Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:39:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Cillian Mayfair Subject: Magnus 6 I awoke just before noon the next day. I had a hangover, one of the worst I had ever experienced. The weather had turned frigid overnight and my open window had no doubt conspired with the elements to make my headache worse than it should have been. Lifting my head up from the pillow I scanned the room for Bianca but the search yielded only a neatly folded piece of paper on the pillow beside mine. Opening it I immediately recognized Bianca's beautiful cursive script informing me she had left for her 9am class and later planned to have lunch with Magnus. The sight of his name drawn so elegantly by her pen caused an ambivalence to settle over my mind. I felt a fear manifest itself as a vague tightness somewhere in my chest. I realised that before last night I would have been happy if the two of them had spent time together but considering the events that had transpired, I wanted them to remain separate, far, far away from each other. Their convergence had the potential to destroy my relationships with both of them. The shriek of the alarm as the clock struck noon jolted me back to the present. I had a class in half an hour. Classics, the class I still shared with Magnus. Despite my headache, I decided to go to class and intercept Magnus before he met up with Bianca. For some reason I felt that this was the only way to keep him safe, to keep him from her and whatever it was she might do to him. It was an irrational plan, if it could even be called a plan, but it was all my brain could come up with, dealing as it was with its own pulsating agony. I gathered myself off the bed with considerable effort and stumbled to a mirror. There was a faint discoloration along my cheek from Magnus' assault upon it. Studying it brought back the memory of that moment and for a second I wondered whether Magnus needed protecting, whether he needed me at all. I brushed these thoughts aside as it became clear to me that whether or not he needed me, I needed to see him. It was the only way to silence the maelstrom of unformulated questions that thundered in my mind. I dressed hurriedly in whatever items of clothing my hand managed to grab from my closet and stepped out onto snow covered streets. It amused me mildly how changeable the weather was. The delicious, dark warmth of the previous night now lay buried beneath frigid white. There was perhaps a metaphor in that that I should have recognised but I didn't. I tried to think of what I would say to him, what he would look like today, whether his eyes would warm or turn glacial upon seeing me. I walked quickly, too quickly as it turned out when a patch of dark ice refused to suffer my passage. In the instant before a fall became inevitable I managed to grab the pole of a stop sign to steady myself. A cold shard of pain, with its source in my palm, impaled the length of my arm as it struggled to support the weight of my entire body. Examining my hand I saw that the wound from last night had reopened and blood was slowly but steadily gathering at the rupture. The pain radiated up my arm and through my chest. Suddenly I felt weak, as if the wound were a puncture through which the energy sustaining me was rapidly escaping. But there was no time to think of it now, I thought, nothing to be done but carry on. I arrived at class late and desperately scanned the room for Magnus. He wasn't there. I kept waiting for him to show up, taking in approximately five of the thousands of words the professor aimed at me, but he never did show. After class I tried calling his cell phone but it had been turned off. Enraged, I threw my phone against a concrete gargoyle hunched beside the doorway to one of the buildings. It was a battle my phone did not survive. As it shattered into innumerable shiny pieces, the gargoyle stared back at me in contempt, insulted at the unworthy foe I had thrown its way. The walk back home was surreal. I wandered in a state of disbelief, as if I had lost a game of monumental consequences not because I had been beaten by my opponent, but because I had been betrayed from within my own ranks. Walking through noisy streets I heard almost nothing. Just the mocking howl of the wind as it tore through my clothes, making me feel naked, alone. Twisting the doorknob to my apartment left it covered with a thin red sheen that announced I was still bleeding. Once inside, I bandaged my hand and returned to bed. There was no more will left in me. Nothing left to fight or even move for. I embraced the sympathetic softness of my pillow and on its loving shoulder I silently shed bitter tears till they too were exhausted. Merciful sleep, the kind that watches over those their gods have abandoned, liberated me from despair. I awoke to darkness and the sound of keys turning a lock that resented the violation. The footsteps that followed echoed silver across the wooden hallway and ceased just outside my door. There they waited, silent and calculating till a knock indicated the end of their deliberations. I tried to answer but my pillow possessively retained my words. The door creaked open bringing with it unwelcome light that danced its jubilant, vulgar tango upon my face and from the immodest brightness emerged a silhouette of curls framing unseen emerald eyes. The curls moved closer, bouncing with a life that seemed out of place in the tomb darkness till they hovered above my face, triumphant and unwilling to lower themselves the last few inches to my level. I looked up into the canopy they formed and at its apex found a smile, loving and dreadful. "How are you, Vincent?" the smile enquired. "Fine," I lied. "You haven't been taking my calls," said the smile, disguising its question in the form of a statement. "My phone broke," I answered, mixing the truth with a lie of omission. "They tend to do that when thrown against walls." Shocked, I turned my entire body to face her fully. She leaned back and away from me, making me follow her ascent to keep a constant distance between us. "Spies?" Her reply was silver laughter; worldly, knowing and hauntingly complex. "No, you fool, a friend of mine saw you in the quad. She said you dialled a number and when no one seemed to answer, you threw your phone at the wall of the Divinity School and stormed off." "So not spies but friends who are accidental spies. How vast is this network of yours? Am I being watched right now?" A shadow crept across her eyes and carved a furrow in her brow in which to settle. Her smile began to wane, bringing me an odd relief. "What is the matter with you?" she demanded. "Who were you calling anyway that no answer provoked such frustration?" It couldn't have been me; my phone was on at that time. I was having lunch with Magnus and..." A spark of comprehension eliminated the shadow in her brow, but only for an instant. When the shadow returned it was stronger, having carved a deeper home for itself. "It was Magnus?" asked the furrow on her brow, disguising a statement as a question. I did not answer but she took my silence for the affirmation it was. She tensed for a moment but then willed herself to relax. The shadow on her brow disappeared, banished, but the smile that returned from exile now seemed forced. "Well of course his phone was off. He was meeting my friend Vivian and I and, dare I say, falling as deeply head over heels for her as she was for him. He's quite a charmer, your friend. They've gone out, downtown somewhere. I'm guessing neither of them will be attending classes tomorrow, or answering any calls, so there's no need to sacrifice any more phones to that lost cause." Her words stung my ears like poison. Looking at her smiling face, almost certain of its victory, she reminded me suddenly of Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar; the woman who is said to have poisoned almost half of Rome to get her way. She looked a goddess to me still, ethereal, majestic, but ruthless, with a poisoned dagger concealed between her breasts. A quiet rage permeated my body, lending my voice the deadly calm the ocean wears before a storm sends its waters hurtling to end the lives of foolish, slumbering men. "Why did you do that?" I asked. "Do what? Set him up?" she countered with feigned innocence. "Yes. I didn't ask you to." "You didn't have to ask me. I could tell he was lonely. He was always over here at night. Now he'll have someone of his own." "Someone of his own..." I trailed off, repeating her words but not her meaning. My voice had an almost imperceptible crackle to it, like a live wire daring someone to touch it. "Vincent I don't understand why you seem so upset. I was just trying to help. He seemed lonely and I helped him. I haven't done anything wrong." The first wave of anger made landfall as I clenched my jaw and through gritted teeth said, "He wasn't lonely and he didn't need your help. Who are you to be his great benefactor? To help him? He didn't ask for your help because he wasn't lonely. He didn't need your help." Her smile receded once more, though this time its departure had a chilling air of finality to it. When she spoke next, her siren voice mirrored the magnitude of anger contained in my own, but none of the restraint. "Of course! How stupid of me. How could he need my help when he has you to help him? How could he be lonely when he takes his comforts from your bed? I was a fool to think of coming between you and your nightly visitor!" The words tore past my ears and laid a siege of panic to my heart, vaporising my anger and causing the blood to drain from my face. I felt dizzy and remained speechless for what seemed an eon. "How do you know this?" I finally asked, my voice an emaciated whisper. "As you said," she replied, her anger giving way to a jeering tone, "my spies are everywhere. But I didn't learn this from them. No, this I heard from the horse's mouth. Your friend told me today at lunch before Vivian arrived. He said neither of you liked sleeping alone so you often slept together. He said it meant nothing but far more importantly, he said it as if it meant nothing, and I believed him. But I see now that it means something to you. It means enough that you lie in this bed, listless and forlorn, pining for him. It means enough that my presence does nothing to comfort or appease you. In short, dearest Vincent, I see that it means more to you than I do." She turned imperiously away from me, her violent eyes flashing poison green, and began walking briskly towards the door she had left open, back towards the light from which she had emerged, leaving me to darkness once more. As she walked away, all I could do was stare at my own hand where a red mark on a clean white bandage reminded me of the wound below. Before she left, without taking my eyes off the stain I weakly said the only thing left to say, "I'm sorry, Bianca." She pivoted herself midstride to face me one last time and bitterly replied, "No Vincent. I'm the sorry one. Sorry for ever having thought myself lucky to have found you. Sorry for having loved you and thinking you loved me. But most of all, I'm sorry to have been the bearer of bad news. I'm sorry to have told you what he said to me and that he meant it. I'm sorry to leave you here alone in the dark to mourn your dead dreams. I truly am sorry." With that she turned away. The livid footsteps that bore her from my life sounded nothing like silver. I sat where I was, unmoving, for hours. Paralysis gives one an extraordinary capacity for reflection. I thought about many, many things, but in the end, despite Magnus' blunt admissions of the previous night, I came to the conclusion that something had irreversibly shifted between us. I thought of how by doing nothing, by not having the wisdom to recognize what I wanted, not possessing the courage to admit it, nor the strength to seize it when it was mine for the taking, I had lost forever that which was only now revealing itself to me as the veiled crux of my desires. It was enough to make me weep, but I resisted. That night there were no tears; just tranquil sadness, and then the insensate embrace of dreamless sleep. ********** I had no classes the next day. This was fortunate as it allowed me to bury myself in mundane tasks like laundry and going downtown to buy a new phone. I tried not to think about anything in particular, adopting a Scarlet O'Hara attitude, telling myself I'd think about it all tomorrow. Surprisingly, it worked. The sun had set and the weather had turned surprisingly warm by the time I finally selected a new phone for myself. Walking down Michigan Avenue was a peaceful, soothing experience. It felt good to simply lose myself in the crowd, to become one with the collective pedestrian organism as it pulsated with a life all its own. I was enjoying being out of familiar campus surroundings and so instead of taking a cab back to the south side, I decided to wait for the U of C Express bus to arrive and take me home. This bought me another 45 minutes of wandering around. I began to feel tired soon however and returned to where the bus was supposed to arrive and sat down to wait. A pretty, blonde girl in a University of Chicago sweatshirt presently appeared and sat beside me. She initiated small talk and I realised she was flirting with me. In line with the devil-may-care theme of the day, I flirted back. By the time the bus hissed to a halt beside us, she was attached to my lower lip, one hand tangled in my hair, the other making its way inside my shirt. She didn't seem to mind that my arms still lay limply beside me, nor did she seem to notice that the bus had arrived as she moved to nibble at my neck. Feeling increasingly uneasy at her voracious appetite, my embarrassment grew further as I saw Joshua, a friend from the swim team, alight from the bus. He spotted me and grinned at my compromising situation. I used his presence as an excuse to detangle myself from my companion, telling her the friend I had been waiting for had arrived. She hesitantly withdrew after storing her number in my new cell. It annoyed me that I could no longer get on the bus as planned, for that would reveal my excuse for what it was. I walked over to Joshua, who was still smirking and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Stop it." I said to him with a laugh. "Man, I'm really sorry for disturbing you," he said with contrived sincerity. "I'm not. I needed help." I said. "Yeah, you did look like you were in trouble there," he said, his usual kind-hearted smile returning. "Thanks." I replied with a smile. "So you here for the party?" he asked. "Party? No I'm just on my way back. What party are you talking about?" "You don't know?" he asked, genuinely confused. "The team's meeting up at Jimmy's to celebrate the coach's birthday. Well actually, his birthday's tomorrow but he said he's gonna be with his family tomorrow so we're taking him out tonight to get him really liquored up so we can see if he's as mean drunk as he is sober. Didn't the guys call you?" "My phone wasn't working till about an hour ago." "It's really lucky that you're here then. C'mon we're kinda late already." "Josh, I'm really tired. I think I'm just going to head home. Just don't mention that you saw me. I think I have a really good excuse because I never got the message." "Oh, no. You gotta come. You're his favourite anyway. He'll be much happier if you're there, which means he might even skip the, `you guys are worthless' speech for once. Sorry Vince, you're coming. C'mon man, take one for the team." I could see I had no choice. I decided to cease the fruitless struggle and go along amicably. And besides, maybe getting drunk wasn't such a bad idea. Joshua practically pushed me to the bar; always walking a little behind me as if to make sure I had no chance of escaping. In the end, it didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought it would. The coach was quite touched that everyone showed up. I have to admit that I knew I was his favourite, but even so, the speech he made at the end was quite unexpected. When he drunkenly told us he was proud of us all, everyone could tell that he meant it, even if he was looking at me while he said it. Joshua and I managed, over the course of the evening, to empty the contents of a bottle and a half of Chivas. Feeling deliciously invulnerable, we left the party just after midnight. I don't remember much of the cab ride home. It took me about five minutes to get past my front door owing to the fact that the key refused to enter the lock. Once inside, I staggered towards the bedroom, almost knocking over a glass I couldn't remember leaving out on the dining table. The conspiracy hatched by the warm weather and the whiskey caused me to start sweating so I pulled open my window and decided to sleep in nothing but my black silk shorts. I had thought that I would pass out relatively quickly, but the fact that I had woken at noon stubbornly kept me awake. Deprived of the sanctuary of unconsciousness, my mind defied me by remembering the events of the previous nights. It thought of Magnus and Bianca, of the scent of his skin as he had once slept beside me and of the dull gleam of rage in her eyes as she had turned away from me for the last time. I closed my eyes to will myself to sleep but the darkness only made the memories brighter. The privacy of my room turned to emptiness and then to desolation. Finally, my inebriation stilled the restlessness of my mind and I drifted off into a light slumber. A muted noise woke me from my shallow rest. Turning towards the perceived source of the disturbance, I saw a figure leaving my room, carefully trying to coax the door shut. "Who is it?" I asked instinctively. The figure paused and then the door began to open once more. Even in the darkness, the silhouette that emerged was beautiful. A bitter chocolate voice answered, "It's me."