3. Pavel
Pavel
“ M aestro?” The voice was a distant echo, and the light knocking that followed barely registered to Pavel’s consciousness at all.
The world returned to him slowly.
Too slowly, slower than ever these days. It had been over a hundred years since he’d last dreamed, and now his slumber was a heavy black blanket. He’d lost his agility, both of mind and body, and could no longer move with ease between the stone form he slept in and his human one.
Little by little, the sounds of the city infiltrated his awareness. Shrill yelling, the blaring of car horns, rhythmic music drifting up from the streets below.
“Maestro Zaslavsky? Can I have a moment of your time?”
Wait. Was someone in his bedroom? Calling his name? That couldn’t be right. He slowly opened his eyes.
The light of the sun was a flash of white, saturating his field of vision. Slowly, his eyes came into focus.
He wasn’t at home at all.
As his sight adjusted, his office appeared in front of him.
First, his antique mahogany desk. It was entirely clear of accoutrement, save his laptop and a leather portfolio.
Then, the two small chairs, upholstered in a light pink velveteen.
Finally, the few carefully curated pieces of art.
A hundred-year-old bust of Tchaikovsky. A large abstract portrait of a tiger, its swirls of orange and black shifting in contrast to the gray-white walls.
He had gone to stone in his office. Dammit. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He had an area in the corner of his bedroom at home set aside for dormancy, a small, clear circle he had designated for the rare occasions he needed to sleep.
The problem was, it was becoming less rare. In his youth, Pavel had gone months without returning to his statue form. For the past few years, he’d get itchy after three or four days.
After a moment, it occurred to him he was unusually low to the ground. The top of his desk was at eye level.
The extra weight of his stone form must have broken his office chair. He sighed, although the sound barely escaped from his gradually unfreezing body. This was the first time he’d gone to sleep without actively choosing it.
He’d have to get his assistant to order him a new chair. How annoying. Choosing a chair had been a frustratingly arduous process.
He focused on that, rather than on the bigger implications. He’d gone to stone unconsciously, without intending to do so. It was disconcerting, and not just because he’d lost control. He knew that someday, maybe someday soon, he would go dormant for the last time.
The knocking was louder now that he was awake, three sharp raps. “Maestro? ”
“Give me five minutes, Yasmin,” Pavel called out, squeezing the words through his still inflexible throat. Her steps were tentative as she walked away, but she was too professional to ask any questions. That was one reason he liked her.
He slowly stretched his arms out to the sides, gray stone dust falling to the carpet below.
This form, his animate gargoyle form, was the hardest to maintain.
He was a being of living granite. It took energy and a strength of will which he found to be in short supply.
He stood, stretching his wings out behind him, enjoying the feeling of it while ignoring the effort it took to stay like this.
He hadn’t seen another gargoyle in many years.
There were times, in the first thirty decades of his life, when he and his friends had stayed in their gargoyle forms for months at a time, reveling in the strength of their stone bodies, marveling at the magic that allowed them to fly despite their density.
After a moment, though, the energy drain nagged at him. Some days, maintaining this form was exhausting. In his mind’s eye, he conjured a familiar image, the human form he had taken for most of his long life. With a surge of silent encouragement, his body began to transform.
His skin shifted from a dull gray to a more vibrant tan, and his wings melted into his back. The weight of the stone disappeared, leaving only the lightness and ease of human existence.
Running his hand over his short-cropped beard, he gazed down at the floor, where the shreds of his outfit lay. His clothing hadn’t survived the unexpected change.
“Damn.” He bent over, picking up the remnants. Thank goodness he kept a spare suit in his office closet for emergencies. Although he’d never imagined the emergency would be this .
As Pavel opened the closet door, he tried to muster a sense of urgency, but all he could manage was dread at what Yasmin had in store for him. Part of it was the natural sluggishness and emotional drop of leaving his stone form. But that wasn’t all, or even most, of the problem.
It's not like he hated his job. The opposite, in fact. He loved working with the young artists. They were talented and eager singers in their twenties, some of the best the Manhattan Lyric had engaged in a decade. They all had promising futures in front of them.
But as he slid on a pair of charcoal gray trousers identical to the ones he’d destroyed, he couldn’t escape the sense entropy was overtaking him.
He wasn’t as mentally sharp anymore. He didn’t have the same energy and enthusiasm.
He’d spent his long life carefully concealing himself from the humans, keeping the supernatural world a secret, and now he’d shifted in his office ? That was bad.
And it wasn’t like he had other personal connections to give him a sense of perspective.
He didn’t have many friends or any living family.
Gargoyles were rare. Other supernatural creatures came with built-in networks.
They helped each other carve out an existence, supporting each other and keeping each other safe from human exposure.
He didn’t have that. He had his job, and he had the television at home where he watched his reality shows.
After changing, Pavel smoothed out his shirt and took a deep breath. Yasmin was waiting on him. He had to leave his office. He’d probably have to speak to multiple people.
Conversation was such a drain, unless he was talking about music. Speaking about scheduling and budgets was inane. Those topics made him even more tired. He wanted to work with his singers, help them hone their musical instincts and achieve their goals, and then go home to watch trashy television.
But being the artistic head of the young artists’ program at the Manhattan Lyric Opera meant he had a never-ending pile of other tasks on his plate.
As Pavel emerged into the maze of rehearsal rooms and offices that made up the fourth floor of the opera house, something was different. Did it have to do with what Yasmin had wanted to speak to him about?
Humans loved change. Didn’t people understand how much easier life was when it always stayed the same?
As he rounded the corner to the front desk, Yasmin waited there for him. Dressed casually in a black denim jumpsuit, the short, curvy, brown-skinned woman exuded competence and intelligence. Pavel liked the operations manager, and he didn’t like very many people.
“What’s going on?”
Yasmin wore the placating look she got when she was trying to mitigate his temper. He hated being managed, almost as much as he hated change.
“Don’t be grouchy. We have a new person manning the front desk. His name’s Justin. He’s taking over for Laura.” Yasmin’s voice was low and sure, but Pavel glimpsed a quick flash of pain in her eyes.
“Why? What happened to Laura?” Pavel liked Laura. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t exactly likable. She talked in a disaffected, flat tone and barely acknowledged it when people spoke to her. Pavel found her aloof persona comforting .
“She got married and moved to Iowa.” Yasmin frowned. “The wedding was three weeks ago. You were invited.”
Pavel shrugged. He couldn’t keep track of such things. Wasn’t it enough he made it into work every day?
A bright laugh echoed down the hall, and Pavel grimaced as he turned his head.
At the far end of the passage, a small, slender man with unruly blonde curls smiled and hugged one of Pavel’s singers.
Oscar. He could tell from the view of the back of his head.
Oscar had distinctive shoulder-length brown hair.
Was the new kid going to be some kind of flirt?
Was he, God forbid, chatty ? That would be the absolute worst scenario.
Pavel didn’t need charm in his life; he needed quiet.
He was there to shepherd the next generation of opera singers, a career that had become increasingly more difficult to pursue. This was a serious business.
Pavel knew he was kidding himself, of course. He had never bought into the whole pretension of classical music himself. It’s not that the work had to be somber. He was tired , almost always these days, and perpetually cranky.
He was over three thousand years old, after all. He had a right to be cranky.
“Justin,” Yasmin called, “come and meet Maestro Zaslavsky.”
The blonde man smiled at Yasmin’s words and strode down the hall toward them.
As he did, Pavel was struck by his beauty and ease of movement.
He had the bright eyes of someone who laughed a lot.
He glided toward them, his blonde curls bouncing slightly as he walked.
Oscar trailed behind, wearing a mysterious expression.
Coming to a stop in front of Pavel, the slim man reached out his hand. As Pavel took it in his own, a spark passed between them, like a shock of electricity. Pavel snatched his hand back, surprised.
Justin’s eyes widened. “Oh, sorry about that! Didn’t mean to get you. Static must’ve built up. I’m Justin.” His smile grew wider as he made eye contact.
Pavel nodded. “Pavel,” he grumbled.
“I need to get Justin some paperwork,” Yasmin said as she walked off. “Wait here with the maestro!”
Of course she abandoned him with the new guy. She should know him better than that. Or maybe she was starting some kind of crusade for him to socialize . The word made Pavel cringe. The only time he tolerated socializing was in order to raise funds for his program.
“I’m glad to finally meet you. I love your work!” Justin winked at him. He winked . Who was this annoyingly adorable young man?
“How?”
Justin shook his head, his smile fading slightly. “What do you mean?”
“How do you know my work?” Pavel didn’t mean to be standoffish or curt, but that’s how things came out naturally for him, and he was too old to change at this point.
“I was at the gala. Last fall. It was so good!”
Justin reached out and patted Pavel on the forearm. Another shock hit. This time, it was dull enough that Pavel was able to avoid reacting.
“Why?” This was more than normal work small talk, and Pavel was strangely flustered. Why did Justin throw him so off-balance? And why was the man so full of static electricity?
“He was there to see me and Trent.” Oscar finally piped up and saved Pavel from his own awkwardness. “Justin’s our roommate.”
“Oh.”
Pavel didn’t know what else to say. Justin smiled at him again. The man wouldn’t stop smiling, and it was making Pavel nervous.
“Everything sounded great. I don’t know music, but the orchestra was very powerful. And the singers were awesome.”
Pavel stared at Justin. He was a man of few words, and even those had been taken away. Mostly, he just watched Justin’s lips as he spoke. They were very nice lips, plump and soft-looking.
Was there some graceful way to end this conversation?