He sauntered Europe round, and
gathered every vice on Christian ground.
The stews and palace equally explored,
intrigued with glory and
with spirit whored.
Tried all hors-d'oeuvres,
all liquors defined,
judicious drank and greatly daring dined.
Alexander Pope, The Dunciad.
Let me put it like this.
In this place,
whoever looks seriously about him and
has eyes to see is bound to
become a stronger character.
Goethe, Italian Journey.
Cheshire, England, 1700 and something.
One.
On the morning we are to leave for
our grand tour of the continent,
I wake in bed beside Percy.
For a disorienting moment, it’s unclear
whether we’ve slept together, or
simply slept together.
Percy's still got all his clothes
on from the night before, albeit
most in neither the state nor the location
they were in when originally donned.
And while the bed covers are a bit roughed
up, there's no sign of any strumming.
So although I've got nothing on but
my waistcoat, by some sorcery
now buttoned back to front, and
one shoe, it seems safe to assume
we both kept our bits to ourselves.
Which is a strange sort of relief.
Because I'd like to be sober
the first time we're together.
If there ever is a first time, which it's
starting to seem like there won't be.
Beside me, Percy rolls over,
narrowly avoiding thwacking me across the
nose when he tosses his arm over his head.
His face settles into
the crook of my elbow,
as he tugs far more than his share of
the bedclothes to his side without waking.
His hair stinks of cigars and
his breath is rancid.
Though judging by the taste rolling
around the back of my throat,
a virulent tincture of baptized gin and
a stranger’s perfume, mine’s worse.
From the other side of the room,
there’s the snap of drapes being
pulled back, and sunlight assaults me.
I throw my hands over my face.
Percy flails awake with
a caw like a raven’s.
He tries to roll over, finds me in
his path, keeps rolling anyway,
and ends up on top of me.
My bladder protests soundly to this.
We must have drunk an extraordinary
amount last night,
if it's hanging this heavily over me.
And here I was, starting to feel rather
smug about my ability to get foxed out
of my mind most nights and then be
a functioning human by the next afternoon,
provided that the afternoon
in question is a late one.
Which is when I realized why I am both
utterly wrecked and still a little drunk.
It isn't the afternoon,
when I'm accustomed to rising.
It's quite early in the morning,
because Percy and I are leaving for
the continent today.
>> Good morning, gentlemen.
>> Sinclair says from
the other side of the room.
I can only make out his
silhouette against the window.
He's still torturing us with
the goddamned sunlight.
>> My lord.
>> He continues,
with a brow inclined in my direction.
>> Your mother sent me to wake you.
Your carriage is scheduled
to leave within the hour.
And Mr. Powell and his wife
are taking tea in the dining room.
>> From somewhere near my navel,
Percy makes an affirming noise in
response to his uncle and aunt’s presence,
a noise that resembles no human language.
>> And your father arrived from
London last night, my lord.
>> Sinclair adds to me.
>> He wishes to see you before you depart.
>> Neither Percy nor I move.
The lone shoe still clinging
to my foot surrenders, and
hits the floor with a hollow thunk
of wooden heel on oriental carpet.
>> Should I give you both
a moment to recover your senses?
>> Sinclair asks.
>> Yes!
>> Percy and I say in unison.
Sinclair leaves,
I hear the door latch behind him.
Outside the window, I can hear carriage
wheels crackling against the gravel drive,
and the calls of the grooms
as they yoke the horses.
Then Percy lets out a grisly moan,
and I start to laugh for no reason.
He takes a swipe at me and misses.
>> What?
>> You sound like a bear.
>> Well, you smell like a barroom floor.
>> He slides headfirst off the bed, gets
tangled in the sheets, and ends up doing
a sort of bent-waist headstand with
his cheek against the carpeting.
His foot rams me in the stomach,
a little too low for
comfort, and my laugh turns into a grunt.
Steady on, there, darling.
The urge to relieve myself is too
strong to ignore any longer, and
I drag myself up with one
hand on the hangings.
A few of the stays pop.
Bending down to find the chamber pot under
the bed seems likely to result in my
demise, or at least a premature
emptying of my bladder.
So I throw open the French doors and
piss into the hedges instead.
When I turn back,
Percy’s still on the floor,
upside down with his
feet propped on the bed.
His hair came undone from its
ribboned queue while we slept, and
it edges his face in a wild black cloud.
I pour a glass of sherry from
the decanter on the sideboard and
down it in two swallows.
Hardly any flavor manages to kick its
way through the taste of whatever
crawled into my mouth and
died during the night.
But the hum will get me through
a send-off with my parents, and
days in a carriage with Felicity.
Lord, give me strength.
>> How did we get home last night?
>> Percy asks.
Where were we last night?
It's all a bit woolly after
the third hand of piquet.
>> I think you won that hand.
>> I'm not entirely certain
I was playing that hand.
If we're being honest, I had a few drinks.
>> And if we're truly being honest,
it wasn't just a few.
>> I wasn't that drunk, was I?
>> Monty, you tried to take your
stockings off over your shoes.
>> I scoop a handful of water from
the basin Sinclair left, toss it across my
face, then slap myself a few times,
a feeble attempt to rally for the day.
There’s a flump behind me as Percy
rolls the rest of the way onto the rug.
I wrangle my waistcoat off over my
head and drop it onto the floor.
From his back, Percy points at my stomach.
>> You've something peculiar down there.
>> What?
I look down, there’s a smear of
bright red rouge below my navel.
Look at that.
>> How do you suppose that got there?
>> Percy asks with a smirk,
as I spit on my hand and scrub at it.
A gentleman doesn't tell.
>> Was it a gentleman?
>> Swear to God, Perce,
if I remembered, I’d tell you.
I take another swallow of sherry
straight out of the decanter and
set it down on the sideboard,
nearly missing.
It lands a little harder than I meant.
It's a burden.
>> What is?
>> Being this good-looking,
not a soul can keep their hands off me.
He laughs, close-mouthed.
>> Poor Monty, such a cross.
>> Cross, what cross?
>> Everyone falls in immediate,
passionate love with you.
>> They can hardly be blamed.
I'd fall in love with me, if I met me.
And then I flash him a smile that
has equal parts rapscallion and
boyish dimples, so
deep you could pour tea into them.
>> As modest as you are handsome.
>> He arches his back,
an exaggerated stretch with his head
pressed into the rug and
fingers woven together above him.
Percy’s showy about so few things, but
he’s a damned opera in the mornings.
>> Are you ready for today?
>> I suppose.
I haven't much been involved in
the planning, my father's done it all.
If everything wasn't prepared,
he wouldn't be sending us off.
>> Has Felicity stop
screaming about school?
>> I don't have a notion
where Felicity's mind is at.
I still don't see why we
have to take her along.
>> Only as far as Marseilles.
>> After two goddamned months in Paris.
>> You'll survive one more
summer with your sister.
>> Above us, the baby kicks up his crying.
The floorboards aren't
near enough to stifle it,
followed by the sound of the nursemaid's
heels as she dashes to his call,
a clack like horses' hooves on cobbles.
Percy and
I both flick our eyes to the ceiling.
The goblin's awake, I say lightly.
Muted as it is, his wailing stokes
the ache pulsing in my head.
>> Try not to sound too
happy about his existence.
>> I've seen very little of my baby
brother since he arrived three
months previous.
Just enough to marvel at,
firstly, how strange and
shriveled he looks, like a tomato that’s
been left out in the sun for the summer.
And secondly, how someone so
tiny has such huge potential
to ruin my entire bloody life.
I suck a drop of sherry from my thumb.
What a menace he is.
>> He can't be that much of a menace.
He's only about this big.
>> Percy holds his hands
up in demonstration.
He shows up out of nowhere-
>> I'm not sure you can claim out
of nowhere.
>> And then cries all the while,
and wakes us, and takes up space.
>> The nerve!
>> You're not being very sympathetic.
>> You're not giving
me many reasons to be.
>> I throw a pillow at him.
Which he's still too sleepy to bat away in
time, so it hits him straight in the face.
He gives it a halfhearted toss back
at me as I flop across the bed,
lying on my stomach with my head hanging
over the edge and my face above his.
He raises his eyebrows.
>> That's a very serious face.
Are you making plans to sell the goblin
off to a roving troupe of players,
in hopes they’ll raise
him as one of their own?
You failed with Felicity, but
the second time might be the charm.
>> In truth, I'm thinking how this
tousle-haired, bit-off-his-guard,
morning-after Percy is my
absolute favorite Percy.
I'm thinking that if Percy and I have this
last junket together on the continent,
I intend to fill it with as many
mornings like this as possible.
I'm thinking how I am going to spend
the next year ignoring the fact that
there will be any year beyond it.
I'll get wildly drunk whenever possible,
dally with pretty girls who have foreign
accents, and wake up beside Percy,
savoring the pleasant kick of my
heartbeat whenever I’m near him.
I reach down and
touch his lips with my ring finger.
I think about winking as well.
Which is, admittedly, a tad excessive.
But I’ve always been of the mind
that subtlety is a waste of time.
Fortune favors the flirtatious.
And by now, if Percy doesn't know how
I feel, it's his own damn fault for
being thick.
I'm thinking that today we're
leaving on our grand tour, I reply.
And I'm not going to waste any of it.
