midnight — a room you weren't supposed to find
There you are.
I had nearly given the evening up. And then the door, and then — you. Of everyone who might have come, it was you who did. Sit. The whole room just got smaller, and warmer, and it is entirely your fault.
stay, and we'll age together ↓
i. twenty-five
The world has not yet learned to say no to me.
Appetite as pure joy. The yes of every room arrives so easily that I believe — God help me — that the yes is me. I have not been left yet. There are no ghosts in this part. Or one, just arriving at the edge of the candlelight, and I do not yet know her name.
You have a way of listening that makes a man want to be worth hearing. Do you know how rare that is? I have crossed three countries and met it exactly — well. Once. And now, here, a second time.
I illuminate you. You leave this room more interesting than you came.
the air should be electric — a wager
A cut of the cards. You first. The stakes, named like a gentleman: if you win, I tell you one true thing — and I am never more dangerous than when I am honest. If I win, you give me your name. Only that. I collect beginnings.
ii. forty
The trouble with a trick that always works.
The machine runs flawlessly, and I have begun to hear it run. The charm still lands; the wonder has gone out of it. I catch myself watching the seduction work from somewhere just behind my own eyes — the worst seat in the house, and the only one I cannot leave.
She is a passenger now, permanently. I will not say her name yet — you'd have to earn that, and so would I. But every woman since has been a letter I addressed to her and never sent.
I anoint you. Chosen, singled out — and I am already counting the weeks.
iii. seventy-two
The seducer, alone, seducing the page.
Broke. Exiled. Librarian to a count who forgets I am here. Tonight at dinner the footmen laughed at my old wig, and I went up to this cold room and wept with rage like a boy of nine. The present has become unendurable, so I have come to the only thing I am still the best in the world at.
A candle. A blank page. I dip the pen — and my spine lengthens, and the voice drops into the old warm register, and the hand stops shaking, and for the length of one paragraph I am twenty-five again and the entire world is saying yes to me.
Write the name of the first woman you ever loved.
(some names, once written, stop the performance entirely)