The Taming of Frankie Carrozza

The Revellers Reimagined

Charlie had gone to sleep that morning with dreams already waiting behind his eyelids. When he woke, both boys spent most of that afternoon in bed together. Plates and jugs and cutlery were stacked around as though they were building metallic and ceramic cities, reluctant to leave the sanctuary in which they'd created for long periods of time. Despite spending several hours together like this, they were comfortably quiet for most of them. With his chin resting on Frankie's breast, Charlie whittled away most of that silence by tracing his fingers over the tattoos on Carrozza's body. Although there were quite a few, they were scattered across his form like careless splashes of paint lashed by a feverish painter, doodles thoughtlessly doodled on the edges and corners of a sketchpad, or excess inklings and inkings from his heart spilling over onto his skin. He knew them all by heart now, these blotches of ink on his skin. They were essential and precious revelations of a heart laid bare, bravely showcased to the world—depictions which Charlie could now draw from memory even with his eyes closed as he read his body like pages in a book. Under the knuckles of his right hand, which had studied his own body in turn like fingers pressed to Braille, there were four symbols underneath each knobby bone: one for each member of the Revellers; a crown for Frankie on his index finger; a diamond rose for Seraphina on his middle one; an owl for Bethany Green on his ring finger; and the sock and buskin masks, the ancient symbols for comedy and tragedy, on his little finger for Trevor Hamilton. A black lion's paw was printed over his heart, just underneath the word freedom in Gaelic above his nipple. Two vivaciously coloured swallows swooped down over each of his clavicle bones. A large old sailing vessel was erected up his ribcage with its sails set. An open birdcage with a little robin soaring out was painted along his forearm, an outline of the map of the world glowing brightly above it, and a barcode was stamped into the groove of the other arm on the inner side of his elbow. A little black wing on each wrist and each ankle were identical quadruplets to the same four wings that Seraphina Rose had tattooed on the very same places on her own body, both of theirs placed over shimmering identical scars. His untranslatable and last words he kept safely tucked away inside the vault of his mind; all but one exception from the collector's precious collection, a German word tattooed directly under the beaks of the bright birds on his collarbones: waldeinsamkeit. A scintillating set of rosary beads dangled over his left wrist. Roman 5:8 shone in black on the inside of his other wrist. A beautiful copper compass gleamed on the inside of one bicep, a jukebox in memory of the beat generation on the other. A naked mermaid clung to the wreathed anchor that decorated the ribs that opposed the boat. However, Charlie's favourite piece of art was on his hipbone, a delicate and ominous piece that the talent of the hand had made look like a watercolour painting. The tattoo just about peeked over his navel and out of his jeans and underwear when shirtless like a comic strip. It was of the top half of a boy, cut off abruptly at his elbows and eye, though his body posed side view suggested that he was glancing towards the viewer—that is, hadn't the brow of his head not been severed just beneath his gaze. He was dressed in an Eton school shirt, a bouquet of roses held against the blazer shoulder facing the beholder. Another arm extended from midair on his midriff with a Zippo cigarette lighter clasped in the hand of the other bodiless person. There wasn't much colour to it aside from pink hues shading youth above his cheeks, just beneath his eyes, inside his ears, and around his nose, so that he appeared to be kissed by winter, forming lips like petals. Strokes of the pinkish shades were along the knuckles and the back of the hand clutching the bunch of flowers, a trickle of red blood streaming down his forearm from where the thorns of the roses cut into his fingers. Gentle peach slashes shone from the pistils and petals floating downwards towards the hair of Frankie's sex, a darker shade at the summit of the bundle from where a fire had been set to coil smoke by the extended hand of the unseen assailant, the root of his woes.
Eventually, Frankie broke their silently sworn truce—to not disrupt the seemingly everlasting harmony—by pulling his underwear back on and getting out of bed to brush his teeth over the sink. 'Next summer, we'll go to San Francisco,' he promised. 'We'll wear hot-pink bathrobes and be surrounded by golden fixtures like something out of the pages of Vogue. The byline will read: Francesco gets frisky in Francisco. Or something to that effect.'
'Mmmh,' Charlie answered, absent-mindedly entertaining Frankie's hundredth grand decision made that day. He sat cross-legged on the bed, eating toast and read the news about England, feeling as though he'd left that kingdom so very long ago to build his own. 'Don't think I don't know why you want to go to Fire Island, Carrozza. You dirty dog, you.' He arched his back and stretched out the activities of the night before like a feline, all the while looking out the window. Balancing his cup of tea in his hand, he bent off the bed to retrieve Frankie's mustard-coloured jumper. 'You'll wear this today, won't you?'
Frankie poked his head in, mouth frothing with toothpaste. He pointed his toothbrush at it. 'I gave that to you, did I not? Why do you want me to wear it?'
Charlie uttered some half-truth about how he admired how impressive he looked in it—kingly even, like royalty—but mainly he wanted to revitalise the strength of his scent on the garment. This was why he never wore it—that, and because he didn't think he could quite fill it as magnificently.
'To be sure, to be sure.' Frankie caught the jumper and tied the arms around his naked waist.
'Much obliged.' Charlie raised the cup to his mouth and paused. His head tilted sideways. 'Do you hear that?'
'Hear what?'
    'Music playing.'
Frankie's foamy face reappeared in the doorway. He listened intently, then smiled widely and knowingly. 'Go and have a look, will you?'
Once he'd frowned his confusion, Charlie quickly got dressed and left the room. As he slowly zigzagged through the corridors, "Moi Je Joue" by Brigitte Bardot played louder and louder the more he approached the foyer. As he passed the front door, he stopped to watch a white limousine pour away from the gravel and roll towards the garden gates. He entered into the living room, where the music was blaring from, just as the song changed to "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?" by Peter Sarstedt. A blonde girl stood with her back to him by the record player, covered in sparkling jewels. She was smoking a pastel-coloured cigarette, swilling a glass of dark liquid, and decked to the eyeballs in black Parisian fashion.
'Seraphina!' he cried. 'What are you doing here?'
The girl span around. 'Darling, it's November!' she exclaimed, confident that this completely answered his question. When he gaped at her still, she rolled her eyes. 'It's November, so everyone follows the Carrozzas to Malta.' Leaving a trail of smoke behind as she rushed towards him, her splashing green eyes widened when she threw her spare arm around him and kissed his cheeks, instantly engulfing him in a smog of citrus perfume and her fur coat. 'Darling, it has been ages!'
'It's been a fortnight.'
'Ages!' she reaffirmed. She stopped to scrutinise him from head to toe. 'You seem different in our time apart—more together, more mature, more yourself. The sort of self-version of themselves that everyone eventually becomes, one way or another.'
'How—how is Paris?' he stuttered.
'Positively smoked out, I'm sure.' She removed her fur coat, eyeing the high ceiling above to drink the place in again. 'Everywhere I leave, once I do, they all light cigarettes. Cousin!'
Charlie turned around to see Carrozza enter through the door.
'Cousin!' Frankie called, equally as enthusiastic once they hurried towards one another. They both instigated a hug, seemingly, until they retracted their arms and then embraced again. Then, the pair spat into their hands and shook them. They let go to take a step forward to step behind one another, then stepped to the side, then another one back so that they were facing each other again in their original positions. A series of hand gestures followed that ended with them knocking their hips together and shaking their bodies before they spat into one another's dry hand and shook them again to finish it.
Charlie blinked at them, dumbfounded. 'Need I ask?'
'Vintage childhood handshake.' Seraphina wiped her hands off on Frankie's jumper and shoved the handle of her teal tartan suitcase into his. 'Why are you two boys still in your pajamas? It's almost evening o'clock! Could someone be a dear and go get me another glass of wine? I'm absolutely gasping.'
Seraphina Rose had a surprising skill that she was exceptionally good at—a talent that she tried wholeheartedly to hide and deny, one unlike any of her others—and that was cooking. The domesticity of it utterly terrified her, that her hands could betray her and whip up something wholesome and familial despite her opposite outlook, so she applied the same disposition for experimentation to the craft as she did her Bohemian lifestyle.
'Me and Kip and the other girls got ridiculously high during a rather tasteful photoshoot near the canals in Amsterdam, as you do. I'm sure there will be evidence of that on the cover of L'Officiel when it's due out next month.' Sparkling and jingling like Christmas, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, she walked around a tray of spicy chorizo sausages and sprinkled them with spices and ingredients like a witch concocting a potion. 'I'd hired another agent while I was there in the Dam, but he told me that I ought to lose some weight—something he says to all the new girls in an attempt to sound professional, like he knows what he's doing, and to look like he's there for a reason other than to be a pervert, apparently.'
'Well?' Charlie jumped up onto the kitchen counter, squinting his eyes to keep his cigarette smoke out of them. 'What did you do?'
'Well, I lost some weight, didn't I?' Seraphina took a swig from the bottle of red wine that she was pouring over meat. 'I promptly fired the prick,' she elaborated. 'He made another girl so miserable about dieting that she only ate pages of Les Misérables. One day, I took the poor girl aside during one of her most catatonic meltdowns over not being skinny enough and I told her ... I said to Dagmara, I said that she was skinny, that she was positively covered in skin, therefore—' She froze up as she shoved the baking tray back into the oven. Her face suddenly faltered with horror as she looked down the corridor towards the front door, which they'd left open to cool the house down. 'Oh, shit! Fiddle me silly!'
'What?' Charlie slid off the counter and joined her by the doorway. 'What is it?'
'Christ on a bike, it's the Antichrist! Frankie!' Seraphina cried out. 'Frankie!'
Charlie stared out the front door as a shiny black Willys Americar gasser pulled up outside like a dwarfed hearse. A pale boy emerged from the driver's seat dressed in clothes as black as coal and sin and the vehicle, and an equally black rottweiler jumped out and followed the driver towards the front door. 'Who is that?' he demanded.
'FRANKIE!' Seraphina yelled again.
'What! What! What!' Frankie growled irritatedly as he slid on his socks into the kitchen. 'What's all this bellowing about, Serph? You look like you've seen a ghost.'
'You're not wrong,' she muttered. 'We're about to get as close to Death as one can possibly get without crossing over.'
'Why were you wailing like a banshee? Who died?' Frankie rushed to her side curiously. 'What are you gawking at?'
Seraphina nodded towards the door. 'The insufferable and insidious Trevor Hamilton.'
'Trevor Hamilton?' Charlie repeated, his eyes widening with recognition. 'Why's Trevor Hamilton here in Malta?'
'That omen of death is everywhere,' Seraphina spat. 'You can never outrun it.'
'Him and his parents are here for the season.' Frankie sighed, a queer look in his eye as he looked down the hall. 'That was their property that we saw on the way in here, up yonder on the hills—that odd looking building with the spire and belfry that looks remarkably like a gothic cathedral. Hamilton demanded that they purchased it, otherwise he'd inform Granny Hamilton just exactly what dear old mummy and daddy have been doing with the Sinclairs, the Pembertons, the Crowleys, the Hogarths, the Birtwistles, and a bowl of keys. They haven't been doing anything of the sort with other married couples, but Hamilton has a remarkable talent of bending the ear.'
As Kevin started to bark angrily, Charlie followed their stares towards the figure of the boy cutting a dark, lonely, romantic, and tragic image across the gravel as he approached the house like a plague come to claim the firstborn if blood was not on the door. He knew the boy's face well, everyone at Eton did: from his firm and protruding jaw, jutting out as though daring to be cuffed, to his wild, beady little metallic-grey eyes, as dark as the sea's most furious storms, and all of that projecting from a cadaverous complexion. As Charlie thought of it, he became instantly aware of how he was the anti-Frankie—yet, so like him in many other ways. His reputation was upheld as well. He was full of badness like him, but he added an even more darker element of criminal danger to his antics rather than the capricious playfulness that Frankie ruled with. There were two blatant words to describe Hamilton: crafty and sordid. Even though Frankie Carrozza wouldn't be perfectly suited as being one's conscience, had he and Hamilton shared the responsibility of being that, Frankie would be the side wearing the halo, whilst Hamilton donned the horns. They were both incredibly impulsive, yet Carrozza was at least reasonable to some extent. Seraphina was involved in that entangled relationship somewhere, the three a part of the same rose: one a flourishing leaf, one a coquettish petal, and Hamilton was the prickly thorn. Trevor had been suspended and punished so many times at Eton that, due to being a repeat offender, some suspected that he enjoyed every aspect of it—act and consequence, cause and effect. However, Eton was somehow powerless against Hamilton when it came to trying to press expulsion upon him, which they'd tried many times, walking him as far as the gallows but never quite reaching the block. This was rather baffling, especially since the school had very strong grounds to do so when it came to their stack of evidence against him from the documentation of his many crazed and elaborate acts of violence, vandalism, and even debauchery. It was soon believed that his imperviousness to severe punishment was rooted, possibly, to his relations with a duke, a judge, a renowned barrister, and members of the Cabinet. The whole of College heard whispers of how he'd set out on a corrupt quest to shatter every single rule established at Eton; and it was also rumoured that in doing so, he'd successfully broken more rules than what Eton even had in place. It was common knowledge that his records could fill the entire H section in a library and that the documentation of his endeavours filled his own designated drawer in the administration's office. Francesco was famous, whilst Trevor was infamous. Frankie was a glorious archangel, whereas Trevor was a wanton demon. Carrozza was a certain sterling calibre usually unfound, and Trevor was sinister sadism found unusual. Frankie steered his misdirection with mischief, but Trevor operated his own by malice.
There was one filthy rumour that was notorious through the halls, often excitedly whispered about upon spotting Trevor Hamilton. The tale involved Sebastian Phillips, once a popular boy at school. One morning, he had shouted something particularly unpleasant across the cobbles at Trevor to get a laugh out of his friends. Hamilton had fixed the boy with a very cold, very calculative, and very villainous stare, and then, surprisingly, continued on his way without a retort. That following weekend, a scandal spread of how Hamilton had seduced Sebastian and laid his back upon a table in the science classroom and, in wicked revenge, had gave the boy one single night of great pleasure—one that he was unlikely to find in his lifetime again, a sort of hellfire that burnt through the fibre of Sebastian's very being until religion and reluctance was lost in him. Despite the uncertainty of this being a true story, they spoke passionately about the dark rhapsody, the euphoric tears shed, the cry-out that could be heard throughout all the halls and fields, and the fire of Hamilton's vehemency given metaphorical life from the Bunsen burners. A week later, Phillips had been rendered into nothing more than an eager, pathetic sycophant, desperate to obtain Hamilton's attention as he followed him around everywhere. Although he wouldn't be touched a second time, he willingly left the fields for the theatre and joined Trevor Hamilton's legion of shrivelled fledglings, never to utter a bad word about his newfound friend again.
'Oh, bloody bugger!' Seraphina groaned in distaste. Looking from Trevor Hamilton, swinging a black cane side to side that was topped with the head of a silver wolf as he approached, and back towards Frankie to share a concerned look, she answered Charlie's puzzled expression: 'His family is friends with ours. We grew up with him, but we both grew to dislike him severely the more we got older and the eviler he got.' The dislike in her eyes was astounding once the dark phantom decked in black knocked the open door with the wolf head on the cane and grinned in at them, standing in the entrance like a shadow smeared in the wind. 'Are we letting him in?' she asked, running a hand through her long blonde hair as she fretted over what the evening might hold. 'After all, vampires do need an invitation to enter.'
'I dare say we must.' Frankie sighed, grabbing Kevin by his collar once he and the black rottweiler started to bark angrily at one another. 'I highly doubt that he has given up his tattletale ways, and I really don't want to be bored out of my skull listening to Elena harping on because we wouldn't let him in. God forbid, I think she actually enjoys him. Though she knows he has a proclivity for controversy, she said that she always found his talks witty and entertaining, that he's as bold sober as his mother is drunk.'
'I'm sure that whatever she and Hamilton spoke of over the years that left her speaking in his favour, I'd imagine he wasn't being bold so much as he was being reserved if it didn't give her cause to reach for her rosary beads.' Seraphina glowered down the hall. 'That boy is the Devil in a tailcoat.'
'Still, I'd prefer devilishness over tediousness any day, me.' Frankie shrugged innocently.
    'Fine.' Seraphina slammed the bottle down on the nearest table. 'I'm sure all the crucifixes in this house have probably already turned upside down anyway.'
'Isn't Trevor Hamilton a pyromaniac?' Charlie muttered nervously. 'Or so Eton says.'
'He's a disciple of general mania, so this house catching on fire and killing us all should be the least of our worries.' Seraphina snapped. 'And don't say his name aloud! The very mention of it, all the furniture in the house might start floating.'   
'Keep that Demon on its leash!' Frankie shouted.
'Demon, stay!' Hamilton commanded. When he put his heel over the threshold, the black dog stayed by the door. 'Good boy, Demon.' Once Hamilton had swaggered into the kitchen, his long black greatcoat flapping around him like bat wings, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together, gazing around at them all with steely eyes and a wicked grin—though, perhaps it was just his usual smile rather than one reserved for immoral use, but malice was found all the same at every corner of his devilish smirk. 'Frankie Cacrazy! Syphilina! What a sight! I'm not intruding, I hope? Room for one more for tea, perchance?'
'Hifalutin Hamilton, always a displeasure' Seraphina remarked. 'If you're staying for dinner, then we will go wash up and rejoin.'
When they returned to the table afterward, they returned and took their seats like commanders of various nations ready for battle—be it with wit, with armies, with swords, or with chess pieces. After he'd changed into a white cable-knitted Aran jumper made of Irish wool that he'd rolled the sleeves of up to his forearms, a pair of dark trousers that had braces dangling down his rump, and a tweed flat cap sitting on his head, Charlie was the first to arrive back at the long dining table. Trevor sat opposite and stared at him for the most uncomfortable amount of time, listless eyes scrutinising him, fingers sprawled across the side of his face and the tip of his middle finger resting on his bottom lip. Despite the candlelight and splendid decoration of the room, every ounce of Hamilton was sucked of colour so that he sat on his side of the table like a black-and-white film, wearing black jeans, black boots, a dark grey tunic, and a black greatcoat. The Teddy Boy rarely moved, but to sweep a cadaverously pale hand through ashen-coloured Teddy-Boy-inspired, wavy hair, or to fix his Teddy-boy clothes. There was a birthmark above his eye—two purplish dashes on either side of his eyebrow that made him look as though he'd recently been punched. He was an incongruous vulgarian in every regard, a firm believer in both Manichaeism and being contentious.
After the longest spell of silence, Hamilton finally asked flippantly, 'Are you a cousin, or something?'
'I ... I'm Charlie.'
'Never heard of it.' Trevor waved a dismissive hand.
Seraphina Rose returned at that moment to quell the tension. Her fur coat poured from her shoulders to puddle dreamily on the marble like a heap of snow, exposing the puffy silver dress, matching silver shoes, and pair of cherry-coloured tights that she wore underneath to sparkle like a fabulous chandelier. She had her blonde hair pinned up in a high and tight beehive, decorated superfluously with pearls and gems. 'Don't take anything he's said to you to heart, Charlie,' she encouraged, taking her seat at the head of the table. 'He is the damp sock on the foot of society.'
'Always full of compliments, this one.' Trevor stabbed a thumb at her. 'All we need to do now is wait for Frankie to complete the table.'
'No need.' Carrozza strode in to take his seat at the other end of the table. He'd dressed in skin-tight black jeans, his mustard-coloured jumper—to Charlie's delight—and a matching scarf tied around his head and through his curls to crown his head with marmalade royalty. 'Never fear, I am here.'
Dinner was an intense affair. To Charlie, it felt as though they were dining with a known serial killer. The atmosphere of the sticky situation was thick enough to thrum. Being so close to the pale boy made him unsettled and his skin crawl, feeling naked and vulnerable underneath the look of sheer crazed intelligence constantly lingering in the third boy's piercing grey gaze. Hamilton had proposed that they had their meal out on the patio as it would be much more delightfully intimate, but Seraphina rejected this and demanded that they put a long table between them since he couldn't settle for several countries betwixt. As candlelight melted the shadows, there were long periods of silence that were startled only by the clinking of their plates, cutlery, and glasses, by "Sunrise, Sunset" by Perry Como playing in the parlour, or by Hamilton mentioning Arthur Rimbaud and Pavlovian conditioning. There was an even heavier hush that settled when Seraphina had left for a moment to return from the cellar with another bottle of red wine. Upon her return, she poured three generous measures into three glasses and only a tittle into Trevor's. With a little smirk on her lip, thoroughly satisfied with her immaturity, she set the bottle back down just out of reach of Trevor's grasp.
Trevor stood so as to reach the bottle. When he'd poured himself a larger amount, he tapped his glass sharply with a knife as though to propose a toast. 'Before we begin, we ought to say disgrace.'
'Kill me now,' Seraphina groaned.
'Father, we are coping with an empty seat at our table.' Trevor glanced down between his feet to address below, the candlelight glancing off his wine glass to cut a shard of harsh light over his dark eyes. 'Be with the one we are without today, and help us to trust in Your timing, purpose, and great love for us all. As we miss her today, we pray for Your blessing over her and us and the space in between now and when we see them next. Forgive us for taking that simple joy for granted, and bless this food to fuel our bodies forward into Your will for our lives ahead. We pray that we will be energised and be able to work for the glory of Your Kingdom. In Lucifer's name, we pray. Amen.'
'I thought you'd finished with that satanic schtick when you were fourteen-years-old.' Seraphina tutted. 'Get on with it.'
'It's still humorous.' Trevor shrugged his shoulders. When she reached out for her glass and plate, he proceeded to say several other variations of disgrace to stop her, forcing her to slump back on her seat, fold her arms, and roll her eyes. On his third attempt to say another, she lunged forward, drained her glass, and threw the dregs of it into his face to shut him up. He wiped his eyes with a napkin very slowly. From his pocket, he then retrieved a box and slid off the lid to unveil a heap of white communion wafers. 'The body of Beelzebub, which has fallen for you.'
'I'm not putting that in my mouth if it's consecrated.' Seraphina pointed at the sacramental bread. 'The Lord knows I've given Him enough excuses to lump me together with you in Hell.'
Frankie eyed the altar bread in Trevor's colourless fingertips suspiciously. 'These theatrics of his will pass all the more quicker if we just humour him.'
Trevor went around the table. Once he held each one up, they opened their mouths for him. When he reached Charlie, he said for the fourth time, 'The body of Beelzebub.'
'Amen,' Charlie said after Hamilton laid the wafer on his tongue. It stuck immediately to the roof of his mouth once he closed it.
As Trevor reclaimed his seat, Frankie fidgeted with his cutlery and said, 'Have you been in Malta long, Hamilton?'
'He probably blew in with that storm did last night,' Seraphina muttered. 'Or did someone say your name three times and accidentally summon you here?'
'Actually, I was in Poland until just this morning,' he responded, throwing the hem of his greatcoat over his crossed knees. 'I swear, there was so much cocaine, you could've mistaken it for the Alps.'
'My God, you really would snort the white outline they'll eventually draw around your body, wouldn't you?' Seraphina rolled her eyes.
Three of them ate their dinner in silence, sharing shifty looks, but Hamilton talked on and on—of Rembrandt, of the dancing plague of 1518, of how a doctor performed an amputation within twenty-five seconds in 1847 and operated so quickly that he accidentally amputated his assistant's fingers, too, causing both later to die of sepsis and for a spectator to reportedly die in shock, resulting in the only known procedure with a 300% mortality rate.
'I'd like to say that that was scrumptious, but it wasn't your finest.' Trevor pushed his plate away and took a long sip of deep crimson. He smacked his lips, bruised red with wine, the colour causing his pallid cheeks to glow white so that he resembled a feasting vampire. 'Pray tell, did you cook those sausages with your skin temperature, Imogen? If Jesus was served this at the last supper, he'd have betrayed himself.'
'Don't call me Imogen,' said Seraphina.
'Then what should I call you?'
'Your Grace,' she replied.
'Do you mind if I smoke?' he asked.
'Hell, burn for all I care,' Seraphina muttered.
'What a smashing evening for it.' Trevor slouched back in his chair and slung an arm over the back of it. He lit a thin black cigar and used his plate as an ashtray, immediately putting Frankie and Charlie off their food. When he shoved his sleeves back to keep the lit end from burning them, Charlie spied the familiar tattoos of the little black wings and scars on the corners of both his wan wrists. Something about the thin black cigar in his hand retrieved a memory, too, and Charlie remembered seeing the stub of one floating inside a glass in Seraphina's hotel room when he'd met her again back in September—meaning that Trevor Hamilton was the first person she'd reunited with upon her return to Eton. 'This little soirée has me feeling so sentimental, so nostalgic. The old gang all back together again.' He stabbed the flame of his cigar at Seraphina and Frankie. 'Mind you, without Bethany Green here with us, it doesn't feel right, does it? The feel of an empty chair, a ghostly space, a seeping wound unplugged is so profound. You can be the new Beth, Chance, like a plaster over a knife wound.'
'Or, you know'—Charlie eyed the amber end of the cigar directed at him as it danced beside the other boy's sneer—'I could just be Charlie.'
'You could be,' said Trevor darkly. 'But that isn't true, New Beth. She gave the gang divinity embodied—'
Having had enough, Seraphina groaned heavily and slammed her wine glass down. 'What gang, Trevor? Tell me, what gang? The Revellers? That gang disbanded aeons ago. Keep up!'
'Just because Beth is no longer here—'
'Keep her name out of your mouth.' Seraphina aimed her fork at him. 'She might still be here if it wasn't for you, you vicissitude; if it wasn't for us—' When she noticed that she was getting flustered, Seraphina recomposed herself and fixed the tablecloth. 'The Revellers are no more.'
'You know perfectly well that our parting ways wasn't my doing,' Trevor challenged. 'Beth and that Max Mayvolu boy left by their own free will, and—'
'Enough, Hamilton!' Frankie grunted sternly. He had donned an expression that Charlie hadn't seen him wear before, but had witnessed it in his own father's face at times of great testing upon his patience when he was a child. The taut muscle clenched and embedded a deep depression in his jaw, exhibiting an unwavering warning so that he appeared as the ferocious lion protecting his pack against the hyenas and the wolf. 'Enough.'
'I joke, I jest! Just a bit of light entertainment for the evening.' Trevor laughed heartily—had there been an organ available inside to construct such a chortle—and leaned back from the debate. 'What fine days they were,' he said, coiling a snake of smoke towards the ceiling and carelessly flicking his ash on the floor. He offered Frankie one of his thin black cigars that looked like skinny leeches and, hesitantly, he accepted one. 'And even finer nights. Do you remember the night of the four hearses? What about that American boy with the flashy red car? When I remember him, I often recall Bethany Green in his red Letterman jacket alongside the memory, wearing matching red Converse shoes and covered in blood. Or how about that Halloween party at that dilapidated manor in the middle of the woods? Or The Dying and the Dining of the Revellers? Now, that was a fantastic performance if I do say so myself. Oh, how I long to go back to Paris again.'
'That was a long time ago,' Frankie muttered inaudibly.
'Is it? Even now, as we four sit in this very room, I'm reminded of the time another similar set of four friends sat inside a dingy pub in Amsterdam as the day broke, subdued sunlight whispering through the windows as we smoked and laughed and drank around a table until nightfall again. Only absence makes a difference out of yesteryears and yesterdays.' Hamilton abruptly burst into laughter, a raspy chuckle rolling in his chest like a cough. 'Do you—do you remember that time I bought that ice-cream van?'
'An ice-cream van?' Charlie coughed and leaned forward to set the wine glass back onto the table. 'Of all the things that you've just listed, that one sounds rather harmless for someone who seems to rather enjoy a bit of wrongdoing.'
'Don't be so easily fooled by appearances.' Frankie inclined his head above the hand holding the cigar and rested his elbow on the tabletop. 'He used it to sell illicit substances to Etonians from and mulcted the lot of them all when his parents cut him off for a month.'
'Admit that it was a marvellous plan. Didn't get caught, did I?' Hamilton redirected his dark gaze towards Seraphina. 'I heard that you're seeing a Persian man, is that true?'
'It was. And I had been right up until the other night when he flew out to see me in Holland. What's it to you?' She set her plate to one side and put her glass of wine to her mouth, ready for the eristic boy. 'Mind you, I'd gone off him like sour milk as soon as his toenail scratched my leg in bed. When making love, there is no place for the slightest mishap or wrong movement that isn't inspired by passion. It all has to be as aesthetically pleasing as a painting, and such things as fumblings are the acts of a novice, don't you think?'
'I think that another man has been cast aside by Imogen Rose as thoughtlessly as she did the contraception wrapper,' Trevor muttered as he lit another one of his smelly cigars.
She glanced at him across the rim of her glass and narrowed her eyes, daring him to challenge her. 'And tell me, what is so wrong with a woman enjoying the act of lovemaking just as much as any man does? What is so unforgivable about her being blessed with the ability to throw him aside when he doesn't meet her requirements just as many men have done before without being lambasted? If she's solely after pleasure and not a diamond ring, then she ought to take as much as any man has.' Seraphina tapped a pastel-coloured cigarette out of her box and lit it. 'Nobody has any right to tell another how to live—albeit, unless blood has been spilled, negligence has been committed, or possession has been taken. She may do and choose as she pleases. Men only got to the front and throne of ruling this world because women were much too busy dusting away and cleaning up their mistakes, their imperfections, their infidelities, and their grave mishaps that they've left behind—and have done so from cave to castle, from womb to tomb. Do you know what that means, Hamilton? That means that all those men in that godforsaken Cabinet that you admire so wholeheartedly are just toddlers running through the halls, smearing their messes along the walls for their mothers and sisters and daughters and nieces and wives to wash. Now, don't mishear me: I do not claim that women are perfect creatures. But when wrong, we are ostracised. There has always been an imbalance, a disparity that will remain for only God knows how long. I've never given a hoot what society and media thought of me, but this was something Bethany Green had always struggled with: to be pure of heart, as the world demanded her to be, and to be as wild as hers longed to be. Take Susan B. Anthony, for example: in 1872, she broke the law by voting. And even though she had been found guilty, the courts decided to go easy on her by not sending her to jail simply because she was female. As any admirable suffragette, Anthony spat in the face of special treatment. Wanting to be treated and charged with a thought given to gender equality, Susan demanded that she be tried and sent to jail just like any other man convicted. We women are either ignored or punished severely; there is hardly ever any happy medium.' When Trevor Hamilton made motions to interrupt her, she parried him into silence with a raised finger. 'If these silly little men didn't consider her a threat, then they wouldn't have waged a war against women for all these centuries. He brandished her with the mark of a witch to chauvinistically eradicate rebellion and categorically disempower her in fear of her rise—for he fears the laughter from her lips, and she fears her death in his hands. Like all those little swots who've never gotten a single date in school, men feel entitled to a woman without bothering to put in the work. They insist that Eve took the very first bite out of the apple, and our sex has been paying for her sin ever since. Yes, I, too, can see it as a sport, because I've come to realise that I have even more, even bigger gonads than any male that I have ever encountered. For in the end, they are all still just boys playing conkers and rarely is there ever a true man from your ilk—my father, the exception—which is why I'll never settle for a standard anything less than my equal. It is high time that man tasted a spoonful of his own medicine—or, rather, in your case, those little perky pills you swallow.'
'If I didn't know you, Imogen, I'd simply think that you were only a pagan girl seeking power through Bohemian, Hellenistic, and hedonistic living.' Trevor leaned forward threateningly, showing his willingness to engage in debate as he brandished his cigarette at her. 'Phallic envy, that's what you have.'
'Good God, Trevor, that's a joke!' Seraphina shifted forward also, rising to the challenge with her wine circling in her glass. 'I don't have phallic envy, you Freudian's pet. I already get enough of it whenever I wish. Like any clever girl, when man-made media made beauty a girl's best asset, we turned it into a weapon. Those desperate orifices of yours couldn't keep up, you snivelling, pus-gargling, devious little bat creature sneezed out of the nether realms of Hell!'
Rather than look offended by her outburst, Trevor laughed even more, which, Charlie sensed, only infuriated her. 'You were singing a very different tune not so long ago.' Trevor smirked as he bent forward to refill his glass. 'When it was my phallic—'
'Leave the past behind in its coffin, Hamilton. It's been a long time since that girl with less faith in her morality has existed—the things that hair dye and glitz and glamour can achieve! I was an entirely different person back then, back when I was subdued by society from recognising my own potential. I no longer need to drink myself into many a stupor to forget it because I barely remember it. I suggest you do the same. You repulse, revolt, and repel me, Hamilton.' Seraphina crossed her legs and rolled her eyes. 'I just simply cannot settle on a single verb strong enough to convey my abhorrent feelings towards you.'
Charlie glanced between them both. For a second, he wondered how anyone with eyes and ears could find Trevor Hamilton appealing—even with alcohol and drugs in their blood. Although he wasn't at all hideous, he did reek of seedy and deplorable behaviour. Perhaps that's it, he thought. Maybe it's because of that: there has always been something so alluring about things of and in a frightfully dark nature, and maybe it's their ability to let you truly see your own in full.
'Oh, if I had a dead body for every time I'd heard that!' Trevor murmured, carelessly proceeding to poke at the sleeping beast behind the flimsy cage. 'You once praised my passion, Rose.'
'Now, I would sooner praise your death,' she muttered, snapping the bottle from his hand and filling her own glass up to the brim. 'And if a woman has a pair of court shoes, you'd better believe that she has a felony shoe, too. Keep that up and you'll be reduced down to a single atom by the time I'm through with you, you grim ghoul.'
'Have you ever spoken as passionately as this about another man, I wonder? I highly doubt it.' He grinned. 'And that isn't how I'll go. If I die—'
'Does it worry anyone else that he said "if"?' Seraphina glanced around the room.
'I already have it planned: at my funeral, a man with a facial scar will look over my coffin and whisper, "I should've been the one to finally take you out," or, alternatively, "They won't get away with this. I'm going to finish what you started, old friend." So, I think you'll find that I'll be the one orchestrating how my end comes, thank you very much.'
'If it's the last thing I do, I will see you hanged!' she snarled. When he took a dog-eared copy of Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller from his coat pocket and threw it onto the table to relieve it of the weight, she said, 'You were born wrong, Hamilton. I'm sure even your own mother knows that.' She crossed her arms and smiled glibly, clinking her perfectly manicured nails against her wine glass. With her eyes focused on Hamilton, she spoke to Charlie: 'Did you know that when Trevor was a child, he made his mother inadvertently read Hell House by Richard Matheson? When she'd found him reading it at night, he said he needed to because it was for a school book report. When his mother took it from him, she decided to read it first and said that it was the most evil book she had ever read. So evil, in fact, that she couldn't finish it. Instead, she burnt it in the fireplace. Trevor went out and bought another copy, singed the edges with a lighter, and left it on the nightstand by her bed. He laughed for days when he heard her scream and faint later that night.'
'That book was incredibly cathartic,' Trevor commented.
'Your mother should've put you in a bathtub full of holy water and pages torn from the Bible, with a priest taught the Latin tongue in attendance to prepare to exorcise you, you leviathan,' Seraphina sneered. 'You really are a sacrilegious plague, Hamilton, returning over and over again.'
'You really think they haven't tried before? A true waste of their efforts, but ever so humorous to watch unfold,' he replied. 'Who knows? I might've rotated my head all the way around as quickly as all the men who've swiftly left you, Rose.'
She glared at him. 'You degenerate, depraved decadence—'
'Please, would you two just try to be civilised?' Frankie sternly said, rubbing his temples.
'Fine,' Seraphina muttered. 'Have you ever been to Costa Brava, Hamilton?'
'No.'
'You should go there.'
'Why?'
'Because it isn't anywhere near me right now.'
Charlie tugged his collar. 'Is anybody else really warm?'
'Er ... no.' Frankie glanced at him. 'Actually, a little.'
As all the muscles inside his body started to clench tight, Charlie began to rub his thighs aggressively and blowing out puffs of air. 'I'm beginning to feel a bit ... odd.'
Frankie shared a nervous look with Seraphina. He quickly glanced at Trevor, then looked back at Charlie and said, 'Hamilton, what exactly was inside those communion wafers?'
'Holiness!' He laughed, clapping his hands together and smiling subtly like a pantomime villain. In the distance, Charlie thought he could just about hear the faint boos of the audience. 'Just a little something to resurrect the Revellers from these dusty vestiges that remains to their full glory.'
The edges of Charlie's peripheral vision began to blur, but his hand looked clearer than ever before when he lifted it up to eye-level. He pressed it to his face, astounded by the sensation: he felt like a new-born baby feeling touch for the very first time. Groggily, he lifted his head and looked to Trevor. 'Did you ... did you poison us?'
Trevor laughed. 'That's circumstantial.'
Seraphina froze. 'No, he drugged us with LSD.'
'He WHAT?' Charlie cried.
'Damn you, Hamilton!' Carrozza shouted angrily. 'This is Camden all over again!' Frankie stood up and pushed himself forcefully from the table, hard enough to cause it to clatter, and strode around the table to sit beside Charlie. When he touched his thigh in concern, it rippled sensuous pulses throughout his body like a pebble plopping into a lake. 'Don't panic, Charlie. It'll only make the trip worse. Just ride it out.'
'What, has the boy never taken acid before?' Trevor frowned.
'Oh, yes, Hamilton, like it's a common practice!' Seraphina sniped sarcastically.
'Then what's he doing hanging around with you lot?' he retorted.
Charlie stood and started to pace, running hands over his heart and through his hair. 'I—I'm starting to freak out a bit.'
'Quick, you two, talk about something else.' Frankie looked to the others for support. 'Talk about ... talk about capitalism. Compared to this, capitalism is really fucking scary, mate, because it will literally commodify anything. It commodifies the rebellion culture that is supposed to strike against the system, but capitalism turns it into "punk rock". It commodifies spiritually to make you buy self-help books that teaches you to stay away from capitalism. It commodifies minimalism and makes you buy things to maintain your minimalistic aesthetic. It commodifies global warming, climate change being one of the deadliest consequences of capitalism itself, and guilts you into buying products free of ozone-depleting chemicals. It commodifies itself and creates the idea that vanity is fashionable! Honestly, it will eat everything up like a hungry monster—'
'What's going to happen?' Charlie asked. Now that he was feeling a bit more settled, he sat back down. 'What am I going to feel like?'
'Well, it has just kicked in, so you'll have to give it another minute or two for the hallucinogenics to take effect,' Trevor said calmly. He'd taken a vinyl from his coat and put on "Radagacuca" by Brainticket on the player. 'Very soon, reality is going to bleed away and everything is going to get a little more groovy, a little more funky, and a little more colourful.'
'You son of a bit—' Charlie tried to stand and raise a fist, but his hand left a trail of several clones of it behind like a centipede before time caught up with it and they all spilled back into one balled fist. 'Wow.'
'Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride,' Hamilton commanded. 'Let's all just stay put and take a trip away somewhere together.'
Charlie followed the others into the living room. Frankie and Seraphina stopped him by the technicoloured panels of glass as soon as they entered. They were talking to him, asking him something, but their voices were muffled and he was much too busy wondering if the wall full of coloured panels of glass had always been there or if it was a hallucination. Frankie tapped panes with his fingers like piano keys and he saw the sounds of it spring off them in the same psychedelic colours as the glass, like pebbles skipping across a pond surface and splashing up water. Fascinated, Charlie watched as the wall of various colours began to twist and churn like a kaleidoscope. Seraphina started to laugh at him, bathed in a beautiful pink hue that glowed from the wall beside her. Charlie laughed, too. She tugged at Frankie and they walked away from him. "Radagacuca" by Brainticket was playing louder now as he took a seat.
'How are you feeling, New Beth?' Trevor asked. He was standing by the wall of vinyl records, smoking a cigarette and sipping on gin.
Charlie sat down on an armchair. As the song played, he listened to the sounds of English trees creeping up the windows. When he looked to them, dark shadows of leafy branches crawled across the panes. Five minutes later, he replied, 'I feel very mellow.'
'I believe biblical beings revisit the world in various forms over the centuries. The Devil was the King of Babylon for many decades,' Trevor theorised sometime later, swaying to the music. 'And Jesus Christ was the first chancellor of Oxford when he established it. Mary, of course, returned as Joan of Arc.'
'There's something behind here.' Frankie was standing on the arm of the sofa, pulling at the corner of the wallpaper. When he'd gotten a good grip of it, he pulled it down diagonally and tore the wall away. What each of them saw behind the wide tear varied from each perspective—Seraphina saw a tunnel into a cityscape that was lit up like galaxies, Charlie saw a rip in reality that fractured existence, and Trevor saw only a veil between life and death. Frankie stumbled off the sofa and stepped back.
'What do you see, Frankie?' Trevor asked.
'Beth,' he confessed. 'Don't you see Beth? She's behind the window of that snow-laden cottage, reading a book by the fireplace.'
'She always was the snowbird,' Hamilton commented.
The name stirred in the room, altering something in the very air like a beautifully poignant phantom that could only be summoned from the negligent mentions of a dearly departed or a devil in disguise that had been invited in to haunt the halls. The name fleeted in the corner of the eyes, drifting through the hallways like a ghost—not seen, but heard. They were each a fragment of the same rose: Frankie, a vigorous leaf, Seraphina, a deft petal, Hamilton was the barbed thorn, and this Bethany Green seemed to be the stem that kept them all together.
    Charlie's curiosity was seeping in paranoia. He waited until Seraphina sat on his lap and dangled her legs over the armrest. 'Who is Bethany Green?' he asked her quietly. 'Trevor said—'
'Never listen to a single word that charlatan says. His mouth is a cesspool of poison.' She slid her hand underneath his chin and gripped it hard until her rings dug into his soft flesh. 'Beth is—sorry, Beth was a very dear friend of ours from very long ago ... up until not so long ago. She was my best friend, one of our most favourite people in all the world, one of the purest humans to ever exist, one of the remarkable loves of my life, and one of its greatest tragedies. She was like a sister to me. But she is gone now, sweet soul. Lost to me and ...'
'I'm sorry,' whispered Charlie. He wanted to ask about her more, to ask how she died, to ask how she lived, but he thought better of it when Seraphina's anguished eyes filled with tears as she looked towards the tear on the wall. Instead, he said, 'Seraphina, I'm so sorry for your loss.'
"Girls Just Want To Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper was repeated to answer her sudden demands that it deserved a replay. Instantly expunged of her sorrows—or, rather, ignoring them—Seraphina ran her hand through her blonde hair to release it from their pins, her fur coat hanging off one bared shoulder. She rested her head against Charlie's shoulder and they spoke of silly things—of how the walls looked like they were breathing, of how thick the red haze was in the room, of the lava lamp in the corner that made them think of kissing. Every song played had a profound effect on him, both the happy and the sad: they filled his entire sentience to stir his very soul, carrying him into an acidic transcendence until his heart throbbed in his ears like a blaring radio.
'This is what it's all about!' Frankie shouted. He was holding his mother's tennis racket and pretending to play it as if he was jamming on a guitar, thrusting his groin back and forth. He had his eyes closed, biting his bottom lip as his fingers strummed to the music and spectrums from a disco ball swilled across the walls and over their bodies. 'It's all about forgetting about the clock, lads, because we're much too young to worry about it ever stopping anyway! Wakey, wakey, boys and girls! We're the Revellers who ride at midnight, we who lived as everyone else just got old. And what a victory! For we were the kids who believed in rock and roll, and I know—well, for me—that those memories will live on and never grow old!'
'And you have done your devoir right, good sir!' Seraphina downed a wine glass of water. 'See? That's how you should talk, Charlie. How has your time here been?'
'Pleasant,' Charlie answered dreamily. Though she spoke of location, he believed, judging by her knowing smirk, that she meant his time with Frankie and what might've transpired between them.
'Pleasant?' she cried incredulously, her hands flying up into the air theatrically like departing doves. 'We're talking about—about Malta, Charlie, not the bloody ballet! You ought to be more artsy with your words, Charlie. Be more passionate. Would it really kill you to apply the same talent that's in your hand to your tongue? It should enthral you to use all the great, grand, and spectacular words that love—' she quickly stopped and eyed the other boys—'that love for living should conjure out of your little rambunctious, besotted heart like poetry already written there.'
When Trevor poured four copper substances from a glass decanter and handed one to each of the partygoers, he raised his own up and toasted: 'To death and to the evermore avoidance of it.'
Frankie raised his own glass. 'To life and forever revelling in it.'
'To love and laughter and may we always have time for both' Seraphina downed the substance to race Trevor.
To dying in another's arms, Charlie thought, locking eyes with Frankie as they both sank their own, and to why I had to try it.
As cigarette smoke choked the hazy room, they had long conversations—about life and death and the meaning of it all, about evolution and spirituality, about the end of good music, about the magic of youth and the wisdom of old age. They spoke of fairy tales, the corrosion of English sentiment, and the poignant nostalgia found in the rustic countryside. They voiced their concerns on the end of frolicsome indulgence in fields of green and barley, of the next generations due to come behind soon, and wondered if anyone else would ever live how they had lived again. They talked rather heatedly about conspiracies, of what sort of food they'd like to eat right now, of how, sadly, there were no more wild horses roaming about unfenced fields, and expanded on their sordid activities during a game of I Never—which Charlie was certain was a ploy of Seraphina's to suss what had happened the night before between the two boys. For the very first time in his life, Charlie found himself mentioning something he'd forgotten entirely: a green toy boat that he'd set in the sea during a holiday in Jersey when he was eight years old and how he often believed that it would return to him from its long voyage one day, bobbing along the coast of some other beach years later to be moored to him again. They swore to remain young right into old age, promising to grasp a tight hold upon their youth, and if they could not retain it forever, then they would at least keep it for as long as they could. Despite having a constant disposition for mortal turpitude, Trevor Hamilton never said another noxious thing; he often rolled his eyes or tutted at many things they said, but most of the time he said rather interesting things that made one want to listen to the next thing he had to say. Fascinated, Charlie listened intently as the three of them spoke of some friends they've made along the way, across the lands, and over the years—boys with dark Cuban hair and handsome Jewish features, girls who wore beautiful sundresses and sunglasses at night and spoke mainly about postmodernism and avant-garde art, sailors in leather who told them about their time at sea in the summers, and people who wore only black garments, smoked expensive cigarettes, drank boxed and bottled wine, and spoke openly about rebellion—and found himself becoming envious over how much they'd lived despite not being alive for very long.
'What was it that Swahz said to you again that made us howl so?' Trevor called to Frankie.
'Who?' he asked.
'Swahz! Oh, you remember Jacques-Claude François!'
'Oh, I remember him!' Seraphina exclaimed, looking to Frankie. 'You're bound to remember him! Oh, you do! Enchanté!' she cried, adopting a guttural accent and kissing both of his cheeks. 'Remember?'
'Oh, yes!' Frankie shouted, his languid eyes brightening with energy and recognition. 'He said that I gutted the French language with a cheeky smile and if only Death was so kind and handsome when he took away.'
'That's it!' Hamilton laughed and slapped his knees. 'He was a delight.'
When the smoke in the room became too unbearable, Charlie followed Frankie outside for a breath of fresh air. They sipped on water or beer, smoked a cigarette, and smiled at each under the sheltered patio. As they stood out in the cool air and looked at the sky in a moment of peace together, far from the hectic rush of the party, the muffled music playing from the room inside produced an incredibly calming effect.
'What are you seeing now?' Frankie smirked.
'Just the grass dancing,' he answered, aware that there was no breeze to stir it in the warm night. 'But a minute ago, when you said you were going outside for a smoke, I saw this golden line of light come out of your chest and stretch outside like a trail, like intention given a shape like an entity, and then you got up off your seat and it was as if you were following it outside. It was insane—'
Frankie lunged forward to grab Charlie's back and pull his body close to his, forcefully enough to almost lift him off his feet. It dishevelled his jumper upwards and warm fingers slid under to press against the bared skin of his spine. When his tongue plunged into his mouth, Charlie kissed him back just as enthusiastically. The kiss and the drug broke them apart into something transcendental and cosmic, shattering their atoms into something as bright and celestial as souls in their pure and raw form. After a minute or so, whilst their atoms reformed into terrestrial beings, Frankie slipped out of him and grazed his head against his in yearning. 'I can't stand it. I want you,' he whispered. 'I feel so delirious with desire, I almost wish those other two weren't here so that we could f—'
'I can't listen to him for a moment longer on my own!' Seraphina barged outside, forcing Frankie to slowly relinquish Charlie, his fingers lingering briefly on his wrist. 'He won't shut up about the Big Bang theory, some scientific notion of how the universe all began.' She stopped and stared at them with smiling eyes. All the while she spoke, Carrozza's drunken, drugged, and solemn eyes never left Chance. 'What's going on out here?'
'Nothing,' said Charlie, which was, unfortunately, the truth. He became very conscious of Frankie's somber staring. He understood that desire Frankie had spoke of before she'd interrupted them—he smelled amazing; the alcohol and smoke mingled with his natural scent and cologne, making him physically ache with hunger for his body. 'What's Hamilton saying?'
'Nothing interesting, of course,' she responded as she lit her own cigarette. When Frankie swayed forward drunkenly and pecked him clumsily near the mouth, both she and Charlie ignored him. 'He reckons that some scientific statistics determine a theory that there are approximately six versions of every person out there in the world somewhere who look exactly like them. Six versions of yours truly, he reckons!' Seraphina said, gazing off towards the stars. 'I'd hunt and fight and kill each and every alternative version of me if that was the case. There can only be one.'
Frankie took Seraphina's cigarette from her fingers and inhaled a smoky mouthful. As he exhaled, he groggily said, 'If it's true, I'd bed them all.'
'I highly doubt that any other copy from that supposed dozen would say either of those responses, which is why I think that not only did your replies uniquely epitomise the pair of you, but also make it extremely clear that there is only one original even if it's true.' He laughed as he sat down on the steps. 'You're a strange bunch of Roses.'
'That couldn't be any closer to the truth.' Seraphina sat down beside him, wrapping an arm around her knees and sucking in on her cigarette again. 'And you've only met a rather small bouquet. Just wait until you meet Georgia. Or Marigold. Or Tristian. Atticus. Benjamin. Theodore. Montgomery. Augustine. Bartholomew. Alexander. Tennyson. Maximilian. Randolf. Solomon. Sebastian. Gwendolyn. Lawrence. Mirabella. Aballach. Zenobia. Cornelius. Leonardo. Or Amaryllis, Endellion, or Haverlee. Mind you, that's still only a handful of Roses plucked from our garden. No idea why, but something in the blood makes for such eccentric creatures.'
'So, in theory, we are all accidentally made up of stars and stardust.' Frankie sat down behind Charlie, putting his legs on either side of his and cupping his elbows with his hands. 'That's basically what Hamilton's preaching. If you think about it, it seems that we are the universe's one big, hefty prom night baby. We are the starry children.'
'I don't like to dwell on what lies beyond the stratosphere. I find it all tiresome and dire and gloomy.' Seraphina looked skyward pensively. 'Up there might as well be the insides of an ashtray for all I care.'
'But space is infinite!'' Charlie suddenly cried, as if he was prematurely objecting to a disagreeable reply to this announcement that he had not yet received. 'There are no walls! It's so astonishingly astounding, so mind-boggling! There are no walls! Why aren't news reporters mentioning that little fact by frantically screaming it over their desks every morning? Why has nobody lost their minds from staring up into the bejeweled graveyard, glittering amongst that dark oblivion? It runs on for infinity! There are no walls; therefore, there is no end!'
'Alright.' Frankie hoisted him up onto his feet by the elbows. 'Take yourself for a walk to distract your mind.'
'You do understand, too, don't you, Frankie? That there are no walls? Where does it all end? Don't you think it frightening and confusing?' Charlie stopped and pushed the side of his body against his to prevent him from walking further until he got a reply. His head was reeling from the LSD, the warm night cooling his equally pale and flushed cheeks. 'Is this stuff making anybody else get random waves of nausea from time to time? I'm worried I might suddenly vomit up my dinner and make a complete and utter fool of myself in front of your very chic friends.'
'Never worry.' Frankie laughed, coaxing him into the garden and passed the marble statues. 'If you happen to, I'll stick my fingers down my own throat and do the same to distract them.'
'You would do that? You would fall on your sword for me?' Startled, Charlie stopped again. 'That might just be the most romantic thing I've ever heard.'
Frankie urged him on. 'And that might just be the most saddest thing that I've ever heard.'
As the acid in their blood made vividly colourful swirls wiggle from the bushes and trees like fungus-like cracks in reality, they stood in the centre of the garden and gazed at the stars. As Frankie pointed out the constellations, he told their tales and taught him their names. When Charlie leaned in close to him to lift his head near his face and follow his finger, Frankie took the opportunity that this curiousness and attentiveness offered to quickly kiss his cheek each time he looked, an artful trick to get him nearer that Charlie pretended to fall for over and over again. Intuitively sensing their desire to be alone, Seraphina returned inside to keep Trevor at bay in the living room.
The two boys lay down on the grass and gazed behind the dark heavens, out into the bright and psychedelic cosmos beyond them. For Charlie, resting his head was a godsend as the world instantly ceased spinning so uncontrollably, and he was no longer so irrationally fearful of being thrown from the earth to tumble up into that ominous, starry darkness. At peace, he listened to the other boy speak evangelically, for what felt like an eternity, as they faced infinity ahead. He spoke of the bravery of stars, of how their lights shined on so brightly, leaving a legacy behind that carried on endlessly—even after their deaths.
'Are these really stars we're seeing now, or are we just sharing the same starry trip?' Charlie asked.
'I suppose we'll never know.' Frankie chuckled heartily. He put his hands behind his head, and whispered, 'God, I want to go and go and go until even the stars look unfamiliar.'
Who cares if this is an illusion, right? Charlie thought as he looked to him, determined to remember how he looked now—on the grass, in the moonlight, how he shivered and shone. I know that time is going to take me. I know that day is going to come for you, too. But here's to feeling fucking awesome and intrinsically alive right now so that we can say that we did when we're done. He looked to the stars again. 'Frankie?' He sighed dreamily.
'Yes, Charlie?' his reply came hoarsely, the faint words falling between as he lay close by his side.
'Do you think ... do you think God ... the Gods ... a God, or some supreme being ... will someday forge a constellation out of our story, the story of you and me?'
'Perhaps, Charlie,' he replied, to indulge him. 'Just perhaps.'
'Imagine it: rewriting the stars to keep us up there somewhere amongst the quasars, the black holes, the nebulas, the planets, the supernovas, and the galaxies in the only place where forever truly exists and where time does not. I'm going to wish upon the brightest star I see for it to come true. That specific one—right there, by Orion's Belt.'
A moment passed, then Frankie replied, 'That's a satellite, Charlie.'
'Then I'll wish upon that, too,' he whispered and wished.
Trevor burst out of the doors and ran into the garden. 'We're going to Valletta!'
'We're what?' Frankie rose up from the grass.
'Going to Valletta!'
Seraphina came running out behind Trevor. 'Tell him he's being ridiculous.'
'He is being ridiculous!' Frankie called. 'Neither one of us are in any fit state to drive—especially since the Maltese drive like they've got a death wish!'
'We're not the heirs of poverty, you idiot boy!' Trevor was smoking urgently and excitedly on a black cigar as if he had somewhere else to be any minute now. He checked his pockets. 'What money do you lot have on you? C'mon, what are you waiting for? Get up! We only have the night. Let's vamoose! We'll show New Beth as much of Malta as we can before the morning because when might you get the chance to do so again? Change into casual clothes and bring swimwear with you.'
'How long have you known me? There isn't a single thing in my closet that you could consider "casual", Hamilton.' Seraphina tried to focus on her watch. 'At this time—my God, is that the time—the only thing that'll be open in Valetta is bars and restaurants, and we're in no fit state to be in those either since we're all tripping balls.'
'Let me make some calls,' he replied casually. 'I can get us in anywhere.'
'Trevor, you once claimed you could get us into Area 51. That never happened.'
'We've never been to Nevada, so how could you know whether it would or wouldn't have? I did get you into 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, true or false?' He turned and walked inside. 'Get changed. Let me make some calls.'
By the time Charlie had changed into a shirt, a jumper, and shorts, their driver had arrived to take them to the capital. They regrouped by the front door and waited for Seraphina.
'Are we wise doing this? Far from doubting your ability to execute whatever dark and fanciful notion you have, Hamilton, I wonder if I ought to advise against it. We don't want a repeat reminiscent of the Revellers' time in Istanbul or Budapest to occur all over again, do we?' Frankie looked out at the headlights in the driveway and shook his head. 'People do the darndest things when their minds strive to be lawless, and this is surely madness.'
'You'd know an awful lot about that, wouldn't you?' Trevor murmured as he exited the house. 'Come along, gang. We have a few pitstops to make along the way.'
Shortly afterward, there was a strange moment when Frankie turned sharply to glance behind them into the hall: his eyes looked worried as they darted, as though following something unseen that only he could see. He called out, 'Thomas?'
Before Charlie could ask him who Thomas was, his cousin arrived to drag him by the arm as she rushed passed excitedly towards the car, where Trevor hammered impatiently on the horn. Slowed and dazed and white-faced, as though he'd just seen a ghost, Frankie followed behind them uncertainly once he'd locked the door. When the car left the palazzo gates and Sliema behind in the rear-view mirror, time became an illusion to Charlie in the back seat—he did not know how much of it had passed, as he melted into the visuals around him and felt as though he was entering hyperspace on a spaceship, until they reached Mdina, glowing atop a hill like a city afire. As they walked the bridge towards the gates, the others informed Charlie of its deep and bloody history. It was an ancient fortified city in the Northern Region, which once served as the island's capital from antiquity to the medieval period. Although the stronghold gradually lost its strength over the years, it had been reduced to its present size during the Byzantine or Arab occupation of Malta. Furthermore, it had suffered such depopulation during raids that it never quite reformed to its former glory, which is why it was nicknamed the Silent City. Despite it acquiring several Baroque features, it did not lose its medieval character, making Charlie think of Gormenghast as he walked the quiet streets, truly feeling as though he'd stepped onto the pages of a book about foreign and fantastical lands elsewhere, in times long ago. Although Mdina shone like a tart burner from afar, the passageways inside were as eerily silent as the dead. Even when they found a small cafe to eat pizza on a mezzanine balcony covered in briar, still, the Silent City never stirred—except for Trevor Hamilton, who continued to explain that it remains the centre of the Maltese nobility and religious authorities, and how property continues to largely be passed down from families and from generation to generation, but it never did return to its pre-1530 importance, giving rise to the popular nickname. But Charlie wasn't listening to him; he was overlooking their view into Bastion Square, enchanted by a pair of intimate and pretty girls in floral skirts and cheap necklaces, braids and beads in the hair, as they fleeted, gigglingly, through the darkest streets like nymphs, hand in hand. Before they left, Frankie stopped at the part of the bridge nearest Mdina Gate. He took a necklace from his pocket and carefully buried it inside the drain in the wall. Without another word, he pointed them onwards.
Their patient driver then drove them to their next stop, by way of the cliffs near Dingli, and finally left them off at City Gate, located at the entrance of the grand city of Valletta. At the end of it, there were strange, archaic, and blocky buildings lit up like futuristic versions of Aztec pyramids. Despite these modern additions, Charlie thought the old still overshadowed the new in Malta. They stopped at a shop for Charlie to buy a carton of apple juice, for Frankie to purchase some oranges, and for Seraphina and Trevor to stock up on more cigarettes. Throughout his time in Malta, Charlie had drunk so much apple juice that he'd come to feel, years from now, that apple juice tasted more so of Malta than it ever did the fruit it came from each time he drank it afterward.
'A night like this, it's so easy to remember that we were once mortal friends and so easy to forget that we are now mortal enemies,' Frankie said to Charlie as they walked together behind Trevor and Seraphina and watched them race towards Triton Fountain, an ornamental landmark that consisted of three bronze Tritons holding up a huge basin, balanced on a concentric base built out of concrete, and cladded in travertine slabs. Carrozza laughed when, despite wearing heels and another dress, Seraphina reached the large structure first and plunged feet first into the water. 'I suspect the acid was a ploy of his to keep us placid and complicit and compliant, so that we could have a night like this—a night like it was before.'
Without waiting for a reply, Frankie hurried after them, leaped the stone rim, and trudged through the water. When he, Serph, and Trevor mimicked the Tritons, Charlie captured them in his mind's eye like a polaroid. He couldn't see how he rivalled them, how he reached their height. Here they were—the King, the Villain, and the Vixen. But what was Beth? he wondered. Judging by how highly they spoke of her, the Madonna, perhaps? Charlie was the Scholar, studying them all. As he walked alongside them, hands in the pockets of his dark trousers, he couldn't recognise common ground. They were from a more other-worldly place, a higher celestial plane. They'd come like Gods, hands mussing their beautiful hair, catching glances and gazes and looking like the world was lucky to have them, like Gods do to worship. They shone a little brighter, stood a little taller, and were heard a little louder. As they rushed through the streets, Charlie got a sense of what it must've been like to have ran with them all: how one would follow an impulse like a spark, and like a flame to the fuel, the others would combust like a trail of gasoline. They moved like a pack, hunting the night. Where was Beth? he mused. Without her, Charlie made for a shorter foundation, an unstable fourth pillar in comparison. When he'd first met Seraphina Rose, she had told them that Bethany Green had left her, but they (he believed now) had misheard it as a friend had abandoned her in Bethnal Green. He knew now, as he dodged a Ford Cortina and darted dangerously across the street after the fantastical trio, who Bethany Green was: she was the girl with the reddish brown hair, the colour of conkers and chestnuts, in the watercoloured painting of them both cavorting perennially in a field as children, which was hung up and cherished in Frankie Carrozza's Empyreal House; and she was the girl with her arm slung around Seraphina Rose, making funny faces in the strip of photographs that he kept in his satchel. What happened to Bethany Green? What happened with Max Mayvolu? He desperately wanted to know the answers to both of these questions. But he knew he would never ask; he knew he never would dare to.
As they made their way towards Saint John's Co-Cathedral, Charlie quietly voiced his concerns—over his inadequacy—to Frankie.
'I'd love for you to see you how I see you,' he said breathlessly as he peeled another orange. 'I'd love to see me how you see me.' Flustered with thrill, he grinned, clapped his shoulder, and then ran off after the others to meet with the man who was going to sneak them inside. 'C'mon! There he is—the man with the keys!'
When they slipped inside the gigantic Baroque church, the man said that they had an hour to do what they came to do inside; Trevor went in search of a pipe organ, studying the artwork and the plaques on the floors and walls as he went; Seraphina danced beautifully up and down between the pews, as marvellous as the gold decor and marble pillars that she was marvelling at in turn; and Charlie and Frankie hurried off to explore the subterranean levels underneath, following a riddle to a secret entrance that Carrozza had learned of from a Romani gypsy. His euphoria was unparalleled when he discovered the hidden passageway behind one of the marble tombstones in the nave where important knights were buried. With a finger to his giant grin to keep Charlie from alerting the others, he grabbed his hand and dragged him through the narrow passage. They held hands as they jumped down old switchback stairways, and Frankie spun and pulled and pushed at him giddily as they entered another chamber. They'd been expecting the basement area to be much like a grey dungeon, but they discovered that the secret rooms were spacious and bright and full of white marble. When drug-induced paranoia made them think that the archbishop was creeping around down here somewhere, they sneaked through the warren of religious halls to find some place where they could be alone—their sole purpose. The two boys found an entirely glass room inside a room, the glass door as large as the walls around it and decorated with stained-glass images of some pope or saint or other. Without further ado, due to their urgency, they both had to push it open to slip inside. All they found inside were bookshelves, religious artifacts, and old pulpits. When Frankie mentioned that it was like a room they'd use to kill Trevor in, they laughed and stared at each other. What they'd really come here for stayed unsaid, the unspoken agreement. Free of prying eyes, Charlie, much to Frankie's startlement, launched himself onto Carrozza like a vampire, ripping the top buttons of his school-white shirt open to kiss a trail from his throat to his torso—after all, they could only play vampire and victim for so long before a transition occurred during the steady exchanges. His scent and lips were flavoured with oranges; the taste filled Charlie's mouth, zapping his tastebuds with electrical and citric savour that stung his tongue. When he lowered his mouth again, his chest immediately heaved against Charlie's face and his breathing quickened. Despite his breathy moans and guttural groans, he grabbed Charlie's wrists to pry him off, somewhat dishevelled by the sudden onslaught.
'Wait—wait!' he pleaded, stumbling back from delirium. Flushed with heat, Frankie fixed his shirt and hair, buckled his belt, and approached a pulpit to preach a sermon to an invisible congregation. 'Paul the Apostle dealt with the same struggles between himself and his desires that we deal with from ours.'
Having had enough of the charade, now that the very same sensuous desire had overwhelmed the effects of the LSD for now, Charlie knelt between the stand and lowered the zipper on his shorts, exposing the tattoo on his inner thigh of birds on the horizon that represented freedom.
    'Spea—speaking of the bodily appetites'—Frankie fell forward and leaned his elbows on the small table, eyelids fluttering like two butterflies—'Paul said, "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." H-here, P-Paul is indicating that he felt the constant—the constant pull of the ... of the desires of the flesh upon him.' Frankie swallowed thickly, opening and closing his eyes repeatedly like a rousing babe. 'How—however, de-de-desires can be either good or bad. While there are cer-certainly de-desires that we should shuh-shuh-shun, there are also those that we should seek.'
From somewhere upstairs, someone was singing "O come, O come, Emmanuel" inside the cathedral. The acoustics of the chancel caused the Christian hymn to reverberate beautifully until echoes of the melancholic rendition found them there inside the glass room within the secret hall. He couldn't tell if it came from the boy or the girl, but the effect of the heavenly singing was incredibly profound within Charlie's heart. What he was experiencing, he soon realised, was what Frankie described as the "ego death". Individuals who undergo intense psychedelic experiences—"psychonauts", as he called them—often reach this state. It has been said that experiencing ego death can feel as though the person is literally dying in the physical sense. After experiencing ego death, many psychonauts come back with a whole new understanding of their subjective reality; after the terrifying sensation of dying, the acid user enters a trance of cerebral enlightenment, before their entire sense of self disappears and they're left with nothing but awareness that everything in the universe is connected. An instant later, he was resurrected at the end of the road that led to satori.
'That I—I have great he-heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart,' Frankie was saying. 'For—for the son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost—oh, J-Jesus! Oh, Christ! Oh, fu—' Frankie gasped loudly. When Charlie grabbed the seat of his shorts, the pulpit shook once Carrozza seized the edges of the table. His legs trembled and bent forward as he collapsed across the worktop. After a few seconds of silence, Charlie heard him exhale loudly and suddenly as though he'd forgotten to breathe for ages. For a few minutes, he stayed frozen still, breathing heavily. When his senses finally returned to him, he coughed deeply, did up his shorts, then sat down beside the other boy. 'How do you feel now?' he asked. He was looking at him queerly, like he didn't quite know whether to be surprised or to laugh. 'It seems the student has become the master.'
'Much like Alice.' Charlie wiped his mouth on the back of his forearm. The strange shapes that he'd been ignoring were starting to regrow in the corners of the room like moss and lichen. 'Imagine this: we're so out of it, we don't realise that we're actually in front of a mass in full service right now. Wouldn't that be really funny?'
Through fits of coughing into his arm, Frankie started to laugh hysterically.
'There you are!' Seraphina cried as she fixed at the strap of her heel. With Trevor's help, she pulled the giant glass door all the way open. 'We've been looking everywhere for you—for ages.'
'Have you?' Frankie asked.
'Truthfully, I don't know. Because of the acid, we've stepped out of the bounds of time for the time being.' Seraphina looked around the floors and to the roof distastefully. 'What a dreary place. I can feel the suppression on me as thick as my fur coat.'
Trevor sneered at the two boys. 'And just what were you two doing in here?'
'I highly doubt that any louche behaviour that transpires over this weekend will result in anyone getting pregnant, so it's really not worth mentioning, is it? Honestly, where is the harm in a little snog? Nobody fornicated atop the altar of Sainte-Chapelle this time around.' Seraphina looked to Trevor rather nervously and fixed her dishevelled dress. 'Are we finished with Valletta now?'
'With Valetta, yes, my devious little sexpot,' answered Trevor, 'but not with the night: we've one last stop to make. Let's go find a taxi.'
Charlie licked his lips of the taste of Frankie Carrozza, his loins tingling from catching a whiff of his scent on his skin, while he watched his back muscles bulge as he walked ahead of him. When they'd eventually found a taxi, they spent another thirty minutes driving through the barren lands of Malta until the driver dropped them off somewhere in the pitch-black middle of nowhere.
'Where the bloody hell are we now?' Seraphina cried, watching the taxi lights fade into the night. She rounded on Hamilton. 'Great! How are we meant to get back? If I get lost out here and end up getting sacrificed by a cult—'
'Lost?' Trevor laughed in the dark. 'Imogen, you can walk the length of Malta in seven hours, you fool. Look, the sun is rising. Feel the sand under your feet, smell the salty coast in the air, and you tell me where we are. Now, walk that way.'
With a lip of light widening on the dark horizon to guide them, they followed a sandy path towards the cliffs on the rugged coastline. By the time they reached their destination, an orange-and-lilac sunrise had permeated over the rocky bay of St. Peter's Pool, a circular drop-off into deep topaz water that was surrounded by sharp stone edges. To Charlie, it almost looked as if a giant had taken a great, big bite out of the rocky edge of the island. He changed into swimwear in the morning light, marvelling at the dawn that poured over the jagged ledge like foreshore. It was an evangelical light, like the very first ray of sunlight hitting the first day of a new world to welcome Adams and Eve to the Garden of Eden. It was a profound experience, like most of tonight, like the Glenshane sunrise that Carrozza had spoken so passionately about the other night in bed. He was very glad that he was with them all here—even Trevor Hamilton. He mightn't be his friend, but he made an impactful effect on the night; whether that was a negative or positive influence, he could not say for sure, but he believed it was necessary all the same. Charlie's eyes teetered to the edge of the horizon where England lay beyond, far and away, and he imagined he could see it shimmering in the offing like the entrance to a magical kingdom. Looking down into St. Peter's Pool from above, it fell away like a mystical portal burrowing to somewhere foreign, exotic, and faraway—a niche between the mundane, a tunnelling crevice cracking through reality, a world beyond their own. The four of them carefully shimmied towards the lip of it to follow the unpunctual white rabbit to a sequestered somewhere that seemed to summon them here, the waves washing into the small cove to sing hymns to them like the voices of sirens and mermaids that might have just swum up from the underwater caves in the pool below. The turquoise shades of the water glittered with scarce daybreak, enticing and cold and old like mythical treasure with mystical properties. They, the pirates, had finally reached the end of their quest—here, beneath the sun, suspended halfway between Heaven and Hell, and staring into the blue hole that would soon swallow them whole. On the edge of dangers and delights, this was where they belonged.
'We ought to keep an eye out for jellyfish. I can't see any, but—' Trevor let out the biggest shriek once Seraphina shoved him off the edge. When he re-emerged from the water below, he said, 'That was not ideal. I could have died.'
'That depends. Ideal for whom?' She fixed her black bikini and prepared to jump. 'Oh, please! Moby Dick or some other leviathan would need to come out of those waters to finish you off. Only you and the cockroaches would survive Hiroshima.'
'Funny, I thought Hiroshima was precisely where you cooked that dinner earlier tonight.' He quickly swam aside to dodge her legs as she came torpedoing downwards towards him.
'At least we know there isn't any la aguamala about,' Frankie called.
'What does that mean?' Charlie asked him.
'Bad water,' Frankie answered. 'Clearly, the Spanish seemed to have been swimming and didn't see the angry ocean ghost zap them, so obviously decided that it was bad parts of the water that hurts when they named the jellyfish. Let's get on with this schnapsidee!'
'What does that one mean?'
'It's a German word for a ridiculous idea that only sounds good when you're drunk. It sums up this entire night rather nicely, don't you think?' The ever so impulsive Frankie fixed him with a grin before he glanced to the edge of the rock overhanging the pool below. His eyes sparkled like emerald gems hidden in the hazel oak of the woods, lively with childhood excitement. He hadn't a care in the world. 'Ready to jump?'
'Give me a minute.' Charlie took a deep breath, preparing himself to brave the edge.
'Are you scared of heights?' Frankie enquired, the slightest touch of concern in his tone. When the other two called for them to hurry up, he shouted back, 'Give us a minute! It seems Chance has a touch of acrophobia!'
'It's not that: the initial leap is fine, but it's what might happen after that concerns me.' Charlie peeked timidly over the ledge. 'I'm sure you've done this enough times to know if it's shallow or not, but what if we land on the rocks? What if there are jellyfish? What if—'
'The only way to know anything for sure is to turn a "what if" into a "what was", right?'
'Frankie, we could die,' he said.
'Perhaps.' He offered an insouciant shrug. 'But not before we live. Do you trust me?'
Charlie laughed nervously. 'I—'
'Do you trust me?' he repeated sternly. 'It's a simple question with an even simpler answer. Do you trust me?' When Charlie tried to stutter out an answer, Frankie put his hands on his hips, dug his heel into the ground, and turned the toes of the foot upwards. He sighed, disheartened. 'Look, I suppose we can just climb down to them if you want.'
'Honestly?'
'Nope.'
'DON'T—' Before Charlie could throw up his hands, Frankie pulled him into a tight hug and jumped back over the brink. Tumbling topsy-turvy, they parted as they spilled through the air. Despite only having enough time to belt out a short and almighty cry, Charlie believed he'd remember how Frankie looked because it encapsulated him so completely: a serene smile on his face as he fell with his eyes closed, hands in the pockets of his green shorts, and his torso pushed out against the front of his pink t-shirt, ready to greet the cold depths. Once he plunged into the surface and sunk down, Charlie was forced to curl into a ball and somersault under the cool water as it crushed against his lungs. Bubbles scattered around his body and from his mouth before his head popped out of the surface like a babe to life, belting out another mouthful of noise that might've been the scream he'd forgotten to produce above. Shivering from the chill and thrill, he rubbed excess water from his face and hair. 'Frankie, you bastard!'
'What's the matter? The water is warm! It's warm!' Laughing madly, Frankie swam towards him and rubbed his shuddering shoulders. 'Or we'll get you warmed up soon enough,' he promised as he hugged him in comradery. Above the water, they laughed like friends, but their legs touched like lovers undersurface. With the salty beads of the sea running down their cheeks and chests like tears and diamonds, there was a stimulating sense of pleasure to feel both of their rushing and racing hearts beating hard against the other. Frankie slicked his hair back with a hand. 'All good?'
Charlie spat the ocean into his face. 'Never better.'
They all got out to jump in over and over again, until they had their thrill of the fall, and then lay on their backs and floated along to the ebb and flow of the gentle ocean, thoroughly exhausted. The effects of the acid had been washed from them, slipping away like the residues of a dream.
'Mundus rotundus undabundus,' Frankie called out, curling echoes of the Latin proverb around the rocky roof of the sheltered cove. 'The round world is full of waves,' he roughly translated.
Charlie looked to the sky and frowned when he spotted an airplane soaring overhead. For a second, he had an out-of-body experience and the airplane seemed terribly odd and out of place, like it shouldn't be there—not here, near this ancient paradise full of primal fulfilments and barefooted and lawless and divine beings, an old world where civilisation on the island strayed from the notions of modern society. Remembering that Malta was a place full of cars and coins and roads and electricity, he wished desperately that he didn't have to be getting onto a flight in a few hours' time. This had been the most magical night of his life; he didn't want it to end.
'I don't want to go,' he voiced, full of reluctance and sadness.
'Never fear. We'll come back this way again on our way through the world,' Frankie promised him, floating on his back alongside. 'Has Malta given you a nomadic heart? Has it reinforced your desire to see the world? To follow a map to its edges and keep going? To forgo the paths, trusting only your instincts and letting your curiosity be your guide? To map the hemispheres with your feet, to sleep underneath unfamiliar stars, and to let the journey unfold before you?'
'I just want to be with you,' he confessed quietly so that the others wouldn't overhear. The only time that Charlie had ever felt this heartfelt feeling about anything else was when he had to leave a book behind on the final sentence of the last page. 'To go wherever you go. Be it Portsmouth, Portugal, or some other paradise.'