Gilles had few visitors, all of them female. He called in a large, mouth-breathing seamstress named Delia to take in some of Daniel's jackets; there was a deaf Japanese woman who cleaned the loft; and messengers arrived at odd hours of the day with packages and letters. These last did not leave the elevator's cage, but passed their bundles through the bars and departed without saying a word.
Gilles was frequently on the phone or answering correspondence, but he and Daniel were alone for the most part.
"You don't mind?" he asked, indicating the neat piles on the cherrywood table he used as a desk. "This life, sadly, doesn't pay for itself."
"I don't mind."
Most mornings, Daniel studied on the roof, beneath a green awning Gilles had erected to keep Daniel fair. He sat cross-legged, snug within the small square of shadow, while the sky burned and glared, blinding, around him. Time passed for him as it always had: Methodically, without much notice.
Gilles often joined him midway through the mornings, bringing a phone, his computer, and a book or newspaper to read.
The quiet was mutual and comfortable; Daniel was used to studying anywhere, with any distraction. At the beach and at the club, he had grown familiar with Gilles' distant scrutiny; up close, it was simply more intense but never disturbing.
Daniel resigned his job bussing and barbacking at Noise Enough; he entered the back office tremulous and wary of the club's owner, and emerged instead promoted to DJ'ing three nights a week, with a generous raise.
Things were changing, ever-fluctuating, and he knew it had something to do with Gilles. He just didn't know what that was.
*
Early one morning, before the sun was fully up and while Daniel's hair was still damp from the bath, Gilles gave Daniel keys, a heavy ring of them, to each floor and every room in the building.
They lay awkwardly splayed, like something with many arms dragged from the depths of the sea, in Daniel's cupped palm.
"I doubt, of course, that you'll ever need any of them," Gilles said. "But if anything should happen to me, you'll have them."
Daniel nodded, absorbed by the spread of toothed metal catching the morning light. It took some time for him to understand what Gilles meant. "What could happen?"
Gilles' grin was wide and full of teeth. "Any number of things, I expect. None very likely, but anything's possible."
"All right," Daniel said an started to drop the keyring into his pocket. Gilles grabbed his wrist, stopping him.
"Second floor." Gilles plucked at the key painted with a large black number 2. "You won't need to go in there."
Daniel squinted -- the sun was starting to flood the room through the windows behind Gilles and he was black against the brightness -- first at the key, then at Gilles. "Bluebeard?" he said quietly, smiling, and Gilles squeezed his shoulder and laughed.
"Death's the key to unbar those locks," Gilles said, drawing Daniel into his arms, close against his chest, his lips wandering warmly over Daniel's forehead and cheek. "The soul dead through sin comes back to life in order to live with me. Tenderness of years, take this key, give enlargement to your soul."
He sent Daniel on the occasional errand. Dressing him first in the quiet, plain clothes of schoolboys -- blue blazer, plaid tie, gray flannel pants too heavy for the climate here -- Gilles then loaded a worn knapsack with packages to deliver. He rested his hands on Daniel's shoulders and gave him directions: "Take the 23 bus to Nerissa, then the 106 to Rialto Heights. Walk four blocks, and in front of the milk bar and cheese store, there's a red metal rubbish can. Put the envelope in there and come home to me."
So Daniel saw more of the city than he ever had on foot. Verona Beach's bus system ran through the suburbs and over knotted freeways as well as the bright, overcrowded downtown. The buses reminded him of odd glass boxes, aquariums on wheezing wheels, the windows grimy and smeared with people's sweat and breath.
*
Daniel was searching the bookcases one afternoon when Gilles rose suddenly from his desk and crossed toward the elevator. Only then did Daniel hear it shuddering and groaning upward.
"Where the *hell* have you been?" Gilles said, wrenching open the cage.
A small woman, nearly Daniel's own height, strode into the room, the heels of her scarlet cowboy boots clicking on the cement floor. She tossed a red jacket at Gilles and planted her fists on her hips, staring at Daniel.
"The fuck's he?"
Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and willed himself not to shake. For all her noise, she was *tiny*, blonde hair close-cropped like a novitiate's to her skull, except for a long, curling fringe tucked behind one ear, a gauzey red shirt knotted around her waist above gold trousers as slim and neat as anything Daniel wore these days.
"Joan, this is Daniel," Gilles said, hanging up Joan's jacket and moving toward the kitchen. His eyes met Daniel's and he shot Daniel a tight, almost worried smile. "Daniel, meet Joan."
Daniel moved to the couch closest to Gilles and held out his hand to the girl. Joan ignored the gesture, yet kept moving closer and closer. She touched his hair and the sleeve of his shirt, then stepped back. Her eyes were odd, large and green-speckled, constantly in motion.
"Looks like you found your little acolyte finally," Joan said, cocking her head. She looked Daniel over appraisingly, her strange eyes flickering like a cat's in the dark. "Pretty, too. For a boy."
Gilles stood behind the kitchen counter, knuckles gone white on its edge. When he spoke, his voice was silky and false. "Would you like a drink, my dear?"
Joan glanced over her shoulder. "You know I don't touch that shit."
"I don't either," Daniel said. He wanted her to smile at him, but he didn't know why.
Digging in her pocket and cursing until she found what she was looking for, Joan then waved a small glassine envelope and grinned at no one in particular. "My hasty powder, on the other hand -" She dropped next to Daniel on the couch and, curling one foot around the table's leg, yanked it closer. "This is the good stuff. Blow your breath like it's hurrying from the fatal cannon's womb."
"That'll burn up your nose," Daniel said as she emptied the white powder on the table-top and started chopping at it with a playing card. "Put a hole right through it."
Joan looked at him, then over at Gilles, her lips curving.
Gilles cleared his throat and leaned over the counter. "How do you know that, sweetheart?"
"Not sure," Daniel said. He had tried it once, or been about to, after the club closed for the night. He remembered the warnings; recalled the sting and thrill of it over his gums better. "Doesn't everyone?"
He watched a glance slide, nearly visible and geometrically precise, back and forth between Joan and Gilles. Finally Gilles smiled at him and said, "Generally, they do, yes. But not little forest nymphs, no. Where there's no temple but the wood, one doesn't expect much."
Joan squeezed Daniel's knee - her grip was as strong as Gilles', bruising - and laughed like her mouth was brimming with the sound. "I like him," she said, then leaned over the lines of white powder. "Cool kid."
When she snorted, the sound was ugly, harsh and fast, and Daniel watched Gilles grimace, then turn away. Her hand never left his knee, and she just squeezed more and more tightly until finally two columns of powder were gone and she flopped back, rubbing her knuckles against her nose. Her nostrils flared red and wet.
"S'okay, little guy," she said and Daniel realized he was staring. "The nose'll be fine. Hell, I've died a couple times and you don't see me complaining."
Daniel looked at Gilles, but Gilles was pouring himself a large glass of wine.
"Sugar-Daddy here tried to clone me," Joan continued, and slung her arm around Daniel's waist, pulling him closer as if he, too, were a piece of furniture. Her hair smelled like woodfire smoke but it brushed against his cheek like light, weightless and golden. She lifted her chin in Gilles' direction and Daniel felt the laughter rising through her chest. "Went all Aztec mojo on me, tried to make me a legion of sisters, some shit like that."
"That's quite enough -" Gilles said, his voice low, reverberating against his glass.
"Army of Marians," Joan continued, leaning forward again, bringing Daniel with her. She inhaled another column of powder and the shudder ran through her, then through Daniel, like rainy wind. "Wasn't that it?"
"Daniel's not interested."
"Sure you are, aren't you, Danny?" She reclined, nearly horizontal on the couch, and pulled Daniel with her, a hand in his hair. "Danny. Little brother. How do we look, Daddy? Like the family you never had?"
"How was Paris, darling?" Gilles replied.
"Lots of French people," she said. "C'mon, *Daddy*. Answer the question."
"And the French vampires?"
"Dust just like Yankee ones. Can I kiss him? Would that be so wrong?"
Daniel breathed through his mouth; Joan smelled rich and flowery, too many flowers, soaked in alcohol, and the scent choked him if he breathed too deeply. Her fingers twined in his hair, and he supposed, given how well she seemed to know Gilles, that she also knew just how Gilles touched your hair. How his fingers moved in these same slow ovals, over your scalp, down the hair, back again.
The upholstery creaked as Joan turned on her side, closing her fist in Daniel's hair, and pressed her lips against his cheek. Daniel held himself still, trying not to squirm away, not to be rude. Her breath beat like wind under hawks' wings, hot and sweet in his nose, loud in his ear.
Time stuttered and paused; her nails dug into his scalp, her breath blew on his skin, and Daniel felt himself drop away, tumble down and down even as he remained on the couch.
Gilles' glass of wine shattered against the elevator cage. Shards of crystal, spray of red like blood, and then Joan laughed and pushed Daniel away.
"Guess I shouldn't, huh? You're right. That'd be kind of -" She stood, snapping her fingers and furrowing her brow. "Incestuous, yeah. But *sinful*. That's the word, right? *Father*?"
Daniel could not look at her; her hair and her movements were too staccato, broken wings and swift shudder of snakes through dirt, and it all made him feel dizzy even though he was sitting down. The hole beneath him opened wider and he continued to fall, whirling and plummeting, as he stared into the corner.
The stink of wine flowed through the air, everywhere, clouds birthing clouds. "I don't think I want to kiss you," he said, addressing the ivy trailing over the floor, licking his lips.
Joan clapped, once-twice-three times, the sound sharp, barking and reverberating through Daniel. He imagined it must be worse for Gilles, being so much closer to her. He glanced at Gilles, but saw only the harsh set of his face, lips invisible and eyes hooded, as Joan linked her arm through Gilles' and tipped her head against his arm.
"Each toy," she said, her voice dropping, her fingers very bright against his pink shirt, "seems prologue to some great amiss."
"Nonsense -" Gilles bent, and kissed her head, and Daniel was confused. There had been rage, and hostility, but now there was only a kind of awkward tenderness between them. "In dumb significants our thoughts are proclaimed, yes. But not always."
He helped Joan into her jacket and rode down in the elevator with her. Daniel waited, alone, confused.
He curled up on the chaise near the bed, turning the pages of one of Gilles' books of emblems and allegories. Like the comic books he used to read, pictures and text mixing together, like the tattoos on Gilles' skin, but the lines in these were rougher. Jagged, the effort it took to carve and ink them still nearly palpable, and he liked to trace them with his finger.
When Gilles returned, his face was drawn, his eyes averted. He apologized for Joan's behavior and Daniel shivered at the sadness in his voice.
"It's all right," Daniel said. "Thank you."
Gilles settled behind him on the chaise, turning Daniel until they faced the wide steel-framed mirror. He pressed his face into Daniel's shoulder and his chest inflated against Daniel's back, as he unbuttoned Daniel's shirt with skillful fingers.
The mirror was almost perfectly square and Daniel watched them, Gilles' dark head bent in the thick afternoon light, bright as metal, and Daniel's own narrow chest, pale as paper.
"I lost her when they took my dress," Gilles murmured, lips on the back of Daniel's neck. "I'd lost her already, irrevocably, but that was the last time."
"I'm sorry," Daniel said. "Tell me?"
Gilles was silent; keeping one arm around Daniel's waist, he leaned back and removed his own shirt. He pulled Daniel close again and unclasped the chain around his own neck. The crucifix slipped and tickled down Daniel's back before Gilles tugged it free and tipped Daniel's head against his shoulder. Gilles wrapped the chain around Daniel's neck, snug against his throat.
"That which you loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven," Gilles said, voice slow and regular as the chain, as he refastened it behind his own neck, tying them together, "that which you bind on earth is bound in heaven."
Gilles caught Daniel's wrists, laying his palms flat on his thighs. Every movement was short, measured, the chain keeping them closer than ever.
"And that which you *lose* on earth," Gilles continued, "shall be lost to heaven."
Daniel took short, shallow breaths, the chain cutting into his skin. "Nothing's ever lost--"
He stopped, closing his eyes, as Gilles released one of his wrists and walked his fingers up the center of Daniel's chest. Insects and small animals, gentle whispers and tiny feet, and Daniel shivered again. Gilles lifted the crucifix, suspended on a further chain, from the hollow of Daniel's throat and brushed it over his skin.
"And you, darling boy?" Gilles asked. "Look at me."
Daniel opened his eyes. Gilles' face shadowed by Daniel's own, the glimmering crucifix against white skin.
"Tell me your losses, sweet boy."
"I--" *Don't have anything to lose. Never did.*
The bright tip of the crucifix danced up his chin and Daniel tried to bend, open, capture it in his mouth. Gilles moved it back, out of reach, and the chain tightened.
"Do you touch yourself?" Gilles whispered. Daniel wondered whom he was addressing: Himself, the Daniel in his arms, the brighter boy in the mirror, the Gilles trapped in that radiant square. "Pleasure yourself?"
The dead man, agonized and brilliant in the light, ticked like a pendulum before Daniel's mouth. Gilles' free hand moved up Daniel's leg, curled fingers rubbing his crotch.
"Yes," Daniel breathed.
"How often? When? Where?"
Daniel wanted to shake, twist around and cling to Gilles as he usually did, let the sobs and shudders take him. He could not, not now, tied to Gilles with the chain and mesmerized by the mirror.
"Tell me," Gilles said, sliding his hand into Daniel's open fly, pressing the dead man's spread arms and screaming face, warm metal and old death, against Daniel's lips. "Reconcile yourself and make an onement with me."
"Every day," Daniel said, frozen in place, his breath and guts sliding fast and hot beneath his skin. Gilles could probably feel it, close as they were, bound by the chain. In the mirror, Daniel saw himself wild-eyed and open-mouthed. His lips craved the crucifix, his hips needed to buck into the stony stillness of Gilles' hand. "When you touch me. In the bed, in the bath."
Gilles licked the back of Daniel's ear. "Good. What do you think about?"
Caught, mind and body, Daniel searched for the words as he felt himself trembling in place. "So much. Fire, and storms. You, your hands. Mouth, your --"
Behind him, around him, Gilles trembled, too, the light catching and jumping off the crucifix in his shaking hand. When he spoke, he sounded strained, breathless, fighting for control. "Do you think about my cock? Hmm, dirty boy?"
It was not filthy, not dirty. Nothing Daniel felt, so much hunger and need, fires so bright and hot, unquenchable, none of it was the dirt Gilles called it.
"Yes," Daniel said. "I do." He did, he thought of Gilles' prick painting scents over his face, passing into his mouth. He thought of Gilles turning him over and telling him to open himself, thought of the breaching fire when Gilles entered him. He bit back a gasp now when the shaking hand on his own cock brushed the head.
"Fucking you? Making you cry out? Fucking your mouth, your sweet, hot mouth?" Gilles held him more tightly, thrusting against the small of Daniel's back. In the mirror, Daniel saw Gilles' eyes, flashing, and the crucifix, silver and radiant, and his own body, thin and twig-vulnerable.
"Yes. Fires, everywhere --"
"The fire never ceases burning, moving us to wailings without number, for our sins are without number," Gilles growled, biting the side of Daniel's neck and wrapping his fingers around Daniel's cock, pulling as he pushed the crucifix into Daniel's mouth. "Tell me, boy."
"Fires, like rain," Daniel said, breathless against the chain biting his skin, tongue wrapping thickly around the crucifix. "Explosions under my skin. Whirling."
"Yes," Gilles said. Breath and sound thunder in Daniel's ear, his hands moving, clawing at Daniel's skin. "Good boy. Filthy, despicable, sinful boy. Beautiful. So good."
"Always think about it--" Daniel said and Gilles pushed the crucifix deeper into his mouth, stopped his voice.
"Hungry," Gilles said. "Greedy, gluttonous boy. You want more?" He drew out the crucifix and stilled his hand on Daniel's cock.
The moment hung, dangling like one last autumn leaf, withered, and Daniel did not have the breath to moan. Until, somehow, impossibly, Gilles held him more tightly, drew him closer, and there was space, negative and hot, in which to breathe and speak.
"Yes. More, *you*, all the time." Desire was a cancer, rotten black slime crouching in the center of a flower's bud, and Daniel writhed into it, sucking it down as hungrily as some loathsome insect. He wanted Gilles, wanted his voice and his fierce stare and the fire he stoked over, throughout, Daniel. "You. Fucking."
Gilles covered Daniel's mouth with his hand, trapping the crucifix inside, stopping the curses, and Daniel sucked on his knuckles as Gilles stroked him, hard and fast, muttering in his ear. Words Daniel didn't know well, things about fire and penitence, going with grace and absolving. Erasure and salvation.
The dead leaf crumbled in the fire, the slime sputtered and boiled, and Gilles rubbed himself like an animal against Daniel until he, too, was groaning and shuddering.
"Wail for me --" he shouted, directly into Daniel's skull, ripping his hand away and shoving them forward until Daniel screamed out his pleasure, black and steaming, delicious, the chain snapped, the dead man on the cross scraped over Daniel's palate, and Gilles kissed Daniel's back and shoulders fervently, his mouth sliding and hot and desperate.
In the mirror, they lay heaving and splayed, Gilles blanketing Daniel and dropping softer, drier kisses over his head, murmuring gratefully and brokenly.
Daniel wondered if this was what love felt like.
*
Whether he arrived with Daniel at the beginning of the night or met him there later, just before last call, Gilles always took up the same position, leaning against the pillar directly opposite the DJ booth. He remained still amid the twitching, drifting mass of dancing bodies, the twirling lights spinning abyss-deep shadows over his eyes and picking out the glow off his fine nose and smooth, radiant skin. Daniel watched back, could not stare enough at this odd man, both cruel and gentle.
Daniel did not know how it was he had become so fascinated by Gilles. Nor did he entirely understand how everyone seemed to know of this change in him. Before he'd met Gilles, there had been several men at the club who, night after night, tried to catch his eye from the dance-floor or his elbow as he passed. They were still here, still smiled hello, but they looked at him differently -- more directly, far less coyly. No dancing eyes and minnowfast grins now but friendly acknowledgement, no more.
Nearly every night he worked, Gilles watched Daniel for hours, fixedly, his eyes steady and darkly invisible. Daniel wondered just what Gilles could see, how there could possibly be enough about him to capture Gilles' attention. The dancers could be watched, the music heard, and Daniel himself could stare at Gilles for days on end, but that was different. He spun the music, let it boom and unspool, one song melting into the next or clanging against it. Invisible Daniel, teasing out the beats and rhythms.
He was fresh, the manager said. Brought something new, fresh, to the music. "Like you've never heard it before," and Daniel simply smiled. Gilles, knowing more about him, had said something almost exactly similar: "When you warble, child, you make passionate my sense of hearing."
It was shortly after he first met Joan, several days at most, when one night Gilles dropped Daniel at the loft after he finished the night's work.
"You're not coming up?" Daniel asked after Gilles kissed him, deep and thoroughly, and reached past him to unlatch and push open the car door.
"I'll be back," Gilles said. "You rest."
At home, Daniel changed out of his work clothes -- black velvet trousers and a white shirt with tiny, glinting steel buttons, his pentecostal altar-boy costume, Gilles called it -- and into his old red pants and one of Gilles' v-necked undershirts from the hamper. He liked having Gilles' smell against, around, him; it made the loft seem smaller, more easily navigable and far less spacious and overwhelming. After the snugness of his booth, not even as wide as his spread arms -- "your cell, and you might be saint or lion" (Gilles) -- at the club, the loft was far too large, full of echoes and shadows, and too hushed.
He left his jewelry on; he'd become accustomed to its weight, the thick chain that hugged the base of his throat, the squared-off cuff bracelet on each wrist, the heavy rings on his fingers.
Daniel cut a melon, its flesh the same pale numinous green as the jewel in his thumbring, and carried his plate to the chaise by the bed.
The creaking, shuddering grind of the elevator grew as it rose upward and Daniel gripped the plate, startled, certain he would drop it.
The elevator rose all the way to the top floor, groaning to a stop, and the outer door shook as someone tried to open it. It unlocked only with a key held by Gilles or Daniel; messengers passed packages through the grille and visitors waited to be welcomed.
Daniel stood before the cage; Gilles was not inside, but a taller, younger man, much bigger than Gilles. Wide shoulders, seemingly broader than the cage itself, and the flash of angry black eyes.
"Hello?" Daniel said and took a careful step backward.
"Get Gilles," the man said, gripping the grille. "Or let me out. In."
Daniel tilted his head. The man was handsome, like everyone seemed to be here, but very pale. Almost as pale as Daniel himself, while everyone else here was tanned, golden and aglow, livelier than Daniel ever thought he could be. The man's hair, dark and close-cropped, stood up over his broad forehead like pickets in a fence or crosses over an old battlefield.
"He's not here," Daniel said. Unlike Joan with her clattering, clacking energy or the quiet reserve of messengers, this man gave off a strong sense of latent power, coiled just below the surface, visible in the twist to his lips and his white-knuckled grip on the cage.
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
The man sighed and shook at the cage again. "Who're *you*, anyway?"
"Dan--"
He glanced up, squinting, mouth twisting again into a sneer. "Yeah, okay, right. The old bastard's little rentboy. Heard about you."
"Okay," Daniel said. There were still so many words and phrases that passed through him as easily as beams of light, leaving only questions, like shadows, in their wake. *Rentboy* was just another one of these. "What did you hear?"
"Usual bullshit -- maiden blood, light of the moon, alchemy of the hunt. Me, I figure you're just keeping his evil old bed warm, tending to the good father's every, you know. *Need*."
Daniel shifted his weight back onto his heels. "I can tell Gilles you were here."
"You're going to let me in," the man said. "I'll wait."
"No." He thought of the black-egg monster in the alley, the first night he met Gilles, smelled again rotting lilies and dust of bones, and willed himself not to become scared.
The man grinned, flash of teeth and flicker of lashes, at Daniel. "Smart kid. Yeah, tell him I came by, everything's fucked, and I need to talk to him ASAP."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing you need to worry your pretty head about," the man said.
"You can tell me," Daniel said. Thought of Gilles breathing hot secrets into his ear, crying out his fears. "Maybe I can --"
"Yeah," the man said. "Don't think so. Tell him Mick was here."
"Mick."
"Yeah," Mick said. "You brain-damaged or something?"
Daniel rarely felt stupid around Gilles any longer, and it surprised him now, talking to other people, that he still must seem so thickheaded and slow. He pressed the elevator's master button and Mick glanced around wildly as the cage shook, preparing for its descent.
"Tell him--!" he called as the elevator dropped.
"I will," Daniel said under his breath before turning back to his fruit.
The melon was warm now, chewy in his mouth, and he spit it out, grimacing.