Chapter Text
The Thousand and One Nights has not died. The infinite time of the thousand and one nights continues its course. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the book was translated; at the beginning of the nineteenth (or end of the eighteenth) De Quincey remembered it another way. The Nights will have other translators, and each translator will create a different version of the book. . . . Each of these books is different, because The Thousand and One Nights keeps growing or recreating itself.
— The Thousand and One Nights, 1980, by Jorge Luis Borges, tr. Eliot Weinberger, 1984
Dear Mrs Blue Sargent,
I hope this letter finds you safe, and thriving, if such a thing is possible in these times.
I've been following your career with interest since our last meeting. Allow me to congratulate you on your marriages and the birth of your daughters, as well as on your writing achievements.
Our time apart has provided me with… perspective. And I believe the same thing may be true about you. I hope your health, and pride, won't stop you from considering the following proposal.
In a week, I hope you will be willing to concede me an interview, to finish the project the senselessness of our youth prevented us from completing.
Forty-nine years and more than a thousand miles away from our last meeting, I offer, for your journalistic pleasures, the story of my life and my full attention.
Attentively,
Adam Parrish.
When she met him, Adam Parrish had lived in a San Francisco apartment in Divisadero Street with pink walls and no cutlery, brand new heating and empty frames.
He had quite significantly updated his living standards during the last fifty years.
Adam now lived somewhere in Norway, in an undisclosed location—the driver that picked her up when she arrived at the central was less than forthcoming on where they were going, and Blue, due to jet lag and her meds, stupidly let herself be lulled to sleep by the smooth glide of the car. By the time she woke up, with a dull pain on her neck and her cheek pressed against her bunched-up sweater on the cold window, night was falling.
She peered outside the tinted windows and saw the blinding white of fresh snow and the not-so-distant crashing of the Norwegian sea, darkening in tandem with the sky. It seemed depthless to her, massive and gigantic, swallowing it all like a black hole.
They drove in silence to a manor, discreetly tucked away by the cliff side, covered in snow. The driver unloaded Blue's baggage from the car without a word and drove off.
It wasn't too late to change her mind and go home, she thought. She could chase after him and the sight of a flailing old woman would surely give him enough pause for her to reach him before he sped—
And, no, he was too far now.
Clutching her bags, and feeling a bit like the protagonist of a fucked up Gothic novel, Blue knocked on the door.
The house had the sort of modern shine to it that she could imagine on the pages of some glossy magazine article about nature and modernity coexisting; wide plane tinted windows, metal and granite pillars.
The door opened soundlessly, and Blue took a step back. She thought for a moment she saw something in the shadows, but when she blinked, it was just a blue-eyed young man.
“Miss Sargent,” he said tightly. “Welcome.” He said it in a way that implied she was anything but. She raised a brow.
He extended his hands up to her. After a moment she handed him her bag. He grabbed the rest of her luggage without so much as a grunt. Ah, the wonders of youth.
She followed his retreating back as they walked further in on the house, taking it all in. It had an Architectural Digest look that suggested it was either empty or the home of a sociopath.
He led her to a room that was almost all windows, from top to bottom, dark tinted. One wall of dark granite and three walls of windows with a view of the water swirling placidly, nestled in between the hard rocks of the cliff.
The room had a slightly asymmetrical cast, which she noticed thanks to the sharp decline in the windowed wall, cut like the step of a stair. The floor suffered a similar depression, a clear and concise separation between what was the bedroom; with only a silk-and-satin bed and two small bedside tables; and the lounge area, a Freudian couch and a loveseat circling another table, a closet, a door neatly tucked away to the side, a white modern bookshelf adorned with both abstract figures and small imitations of Greek busts. When she approached it, she saw that they were mostly contemporary titles.
“Mister Parrish will meet you when he's ready,” the young man said, and turned on his heel and left.
Her eyes lingered where he stood for a moment. Something about him nagged at her, but she couldn't say what.
Blue grabbed the expensive water bottle she'd bought in the airport and chugged down her pills, hit the showers, then changed into a forest green skirt that went to her ankles, low-heeled shoes, a white button up and a lilac cardigan with giant buttons her daughter made for her.
She retraced her way back through the chrome and granite walls, lingering and feeling cold as she gazed at the paintings there, mostly abstract pieces that sent a sense of unease down her spine.
Two of them, especially, illuminated by the pale light and the moonlight slipping through the window, made her stare and wonder at them. One of them was a study in black and white, writhing, enmeshed limbs or roots, clawing at each other, slowly consuming itself as it twisted on its form, digging in, and the more she looked at it the more her head hurt. The other one, slightly apart, was considerably bigger, a chaotic scribble of boldness and shapes, a multicolored cloud of lines; it gave off the vague impression of evolving movement. It reminded her a bit of the lubki prints she'd seen when she was younger.
“Blue.”
Blue startled, turned. A young man’s silhouette loomed over the hallway, stretching far across the corridor.
He stepped forward. She resisted the urge to step back.
He had the coloring of a sepia photograph, pale shades and weak saturation in his ashen lashes and brows and honey colored hair. He was tall and athletic in a way that could only mean long hours of heavy work; baring, still, in the angularity of his cheek and the cut of his jaw and the slenderness of his waist, the evidence of malnutrition. His face was pale and long, with broad cheekbones and a narrow chin, a thin nose, a hard mouth, and eyes that were perhaps too spaced out, but they were a pleasant icy blue color.
In truth, he wasn't what many would consider handsome, but there was something dynamic and sharp about his face, about the way he held himself, in his long fingers and strong hands that inspired the same sense of fragility a knife did. A broad sketch of attractiveness.
He was dressed down, in black athleisure pants, a black sweater over a red shirt, styled all in a way very reminiscent of the 70s, a book under his arm. He looked like he could be any casual college student.
He hadn't changed a thing.
There was something indescribable in his voice when he spoke. “You've grown old.”
Blue extended her arms in a what can you do way, feeling off-kilter. “Mortality beats a heavy drum.”
She knew the book he was holding. The white and black cover of a girl sitting by the steps of a park staircase with the bright sky behind her, the way her head was tilted away from the camera lense, bestowing upon her a mysteriousness she lacked in real life.
The girl was her; that was her memoir.
Blue knew the story those pages told. An early childhood in the 50s, in the sort of sweltering Southern small town oppressiveness that dug under your skin. The absence of a father; and the quiet shunning it had meant for a woman of color and her daughter. Her mother, seamstress on weekdays and psychic on weekends, and the two women that had been her mothers, too—Calla, who had been a secretary and had taught Blue how to use a typewriter and shorthand, and Persephone, a bird-eyed Estonian immigrant with a cloud of white hair that fell down her back, an artist and scientist by turns.
Teenage years in the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the shock and fear of coming home on a Thursday from her shift at Nino’s to the news that Martin Luther King had been shot. She recalled the smell of tobacco and cheap perfume on the bus she took when she left town for San Francisco to live with her aunt and cousin to pursue a career of journalism in community college.
Her eventual trip to Europe, and the embarrassing string of blond, blue-eyed boyfriends as she went on a pilgrimage to Paris and Venice and Rome and Oslo and Stockholm, Berlin and London, searching, aimlessly, for something. Her eventual meeting and dating and marriage to her first husband, then the divorce, then rinse and repeat with the second one. The birth of her two daughters, and the slow decay of it all. Two Pulitzer Prizes, and all the work it took to get them, the books and articles written under her name.
She recalled, as she always did when she thought of it, the Vietnam veteran she interviewed in a homeless shelter. The one with the burned face and the blue eyes who'd given her perhaps the best advice she ever received. ‘What am I?’ She'd asked. And he answered, ‘A bright young reporter with a unique point of view. Never forget that.’
He'd self-immolated in front of her later that evening. She thinks that’s why it stuck with her for years.
He reached forward in a quick motion. His spidery hands grasped her wrist. She was suddenly, terrifically aware of how easy it would be for him to snap the bone. “Come with me,” he said.
He moved silent as a shadow in front of her, louder and slower. She’d never been more conscious of the wear of age on her body than now, trailing after his forever youthful body. Adam led her to an open space living room, with the same three walls of concrete, a grandiose window with a view to the sea. He let go of her wrist and made his way to one of the modern sofas in front of the glass table, poising himself in front of the paintings by the wall.
It was of a young man, rendered in broad strokes that spoke of excitement. He was lying down, his body stretched erotically, head tipped forward, dark hair like a halo about his face. There was something about his placid, titillating expression, his wide eyes and parted lips, the coil of tension on his body that made gazing at it illicit. His neck looked torn and like it had been gnawed by an animal, his whole body, as far as the painter showed, had been brutalized in cuts and bruises.
There was something indecent about it. It was impossible to say if it was the clear depiction of a murder occurring or the clear arousal someone had found on the inflicted violence.
Adam saw where her eyes lingered. “I bought this one from a movie executive in the 80s,” he said. “As part of his private collection.” His mouth twisted. “He liked pretty things, and he liked looking at his bruised face. Hollywood execs, you know how they are. He wanted to make a movie surrounding it. It was a ridiculous notion, he didn't even know what it meant.”
“I'm assuming you killed him,” she said.
“You would assume correctly.”
She tilted her head towards it. “What's it called?”
“‘Murder through the eyes of a killer.’” He tilted his head. “They attribute it to Hennessy.”
She gazed at it, that eroticism of brutality, tried to peel back the layers. Who are you? She wondered. Who did this to you?
After a moment, she took a seat opposite to him. He looked at her, intently, for a long moment, and she wondered what he saw. Her lost youth, maybe, the slow death of her body.
He blinked slowly. “You’ve had health concerns lately.”
Blue bit the inside of her cheek. “Are you having me spied, Adam?”
“You have Parkinson's, Blue.”
She laughed drily. “And you have this huge mansion in the middle of nowhere, staff, and no presence online. Tell me, does the staff sign NDAs? Has one of them ever tried to run to the police when they saw you kill? What does this anonymity cost?”
He leaned forward. “A lot. How are your daughters, Blue? You'll forgive me if I don't remember their names, you never introduced us. In fact, I wasn't sure you even remembered me.” He tapped the cover of the book. “You didn't mention me in your memoir.”
“Well, it is a memoir. You can’t put vampires in one of those if you want it to get published.”
The door opened. The young man from before was back. This time she subtly tried to get a good look at him.
He had a sort of heroin chic look, with his too thin body and snake face, though there was a certain poetry to his lips. His hair was black and fell down in curls. He had what Victorian novels would agree was a finely shaped head. It was quite easy to imagine the skull underneath.
A tray was set in front of her. It was filled with grapes and pomegranates and apple slices, kiwi and cherries. Blue blinked up at him. His eyes were narrow when he gazed at her, before taking a step back and retreating.
“Thank you, Niall,” Adam said, dismissive. Adam didn’t look at him, his eyes locked on Blue. It was a bit like having a large predator focused on her.
She reached and grabbed a spoonful of pomegranate seeds slowly, holding it up like she would a sign of conciliation. They were ripe when she bit into them. Adam seemed pleased.
“Only my family and my doctor know I'm sick. How did you figure it out? Keeping tabs on me?”
“No,” he said. “I'm not. You smell of it. Disease.”
Didn't that sound terrific. “What does it smell like?”
“Like spoiled food.”
“I take it you're not interested in eating me, then?”
“No,” he sounded amused. “I prefer my meals healthy.”
That was good to know, at least, but just because Adam wasn't clamoring for a stab at her jugular didn't mean he didn't have other plans, like killing her and leaving her to rot under six feet of snow.
She must have done something with her face, because his eyes narrowed contemplatively and he said, like he was commenting on a fascinating discovery: “You're scared of me.”
She smiled without grace. There went the meager attempt at a charade. “Well our last meeting didn't go exactly swimmingly, did it?”
She reached across the table for the cassette player and let the tape roll.
“You don't even understand the meaning of your own story!”
“After all I've told you! Is that what you have to say?”
“I mean you've forgotten, man! You don't even remember what humanity is like!”
Then the lunge, and the loud slam of her body against the wall and her loud shriek of pain and horror as Adam grabbed her like a rag doll and sank his teeth on her neck.
His face twisted, and that was the Adam Parrish she remembered. “You were disrespectful.”
Her scar burned.
“And you had anger issues,” she said sardonically. “Match made in hell.” She shook her head. “You've got the tapes. Hire a transcriber. You have the money.”
“Yes,” he said, softly. “I do. But did you get on a plane in the middle of a pandemic while suffering from an autoimmune disease just to tell me that?”
Blue looked at him unimpressed. “You didn't leave a phone number.”
“No,” he agreed. “I did not.”
She considered him, unchanging creature that he was. He remained the same as he did when they met, and he had been the same before, and he would be the same after. What story could such a creature tell?
“You lost the accent,” she said.
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The Virginian accent. You lost it.”
Comprehension dawned on his face. “I haven't lived in Virginia in a long time.” It was hard to tell whether the thought saddened him.
“That's such a pity,” said Blue. “I loved your accent.”
It had, admittedly, reminded her of home when she heard it, of the rolling Henrietta hills and rivers, the Virginia drawl to the words.
She should leave. Blue had a respectable career, a hard earned one, and she may have fucked up with two marriages and two daughters, but at least they were solid members of society, and she could leave them a pretty penny when she died.
“You're right,” he said suddenly. “I could hire someone else to transcribe it, but that interview… it is a blotched thing. An ill done work for both of us.”
Blue pursed her lips. “Yes,” she agreed. “There's contradictions in your story I never follow on—”
“Yes.”
“—and the good questions I get out, you completely ignore so you can continue to rant about your ex.”
“Yes.”
“It's not an interview, it's… lies and lies told to an idiot in a fever dream.”
“Yes.” He leaned forward in a quick, agile gesture, and Blue was assaulted by the image of a lion getting ready to pounce. “Would you be willing to do it? Re-do the interview?”
It would be the sensible option to walk out, send Adam to hell for kissing her and trying to kill her back in the 70s. Go back to New York, to her apartment and to the worried calls of her daughters, insistent that one of them moves with her or her with them, the stifling atmosphere, the lonely hours…
“Fine,” she snapped. “I'll do it. But I don't want no lies, no bullshit. When I ask you something you answer it, and I want reliable sources like diaries or newspapers or pictures if you have them when they're relevant.” Businesslike, she went for her work bag, and set the laptop and recorder on the table, like a division between them. “Everything else that can be verified goes to my editor, then you get the update, and I get the final edit.”
“I agree,” Adam said, perhaps too quick.
She felt, against her behest, her lips twitch in a smile.
“So,” Blue began. “Tell me, who were you before you died?”