there’s a performance hidden inside every negotiation. back home, the terms stand free of costumes. coin. sugar. flesh. influence. every man reveals the beast beneath his waistcoat soon enough. paris… paris perfumes itself first. takes its sweet time, much to his chagrin. already, in these scant weeks ashore, he learns the french regard frankness as one might regard a blade laid openly atop the supper table. vulgar. threatening. unsophisticated. here, meaning coils itself inside gesture, inside silence, inside compliments swollen sweet as overripe… figs. businessmen kiss cheeks while slipping daggers between ribs. even desire itself arrives disguised.
still, he adapts where adaptation profits him. he hasn’t crossed the atlantic merely to become another fool swallowed whole by european grandeur. so his lodgings remain modest by his own standards, as comfort matters little beside utility. every livre spared now is a seed pressed into soil. and louis de pointe du lac has built whole kingdoms from poorer dirt than this. patronage, however, is another creature entirely. but the theater possesses a strong pulse beneath its bared ribs. he senses it every evening in the restless audience, in the strained velvet curtains, in the hunger gnawing beneath the performers’ painted smiles. potential, raw and glimmering. and at the center of it sits monsieur de valois.
all careless limbs and insolent beauty, reclined as though bacchus himself has wandered drunk into the theater wings. fruit staining elegant fingers. mouth damp with peach nectar. the posture of a prince exiled from heaven for boredom alone. louis despises him on sight. he suspects monsieur de valois cultivates precisely that effect for some, the very inverse for others. but the man is just as clearly sharpened by experience in the crueler corridors of human appetite. louis reads it in the angle of his shoulders, the deliberate looseness of him, the way his eyes linger half a second too long before answering. a man who understands attention because he has survived by mastering its currents. who knows precisely what others ache to hear, and weaponizes it without remorse. infuriating. intriguing. useful. (men have started wars for less. louis merely aims to fill theater seats.)
so there he reclines, the enigma of the actor who asks questions louis wishes some of his financiers back home possessed the imagination to conceive of. the juxtaposition is unsettling, and painfully compelling. a creature so theatrical ought to be foolish. yet beneath the languor lives calculation sharp as a knife.
“votre art ne m’intéresse pas le moins du monde.”
not insult, but careful foundation. a laying bare of terms between them. he no longer waits for nicolas to join them, to perhaps soften the exchange. louis lacks both the patience and the talent for such dances anyway. he exhales slowly instead, sliding his hands into his pockets before forcing himself still. shoulders squared. gaze fixed steady upon the other man as he makes his pitch.
“il n’est point nécessaire qu’il m’intéresse. vous êtes votre art. vous l’aimez, n’est-ce pas ? vous le vivez. vous ne sauriez exister sans lui. voilà votre force. votre… apanage, pour ainsi dire. le mien est de faire de vous l’homme le plus célébré qu’il soit permis d’être. au profit pécuniaire de nous deux. et cela ne sert ni vos intérêts ni les miens si vous êtes distrait… ou arraché à votre art. n’en convenez-vous pas ?”
one breath. another. louis steps nearer despite himself. from one pocket he withdraws a finely embroidered handkerchief, extending it toward the actor with studied casualness. his expression smooths into something almost unreadable, though deep wryness curls quietly beneath each syllable uttered next:
“vous avez quelque chose au visage.”
