The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,68

spending the whole spring there? The Grand Season, yes. He had not imagined her attempting it. He recalled, dimly, that her birthday was in the winter. He had jested he would buy her an insect.

He had missed that birthday.

She was now twenty.

“How did Luc come upon this information?” he asked.

“He ran into her the other day. I think she was buying books. She looked in good spirits, he said. That’s all I was told. He spent most of an hour chewing my ear off about a card game he lost.”

Hector shifted a saltshaker without touching it, making it slide across the table, an annoying mark of restlessness. He checked himself immediately and stopped the motion.

“I’m happy to hear that.”

“All is well, you see,” Étienne proclaimed. “Now, if you’d only have lunch with me more often, you wouldn’t be looking this damn tired all the time.”

“I like to work hard. Nobody ever made anything of himself by lying around all day.”

“Share that philosophy with my youngest brother when you can. All he does is beg me for money. Father doesn’t give him a cent and Jérôme wouldn’t mind if he perished in a ditch, but I’m far too generous and he drains me every month.”

Étienne launched into an impassioned speech about the negative aspects of all his brothers’ characters, beginning with the eldest, Alaric, and ending with Luc, the baby of the family. Hector listened to him, and although normally this talk would have distracted him, even amused him, he could not be amused now.

When they parted, Étienne reminded Hector that he must come by for supper one day, now that he and his wife were installed in an abode of their own.

“We have one of the best cooks in town,” Étienne said. “I’ll be overly plump within a year.”

“You’ll be fine,” Hector replied.

Étienne patted Hector’s shoulder. Their long friendship must have clued Étienne about Hector’s ruminations, or else he was exceedingly simple to read that day. “Hector, you could always try to make amends to her.”

“To Nina?”

“Why not? Do you want me to ask Luc if he knows her address?”

“No,” Hector said quickly.

“Take care, then,” Étienne said with a shrug.

Hector went to his dressing room, his spirits curiously doused, and sat behind his desk. It was not a large dressing room, rather cramped for an important performer. A painted screen hid the area where he kept a couple of changes of clothes. Not all his costumes—he had too many, though a stray one sometimes ended up there—but a dining jacket and a couple of shirts in case he was required to attend a function after work. Behind the screen there was also a full-length mirror and an area where he kept ties, shoes, and a comb.

There were shelves piled with books and props, sheets of paper upon his desk, in a corner a potted plant. A wall showed a poster with his name emblazoned on it, the first big engagement he’d ever played. HECTOR AUVRAY, MARVEL OF OUR TIMES, the large letters read.

He sat upon a couch, brushing aside the newspaper he’d left there.

He had in fact written to Nina. He had not been able to mail the letters, pausing when he had only one paragraph down, then tossing his efforts in the wastebasket. Pages suffused with horrid guilt and imprinted with another, ghastly feeling he couldn’t even name, but which caused him to count the days since he’d last seen her and to rip the letters to shreds. Six letters, and the sixth he did finish but it was terrible, so lacking in every sense that he’d given up and decided that his first instinct, never to write to her, had been correct. Now she was in the city and he thought, It wouldn’t have been proper but I should have written to her. The idea circled his mind, refusing to leave.

He performed that evening and the bit with the shark went well, the applause rising like a wave from the crowd. He bowed low, a hand pressed against his chest. When he was leaving the theater, he caught sight of Mr. Dufren.

“Mr. Dufren,” he said, “I have a novel request for you. Do you think you can find me someone who sells beetles in the city?”

“Beetles?” Dufren asked, looking baffled. “For a new act?”

“No. I need pinned specimens.”

“I suppose I can manage that.”

Hector nodded. He hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult. There must be a market for collectors, and anything you could imagine could be purchased in Loisail.