Cheaters

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

I

UNDER THE SPREADING CHESTNUT TREE, they leaned into each other for warmth as the rain fell steadily around them. It was the rainiest April they could remember, and they had no umbrella between them. Aeneas had left the office for lunch and had no intention of returning today. Heloise was unemployed, but not unemployable.

There was a clear spot, seemingly reserved for them, along the road that turned onto the office buildings of Burman and Fellows. A single segment of the enclosing fence had been lifted from its moorings, and the path cut past the mist, magically, into the forest. They settled against the cold fence, freckled with precipitation, out of view of the cars that pulled in and pushed past. Raindrops flogged the earth around them, but the patch they were standing on was left dry beneath the chestnut tree. 

“Want to go somewhere with me?” Heloise softly asked, resting her cheek on the damp breast of his coat.

“I always do,” he said, sinking deeper into her body, encouraging the ardor of her fingers.

“Okay, so what’s the holdup?”

“I left my car at work.”

“There’s a bus coming,” she said, unrolling her wispy elastic phone, which was the size of a super-slim cigarette, and parsing through seven nearby bus schedules in 2.8 seconds flat.

“But we’ll get wet,” he said distractedly. Aeneas thought neither of the rain nor his abandoned car. Seeing how far his breath could extend from his mouth, he filled the silence between the infinite patter. Years later, he would remember this part incorrectly.

He thought the rain was the thing, or the bus, or her hand in his coat—but the thought did not finish. They were already running.

They dashed down the path that led from the secluded country of Burman and Fellows onto Industrial Road, where traffic ran rampant and buses traveled here and there at short intervals. They sprang along the walk and made funny faces at each other, holding hands the entire way. Aeneas felt his heart couldn’t keep up with his feet much longer—so out of breath he was, and full of mirth. They were soaked to the bone by the time they reached the bus stop. A transit notice taped to the shelter warned of a route change that had already passed.

The bus shelter smelled faintly of citrus cleaner, as if someone had tried to make it hospitable. A man wandering nearby was explaining the rules of pickleball to no one in particular. Drivers were impatient along the road, honking at each other through the fog for no good reason, driving too close to the curbs, cutting through swelling puddles, splashing sidewalks to vent their frustrations.

Heloise was hopped up on a designer barbiturate called Chronostasis, which altered her perception of time, stretching sensory impressions. She pinballed one drug against another to manage the day. This stratagem never worked, but some days ran smoother than others. She heard a kind of madrigal in the ambient noise of car motors, trumpets harmoniously blaring amid the honking. It occurred to her that this might be how things sounded before anyone tried to organize them. Much later, she would think that Chronostasis had never worked, not really, only made failure feel deliberate.

For a moment, the sun burst through the clouds, and she looked directly into the rays, the light filling her eyes without burning in the slightest. She pressed his palm with all the strength in her jaunty body and desired him to squeeze back. “With all your might,” she said. The bus driver saw them late through the brume and pulled in for a tight stop. Then the sun disappeared behind the clouds again.

Aeneas unlocked the door and stopped, his hand still on the knob, as if waiting for something to arrive late. In the living room, a record had reached its end and was clicking, dry and patient. Heloise crossed the room barefoot, lifted the needle, and set it down again near the middle of the disc. The music entered already underway—quiet, unhurried, without a beginning. She did not look at him. The sound settled into the room without arranging it. After a moment, Aeneas closed the door. Neither of them mentioned the music, and it continued as if it had not been put there for them.

Aeneas sat naked from the waist down on the nubuck leather sofa, feeling silly at his erect self. There was no camouflaging his desire for her. It was slightly humid in the room, and he could sense moisture accruing under his thighs. He’d left all three windows in his condo open for fresh air, and the wind danced in the belly of the curtain. Heloise hopped around on one leg, trying to remove her tight canary jeans, struggling at the knees and ankles with the bunching denim. Then, in distinct contrast, she slipped out of her electric pink lace panties with the fluidity of a ballet dancer.

She had just gone down on him, and he was in a kind of rapture in his headspace, breathlessly swimming in a moonlit pool filled with the most beautiful waterfowl he’d ever seen. He looked at her bare femininity and blushed like a twelve-year-old in front of a peep-show marquee. A loose thread on the sofa cushion kept catching his eye and battled for attention.

Looking him in the eyes, she reached down surreptitiously, her cold bangle brushing against his abdomen and causing him to recoil, and put him inside her. The pleasure was too great at first, overwhelming even, rushing through them like a hot spring; they were joined at the source. Whatever it meant dissolved almost immediately.

“You’re crazy, Aeneas,” she said, slowly enunciating his name with an arch, mock-English accent, rocking her body over his lap. She moaned deeply from a place that had been too quiet for too long, and she felt this was her true voice, luxuriant in its resonance.

“Why?” he answered, startled at her words. “I’m not,” he said, playfully squeezing her butt cheek and then running his fingers in the gap between, smoothing the moistness.

“I’ll poop myself,” she exclaimed, batting his hands away sportively.

Aeneas partly lifted himself from the couch and drove deeper into her. His ear and neck were close to her lips while her breath rushed up against him, and he trembled all over. She had had many men in her lifetime, but every experience with him felt like a first. It was difficult for her to explain. Even though he technically wasn’t hers, in their time together she possessed him in more ways than she could understand.

It was more than the feeling of a body on a body, more than a skin trade, so she naturally struggled with it—the spirit, if indeed that’s what it was. In a poetic, narcotized moment, she thought of lightning striking a lake and then rippling across its face, electrifying the current so that even the fish and aquatic plants kissed the charge. But even that image was deficient in encapsulating her true feelings. She expected more from the Chronostasis at seventy-nine dollars a pop.

If there were a bowl in the world that could contain her sighs and moans, Aeneas thought, he would keep it by the bed. His wife would question the bowl placed so near. But in it was contained the very first emotion that gave birth to all others, and he would treasure it as long as he could keep the secret to himself. None of this makes sense, he thought. He thrust deeper into Heloise, and he could tell she had never allowed anyone this deep before. It filled him with bullshit macho pride at his size; he recognized the feeling from advertisements. But also something better, which he didn’t even dare disclose to himself—how slippery that slope, once tread upon, how slippery.

She held his bearded face. Aeneas looked older when his cheeks and chin were bristled. He was almost thirty, but he could have passed for a teenager. His body had filled out right after high school. He was lean and muscly, and there was even some light hair on his chest and abdomen. It was his eyes and lips that made him look younger than his years. His grey eyes had no business being this wide so late in life, and his lips were always in full bloom. Heloise found it impossible to resist him when she was this close to his face.

She put his bottom lip in her mouth and looked perilously into his eyes while softly biting the plump red flesh. Something feral would come over her, and again she couldn’t explain it and mostly wouldn’t even try. Sometimes he’d ask why she did the things she did. “I don’t know, stupid,” Heloise would say. “Why does it rain when the sun is still out?”

Aeneas would wet his lips before he spoke, and it drove her wild. “In Rome they say, ‘Piove e c’è il sole, la gatta fa l’amore,’ which means, ‘It rains with the sun; the female cat is making love.’”

Heloise shook her head. “No, no, no. Wrong—totally wrong,” she said. “Sun showers are liquid sunshine. Didn’t you know the sun had a feminine side?”

Why did this truth reveal itself so late, she thought. Where was this feeling in her bed with Abelard? The Chronostasis was having its way with her. The moment of ecstasy was broadening and embroidering, like a magnet drawing all kinds of metals to itself. She was never certain which thoughts belonged to her and which ones belonged to others.

The brocaded carpet was a medieval cathedral, and she heard Sunday mass bells ringing, even though it was only Thursday. She wanted to lie on the altar and have God pour out of the stained glass and shower her naked body on the marble soleas. She would become swollen with the child of God if only he looked like Aeneas, and only if the parish would overlook the occasional somatic communion between the two, incestuous or not. Why should the fruit die on the vine, she thought, and Aeneas cried out as he shot his semen deep into her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t supposed to do that.” He did not wait to see if she believed him.

“Come here, crazy boy,” she said, and pressed his forehead to the superabundance of her breasts. She ran her fingers through his damp hair and made curls with the longish strands. He held her body close and inhaled deeply, and there was something childish about the way he exhaled, she thought, but she loved it anyhow because of its nakedness. Abelard would have run off and jumped in the shower, while this man in her arms, who was a stranger by comparison, made her feel like liquid sunshine.

“What time is Lavinia coming home?” she asked.

“I don’t care if she does,” he replied.

“You will if she walks in on us.”

“The monitoring system has been on the entire time.”

“You’re fucking joking!” she burst out and tried to get off his lap, but he held her tighter and just laughed.

“I’m only fooling,” he said. “I dialed out this morning before I left for work.”

“Won’t she ask why?” She felt him go soft and slip out of her.

“You want to do it again?”

“She won’t ask why?” she queried a second time, grabbing his hair and pulling it for added emphasis.

“Ouch! I’ll just say I muffed up the codes,” he said, and tried to loosen her grip on his hair by squeezing her wrist. “What do you say—on the bed this time?”

“And if she calls your work, she’ll know you left hours early?”

“I don’t care,” he said, and lifted her from the couch, his moist skin making a sticky, tearing sound on the leather, and walked her over to the bedroom, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, trying not to knock anything over. He plopped her down on the unmade bed and went hard again in an instant. “Not bad, eh?” he said, and lay on top of her and met her laminate wetness.

“Not like that,” she said, and pushed his body away, filaments of honey untwisting. “I want you like this.” She turned around and pulled his hips close, and their bodies aligned perfectly, like two chairs set into each other.

“Okay,” he said, and they stayed like that for a while.

II

THERE WAS A GREEK RESTAURANT on Richmond Avenue that had finally got the Hellenic cuisine right in Graceland after a long string of dreary, paprika-laden failures, and with the Michelin Guide having recently added a second star to the restaurant in its annual rating, Anamnesis had received an influx of frenzied patrons hot on their heels to taste chefs Aris Leandros’s and Toula Xanthopoulos’s progressive signature dishes, like the lauded culinary marvel that was the “Gift of Athena,” which consisted of an edible miniature faux olive tree, and the luxuriant “Foloi Oak Forest,” a deconstructed Black Forest dessert assembled right at the patrons’ table.

Despite the difficulties of securing a table at Anamnesis without having to wait months and months on end for a reservation, Abelard Scrivener—miraculously, some would say—had a standing table at Anamnesis, or at any other restaurant of his choosing in the downtown core, and this proved to be a highly desirable trait in a partner nowadays, partly because it guaranteed at least a temporary foothold in the upper strata of fashionable society, and also because it dramatically increased a socialite’s chances of experiencing the curated latest in the emphatic gastrointestinal pursuit of happiness.

Money could not secure a place among Graceland’s “it” circle; neither could fame, title, or any other blue-blood currency. It was now utility that lay at the heart of the movable feast. The desirability of what you could contribute was the only way to gain acceptance to the party, and what was desirable was constantly changing. Abelard’s seat at the banquet was of priority because he was the senior director of strategy at Elysium Pharmaceuticals, the world’s most accelerated pharmaceutical company, purveyors of “legal highs,” and was a walking apothecary, perpetually weighted with designer drugs in his legal possession in order to field-test the many tablets, tinctures, and tonics and internationally popularize the business.

Anamnesis occupied a chimerical place on Richmond, neighboring the big banks and the stock exchange, imbuing the financial district—where everything had a finite, measurable value attached—with a little culinary fantasy, where epicureans could gather under the Tyrian purple lighting of the restaurant and consign to oblivion the hustle and bustle of the Richmond racket for an evening. The sharp April breeze whisked over from the lake was caught between the burnished corporate monoliths, generating the dreaded downdraft, which occurred when air hit a building and, with nowhere else to go, was pushed up and around the sides of the structure and then forced downward, increasing wind speed at street level. A discreet doorway was surrounded by a frosted, nondescript front, unsigned and nameless, save for a group of noisy smokers loitering on the walkway in a granite mist. The valet stepped out onto the busy street to corral the cars into validated parking a few blocks down.

Inside Anamnesis, near the centre tables where Trent Stillwell, CEO of Horizon Zero Dawn—one of the leading VR technology companies in Graceland—dined most Fridays, sat Abelard Scrivener and friends. Stillwell was a big-ticket bachelor in the city, not yet thirty, and was said to be worth easily over one hundred million dollars. He was seen with a different woman every few weeks—blonde, brunette, redhead; there was no discernible pattern or preference—and had a table that neighboured Abelard’s, which was a pretty big deal for Abelard because the two were on friendly terms, often comping each other aperitifs and exchanging witty small talk over the fricasseed murmur of the restaurant. Abelard was hoping to be invited to one of Stillwell’s parties in the near future, and the fact that he was within striking distance was extremely exciting for him. If he could hitch his wagon to Stillwell’s star for even a fortnight, it would raise his profile in Graceland considerably, and he salivated at the social-climbing prospect, which was even greater than sex in his mind.

Abelard pinched the stem of the large Bordeaux glass with his thumb and forefinger and elegantly lifted the crystal bowl to his faintly moistened lips, sloping the smoky carmine body to the back of his throat in demonstration to the others at the table—the Abelardian way to taste that particular two-hundred-dollar Cabernet. He then serenely nodded to the sommelier, who decanted the Cabernet into three more glasses after refreshing the original, then paused formally at Abelard’s side to await further direction. Abelard cavalierly brushed the foot of the glass with his fingers, and with this virtuosic, codified gesture, the sommelier was sent away.

“I see you’ve trained them well,” Lavinia was first to say.

“He haunts his standing table weekly, with or without me,” Heloise added.

“Which also happens to be a great torch song,” Aeneas said, taking an indelicate swig of the Cabernet, only momentarily distracted from his smartHub to join the conversation.

“Abe doesn’t like romantic songs,” Heloise chortled. “A hummingbird couldn’t catch Abe listening to music.”

“I like to be an expert in the things I know,” Abelard said. “With music, where does one begin?”

“If Abe can’t taste it or wear it, it’s not a thing at all,” Heloise quipped.

“That’s not entirely true,” said Abelard, softly biting into a Calimyrna fig decorous with Gorgonzola and goat-cheese mousse. “I have a watch that rings Beethoven at canonical hours.”

“You mark the hours of prayer?” Lavinia asked playfully.

“Six, twelve, and six, faithfully.”

“Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, like clockwork—to recite the glutton’s prayer.”

Heloise advertently brushed the point toe of her Louboutin’s against Aeneas’s straight-fitted trousers, and he lifted his eyes from the news broadcast on his smartHub long enough to see Heloise stick out her tongue at him through her wine-stained lips, which matched her patent-leather pumps in hue. He silently mouthed the words “fuck you” to her, and she made a reproving face at his muted comment while, under the table, she raised her leg and placed the crimson four-inch heel of her shoe on the cushion between his thighs and rested it there. Aeneas couldn’t very well look under the table at the lace stocking casing her ankle or the silhouette of the stiletto that lay merely a millimetre or so from his crotch and rendered the letter “Y” where there should only have been a “V,” but he knew it was there, and it made him think of the ten-letter word that had won him a game of Scrabble the other night, which began with the letter “Y.”

“Yuppiedom,” said Aeneas, reading from a newly opened tab on his smartHub, “according to author Victor Davis Hanson, is a young city that houses self-absorbed young professionals, earning good pay, enjoying the cultural attractions of sophisticated urban life, and generally out of touch with—indeed antithetical to—most of the challenges and concerns of a far less well-off and more parochial Middle America.” The battery icon hovered at four percent and Aeneas did nothing about it.

“That’s illuminating,” said Lavinia, and drank a large mouthful of Cabernet, pursing her lips, careful not to spill any of it—a brazen gesture that caught Abelard’s attention. He was drifting in and out of the conversation, keeping tabs on what was happening at other tables around the room, like a boat that goes with the tide, drawing near and then skirring away.

“You still begrudge me the other night?” asked Aeneas softly, referring to their late-night Scrabble game earlier in the week, and he gazed at Lavinia’s milky cheek, nearly translucent after the long winter, as she looked away into the hazy distance of the candlelit restaurant. He lingered on the freckled earlobes pierced thrice and orange-hued like glistening cowrie, the champagne brows that domed her periwinkle eyes, her animated mouth that held so many tactile secrets within its provocative labial rondure, her heart-shaped chin filled with hundreds of short blonde hairs that she hated and waxed away every so often without Aeneas’s approval, because to him it was proof—the one outward proof he needed—to remind himself that she was not human the way he was human. She was a different feline creature altogether: Faustian, shape-shifting, superior even, and chronically unimpressed. Nietzsche would have had a field day cataloguing the genealogy of her morals.

“I begrudge you the last two years,” she said, looking Aeneas straight in the eyes for a change, through to the bottom of his oceanic soul—or so he thought—because she was always able to cut him to the quick with a gesture, a word, a glance, and what was even worse, she knew it. Lavinia believed this was a form of kindness. The belief went untested.

“From the branches hang olives that are a molecular synthesis of wheat, oregano, onions, and Kalamata olive purée. The leaves are a compound of sage, sesame, cornmeal, AP flour, and Cretan olives, and the trunk is an amalgam of whole-wheat flour, thyme, walnuts, and Halkidiki olives,” Abelard was pedantically telling Heloise, and she rolled her eyes at his description of the hors d’oeuvre because she was certain she had heard it before—and because she knew he was really addressing Aeneas and Lavinia, hoping to wow them with his culinary knowledge.

“It’s just a piece of fucking toasted bread,” said Aeneas. The sommelier returned with a different napkin.

Abelard paused, frowned, and tasted again. “No—thyme,” he said, though no one had contradicted him.

“You’re being rude now,” said Lavinia, shocked by Aeneas’s outburst—uncommon as they were, especially in restaurants, where Aeneas could shrink to the size of a salt shaker, because he hated being waited on and hated people watching him eat, which, according to him, was as naked an act as using the toilet. He’d say to Lavinia, people don’t shit together, so why should they eat together? It’s an inane public custom, and what’s worse, it’s shameful. People with an appetite for communal gourmandization are a step away from state-sanctioned orgy parties. And Lavinia, who loved to cuckold him in conversation, would say, “Oh, I don’t know. I just love a good sausage party.”

“If you looked up from your smartHub for a second, you would surely appreciate the complexity of the dish,” said Abelard.

“And if you looked down at my smartHub for a moment, you’d appreciate that our troops are turning over a village in Kashmir as we dine at this very expensive—too expensive—restaurant,” said Aeneas.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s my treat.” Abelard rubbed his thumb against the inside of his wrist, a small, repetitive motion, and only then smiled.

“That’s not the fucking point, Abelard. Why do you always miss the fucking point?” Heloise pushed Aeneas’s chair with her patent-leather pump; it was perceptible enough to function as a four-inch warning, but it did not faze Aeneas, who—probably because he was comfortable enough around his old schoolmates to act somewhat like himself, or because he had forgotten himself, forgotten his manners, forgotten where he was—decided he was going to be heard tonight.

“So what? We have troops in Kashmir settling some cross-border troubles. Why should that stop us from enjoying the Gift of Athena?” said Lavinia, playing with the moon-shaped pendant that plumbed the depths of her dress’s plunging neckline, and nobody at the table could tell whether she was being sincere or sarcastic or some new combination of both.

“Gift of Athena,” said Abelard.

“Because our new super soldiers are tearing up a village, sweeping for terrorists, and it’s being televised by some guerrilla news channel, and they are literally mowing through women and children for no fucking reason at all.” Someone laughed too loudly at a nearby table, then stopped. No one appeared relieved.

“After dinner, we can try the Foloi Oak Forest, composed of a fantasia of dark and white chocolate mousses—trees contrived of sticks of dark chocolate and cotton-candy foliage, soil of coffee and cocoa, and decorated throughout with spherical cherry purée and multicoloured icing sugar,” said Abelard, in abject disregard of Aeneas. He continued listing ingredients long after the point had been lost, then stopped mid-sentence, as if surprised to still be speaking.

“You shouldn’t dip into your own stash, Abelard,” said Heloise, in an attempt to dial the tension back to a moderate spa level. “You know I like to do that for you.”

“There is a thin red line between business and pleasure,” Abelard chortled.

“And what is the chemical du jour?” asked Lavinia.

“A conscience in the lower classes is useful like castration is amongst bulls,” said Abelard reproachfully.

“What the fuck does that mean, Abe?”

“It means I’m in desperate need of salvation.” Abelard smiled, waited for laughter that didn’t come, and nodded anyway. Later, no one would agree on whether Abelard had meant it seriously.

“I’m still wearing some?” said Heloise to Lavinia, pointing to her lips. “Want to try?”

Lavinia stood from the table and smoothed out her creamy, tea-length dress. She walked clockwise around the table, behind Aeneas, who followed her every slinky step, and when she reached Heloise, Lavinia bent down and kissed her long and deep on the mouth. When she came up for air, she said, “Black cherry,” sticking her finger in her mouth to smooth the flavours on her lips. “Yummy.”

“What is the Kappa Effect, Alex?” said Abelard, ostensibly pleased with himself. “The cavalry has arrived.”

III

THEY WENT BECAUSE REMAINING would have required an explanation, and explanations had lately grown unwieldy, like furniture swollen with damp; also because the idea of water throwing itself, again and again, without appeal, over a known edge felt, to both of them, like an argument they might once have made passionately and now could only accept without speaking.

Billboards rose from along the rail in anticipatory succession, a procession of varnished cascades rendered in impossible ceruleans, ponchoed lovers pressed together in colors lifted from children’s confections, serifed promises of Wonders, Thrills, Forever. 

Aeneas hovered near the window as if he might lower it at any moment to test whether the air still spoke to him. Lavinia watched the signage accrue like marginalia in a book she had loved once and learned not to reread. Her abdomen supplied its own annotations: tight, dull, proprietary. She adjusted her bra, the lace breathing back into shape beneath her blouse, attentive to the geometry of its pressure as it resolved into lines, angles, and constraint, and wondering how it would read later once her clothes were off.

As the train paused at the station, she set her bare feet lightly against Aeneas’s thigh, a casual touch whose rarity startled him. It had been a long time since she had touched him without purpose. The warmth, brief and unclaimed, raised goosebumps along his arms; the response embarrassed him with how exposed it felt. The train pulled away.

Outside the window, the backs of buildings slid past—stucco blistered and flaking, boarded doors, narrow alleys cut with weeds. Graffiti ran along retaining walls and warehouse backs: names layered over names, symbols half-erased, arrows pointing nowhere. A rusted playground flashed by, then a strip of scrubland threaded with discarded tires and fencing. The train slowed at another station. No one boarded. It paused, then gathered itself and moved on.

At the next stop they rose, lifted their carry-on bags, and stepped down onto the platform. They waited, then crossed and entered a taxi—lower and wider than the city cars they knew, its backseat crowded with flattened cushions; above them, two birdcages hung from the ceiling rack, empty except for a few pale feathers, already in motion, their shadows sliding and doubling across the upholstery. The driver did not speak. The platform fell away. The cages swung with each turn, decorative and inexplicable.

They checked into a hotel shaped like the idea of luxury rather than the thing itself, a place that had mistaken duration for permanence. The lobby opened beneath a spanning mezzanine, a pedestrian bridge of smoked glass and brushed steel connecting two wings over a shallow pool. Water slid along channels cut into faux stone, lit from below so the surface trembled, breaking the ceiling into wavering fragments. Artificial palms leaned toward a painted sky held at perpetual late afternoon. Pink crept everywhere—into marble veins, carpet borders, upholstery seams—softened by age but not abandoned.

A placard beside the water read RELAX / REFRESH / REPEAT, its lettering chipped at the edges. Aeneas counted the screws at the placard’s corners—four, evenly spaced—and wondered, without interest, whether someone had once argued for more or fewer. Above them, couples paused on the bridge, their reflections crossing and uncrossing, robes tied too loosely to be accidental.

Lavinia caught her reflection in the smoked glass—collarbones clean, jawline sharp, the practiced economy of someone who had never let herself spill. She tugged the hem of her top lower, then let it ride back up. Thin, she reminded herself. Toned. She pictured the angle from above, from the side, from behind, and wondered which version Aeneas would see first. Her phone vibrated. She did not look at it yet.

The elevator rose slowly, its mirrored walls multiplying them. When the doors opened, the hallway smelled faintly of chlorine and something sweet. Their door was marked with a script font and a small brass heart, dulled by touch.

Inside, the lover’s room declared itself at once. The bed sat on a raised dais beneath a mirrored ceiling, its headboard tufted pink vinyl that caught the light and refused to soften it. At the center of the room, a heart-shaped tub waited, tiled in glossy blush, champagne glasses etched into the stone beside it. Near the window stood a second tub—taller, fluted, goblet-shaped—its plumbing hidden behind mirrored panels. The lights were low and rose-tinted, warming the air without warming the body.

As the door closed behind them, a preselected track stirred from a hidden speaker near the tub, the sound arriving late and half-asleep. The opening phrase surfaced first, indistinct—There was no way of knowing, like a dream in the night—then the rest followed in a softened spill, the melody drifting thinned and underwater, flattened by bad equalization, romance replayed rather than announced.

Lavinia stepped forward and stopped. The carpet yielded too easily under her bare feet, holding their imprint a moment longer than expected. The room was warmer than the hall, faintly humid; she felt it settle along her spine. The mirrors caught her from angles she did not choose—back, flank, the pale notch at her neck. She reached for the hem of her top, then let her hand fall. Everything instructed them how to behave. Towels were folded into swans. The remotes were labeled in cursive—SOAK, SLEEP, PLAY—the words doing the work in advance.

Aeneas crossed to the tub and turned the handle. Water ran, faltered, resumed at a thinner pressure, striking the tile with a sound too sharp for what it promised. The temperature wavered—hot, then abruptly cool—before settling into something lukewarm and unresolved. Neither of them spoke. The water continued, obedient but wrong.

Aeneas stood still, registering the room the way one registers a diagram. Romance here was not emergent but prearranged, desire rendered architectural. Without warning, he remembered another bridge, years earlier, when bridges were not destinations but shelters. He and Lavinia had skipped class then stepping sideways out of the schedule and letting the drift stand as decision. It had been raining the way rain does only when you are young enough to believe it has chosen you.

They had taken cover beneath a concrete span near the old spur line, the river swollen and brown below, runoff streaking the pylons, the air sharp with wet metal and rot. The bridge had offered nothing. It had simply been there.

They had not entered from the road but through a place where the chain-link had been pulled loose from its post and tied back with a length of electrical wire, the opening narrow enough to suggest accident rather than invitation. The wire bit into Aeneas’s palm as he held it aside for her. Neither of them spoke. The crossing felt unmarked, as if no record of it would remain once they were through.

The graffiti was dense and contradictory: FOREVER scrawled over NEVER, declarations crossed out and rewritten, phone numbers trailing into nothing, crude hearts pierced and repaired, a promise layered so many times it became illegible. Aeneas had produced a joint, damp at the tip, stubborn. They cupped it between them, laughing and coughing, smoke thin and badly behaved.

Water threaded down their backs and into their shoes. Clothes clinging to their bodies. They lay in the grass anyway—cold, soaked through, pressed together as if heat could be summoned by proximity alone. The rain came down hard enough to feel instructional. Everything was urgency. Everything felt permitted.

There had been a third presence in those years, the kind that waits without keeping score. He remembers now how easily he assumed she would always be there, how little drama her presence required. When the moment came, he chose the other one—the one who made the choice itself feel like an achievement. The belated knowledge was this: the first had not been an option. She had been the ground.

They were sick for weeks after—coughs that would not loosen, fevers that rose and fell—but inseparable, cutting class at every turn, hiding under bleachers that smelled of rust and gum, smoking where they could get caught because getting caught still counted as proof. They moved through the school like fugitives who believed pursuit itself was love. Rain had felt like a collaborator. It had not asked permission.

The memory did not bloom; it contracted. Aeneas registered the room without commentary. Lavinia signed the guest book with a looping hand that remembered pleasure even as it withheld it. As she wrote, her phone lit again—three missed messages from the brand analytics team in Singapore, a slide deck flagged URGENT. She silenced it without reading.

From their window they could see the cataract, water hurled downward in a continuous act of forgetting. Mist rose and drifted sideways, careless of railings and rules. Boats nosed toward the white tumult, filled with caped figures who waved as if waving were part of the rite. A banner flapped: GET WET. Lavinia felt, briefly, a tenderness for the phrase. She remembered when it would have sounded like an invitation rather than a dare she had already declined. She stepped back from the glass and rolled her shoulders, testing how her spine aligned.

Aeneas stood very still. The low, unceasing thunder reached into him and rearranged something that had once been loose and had since been bound too tightly. He felt small without feeling diminished. Lavinia watched him more than the water, one arm folded across her midsection. She had started bleeding that morning—early, decisive—and the knowledge of it sat in her body like a refusal she did not intend to negotiate. She noticed how quickly his awe softened into passivity. She remembered when he would have turned to her and said something foolish and sincere. He did not. Her phone buzzed again. This time she glanced: a subject line about sentiment drift. She told herself she would answer after dinner.

They went out where everything glowed. Neon blinked in exhausted loops; arcades promised redemption by the roll of tickets; the boardwalk smelled of popcorn oil and sugar burning. A fiberglass dinosaur loomed over a miniature golf course, its painted mouth erupting in steam. An artificial volcano spat heat in measured bursts. Go-karts screamed in tight circles, engines whining.

A haunted house advertised REAL SCREAMS. The entrance exhaled a chemical chill—rubber, dust, sweetness turned medicinal. A laminated sign explained the rules: no touching, no running, no phones. Inside, the dark arrived in bursts. Strobes exposed the architecture too soon: foam walls gouged with fake nails, a corpse on a track that overshot its mark and had to be dragged back into place. Bodies pressed together in the narrow turns. Dampness gathered under arms, along necks. Strangers brushed against her, apologizing too late. Someone laughed too loudly. Someone else said sorry.

The sound was the worst of it—not screams exactly, but approximations layered on a loop, rising and cutting off without breath. Lavinia felt her body react before she could decide how much it was allowed. Her shoulders lifted and stayed there. She noticed the way fear recruited the muscles she spent most days disciplining. Aeneas moved with the line. He did not reach for her.

Mist thickened, mirrors fractured the space, strobes erased depth. For a moment he lost sight of her entirely. The separation felt final in a way that startled him—sharp, unreasonable, settling low in his stomach. Figures lunged, reset, lunged again. At one corner a child refused to go on, heels digging in, the handler’s voice already practiced: It’s almost over. 

When they stepped back into light, it felt less like relief than release—something concluded without having happened. They walked a few paces before stopping. The noise of the midway rushed back in.

“Do you remember our Caleb?” Lavinia said. Aeneas nodded.

“From summers.” “He loved those places.” “He’d go through twice.”

“Three times, if they’d let him.”

“He said the first one never counted.”

“He said you had to stay scared long enough for it to mean something.” They stood there, the entrance yawning behind them.

“I wonder what happened to him,” Aeneas said. 

“Bay Street happened to him.”

She thought of how screams used to come without quotation marks. She also thought, unbidden, of sodium, of water retention, of how tomorrow’s mirror would arbitrate tonight. In the thickest congestion her body revised the timeline. She stopped, one hand lifting slightly.

“I need a bathroom,” she said. “Not soon. Now.”

Arrows herded them toward RESTROOMS. The line folded back on itself like a rehearsed gesture. Overhead, a screen looped the falls—ENDLESS. POWERFUL. FREE.—and Lavinia thought, with thin amusement, that all rivers ended in queues.

She stepped into fluorescent light and was absorbed. Inside, she checked her reflection from three angles, then opened her phone while the stall door latched. The door closed. Outside, the water roared on. Aeneas was left behind. He stood by a kiosk selling laminated happiness and felt, with humiliating clarity, like an abandoned child in a shopping mall. PLEASE REMAIN IN DESIGNATED AREAS, a sign advised. He obeyed.

He remembered waiting once, under that old bridge, heart racing, convinced love would appear if he stood exactly where he had promised to stand. The memory embarrassed him. When Lavinia emerged, her face wore the neutrality of someone who had bargained with her body and not entirely won. She saw him standing exactly where she had left him and felt a flicker—not quite cruelty, not quite pity. They said nothing. Once, they would have laughed and made it a story. Now they let it pass.

At the railing later, mist found them both. The falls did not look like motion so much as repetition made visible—the same thing, happening again, without learning. Lavinia felt the irony with a tenderness she did not indulge. Aeneas sparked a joint auspiciously. She shook her head, stepped away. Smoke drifted uselessly between them.

Back in the room, the exterior glow pulsed through the curtains. They undressed only partially. Lavinia lay on the bed mostly clothed, shoes kicked off, one arm folded over her stomach, the other near her phone, face down. She imagined the light catching her hipbone, then checked the screen anyway. A message arrived. She did not answer it.

He wanted to say, stay, don’t go, don’t let it harden into this shape. 

They spoke then, softly. Aeneas mentioned the summer they took the bus to the Falls to see As You Like It—how the actors had laughed their lines into the trees. Lavinia said she remembered the benches, the way the audience leaned forward. She said she preferred Rosalind in disguise. Aeneas said he liked the ending anyway. She thought of brand promises. They let that sit between them.

“I think I need to take the early train back,” Lavinia said. “Before the crowds.”

He nodded, as if the plan had been his, though it cut him anyway, thin and precise. Outside, the water did not adjust. Above them, the ceiling light cast a long, narrow band of illumination across the plaster, its metal housing throwing a dark span from wall to wall. The light did not fall evenly. Aeneas noticed a faint stutter in the fixture’s hum and waited for it to resolve, though it never did.

Aeneas watched the shadow stretch across the ceiling like a pedestrian bridge suspended over a restless current. He thought, without drama, of standing under concrete years ago while rain battered the world into intimacy, of believing that shelter and danger were the same thing.

Lavinia watched the light too. She understood the image immediately and disliked it for how accurately it behaved. The bridge did not connect them; it hovered above, indifferent. Her phone vibrated once more and lit up like a match on the duvet. 

Aeneas lay beside her, careful not to touch in a way that would wake an earlier expectation. The sound of water threaded faintly through glass and concrete. He slept first. She remained awake, watching the light hold its position, spanning nothing, while the falls rehearsed their conclusion again and again, never arriving anywhere at all.

IV

THE HEDGE LABYRINTH AT THE VILLA PISANI in Stra, Italy was said to be so difficult to conquer that it even confounded Napoleon, who purchased the late-Baroque rural palace in 1807 from the Pisani family—ruined by gambling—for his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais. The story endured less for its accuracy than for the way it flattered those who repeated it. The maze mattered less as a thing than as a story people enjoyed believing had resisted someone important.

“Did you hear from Lavinia?

“What about?”

“Apparently, Aeneas quit his job.”

“I wonder what got into him.”

“He’s working for the Salvation Army now, as a correctional officer or something.”

“The pay can’t be too great.”

“There’s not much money in outreach, is there? I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s an Aeneas thing to do.”

“Yes.”

“You sound impressed. You approve?”

“I approve for Aeneas. He’s always wanted to help others.”

“Poor Lavinia.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She needs to come to her senses. We’re not kids anymore. A stick in the mud isn’t so attractive once you roll past thirty.”

The judgment lingered between them, unchallenged. Abelard drove with his wrists loose, fingers resting lightly on the wheel, as if the car responded better to persuasion than control. The road narrowed as the city dissolved behind them, becoming a corridor of trees punctuated by ground lights set low and deliberately dim. Each lamp delivered the same instruction—here, here—until motion itself felt procedural. Abelard drove. He had already been driving.

Heloise sat angled toward the door, a posture that created distance without declaring it. Her mask lay untouched in her lap: dark satin stiffened with lace, formal to the point of severity. It resembled less a disguise than a credential. Refusal, here, was a way of staying in time. Abelard glanced at it without turning his head.

“You were going to finish that,” he said.

“I wasn’t,” Heloise replied. “It finishes itself.”

“That’s a talent,” Abelard said.

She did not respond. At the light, her feet contacted his hand on the gearshift and withdrew. He continued driving.

They passed through a gate that announced nothing. A sensor lifted, the mechanism barely audible, and the road beyond was already private. Abelard did not slow. Permission no longer needed to be felt to be effective.

The castle appeared abruptly. It rose from the trees in layered stone and glass, neither fortress nor residence but something aspirationally ambiguous, suggesting permanence without admitting history. Light pulsed behind the windows in a controlled rhythm. Music reached them before the building itself, low and insistent, a bassline felt more than heard.

“It’s trying very hard,” Heloise said.

“It has to,” Abelard replied. “It’s competing with boredom.”

Valets moved in quiet choreography. Cars arrived uniformly dark. Keys were exchanged without names. Recognition had already occurred elsewhere.

Inside, the air cooled immediately, layered with scent engineered to feel effortless—neroli sharpened by leather, a floral note abstracted beyond any actual plant. The foyer opened upward into an atrium designed to make the body feel provisional.

A staircase unfurled along the atrium wall, broad and shallow, its steps cut from pale stone veined faintly with pink, as if quarried from something once alive. The risers were low enough that no one appeared to climb; guests seemed merely to continue forward, elevated almost incidentally. A balustrade of wrought iron traced the curve, warm beneath the palm, its pattern borrowed from an earlier century and smoothed of sharpness. Small lights embedded at ankle height erased the need to watch one’s footing. Movement upward felt less like effort than agreement. Above them, a chandelier hung like an inverted constellation, redistributing light until its source disappeared.

The ceiling rose beyond usefulness, painted in muted allegory—figures reclining among clouds, gestures frozen mid-grace—too distant to reward scrutiny. The height defeated the natural voice; conversation relied on the sound system threaded invisibly through cornices gilded just enough to catch the light. The body felt provisional beneath it all, temporary in a way that read as privilege rather than threat.

Masks filled the space. Animals, saints, mirrored faces, half-faces cut to exaggerate cheekbones or conceal mouths. Identity was not obscured so much as licensed. People moved differently once altered, as if granted permission to exaggerate themselves. Presence no longer depended on movement.

Abelard accepted a coupe of champagne, not for thirst but for posture. Heloise declined.

“Abelard,” a voice said.

A man in a gold skull mask approached, touching Abelard’s shoulder with practiced entitlement.

“Marcell,” Abelard said.

“I hear you brought something special.”

“People hear a lot.”

“They don’t usually hear wrong.” The grin remained fixed.

They moved deeper into the ballroom, less a room than a theater.

Beyond the ballroom, space loosened its definitions. One room opened into another and into another without doors—only changes in flooring, a shift from parquet to marble to rug, a curtain left perpetually half-drawn. Sound traveled unevenly: laughter from somewhere important reached them softened, already translated into promise. There was no clear moment of arrival or departure; one was always on the verge of being elsewhere. Privacy announced itself only after it had been breached.

The ceiling receded into shadow; the walls were draped in fabric the color of oxidized wine. Candles burned in clusters tall enough to suggest history. Music slid between strings and electronics. Laughter erupted in calibrated bursts.

Heloise watched with the stillness of someone observing a ritual she did not believe in. Abelard’s phone vibrated once against his ribs. He waited, then glanced down.

Back hall. Ten.

The corridor beyond the ballroom shed ornament quickly. Walls were undecorated, light functional. Portraits appeared briefly—men powdered into authority, women posed beside symbolic objects—then disappeared as the corridor narrowed.

The stone beneath their feet bore shallow imperfections—chips, hairline fractures, the suggestion of age—but no repair marks, no stains of use. Timber beams overhead had been distressed deliberately, edges softened, bolts darkened to resemble oxidation. Everything looked inherited; nothing showed the labor of upkeep. Time here had been applied, not endured.

At its end, doors opened onto a courtyard exposed to the night.

Cool air carried the smell of clipped hedges and wet stone. Lanterns hung at intervals, casting light that suggested guidance while offering little clarity. Beyond the courtyard stretched the hedge labyrinth, its walls dense and high, its paths obscured.

“So,” Heloise said. “Napoleon bought a maze.”

“He bought a ruin,” Abelard replied. “And called it a gift.”

“He purchased it from gamblers.”

“Families don’t lose everything,” Abelard said. “They transfer it.”

A bell chimed softly inside.

“Ten,” Abelard said.

The back room had been converted into a private lounge. The ceiling lowered noticeably as they entered, the space upholstered to absorb sound and slow time. Velvet walls curved inward, erasing corners, while lamps shaded in amber flattened depth. Furniture encouraged proximity without intimacy—couches that bent the body into agreement, tables too low to insist on posture. The room asked nothing and received everything.

Low couches. A table draped in black. Silver trays arranged with bottled water and glassware placed with ceremonial precision. A small group of men waited, masks removed, faces flushed with anticipation. Their eyes reorganized the room into value.

Abelard opened a slim case and placed it on the table. Inside, vials aligned with laboratory precision: clear glass, sterile labels, no branding.

“It’s not one thing,” Abelard said. “It’s an effect.”

“And the crash?” someone asked.

“There’s always a crash,” Abelard replied. “This one is quiet.”

Money exchanged hands without ceremony. Consumption followed with solemn efficiency. No one joked.

Heloise watched faces change—not dramatically, but subtly. Shoulders loosened. Smiles arrived early. The room softened.

Abelard closed the case and slipped it back into his jacket. He removed a single narrow vial and held it out to her.

“For you.”

Heloise looked at it without taking it.

“What is it?”

“Methexis.”

She turned the vial once, the color doing most of the work—lavender, glossy, insistently feminine—the liquid suspended in the clear glass, fingers crimped tight.

“What does it do?”

“It lets you participate,” Abelard said.

“In what?”

He shrugged. “In what’s already happening.”

“And the cost?”

“You won’t notice it. Not tonight.”

She slipped the vial into her clutch without opening it. Abelard did not answer further. He was already looking back toward the ballroom, where the music had thickened and bodies had begun to close ranks.

They returned to the ballroom. Decadence had reached its practiced peak. Financial giants moved through candlelight armored in excess. Masks scraped against shoulders. Couples disappeared behind curtains. Laughter surfaced and stopped abruptly.

“He’s working for the Salvation Army,” Heloise said. She knocked back the lavender liquid, accepting the taste for the speed of it.

“Appropriate,” Abelard replied. “Aeneas always relished penance.”

“And Lavinia liked control.”

A speech began—freedom, pleasure, release—punctuated correctly by applause. Words floated through the room like perfume, pleasant and fleeting. Abelard’s product took hold. Dancers drew closer. Masks pressed together.

They moved through a side gallery where the ceiling dropped and the noise thinned, the party briefly forced to reveal its mechanisms.

Two men in identical white bauta masks stood drinking without removing them, voices flattened, interchangeable. They spoke in policy language, calm and untraceable, as if consequence itself had been dissolved by design. Abelard registered the appeal immediately.

In a velveted recess, a woman in a small black moretta listened to a man who spoke too much. She could not answer him; she did not need to. When she turned away, his words were left standing where he had placed them.

A group of women passed in Colombina masks, half-faces glittering, mouths visible and carefully managed. One laughed briefly and adjusted her baton, as if to confirm how much of herself was being shown.

“Half is enough,” someone said, already elsewhere.

Near the wall, a plague doctor stood motionless, beak filled with something sweet and medicinal. Guests treated him as ornament, amused and faintly reverent. A raised phone was lowered at a touch. Even death had rules here.

As they crossed the gallery, the floor dipped almost imperceptibly—just enough for a glass to tremble, for someone to pause and then continue once nothing came of it.

Laughter broke as a figure in a gnaga mask drifted through, skirts lifted, a basket swinging. The performance was received with relief. Transgression, Abelard noted, mattered only when scheduled.

At the far end, a small cluster in stark white volti stood listening to someone just out of sight. No one spoke. No one moved. Abelard felt the pull of it—the sealed mouths, the absence of negotiation. To be entirely covered was to belong without effort.

Another vibration in his pocket.

Labyrinth. Now.

The hedges closed behind them with a sound like fabric drawn across a mouth. Inside, the air cooled and sweetened, wet with crushed leaves and stone that never fully dried. Lantern oil added a resinous note that caught in the throat. Sound rearranged itself immediately—footsteps softened, voices returned incomplete.

The drug took hold without violence. Taste narrowed to a clean bitterness. Touch clarified: fabric gained weight, air pressed. Sound layered carefully, each register entering on cue. It felt orchestral—percussion in the gravel, strings in breath, low brass rising behind the sternum. The conductor was not seen. It lived in the paths themselves, in the way corridors corrected and doubled back, in the inherited knowledge of where bodies should turn.

Masks surfaced again—boar, stag, bird—bristled, antlered, beaked. They passed close enough to move the air. The plague doctor’s beak breathed sweet rot and herbs. Hands appeared, guiding, withdrawing. Heloise was turned, then turned again, sequence dissolving. The loss of orientation felt deliberate, almost kind.

Abelard nodded once, the gesture small and sufficient. Assent registered. She was taken gently, passed the way a theme is passed—introduced, developed, returned altered. Smell deepened. Sound thinned. Laughter escaped her once and was absorbed.

When the music resolved, she stood alone for a moment, hedges breathing. Someone offered water. It tasted exact.

Abelard reappeared as if he had never left. He touched her shoulder lightly—acknowledgment, not claim. The path ahead opened.

She stepped forward, uncertain whether she had been lost or precisely where she was meant to be.

The night closed behind them.

V

THEY JOINED THE TOUR THE WAY PEOPLE JOIN THINGS they’ve already half agreed to—by drifting toward the sound of a voice that seemed to know where it was going. The guide was standing on a low stone riser, hands loosely folded, smiling at no one in particular while the group arranged itself into something like a semicircle. She wore a green jacket with the garden’s insignia stitched at the breast and a headset microphone that made her sound both intimate and official, like a teacher on a field trip or a docent who had learned how to be liked without trying.

“Okay,” she said, clapping once, lightly, as if gathering attention rather than demanding it. “Welcome, everyone. If you’re here for the pollinators tour, you’re in the right place. If you’re here by accident, that’s fine too. It happens more than you think.”

A few people laughed. Aeneas felt a small loosening in his chest. Heloise leaned into him, her shoulder fitting easily under his arm, warm even through her jacket.

“We’ll be walking for a bit,” the guide went on. “Not far. You can always step out if you need to. The paths loop back. They always do.”

She smiled again, and started walking without waiting to see if they followed. They did.

The garden opened gradually, not with a vista but with a sequence of small assurances: trimmed hedges, evenly spaced trees, gravel paths that absorbed sound without silencing it. The air smelled clean in a deliberate way, not like wild growth but like something maintained with care. Heloise breathed in deeply and let it out.

“This feels like camp,” she said quietly. “Remember camp?”

Aeneas nodded. He remembered the idea of camp more than the reality of it—structured days, friendly authority, the relief of being told where to go next.

The guide stopped beside a long bed of flowering plants arranged by color, the gradation so smooth it felt almost digital.

“These are perennials,” she said. “They come back every year. People love them because they’re reliable. You don’t have to renegotiate your expectations.”

She knelt and brushed a leaf between her fingers. “We select them for that. Consistency is calming.”

“Tell that to my children,” a man said from the back. Laughter rippled through the group.

Heloise laughed too, a quick, delighted sound. She slipped her hand into Aeneas’s pocket and hooked her fingers through his belt loop, anchoring herself.

“Most of what we do here,” the guide continued, “is about managing relationships. Between plants, between insects, between timing and outcome. Gardens look romantic, but they’re actually very practical places.”

She stood and led them on, her pace unhurried but confident. The group fell into step naturally, like students who had done this before even if they hadn’t.

They passed a small water feature where bees hovered and dipped, their movement constant but not chaotic. The sound of them was a low, collective hum, comforting in its steadiness.

“This is one of my favorite stops,” the guide said. “Because people always expect it to be quieter.”

She gestured toward a glass-sided observation hive set into the hedge. Inside, the bees moved in tight coordination, a living system that never seemed to pause.

“In eusocial species,” she said, “everything works because roles are clearly defined. Not everyone does everything. That’s not how efficiency happens.”

A woman near the front raised her hand, then seemed embarrassed and lowered it again.

“Go ahead,” the guide said kindly. “This isn’t school.”

“Well,” the woman said, smiling, “I just wondered—doesn’t that get boring? Doing the same thing over and over?”

The guide laughed. “That’s the human question,” she said. “Bees don’t get bored.”

Aeneas watched one bee detach from the mass and trace a short, looping path before reintegrating. The movement looked practiced, almost rehearsed.

Heloise squeezed his hand. “You’d be a good bee,” she murmured. “You like routines.”

He smiled, though he knew it wasn’t true.

“Now,” the guide said, “you’ll notice something interesting if you look closely. Not every bee you see here will stay.”

She said it lightly, conversationally, as if sharing a bit of trivia.

“Some roles are permanent. Others are temporary. Drones, for example, exist for a very specific purpose.”

Aeneas felt Heloise shift slightly beside him, adjusting her stance. She rested her free hand against her abdomen for a moment, absently, then dropped it again. Aeneas noticed the movement and shifted his weight, thinking she might want to sit. The thought passed.

“Once that purpose is fulfilled,” the guide continued, “the system doesn’t need them in the same way. That’s not cruelty. It’s timing.”

“Like seasonal jobs,” someone said.

“Exactly,” the guide said. “Seasonal jobs with excellent benefits, briefly.”

More laughter. The tone stayed light, the way it does when people trust they’re being entertained.

They moved on. The path narrowed, gently guiding them into single file. Aeneas found himself behind Heloise now, watching the way her hair caught the light. She turned her head slightly, just enough to glance back at him, and smiled. It was an intimate smile, private even in the middle of the group.

“You okay?” she asked softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “This is nice.”

“It is,” she said. “I’m glad we came.”

The guide stopped again near a bench set just off the path. A docent appeared as if summoned, offering water on a tray. Heloise accepted a cup gratefully and sat. The guide continued speaking, her voice carrying easily.

“When continuity is secured,” she said, “the system shifts focus. Early on, there’s a lot of activity, a lot of motion. Later, it’s about maintenance.”

She took a sip from her own bottle. “People often confuse maintenance with stagnation. It’s not. It’s care.”

Aeneas remained standing, leaning against the railing. He liked the word care. It made the rest of it feel softer.

“Now,” the guide said, consulting her tablet, “we’re going to take a slightly longer loop. If anyone needs to step out, now’s a good time.”

No one moved.

They walked. The garden deepened, hedges growing taller, paths curving more deliberately. The guide told a story about a school group that had once released a balloon by accident and how it had taken the staff days to retrieve it from the trees.

“Systems don’t love surprises,” she said cheerfully. “They recover from them, but they prefer not to.”

Heloise laughed again, louder this time, and leaned back against Aeneas, warm and solid. He wrapped his arm around her without thinking.

The group reached a fork in the path. The guide led most of them left. Aeneas followed automatically, then paused when a gentle hand lifted near his arm.

“Just a moment,” the docent said, smiling. “We’ll rejoin shortly.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

Heloise turned back, eyebrows raised, playful. “Don’t wander off,” she said. “You’ll miss the best part.”

He laughed. “I won’t.”

She followed the group, her jacket a bright spot of color as it disappeared around the bend. Aeneas waited near the rope barrier, listening to the guide’s voice drift through the hedges, still friendly, still explaining. He didn’t feel alarmed. If anything, he felt oddly calm. This was how things worked on trips like this. Groups split. People waited. Everything came back together in the end.

Somewhere nearby, the bees continued their work, precise and untroubled, as the paths quietly did what they were designed to do.

Aeneas waited longer than he expected to, though there was nothing to measure the time against. The guide’s voice floated intermittently through the hedges, occasionally closer, occasionally receding, like a radio station losing and regaining signal. He could make out fragments—coordination, seasonal adjustment, natural efficiency—each phrase delivered with the same easy confidence, the same reassuring cadence that suggested the speaker knew exactly how much information people wanted and where to stop.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and read the placard nearest the rope barrier. It described the construction of the garden paths, the way curves were used to slow foot traffic without making anyone feel delayed. He liked that. It felt thoughtful. He imagined the meetings where that decision had been made, the satisfaction of agreeing on something subtle that worked.

The docent remained nearby, not watching him exactly, just occupying the same stretch of space. She checked her tablet, nodded once to herself, and smiled at him again.

“They’ll be back around in just a bit,” she said, as if he had asked.

“Of course,” he replied. “I’m in no rush.”

She seemed pleased by that.

When the group reappeared, they came from a slightly different direction than he expected, spilling into view in a loose cluster. Heloise spotted him immediately and lifted her hand in a small wave, as if they’d been separated for much longer than they had. When she reached him, she leaned in and kissed his cheek, quick and familiar.

“You missed the funniest part,” she said. “She told a story about a wedding party that tried to release butterflies.”

“Oh no,” he said.

“Oh yes,” Heloise said. “Wrong species. Wrong climate. They all just sort of… dropped.”

“That’s awful.”

“It was very gently awful,” she said. “Everyone learned something.”

The guide was smiling as the group reassembled, clearly enjoying herself.

“Okay,” she said, clapping her hands once again. “Last stretch. You’re all doing great.”

Aeneas felt a small, unexpected swell of pride at that.

They walked deeper into the garden now, the hedges taller, the paths more deliberate. The guide spoke about coordination at scale—how small adjustments, made early, prevented larger disruptions later. She talked about how systems that appeared rigid were often the most forgiving, because they didn’t require constant intervention.

“Think of it like choreography,” she said. “Everyone knows where to be. If someone is a little off, the formation absorbs it.”

A man near the front made a joking attempt at a ballet pose. His partner groaned. Laughter moved easily through the group.

Heloise slipped her arm through Aeneas’s and rested her head briefly against his shoulder. He could feel her breathing, steady and unhurried.

“You’re very quiet,” she said softly.

“I’m just listening,” he said. “It’s interesting.”

“It is,” she agreed. “She’s good.”

The guide stopped them near another observation hive, smaller than the first, less dramatic. The bees inside moved more slowly, their patterns subtler.

“This is a later-stage colony,” the guide explained. “Everything looks calmer, but that’s because the hard work has already been done.”

The guide paused and adjusted her stance, feet placed evenly, hands resting lightly together at her midline.

Several people mirrored the posture without noticing.

Aeneas felt his own hands settle the same way.

“At this point, the system’s priority isn’t expansion,” she continued. “It’s preservation. That often means reducing activity rather than increasing it.”

Heloise nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense,” she said, mostly to herself.

Aeneas felt a flicker of something he couldn’t quite place—not fear, not concern, more like the sensation of missing a step and correcting it quickly before anyone noticed.

The guide smiled again, bright and encouraging. “People sometimes ask if this part is less exciting,” she said. “But I think it’s my favorite. There’s something comforting about knowing what comes next.”

The path curved gently and widened into a small clearing with benches arranged in a semicircle. The group sat, obedient without realizing it. Heloise sat close to Aeneas, their knees touching. She laced her fingers through his again. 

“We’re almost done,” the guide said. “Just one last thing.”

She spoke now about balance—how systems that lasted were the ones that resisted constant reinvention. She used the word maintenance again, and again it sounded like care rather than limitation.

“Once continuity is secured,” she said, “attention shifts. Not away from people, but toward what matters most.”

Aeneas noticed the guide checking her tablet again, this time longer. The docent moved quietly among the benches, offering water. Heloise accepted another cup and drank it slowly.

When they stood to leave, the group did so with the mild reluctance of people who had enjoyed themselves more than expected. Someone thanked the guide. Someone else asked about gift shop hours. The guide answered cheerfully, already half turned toward her next responsibility.

As they walked toward the exit, the crowd naturally compressed, funneling along the path. Heloise stayed close to Aeneas, her hand firm in his.

“This really was nice,” she said. “We should do more things like this.”

“We will,” he said, without hesitation.

At the final turn, an attendant stepped forward, smiling broadly.

“Just a quick adjustment,” she said, placing herself slightly in front of Aeneas. “We need to redirect you for a moment.”

Heloise continued walking, then realized he wasn’t beside her. She turned, confused but not alarmed.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” the attendant said, answering for him. “Just a small routing change.”

Heloise hesitated, then smiled, that same trusting smile, the one that assumed systems worked because people made them work.

“I’ll see you at the gate,” she said to Aeneas. “Don’t get lost.”

He laughed. “I won’t.”

She turned and walked on, her stride relaxed, unburdened. Aeneas watched her go, noticing how easily she moved through the space, how naturally the path seemed to open for her.

The attendant gestured politely. “This way, please.”

Aeneas followed. The path narrowed, not dramatically, just enough to suggest intention. He told himself he would catch up in a minute. These things always rejoined.

Behind them, the guide was already addressing a new group, her voice bright, familiar.

“Welcome,” she said. “You’re right on time.”

The garden continued its work, orderly and efficient.

VI