Chapter Text
When Magnus slams down the big box that he’s been struggling in his hands up to that moment to the ground, a cloud of dust rises from the Persian carpet he has rolled out in the doorway, causing him to sneeze. His back is killing him and his arms are sore; he's no more used to straining his body like this, and carrying such a weight up five flights of stairs because he couldn't fit in the lift and the delivery man had no intention of helping him, was exhausting. If you consider that he has been receiving boxes like that from London for weeks and has been lifting, dragging, and carrying them ever since, that explains the pain in his lower back that just won't go away. He shouldn't be surprised at all, because in those boxes is packed what's remained of his old life, and if it wasn't easy to carry all that weight there, the thought of opening new boxes each time and seeing what's inside is even less so. He always has vague ideas about this, but never precise ones, because Tessa Grey and Jem Carstairs, his English friends, have taken care of his home in England. He will have to give them a big Christmas present, he thinks, stretching his back muscles. After fleeing the country in the direction of New York, Tessa and Jem took control of the situation and took care of all the necessary formalities: they were concerned about emptying the flat of all his personal effects, sending everything he wanted to keep to the United States before selling the house. In the last five weeks, books, clothes, and all sorts of knick-knacks have been arriving at the drop of a hat. Stored in his phone is a WhatsApp chat that Tessa and Jem filled with photos of objects he didn't even remember having, wondering what he wanted to do with them. He has a huge file saved in the cloud with parts of a house that he is doing everything he can to forget, pictures that he will end up deleting for good as soon as this story is over. To be honest, he was sure that they were finished, that what was missing was donated to the needy or sold along with the flat. His modest bookcase is exactly as full as the one he had when he lived in London, the dressing room is overflowing with clothes and shoes, and about the pictures he has hanging on the walls only two are from his old flat, the rest he gave away. If he could do the same thing with memories, the last year of his life would have been easier than it was. However, he doesn't have to lie to himself, some he has succeeded, on others he has to work because there are ghosts that don't go away just by throwing away a dress or giving away a painting. But it has helped, to be honest so many things in the last year have helped him. Select helped his mental health and was even funny to some extent, yet he is forced to admit that when Tessa phoned him, not more than a couple of days ago, claiming that there was one last package on the way and that they were finished after that, the anxiety came back to him.
"I thought there was nothing left," he answered her, the unnatural pauses between the words Tessa poured out over the phone, as if searching for the right way to tell him something, alarmed him. He was convinced that the last box arrived by courier, containing some of his most beautiful jackets, was the last one. But that damned household equally damned surprises every time he gets distracted for even a moment.
"There was something else that you forgot," she replied, enigmatically. "I thought you might want to keep them rather than give them away, if you want to throw it all away I'll understand though it won't be me and Jem who do it. It will be you this time who will have to throw everything in the rubbish. Take it as our farewell gift." Magnus, that day on the phone, doesn’t really understand what Tessa Gray is telling him and is not able either in the days to come, because in truth he’s exhausted. The move has been tiring, doing it with an ocean in the middle has made it almost impossible for him to manage. His nerves snapped a long time ago, the fatigue kicks in every evening after he has finished sorting out clothes and shoes, after spending afternoons wandering around furniture shops. He has lost track of what's missing, if he had to list what it is precisely he can no longer remember. So he does not know what Tessa is referring to, at first, he just believes her, deciding to nod and keep quiet. He trusts her and Jem so much that he cares not to investigate further. That evening he does well to change the subject immediately, he’s happy to hear her giggle at the frivolities Magnus rattles off as if they weren't actually both dying a bit. If there is another package, he thinks, it will be like all the others.
"From now on you'll have no connection to Britain," Tessa added at the end of that phone call, in New York it's eleven o'clock, in London he has no idea: he has no reason to do the math every time he picks up the phone. But his friends at the time never cared so much, not even when they opened the door for him at three in the morning to calm one of his fits. Tessa and Jem are the most helpful and understanding people he has ever met. What seems to undermine his positivity that evening is Magnus' absence in England, he’s like that even though from the faux-cheerful tone in his voice he almost seems to resent it. Yet he recognizes the forcing, he has felt it. If the note of melancholy is there, it’s so well hidden, so much stifled by a faint giggle, that anyone else would not have even realized it. He knows her though, he met her for the first time when she was seventeen and lived on her landing in London, he watched her grow up. Almost ten years have passed since that first meeting. If he closes his eyes, he remembers her as if it were yesterday: tiny, with that brown hair and thin eyes. Tessa, who was constantly in doubt about who she loves more between Will and Jem. So he knows it's best not to insist, she must have forced herself so hard to address him naturally and then she did a lot in the last weeks, that evening he owes her at least a good dose of silence.
"Don't talk nonsense, my dear,” he scolded her at once. He knows they miss him, of that he is quite sure. He also knows that they disapprove of his decision to quit his job. He hasn't forgotten what Jem told him some time ago, that although it had been months since his farewell to London and his life, there was still time to pick up where he left off. He could do it again even tomorrow, Jem seemed sure. So is Tessa, his mother, Raphael, and even Catarina, who occasionally gangs up on everyone else and ends up cornering him, giving him the usual speech about how he is wasting his life. Magnus might even come to believe that they are right, that in some respects it is true, and that if he resumed tomorrow everything would be as it was a year ago. From a technical point of view, it would be, even though more than a year has passed since his leaving. But there is a whole emotional and psychological part that nobody takes into account when referring to his former life. Magnus never replies when they talk about this, he just nods and deflects the question: he has become a master at changing the subject. He also does this with Tessa and Jem that evening on the phone. They keep quiet for his sake, so as not to cause him grief while he does not speak out of cowardice.
"There are still you two" he pointed out after a moment of silence, hearing her grin slowly. She then hastily says goodbye to him, maybe she feels teased, maybe she thinks it's not true, and that they will never see each other again. He has no idea what he should tell her about it because he doesn't know how long it will be before he returns to England for a visit. When he feels ready to take that plane to see his best friends, but perhaps it may never happen and Tessa knows it, as well as Jem who also keeps silent and ends the phone call with a cheerful greeting that sounds a bit fake. Without worrying about anything else, after that phone call, Magnus celebrated the last package arriving with a dinner with friends and a big hello to damned London and not because every occasion is good for drinking, but because last box means that the connection with that city has finally broken. Uncorking a bottle of wine together with the people he loves the most, after a sushi-based dinner is also fun, despite Raphael's biting sarcasm who hasn't stopped for a single moment to point out to him how much getting rid of what he has always defined as a "filthy boudoir" has been nothing but good. Yes, Raphael, mom, and Catarina hated that house and also the fact that he lived on the other side of the ocean for a decade. However, they still disapprove of his choices, because the work to which he has dedicated effort and sweat could also be done in the United States. But his life in New York will be different, no one understands it.
Returning to Brooklyn after living there until the age of eighteen was strange at first. He spent most of his childhood and all of his adolescence there, studied, graduated, learned to dance, fell in love, and had his first experiences until he left America to follow a dream, coming there only at Christmas and not even all the time. Mum understood, or perhaps pretended to, every time, to remind him that Christmas should be spent with family and not with just anyone. But he saw no point in it, he was too busy, he had to work and had no time for anything. Until it was over. Magnus remembers when he stepped off the plane more than a year ago. A house behind him, no support in New York except for his mother and his three friends, whom he had not heard from in ages. He didn't think about it at the time, he was simply upset and what he wanted to do was just walk away. He had returned to tell everyone the news, knowing full well that he would be there for only a short time. New York was in the plans, but not right away, not then. Of that first time in Brooklyn after so long, he remembers having the strange feeling of being home and yet not being there at all. A bit like being stuck in limbo between past and future and not being able to find his way out. There, his wandering life of the past year could be defined in many ways, but Magnus thinks 'Limbo' is perfect. Thinking about it, thirteen months later, he realizes that part of that feeling has never gone away. At times it's as if he doesn't recognize where he lives, as if he still expects to see London outside the window or hear Tessa and Jem knocking on the door and telling him to stop screaming so loudly every time he fucks. London is stuck on him, clinging to his fingers, caught in the back of his eyelids like an uncomfortable memory and yet it doesn't seem to want to go away. Last year it was his broken heart, a bleeding wound that has become putrescent, the sense of being abandoned, and the pain of so many, too many things lost. But now the reasons are different and maybe the suggestion has something to do with it, all these packages to open, the memories to chase away, the video chats with Tessa and Jem didn't help. Even now as he stares at the last box he abandoned at the entrance who it’s still closed, the feeling returns to his stomach. Magnus decides that drinking from it is for the best, he opens the globe inside which he keeps his favorite liquor: the first thing he filled when he moved into this house, a month and a half ago. He bought drinks before he even went shopping at the supermarket. He didn't even do that, his mother filled his fridge. But now she's not here, she'll be in her pastry workshop baking cakes. She never liked to see him drinking, especially before noon. Now, however, he needs a martini, because another box means more memories and if he has had a martini for every box that has come his way, there must be a reason. Because London not only means a job he loved and left, something he had dedicated his entire life to, but it also means Camille Belcourt, his ex. London means dance, what he loved above all else and what he left behind, just as he left her.
Magnus Bane is a dancer, perhaps the most famous tanguero in the world. Or rather, he hasn't danced for a year and a month, that is, since the day he closed the door of the Soho flat he shared for so many years with the woman to whom he had entrusted his heart, as well as parts of himself. Camille Belcourt, indeed. A talented and sensual dancer in her spare time, a manipulator by profession. Camille's torture is the kind of torture of the soul, the kind that sticks to you and fills you with bad thoughts and self-doubt. She didn't just manipulate him, she also made him believe that she was the only person he could be with, convincing him that he was unfit for feelings, incapable of loving even his mother. She also betrayed and ridiculed him, but absurdly this is perhaps the least of the problems. She dragged him down into the abyss of a toxic relationship for what, on closer inspection, was almost ten years. Camille emptied him, alienated him from New York and from his mother Madeleine *, as well as from his friends Raphael, Ragnor, and Catarina. She wanted exclusivity on everything, even family affections or friendships. If he hung out with Tessa and Jem it was because they shared the same land, but if they lived in Brooklyn it was certain he would never see or hear from them again either. Magnus listened to her for so long that he risked losing the respect of even his mother until he realized who the woman he thought he loved was. Until he found out about her repeated betrayals, her plotting to leave him as a dancer as well and not just as a man. Since then something broke inside him, he was no longer even able to move a step to the rhythm of the music. He no longer even dances while he cooks, and Magnus has always danced in his own time, especially while preparing some dish from that Indonesia of his childhood, the same Indonesia that populates his memories with bittersweet images. His country of origin, which flows in his veins, still lives under his skin as did Madeleine, as well as the father he never knew. Fragments of himself on the streets of Jakarta and, then, of a new existence in New York. But Magnus no longer even dances when he has a drink, and he has always done so while drinking a martini, alone, half-naked, in his dressing gown in front of a window admiring the city at night. Break up with Camille and stop dancing is a combination that no one has understood, perhaps only Ragnor, who of his friends has always been the most emphatic. To this day his friend hides his sensitivity behind layers of gruff attitude, but he is the only one who has understood why he made the choices he did. Dancing, for Magnus, means much more than moving in time to the music and following an artfully created choreography. It is not a coincidence that he ended up falling in love with Camille, for him loving and dancing are the same thing: he can't dance well if he doesn’t love his dance company if he does not feel for that person a visceral passion and a desire that he expresses even through gestures learned by heart. And he cannot do that, not again. Not this. He has had sex with so many people in the past year, which he has spent traveling around the world, many of whom he does not even remember the face or name of, but he will never fall in love with anyone again, he will never like anyone so much that he thinks he can dance again. And it is for the same reason that he was forced to end that chapter of his life.
Magnus still remembers the day he closed that door behind him, it has been a year and a month since he said goodbye to dance and he has not missed it at all. It was like freeing himself of a weight. Perhaps that is what hurts, definitely more than the nostalgia of the stage or the adrenalin rush of competitions. At the time, he had a broken heart and only a suitcase full of clothes with which he took his first flight to the United States. He never looks back, not once. What he does when he opens the boxes that Tessa and Jem send, is just putting order fragments of the past and relocating them to an entirely different existence, but those are just objects and with inanimate things, he can also get by. The dance, Camille, the parties, Will's unexpected death... Tessa and Jem, his best English friends. From time to time even now he has the feeling that that is a life that belonged to someone else, someone whose first and last name is not Magnus Bane. And it’s probably true: it is the story of someone else whose name is the same as his. To forget it, to move on and decide what to do next, he needed time. So he told his mother at that time he wanted to breathe slowly and travel. Not traveling the world to do dance competitions or stage shows, he wanted to admire the views and eat a meal sitting at a restaurant table between chatting with friends and glasses of wine. He wanted time to be alone, to read a whole book, or watch a TV show on the sofa eating popcorn. He wanted time for himself and to share crazy experiences with his friends. All the things he didn't get to do in his twenties, too busy becoming the best tanguero in history with a woman he thought was perfect at the time. Magnus hasn't paused for a moment since that distant day when he ended it all, trying not to hear Camille's sadistic laughter ringing in his ears. Since then, he has been running around with Ragnor, Raphael, and Catarina, but he has often done so without anyone.
He traveled on unlikely trains in South America, hitchhiked in Europe, and walked alone along the road to Santiago de Compostela. His friends in turn joined him, following him according to their commitments in New York. In Peru they were all together, Magnus remembers this. The rest is a bit obscure, as he tells anyone who asks him why he was banned from that country. Yes, he was banned from Peru, it's not something that happens every day. To be honest it's nonsense, he's not even sure he remembers it happening exactly that way. He never even told his mother about it, it's better she doesn't know such things. To her he bought silly souvenirs, and magnets to stick on the fridge and sent postcards from all over the world: Italy, France, Spain, Vienna, and then Singapore, Jakarta where he returned after more than twenty years. And then Tokyo and Argentina, Bolivia and Lima, the last stop before starting again, he told his friends. He called mum sometimes. She made him promise to make a phone call at least once a week and he, desperate to be a good son again, kept his word. He even wrote her a few of those long, heartfelt letters, until he appeared on the doorstep of the bakery he runs there in Brooklyn, making her scream with joy.
"I'm back," he told her, kissing her cheek. "I won't leave again." And he didn't. He found a flat in Brooklyn, not far from where she lives, a wonderful loft at a dirt cheap price, found through Raphael's connections. He also has a new job, one he has had for more or less a year, that is, since he started his own 'Travelog'. He doesn't remember exactly when he got the idea, perhaps somewhere on a flight between Europe and the US. He could no longer be a dancer, this was dramatically obvious to him from the first moment he broke up with Camille. He would not even be able to teach in a school, although he had the skills. And so he dusted off his Instagram profile, turning it into a blog of photographs and trivia. He poured much of what he had done over the past twelve months onto it, the strangest places he had visited, the things he had seen, the odd things he had eaten. Fame did the rest, a social media manager he spoke to over the phone, sitting at a table in Rome while eating a giant bowl of ice cream, took on much of the work. Now he has millions of followers and lots of contracts with companies that want him. Not for dancing, because Magnus Bane can also do something else and the world seems to have noticed. He has recently started a proper blog in which he will talk about fashion and makeup, although he has decided to also maintain one in which he tries absurd restaurants in New York or eats unusual food that he cooks himself. He will also take a few more absurd trips, but not right away: his mother would hate to see him go off to who knows where again without knowing if he will ever come back. Besides, it's not the right time to leave. He invested, he had a lot of money set aside because being a famous dancer brings in profits and with part of it he bought the Pandemonium, a very fashionable nightclub that the owner had decided to close. And he, who just couldn't allow such a ruin, bought it. He signed the deed just yesterday morning and is now also an entrepreneur. And he doesn't dance. He doesn't even do it at Pandemonium, where he goes to hook up or drink. Sex, after all, is all he can get.
Magnus stares at the box at the entrance from the side. He has not yet dared to open it. Mid-morning he still stands wrapped in a cloud of light dust that hovers in the air, kissed by the rays of light filtering through the windows. The September sun does not burn, it caresses. And he almost seems to want to light up that big box with a yellowish light, as if it were enticing him to open it. But he is not ready, not yet. He decides to have lunch with one of the food his mother has prepared for him and with which he has crammed the freezer. He doesn't know how normal it is that at almost twenty-nine your mother still makes you food, but he has been away from home for too long and he concedes that cuddling to her and himself. He really couldn't say no to her and so he defrosts some chicken curry which he eats on the sofa, drinking martinis. The third since the courier rang the bell. Curry doesn't go well with cocktails at all, for that maybe he needs wine or beer, but Magnus doesn't give a damn. He empties his third glass without any problem, but forces himself to stop because in the afternoon he has to go to Pandemonium and work. He must not go there drunk, that's for sure. But he doesn't even open the box after eating or after deciding to get dressed and go out. He will think about that later, he has other things to do now.
The 'later' becomes the next day. Managing a nightclub also implies that you have to be there, in the said nightclub. Magnus has spent the afternoon trying to make the numbers add up, jotting down a few notes that he will have to go over with Raphael, whom he will certainly get to help him assess the financial situation. Raphael will certainly know how to run such an establishment, as he has been running the Hotel Dumort since he was eighteen. Once the job was done, he realized it was already nine o'clock and the room was filling up, so he had a drink brought in and chose a small sofa. And then he hooked up, fucked a hot hunk with ebony skin, a firm chest and a great ass, when he got home it was four in the morning and he was definitely tipsy.
He wakes up at noon and only after the second coffee and a nice shower does he realize that that damned box is still where he left it: at the door. He certainly won't be able to keep it there forever, his mother will come by in the afternoon and if by chance he sees that she still has work to do, she'll certainly end up giving him the usual lecture on how much he needs to clean up his act and be more orderly. But Magnus is not tidy, never was in fact. He throws things at random without bothering to put them away. By one o'clock he's half-dressed, lounging around in pajama bottoms and a silk dressing gown that leaves his chest bare. The only reason his clothes aren't on the floor, where he threw them last night, is because he cares about his clothes more than he cares about anything else, and for any reason should they get ruined or creased. At two pm he receives a message from his mother: she'll arrive for tea time with a cake and a special mixture that she has set aside just for him. He manages to get dressed for four o'clock, to fix the kitchen, to clean up the mess that Chairman Meow, his cat (yes, because in all of this, he has also adopted a three-month-old kitten), has made the bowls. At a quarter past four Magnus stares at the box defiantly: he cannot wait any longer.
“Damn it, Tess!” he blurts out. She could have told him what she put inside the box, he thinks in the meantime as he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows and, using a cutter, opens the packing tape that keeps it closed. Whatever's in it, he'll just fix it quickly, without thinking about Camille or how unhappy he's been with her. That's the plan, but things don't go exactly as he planned. There's a thing about his old life in London that he hasn't figured out and when he sees them, there in the box neatly tucked away, he realizes that he hasn't given Tessa and Jem any indication of that. Not knowing what they were supposed to do with it, they decided to leave the decisions to him. They are stage clothes, the ones he used for the competitions or shows he did. Dozens of shirts, trousers, jackets, shoes… His tanguero clothes were hand-sewn by a skilled English dressmaker who made them by the hundreds.
He didn't keep all of them, in more than ten years living in the spotlight someone was lost, others were thrown away and the most precious ones were sold or donated to some charity auction that made him appear generous and good-hearted. He has kept only the ones he is most fond of. Magnus skims the first of a series of shirts, it's on top of a pile and it's red, studded with glitter. He remembers it perfectly: he won a world championship with it. He didn't remember there being so much glitter. He touches the precious silk, he finds it smooth to the touch where it is not dotted with glitter that makes it rough. He has always loved that shirt and if he closes his eyes he still remembers his outfit from then, he had dyed the crest the same shade of red. The makeup over his eyes was a very similar color, the overall effect was stunning. Magnus knows that he shouldn't caress those memories, he's been trying to erase them for a year now, and the fact that now a shirt is enough to find them all should make him think. However, he doesn't want to investigate himself. He just realizes that he's not thinking about Camille. Which is strange, undoubtedly unusual. But now she's not at the center of his thoughts, as he feared it might happen when thinking back to dance. Amid the whirlwind of memories is Magnus himself. And so he goes ahead, sits on the ground cross-legged, and takes out all the clothes one after the other. The fuchsia suit that he used for the 2016 show, that other green with which he won his first dance competition, almost twenty years ago when he was not even ten years old and already enchanted the crowds with his skill. A born talent, as his master called him. He barely spoke English at the time, but he danced like he was born to. He has never stopped loving tango, never even for a moment. The music still runs through his veins, he moves his steps although he hardly realizes it. And then he understands: he put his life aside, he erased it, too grieved to continue doing what he had always done. He shut his brain off, and now that he's back on, Magnus realizes he misses dancing.
Mum arrives a little after half past four, inside the bag she's holding is a mango cheesecake, his favorite since he was little, and a special blend of tea, as she stated earlier on the phone. But he hasn't set the table on the terrace, where they can converse amiably, on the contrary, he is still sitting on the ground among dozens of clothes and shoes. A glance is enough for her to understand. And she doesn't say anything, she puts the cake aside and sits down next to him. She doesn't insist that he go back to dancing, as she has often done in the past. She just hugs him, kissing him on the cheek maternally. And that's when Magnus allows himself to cry. In more than a year he has never done it, he has been heartbroken, he has torn himself apart, he has brooded on himself, he has suffered, but he has not shed a single tear. Maybe if he had done it sooner he wouldn't find himself still wracked with pain after all this time. But he does it then, in his mother's arms and it's like a river that overflows. He thinks it's the end, a way to close a cycle. His way of saying goodbye to dance and closing the “Camille” chapter once and for all. He doesn't know he's very far from reality, he doesn't know that this is just the beginning.
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