The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [112]
Eduard sighed. “I saw the emperor this morning. They’re going to demolish it and use the committee plans.”
Eduard’s words—now that Lucien understood what was happening—seemed to hang in the air for a second before they froze and like a piece of ice fell down to break into shards. The water dripped around him as he responded. “Eduard, they can’t,” he said and realized that his hands were shaking where they gripped the board on which he sat. “They’ll have to kill me—both of us. We’ll fight. You know that just because the emperor says one thing it doesn’t mean he can’t say something else the next day.”
“I—I don’t know, Lucien,” Eduard sighed. “It’s too much. I never thought I would say this, but I can’t see this destroyed.”
Lucien could not contain his dismay. “Eduard, this isn’t you talking—it’s—it’s your demons.”
Eduard responded in a resigned tone that—because of its flat, conversational quality—frightened Lucien even more. “You’ve said it a thousand times, Lucien—it’s irreplaceable. You don’t build something like this more than once in your life. Losing this makes me less than nothing.”
The implications of this statement—not only for the present situation but for their past—took Lucien’s breath away. He felt a new tremor of panic as he considered how he could possibly reach Eduard, whose despair surpassed anything Lucien had ever experienced, even during his darkest moments in Munich. It seemed to unveil a wider gulf between them than he had ever imagined, and he saw nothing in his own life—or at least his artistic life—he could use to convey his empathy without sounding condescending and false. Yet even as these doubts occurred, he brushed them away with a desperate certainty that what he and Eduard shared transcended any artistic crisis. He stopped himself from shaking and focused on the still, yellow light surrounding him.
“You can’t be nothing,” he said, “because to love you would make me nothing, too—and that’s not what we are. We’re not nothing—I know you don’t think that.”
Eduard seemed to waver for several seconds before he spoke. “Lucien … you know … I love you,” he said, and there was a tender quality to his voice that led Lucien to think he was getting through.
“I’m coming up there,” Lucien cried and started to paddle toward the scaffold upon which Eduard was perched. “We’ll go home—Heinrich is making lunch—we’ll go back to bed and sleep.” He paused to look up, and Eduard took a step toward the ladder from which he could descend. Now drifting, Lucien felt the light on his face and, sick with relief, thanked whatever power had led Eduard to back away. “Eduard—be careful—”
But Eduard did not pivot around as Lucien expected and instead launched himself off the platform. He fell through the gloom, his arms extended like wings, his eyes no longer silver but soft and unfocused as he spoke his final words. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered before he hit the water, where the heavy splash echoed beneath the harrowing dismay of Lucien’s untrained screams.
32
Do You Want Chillwave or Do You Want the Truth?
NEW YORK CITY, 2001. On Thursday morning after the attacks, Martin went to work and arranged an appointment with the managing partner. His intention was to give notice as quickly as possible, but when he walked into the corner office, he was shocked to find his dead father, Hank, sitting behind the desk. Although Hank was now a lean sixty-something man, his hawkish eyes and jutting chin left no doubt in Martin’s mind as to his identity. “How’s it hanging, Marty?” he asked as he removed his sunglasses from where they had been perched on the top of his head.
Martin did not respond for a few seconds as he debated how to react; he knew he didn’t really have time to consider the logic or illogic of what he saw but simply needed to accept it, to adjust to the unexpected terms of this confrontation and proceed accordingly. If he had learned anything in his career, it was that nothing ever went according to plan, and his ability to maintain his cool under the tensest of negotiations was part