Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
The arcade wasn’t as empty as it had been the first time we’d come here, but the few people in there were all older, pretty quiet and minding their own business, not that it really mattered with the music coming from all the machines.
Soyer led me around the maze of games, some of which were surely vintage. They were well loved too, the color here and there no longer as bright, the joysticks showing edges smoothed out with use. Still, everything was running.
“It’s strange to think that you had to go to an arcade to play video games back then,” I mumbled, but Soyer heard.
“You could do a lot more at an arcade than play video games, but how would you know that? You missed out on a lot of fun. I think you’d have enjoyed it.”
I realized then that it wasn’t just me who got nostalgic. Soyer did too. But, like with so many things, he hid it better.
“Soyer?”
“Hmm?”
“How do you do it? Always move with the times? How do you go from playing—” I pointed, reading the first machine’s name I saw. “—Frogger to using all the right emojis?”
“Ah. It’s good to know you enjoy it when I text you things.”
His tone of voice made it pretty clear what he was talking about, and it wasn’t the innocent texts.
“That was… Yes. I do.”
He glanced at me before leading me around another turn.
There was a counter here, glass encased and with only a small, window-like opening.
An older man in glasses sat in the chair behind it, reading a dog-eared horror novel.
His dark blue woolen cap was worn and had a small hole in it right above his left temple. He looked up.
“Ah. Shuck. A long time.”
I couldn’t place the accent exactly. Maybe it was Italian, but it wasn’t pronounced enough for me to really tell.
“Yes. This one is new to the many entertainments to be had here. We’ll need coins.”
Soyer handed the man a bill. I couldn’t see how much it was, but the man took it and left through a narrow door behind him. A few moments later, he came back with two large soda cups that had red and white swirls on them and were full of coins.
“There you go. If you want something different, there’s a few new custom games behind the curtain.”
Soyer nodded. “Thank you.”
He handed me one of the soda cups, and we continued on our way through the maze. I did look back at the man. He was watching us, and he gave me a small nod as if he were happy to see me, or satisfied maybe.
“It’s about attachment,” Soyer said out of nowhere when we got to the crane machines. It was brighter here, almost like a zoo of stuffed animals and funny fantasy creatures.
“Huh?”
“You asked a good question. About moving with time. It’s important, but I think you’ll be good at it.”
“You mean when I…don’t die?”
I was looking at the machines, trying to decide which one I wanted to risk, but Soyer stopped dead at my words and made a dark, grumbling sound. “Do not say that. Do not talk about…” He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. It’s this place, it…it’s me. Forgive me.
“But yes, I think you will be fine. The people who have issues, the people who get strange and out of sync are the ones who hang on to things. Look at Elias to understand what you’re supposed to do.”
My brows crept up my forehead. “You want me to take Elias as my example?”
“Fuck no. He is and has always been a Bad Influence, capitalized. But the one thing Elias is unfailingly good at is understanding the time he lives in. He told you about his degrees. He went to school to catch up with the changing times, whether that was intentional on his part or just healthy instinct.”
I frowned. “I think he just wanted to meet new people.”
Soyer sighed and shook his head in mild exasperation. “You and Elias. I don’t like that you understand each other as well as you do.”
“You don’t?”
“Not literally.”
“I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense, Soyer.”
“Well, then I guess that’s how it is. Look, those ones.”
He pointed me to a claw machine with a mix of fluffy creatures inside. I decided to give it a shot and almost got a fluffy white bunny into the chute, but it slipped out at the last moment.
“They’re rigged.”
Soyer rolled his eyes. “These aren’t, but you have to have skill. Do you want to ask anything else?”
“About living?”
“Yes. I… We never talked about it, or maybe not as much as we should have, but I’ll answer every question you might have.”
I couldn’t help it, it just burst out of me. “Did you go to school? As much as Elias?”
“Hah. This isn’t what I meant. You wanted the bunny?”
“It was closest to my claws.”
“Claws, you? Hardly. Here, let me show you.”
Soyer did just what he’d done when he’d gotten me Oboe.
He used a single coin, tossed it, and fed it to the crane machine.
Then he moved the controls with precision.
He managed to grab the exact bunny that had escaped me, letting it drop into the chute.
He picked it up and held it out to me, looking pleased with himself.
I crossed my arms and shook my head. “Nope. We said whichever animal you grab is your spirit animal.”
He frowned. “I grabbed this for you. For demonstration purposes.”
“That’s not how bargaining works, Soyer.”
“Fuck me. This is why I said Elias is bad for you.”
“Elias begs. He doesn’t bargain.”
He huffed. “And you, my heart, have the power to make any man weak in the knees.” He looked at the bunny. “You think this is me?”
“No, I’m saying this is what you got, and thus fate has decided that you are a bunny.”
“Again, fuck me. All this energy, Amory. Do I have to make you go back to working every day if I want to impress you?”
That struck a chord with me, and I opened my arms and moved in to hug him. He was surprised, my firebird, his breath soft against my cheek, his smile pressing against my forehead.
“I don’t want to,” I whispered.
“What did you just say?”
I nuzzled closer. “This is nice. I want to spend time with you, Soyer. Don’t tell Dwayne.”
“Fuck me thrice.”
“So many fucks.”
“Well, they’re necessary fucks.”
I looked at him. “So did you? Go to school as much as Elias?”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so. I…well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Tell me, please?”
“I just wanted to learn reading and writing. I’d seen the books, the illuminated manuscripts. They were treasures. I wanted to learn how to do that. So I may have—fuck.”
I gasped, taking a step back though my hands still rested on his hips. “Did you go to a nunnery?”
“Ssh! Keep quiet. It was an abbey. I thought I could handle the corruption and the secret sex they all had, but I didn’t last a month.”
“Wow.”
“I did learn reading and writing though.”
“In a month? That’s impressive. You’re talented.” I tried to imagine it, Soyer in a monk’s robe. I couldn’t. “How did you even get in there?”
“I lied, how else?” He shook his bunny. “Definitely not this. I did attend various universities here and there, but I never stuck around for a degree. A lot of the time, I had ulterior motives.”
I pulled on the ear of his bunny. “You liked learning a trade better, didn’t you? Like when you learned about watches and clocks, you liked that because it meant that you were independent once it was done, could set up your own shop eventually.”
He looked at me for a long time. “That’s very insightful, my heart. Now, we were talking about fucking, which this is not the place for. Are you going to learn how to get a bunny from a crane today or not?”
“A dare?”
He shrugged. “Sure, why the fuck not?” He rattled his coins at me. “I dare you to crane something cuter than my bunny, Amory.”
Soyer knew me too well; I couldn’t possibly say no to that.