“It’s been ages since I was on the stage,” Alexi pleaded one night. We were all coming back from a night at the theatre, taking our time walking home in the warm summer air. “Why won’t you let me audition?”
“Because it’s dangerous,” you said with a heavy sigh. This was not the first time you and Alexi had had this conversation. “Eventually, people would start asking questions. They would notice that you don’t age. Use your head, Alexi.”
“Then I’ll switch troupes! You’ve never even seen me act, I was very good! I would be responsible, I promise.”
You gave him an indulgent smile.
“Why don’t you do a monologue for us at home, then? We can have our own private performance; we don’t need all those other people. Besides, I don’t want to share you with them.”
You were speaking in a low, cajoling voice, the way you spoke to him when you were trying to entice him into your bed. Alexi didn’t look convinced, but he nodded anyway.
Later that night, Magdalena accentuated his features with dabs of her makeup while I created a backdrop of bedsheets. He performed scene after scene from memory, declaring valiant love before launching into a tyrant’s triage and then dying beautifully on the ground as Romeo. You cheered him on and tucked roses into his lapel, waxing poetic about his once-in-a-century talent. Alexi, ever a lover of the spotlight, grinned so wide that I thought his face might get stuck that way.
“See?” you said. “You don’t need to go running around on stage with the rabble of Paris. Our home will be your theatre, and we your devoted audience.”
Alexi’s smile faltered a little, but he let you kiss him all the same.
Alexi was entirely rapt by you, following you around like a dog at the heels of its master. He adored everything about you, good and bad, from your soft-spoken declarations of love to your flashes of foul temper. The love he had for you was the cartographer’s love for the sea, trembling and all-consuming and so far beyond the reaches of right or wrong. Far from shrinking from your bad moods, he welcomed them.
Alexi provoked and riled you at every turn, seeming to delight in the conflict, and he did whatever he pleased despite your litany of rules. Nothing was sacred to Alexi, and he was happy to commit the most outlandish and egregious of faux pas whenever it pleased him. For the most part, you ignored his antics as though he were a misbehaving child, probably hoping he would settle into his new life with time. But the opposite happened. The longer Alexi lived with us, the more restless he became. Eventually, even your sweetest words and most luxurious gifts couldn’t placate him.
One night, you and I came back from the hunt to find all the lights burning in the apartment. We were greeted at the door by the sounds of tinkling champagne glasses and uproarious laughter, sounds so foreign to that house.
You froze in the entryway, your hand still gripping the door knob, and listened in gobsmacked silence for a moment.
“Alexi,” you growled.
I followed after you at a brisk clip as you strode down the hallway towards the parlor. Alexi lounged on the couch with a glass of wine in his hand, holding court over a ragtag group of seven or eight guests. I assumed they were actors from their florid but frayed clothes, and the smears of greasepaint still clinging to hairlines and shirt cuffs.
Far from looking contrite, Alexi burst into a smile when he saw you.
“Darling!” he crowed, beckoning you over. “Come have a drink with us.”
You stood glowering in your own parlor, looking like the Red Death come to break up a lively party. There was no way you would have given Alexi your approval to bring people over to the house. It was our sanctum; no one stepped foot inside except servants and meals.
You deliberately removed your gloves one finger at a time.
“Alexi,” you repeated, heavy and low. You had an uncanny ability to turn any of our names into a warning when you wanted to.
Alexi ignored the threat, slinging his arm around the shoulders of a young man seated next to him on the sofa. The boy was gangly and hadn’t quite grown into his limbs yet, around the same age Alexi has been when you turned him. Magdalena sat on his other side, looking entirely enchanted by the ruckus in her living room. She had probably been surprised when he brought the actors home, but she didn’t seem upset at the diversion in the slightest.
“These fine players just closed a marvelous show,” Alexi prattled on. “Totally modern, avant garde , as they say. It was a revelation. Come, sit with us! Constance, you too, dear one.”