Chapter Text
When Lorenz went back to his beloved alma mater for the Harvard-Yale football game, he had expected something classy. Mimosas in Annenberg on the morning of the game, say, or sherry in the house dean’s study in the afternoon. Listening to compline at Memorial Church, even. He missed that church, missed its bright-red banners strewn with Veritas, missed the splendor of it all—
And what Lorenz hadn’t expected was having half a can of Bud Light spilled on him at a tailgate in forty-degree weather.
“Oh, that’s quite alright,” Lorenz muttered—though the other man didn’t even apologize, just staggered away, while Lorenz wiped the beer off as best he could with the little handkerchief he kept in his pocket.
The tailgate had been Ferdinand’s idea. Lorenz had gone along with it because, well, the alumni association had said they were setting up a tent there, and Lorenz thought perhaps there he would find some good company and good scotch, some quiet little corner amidst the chaos.
They never did find the alumni tent. They did, however, find Caspar von Bergliez.
“Hey guys!” he shouted, from the other side of the muddy, torn-up field that had been set aside for tailgate. “You ever shotgun a beer before?”
Lorenz hadn’t, and had no intention to start.
Ferdinand hadn’t, but was gamely intrigued—and three shotgunned beers later, Ferdinand and Caspar were positively radiant, arms slung over each other’s shoulders as they shouted the chorus of ten thousand men of Harvard for the upteenth time, drawing ragged cheers from the crowd around them.
Lorenz hovered nearby, sighing. Oh, it wasn’t that Lorenz was a sourpuss, and he didn’t mind some game day revelry in principle. There was, after all, history here: Harvard had one of the oldest football programs in the country, had once been one of the best, and still carried on a noble legacy of sportsmanship (well, that horrid little sophomore year cheating scandal notwithstanding).
It was fine, fine. It just wasn’t the weekend he’d had in mind.
But then Ferdinand appeared alongside him, as if on cue, clapping an arm around his shoulder. “I was so glad you could make it this weekend, Lorenz,” he murmured. “I am enjoying London, but, there is no one there who appreciates tea quite as well as you.”
Lorenz warmed to hear that. Then Ferdinand leaned on him a bit too heavily, and Lorenz staggered. “You haven’t had as much to drink as that,” he said, twisting away.
Ferdinand laughed. “No, no, just—it is just so fun, being back.” His cheeks were flushed—perhaps more from the cold than the drinks. The November wind was howling across the field. He straightened himself a bit: “We should not let time get away from us, however! Shall we go on to the game?”
Lorenz agreed, heartily. Caspar, however, seemed to have disappeared—likely had no intention of leaving the tailgate at all, if the twelve-pack he’d had tucked under his arm was any indication. Ferdinand only called into the crowd a few desultory times before he shrugged and bid them start moving along.
And away from that crowd, walking along the Charles River, breathing in that particular crisp scent that only New England autumn had, Lorenz felt himself a bit restored, found himself smiling at their destination in the distance. While others tended to see Harvard’s century-old stadium as a concrete eyesore, Lorenz had always rather liked the look of it: grand in its bold construction, looming like a Roman coliseum over the river.
When they got to the bridge, he asked Ferdinand, “How is London treating you?” Then he added, “Speak truly, now.” No need to stick only to surface pleasantries with such a good friend.
“Oh, it’s lovely, of course,” Ferdinand said, with a sparkling smile. “I have a place right across from the Thames; the view is splendid. You simply must visit in the spring. McKinsey can’t be flying you off to clients every week of the year.”
Lorenz cringed guiltily. He’d meant it, when he’d told Ferdinand he’d visit this past summer. He just hadn’t imagined the caseload his first year would be so overwhelming.
“And parliament,” Ferdinand continued, “parliament has been—well, it has kept me busier than I ever imagined. Turns out MPs really do have their staff write all the bills. I have learned more about lawmaking in six months than I did in four years of government classes.” Ferdinand laughed.
Then his voice softened: “Though, to tell you truly, it is lonelier there than I thought it would be.”
Lorenz nodded. He was listening.
“It feels a bit absurd to even say that. I grew up there, after all. And I have caught up with some old friends from sixth form, and they are wonderful, but...” Ferdinand was looking off into the distance, downriver. “I am a different person than I was back then.”
“So different as that?” Lorenz asked, a little astonished. Certainly plenty of other students had frittered around and dithered, deciding what to study or who they wanted to be. Marianne, for one, hadn’t hit her stride until she settled on environmental biology, her junior year.
But his very first week on campus, Ferdinand had told everyone who would listen that he was going to work in parliament, and then become an MP, and then become the prime minister himself, just like his father. And that was exactly the track he was on—or so Lorenz had thought.
Ferdinand shrugged. “Many of them never left London. And they never really talk to anyone outside of the same old families. My time here made me just different enough from that, I suppose.” He gave a wry smile. “Not in a bad way, I think. It is just a little lonely.”
Lonely, Lorenz thought. Maybe that’s what’s been ailing him.
And Lorenz thought about explaining the muddle in his mind to Ferdinand. How he hadn’t been wrong to turn down the position at his father’s company, exactly, but maybe joining McKinsey Consulting hadn’t quite been right. How he didn’t mind working hard, and, of course he’d already distinguished himself at the firm immensely—but the work was a mess, cleaning up after others’ sloppy statistics and formatting tedious powerpoints for clumsy corporations, and the promised pro bono cases never seemed to come. How last weekend, for the first time in years, he overslept and failed to attend mass, and he still wasn’t sure what that meant.
And how at Harvard he had felt sure, so sure, so much surer than he does now, and he’d come back to see if he could feel that way again.
But the moment passed, and Ferdinand’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out—a little uncharacteristic for him; he was more likely to lose his phone than to ever look at it—and he started texting furiously. “Apologies, I do not mean to be rude, Lorenz. It is just a rather urgent message.” He glanced up, a realization dawning: “Actually, do you know Hilda Goneril?”
Lorenz brightened. “Why, certainly. We were on house committee together, and, you know, our families are both from Boston. Similar social circles and all that.”
“Lovely. Would you like to come with me to meet her? Say, at The Boathouse?”
“Ah, well.” Lorenz remembered The Boathouse as the venue for Thirsty Thursdays and noisy horrible ruffians who’d kept him awake at all hours when he’d been trying to write his thesis. “Wouldn’t you prefer a quieter venue? There is a lovely cocktail bar in Porter Square—”
“Well, she is already at The Boathouse, actually.”
Lorenz looked archly at Ferdinand. Looked at how rapidly he was texting on his phone. Looked at Ferdinand again. “If you would prefer some alone time with Hilda, of course, I understand, I’d like to see some of the game after all—”
“No, no, she asked me to bring you along. She is there with a friend—some fellow named Claude. Do you know him?”
“Oh,” Lorenz said, and oh. This wasn’t going to be the weekend he’d hoped for at all, was it?
“Ferdinand is just a friend,” Hilda insisted, after shooting off another text and giggling. “I mean, it’d be like, I dunno, like dating the boy next door, or something. It’d just be too weird.”
There was more to that story, Claude thought, sipping his beer. While he waited for the rest of it to come out, he watched the postgame crowd trickling into The Boathouse—a few overdressed parents, some other crimson-clad alumni like themselves, and some undergrads—who looked much the same, just far less sober. He’d have to tip extra, he thought, as he watched a harried waitress clearing away glasses from a beer-splattered booth by the armful.
“Though, well... we did sort of hook up last night,” Hilda giggled.
And there it was. “Last night? You told me your train didn’t get in until ten.”
“It didn’t. And then Ferdie just happened to be staying near South Station, so I asked if he wanted to meet up at 21st Amendment really quick, and, well.” Hilda shrugged. “Things happened.”
“Friendly things.”
Hilda stuck out her tongue. “Well, anyway, I want you to meet him. Alright if I tell him where we’re at?”
“Whoa, what, just so I can play third wheel on your little date? I’d rather get out of your way, actually—”
“You will not be a third wheel, because it is not a date. He’s bringing a friend too. It’ll be fun. Also, he’s sooooort of already on his way, so—”
“Miss Goneril!” a voice boomed, from clear across the other side of the restaurant, startling an armful of glasses out of the poor waitress’s grasp.
As their new guest crossed the restaurant to greet them, Claude shot Hilda the barest flicker of a Look. She had told him his name was Ferdinand, and she had said he probably didn’t know him. But she didn’t mention it was Ferdinand von Aegir, son of the British prime minister, and of course Claude knew of him.
“A pleasure to see you, as always,” he said to Hilda with a little bow. “And you must be Claude von Riegan?”
“A pleasure to meet you, Ferdinand,” Claude replied, smooth as silk, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Hilda’s pretty pleased little grin.
Ferdinand turned to the gentleman trailing him like a shadow: “And my friend here is—”
“I know you,” Claude said, with a lazy smile. “Lorenz, right? Social studies tutorial, sophomore year?”
“Ah, yes. Claude.”
Claude didn’t miss the unpleasant little curl of Lorenz’s lips. Not that Claude could exactly blame the guy. He had been an argumentative little shit back then. He didn’t mean to be, just, that whole class was a bunch of Famous Dead White Guys, so of course Claude did all the reading in excruciating detail, just so he could point out all the contradictions and fallacies and lazy thinking. And Lorenz, the apparent self-nominated Defender of Famous Dead White Guys, would bristle and argue back, and inevitably they always broke into some heated debate and ran roughshod over the whole section. (Gosh, that poor teaching assistant.) Claude had thought they were just having fun, and he was certainly having fun. But eventually he noticed that he never seemed to bump into Lorenz around campus, even though they had so many of the same classes, it was almost like he was avoiding him, and—oh. Whups.
But that was a long time ago, and besides, Foucault was unlikely to come up over a bunch of drinks on a football weekend.
Claude saw Hilda notice that little bit of tension, and he also saw her very determinedly decide to ignore it, with a clap and a smile: “Awesome, so we all know each other, that’s great!”
“Hilda, let me buy you a drink,” Ferdinand said. Then, remembering that they were technically a crowd, he amended: “Buy everyone a drink. My treat.”
“We already have a pitcher—” Claude tried to point out, but Hilda already had her arm wrapped around Ferdinand’s and had waltzed him halfway to the counter. Well, whatever. He shoved the pitcher to the side and turned to Lorenz. “So how’s your Harvard-Yale weekend going?”
Lorenz hesitated before answering. “It’s very festive, certainly.”
Claude grinned. “So you were at the tailgate. Nice.”
“And you weren’t?”
“Nah. Not really my thing. I was catching up with some old professors, actually, until Hilda dragged me out here.”
Lorenz had forgotten this—how a conversation with Claude would twist and turn and leave him off-balance, because Claude always managed to say the last thing Lorenz would expect. “Catching up with professors? What for?”
“Oh, you may not have heard—I’ve got a startup I’m kind of working on, out in San Francisco. I wanted to pick the brains of some of the folks in the computer science department while I’m here.”
“What sort of startup?”
“Whoa, is that some skepticism I hear, Mr. Gloucester?”
It was. Lorenz didn’t bother denying it.
Claude laughed. “Well, fair enough. There’s lots of snake oil out there these days. But I think I’m actually onto something. So, you’ve heard of neural networks, right? Really handy when you’ve got a lot of training data, or can generate training data from a rule set, right? The problem is, there’s a lot of data sets that—”
Hilda returned, dropping a handful of drinks onto the table. “Claude, you’re not doing your startup pitch again, are you?”
“Hey. He’s the one who asked.”
“Startup talk is banned. It’s happy hour now, c’mon.”
“If the lady insists,” Claude said, giving Lorenz a sly little smile.
And Ferdinand, of course, was already carrying on about the game, which was playing on a boxy, ancient TV just above there table. How splendidly Harvard’s defensive lineup has been doing this year, just look at them! and would you believe that I saw saw Caspar von Bergliez at the tailgate? you remember him, of course? he asked after you—
But Lorenz was only half paying attention, because there was still a ghost of that smile on Claude’s face. A startup. Lorenz knew startups, of course. He’d interned in the merchant banking division of Goldman Sachs two summers ago. Which was why Lorenz thought they were vanity projects at best, and preposterous wastes of capital at worst, particularly with founders straight out of college. So of course Claude von Riegan would start one. What made him think he knew better than those with proper industry experience—?
Claude turned briefly, saw Lorenz staring at him, and winked.
Lorenz scowled and shook himself, hair flopping into his face, and Claude had to laugh. Apparently graduation hadn’t chilled Lorenz out in the least. Which Claude admired, really. San Francisco was great so far, but everything was so chill there. It was hard to find anything like the obnoxious debate-team-captain energy they’d had in their sophomore classroom, hard to find folks who would just come out and say your ideas were wrong, or stupid, or bad.
Claude turned back to Ferdinand, for a bit, and said some vague on-topic pleasantries (so how is London? oh, I’ve only been there once, saw the British Museum, or should I say, stuff-plundered-from-everywhere-except-Britain Museum, ha ha, great fun though). But eventually he noticed Lorenz was being oddly quiet. He looked at Lorenz, and was surprised to see him still staring back at him. Claude tried a little grin, and Lorenz made an affronted noise, turning toward the conversation he’d been ignoring for the past fifteen minutes. What was going on in his head—
“Claude,” Hilda said, startling him. He must’ve been zoning out. “C’mon, finish your drink already, let’s go to the Kong.”
Claude raised an eyebrow. “The Kong? Didn’t you just eat?”
“Not the restaurant. The club.”
Claude nearly spat out his drink. Hong Kong Restaurant—known affectionately as the Kong by every starving student and busy professor within a twelve-block radius—was a three-story, hundred-year-old, glorious disaster. The first floor was a typical American-Chinese restaurant, with greasy scallion pancakes and crab rangoons, perfect sustenance after a night of heavy drinking. The second floor was a karaoke bar. And the third floor was a club—the kind of club only a freshman could love. Absolutely no decor, a bouncer who didn’t even pretend to check IDs, the most consistently lousy DJs Claude had ever heard, and liquor options just a half-step above paint thinner. In fact, Claude was pretty sure he hadn’t been there since he was a freshman. He was pretty sure Hilda hadn’t, either.
Which he thought was weird, until he noticed Hilda’s fingers clasped around Ferdinand’s, and he realized the club part was a bit beside the point.
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. You owe me, Hilda.
“Alright, let’s go,” he said, tilting back his glass and finishing the whole thing in one gulp. (The look on Lorenz’s face was priceless.)
Lorenz’s shoes made an unpleasant squelch as soon as he stepped into the club. He scowled, and tried to sidestep to someplace a little less beer-soaked—but the whole floor seemed to be sticky, to varying degrees. When was the last time they’d mopped?
Ferdinand, of course, seemed wholly unperturbed—he surveyed the scuffed-up dance floor and the tacky colored ceiling lights as though this were his first glimpse of some grand safari. “I had no idea there was a club up here!”
Hilda giggled, hooking her arm around his. “Well, we’re making up for lost time, aren’t we?”
On impulse, Lorenz shot Claude an exasperated look—and felt a little stab of satisfaction when he Claude mirrored the very same look back. Claude grinned hugely, and Lorenz only barely stifled a laugh. Oh, this wasn’t the weekend he’d been hoping for at all, it had turned so absurd so quickly, but at least he wasn’t alone. What an odd third and fourth wheel they made.
Hilda started pulling Ferdinand onto the dance floor, but he balked: “Hilda, I am not so sure about—er—I am not particularly used to this sort of dancing—”
“Well, lucky for you, I happen to be an excellent dancer. Now it’s my turn to teach you something, hm?”
Ferdinand’s eyes lit up at that, and he let himself get dragged into the crowd quite easily thereafter.
Claude rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “I’m gonna get some water,” he said, leaving Lorenz standing awkwardly on the edge of the dance floor, and for lack of other entertainments, he watched his friends. Absurdly, Ferdinand tried to do some sort of waltz stance, putting both of his hands on Hilda’s shoulders—Hilda laughed, and moved both of his hands onto her back.
By the time Claude returned two songs later, the pair of them were practically grinding. (Ferdinand, as expected, didn’t quite seem to know what to do with his hands, and was flailing a bit, but Hilda looked so supremely comfortable it hardly mattered.)
“Wow,” Claude said. “She’s really not wasting time.”
Lorenz’s face was pinched. “Does she usually... hurry things along like this?”
“Eh, I’ve seen it a few times. What about Ferdinand? Is he usually in a hurry?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Sounds about right. Hilda’s got that effect on people.” Claude offered one of his two glasses of water to Lorenz; Lorenz accepted and took one prim sip. “So how long have you and Ferdinand known each other?”
“Since freshman year, I suppose. We were both on the polo team.”
“Polo!” Claude echoed, and started laughing. “Sorry, it’s just... I mean it’s kind of the most Harvard possible sport, right?”
Lorenz arched an eyebrow. “You attended Harvard as well, you know.”
“Don’t I know it,” Claude said, unsmiling.
Lorenz frowned. What was that about? But before he dared inquire further, Claude was all smiles again: “And what did Mister von Aegir tell you about Hilda?”
“Oh, well, I knew Hilda from undergrad, of course. Our families knew each other, and we were both on the house committee—”
“Right, right, but what did Ferdinand tell you about her?”
“Ah. He only told me that she was a very dear friend.”
As if on cue, Hilda ran both her hands down Ferdinand’s back, and Ferdinand leaned down to kiss her, uncannily in sync with a sudden swell of the chorus line.
Lorenz gasped. Claude laughed: “Well. That’s not unfriendly.”
“Should we...?” Lorenz said, only looking at the dancers sidelong now, fumbling for words. “Just standing here feels a little...” Lorenz didn’t quite want to use the word voyeuristic, but it was definitely odd, gawping from afar while huddled in a corner with Claude.
Claude clapped a hand on Lorenz’s shoulder. “Yeah, let’s leave them to it. I could use a bite to eat.”
The first floor had plenty of seating, probably because it was only nine, and because no self-respecting upperclassman would eat there before they were good and drunk. Claude picked a booth by the window. He opened the menu, then closed it a half-second later, with an impish smile: “Want to split a scorpion bowl?”
Lorenz frowned. “I’m driving.” Also, he found scorpion bowls absolutely wretched, a mistake he’d made once and never again—but he didn’t mention that bit aloud.
Claude tilted his head. “You’re driving? In Boston?”
“My parents live just outside the city, in Weston. I’m staying there.”
“Weston,” Claude repeated, in the tone he’d repeated polo earlier, and Lorenz rankled but he didn’t say anything. He was well aware of just how well-heeled his hometown was.
Claude flagged down a waitress, and ordered a Tiger beer and a plate of scallion pancakes. Lorenz asked for a ginger ale.
The drinks appeared at once, two aluminum cans thunked unceremoniously on the table, and Claude cracked his beer’s tab with a flourish, tilting his head back for a huge swig. Lorenz sipped his drink more tentatively, staring out at the street, at the dozens of other twentysomethings who are all walking or staggering or stumbling by. He could only faintly hear the bass down here, but he could feel it—the silverware on the table kept rattling with every downbeat. It made him uneasy. Maybe they should go back upstairs. He’d been with Ferdinand all afternoon, so he knew he perfectly clearheaded, and probably Lorenz was worrying over nothing, but—
“Hey, are you okay?”
Lorenz shook himself. He must’ve been staring into space. “Hilda isn’t...” he started, then faltered. “She hasn’t had too much to drink, has she?”
Claude figured out what he was really asking, and laughed. “Oh, God. No, no, Hilda’s fine, she knows what she’s doing. Wouldn’t let her out of my sight otherwise.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Very gallant of you to ask, though,” Claude said with a wink. “So what have you been up to since graduation?”
Lorenz had been answering that question all weekend, so many times that the answer had become automatic, I’m an analyst at McKinsey in New York, and everyone here was sufficiently Harvard that they all knew what that meant, and murmured the right approving or jealous or admiring words. He should just repeat that again. They’re just making conversation, after all, passing the time until their companions see fit to depart the dance floor.
But Lorenz hesitated, just long enough that Claude cut in: “Wait, no, let me guess, that’s more fun.” His eyes were glittering. “Let’s see. Journalism or something? Or, actually, I think you’re at one of those think tanks, maybe the Heritage Foundation or whatever—”
Heritage! Lorenz nearly spat out his drink. “No. No, nothing of the sort. What gave you that idea?”
“Didn’t you write all those editorials in The Crimson?”
“Oh, those,” Lorenz said, his voice dropping a pitch.
“Yeah, those! I remember because you always had your full name in the byline, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester the whatever. There was that one that got everyone so mad, where you were going on about how Harvard should be preserving traditional family values—”
“I don’t really—” Heavens, Lorenz thought everyone had forgotten about those. Hoped everyone had forgotten about those. “I don’t agree with what I wrote in those, anymore.”
“Ah. Caved to the popular outcry?”
“No, not exactly, not the way you mean, just—”
“Scallion pancakes,” a waiter interrupted, tossing a plate onto the table between them like a hunk of meat for a pair of dogs.
Claude reached for a slice and ate the whole thing in one bite. Impressive. Barbaric.
Lorenz tried to continue: “I didn’t cave. I reconsidered. I only ever wanted to promote a robust dialogue, and I had only honorable intentions, but after some dear classmates shared how they thought of things—”
“Oh gosh, Claude, thank you, I’m starving.”
Hilda didn’t walk up to the table, so much as she materialized. One moment, it was just him and Claude, and Claude was staring at him with those too-bright eyes, the way he’d always looked at him during those ferocious debates in their classes. Lorenz had hated it back then, but now—well. Now he doesn’t hate it, apparently.
But the very next moment, Hilda had shoved herself next to Claude, and reached over his arm to grab three slices at scallion pancake all at once, and splashed little flecks of soy everywhere as she dunked it into the sauce.
Ferdinand trailed closely behind, sitting himself next to Lorenz. “Lorenz, Hilda and I were thinking perhaps we could decamp someplace a bit quieter, and we wondered if your family’s home is available?”
Lorenz looked stricken. “Oh, er, well, technically my parents are out of town, so—”
Hilda brightened at that. “So there won’t even be anyone around, perfect!”
“Hey, c’mon,” Claude protested, “this is supposed to be like a college reunion, right? Why not stick around campus? I bet I still know how to climb onto the roof of the library—”
Hilda elbowed Claude, hard, and shot him a don’t you dare ruin this for me look.
“Though I guess you probably never did see the inside of that library in the first place, huh?” Claude added quickly. “The effect might be lost on you.”
Hilda stuck out her tongue. “Look,” she said, “Lorenz isn’t gonna say it himself, because rich people modesty or whatever, but—his dad is really really loaded and lives in a huge mansion just outside of town and it’s way cooler than anyplace we can go on campus, so we should just go there.”
Claude gave a low whistle. “Well. That is a heck of a pitch.” He’d seen what Hilda called her family’s “summer cottage” before. The sort of thing she’d call a mansion must come equipped with its own aircraft carrier. He leaned closer: “What do you say, Lorenz? The mansion or the library?”
Lorenz sighed. He couldn’t argue with all three of them at the same time. “I’ll drive,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the keys with a supremely resigned air.
In between the time it took Lorenz to open the door to his house, and the time it took Claude to take off his shoes, Hilda and Ferdinand had already disappeared. Claude could hear their hurried footsteps echoing up the stairs, could hear Hilda giggling somewhere two stories above, and then heard a door slam.
Claude gave a little wolf-whistle and took off his jacket. “How many bedrooms does this place have?” he asked Lorenz.
“Seven.”
“Well, that’s nice. Lots for them to choose from.”
Lorenz flushed.
Claude stifled a laugh. This was far from the first time he had played wingman for Hilda, but ah, maybe Lorenz had never seen Ferdinand in such a state. Hilda had a way of bringing out the most enthusiastic in people.
He glanced around. The foyer alone was already larger than some apartments Claude had lived in. The ceiling stretched a full two stories in height, and the chandelier looked like something out of a Disney movie. Pure crystal, and must weigh a ton; that would absolutely kill someone if it fell at an inopportune moment. (Claude sidestepped a little.) Along the walls hung an array of oil paintings, mostly portraits—family portraits, maybe? of Gloucesters from a century ago? He wasn’t exactly an art appraiser, but they looked old, and they looked like originals, which meant money for sure. What was homeowner’s insurance on a place like this, he wondered?
Then he looked back over at Lorenz, who was still staring upstairs, wringing his hands.
“Well?” Claude prompted. “I heard this place was a mansion. Aren’t you gonna show me around?”
“I... certainly.”
But Lorenz still balked, because, it struck him they were very alone now, in a way they hadn’t been before. Being wheels one and two was a very different matter than being wheels three and four, and he’d only just gotten used to the latter. And what did Claude even want to see? If he took Claude to the stables or the racquetball court, Claude would only laugh at the so-called excess of it. Maybe the billiards room would strike the right tenor—classy, but not overwrought. Plenty of people had billiards tables, right? Or maybe—
“Hey, is that a Gainsborough?” Claude asked, pointing. Lorenz turned his head to follow—in the furthest part of the foyer, hung up high, was a landscape painting in a gilt frame. The nicest painting in the whole gallery, despite its obscure placement.
“Why, yes. Yes it is.” Lorenz blinked. “That’s a keen eye. Did you study art history?”
“Nope. I just like art.”
Art, Lorenz thought. He could focus on the art.
So he led Claude from the foyer to the sitting room room, where the rest of the British landscape paintings hung. The ceilings here were so high that there were easily six, seven, ten paintings on each wall—crammed close together, in the style of a French salon. Claude had a good eye, or at least, a very well-matched eye: every time he lingered overlong on a piece, it was one of Lorenz’s favorites.
And from there, he led Claude into his father’s study, where a splendid selection of early American painters were on display—Stuart, Copley, and a few lesser-appreciated but equally-stunning artists. This might’ve been the priciest collection in the whole house—yet Claude only murmured the mildest praises, nodded only vaguely.
“I’m not huge on American stuff,” he confessed when pressed. “It feels sort of derivative, you know? Well, at least until the 1900s or so. Then it gets exciting.”
Lorenz balked. “You can’t be into that—that abstract expressionism nonsense, can you?”
“Of course. They’re some of my favorites. The whole contemporary section at the art museum was kind of my jam when I lived here.”
“That,” Lorenz said stiffly, “is not art.”
“Oh, come on, not even Pollock?”
“No one will be talking about Pollock in two centuries’ time.”
“No one?” Claude tilted his head. “I understand you may not like the guy, but no one seems a little harsh—”
“Jackson Pollock,” Lorenz spat, “was an abysmal draftsman—just look at his sketchbooks sometime. He drew attention that should’ve rightly gone to someone Franz Kline, who was at least trying to say something, or Sonia Gechtoff, who equalled his talent in her pinky finger alone, while raising two children. That is, of course, if you have to pick an expressionist at all. But somehow Greenberg’s little dribblings in a few myopic journals were treated as actual art criticism, and thus his little trumped-up cowboy Pollock became the standard-bearer for modern American art, and we’re all the poorer for it.”
Lorenz could actually feel his heart beating faster, as he finished out with one last gasp. He hadn’t meant to go off like that, it just... happened.
Claude, however, was grinning ear-to-ear. “And this,” he said, “is how we ruined that social studies class for everyone except us.”
Oh, Lorenz thought, that’s absolutely right. And he laughed, and Claude laughed, and for a minute that was all there was, their laughter echoing out of the office and into the foyer and off the high ceilings of this mostly-empty mansion.
“Wait, wait,” Claude said, still chuckling a little bit, “you never finished telling me—what do you do nowadays? Like, jobwise?”
Lorenz looked off to the side for a moment, at that lovely vivid Copley on the wall. It felt a little deflating, talking about work, right after all that. “Consulting,” he said at last, “at McKinsey.”
“Nice, nice. But we both know consulting’s kind of a bullshit word, right? What is it you really do?”
“Oh. Well.” How to explain? “So far I’ve mostly been on private equity acquisitions, due diligence and such. Some firm’s trying to buy a company, say, and they’ve got the company’s growth projections and finances and all that—we check to make sure those numbers actually add up.”
“So, you’re a professional bullshit detector?”
Bit of a crude way to put it, but Lorenz smiled anyway: “That’s not entirely wrong.”
“I bet you’re good at it,” Claude said, and Lorenz felt himself stand up a bit straighter. “And after that?”
“Hm?”
“What comes next for you, after McKinsey or whatever?”
“Oh, well. I mean, I’m only in my first year. There’s still so much to learn. And I am on the partner track, so, I expect I’ll be there a while.”
“Huh.” Claude’s voice sounded oddly flat.
“What?”
Claude scratched his head. “I dunno. I was just thinking that the guy who used to piss off everyone on campus with those little five hundred word editorials might want to shake things up more than that.”
This again. “I said I don’t stand by those anymore.”
“Sure, but you stand for something else now, right?”
Lorenz opened his mouth—then closed it. All weekend, he’d been trotting out this same little pitch about what he’s been doing, and how he’s been doing, and how successful it all was, and everyone else had said how wonderful or they’re lucky to have you! and left it at that. Claude was the one who was being uncouth.
So why did Lorenz feel somehow ashamed?
“I could use some air,” Lorenz said, after an awkward silence. “Would you care to join me on the roof?”
“The roof!” Claude’s eyes were glittering again. “Sounds great. Lead the way.”
The route to the roof, thankfully, took a different staircase than the one that led to the bedrooms. Lorenz led the way, with Claude loping after.
The view from the terraced roof was as lovely as anything one could hope for in November: there was fog, but it was all low to the ground, morphing the street lights’ glow into something hazy and romantic, and from here they could watch those low little wisps roiling for miles. Up above, the sky was cloudless. To the east, the city glowed electric, and to the west glowed the moon, with its own silver light.
“It’s like being on top of a castle,” Claude whispered, and he wasn’t saying the word castle the way he’d said the word polo and the word Weston. He said it like it was a little bit magical, like it was wonderful, and Lorenz felt an unexpected, smug satisfaction at that. This was the part of the house he’d always liked best.
Claude rushed to the far corner of the roof, pointing upward. “Look. Polaris.” He turned a little: “And hey, Taurus too. Wow.”
“You know the constellations?”
“Yeah. Used to hang around outside all the time as a kid. And it’s almost the same latitude, here, so the sky isn’t even all that different. I’d be stumped if you dropped me south of the equator, though.” He sighed, swiveling his head all the way east, then all the way west. “That’s something I don’t like about living in San Francisco. Too much light pollution. You can’t see even a single star from my fire escape.”
“Well, I’d hardly call this an optimal view,” Lorenz demurred. “We’re still quite close to Boston; you need to get out to the Berkshires for a proper night sky.”
“Sure, sure,” Claude replied, unperturbed. “But still—something’s better than nothing.”
Lorenz looked up with him and had to agree. There weren’t really stars in Manhattan either, he realized, even though he’d never really bothered to look, and this—this was nice.
“Where is Taurus, exactly?” Lorenz asked. “I always meant to learn more about the stars. Just never managed to fit astronomy into my class schedule.”
“I don’t think they teach you this sort of thing in astronomy anyway,” Claude said, and pointed to Orion’s Belt. Lorenz knew that one, at least. And Claude showed him how the belt pointed across the sky, to red Aldebaran, to Taurus’s left eye. Splendid, so far. But it took Lorenz a while longer yet to make out how that little pebbling of stars around it was supposed to be shaped like a bull—it just looked like so much stardust, to his eye. At one point he tried to get out his phone, because surely if there were some app for mapping the night sky, he could figure it out, but Claude clucked his tongue. “You won’t learn it like that.”
“I’m only using it as a reference. To orient myself.”
“I’m all the reference you need. C’mon.” Claude reached over and grabbed Lorenz’s phone out of his hand—and Lorenz jumped. “Your hands are freezing,” he yelped. “Are you alright?”
“What, this?” Claude reached out and pressed the back of his hand against the back of Lorenz’s neck. Cold! Lorenz squirmed away, and Claude laughed: “The California weather must be making me soft. Guess I should’ve brought my jacket.”
“Well, let’s head back inside, then. I’ll make you some tea. I only meant to to tarry a moment--”
“What? No, c’mon, I haven’t finished teaching you about Taurus. A little cold never hurt anyone.”
Lorenz bit his lip. It felt inhospitable, letting his guest linger in such cold (he saw now that Claude was even shivering a bit, from how his misted breath quavered in the air—how did he fail to notice that earlier?). But Claude remained rooted. So Lorenz sidled closer, close enough that he could follow Claude’s finger as he pointed out the path from Taurus’s eye to his great sprawling horns once more. And after that, they craned their heads straight up, so Claude could point out Cassiopeia. It gave Lorenz an awful crick in his neck, after a few minutes, but he very determinedly ignored it, because Claude was telling the story of how the vain queen had gotten fixed in the sky like that. How she’d been so vain that the gods sent a monster to punish her, and the queen was so selfish that she’d chained up her own daughter to die instead of her. But a hero saved the daughter, and she’d wound up chained herself—forever, right there in the sky.
The monster, and her husband, were constellations too; Claude pointed those out breezily as he went along, and Lorenz marveled. Any star could become a story, it seemed, when Claude spoke of it—his voice low, earnest, full of fervor. A storyteller’s voice. He leaned in close. He could listen all night.
But around the time Claude pointed out out Gemini, he turned to Lorenz with a funny look and started laughing.
“What?”
“Now you’re shivering, too,” Claude said, grabbing one of Lorenz’s hands. “See? Cold as I am, now.”
Lorenz blinked. It was true; he couldn’t feel Lorenz’s hand at all, except for the pressure of it, tight around his whole hand, clasped like a locket. Lorenz blinked and waggled his fingers, but for half a second Claude’s grasp held fast. He grinned. Then he let go.
For a moment they just looked at each other.
Then: “Let’s get back inside, yeah?”
Lorenz nodded. Of course. Of course. Inside.
By the time they were finally back downstairs, fingertips numb and shivering all over, it was 2 a.m. Claude glanced between the microwave’s bright-red clockface, and the spiraling staircase that led upstairs. “So, uh, I don’t think we’re seeing them again until morning, right?”
“I concur.”
“So, should I avail myself of one of those seven bedrooms, or...”
“I can drive you home,” Lorenz said, too quickly. Less like a courteous offer, and more like he was trying to get rid of Claude. Which he wasn’t. Well, he didn’t think he was. Was he?
Claude arched an eyebrow. “I’m staying in Watertown. That’s not too far?”
“No, no. It’s fine. Perfectly fine.”
“Alright then.” Claude patted his pockets, and walked back to the coat rack for his jacket. As he shrugged it on, he spared a last look upstairs: “The soundproofing in these walls really must be something. I haven’t heard a whit from either of them all night.”
Lorenz groaned. “Please don’t remind me.”
As they stepped back out to the four-car garage and back into the slick silver BMW, Lorenz asked, "What music do you want to listen to?"
“Oh, whatever you like.”
“This car has bluetooth. I really can play anything you like.”
“I’m fine with whatever.”
Lorenz stared at his phone for a moment, trying to guess what would be to Claude’s taste—and realized he hadn’t the faintest clue. How many classes had they had together? and he couldn’t even guess?
Annoyed, Lorenz chose nothing, turning on the engine and backing too quickly out of the driveway. The roads were empty—Boston, unlike New York, was a city that slept—and the drive was easy, but Lorenz felt oddly distracted. The stop signs kept surprising him, and he kept having to slam on the breaks. Claude didn’t seem fussed (had he ever seen Claude fussed?), but Lorenz was. This was an easy drive. Why was he so tense?
They were halfway through the drive before Claude finally asked: “Are you one of those people who doesn’t listen to anything when they drive?”
“Of course not. I merely didn’t want to impose anything on you.”
“Oh,” Claude said, laughing, “when I said ‘whatever you like’ I meant it. I was curious what Lorenz Hellman Gloucester the whatever listened to. You’re courteous to a fault, you know that?”
Lorenz was learning to tell the difference between Claude’s laughs. This one was the friendly one, the one that he could smile along with, too.
“Next time you really can tell Hilda to buzz off, you know,” Claude added. “I do it to her all the time. It’s good for her to hear no sometimes. Oh, hey, turn off here. Waverly.”
Lorenz did, and all-to-soon they were pulled up next to a worn-looking duplex with a chain link fence around it.
Lorenz turned off the car. “So this is your place?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“Just where I’m staying. A friend of mine’s in art school at BU. He said I could crash on his couch. Also, there’s a great Turkish bakery down the street.” Claude’s hand was resting on the dashboard, not on the door handle. He was tapping out a little rhythm there, and looking over his shoulder at one of the streetlights. “I kind of like staying a little ways away from campus when I’m back in town, you know?” he said, voice unusually soft. “Undergrad was nice but it’s not the whole world.”
“Quite,” Lorenz said, but he felt something twist in his gut as he said it. He wasn’t staying near campus, but he was staying at his parents’ home. Was that any better?
And that got Lorenz to thinking about all the things he wasn’t, anymore: those horrid old editorials, every embarassing out-of-touch raised-in-Weston thing he’d said freshman year, and the narrow path he’d walked to all those spotless grades, to the spotless job.
But when he thought about himself now, he realized, there was—a chasm, a void, something dizzying and daunting, something to be leapt across. He didn’t know what laid across it, and Claude was the first person who had ever asked. They were all getting tangled up in his head—Claude, that chasm, everything he’d hoped for this weekend, and everything it was instead—all tangled up until all he knew was wanting. He wanted something, he wanted—
Then Claude leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for the ride.”
Claude pulled back, looking at Lorenz archly—yes? no?—but Lorenz didn’t even need that long, because the second Claude pulled away, Lorenz realized, no, no, come back here, don’t you slip away from me, and he leaned across the center console to kiss him back.
Claude was so stiff, so startled, for a moment, that Lorenz thought maybe he’d misread this horribly—but no, Claude was only surprised, because after a beat Claude smiled. Lorenz felt it, rather than saw it, felt it in how his returning kiss curled around the smile.
Lorenz leaned so far over the center console that he almost lost his balance; he pushed a hand against the window behind Claude’s head to steady himself. One hand on the window, and one hand stroking Claude’s hair, as he tilted his head to kiss him better. Claude was teasing, playful—he’d do a light peck, then pull away so Lorenz had to chase him; then he’d follow up with a deep, long kiss, pressing him back and back. It was ridiculous, maddening, and—it was also good. Lorenz traced his hand from Claude’s hair to the back of his neck, down the side of his neck—Claude let out a lovely little sigh at that, and Lorenz noted it, interesting—and then he slid his hand down Claude’s back, slid his arm around his back. Claude’s shirt was soft, so soft.
Lorenz wanted to be closer. He already had one knee on the center console; his other leg was stretched out behind him, balancing him precariously between one half of the car and the other. He leaned in a little further, then a little more—he moved his left hand to grasp the other seat for balance, right next to Claude’s thigh, and pulled himself closer, pressed his chest against Claude’s—
Claude started laughing. And Lorenz faltered, hearing that, because he couldn’t tell if it was the friendly laugh or the mocking laugh, and he already felt a little ridiculous himself so maybe he ought to be mocked. Maybe this was just a joke and it had gone too far and now he was the fool. He jerked away, pushing off the window, pulling back to his side of the car. “What?”
“Nothing, nothing, you’re good, you’re good,” Claude said. It was the friendly laugh, Lorenz realized, too late. “I was just thinking... it seems like we could’ve saved the trip out here if we’d just picked a bedroom back at your place, right?”
And that. That was a thing Lorenz hadn’t even been thinking about. Lorenz hadn’t been thinking beyond the frame of this car, beyond the frame of this moment. Outside the car all he knew was not this, not this, not this—not McKinsey, not New York, not the church, not any of the things he’d so carefully strived and strained and studied for all his life—and that yawning chasm. Remembering all that made him dizzy, made him ill. This, he tried to tell himself, just focus on this, this impossible, ridiculous thing—but no. Like after a fever breaking, all his muscles felt weak, he felt sweaty, and he couldn’t move, not even for this.
“Oh. I ruined it, didn’t I?” Claude scratched his head. “Sorry. But hey, give me a shout if you’re ever in San Francisco, yeah?”
San Francisco, Lorenz thought miserably. Three time zones away. Three thousand miles away. He watched Claude open the car door. Watched Claude close the car door, watched as Claude strode three steps away, a chain-link fence away, a yard away. And Lorenz thought, as Claude was just about to enter the house, if he could say the right thing, if he could find a way to explain, maybe he could stay, maybe they could just sit in this car just a little while longer—
But the moment passed and Lorenz was still mute. A latch clicked. A door creaked open, then closed, and Lorenz was alone.
He sat there a long while. Long enough that the cold crept in again, long enough that his fingers started turning numb.
When he finally gathered himself, when he finally managed to turn the engine on and rub some feeling back into his fingers and pull back onto route 20—when he managed all that, he at least saw one thing that made him smile, if only a little. Though the sun was beginning to lighten the sky behind him, in front of him he could just make out Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus, glittering brightly in the west.