A Beautiful Mind (204)

[PSI-2]

As the third son of a third son, Barnaby Marion Fayrfowel Graham had grown up knowing he was sort of a spare inheritor who was meant to remain patient and semi-respectable in case a large chunk of his family died for whatever reason. Another war, perhaps. A plague. A fire during a charity fundraiser. Academic employment or something in the clergy was considered appropriate for such people. They could build modest little lives for themselves and if they didn’t happen to inherit they could live in faculty housing or a parsonage somewhere.

The trouble was, he had also grown up with a bit of a problem sitting still and allowing himself to be educated. There was always something more interesting going on. In the city it was restaurants and shows. In the country, garden parties, fox hunts, or any other excuse the men could come up with to ditch their wives and get drunk. Why should he have to spend his hours indoors with a lot of dusty old books and tutors, memorizing dead languages and the history of fallen empires?

As it turned out, well, he didn’t have to.

It drove his tutors totally bananas.

“I know for a fact that you have not studied for this, Master Graham! I’ve watched you all week! You’ve been in the garden eating chocolates and reading… reading novels! I hid behind a rosebush so you wouldn’t see me!”

“Indeed?” He had seen the tutor in the rosebush. That rosebush was very popular with tutors. It never seemed to occur to them about the thorns.

“Roll up your sleeves!” said the angry man with scratches all over his face and hands.

Barnaby did so. He also turned out all his pockets and removed his vest and jacket upon request. He refused to take off his shirt. “Mr. Thompson, I hardly know you.”

“You’ve hidden it. You’ve eaten it. There’s some magic involved that you ordered out of a catalog!”

“Perhaps I’ve just been studying when you weren’t looking.”

“It’s not possible!”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Thompson. My tutors are always frightfully insecure in their ability to do their jobs. Isn’t it possible I have all the answers right because I learned them from you?”

“No!”

“Ah.” He shrugged. “Well, nevertheless.” He indicated his 100% test score as a fait accompli.

“You are cheating, Master Graham.”

“Apart from a contagious mania affecting every tutor my parents care to hire, there is no evidence of it, Mr. Thompson.”

He was, of course. He was cheating up a storm. He just wasn’t using any materials that a human being could find or take away from him. And, really, you couldn’t call that cheating. That was being talented.

They didn’t catch him being talented until Miss Mayweather, damn her, tricked him into correctly answering a question about a parliamentary decision that hadn’t been made yet. It was an essay question. He had provided details. Two days later she showed him and his parents the newspaper, screeching in triumph.

“The boy is psychic!”

“Is this true, Barnaby?” his father asked, sipping coffee. “Are you psychic?”

“Perhaps a bit, father, but I wouldn’t call it cheating. I am learning every last bit of information Miss Mayweather requires of me, it’s just not in books. For instance, I can see in these tea leaves that she has been trysting with the gardener behind the stables and intends to do so again today. It’s as plain as a textbook.”

So he got Miss Mayweather fired, at least. But his parents were pleased with his talent and they decided he ought to be trained. There were plenty of unassuming careers available in the mental arts, perhaps he could be a stockbroker.

He was willing to put up with it. It was more fun than religion and history, anyway.

Thus, at the age of fourteen, he found himself packed off to a boarding school, where he could continue his studies with professionals and not bother the servants at home with his upkeep.

His parents waved goodbye to him at the train station.

———

There was a dark-haired boy lying on his bed eating cookies out of a box.

“Who do you belong to?” he demanded. “Get out.”

“I belong to you,” the boy said.

“You’re somebody’s little brother. This is my room. Get out of it.”

“I’m a child prodigy here on a scholarship and I’m your new roommate.”

He threw down his suitcase. “You are not my roommate. I don’t have a roommate. I’m studying divination and I need my privacy to concentrate!”

“You’re sure about that?” said the boy. He drew out another cookie.

“I am extremely sure about that, there is only one bed in here!”

“It’s a big bed,” said the boy.

“I’m getting the matron.”

“You won’t find me when you get back. She’ll just think you’re mental. Maybe you are mental. Maybe you made me up because you’re lonely and nobody will be friends with you.”

“If I were going to make someone up, I’d do better than a twelve-year-old with a box of cookies!”

“I’m fifteen. I’ve already been here a year. I just look young, like a fairy.”

“You just said you were a child prodigy.”

“I can be two things. I can be however many things I want. I just show up looking like I belong places and nobody has the courage to throw me out.” He chewed. “Anyway, I might as well be friends with you. I can’t get back into my room and I like this one.”

He was drawn, in spite of himself. “Why can’t you get back in your room?”

“They’ve put intent lines on all the doors and windows. I got in through a skylight for a while, but they closed it off sometime over break. I was going to blow a hole in the wall with this cannon I found, but it was all full of cement. So I went house-hunting instead. I like your little bedspread with the stars on it.”

He laughed. “You’re crazy. You’re making shit up.”

“Maybe you are.”

“Then give me the cookies. Imaginary friends don’t need real cookies.”

“They must be imaginary cookies.”

“Just give me a damn cookie.” He sat down on the bed and snatched the box. “Who are you? I mean, what am I meant to call you?”

“David Crisp, but I’m thinking of changing it.”

“I’m Barnaby Graham.”

“You ought to have that changed as well,” the boy opined.

———

With a few more decades of experience he might’ve recognized the signs of insanity and backed away, but he’d never been very good at noticing what was right in front of him. David Crisp (or whatever his real name was) seemed like a fun person!

It was over a year before David threatened suicide for the first time, and by then they’d already liberated a cannon together and blown him back into his dormitory. That was what you called a powerful bonding experience; there really was no going back after that.

The school had filled that one up with slag instead of cement. Idiots. Barnaby divined its location via a fortuitous flight of starlings. David melted it loose and left a flaming puddle on the Dean of Cultural Anthropology’s lawn. He was never quite sure where David had come up with the gunpowder, but they were both from obscenely wealthy families and not used to being told they couldn’t have what they wanted. If they wanted to blow up a building there was doubtless some way to accomplish it and providence had provided.

If they wanted to blow up a building and go back to school like normal, without being institutionalized for the rest of their lives, there was a way to accomplish that too. As far as Barnaby knew, the Graham-Wallace Memorial Library was still in operation. It specialized in abnormal psychology.

Anyway, he was certain David hadn’t been serious about it. Dying. He was just a boy. A boy who might’ve been anywhere from thirteen to seventeen years old and who appeared to have no home other than the school, and no one to look after him. But that wasn’t unusual. Barnaby’s parents only sent him postcards and let him sleep over on holidays. Rich boys didn’t need anyone to look after them, they had money. Money provided an education (Barnaby continued to cheat whenever possible, he didn’t know what David did), room and board, a vibrant social life, and it kept them out of jail. What else could a boy need?

David had only been after the attention. With hindsight, he regretted having provided it. He had reinforced the behavior. But it had been very upsetting at the time. He wasn’t used to it yet. It never occurred to him to apply his third eye to his surroundings and ask if his best friend really meant all this nonsense about wanting to be dead. In desperation, he began offering fun activities that they could do instead. As if David had said he was bored. Maybe he was. Maybe that was David’s demented code for being bored. ‘I don’t want to live anymore.’ Oh. All right. What if we go to the movies?

He’d said they ought to go into town. That was what finally snapped him out of it. “Let’s go into town then!”

“Now you’re just being stupid. We can’t go into town by ourselves on a weeknight.”

“Why? What do we need to go into town? A horse? You know how to ride a horse. We’ll just take one!”

“You’re going to steal a horse?”

“Borrow.” He grinned. “What, do you think I can’t? I’ll pick one nobody’s going to miss. Find me something to kill!”

“I don’t want you to kill anything. That’s cruel.” That was David. I can’t bear to live anymore but don’t kill a mouse, that’s cruel. Spoiled rotten idiot.

“Hand me that box of paperclips then. Come on!”

He found them a reasonably safe horse in the spilled paperclips and they went into town. They didn’t even get caught. That time.

So he had told his insane, manipulative best friend in no uncertain terms: “Hey, if you threaten to kill yourself, I’ll do something extra entertaining! Just store that away and use it whenever you feel I’m getting a bit dull, for the rest of your goddamn life.”

People were always getting trapped in these cages that, if you rewound causality enough, it turned out they had built for themselves and stepped into willingly. It was intensely frustrating.

When he came back to school after summer that year (He’d gone to Iliodario. He didn’t know what David did in the summer.) David had a new nose.

Or maybe he didn’t. That was the hell of it.

“What the hell happened to your face?”

“What? Nothing,” said the dark-haired boy with the golden nose.

“How is that nothing, you mentalist?”

“You’re the mentalist, you’re getting a degree in it. I just decided to stop using makeup. I don’t want to look normal anymore, I’m bored of it.”

“What? That’s… No!” He unlatched his suitcase and dumped all the clothes on the pavement. And he still couldn’t tell! There were always at least three different plausible scenarios for David and nothing to indicate which had actually happened. New nose? Not a new nose? Maybe! “I can never get a read on you, you devious little shit.”

David smiled. “You’re not being objective. You like me too much.”

“You piss me off too much!” he snapped. “What happened to it? Something obviously happened at some point, you weren’t born like that!”

“It’s funny you should mention it, because I was. The Marselline branch of the Dickenson family is known for its noseless children. Our blood is extremely pure, blue, and degenerate. Many of us expire before the age of three. At three years and two months, my parents purchased the model you see here for me, in celebration and at great expense. It was a bit outsized at that age, but the amount of gold involved is several thousand sinqs worth of love and admiration, and as you see I’ve almost grown into it. If my inbred body should last me until the age of eighteen, according to family tradition, I shall have my sinuses inlaid with gems. Color varies as to personal preference. I’m considering diamonds. What do you think about diamonds, Gray? Too ostentatious?”

He walked off with both hands clutched in his hair, abandoning his suitcase and clothes. “Oh, gods! I don’t even know why I bother!”

“Are you going to give nudism a whirl this semester, Gray?” David called after him. “What if I join you?”

Barnaby ran back with a handkerchief clutched in his hand. He spat in it and wiped David’s apparent nose. A flesh-colored stain appeared on the white cloth and the ragged edges of the merger became visible, including blue lines that crept into his forehead and cheeks. The gold itself remained.

“You said you stopped using makeup!”

“A gentleman must have some secrets, Gray.” David drew a compact out of his pocket and began repairing his appearance. “That was extremely rude of you. If you’re going to rub your saliva all over me, at least have the decency to kiss me.”

David experimented with several different nose stories that year and eventually decided he had lost it in a duel, although why and who with remained endlessly variable. Years later, Barnaby even caught him trying to say it had happened at age twenty-one.

But maybe he was twenty-one and masquerading as a teenager for his own amusement. You never could tell anything about David.

Case in point, after prep school David had decided to take a gap year and visit Farsia — the ancestral home of the Naadji family, which David had decided was his last name at the moment. David, who had already been at school for a year when Barnaby got there, or at least long enough to get himself kicked out of his dormitory, was suddenly graduating at the same time and taking a gap year. He had tickets. And a passport! The damn passport said his name was ‘David Abdul Naadji III.’

Barnaby had been jaded enough by that point to feel pleased at the prospect of a David-free year to develop his own personality and destiny — perhaps he would try being stodgy and respectable for a change! — if a bit wistful. “Well, send me lots of postcards, all right? You know where I’ll be.” He was continuing his education without pause, like ripping off a bandage. Then he could get right down to pretending he had some kind of job and taking a lot of vacations. Government work looked like a good fit.

David certainly did know where he’d be. There were two dozen red roses from ‘Your Pet Fairy, D. A. N. Keep your pecker up!’’ waiting in his room when he arrived. He read the card and crumpled it with a snort. “Fool.”

“Would you rather have had a box of cookies?” David said, behind him.

Barnaby screamed and swore for a solid fifteen minutes.

David said he’d expressed his intention to follow Barnaby to university over a year ago. He had, in a folder, his admission papers and an essay entitled, ‘My Poor Mad Best Friend’ which he claimed had made the Dean of Psychology weep. Of course you must stay in Ansalem and look after your poor mad friend, here is a scholarship for you.

“I put you on a train to San Rosille so you could get on a boat to Farsia twelve hours ago!” Barnaby shrieked.

David patted him on the head. “You poor thing, you really can’t get along without me, can you?”

Barnaby straightened the card and held it in both hands. “Then who the hell is my pet homosexual D-A-N?”

“David Andre Nadasdy. My family’s from Piastana.”

Barnaby howled. “You’re taking your life in your hands, David! I’m about to lop a piece of you off and have it analyzed in a lab to prove you’re not my imaginary friend! Excuse me! Excuse me!” There was another young man walking by in the hallway. “You can see this man, can’t you? Can you see him?”

The young man in the hallway said, “What man?”

Barnaby wheeled and punched David in the face. David collapsed to the floor, cackling. The young man in the hallway clapped both hands to his mouth and cried, “Oh, gods, it was a joke! He gave me a hundred sinqs and said it was for a joke! Are you all right, sir?”

“This person is congenitally not all right and he has grafted himself to my ass like a barnacle!” cried Barnaby.

David was still cackling and dripping blood on the carpet.

They took him to the infirmary.

“I’m afraid it may be permanent,” the nurse said, shining a pen light into his blown pupil. “How did it happen?”

“Oh, just a silly little lover’s tiff,” David replied with a smile. He threaded his arm around Barnaby. “I’m his pet homosexual.”

Barnaby spent the rest of his academic career, and perhaps the rest of his life, presumed gay and in a relationship with David.

Even getting married to Veronica didn’t help.

They met at a garden party. He was thirty-one and starting to look even more suspicious. She was twenty. She laughed at one of David’s dumb jokes and called him ‘precious.’ David nudged him and said, “Oh, she’s a treasure. Marry her quick, before she figures out you’re queer!”

Forever afterwards, he alternately denied it or claimed he was being sarcastic.

Veronica had managed to remain secure in her delusion that David was funny and precious for about a year of married life, and it was all downhill from there.

“What you don’t seem to understand, Miss Admunsen,” Barnaby declared, with great dignity, after crawling in his own bedroom window at four o’clock in the morning, “is that I have been away on a mission of mercy. I saved the life of a brilliant human being tonight!”

“I think if he wasn’t real, you would’ve made him up as an excuse,” his young wife replied, and she departed to sleep in the guest bedroom.

He was a bit put out, but Veronica wasn’t capable of really hurting him. All she had to do was exist near enough to be seen with him occasionally, and she fulfilled her duty. Which was not so much love or devotion but an object he could cling to and use to declare his independence. No, my very best friend and lifetime companion is not everything to me. Not everything. We’re certainly not lovers! Why, just look at this woman I have right here! My woman. A tiny island of his life where David did not own property or even visit. And if Veronica wasn’t available, a showgirl or two would usually volunteer, temporarily.

I have my own house, my own wife, and my own life, don’t I?

Until he didn’t anymore. That hurt like hell. But that was much later.

David would’ve ruined his career as well as his marriage, if he’d allowed it.

After working his way up through budgets, weather reports and grain futures, the military had decided it wanted him for tactical matters. A lavish paycheque, a health plan, flexible hours and a pension. Yes, thank you very much. I prefer to do my augury in an island environment, you must understand. It’s the humidity. I’ll telegraph you the results, all right? Splendid!

And David showed up at his back door, pretending to be concerned.

“You have a house of your own and they are not allowed to put intent lines on it,” Barnaby told him. “Go away.”

“Gray, you can’t do it full time.”

“What? Live on a beach and drink sticky drinks? I’m certain you’ll find me and I’ll have to deal with you wherever I end up, so don’t…”

“You know what I mean. What if there’s a war?”

“What if there is? I don’t have to show up for it. They’ll set me up in some luxury hotel within radio distance and ship over a box of pigeons every few days.” He put up a hand. “And don’t try to tell me you’re upset about the pigeons, you eat squab.”

“Gray, it’s not the location, it’s the amount. This beautiful brain of yours is like a wax cylinder. They wear out. You know they wear out. Please let me in and let’s talk about it.”

“I’ll let you in and you’ll grab some sharp object and threaten me about it, you mean. Go home, David. The thing is already done. Go listen to your album on loop for a few days. You’ll feel better. Then we’ll go to a show or something this weekend, all right?”

He had his foot in the door. “Gray, the reason the damn job has an obscene paycheque and a health plan is they’re going to tear you up and throw you in a bin before you turn fifty! Please! I don’t… I-I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Kill yourself, right?”

He turned away, but he still had his foot in the door. “Don’t you care if I do?”

“After twenty-seven years, I no longer believe you have any intention of it. Maybe an accident or something, I’ll warn you if I see anything, but not on purpose.”

“Would you quit and go back to agriculture if I did die?”

“No. I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

“You have to know this is going to hurt you. You have to see that. You see everything.”

“So the worst years of my life will be just a bit shittier, so what? I was probably going to lose my mind anyway. This way they’ll store me somewhere nice and you can visit. In the meantime, I can have fun. I want to have fun. Don’t you want me to have fun? Or do you just want me to be kind of a life buoy that you can cling to?”

“I thought we were clinging to each other.”

“I have my own life, David. Now move your foot or I’ll smash it like I did your eye. Go on. I’ll see you later.”

“I don’t want to be your imaginary friend anymore,” David said weakly.

Barnaby smiled. “But what would you do without me?” And he closed the door.

David had pouted for a while and gone off on a trip to the country alone, but that was just for show.

Barnaby received a telegram from David’s country sulk, at eleven o’clock at night, when Veronica was trying to sleep.

I SAVED A HUMAN LIFE I AM A GOD.

DAVID VALENTINE.

Snickering, Barnaby folded it and saved it. He showed it to David upon his return. “So exactly how high were you when you sent this?”

“But I really did save a human life!”

“Oh, sure. Sure.”

“It was an adorable little blonde girl at a garden party! She was shot in the head!”

“Yes, that sort of thing happens in the country every day. Well, good for you.”

“Will you at least smash a couple of plates and look?”

“No, I’m conserving my cylinder. Would you like to go to dinner?”

“I despise you!” David spat.

“See you later then.”

Barnaby was not invited on David’s subsequent country jaunt either: “I’m having a themed orgy about terrible friends and we’re going to have a lot of fun without you.”

He got a telegram two days later.

I HAVE A CHILD BRINGING IT HOME NOW YOU’LL BELIEVE ME.

DAVID VALENTINE.

Barnaby ran down to the nearest office and sent a reply.

NOT FUNNY. IF YOU DO GIVE IT BACK.

BARNABY GRAHAM.

David’s answer came an hour later.

THEY DON’T WANT IT BACK I BROKE IT.

DAVID VALENTINE.

Barnaby purchased another telegraph, and a train ticket.

I WILL BE THERE TIW YOU BETTER NOT HAVE STOLEN A HUMAN BEING.

BARNABY GRAHAM.

If there was a reply, he wasn’t in town to receive it.

He arrived at the gates of Maribou in South Hestia without even a toothbrush. He dismissed the taxi there and walked the rest of the way. He didn’t want the driver to get David arrested for human trafficking.

He was still desperately hoping that it was all a ploy for more attention, but this was crazy even for David.

He banged open the front door and demanded, “What the hell is going on here?”

David ran in wearing a silk brocade regency gown. This was how he relaxed at home. “Gray! Guess what?” He clasped his hands. “It’s a baby dyke! I’m going to call her Alice! I’m going to train her to wear lipstick and femmy dresses, and we’ll pick up lots of girls together and have the cutest little parties…”

“Where is it? Do you really have a child? Is it alive? Have you fed it recently?”

“I gave her a guest bedroom. Yes. Yes. And I’m not sure. Don’t they feed themselves?”

“Which guest bedroom?”

There was a naked blonde girl sitting on the bed, reading a novel.

“Oh, my gods!” said Barnaby.

David clicked his tongue. “Alice, please put something on. We have company.”

“My name is not Alice.” She licked her finger and turned a page.

“Listen, my friend never believes me when I tell him things and he’s going to think I’m abusing you.”

“Maybe you are,” she said gravely. She didn’t even glance up.

David appeared sheepish. “Honestly, I’m not. I told you I broke her. This is a feature.”

“Put this poor girl back wherever you got her from right now or I’m going to call the police! You’re taking this Titania-Queen-of-the-Fae thing too far!”

“He can’t, my parents don’t want me anymore.” Now she tipped down the book and considered for a moment. “I don’t think I want them either. I want to go and live with my Aunt Vic, but they said it was either him or the nuthouse. This place has chocolates.” She shrugged and returned to her book.

“See? I told you they feed themselves,” David said. He hugged his own shoulders and squealed. “I’m going to dress her up just like a princess!”

“No, you are not,” said the naked girl with the book.

“A prince then! Do you want to be a little drag prince?”

“No.”

“I’m going to buy you your very own pony!”

“No thank you.”

David scowled at her. “Why aren’t you fun? Children are supposed to be fun.”

“Men are supposed to wear trousers.” She turned another page.

Barnaby found himself grinning. “Tell me. Tell me, little blonde girl…”

“My name is Hyacinth.”

“Lovely. Tell me, do you see this gentleman in the gown? In your considered opinion, is he a real person who exists?”

“Sure. He really ruined my brain, didn’t he?”

“And are you real? I didn’t make you up?”

“Are you senile or something, old man?”

Barnaby clasped his hands. “Ah, David. It’s the dawn of a new era. Two against one. I win forever.”

David beamed. “Then you’re going to let me keep her?”

“David, nobody ever lets you do anything.”

———

“Not that it makes any difference,” the blonde girl said. “I know it doesn’t. But he didn’t really die on Cloquette Day, Barnaby.”

He sighed and sipped his cold coffee. “It was close enough. There was a street festival.” He shook his head. “Would you believe I was only thinking of how much my life has improved since you’ve been in it? I took off on a tangent and I was back blowing up a school building singing ‘Rocket Man’ at the top of my lungs. David just… turns up places he doesn’t belong and refuses to leave.”

“It was a talent of his,” Hyacinth agreed. She sat down at the table and poured more coffee. “I almost wish someone would blow their fingers off with a firework and give me something to do besides think. You’re not worried about him coming back, are you?”

“I know these jaunts I take to the past are just another feature of my deteriorating brain, but if you’d been through what I’ve been through, you’d be expecting him to turn up again all the time too. Do you know he used to pretend I made him up? He couldn’t do that anymore after you. You were honest. It was wonderful.”

She snickered. “Yeah. He mentioned it. He had a lucid moment and you weren’t in the room. He said I ought to give it about a decade and then start denying he ever existed. He said it would be very, very funny, but don’t forget to duck. ‘Don’t forget to duck, Alice.’ Does that make any sense to you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe it’s something I’ve forgotten.”

“I thought about doing it, but I don’t think I really decided not to. I just forgot. It would’ve been too lonesome, anyway. I like having someone around who can confirm the insanity of my formative years.”

“If you liked it, you shouldn’t have taken off on me like that.”

She sighed. “Yeah, well, I also like not having to think about my past. It’s a trade-off.”

“We can’t make that trade this time of year,” he said. He looked away. “Should I apologize to you?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. He apologized to me. At the end. Near the end. I thought he was screwing with me, but he started to sound like he meant it. He said sometimes he wished I’d made him up because I would’ve made him a better person. That was about his usual pathetic behavior and I put up with it under the circumstances.” He paused. It was painful to say, even after all this time. He didn’t want to say it. But he did. “Then he said sometimes he thought he made me up, because he was lonely and nobody would be friends with him. And I never left like all the rest. I said he was being stupid. He said he hoped I was real so I could keep taking care of you.” He waved a hand. “I thought it was the drugs and it would’ve embarrassed him so I didn’t mention it.”

“It was definitely the drugs. Neither one of you took care of me.”

“Do you want that apology?”

“I don’t think it matters. Just don’t expect me to apologize back.”

“I was going to go live on a beach somewhere. A tropical beach. I was going to spend the next couple decades of my life wasted and enjoying myself until my wax cylinder wore out. Then I’d let the state take care of me. But then you showed up and obviously I couldn’t leave you alone with him.”

“You just said I improved your life.”

“There is no contradiction. You did.” He stirred his coffee. “Nevertheless, I was going to live on a beach. Now we live in David’s miserable old townhouse.”

“You live in my attic. We’ve just done Milo being a zombie.” She stood and opened the junk drawer. “You clipped this out of the paper, do you want it?”

Barnaby regarded the scrap of newsprint.

…Inexplicable casting choices abound, including a young dandy as a burn victim, a woman as some kind of scientist, and a wannabe Buster Keaton as a zombie… Two stars.

He snickered weakly and pushed it back at her. “Save it in case I lose my place again, won’t you, Alice? That’s a good girl.”

She sighed and put it back in the drawer. “Do you want me to hand you over to the state? Is that what you were saying?”

“I don’t know if I have enough documentation or credibility left to prove I am who I say I am. He might as well have made me up at this point. But you could always try.” He trailed away. “I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t. If you don’t mind seeing me through to the end.”

“I don’t mind it enough at the moment, but ask me again in ten years.”

He nodded silently. I’m not sure I have ten weeks from here, Hyacinth, but there’s no point in upsetting you. I don’t want to deal with it.

“I really have been an unrepentantly horrible man, haven’t I?”

“I rate you about a nine-point-eight. Good job. You want another cinnamon roll with your pathetic behavior?”

“Yes. Thank you.”