“I know only what I find between the pages of books,” he says sadly. “I would not call this living. I am merely here. Nothing more.”
“Really?”
He nods and shrugs again. I want to ask him more, I really do. But each time certain subjects come up, his whole self just shrinks. I never know which ones, either. I wish I could make his anger come back; that was easier to take. But this…it’s too vulnerable and raw.
“How about that cherry?” I ask, hoping to change the subject.
He hands me a particularly plump and juicy-looking piece. I throw it in the air and catch it with my mouth, but it falls too fast and too deep, making me cough it up. Lazarus looks dismayed, but I recover quickly and drop one moist pit into the palm of my hand. His eyebrows rise, then he grabs the pit and holds it up to the light.
“How peculiar,” he mumbles, studying the object between his fingers like it’s the strangest object. Has he never seen a cherry before?
Lazarus takes another from the tray and, with the tips of his fingers, splits it in two. The ruby liquid drips down his hand. I want to lick it off so badly that I can’t help but gulp. He tilts his head in curiosity, following my gaze with his own. He holds his fingers closer, cherry juice dripping further down his palm all the way to his wrist.
I lean in, slowly licking the sticky-sweet trail. Lazarus’ quiet gasp motivates me to suck harder at the cherry’s flesh still held between his fingers, then nip the tip before I lean back again. He stares at his hand like he has never seen it before.
I watch him intently as he sits there surrounded by the red glow of the fire. The smooth waves of his hair shimmer unnaturally as he stares, eyes wild, breath caught, until my gaze catches on his wide mouth. I swallow and suddenly feel impossibly hot. All I can think of is what it would be like to kiss a mouth like that, the mouth of a murderer.
I move closer, until I’m leaning against Lazarus’ side. He lifts his hand to caress my cheek, cupping my head while he strokesmy face with his thumb. I close my eyes, leaning further into the touch. My limbs feel strangely frozen in place. I want to touch him, too, to feel the silkiness of his hair. I hesitate for a moment, worried that this might be too much, too intimate. But he moves closer too, enveloping my body with his own, inviting me to touch him, to feel him around me.
I wrap strands of his hair around my fingers as if he would disappear if I let go even for a second. My body tenses and relaxes in his arms, trying to find a way to diminish the space between us until there’s not even air left. Lazarus’ breath tickles my skin, cold and ragged. His eyes are a shade of red as deep as pomegranate flesh.
I’ve never felt an urge as intense as this. The need to kiss him takes up every single atom left in this body. I look at his mouth, leaning closer and closer still. I feel the cold seeping from him, and it makes me shiver. We’re so close to each other now, so entangled, I can almost feel the softness of his?—
Lazarus shoots up. I sit back startled and confused. He strides across the room, stopping in the shadows near his bed. I don’t know what to do. I want to stand up and follow him. But before I can make any decisions, he starts to pace restlessly in front of the fireplace with fists tightly balled up. He’s bathed in the hearth’s glow, a dark silhouette with an outline of fire. I try to make sense of this reaction, try to remember everything he told me about himself. But none of it seems to fit.
I stand up, moving toward him slowly, as if he was a skittish animal. When I’m near, he stops pacing and leans against the hearth. I gently put my hand on his shoulder, which rises quickly, as if he’s out of breath and desperately trying to calm himself. Running a hand over his face, he lets out a quiet sigh of frustration.
I stand on my toes, wrapping my arms around him as best I can, and draw Lazarus down into a hug. With my head on his chest, I feel the rhythm of his breath: fast, erratic, and dragging.
Lazarus’ arms shift around me, pulling me tighter with a kind of desperation. We stay like this, eyes closed, pressing into each other with a quiet yearning until his breathing calms and his hands relax.
XIX
Ihave to admit I feel a bit silly hugging Lazarus. Not only is he ancient, but he’s also much larger than me. And I’m not a hugger by any means. In fact, I can’t remember ever initiating one before. But something about this feels right. Comforting. Almost familiar.
With every second we stand there, Lazarus draws me deeper into his arms, until I’m half floating above the ground, breath crushed from my ribs. Just before I’m sure I’ll faint, he loosens his grip and puts me back down. He cups my face between his hands and stares at me in a very peculiar way. I don’t know what to make of it, but my heart stutters awkwardly, and my ears throb. The way he looks at me, though, it’s too much. Too intense. Years pass, and then?—
“What is this?” he asks, pointing to my left pocket.
Only when I take a breath do I realise how long it’s been since my last one. I look down, dazed. “My Walkman,” I explain, pulling it out.
He looks at it quizzically. “Walk…man?”
“It’s for music,” I say, but he looks even more confused than before. “I can show you, if you want.”
He follows me wordlessly back to the sofa. I unwind the wires from the headphones, open them up, and place them on his head. He ducks at first, as if this is some kind of dangerous machine, but I smile at him in reassurance. With an eyebrow lifted, he lets me put the headphones on. I turn the volume down to the quietest setting and press play.
The familiar sounds of “A New Kind of Water” drift faintly from the headphones. Lazarus’ face changes from a scowl into an expression of astonishment. He stares into the flames as the eerie voices rise. His face opens once Hayward starts to wail.
I smile, watching his face go from one expression to the next. He pushes his hands over the headphones, and recognising the gesture, I raise the volume up a little. His lips move, mouthing the word “more.” I turn it up further until I hear the song playing clearly. Lazarus closes his eyes while Williams sings his lamentations.When the last chords ring out, he pulls the headphones down and stares at me wordlessly.
“Are these the poets of this age?” he whispers at last.
“I would like to think so,” I grin. “But many would disagree with us there.”
“What sort of sorcery is your little machine?” He pulls the Walkman from my hands, turning it every which way.
“It’s a tape. Sound recorded onto a strip with magnets or something. See.” I pull out the cassette and show it to him. “The machine plays it for you, and the headphones make it loud. I have a bunch of different tapes, and I can change them to whatever music I feel like.”
