Steelhands - Jaida Jones [115]
“Before my friend’s swept away by nostalgia,” I said, “do we have permission to visit Balfour, or not?”
“You two head on in,” the woman said, pausing to polish one of her spectacle lenses. Fortunately, Luvander’s wild little story had blown right past her. “I ain’t seen him today, but that don’t mean much. He’s a real quiet fellow, keeps to himself mostly. Last person I’d expect to cause a scene in the middle of the bastion, but it just goes to show I ain’t got the sense given a mouse.”
“You ain’t kidding,” I muttered, and Luvander gave me a little shove in the back, just to show me he’d heard and I should’ve been sweeter-tongued while talking to a lady.
It was more than a few flights up, which I guessed was all right for exercise, but I had to wonder how Balfour’d managed it when his hands were troubling him. By the time we finally reached his floor, even I was a little winded. I let Luvander knock, seeing as how he never ran out of breath, and then we both stood there, the strangest get-well party I’d ever been a part of. Also, we were probably the first.
“Perhaps I should have brought flowers,” Luvander said regretfully, “but I think he was allergic to the pollen … Do you remember that one time Compagnon collected all those stamens—”
I didn’t have time to ask if he’d cracked his head on one of the low-hanging beams coming in, because Balfour was there opening the door.
To put it frankly, he looked like shit.
The thing with someone like Balfour was that he was always so damned tidy and put-together. The minute he didn’t bother with it, he ended up looking like he was about to drop dead. He was pale, probably clammy, and his hair looked like something for birds to nest in. There was a neat little pattern of wrinkles on his cheek from a pillow, and when he saw us he looked like he wanted to sink through the floor and disappear.
That, at least, was a familiar look.
“Oh,” he said, fidgeting with the doorknob. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, but fuck me if I was going to stare and draw attention to something that made him uncomfortable. I focused on his face instead, even if I was curious. “I didn’t realize you were coming. I didn’t realize anyone was coming …”
“We thought we’d surprise you,” Luvander said, inviting himself in. He pushed past Balfour into the sitting room and made a noise of despair. “In the nick of time, by the looks of it. Let’s get some sunlight in here, shall we?”
That left me and Balfour staring at one another at the door. He wanted us to be elsewhere, and I definitely wanted us to be elsewhere, but neither of us was gonna get what we wanted just by wishing it and staring at each other.
“You eaten yet today?” I asked, giving him my look. If he said no, he was going to regret being so careless, and I’d know if he was lying. That was the look I’d perfected.
Too bad it didn’t seem to work with students and their homework. They just didn’t have the right amount of shame or common sense for self-preservation.
“A … little,” Balfour said carefully, glancing over his shoulder as Luvander started making some kind of infernal racket with the window shade. “I suppose you’d better come in.”
“Before Luvander gets you slapped with room-destruction charges?” I asked.
It was an okay little place, if sparse, with barely any color on the walls. Either Balfour’d just moved in or he hadn’t seen the point in adding something personal to the place. No posters on the walls; no paintings or portraits. There was a settee on the far side of the room and a table with a few chairs in the middle of it; the room opened up into a kitchen the size of a closet, and I noticed the water closet and the bedroom next to it. Sure would’ve depressed me to live in an empty little place like this, I thought, especially coming from someplace so distinctive.
But maybe, after everything the boys’d put him through, he’d felt like he needed some peace and quiet.
There could be too much of that, though,