“And you using the panacea is—what, a sacrifice for you to be well again? Are you sacrificing your illness for me?”
“What do you want me to say? Yes, I’m ill. I’m an epileptic—that’s my lot. It isn’t easy and it isn’t very enjoyable but this is what I’ve got to live with. This is who I am, and I don’t think I’m insane. I don’t think I should be locked up and I don’t think I need to be cured of it for my life to be good. But no one seems to agree with me on that, and I was hoping you’d be different, but apparently you think just the same as my family and my doctors and everyone else.”
I am losing ground. It’s giving out from under me, all the certainty I’d nursed over the past few weeks since learning of the key and the heart, certainty about him and me and us and how all that needed to happen to go back to the way we were was for Percy to be cured, but I’m realizing suddenly that this has always been Percy. It was never a barrier until I knew, so it’s not something wrong with him. It’s just me who’s driven this wedge between us. “But we’d have the panacea! If we ran away together now, you’d still be ill—nothing would change.”
He folds his arms. “So which is it—do you want me to be well to keep me from an asylum, or so you don’t have to deal with me being ill?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s both, all right? I don’t want to lose you to an asylum, but this . . . It would be so much easier on both of us if you were well. God, Perce, we’ve got enough in our way, why this too?”
“Whatever things we have standing in our way, this isn’t one.”
“Fine.” I wrench the key out of my pocket and throw it to him—perhaps a bit more at him than to him. “There. Now it’s yours. Do whatever you want. Make yourself well or run away or toss it in the goddamn sea for all I care.”
I expect him to keep arguing, but he doesn’t. All he says is, “All right.”
Shout at me, I want to tell him. Fight back, because I deserve it. I deserve to be fed all the ways I’ve made him feel unwanted, slapped with my own selfishness. But he’s Percy, so he doesn’t say another cruel word. Even at his worst, he’s so much better than me. His shoulders slump, and he swipes a hand under his eyes. “I’m going to go to bed,” he says, “and tomorrow morning, I’m going have a word with Scipio about getting away from here. And I don’t think you and I should see each other for a while.”
“Wait, Percy—”
“No, Monty. I’m sorry.” He starts to walk away, stops and raises his hand like he might say something more, then shakes his head and leaves me.
I don’t know what to do. I stand there, silent and stupid and absolutely in pieces as Percy walks away. I watch him until he’s gone and I’m certain he won’t come back. The hour strikes—church bells around the city all begin to clamor. The air quakes. It starts to rain again, very softly.
I don’t want to think about it. Can’t think about it. Got to shut up that voice in my head telling me that I’ve just lost the only good thing I had because I couldn’t get out of my own self. All this while I’d spent thinking we could never be together because we’re both lads, but it’s not—it’s because of me.
He asked, and I couldn’t give it up.
Can’t think about it. Will do absolutely anything not to think about it.
I follow the revelers back toward the piazza—my mask lost somewhere back in the alley and my face bare—and I know what I am going to do, which is drink until I can’t even remember this night happened.
Back along the Grand Canal, it’s easy to find cheap, virulent gin, easier to drink it until everything smudges and I start to feel like I can leave myself behind. I take four shots of it in quick succession, chased by ambiguous ale and clear spirit straight from a bottle I have to reach behind a bar for. The skyline slants. The moon turns black. It feels like everyone around me is screaming and I am not thinking about Percy.
“Monty. Hey, Monty. Henry Montague.”
I raise my head and there’s Scipio, one hand on my shoulder and his face a bit distorted like he’s standing behind glass. I’ve that mostly empty spirit bottle clenched in one fist and also I cannot remember where I am—sitting on the edge of a bridge overlooking a canal, which narrows down possible locations not at all. A gondola passes beneath me, a woman in a blood-colored dress perched on the prow with her train dragging behind her in the silver water.
“Monty, look at me.” Scipio crouches down so our faces are level. “You all right, mate?”
“I am spexcellent. Mmm. No, that’s not a word. See, I was going to say excellent, and then instead I went with—”
“Monty.”
“How are you?” I stand up, roll my ankle on the cobbles, and nearly fall over.
Scipio flies to his feet and catches me. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“No, no, I can drink more.”
“I’m sure you can.”
I hold out the bottle. “Have some.”
“No, it’s too late for me.”
“Right. Tit’s late. It’s late.” I laugh. Scipio doesn’t. He pries the bottle out of my hand and empties it into the canal. I try to snatch it back and miss so spectacularly I would have pitched into the water if he hadn’t had a hold on me. “What’d you do that for?”
“Because you’re bashed. Come on, to bed.”
“Mmm, no, can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Bed is where Percy is and Percy doesn’t want to see me again.”
“He mentioned something about that when he came in. You two got each other quite worked up.” Scipio tosses the bottle into the canal, then claps me on the back. “He’ll calm down.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Why not? You’re friends. Friends quarrel.”
“I ruined everything. I always ruin everything.” I let my forehead fall against his shoulder, and I can tell from his awkward grip on me that neither of us is quite certain what it is that I’m doing, but we don’t move. “Goddamn Percy.”
Scipio pats me on the shoulder, flat-handed, then pries my forehead off him like he’s pulling up a floorboard. “You can sleep on the ship if you’re so keen not to see Percy. I told you not to go out—people are after you, remember? You’re going to get us all strung up.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and I fall a bit more into him than I mean to and let him pull me back through the crowd.
I trust Scipio to lead the way—either to the docks or the inn, wherever he feels it best to take me. The first landmark I recognize is the Campanile in Saint Mark’s Square—a needle poking at the moon. Percy and I stood here together just hours ago, in the shadow of the bell tower, and goddamn Percy, I’m so angry at him I want to punch something, but it’s just me and Scipio and crowds of strangers, and none of those seem like good options. Someone slams shoulders with me, and someone else screams right near my ear, and I pull up short, suddenly drowning in the night.
Scipio stops as well. “Come on, Monty, we’re turning in.”