The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [33]
“Wish you may, wish you might, what is it you wish tonight, dearest Andrew?” whispered the hallway darkness which led to the bathroom and single bedroom. “Tell me of your wishes.”
It was the distant echo of a voice, calling, speaking, a woman’s spoken caress, smooth and hushed and provocative, beckoning into close intimacy. Within the apartment, within the single bedroom, in the hallway. Somewhere, yet everywhere.
As it always had been.
Andrew took several steps backwards, leaned likewise into the hallway.
“I don’t wish anymore, if I can help it, and I don’t wish to talk to you tonight as well, Bari,” Andrew grumbled with bridled contempt. “You know how I get when I let go of another work like that, to that conceited drug geek. You made it so I have no choice....you’re responsible for this goddamn arrangement, you made it happen. And each time I write him another book, I’m stuck wondering what Dad would think of all this.”
“And just what would he think of all this?” An obscure figure accompanied the voice now, a mere silhouette, a shady sketch of blackness, seen yet unseen.
“You know what he would think, and you know he would be insulted,” Andrew spat, then added quite reversely serene, “Unless he knew about you.”
Andrew turned and headed for the coat rack, situated between the recliner and the space between the front door, reaching for a black and grey blazer.
The darkness was silent for a moment, until it asked, “Where are you going?”
“You heard the ass wipe,” came Andrew’s determined reply. “I hear a beer calling me.”
“Are you so sure you should drink tonight?”
“Tonight I drink, Bari. Tonight I hear the music of Ralston Cooper, if you can call it music, and I don’t usually do that either. In fact, I never do that if I can help it. Dammit...I just need to get out, get away....” Marching towards the front door, Andrew paused, turned to the darkness, hesitated, then continued, “Bari...did my father know about you?”
“You’ve asked me that before, I gave you my answer.”
“What good is an answer you’ve made me forget? Everything I want to know about my father and who I am, you tell me it’s all been already answered by you, and that you’ll bring it back to my memory in due time, when the moment is meant to be. Fuck meant to be, fuck Ralston Cooper, and fuck you!”
“Yes, you must go,” Bari sighed. “Tonight is not the night for dwelling in this confusion of yours. Go, have a blast at this boozer emporium of yours. And for heaven’s sake and all the saints, meet someone.”
Andrew was at the front door, on his way out the front door, was about to slam the front door: when someone gives you what for and ends it with a fuck you, you wouldn’t expect him to say very much more before he heads out, even if he was an innocent, clean-cut vessel of a twenty-something kid personality like Andrew Erlandson.
“You can’t be serious,” he wheezed. “You don’t want me to be with anyone besides you. What do you mean, meet someone? Bari...what are you saying?”
Bari was unmoving and quiet as her companion lightly closed the front door, stepped close, closer and then closer still until she could smell the eternal aroma of his breath penetrating the gentle expanse of her presence.
Like a son.
Like a lover.
And Andrew could feel her understanding, her compassion, even in the midst of the chill of the apartment’s inner hallway. He heard himself utter, tenderly, “Bari...show me your eyes again, show me your beautiful eyes.”
Just as the orange streams of the bathroom nightlight reflected from his pupils in the cloudiness of the bathroom mirror, the dual glows appeared. There, before him, hovered the lambent orbs of the presence...a presence not unlike his own, but at the same time a presence alien to him.
A welcomed, familiar presence.
“Go now,” whispered this presence, so sweet, so soothing, “for tonight may very well be a night of nights, young one. A night of destiny. Soon, you shall become as new. Soon, yes, in time.”
The eyes disappeared then into empty darkness, leaving only the wispy remnants of a swirling breeze