Chapter 26 Including but Not Limited to Horses
Armand Faces Myriad Horrors
Including but Not Limited to Horses
I stamped out my last cigarette and leaned back against the cold brickwork of the alleyway. Karim watched me, savoring a small cup of coffee. “You did good in there.”
“This is the worst arrangement in the world, you realize?” I grumbled.
“You take a load of antisocials who deal with the absolute bloody nightmare of being alive by drinking or getting high or numb or whatever, and the way you help us reintegrate into society is forcing us to interact. That’s mad, innit?
All we want is relief from the world, and you shove us together to talk about the worst parts of it: the shame, the ick, so we can rub our failures up against each other, hold up these sad, manky little successes that to any normal person would be functioning and—”
“Had a good time, did you?”
I thumped my head against the wall. “Aye.”
“Proud of yourself?”
I groaned.
“I like what you said at the end there.” Karim’s eyes were laughing at me over the edge of his Styrofoam cup. “About wanting to be one thing, but knowing you’re another.”
“Piss off, Sidi.”
“Nah, nah, say it like you said it. I loved it.”
I shut my eyes tight, scraping the back of my head against the bricks. “Some people drink too much, and some people are alcoholics. And I’d give my left nut to be the first, but I know I’m the bloody second?”
“Yeah, that. Loved that. And so did the lads. You really found yourself in that teaching business in America, didn’t you?”
“Piss off.” I opened my eyes long enough to see him coming at me for a hug. “Bloody—mmfff!”
“Your sexy cowboy will be fine, habibi; you’ll find a way to tell him everything you need to, and I bet it won’t matter in the end.”
Oh, it was going to matter. And I was going to tell him, damn it, but not until after the exhibition.
The last thing I wanted was to steal his thunder—sour this moment, ruin the lovely little artistic community he was building around himself.
He’d spent the last few weeks fully immersed in it, making friends and connections, learning about gallerying . . .
Spending time with Jean.
I extracted myself from my sponsor’s arms and attempted to act like a fully grown adult man rather than a stroppy child. “Thank you.”
“Everything will be fine.” At some point Karim had made the transition from twinkling inspirational mentor to taking the piss, but that line was always a bit fuzzy.
“I’m going to leave now.”
“Cheers.”
I huddled into my jacket and started toward Angel Station. I was about to cross White Lion Street when someone called my name. No, not my name.
“Darling.”
I skidded over the curb and nearly rolled my ankle, twisting around to look. There he was, in a long burgundy coat that should’ve clashed horribly with his hair but didn’t. Perhaps because there was more silver in it these days.
“Desolé, Armand. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He held a long white hand to his chest and grinned at me like he always did, silver-blue eyes flashing dangerously in a vulpine face. Like I was chum in the water.
“You okay, kid?” the dark-haired man next to him, wearing classic gray tweed and a deep scowl, asked in a surprising American accent. The frighteningly skinny woman beside him made some Och, poor dear noises as well.
I grunted, realizing I’d landed in a puddle, and stepped back onto the pavement, trainers squelching. My heart hammered in my throat, and I’d gone cold all over, but I didn’t want to come off strange. “Er, aye.”
“Jackson, Olivia, this is Armand Demetrio, my little comic artist.” Jean presented me like an exemplary vegetable. “Armand, these are my dear friends: Olivia Voclain, patroness of the arts, and Jacoby Jackson, the very famous New York playwright. They’ve got a bit on at the Almeida.”
Jacoby Jackson didn’t look particularly pleased to be called his friend, but that could’ve been the result of the general crag of the man’s face.
Olivia Voclain, on the other hand, was giving me a familiar, calculating look.
“Oh yes, I’ve heard quite a bit of chatter about you, young man.
Something about this year’s Falcon Awards? ”
That was news to me. Or at least it would be once I processed what she’d said. No, running—that is, politely excusing myself—was definitely the right move here. “P-pleasure meeting you both. Er. Goodbye.” I tugged my actual forelock, turned on my heel, and scarpered.
I could hear him laughing behind me. “Always the temperamental artist. We’ll see you at the exhibition, darling!”
I wrapped my jacket tighter around me and focused on not tumbling down the escalator steps. Once I was safe on a moving train surrounded by strangers, I sat down on a rare empty seat and closed my eyes, letting my shoulders slump and my fists unclench.
It didn’t matter if I’d made a fool of myself in front of two random nobs.
He hadn’t grabbed hold of the bits of soul I occasionally and embarrassingly left trailing out of my body like toilet tissue stuck to a shoe or an untucked shirt tag only he could see.
It had been a quick encounter on the street, but I was shaking like I’d barely survived a traffic accident.
There was never going to be a way for me to interact with Jean-Michel LaRoux neutrally, calmly, without triggering my fight or flight (always flight).
More importantly, there was no way, at this juncture, to keep Jean away from Lucas and the exhibition.
Jean was, much like Lucas, from that world where closed doors merely needed their handles jiggled a bit.
He was always going to be there, lurking around a corner or behind a pillar, waiting to pull me down right as I’d gaspingly reached the surface.
November 22
97 days sober
I’d never been happier to leave the city. After nearly a full week hiding indoors, it felt good to . . . not so much see the sun as witness the sky. Exist, however briefly, unwalled.
I hadn’t been this far north in ages and nearly forgot how picturesque the English countryside could be, especially in November with all the fog and foliage, and especially to a sweet, impressionable Yank.
“We are literally two seconds away from stumbling onto Pemberley Manor.” Lucas was grinning ear to ear, cuddled into his dark blue peacoat and white scarf.
“No, love, we’re in Epping.”
Lucas rolled his eyes and pointed out the window at the hulking beech trees and thick carpet of fallen auburn leaves rolling by. “You’re telling me Lizzie Bennet never walked these moors? Bullshit.”
“You’re absolutely right.” I nodded contritely. “I apologize.”
We were meeting his mother at Drummer’s Reprieve, a horse rescue farm run by one of the Barclays’ family friends.
I was telling myself that it was an excellent coincidence—Lucas’s mother coming to see her friends and her son’s photography exhibition was serendipitous.
Not Lucas introducing me to his mum because we were at the mum-introductions stage.
This was about convenience, and the interconnected world of horse charities operating on an unsurprisingly global scale. I could smell the peerage a mile away.
Sure enough, the woman who greeted us resembled nothing so much as a toadstool in tweed and wellies. She introduced herself with a cut glass accent as “Lady Dorothy but do call me Dodo.” Then she pointed down the hill with a glove covered in something truly foul.
“Cheyenne is with the Captain.” She grinned at Lucas, strongly resembling one of the well-aged trees surrounding.
“Your mum’s told me so much about you, Lucas.
Jolly chuffed to finally meet in person.
And the handsome beau. A fine specimen.” She looked at me like an eldritch creature that might or might not be considering a revival of the Empire.
Lucas mercifully pulled me down the hill toward his mother and the Captain, who unsurprisingly turned out to be a horse.
“Baby!” Mrs. Barclay let out a happy shout the moment she set eyes on her son.
She gracefully clambered over the side of the pen with the agility of a woman half her age.
What age that was, precisely, was hard to gauge, because she was blonde and Californian in a way that seemed positively airbrushed.
Lucas and his mother hugged for a long moment, rocking from side to side and exchanging near-incomprehensible proclamations of affection. When they turned to me, they appeared joined at the hip like some two-headed, beaming American monster.
“Mom, this is Armand Demetrio, my boyfriend. Armand, this is Cheyenne Barclay, my mom.”
“Very pleased to meet you, ma’am.” I held out a hand, then panicked. Didn’t American women have a long-standing complicated relationship with the term ma’am? What should I have used instead? Miss? Ms? Madam? “Er, that is, M-Mrs. Barclay.”
Her grip was strong, fingers smaller than Lucas’s but every bit as rough. Eyes just as sharp and sparkling. “Pleased to meet you as well, Mr. Demetrio. And it’s Cheyenne, don’t hurt yourself.”
“Er, yes ma’am. Mrs. Barclay. Cheyenne!” I winced. “And please call me Armand.”
She grinned. “Cute. I’m starting to understand what’s kept my son away all this time.” She let go of my hand and reached up to boop my nose. She had to stand on her tiptoes to do it, so I helpfully hunched a bit.
“It’s nice to see my baby so happy,” she said. “The beautiful awkward Brit schtick you’ve got going on is delightful.”
I laughed uncomfortably, hoping the heat and color that had very clearly risen in my face could be put down to the nippy weather. “Er, thank you?” I automatically reached for Lucas, and he squeezed my hand.
“No, thank you.”
“Mother,” Lucas warned, both affectionately and ineffectually.
“Okay.” I cleared my throat as Lucas giggled, and I tried to smile good-naturedly. “That’s, er, very flattering. You are also . . .” Oh bloody hell.
Mrs. Barclay raised her eyebrows. “Go on.”
Lucas beamed. “Yeah, babe, go on.”
“I can see where Lucas gets his looks.” I salvaged it, if in a somewhat higher pitch than preferable.
“Nice save.” Lucas leaned up to kiss my cheek. “But you can tell my mom to her face that she’s drop-dead gorgeous. She’s well aware.”
“I am.”
There was no way out of this that left me spiritually whole. Mrs. Barclay turned to her son. “And he’s treating you well?”
“Oh, yes, very well.” Lucas patted my arm. The way he said it didn’t have to be read as suggestive, and very likely my paranoid brain was trying to make me embarrass myself, but now all I could think about was my boyfriend and his mother discussing my relative fitness as a partner and lover.
“Want to meet the Captain?” Mrs. Barclay indicated the giant creature of pure muscle and teeth behind her. “He’s got real Major Bananas energy.”
Lucas indicated that he did, and I politely excused myself. “I’ll be here when you get back. Enjoy. Er. Say hi to the horse for me.”
Lucas climbed over the fence, then helped his mother like a gentleman. Mrs. Barclay glanced back at me. “Don’t get lost—would hate to find you hopelessly wandering the moors later.”
At some point I’d have to explain what The Moors were.
Lucas giggled again, and I said, “I won’t.” Perhaps a smidge too loudly.
Then I watched the Barclays walk confidently over wet grass, arm in arm with the pretext of each keeping the other from slipping, but clearly drawing sustenance from the contact.
Good mothers were far less of a foreign concept to me than good fathers, because I’d had so many surrogates, people who stepped in to make sure I was fed, clothed, and doing my homework.
Auntie Abeni, Hettie Marks, and even Winnie had all given me the tools I needed to not only weather Cheyenne Barclay, but eventually enjoy her.
If I lasted long enough to get the chance.