The Silenced Tale, стр. 23
But the police are on their way, and Elgar doesn’t want to be on the phone when they arrive. Especially to someone who prides himself on his anonymity, and whose livelihood and happiness depends on him remaining anonymous, unlooked at, secret. Forsyth has to appear to be bland, an overly intellectual house-husband and stay-at-home-dad who likes his books just a little too much, and stereotypically “manly” pursuits just a bit too little. His whole gig is built on people assuming that crumpled, cardigan-clad Syth Piper is the furthest thing from dangerous.
No. Elgar’s seen enough police procedural TV shows to know that if he’s on the phone with someone when the cops show up, they’ll want to talk to that someone. He can’t do that to Forsyth. Instead, Elgar plugs his nose, heaves himself to his feet, passes the kitchen, and goes down the hall to his office.
“Black magic shit,” Juan had said.
His laptop is where Elgar left it, and he immediately moves it to the filing cabinet, locking it in the same drawer as the fire-safe filled with external hard drives and papers. A small, fuzzy orange head pokes out of the end of the under-desk tunnel, and mrows pitifully at him.
“I found him!” Elgar calls, and reaches out to gently rub a finger up the bridge of Linux’s wrinkled nose. The cat’s ears are back, whiskers spread wide and pupils massive, the skin around his mouth pulled tight. He looks terrified.
Whatever it was that had come into their house and done . . . that, has scared the daylights out of the poor cat. Elgar is tempted to try to coax Linux out, to shower him with affection in order to soothe the cat and himself. But he’s too relieved that Linux is fine, and too worried that he might get underfoot once the police arrive, that instead, he rubs the cringing cat’s head once, then closes the office door to keep him trapped in there. Linux doesn’t like being shut up. Elgar expects him to yowl indignantly and bat at Elgar’s toes through the gap at the bottom of the door like he usually does. That Linux stays still and silent says more about his fear, and perhaps the danger of the situation, than Elgar likes.
Elgar shuffles back into the living room, where Juan is now sitting as close to the fire as he can get, shivering. There’s a quilt over the back of the sofa—Elgar’s late aunt Lilah had sewn it back in the forties out of the rags of clothing that were rationed in England—and he drapes it around his assistant’s shoulders. He feels, strangely, like he’s the world-wise and weary one this time around. Perhaps it’s the shock keeping him calm—actually, it’s definitely the shock keeping him calm—but with Linux accounted for and Juan to look after, the fear caused by the violation of his home isn’t as intense.
“Okay,” Juan says softly. “Okay. I guess it wasn’t stress after all. Or drugs.”
“You think?” Elgar snarls. But it is soft. Not cruel, not accusatory.
Juan cringes all the same. “Yeah, boss. Sorry, boss.”
“It’s okay. Are you all right?” Elgar sort of wants to do something to comfort him, but . . . a back slap is too jockish, and he doesn’t think his relationship with Juan is on the level where he can offer a hug, so instead, he just twists his fingers around themselves uselessly and squirms.
“I won’t be eating meat for . . . like, the rest of my life,” Juan whines.
“Shame,” Elgar says, trying to lighten the mood, to distract them from the horror of their situation. “What will your writer-worshiping boyfriend say to that?”
Juan gasps, some of the color that shock had drained from his face bubbling back up to the surface of his skin in two pink splotches on his cheeks. “Boss! Did you just make a blowjob joke?”
“Yes?”
“To a man?”
“. . . yes?” Elgar says, wondering if this is a trick question.
“Good for you, boss,” Juan says, and punches his arm gently.
Elgar grew up in a very conservative household, his parents having passed away when he was young and his Aunty Lilah the kind of god-fearing Christian who had firm ideas of what was right and wrong. She hadn’t even been that keen on fiction, believed it was a waste of time and thought, and that a serious young man like Elgar Reed should be studying instead of reading comic books. She hadn’t minded so much when his first advance had gotten them both out of the co-op welfare housing, or when the subsequent royalty checks had gotten them into a house of their very own. A house that Aunty Lilah had lived in until she’d died in ’91. Elgar had sold that house because he couldn’t bear to see her in every wall and carpet, and bought the house he and Juan were sitting in now.
A lot of that god-fearing righteousness had crept into Elgar’s work, though he hadn’t really realized it until he’d read Lucy Piper’s PhD dissertation. It had also colored his perception of the people around him. So much so that he nearly hadn’t hired Juan when his previous assistant, Janet, had told him to go screw himself.
It was Lucy who’d encouraged him to give Juan a try. They’d been reviewing the resumes the temp agency had forwarded to Elgar at the Piper’s home in Victoria. Elgar had always thought that assistants should be women. Secretaries, receptionists, clerical aides . . . that was women’s work, right? Lucy had smacked him upside the head and told him to stop being so sexist, and to hire the right fit, not the right plumbing.
It wasn’t until