If he was almost ready to throw in the towel for something like this, he was going to be in for one hell of a ride later, he thought. And with that, Jeffrey Claremont laughed at himself.
Joachim stopped calling after that. Everything was over, it seemed. Done and dusted.
Jeffrey was happy about it—well, only at first. He rationalized it to himself—it had to happen, he said. Once in a while he’d dream of the dear old strip club or Joachim in his Chanel suit, but no matter when and where the dream took place, Joachim’s handsome face was always marred with bruises. There was no light in his eyes, no smile to be found on his face. Jeffrey reminded himself over and over that these dreams were nothing more than manifestations of his self-pity or escapist desires, but as the days went on and everything in the world seemed to be trapped in deadlock, the dreams increased in frequency. At times, Joachim appeared crying. In his lucid dreams, Jeffrey always asked him, Can’t you just be anyone else? but the director of Jeffrey’s slumber was evidently fresh out of replacement actors to cast in these nighttime visions.
What were Jeffrey’s options? Face a reality he wanted to avoid or witness dreams he couldn’t bear to see? There was no escape for him, either awake or asleep. As the days dragged on, Jeffrey was haunted by the notion that the face in the bathroom mirror was slowly but persistently peeling further away from himself. His hair—dry as grass in the desert—his eyes—staring and lifeless like a corpse’s. None of it felt like it belonged to him. More and more often, concerned officemates asked him if he was all right, and even if he tipped them a wink and a “Of course!” their reactions were only that of alarm and horror.
Nor did he receive any further compliments on his wardrobe, but this had a simple explanation: He’d stopped wearing Joachim’s outfits in favor of whatever he could find in his wardrobe. Now, for the second time in his life, Jeffrey appreciated just how much clothing could shape a person’s image. The first time had been when Joachim had started working for him. Jeffrey soon gave up trying to dress himself on his own, as all it did was distressingly remind him of someone else. So long as he didn’t go stark naked, he figured he was fine on his own.
And still the dreams kept coming. By the time he began to miss seeing Joachim’s face without tears streaming down it, dark circles had long since set up permanent residence under Jeffrey’s eyes. Hazily, he wondered how he was supposed to show up in such a sorry state in front of his brother, his younger cousin, and the young man Richard had taken under his wing.
His fingers fired off a text. “You doing okay?”
A single sentence, but Joachim always responded to short messages. Yet he didn’t. This was out of character for him, as Joachim was obsessive about texting back immediately, but it was even odder when no reply came the following day. Nor the day after. He couldn’t have blocked Jeffrey. Could he have?
Jeffrey feared the worst. Maybe Joachim was dead. The premonition traveled through Jeffrey like a serial killer’s knife. Jeffrey hadn’t tried to reach Joachim once in all this time. If something had happened, how would Jeffrey had known? Now he had no recourse to find out. Joachim was a dancer who lived in a trailer behind a seedy strip club in a bad neighborhood. Was it such a shock that he could die as easily as snapping a pencil in two?
God, Jeffrey thought. He really might be dead.
An old Japanese idiom might have called it a mallet swung long ago. In English, he might have said it was just like riding a bicycle. He breezed through the necessary preparations. Just a few days later, he was flying to New York. He spent one night putting everything in order before hailing a cab. His smile was stretched thin across his face by nerves, the same anxiety an actor might feel before taking the stage for their final performance.
The club was open on Saturday, but Joachim was nowhere to be found. Jeffrey went around back to the trailer and rested both palms and an ear on the door. It felt like he was holding a certain someone in his arms. There were small sounds of life inside—not a person alone, though. He could hear a conversation.
The door wasn’t locked. When he opened it, there was Joachim. Crying. He sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by scattered scraps of paper and shards of glass. The Ritz was a shell of its former self. Now, it looked more like a dumpster piled high with recyclables. A man towered above Joachim. Short hair, face flushed with alcohol.
Something had clearly gone terribly wrong. But, putting everything aside for a moment, Jeffrey sighed. “Guess my dream was right.”
He was surprised—and disgusted—how calm his voice sounded. His shoes crunched shards of faux chinoiserie with every step forward he took.
“Are you all right, Chim?” he asked.
“…What are you doing here?”
“On a Saturday, you mean? Well, I just found myself wanting to see you.”
Joachim’s disheveled face told Jeffrey that was not at all what he meant, thank you very much. Jeffrey returned the look with a strained smile of his own while the man behind Joachim looked on in confusion. Still, the disorientation did not stop him from growling, “The hell’re you?”
“Good heavens! Your commoner pronunciation is too vulgar for my lordly ears to understand,” Jeffrey exclaimed, Hollywood gangster style.
The man, startled, took a half step back but showed no signs of leaving the trailer.
Jeffrey knelt and offered Joachim a hand. A portrait of a beautiful noblewoman creased under the knee of his suit.
“It’s too good to see you again, Chim. I’ve missed you. Dearly. Terribly. I missed you so much I dreamt of you every night. Every time I closed my eyes, there you were. I must sound like a fool, but it’s true. The human brain is a mysterious thing.”
“Hey! I’m askin’, who the hell do you think you are?”
Jeffrey turned, and the man took another half step back. The whole room reeked of booze. Jeffrey cooly sized him up. Not so drunk he can’t tell what danger he’s in, Jeffrey judged.
“You don’t know who I am? Really?”
He made his smile unsettling. The man, startled by the cruel sneer on the face of this mysterious figure, retreated further. Now, Jeffrey took a step forward.
“Very well. Let me introduce myself,” he said. “Sorry for giving you such a nasty fright. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a tease. Incidentally, do you have a favorite news outlet?”
“Wha?”
“Any you frequent will do. The B—? The N—Times?”
“Y-yeah. What about it, huh?”
“Excellent.”
Jeffrey beamed and reached into his pocket. The man flinched, expecting Jeffrey to pull out a gun, before Jeffrey waggled his phone in the man’s face. The lack of weapons seemed to disappoint the man, which amused Jeffrey.
In the interim, the call he placed went through. “Evening, Mighty! Sorry for calling so late at night, but I was hoping to run an ad in the Times. Have it say, ‘Thanks, Charlie Eggins! I love you like hell.’ I’ll send you the funds in a jiff. Run it for a month; there’s a good lad. …It’s how much? Sure. The money will be in your bank account momentarily.”
“Wha? Wh-why’re you usin’ my name?”
“Oh, I’m just messing with you. That phone call was just for show! I had the same conversation with that gentleman long before I got here. Here, see this.”
Jeffrey passed his phone to the man, one Charlie Eggins. Eggins nervously rubbed his fist on the butt of his jeans, presumably to hide Joachim’s blood that was staining his knuckles, and gave the screen a terrified look. There the message was, just as Jeffrey said, displayed in bold white type on a red background with as much fanfare as the results of a presidential election. Ads for specialty supermarkets, pornography, and PC parts crowded around it in a boisterous dance, the single, incomprehensible message floating in their midst like a cryptic code.
Jeffrey’s smile never faded as Eggins backed away in horror.