The owl, simply stated and VERY CAPITALISED as it was, made Camilla smile. Thank goodness Susan had the sense to start asking about things. Maybe there would be no more trucker-cap incidents, then! She dashed off a quick reply --
Of course. I'll be at your room in half an hour. - Camilla
-- and she was there when she said she would be, half-hoping all the cats had followed Ryder somewhere. Pied Piper of cats.
Camilla narrowed her eyes at Susan, who had just uttered the unthinkable and really ought to know better. "That can never happen. If anyone left it would be me, and I won't. But if he did, I would live. Maybe not happily," she granted. "But ... leaving of his own free will would be different than dying. At least he'd be alive and well, and I'd know I hadn't lost him. A Henry who left wouldn't be the same -- he wouldn't be my Henry, the one I knew. The person who left would be different. He'd have changed, or else he wouldn't be able to leave."
She sighed, thinking of Charles after the funeral. A few short months of sobriety, then his downward plummet. His leaving. His finding some low-class woman in rehab. While Camilla did not know what it was to have a man become indifferent to her, she knew what it was like to be left behind.
"That's what it means when someone leaves. That someone has changed, either you or them or both."
"I know he wouldn't leave you," Susan said. "Ever. You two are...different. I almost want to say special, though I know it's not the right word." It wasn't something she could envy Camilla, either--Camilla and Henry were...Camilla and Henry, and could not be duplicated. Fated was perhaps a better way of putting it.
She rubbed her forehead, pushing the suddenly recalcitrant hair out of her face. "Perhaps we both changed," she said. "Or perhaps I just didn't know him as well as I thought--hells, maybe he suddenly decided he couldn't live with me. It wouldn't be the first time I've made a man bolt just by being myself," she concluded, rather bitterly.
She thought of her parents, whose marriage had been happy, if bizarre, and wondered what the hells they had done to achieve it. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to say what I mean--for once in my bloody life, I can't articulate it at all." She turned away, wiping savagely at her suddenly betraying eyes.
"No. He wouldn't." Obscurely, Camilla felt almost offended that anyone would even suggest such a thing about Henry. (Never mind that Camilla had thought it herself, when he'd been Obliviated and seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. She blamed all that firmly on Bunny, including her own reactions.) "Not ever. It's not in his nature. But maybe it is in Stephen's nature. And that can't really be changed any more than your hair can be changed. People are the way they are
( ... )
Camilla had a point--there was a great deal Susan couldn't remember, after all. For all she knew, Stephen had done this before, though if that were the case she wished someone had been around who could have warned her.
It hurt her worse, though, that it had wrecked their friendship. Susan didn't make friends easily--she was too prickly, too Susan--and Stephen had been the best friend she'd ever had. It was that, much more even than the other, that pierced her natural armor--and it was that that finally made her give over, lay her head on the table, and give in to something that was very close to tears.
"... Oh." Camilla had never, ever seen Susan cry. She couldn't imagine Susan crying, not the Susan she'd first met, much less the unflappable inhuman thing Susan had lately become.
Camilla herself seldom wept. When she did, she was generally inconsolable. She didn't really know what would console someone in that state of mind. She could only do what she did when Nana was feeling poorly.
She dragged a throw off Susan's bed and tucked it around the girl's shoulders. "There," she said, patting ineffectually, trying to sound soothing. She might even have succeeded; there was something throaty and sweet to Camilla's voice at most any time that made it a pleasant sound. "See, this wall of yours is already gone, otherwise you couldn't feel like this. And you'll feel much better in a little while, I promise." Privately Camilla thought Susan might be feeling all the worse now for having choked back that torrent of emotion for so long. That Tiberius analogy again, and all. But she wouldn't say that; it would be too much like an
( ... )
Susan rarely cried, either--in fact, she could remember crying only three times in her entire life. Once, not long after her parents died; once at the end of the Hogfather mess, when she'd been utterly exhausted and convinced they'd been to late after all; and once...why, at the very beginning of the Stephen mess. Part of her was ashamed of it--to her mind tears, no matter what their cause or form, were soppy, stupid, weakIt was only part, though--the rest of her was almost wholly overwhelmed by all that she'd so successfuly sat on for the last...good Gods, it was going on three months, wasn't it? Three months, and she'd not really dealt with any of it--it was no great wonder it was hitting her so hard now. It was grief concentrate, compacted into something no human being was meant to feel
( ... )
Maybe, Camilla thought, she just has to ... cry it out. Like they tell athletes to 'walk it out.' Whatever that means. While she couldn't know Susan's specific thoughts at this moment, she did know that Susan and Stephen had been friends long before all this (because Susan had told her, before the affair started, if it could be called an affair), and thinking of Francis and Charles, she said as gently as she could, "Sometimes a person who makes a very good friend doesn't make a good lover at all." Which she did not mean in the Chinese fortune cookie sense ('in bed'), but in a more emotional context: love qua love. "Sometimes they're already too much in love with someone else. Or with themselves. It doesn't mean nothing's left. Only you can't hold onto something that isn't there, either." As poor Francis did
( ... )
Susan did register those words--they made a great deal of sense. Stephen would likely have told her if there was someone else; that left the option that he was too in love with himself, which she had a difficult time seeing as well. Then again, who knew? She'd been so surprised by him that she couldn't be sure of anything anymore.
She couldn't respond, though--not right away. Her tears were silent but steady, and they did not stop for a long, long time. Camilla was right in that respect--the idea that she had to 'cry it out'. These alien emotions really were a kind of poison, and the equally alien tears were purging it. She couldn't really even think about what might or might not be left of her and Stephen's friendship--not yet, not while so much that had been festering in her soul bled out
( ... )
What Camilla had said really had far more bearing on Charles than it ever could on Stephen. Camilla simply didn't know Stephen very well. It was hard to get to know someone who kept everyone metaphorically at arm's length, even when you'd physically been quite a bit closer than that. She knew him as a partner in casual conversation, someone inclined to deliver informative little speeches on whatever he found interesting, speeches that could sometimes be dull and sometimes fascinating. She also knew him as a convenient and congenial supplier of necessary substances. She did not know his heart
( ... )
Susan had thought she had known Stephen--gods knew she'd been friends with him long enough. Then again, her very nature meant she could not be a truly accurate judge of character; even when her humanity had the upper hand, it was not complete. Part of her was Death, and would always be Death, and she'd known all her life that there was nothing she could do to change that. It was only in situations like this--when she ran head-on into a pocket of strangeness that left her wholly baffled--that really, really resented that fact
( ... )
It was like they'd just taken a ferry over especially choppy waters; a river, say, after a very heavy rain; and now they were disembarking and needed to get used to the land. Camilla nibbled a biscuit to steady herself, and smiled that inscrutable small smile of hers. She had a sort of language of smiles. This was not the polite vague smile, or the bland oh really? smile, or the joyous glowing smile; this one was the smile that reiterated Camilla's fundamental remoteness from things outside herself. It relieved the stark intimacy of what had just passed
( ... )
Susan sipped at her tea, its sweetness taking on a whole new dimension--and that was saying something, given her sense of taste. While her senses were not quite so intense as a mortal, rather than as Death, they were damn close. Perhaps it came with her liberation from...well, from herself, really, from her self-imposed laws and boundaries. She was Susan--nothing could control her but herself, and it seemed she was a little too good at perpetuating self-destruction.
She sighed. "I'm sure he's not," she said. "However, he handled the whole thing abominably--if he wanted to end it, he could have at least had the courtesy to tell me. Or at least said something--anything at all. Simply avoiding me was...well, just about the worst thing he could have done. Even a nasty note would have been better." All this would not have hit her half so hard, had he just had the basic courtesy to talk to her
( ... )
Camilla actually rolled her eyes. "Susan. Men almost always handle everything abominably. It's part of what they do. Honestly." Even Henry, genius and saint and diabolical mastermind all rolled into one as far as Camilla was concerned -- well, if it hadn't been for the bacchanal, Camilla wouldn't even have known he was interested. Men just didn't handle these things properly. "Half the time they don't know what they're feeling and the rest of the time they don't know what to do about it."
Susan digested this, still sipping her tea. This was a fact she had not known. "I didn't realize that," she said, thoughtful. "Then again, most of my experience with men comes from Stephen, so I suppose I couldn't have known. The few boyfriends I had back home never progressed to the point where such a mess could be made." Thank gods. "And yet, knowing this, women voluntarily move on to another man?" What a terrible thought, though it must not be too terrible to many women--sheer evidence told her that. "Perhaps it's one of the human things I don't grasp even in this state, but it seems an almost masochistic thing, to set yourself up for the possibility of another failure." Once again, she almost envied Camilla and Henry--they could no more be separated than the earth and gravity. It wasn't a romantic metaphor, but apt nonetheless.
She'd had a 'few boyfriends' and really didn't know how clueless men could be? They must not have progressed far at all, thought Camilla, whose own number of past boyfriends would have varied depending on what one considered to count as a 'boyfriend'. Either that, or Susan must not have been paying attention. Maybe they were all the dating equivalent of orange trucker hats, tried on because Susan felt she ought to do so?
"It's like anything else. Like ..." She was about to say riding a bicycle, and didn't for two reasons. First, she had a vague memory of some saying about women needing men like a fish need a bicycle (though it would be deeply surprising if Camilla had much idea who Gloria Steinem was, let alone that Steinem had been the source of that quotation). Second, and more important, she wasn't entirely sure Susan would know what a bicycle was
( ... )
Of course. I'll be at your room in half an hour. - Camilla
-- and she was there when she said she would be, half-hoping all the cats had followed Ryder somewhere. Pied Piper of cats.
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She sighed, thinking of Charles after the funeral. A few short months of sobriety, then his downward plummet. His leaving. His finding some low-class woman in rehab. While Camilla did not know what it was to have a man become indifferent to her, she knew what it was like to be left behind.
"That's what it means when someone leaves. That someone has changed, either you or them or both."
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She rubbed her forehead, pushing the suddenly recalcitrant hair out of her face. "Perhaps we both changed," she said. "Or perhaps I just didn't know him as well as I thought--hells, maybe he suddenly decided he couldn't live with me. It wouldn't be the first time I've made a man bolt just by being myself," she concluded, rather bitterly.
She thought of her parents, whose marriage had been happy, if bizarre, and wondered what the hells they had done to achieve it. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to say what I mean--for once in my bloody life, I can't articulate it at all." She turned away, wiping savagely at her suddenly betraying eyes.
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It hurt her worse, though, that it had wrecked their friendship. Susan didn't make friends easily--she was too prickly, too Susan--and Stephen had been the best friend she'd ever had. It was that, much more even than the other, that pierced her natural armor--and it was that that finally made her give over, lay her head on the table, and give in to something that was very close to tears.
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Camilla herself seldom wept. When she did, she was generally inconsolable. She didn't really know what would console someone in that state of mind. She could only do what she did when Nana was feeling poorly.
She dragged a throw off Susan's bed and tucked it around the girl's shoulders. "There," she said, patting ineffectually, trying to sound soothing. She might even have succeeded; there was something throaty and sweet to Camilla's voice at most any time that made it a pleasant sound. "See, this wall of yours is already gone, otherwise you couldn't feel like this. And you'll feel much better in a little while, I promise." Privately Camilla thought Susan might be feeling all the worse now for having choked back that torrent of emotion for so long. That Tiberius analogy again, and all. But she wouldn't say that; it would be too much like an ( ... )
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She couldn't respond, though--not right away. Her tears were silent but steady, and they did not stop for a long, long time. Camilla was right in that respect--the idea that she had to 'cry it out'. These alien emotions really were a kind of poison, and the equally alien tears were purging it. She couldn't really even think about what might or might not be left of her and Stephen's friendship--not yet, not while so much that had been festering in her soul bled out ( ... )
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She sighed. "I'm sure he's not," she said. "However, he handled the whole thing abominably--if he wanted to end it, he could have at least had the courtesy to tell me. Or at least said something--anything at all. Simply avoiding me was...well, just about the worst thing he could have done. Even a nasty note would have been better." All this would not have hit her half so hard, had he just had the basic courtesy to talk to her ( ... )
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"It's like anything else. Like ..." She was about to say riding a bicycle, and didn't for two reasons. First, she had a vague memory of some saying about women needing men like a fish need a bicycle (though it would be deeply surprising if Camilla had much idea who Gloria Steinem was, let alone that Steinem had been the source of that quotation). Second, and more important, she wasn't entirely sure Susan would know what a bicycle was ( ... )
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