Amberlough(35)

Well that was a lie. Cyril palmed the cigarette case. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, I’m sure. Now. What is the reason for all this … subterfuge?” He drew the word out with central city sibilance, feigning interest in his nails as he spoke, one hand spread in front of him like a decorative fan. Cyril couldn’t tell if he was just playing along with the intrigue, or if he was genuinely offended. It didn’t matter, anyway.

“Listen,” said Cyril, without preamble. “I have to stop seeing you.”

“What?” The whites of Aristide’s eyes flashed as he cut his gaze toward Cyril.

“We’re done. I just … we’re done.”

There was a long pause. When Aristide did speak, he had damped down his sparkling affectation. “Something happened in Nuesklend.”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Of course you can’t.”

“Ari, don’t be sour—”

“Who’s the boy?”

The question brought him up short. It was not what he had been expecting. “A colleague. An excuse. I owed him a drink. I couldn’t be seen coming to the Bee on my own. Not now.”

“I won’t ask why not.” Aristide pushed away from the bar. His words were clipped. “Because I know: You can’t talk about it.”

“Don’t—” But Ari was gone. Cyril slumped against the bar, angry with himself for breaking character. Had he thought Aristide would just nod and smile? He should have been ready for what he got. He wanted, desperately, to explain. To tell Ari that the deception was for his own benefit. That the ends would justify it. But Van der Joost’s hesitancy made him hold back. No good promising what he couldn’t deliver.

“Your order, sir.” Ytzak set the tray of glasses down. “Should I put it on Mr. Makricosta’s account?”

“No, no.” Cyril took his money clip from the pocket of his jacket and put down a bill. “Keep the rest,” he said, and Ytzak nodded his thanks.

By the time he got back to their table, the sugar cube over Aristide’s absinthe was burning low and poisonously blue, dripping molten threads through the slots of the silver spoon. Aristide had drawn his chair close to Finn’s, and was flirting like a Princes Road harlot. Well, Finn couldn’t possibly be suspicious now. He wouldn’t remember his own name by the time Ari was through with him. Cyril set the glasses down.

Aristide barely acknowledged him, which was childish, but deserved. There were probably better ways to have done this. But Cyril had panicked, and taken the first route that presented itself. Bad technique. Culpepper would have switched him raw. But Culpepper would never know he’d thrown Ari over, would she? Or if she found out, he hoped she wouldn’t pin the reason.

He caught Finn’s gaze over the top of his drink. The accountant’s eyes were wide, blissful and disbelieving. In that moment, Cyril hated Aristide more than he had ever hated anyone.

Then, with excruciating elegance, Aristide upended a shot glass of cold water over the last embers of his sugar cube. Like alchemy, the liquid in the absinthe bulb turned milky green. Aristide touched the tip of his tongue to the intricate twists of the flat absinthe spoon, though it still must have been hot, tracing and tasting the remnants of burnt sugar.

It was an ostentatious metaphor for spite, but Cyril could not look away. The house lights dimmed and rose, then dimmed again, signaling the end of the interval. Aristide turned away from Finn, at last, and lifted his glass to Cyril.

“Thank you for the d-d-drink, and a d-d-divine introduction.” He was curling his words against the roof of his mouth again, his speech peppered with that false, delicious stutter. “Mr. Lourdes is quite the charmer.”

“My pleasure,” said Cyril, matching his toast and his empty smile.

Aristide tilted back his head and drained the last of the absinthe. The edges of his white greasepaint were blurred where they met his brown skin; brown as the burnt sugar on the spoon. And, Cyril knew from experience, as scorched and sweet.

The whiskey, when he drank it, tasted like nothing at all.





CHAPTER

TEN

After the last curtain call, Aristide went straight to his dressing room, ignoring Cordelia’s snappish “Well you assed that one bad enough, didn’t you?” The striptease had been a disaster, but by the end of the second half, the audience was inevitably drunk, and as long as they saw flesh, they didn’t care how.

He showed most of what he had to stage right, which snarled the choreography and put Cordelia in a snit. But Cyril’s machinations had cost Aristide a pleasant chat with an influential heiress, and then—without any explanation—the man had dropped him like a burned-down cigarette. Now Aristide was seething mad, and revenge was worth a little improvisation onstage.

During the interval, Aristide hadn’t slipped Finn a card, or made any lewd suggestions. If he couldn’t find the boy right after the show, still stuck to Cyril’s side, there’d be no point in picking him up. So Aristide had to hurry.

Peeling off what little was left of his costume, he replaced it with the tight black jersey he wore during rehearsals. The buttons of his dress shirt and waistcoat were too much hassle. His hair was already down—most of the pins came out while Stella and Garlande did their contortion act, so that during the striptease, Cordelia could pull the few that were left and let loose his curls.