“Do y’think it’s sad if the first thing that comes to mind is consent? I’m not big on even pretending someone’s being forced, and that’s no bullshit, either. You should know I grew up in San Francisco, where they hold annual kink festivals, so it wasn’t for lack of options that I never got into kinky stuff.
“As with most of my stories, this all ends once I meet Armand, who insists I sample all of life before I make a claim for immortality. That includes sex. Good-bye, lingering doubts about heterosexuality. If I’m sober at the time and I don’t like it, I put my foot down. Sometimes the other people involved realize how permanently drunk I am and leave. So no thanks.
“The only thing you might consider a kink happened once at a Renaissance Fair in upstate New York. We came separately, so I didn’t know what he’d done until I saw him across the way next to the turkey drumstick vendor. He had on this dark blue velvet doublet with what had to have been real gold thread. I thought I’d had too much ale. Christ, you should have seen the way his stockings looked, I felt like a perv standing there, and so did everyone else, pretending we weren’t staring at him like some kind of ultra-beautiful model in the middle of a fake, sleepy medieval market in sticky, middle-of-summer Westchester.
“I don’t think I knew what I was doing until I had him up against the central pole in the tent marked ‘private’ for staff, cursing under my breath at the complicated laces and buttons and things, but not wanting to rip anything in case he’d nag me about it later.”
Do you resent Marius' treatment of you, or are you appreciative of him taking care of you?
“(E), all of the above.
“After he bailed me out of jail, Marius was worried I’d do something stupid after what I saw. I straight up lied to him, told him going to New York had given me closure. I’d be okay and I’d check in.
“When I didn’t, he came looking for me. For a whole week, he followed me as I wandered from the Meatpacking District down to the Village and back, asking pedestrians about people who had long died. That dancer Armand adopted for a summer. Young men with handsomely-trimmed moustaches that never made it past 1990. Our bright, joyous friends. People I’d watched be the best I never could be. Anybody who might have seen a person with Armand’s description.
“Marius watched me do that for an entire week before he stepped in. He told me I had been desperate, confused, lost, sleeping in the trunk of my rental car that I’d locked from the inside with a bent coat hanger, a picture-hanging hook, and a super-strong magnet.
“It was a year before anybody bothered to tell me Armand was alive. It was longer than that before Armand bothered to tell me he was alive. But Marius was with me from the day Armand held a solo barbecue without even calling me to say goodbye. Without at least giving me the choice to join him.
“I couldn’t bear that he had died alone.
“…
“It’s okay. He’s alive. We texted last week. Where was I?
“But Marius had lost him twice before. He put up with me and took care of me when he must have been hurting too. He forced me to take his blood when I couldn’t bear to face an outside that didn’t have Armand in it somewhere. I don’t always remember what we did together, so half the time it feels like I’ve missed the thread of the conversation and failed to answer his affections. He usually doesn’t push it. He’s very patient with me.
“I’ll be honest. I don’t always trust Marius with Armand. Sometimes I wonder if the shit that he did to Armand he did to me too. I’m not his Renaissance apprentice and I don’t appreciate his contempt for my hobbies. But then I remember that Armand didn’t even bother to look for me.
“Armand made those decisions for us, as he’s always done. Marius let me build those houses and let me drink his blood and let me sleep under his protection.
“So my answer is, a little from column A, a little from column B. I love Marius. I don’t trust him. I don’t like what he says about Armand or about my stuff. And that stuff he did to Benji and Sybelle wasn’t cool. But I love him, and I’m grateful to him, and he can ask me for any favors I’m able and willing to fulfill.”
❓- Did they ask a lot of questions when they were younger? Did they like to explore the world?
“This is Daniel Molloy, Boy Reporter, coming to you live from Mrs. McGrath’s backyard, where I am joined by Pop-Pop and Shannon. Thank you for joining us. Miss Molloy, what can you tell us about what happened?”
“I sat here yesterday an’ I was helping make the posters an’ an’ this, big, huge, it was enormous, this enormous dog came up an’ licked my face!”
“And what was that like?”
“Gross! Haha! An’ wet! I’m gonna go see if Kaitlyn’s home. Be right back.”
“No wait! Shannon! Come back!”
“Thanks for your patience, folks. The one finger to my ear means the studio has a small technical difficulty. We go now live to Pop-Pop, local expert and friend of the show, to get to the bottom of this mystery. Why do dogs lick your face? Welcome back, Pop-Pop.”
“Thank you, Danny.”
“Pop-Pop! We talked about this!”
“Oh, excuse my manners. Thank you, Boy Reporter. This is so different from your news studio. Where’s the camera? Is that why I couldn’t find the oatmeal this morning?”
“I was gonna put it back!”
“Whoa, buddy, you’re not in trouble, okay? Now how’d you manage to make the oatmeal canister work like a camera? Was it magic?”
“Magic’s not real, Pop-Pop. Everybody knows that.”
“Uh oh, then somebody better convince me it isn’t!”
“But that makes no sen—”
“Danny I’m baaaack! I brought the dog!”
“You said it was an ‘enoooooormous’ dog!”
“He has a big personality!”
“That thing is tiny! You got licked by a before-dog, Shannon! That’s not news!”
“Sure it is! Better’n who ate the last slice of pie in the fridge!”
“I know it was you, I saw you!”
“Kids—”
“Prove it, DAN-iel!”
“I will! You can’t hide the truth!”
“Agh! Nobody cares! Why can’t you just be NOR-mal?”
“Shannon, that’s not—”
“Takes one to know one, dweeb!”
“Loser!”
“Liar! Liar liar pants on fire liarliarpantsonfire Shannon is a lia-aar! You better put ab-ses-tos in your pants and get some burn cream because your pants are on fire! Ow! Ow-ow no hitting! She’s hitting me! Shannon’s hitting me! Stoppit!”
“Snitch! Snitch! You’re not my brother! You’ll never be a reporter!”
“Break it up, you two. Shannon, go wait in your room. Daniel…”
“I’m sorry. Sir.”
“C’mere, buddy. C’mere, sit next to your grandfather.”
“She started it! She lied about the pie and I got in trouble and I didn’t get to go to Great America that summer and I’ve never been and she lied about the dog and—”
“Do you still want to know why dogs lick your face?”
“Well duh. C’mon, Pop-Pop.”
“It’s because they love you.”
“What? But it’s slobbery and gross.”
“Sometimes love is slobbery and gross. It’s one of the ways dogs show you they love you. Dogs can smell all the ugly feelings you have, so they help you lick it off.”
“Oh.”
“Now do you love your sister?”
“Yeah. I guess. Yes.”
“Your mother told me about the pie.”
“I saw her—”
"Let me finish, now. Do you think you were showing her your love, just now?”
“…no. I was not. But she hit me!”
“You’re right, and that was wrong of her. I’m going to talk to your parents about that. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Didn’t hurt. Pop-Pop?”
"Can you not tell Mom and Dad?”
“Why not?”
"It was nothing. It didn’t even hurt. I was making it sound like it did. I…wasn’t showing her my love.”
“I’m proud of you, Danny. You’ve got spirit and you’ve got courage. Now if you could have some wisdom too with that, you’d be set for life. You can’t do that without love.”
“D’ya think Shannon was right? About…the reporting? Sir?”
“Oh a leanbh. So is it the ‘truth’ that’ll be the end of you one day and not a fine whiskey after all?”
“Pop-Pop, I’m almost thirteen. I don’t need this Lucky Charms crap.”
"Oh are you now? I couldn’t tell, with you mentioning it all the time. And you say there’s no magic in the world already?”
"Santa Claus isn’t real. The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy don’t exist and never have. Oh my God, Pop-Pop, I’m not a kid anymore.”
"That’s all well for you, but what if I were to tell you that I don’t believe you? I think magic is real. I swear. Cross my heart. Spit and shake my hand.”
“Huh? I don’t get it.”
“Prove me wrong, Danny. Get eyewitnesses. Tell their stories, about stone circles and dancing to the moon and all that good old rot. Report on the abnormal until not a single soul in the world thinks they can’t live as who they are.”
"Pop-Pop, you sound like a hippie.”
“Would a hippie take you to Great America?”
Mr Daniel Molloy—with his newly-minted Press Pass as staff and not just struggling stringer for KQED—sits in the back of the bar, admiring the celebratory amber liquid in his tumbler. His grandfather tends to pop up in his dreams whenever he considers his career.
The men in his family are known for their thirst. For life, for love, for drink, and for a certain brand of violence. The senior Molloy’s had been for family until he died of a broken heart and ten bottles of 92-proof. But before he died, he’d recognized Daniel’s own thirst for the truth in a way certainly his parents never had.
“And still don’t,” Daniel thinks to himself, eyeing the handsome dark-haired stranger cohabiting the back of the bar. He hefts his bag of blank tapes onto his shoulder and picks up his drink. The stranger is gone when Daniel looks back up. Like magic. He grins abruptly, delighted at the mystery unfolding before him, and begins his chase.
“I love the San Francisco fog. It’s just that on really foggy nights, the foghorn in the Bay blows incessantly and you can hear it almost anywhere in the city. I mean like every couple seconds. If you’re sleeping rough, it’s almost impossible to get a good night’s sleep.
But imagine that maybe someone is only conscious after sundown. (And if I’m gonna be honest, well after sundown.)
If only foghorns didn’t save lives. One of these nights I’m gonna go down there and turn off the damn thing myself.’
“We’re spending some time apart right now. We visit occasionally. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not.
“We’re working on it, but he never needs to doubt I love him.
“How much of my life have I given for him? How much of who I am has to do with what he does to me? Nothing will ever keep us apart because I will ensure that it doesn’t.
“Maybe, if it seems like we could have a good time. I think about it from time to time. I’ve been on my own for a while, building something to call mine. Why, has someone been asking?”
//2. Did they collect anything as a child? Do they still have their collections? Do they still collect anything?
My brother and sister and I used to go hunting for rocks and stuff on Ocean Beach. I only kept the tiny pieces of driftwood that could fit in my pocket. Don’t know what happened to it. I leave the beach alone, now, let it stay in the wild. I don’t get tied down to anything these days. I carry all my memories with me. It’s called an .osf RAW file and I have thousands of them on tiny little SD cards.
dm.
//5. How sentimental are they about their childhood?
Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister, love her kids. I love my parents. But after Tommy died, the heart of the family just faded and crumbled. We couldn’t talk to each other anymore. We spent time by ourselves, alone, me down to Stern Grove, Shannon to St. Cecilia’s, Dad ironically at the Shamrock Pub, and Ma with Mothers Against Drunk Driving. As if we could keep him alive as long as we didn’t make new memories together and end up crowding out his memory.
I was too young to appreciate my memories of Tommy. I know now that I was in shock for a long while after. Seeing your older brother, your hero, the Eagle Scout, the football star, somehow occupying the same space as the 4-barrel Windsor V8 engine of a Ford Mustang, will drive everything else out of your brain. I’d be sitting in math class and suddenly it felt like I was right next to the car, watching it struggle into the realm of reality, catching my beloved brother in the wake of its surreal nightmare.
I’m getting wordy. Sentimental, I guess.
dm.
//6. Do they have/keep items they got from relatives (deceased or not)?
Can I take the Fifth? I really don’t want any Coven members to kill me for taking their stuff. Not that I have. At all.
If you’re talking birth relatives, I have Tommy’s Eagle Scout bandana and patch, and Shannon’s photos she sent of the kids. I didn’t want anything from Ma or Dad. I ceded my entire claim of the inheritance to Shannon’s kids.
