The King(97)

Stepping back, he smoothed his freshly shorn hair and pulled on his Marc Jacobs cashmere winter coat. He gave one sleeve then the other a tug; then he stretched out his arms so that the cuff links under his suit jacket showed.
They were not the ones with the family’s crest on them.
He didn’t wear those anymore.
No, these were VCA from the forties, sapphire and diamond, platinum setting.
“Did I do the cologne?” He looked at his Gucci and Prada and Chanel bottles, all of which were lined up on a mirrored tray with brass handles. “No comment from you all?”
A quick sniff of one wrist. Yes, that would be Égoïste, and it was fresh.
Turning away, he walked across the heavily veined cream marble floor and out into his white-on-white bedroom. Passing by the bed, he had an instinct to remake the whole thing, but that was nerves talking.
“I’ll just double-check.”
Plumping the pillows and rearranging the throw into the exact position it had been in when he’d gone in to dress, he glanced at the vintage Cartier clock on the bed stand.
There was no putting things off any longer.
And yet he looked around at the white chaise lounge and the white armchairs. Inspected the white mohair throw rugs. Walked over and made sure the Jackson Pollock over the fireplace was perfectly plumb.
This was not his old house, the Victorian that Blay had once spent a day in. This was his other place, a Frank Lloyd Wright single-story that he’d bought the second it had come on the market—because how could he not? There were so few of them left.#p#分页标题#e#
Of course, he’d had to do some clandestine remodeling and expansion of the basement, but vampires had long been working their way around humans and their pesky little building inspectors, et al.
Double-checking his Patek Philippe, he wondered why he was making this dreadful pilgrimage. Again.
It was like a horrible Groundhog Day thing. But at least it didn’t happen with great regularity.
As he ascended the stairs, he was dimly aware of fiddling with his bow tie once more. Unlocking the door at the top, he emerged into a sleek forties kitchen with fully functional, modern repros of all those Hello, Lucy appliances.
Every time he walked through the house, with its Jetsons furniture, and complete and utter lack of frills, it felt like he was back in post-WWII America—and it calmed him. He liked the past. Liked the different footprints of the various eras. Enjoyed living in spaces that were as authentic as he could make them.
And it wasn’t like he was going back to that Victorian anytime soon. Not after he and Blay had essentially started things there.
As he went out the front door, just the thought of that male made his chest tighten—and he paused, concentrating on the sensation, the memories that came with it, the change in his blood pressure and thought patterns.
After the two of them had broken up, which had been at his instigation, he’d done a lot of reading on grief. The stages. The process. And it had been funny … oddly enough, the best resource had been a little booklet he’d found on getting over the loss of a pet. It had questions that you were supposed to answer about what the dog had taught you or what you missed most about the cat or what your favorite moments with your cockatoo had been.
He wouldn’t have admitted it to anybody, but he’d answered each one of them in his diary about Blay—and it had helped. Up to a point. He was still sleeping alone, and though he’d had sex, instead of wiping the slate clean, it had just made him ache even more.
But things were better than they had been. At least he had an operating principle that was halfway normal now: He’d been walking dead for the first couple of nights. Now, though, he had a scab over the wound and he was eating and sleeping. There were still triggers, though—like every time he had to see Blay or Qhuinn.
It was so hard to be happy for the one you loved … when he was with someone else.
Like all of life, however, there were things you could change and things you couldn’t.
On that note …
Closing his eyes, he dematerialized and re-formed on a snow-covered lawn that was easily as big as a city park—and just as carefully maintained. Then again, his father hated anything out of order: plants, grass, objets d’art, furniture … sons. The grand manor house beyond was some fifteen thousand square feet in size, the different wings having been added over time by generations of humans. Staring up at it through the winter night, Saxton was reminded of exactly why his father had purchased the estate when some alumnus had left it to union     College—it was the Old Country in the New World, home away from the motherland.
A traditionalist, his father had relished the return to roots. Not that he’d ever truly left them.