“…Chim, you told this guy about me—”
“No, he didn’t. But I know everything about you, Mr. Eggins. Oh yes. I can do anything, you see. I never go easy on people, and nothing scares me. Why should it? I have nothing I want to protect. It’s not wise to make enemies of a man with nothing to lose. How have you been lately, incidentally? Sad because the cash flow from Joachim dried up with no warning? Is that why you started drinking more? Even went to the hospital? I hear you and your wife are attending couple’s therapy. That’s smart; I imagine it’s hard to hide this from the woman you share your life with. Speaking of her…I’m well aware you two have been bleeding my paramour dry.”
“Jeffrey. Stop. Stop this right now,” Joachim snapped.
“Nope. Not unless you call me Jeffy.”
“Jeffy!”
“Sorry. I’m not stopping.”
Jeffrey’s smile was cheerful, all business, and that seemed to tell Joachim everything. His sweetly colored eyes, gripped with despair, stared holes through Jeffrey’s pleased grin.
Meanwhile, Joachim’s “boyfriend and life partner” stood rooted to the spot, sweating like a pig. “What…what do you want? What do you want from me? Who the hell are you?” He sounded like he was about to cry.
Jeffrey’s smile turned sadistic as he leaned into the man’s ear and whispered, “Whenever you feel stuck, whenever you’re in more pain than you can handle, whenever you feel like life has lost all meaning, know that I am right behind you. I’m like an evil eye stuck to your back, always watching from a place you’ll never find. I enjoy it. I have so much fun doing this. With my whole heart, I love watching you squirm.”
“A-am I gonna die?”
“Who knows? I sure don’t. It all depends on who sees that ad and gets the right message.”
“…What right message?”
Jeffrey chuckled. “You naive fool. What, did you think I was sending you a thank-you card?”
It took several seconds of silence, but Eggins finally cottoned on to the implications. He gasped and froze. Jeffrey gave him a sweet smile to pour salt on the wound before Eggins turned tail and bolted from the trailer. On his way out, oddly enough, he paused to close the door politely behind him.
Jeffrey chuckled under his breath as he watched Eggins go and turned with a smile still on his face. Joachim sat there, stunned, with the backdrop of the wrecked Ritz behind him.
The pasted-on smile didn’t drop from Jeffrey’s face as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills, and let it fall to the floor. Another joined it. Then, a third and final bundle. Joachim winced as each hit the ground with a heavy thud, like the thump of a well-laden bag, and Jeffrey’s smile waned in its blinding intensity.
To Joachim, eyes heavy with unfallen tears, he enunciated each syllable with care: “The End of the Affair.”
Joachim’s eyes widened, and Jeffrey smiled. He knew the message had been conveyed. And understood. In his head, his eyes remained shut fast, allowing no entrance to anything from the outside world.
“It’s a good book. You should read it if you ever find the time.”
“…Jeffy.”
“I’m glad I got a chance to see you. Make sure you go to the hospital now, all right? Take care now.”
His fingertips fluttering like a pianist as he waved, Jeffrey turned and walked away. A cry—“Jeffy!”—chased after him, but by then he was already secure in the backseat of the waiting taxi. “Let’s go,” he said, and the taxi started up immediately.
“…Look at what you’ve done, Jeffy,” he said to himself. “You broke your promise.”
The promise to not make each other happy. The unspoken promise to not meddle in each other’s lives. Now that he’d broken every line of that agreement, Jeffrey thought with a self-mocking smile, he might as well have never made the promise to begin with. His clothes reeked of alcohol; his shirt was stained with sweat.
His heart, though? His heart felt free. Free of the weight of his sense of self.
This really was “the end of the affair,” Jeffrey realized. Now that everything was coming to an end, he knew that he had to force himself into action, but his body felt too heavy to move. Soon, he would have to accept that great sphere of light had sunk behind the mountains, never to rise again.
As the taxi drove Jeffrey to his hotel, he called his British butler back home. In the Claremont mansion, his father lay dying. He’s not the only one, Jeffrey thought, but those were only his feelings, which—in the grand scheme of things—didn’t matter much at all.
“Hey there, Laurie boy. Just checking in about the you-know-what. How goes it? Once you find a good candidate, let me know. I’ll hop right on this whole dating thing. You know, I’m starting to feel excited about it. Well? What do you have for me?”
Laurent listed off several individuals with whom he had made prior arrangements and these young ladies’ respective schedules. A few seconds later, the details arrived in Jeffrey’s inbox. Jeffrey responded with a bright “Thank you” and ended the call.
He wanted to vomit but stifled the impulse and leaned his head against the car window. In Japanese, so the driver wouldn’t understand, he murmured, “I don’t want to die yet. I can’t. I just can’t. I don’t want to die.”
Because of the crime he had committed. Dead men couldn’t repent for their crimes.
Funny how telling himself that only served to make him think of the trashed and despoiled Ritz.
Jeffrey felt like he had puked his guts out in the hotel in Sri Lanka. He vomited up everything, even the things that could have stayed bottled up, and by the time he had finished, he was as shaky as a flopping piece of paper. Why, oh why, was it so easy for some people to spill other people’s personal business? He felt like he had been decked by a powerful uppercut from his younger self. It was all over. And, at the same time, it was the start of something new.
Back in London for a change, he spent two days in bed before a visitor came up to his hotel room.
“Room service!”
Jeffrey recognized that voice. He wobbled to his feet and opened the door in wrinkly pajamas.
The person on the other side was someone he had never seen before. That ash-grey hair, yes. That lustrous skin, of course. But the face free of makeup had no match in his memories.
You? Is that really you? he beseeched with his eyes.
Joachim’s own misted up. Teardrops rolled down his smooth, bruise-free cheeks. He mustered his best haughty voice. “…So? Where did it all go wrong?”
Then he pulled Jeffrey into a hug. It wasn’t the most intense of hugs. It was almost like Joachim was asking for permission—was it all right to hold Jeffrey like this? A smile tugged at the edge of Jeffrey’s lips. After tumultuous days of being battered by storms of emotion or knocked sky high, Jeffrey couldn’t have asked for a better person to show up on his doorstep.
He let Joachim into the room. It was as neat as when he booked it, by virtue of the fact he’d had no energy to make a mess. Only now and rather suddenly did he notice the small blue flowers in the wallpaper pattern. It felt like a vase that really ought to have held flowers was finally blessed with a bouquet, a lonely record player finally gifted a record. Anything and everything looked new in Jeffrey’s eyes, and that was when he knew there was no more fighting the inevitable.
He scratched his head. “All my life plans just blew up in my face, so I’ve been taking a break from life here.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“Thanks.”
Silence filled the room. After a few moments of mutual pity and trying to gauge the other’s next move, Joachim spoke up. “Let me get this out of the way. Your brother sent me here, but that doesn’t mean I’m on his side.”
“In what sense?”
“I heard he did something awful to you.”
“…Can I ask who told you that?”
“The man himself. Your brother.”
“Oh, blast. So he knows just what he’s done to me.”
“What are you two to each other?”
“I don’t know. We’ve put that question on hold for too long, and I think pretty soon we’ll be forced to find out.”