Radiance

CYTHERA: Alfric struck the boy, correct?

ERASMO: That is so entirely, utterly irrelevant. Yes, she slapped him, that morning when I gave him a plate of eggs and he gave us the hell’s loudspeaker. When it looked like the sound was coming from him, she slapped the scream off him.

CYTHERA: Was that the only time she made physical contact with him?

ERASMO: I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe.

CYTHERA: Varela said he argued with Severin on the night of December second.

ERASMO: I think everyone argued with everyone on the night of December second.

CYTHERA: Do you know what they argued about?

ERASMO: She said it was nothing. She and Varela had a thing when they were kids—really, just kids. So they couldn’t just disagree on what gels to use, it was always the wrong gel and you broke my heart a million years ago. I usually tuned it out. But Mari was still an absolute wreck and the static kept rising and falling like waves, hitting us over and over, and it wouldn’t stop, it never stopped. Max was worried about Severin. Maybe that was it.

CYTHERA: Was there a physical altercation?

ERASMO: She

wouldn’t have told me if there was. I’d have slammed his face into a tree so hard he’d have had to live there. And she liked his face.

We were all on edge. Sleeping in that ghost town, in the middle of all those shattered houses and wreckage and misery, feedback sawing on our ears every minute of every hour and the sun never coming up or going down and this poor helpless kid with the monster in his hand…By the fourth hour, I wanted to slide out of my own skin and return to the invertebrate sea. I would’ve been thrilled to hit something. Anything.

You want to know how bad it was? I can sum it up for you. That night, after eight or nine hours of that horror show ripping through the air, Severin curled up next to me and hauled my arms up over her body. She was hiding in me. And do you know what she said?

CYTHERA: What?

ERASMO: Miss Severin Lamartine Unck said to me, “Baby, I’m so scared.”

CYTHERA: What did you say?

ERASMO: What do you think I said? I said what you say. I said I loved her right in the face. It was just some kind of malfunction in Mari’s gear: you know how touchy all that Edison rot can be, don’t worry, go to sleep, I’m right here. Not going anywhere, my love. We sang “Down to the River to Pray” to Anchises. We always sang beautifully together, Rin and me. We sang to him and he stared up at us and his eyes didn’t seem quite so horsey anymore.

I woke up late that night. Both Rin and the little bit were snoring away. Click, sigh, choke. I put my trousers on and went out to the village well—I suppose that would be the hotel lounge, wouldn’t it? If Adonis had a hotel anymore. I knew Horace would be there. I sauntered up. The static sizzled madly in the air. I mimed holding a glass full of sweet pink lady and lifted it up like I was going to toast my cousin. But he didn’t move. He stared straight down into the well.

“Hey, mate,” I said. “You sleepwalking?”

Nothing. I grabbed his shoulder, a little roughly, but he was upsetting me with this nonsense. I yelled over the static, “Horace, wake up!”

He did. He turned to me and smiled. He looked so much like my father. I saw the scar where I’d got him with the dart all those years ago. And then he jumped into the well.

[long pause. Sounds of fingernails scratching against the table.]

It was very deep. I heard him land.

CYTHERA: Had Horace St. John shown suicidal tendencies before this? Do you have any idea why he would take his own life?

ERASMO: [ragged breathing] Stop it. I don’t like you using his full name. He was just Horace. I loved him. Horace was sixteen months older than me and our fathers were brothers. Horace’s mum sold hats in Grasshopper City. Horace would not abide anyone calling him Ace, and God knows I tried. Horace liked to bake. You wouldn’t think a bloke like him would, but he made coronation cakes that looked like iced heaven. If you lined up everyone I’d ever met, he’d be the last one I’d pick to kill himself.

CYTHERA: And when the others found out?

ERASMO: [quiet weeping] They didn’t, right away. Because Mariana woke up with one of those mouths in her hand where she’d slapped the kid, and she started screaming, and it was the same scream we’d heard on the static wind hours before. So it took a while before they listened to me bawling my eyes out that Horace was dead.

CYTHERA: I know this is difficult. But I have to ask, for insurance purposes—what was Mr Covington’s reaction to all this?

ERASMO: Arlo? Oh, he said the shoot was over and we were heading back to White Peony as soon as the equipment was packed.

Oh, Those Scandalous Stars!