Well, anyway. I knew Diana. [A queen should be aware of her competition - they ate ice cream together.] And the - the glass ball? I met her too. My doctor went, before all this. You'll have known him from work: John Watson. My, it really has been a cull. We're practically decimated.
[There, put it in perspective. His small desolations don't matter at all in the scale of things.
Only they do, damn it all. They really do.]
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Yeah, it's a bloody swathe all right. The new kids are piling in but the old guard is dwindling all the same. I wonder how the numbers skew now.
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I've heard it's that there's something still to be fixed by their stasis but some of us unfixable ones find that a hard concept to buy.
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Well they're dead ringers for big time G-O-Ds even if they insist that's not the game. Here to work every miracle except the ones you need and the ones you ask for.
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I'd just like to know why, I suppose. Am I supposed to be lonely? Did I do something terribly wrong?
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Like what? Next to the rest of us a guy like you is a bonafide saint. If you're getting personal punishment what's coming for us hooligans and bad eggs?
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And sodomites don't get to be saintly, you should know that. Balanced at the edge of the fiery pit, we lure others to its depths, that's all. Sirens, not saints. But I'm curious - for a bad egg I haven't detected a hint of sulfur. What is this fad for self-loathing? It's just not like me to be behind the trend.
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[Ah yes, this old yarn. Something you could subscribe to as a pint-sized choir boy, but made less and less sense the more life you lived. The wonderful thing about eschewing God was doing away with all those archaic don't-you-dares. And he'd...well, not with Byerly, but with girls, sure.]
There's far worse sin in this world than a little ass poking, you should know that.
That's a mystery for you to solve, my sulfur is secret and close to my heart.
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[And, through everything, the wages of sin theory is not one Prior ascribes to. Calculated, perhaps, but he raises the point to test other people's moral quandaries, not his own. 9 parts theatrics to a single measure of caution. Richie's passed the test more than once already, still: force of habit.]
So you're saying I should get close to your heart to find it?
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You could if you're so sweet on me baby!
You never answered my question by the way.
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How am I holding up?
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I meant about a pad to crash in.
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[And he finds himself missing smoky breath. Though as to the other thing-
Well, there could be someone. He could ask Dorian. Maybe through some unfortunate happenstance he'll have been left equally abandoned and - mm. No, things are still new there, a balance he's not ready to tip. For all the better days he has, he's still sick. It's not the most romantic of prospects to live with.
Though that's also no reason to inflict it on Richie.]
I answered: no plans yet. Though your pity is appreciated by we the pitiful - are you sure you know what you're asking?
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[It really is terrible. He ought to quit, but it's just a very difficult time and a very difficult place for it. His nerves are always on high alert and nothing soothes them down like a long drag on a slim stick.
Prior's reminder does have him hesitating. Yes, it's not ideal. Richie types Nevermind, but deletes it immediately. He'd had the one scare. Survived it just fucking peachy. Then he'd had a much worse scare that involved no kind of AIDS or leprosy or any other such knowable disease, and the motherfuckers brought him back from the grave.
So perhaps there's something to be said for the atmosphere around here. Or it's the protection of the Orbiter's investments. Micromanagers indeed.
The pause must be notable by now.]
Sure I do. If you might accept pity that is.
[Heaven help him.]
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So a response does come, eventually.]
Did Byerly ever tell you why we lived together?
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The second obvious retort is one that chills him a little more considerably, but a moment of rational thought has him backpedaling. No no no, Byerly wouldn't be hustling under Shades Darker's roof if Koralle suspected deathly, incurable illness passed through sex and blood. Sharing an afflication can't be the reason either.]
A mutual love of parcheesi?
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I was assigned a house when I got here. Everyone else got roommates but me: I got all the space I could wish for without the wish ever being made. Creaky floorboards and silent, impenetrable dark. I posted on the network that night, because I was lonely, and my leg was fucked up and I couldn't get off the bathroom floor.
He came over with a picnic. Apple turnovers and not-terrible wine and an invitation he wouldn't let me turn down. And after that I wouldn't let him let me go.
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What a soft nougaty center lies under that devil's goatee.
Is this your way of asking me to up the ante?
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It's my way of telling you I'm like that Japanese knotweed. Harder to get rid of than you may have intended.
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[So maybe this will backfire one day. But if he's telling truths? It's not just for Prior's own health he made the offer.
Things have been too quiet lately. He's never thrived in silence, and he can't crash on Red and Boxer's couch like it's his vacation cottage whenever the deafening nothing bears down on him. Can't keep pestering the kids. Can't keep strolling among the pods and mooning over Big Bill and Haystack and Eds, Mikey.
Beverly.
Fucking Beverly. It had only been weeks. Not even a full month, he'd had her smile and her fire and her goddamn laughter, too generous for how shit half his jokes were. They were only friends and never lovers, but that didn't erase what having her meant to him.]
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