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It surprised him that Armand hadn’t come seek him out in the aftermath, but it was probably for the best; he would have otherwise been forced to admit he had been right, this was repulsive.
He had given the girl of all his blood and shared hers with Claudia, yet what little he had drank sat heavy as oil on his stomach, refusing to spread itself out to his numb empty limbs. He had gnawed and torn at his wrist, frustrated with the lack of cooperation: it had accomplished nothing but make him lightheaded.
Madeleine’s mind had taken a few minutes to close itself to him, and he had still perceived Claudia’s for several hours as they left town, but now all that awaited at edges was silence.
It unnerved him: he kept thinking of his sister’s face, round and glowing on the first night he had seen her with his new eyes.
How had it been possible for her to smile and entertain, knowing her body had created life and yet she was denied the chance to know it, when she was so shut away from her girls' minds she couldn’t even know there were two of them? How was it possible for any human being to bear?
What if she throws herself into the fire? What if the first meal she craves is wiping out a small village and Claudia’s too small to stop her? What if there’s a heaven and I’ve shut her out of it? What if when they lay together on their wedding night Madeleine kisses her and takes her hands and helps her up above the clouds to see the stars shine on her face, and then she lets her fall?
He jumped on his feet, unable to lay curled up in his own misery anymore. He had hoped when all was Armand would come to him to hold him and soothe him, to tell him of all the turnings he had witnessed, to reassure him that it could be beautiful, as it had to be, surely, for Armand to believe there was any purpose to continuing to protect his motley crew of orphaned fledglings, trim out the bad influences, force it into some sort of civil cooperation to make their own grotesque sort of beauty.
But there was none of that: the apartment was quiet as a coffin, and his lover’s mind evaded his clumsy attempts at connection. He paced the room, stuck in his nails into his wounded arm as he passed by the window, as if Armand would be able to smell the blood and materialize by his side just as he started to feel woozy.
Nothing. He supposed he couldn’t complain: he wanted to be maitre, wanted to be a maker, and now he couldn’t expect to be coddled.
He tried his best not to cry himself to sleep come dawn.
***
He had expected some resentment, expected that Armand wouldn’t suffer the indignity of seeking him out first. Once his wounds had closed, he dragged himself to purchase a dozen purple hyacinths for forgiveness and projected out a mental invitation to the spot by the river at which they usually met these days, now that fucking at the theatre had started to become more trouble than it satisfied.
Nothing: not at the riverwalk, not at the park, not at the cafè. He couldn’t remember the last time they had not reached for each other for longer than a day.
Was it possible he had truly pressed too much on the matter of the turning? The truth was that Armand’s reaction had completely blindsided him. It repulses me, I have never made one, I vowed to never curse another as I was.
None of that was an original sentiment among the damned, of course, but that made it feel all the more incongruous for the Armand he knew. It was something Louis could see himself saying, or even Lestat, on the day he had asked him to turn Claudia, a burst of truth piercing the veil of his violent nonchalance. All screamed, all passion and fire, both of them steeped in fire since their rebirth and headed for the fire just as surely. Armand had felt to him from the first moment like the water of the bayou, gentle and cool and not especially transparent, far too old and wise for such banality.
No, one didn't dismiss one’s existence as a curse only because it was not ideal. One endured, one enjoyed whatever gradations of beauty and goodness made themselves available, one showed up in a timely fashion for curfew. The practicality of Madeleine’s transformation - for the girl herself, doomed to a bad start to her mortal life, for Claudia, doomed to a bad start to love, for them, hopefully to be delivered of coven politics - had been so clear.
And yet, Louis could see no other explanation for his absence. Have I hurt you, Arun?
That, of course, was more like Armand - wisely choosing to leave if they truly could do nothing but hurt one another, unLestat-like to the bone. Louis wanted him back so much his chest hurt.
After three days of unexplained absence, closed mind and empty darkness in all their usual haunts, he started to venture to the theatre again, trying to block all thoughts of Claudia from his mind and to be seen only by the members who appeared to be the least preoccupied with hating his guts. From Santiago’s scorned ticket-office girl, he heard that Armand was very preoccupied with rehearsals of a new play, and that he had no plan to come out tonight or any time soon.
Even hoping for some kind of the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend solidarity from this interaction, Louis wasn’t sure whether to believe her. Yet what else could possibly be going on? He had to admit Armand had expressed himself openly enough this time: this had pissed him off in a way no other transgression had before.
Fuck him, he thought that night at the park, sinking his teeth into a boy he could bring himself neither to let go in time nor to drink to the end, now nobody was left to busy themselves with his eating habits. Fuck him, there was no way this girl or Santiago or half those incompetent buffoons had been enduring eternity since the middle fucking ages: Armand had been maître when their initiation to the blood had taken place, he must have given permission, if those precious five laws really mattered so much.
Clearly it was only so very repulsive when it was important to Louis. He should have expected it. He had played cool as long as he could, but now he had shown his hand: Armand knew Louis loved him, and that thus sacrificing for him was now wholly unnecessary, an effort better spent on those whose favor was not yet secured. Especially so when it was an effort that reminded him of Louis having a family of his own that would never be under his control. How very typical: it might be the only way he could be loved.
He closed his own mind, returned to his salon, tried his hand at photography again - he had to, now that he very possibly wouldn’t be able to open his thoughts to another vampire in years, possibly decades, depending on quite how hard he had managed to make Claudia hate him. Yet in every amber light in the street that became dull grey in his pictures he saw Armand’s eyes that night under the magnolia tree, tender and helpless and full of surrender. How could all that have been a lie?
As the summer faded into autumn, he made a last desperate attempt to walk to the theatre.
I’m sorry he thought with all his strength. I never wanted to hurt you. I wanted you there because I needed you, but it was wrong if you say so. There’s only one person besides you in this world who still loves me, so I’m pretty fucking sure this isn’t going to come up again. Why let it break us?
Nothing: his mind gift had no chance against an ancient who didn’t wish to be found. Louis sighed and sat out of the deserted threshold. It was showtime, and the theatre was locked in its own happy little word, a soft piano melody and Santiago’s reverberating death monologue barely perceptible from outside. He had never thought he would miss Claudia’s Baby loves windows . He wonder if Armand did too, or if he was happy and engrossed in the show, finally in perfect dull harmony with his faithful acolytes, perhaps Gustave’s or Quang Phan’s arms around him backstage -
He raised his eyes to the poster wall, to catch a glimpse of the new play that seemed to be absorbing his attention, and flinched. Among the old classics and the torn remnants of Baby Loves Windows, a new play was being advertised, an one-time-only performance of Julius Caesar on the autumn solstice. The Theatre des Vampires disposes of their tyrant, the headline read in vibrant red colors, and Caesar looked alarmingly familiar behind a wall of clawed hands grasping daggers.
***
He had never imagined he might miss the time he and Claudia had been planning Lestat’s murder together. Obviously, in this case there was a lot less emotional distress, but there was still a loneliness in doing everything himself that he didn’t expect would make it almost as bad.
But he couldn’t draw her back into danger, no matter how unsuited he felt by himself. He read the notes of her research years over and over - iron → stops vampiric powers, sun immunity → 10-15 minutes, 2 for fledglings. Black velvet slows it by half.
In the end, he mostly made use of the power he already had - a stack of francs for the gunpowder and gasoline, another stack to a mortal patron of the evening show to spread said gasoline on the seats as a lark, and the knowledge of the divas involved to know how recklessly a suspiciously bulky bouquet of flowers would be brought into the very innard of the theatre.
He knew he couldn’t be there, waiting for the blast. His mind would be recognized, he wouldn’t be able to take thirteen vampires, or even three. He awaited in the park, low in the bushes, clutching his brand new flamethrower, and prayed that all would work properly, that the flames would last until dawn, that the coven wouldn’t be able to find a refuge too close to the theatre and that Armand was being held someplace safe enough. There was nothing else he could do for now.
Once the sun had risen, he pulled up his hood and took his car outside the theatre, still burning and seemingly empty. Luckily his predictions had held true, the flames in the crypt had largely suffocated without touching the iron coffins in the wall, and Armand was woozy and hot to the touch when Louis pulled him out, but unburned.
“It’s not showtime, you’re not dreaming,” Louis said as he loosened the iron chain around Armand’s wrists, let the slowly-kindling wonder in his eyes warm him like the distant memory of wine. “Oh dear, what’d you do to them?” he teased, lifting Armand up with an hand under his cheek, it being absolutely pointless to ask what did they do to you? It would have been almost showtime, if Louis hadn’t interrupted it: Armand was already in his short Roman tunic, his beautiful curls torn out to the root and the location of twenty-two stab wounds drafted in chalk and clawmarks all over his body. The twenty-third was marked across his throat, raw and bloody.
Armand didn’t say a word, but the images flooded his mind - the assembled coven on the stage, the script shoved in his hands, too quickly for Louis to make out anything but his own name, the screaming, the refusal, centuries old grudges brought back, Lestat Lestat Lestat Lestat Lestat how could anyone seriously prefer him, in the matter of leadership at least? - and then - Armand storming out, Armand rummaging for something in his closet, the coven spilling in through the office door, claws and blood, pushing him flat to the floor and stripping him down -
Louis jerked away and pressed a kiss on Armand’s temple. “I’ll go get your coat,” he said impulsively, blinking away tears. Luckily for his idiocy, the study was very near and also unburned. To his surprise, a suitcase was already sitting in the corner, packed with a few spare possessions and, on top of everything, a single delicate magnolia sprout. Louis was caught staring at it for a few moments before he understood what exactly Armand had meant to do with it, then quickly threw everything into a carpetbag and hoisted it over his shoulder. If he had a responsibility to Armand to shield the vulnerability of his body, then it would be pretty counterproductive to prance back downstairs with the evidence of his lovelorn desperation flaunted without the chance of plausible deniability.
Gently he tucked Armand in his trench coat and wide-brimmed hat and picked him up - it felt a little as it had on the day he had ran out of the burning boarding house with Claudia in his arms, though he wasn’t about to think that too hard - Armand entirely dead weight, his face pressed against Louis’s chest when they crossed the flames.
It was harder to avoid the sun now it was hotter and he needed to occasionally shift the velvet cover to look where he was going in the morning traffic, but he had stashed Armand safely under the backseat, and for himself he just gritted his teeth and sped on. He expended his 10-15 minutes of autonomy to drive to the underground parking garage on Rue de Ponthieu, snatched the parking valet from his cubicle, doused himself in his cold beer, sat Armand up in his lap and gently pressed him down to sink his teeth into the boy’s neck.
Once he was done, Louis caught a sip of half dead blood himself and slit his thumb, dribbled it down Armand’s neck, rubbed and kissed the hollows of his palms. He wondered if Santiago had meant to pin him down on the stage, a knife at each extremity, to more easily deliver the final blow.
“Why did you not just freeze them all? I know you could,” he blurted out.
Armand reeled a bit, and he immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry-”
“I can hold it for five minutes these days. I would get outside the theatre, and only have to fight them in the streets, and right on curfew, undignified.” His voice came out in a pained whisper. “Or I would outrun them all the way down to the sewers, and have to kill them all in the catacomb where I saw some of them made fledglings. Or I would outrun them all the way to you, and see you murdered, or we would outrun them out of the city, and know they would always be after us, or they would give up, and I would be alone with you forever, and you would not dare leave because you felt obligated to me, and you would hate me. None of that seemed worth the hassle.”
Louis blinked and cupped his face to softly kiss the corner of his lips. “You don’t have to fear me hating you. Anyone who’s ever loved me will tell you I’m physically incapable of being grateful. I’m here only because… you know why.”
Armand sighed and leaned on his shoulder, soft and empty. Louis held him for a while, tucking him under his coat when a rustling out in the lot drove him to investigate. Luckily it was only a cat to give him a little strength and finish closing his sunburns. Armand had wriggled out of his blanket when he returned, and Louis sat down the flamethrower to lay with him awhile.
“‘s okay, Arun. Just a noise.” He kissed the top of his nose and wondered if he should tell him they were all dead. Wasn’t that the sort of things a maître was meant to do?
“Do you want me to go back and kill them all?” He asked instead. “So we won’t need to run away from them forever. We are still very close. You won't have to see it, not even in my mind for I'm not going to bother remembering it. Would you like that?”
“No,” Armand said, a bit too quickly.
“However you want it. You don't need to be afraid.”
“I'm not afraid.” His eyes were indeed soft and unalarmed, but Louis feared it had little to do with his trust in him as a protector.
They left again at sunset, six hours’ ride to Antwerp - as far as they could get while still speaking French, they neither of them could handle one more logistical hassle by now. Louis hadn’t suggested to Armand to sit in the passenger seat, figuring he probably needed rest but wouldn’t want to refuse him. Despite that, he didn’t seem any more energetic when they finally stepped out in front of a suitable hotel, trailing after Louis like an unsteady shadow. He hadn’t slept well, Louis supposed: of course in most respects, nobody would call spending three centuries underground being spoiled or pampered, but it was undeniable it would kind of ruin you for the pedestrian darkness of a city night. He checked in, led Armand upstairs and unpacked, then fed Armand as much as he could take, resting his face against Louis’s chest as he lapped the blood up. He took him to the bath and washed him all over in blood and kisses and lavender-scented Marseille soap until the stray burns closed and his curls sprang back up to their full length, and only then Armand relaxed enough to weep against his chest in soft trembling hiccups.
In lieu of a coffin, he maneuvred Armand atop the drawers of their closet, leapt in and wrapped himself around him, curling up so he could sit on his thighs and rest in the hollow of his chest, entirely enclosed in the dark.
“Thank you,” he felt Armand whisper as he fell asleep. Unfortunately, but as he had predicted, this sleep lasted thereabouts thirty-six hours and even thereafter, Armand seemed strangely frozen, would not move, not eat, not speak to him.
“Would you like to go see the gothic cathedral?” He suggested on the third day.
Armand winced at the sound of his voice, shaking his head. “It’s not safe.”
“They can’t have possibly followed out here and if they have, I’ll be the first to say they deserve us.”
“No, it’s the humans. The second law. We can’t afford to be driven out.”
Louis scoffed. “You can give a show from the balcony of a theatre but not take a stroll in the street?”
“It’s dangerous now.
“You still have your hat, your coat and your pretty silk handkerchiefs and your tinted glasses, you’re as distinguished as ever. None of these humans will magically intuit you’re not maitre and sense a weakness,” he scolded him. But still, on some level deep within him, he understood: it couldn’t ever be the same again, so why insist?
He did his best not to push, afterwards, even as the days became weeks.
Armand’s sorrow was as cool and gentle as his courtship, as his dominion. Louis had always struggled to imagine what the 18th century tryst between his two lovers might have been like, but now he could at least say for certain that Lestat would have preferred to suffer Armand in the house rather than Louis in the same state. He didn't fight or ramble, didn't make a mess of the house, didn't curl up tightly in obtrusive layers of clothing, at least not once he had fed enough to balance his temperature. He wept very softly and only in daytime, always said “I'm sorry” and “thank you” when he refused Louis’s invitation on some outing, let himself be carried and rearranged as needed, laid out open to being touched and kissed as easily as stealing sips from a spring.
On e sunset, when Louis woke still half in a lovely dream and instinctively nibbled on his neck, Armand brushed back his hair and opened his pajama shirt further. That had been a bit unsettling, but Louis wasn't going to take advantage, so he didn't let it worry him too much.
After all, if he needed rest why shouldn’t he rest, if he deserved more gentleness than Louis had, why shouldn't he get it? Louis was all the more glad to give it.
He bought him soft silk pajamas in ochre and mossy green, and a fluffy white robe when winter approached, new pillows, herb-scented bath salts and books in French and Italian. He slept with Armand in the closet and alone in bed on alternating days, so to let Armand have his space and his affection without needing to ask or decide; it worked so well Armand would gently wake him up and correct him when he mixed up his dates. He read to him sometimes, though Armand was slowly beginning to pick up books too, to walk from the closet to the bed for better lighting (and access to Louis’s lap) of his own intent.
He still never spoke but a few words a day, nor accepted to set foot out of the suite. That, was harder to get used to, but at least he realized that however worrying, Armand’s affliction was not so destructive that he couldn’t be left alone. He used the dusk hours to shop, occasionally sightsee, write one letter to Claudia attempting to convey the absurdity of their circumstance, and do his duty as a provider. Armand was remarkably unobtrusive in diet too: at the beginning Louis had been able to just feed himself and then let him nurse from his wrist, still unsure how many kills they would be able to dispose of before someone at the hotel caught on.
By November he required so little energy that Louis could bring home victims and Armand would take a petit coup from their neck and erase the memory from their mind before Louis sent them off.
“If you no longer provided me with enough, I would hunt, but if you mean to continue…” Armand had said when Louis, fully appreciating the irony, had asked him if he was sure this was enough. There was no teasing to it - just plain, total abandonment to Louis’s whim. It almost frightened him. “I don’t want us to have to move.”
“No?” Louis teased as he wiped down his face and carried him to the closet - it still tired him to use his powers fully, and to be honest Louis had gotten into the habit. “I thought we might move somewhere for winter. Don’t you miss Italy? A little trip to sea for your health…”
“It will have no effect.”
“Not with that attitude.” Louis ruffled his hair. “What about London, then? Might be nice to talk to someone else ever in our immortal lives, you know, or somewhere up North. Claudia was so convinced there was a coven in Denmark and I must say it would make logistical sense with the arctic night-”
He stopped as Armand let out a strangled gasp. “No, I wouldn't be suitable, I can’t ever again.”
“I’m not suggesting we embark on a war of conquest and take over, just to see if we like it there. If you’re scared they’ll take a look at you and beg you to be maître, we could lie about your age, tell them you’re my precious little fledgling…”
“You can go. I will not starve.”
“Oh yeah, I'm totally suggesting for my sake, you know how much I love swearing vows of loyalty -” Louis started, then bit his tongue. “Actually, yeah, it would be good for me too. It’s just we’ve both been hustling our whole lives, you know? As much as I love to have you all to myself, I don’t think we exactly thrive on hiding away in romantic isolation.”
“I was made to be hidden away in romantic isolation, quite literally” Armand said, in the softest, most polite whisper, and there was nothing he could say at that point.
He waited to cry until the next day he was to be exiled to bed and suffocated it in the pillow, but Armand still felt it, still perceived it somewhere within him somehow. He laid beside Louis smoothly, noiselessly, and turned his face to kiss the damp hollows of his eyes.
He was naked under his fluffy dressing gown. “If it’s boredom that frustrates you so, maitre, I can try…”
“No, no.” Louis kissed his hands, trying to blink back all his tears at once. This was not boring in the slightest to neither of them: that was the problem. So easy to go still forever, so easy to drift away. “You’ve given up everything for me; I wish I could see you happy and well. But it’s wrong, it’s too much to ask of you yet.”
“It’s not wrong, just… untrue.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How can it be untrue if I mean it?”
“By the time I refused the coven, they must have already hated me to suggest a thing like that, even the ones I fucked, even the ones I knew from the middle ages always hated me. They never respected me, I never gave them a reason, I was forced on them by my old covenmaster and they tried to trade me in with Lestat and couldn’t and tried to trade me in with Santiago and maybe will be luckier. I had nothing left, love or power or position, and never had it to begin with, and they were going to invite Lestat and he was likely not going to let them kill you anyway, so it follows logically I’ve given up nothing.”
“Arun…”
“And it’s untrue that I’m unhappy, as well: I should be happy. I was made to be hidden away and enjoyed, and that was the only time I was happy. My parents could have apprenticed me to a different trade, but they didn’t. There were children that they sold to be soldiers, but not me, even though I was the tallest on the boat. There were courtesans in Venice who wrote poetry and did their own paintings and schemed with the high nobility, but nobody ever chose me for that, only to fuck and to pose. It was Santino who was mistaken, to force me to be something else. Now that’s over and done with, and I’ll be happy to be all yours. I only need a little longer to start: children are more adaptable, I'm sorry.”
Louis shushed him and pulled him close, powerless to deny the logic of any of that in a way Armand would believe. But in his mind’s eye he saw Armand on the first day they had sat in the theatre seats together, soft chapped lips muttering stage directions ever from there and eyes glittering with pride, sneaking a glance every now and then to see if Louis was impressed. How could that Armand have been a mistake if that was when he had started falling in love with him?
***
Claudia and Madeleine “surprised them” over Christmas. “I really don’t mind passing by,” Claudia told him, as he took the girls - fully women both, he supposed - on a tour of the Fine Arts museum. “Maddie always wanted to see Spain and we definitely had some fun at the bull chase in July, but to be honest I think you had the right idea to follow the cold and dark. Moreover, I suppose I owe him one.”
At midnight, Louis served them cups of Earl Grey steeped in hot human blood with a drop of cognac, and Armand looked like a perfectly distinguished gentleman in his steel-grey pajama pants and the adored 19th-century smoking jacket Louis had hunted down for him at an antique store. Louis had put the pin in his hair while he slept so his curls would look just as he liked them, and they had even put on a little kohl as Armand used to in Paris.
He sipped his tea daintily, inquired after their travels and said “oh, I’d been telling Louis we should leave for long” with no further elaboration when the girls attempted to at least glance at the elephant in the room, though Louis only remembered Armand saying you should think to leave.
That was convenient, in a way: It gave Claudia the chance to make her proposal as if she knew nothing, which was perhaps the only way it might work.
“I found out about the loveliest sapphic play. Well, there are probably lovelier ones, since in this one the lover doesn’t even appear onstage, but it makes it easier for what I need to do with it.”
She produced her heavily scribbled La prisonniere and launched into a very enthusiastic and excellently acted explanation of how she would adapt it for one female protagonist and two swing actors, complete with a few special effects to really exploit the infinite healing abilities of the vampire body.
“You don’t need my advice on this, puce, ” Armand interrupted her, to her credit with a faint smirk on his lips. “I didn’t give you the only psychologically challenging role Sam wrote this century because you didn’t understand theatre.”
“Oh that’s how he calls it now,” she scoffed. “Come on, don’t play dumb with me. We could make something truly beautiful now you won’t have to balance out thirteen people who all want to be the star of the show. Maddi can sew the costumes, and you can teach Louis whatever was done with the projections, or if you don’t want to do that, that’s fine, he’ll just be onstage all the time. He would do even that for you. We’ll be a little limited in the genres available until we can turn -” she glanced at Louis’s face and quickly changed “until we can find someone who plays an instrument. Or maybe one of you will want to learn, shit, who knows what we will want to do with all eternity to figure out? You can’t tell me you don’t want to give this a try, to show them who was really carried the company if nothing else.”
“I hope you do find someone who wants it,” Armand said, smiling politely. The worst part was how much he truly meant it.
The girls departed on New’s Year, and Louis felt guilty leaving Claudia with the blame for that conversation.
“I’m sorry,” he told Armand as he lay together in the bathtub. “I hated a lot of things about that theatre, but never what you did with it, you really had something special in you. I wish you could love what you do again.”
“The theatre was Lestat’s idea,” Armand sighed. “I didn’t complain, it was a way to keep the coven all in one place and each with their purpose as any other. But still, did Lestat’s idea of a positive life change ever work for you?”
Louis had to admit he had a point, however much it sent him back to the start. “What would you want to do, then, with the rest of our eternal lives?”
Armand kissed him, and he got the message.
***
The stacks under his bed were soft to the touch as he counted them on his fingertip, over and over. The profits of slavery, the profits of sin, the profits of Lestat’s spindly roots not letting him free even from the grave - or at least the other side of the ocean, it had turned out, all built up in the only power he had to offer relief.
He hoped it would be enough.
When the day came, he lured Armand out with the offer of a hunt, promised him that Louis would pick out an evildoer of his preferred kind himself to spare him the foray into cruel thoughts and drew out the chase so Armand could finish his meal nice and clean into the river.
After that, it was a short enough walk house walk to the house, slightly out of the bustling city centre, overlooking the water
“Is this some sort of mob den?” Armand asked once the silk handkerchief was slipped away from his eyes, crossing his arms nervously
“Yeah, I should probably have taken a little longer with it,” he grumbled as he led Armand through the wide unfurnished open space of the entrance and through the small bedroom into the garden. That was when Armand stopped in his tracks as the revelation hit him. Louis slipped an arm around his waist and took his hand. “It could be a photography studio. It could be a little antique bookstore. It could be a theatre if you change your mind.”
“We’d have to remodel for that,” Armand whispered as if half-caught in a dream, his hand reaching out to stroke the leaves of the laurel hedge he’d had planted on the edges - for privacy and familiar scent, pending Armand’s blessing to set down the magnolia tree.
“It doesn’t have to have a purpose right away. As of now, it’s just something to hold us in place while we figure it out together, can’t do that in a hotel room, you know? Not for a long time, as companions.”
Silently, but quick as a snake, Armand wrapped his arms around him and rested his head on his shoulder. Louis stroked his hair and smiled. It was still a bit of a gamble to try it out in a city they had mostly picked out at random, he supposed, but wasn’t this the point of eternity? They could have a thousand magnolia trees.