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Oletus Manor guest rooms provide a small desk, a bedside table, and a queen size bed. In the dark of night, these accommodations prove sufficient enough to treat the sniping illness that is loneliness, and blow off steam. The composer and the novelist can both attest to that fact. After the endeavor reaches its end, the men usually take a moment of rest before parting ways, with the sunrise and the other guest’s alarm clocks as their deadline. A lamp interrupted the dark, tinting the room with shades of orange and red. Under the bask of the light and the cotton sheets, the men lied on their backs, catching their breath and assimilating the situation.
“Tell me, Orpheus. I allow you to bed me constantly, despite not knowing your real intentions. Part of me despises you, and yet I still crawl back to your side most nights. What does that make me? Desperate? Subservient?” Rancorous pillow talk was not a novelty when it came to Frederick, yet his question had a tinge of pain, hidden poorly enough for Orpheus to pick up. (Perhaps meant to be found?)
“A fool, perhaps?” A crude, yet simple answer. Like a dictionary definition.
“Hmm, fits well, I suppose.” Frederick sat up on the bed, searching for his cigarette case in his nightstand.
“Don’t put yourself down like that. Shakespeare thought quite highly of fools, you know?”
“I am no poet.” His voice came out bitter. With a swift motion, Frederick struck a matchstick against the side of its box, illuminating his face, before lighting up his cigarette and taking a drag.
“Well, you’re not the sole owner of the title either.” Orpheus shifted to rest on his elbow, and motioned with his free hand to the composer to pass him the smoke. Frederick complied.
“What do you mean?” Frederick narrowed his eyes, crowned by blonde eyelashes.
“Would it not make me a fool to love someone who, how did you say…partially despises me?” Orpheus blew smoke on Frederick’s face before passing it to him. Frederick averted his gaze as he took the cigarette a little too harshly.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean.” He took in a long, shaky pull, before putting the smoke out in an ashtray.
“Ah, but I do.”
-
When Frederick gives his heart, it’s not a pretty sight. It’s gruesome, messy, sick. Frederick’s love is visceral and rapid, like a starved stray at the sight of food. Frederick loves with all his being. He loves with his passion, with his shame, with his mouth, with his hate. His feelings end up as a muddled array of venom, blood and tears, unable to tell apart from each other. Mania is a hideous trait on his family tree…
Regardless. A Kreiburg ’s love is a privilege. A privilege reserved for few. For the righteous and the honored. For the talented and skilled…
Frederick certainly didn’t fit the criteria himself. And he wasn’t sure if Orpheus did.
-
“You don’t love me. You might like me, or the concept of me, or the mess you make out of me. But you don’t love me.” The lingering scent of tobacco haunted the air as Frederick turned to look at Orpheus, biting the inside of his lip until he could taste metal.
“As far as I’m aware these are synonyms. Are we going to argue about semantics, Frederick?” Orpheus smiled. Before Frederick could argue, he continued: “But disregard the locutions. How does my comment make you feel?”
“I’m not in for psychoanalyzing, Orpheus.”
“Humor me for a moment. If I tell you that I love you, that I like you; is it comforting?”
Frederick considered the question longer than he would’ve liked.
“Partially yes, I suppose.” An honest answer, as vague as his clarity on the subject.
“Then why not take such placidness and relish in it? Literary analysis is not about the writer’s intent, but rather your own interpretations. If the words prove pleasing, wouldn’t it be wise to take them for your personal benefit?”
Frederick did not reply, but he laid his head on Orpheus’ shoulder. For a man of music, physicality must come easier than talk.
-
Orpheus loves, but only partly. This is not a sign of apathy, but rather of his “confusion” His tortured mind is divided in figments: I, Me, and Myself. One is in love with the dark. Other, in love with mystery. The last one is in love with love itself. In matters of romance, the nihilist cares not but for the bodily; the realist is cautious and rational in his treading; and the sentimentalist aches, ready to give all and every fiber of his being. So Orpheus loves intensely: he falls head over heels in his fairy-tale world, where love at first sight is a given and not a dream; but only with the part of him that’s capable of giving in to such feelings.
So, how does Frederick appear, in Orpheus’ mind? As an idiot, a simpleton; as an opponent, to watch out for; as a lover, in the full extent of the word. Lover as in person in love, person you love. Lover even with its outrageous, immoral implications. Lover with all of his red, palpitating heart.
-
Touch and mere traces of affection evolve quickly. Out the window, light was starting to appear. And the men held an embrace, soft and caring, like that of newly-weds with big dreams and burning passion. There was something inherently sacrilegious about the act, despite its agamic nature. Brushing hair with fingers, rubbing circles on skin, pressing lips with care… On a matrimonial bed. Love thy neighbor… Could God really be capable of looking down upon them? The rites of marriage are not made for people like them, after all. One must search for accommodations.
“It’s nearly dawn.” Frederick broke Orpheus’ train of thought.
“I should get going.” The novelist stood up from the bed and started dressing himself, just to look halfway decent when walking through the manor’s corridors. Frederick observed as he tidied up, a reverse burlesque show: the linen of his shirt clung to his body while he buttoned it up; after stepping into his suit pants, he pushed his hair back in an attempt to fix it. Clearly not attire meant for those hours, but simple enough to not have any just-woken passerby question it at first glance.
As Orpheus grabbed the rest of his clothes and headed for the room’s door, he was called over by Frederick.
“Give a proper goodbye.” Frederick, still half–lying on the bed, pulled Orpheus in for a chaste kiss that lasted a second too long, and felt a little too intimate.
-
The composer was left alone in his room, sheets still disheveled, body still aching. He was a bigger fool than Orpheus, for both despising and loving him.