“There. You’re settled.”
“Deeply ashamed!” the sailor shouts again, grabbing the front of Monty’s shirt.
“Fine, I’m deeply ashamed.” I manage to push myself in between and drag Monty away. He seizes my arm, his gait unsteady in a way that I am almost sure cannot be blamed solely on the fact that I have his cane hooked around my foot. Warm air off the canals wafts in through the window. It’s summer, I realize. I left England in the rainy doldrums of March, and missed the spring blooms. It’s odd, to think of a season passing at home without me, the first of my life. I wonder if, back in London, Lou went to Milk Street’s May Day celebrations. We have always gone together in Cheshire to watch the Morris dancing and the chimney sweeps’ procession, and I’m gripped by a sudden panic that I’m missing my life—my life with her—chasing a story I already know the end to, not to mention a clearly inebriated brother across a crowded barroom.
He’s too drunk and I’m too scrawny for me to carry him like this all the way back to Johanna’s. I’ll be lucky to get him out onto the street. I glance over at the bar to make sure the bartender’s attention is elsewhere, then shove Monty down at a table near the door. His knee strikes the edge, and he yips in pain.
I drop into the seat beside his good ear. I should be angry at him. More angry than I am. That spot on my collarbone still stings. “Are you drunk?” I demand.
He puts his head down on the table, nose to the wood. I shudder to think of what’s likely rested there before him, and certainly not been wiped up after. “I think so.” He sits up again so suddenly he almost smacks me in the face with the back of his head. “Don’t go. I need to tell you something.”
“I’m not going.”
“I have to tell you something.”
“All right, tell me.”
“It’s a secret. Come here, it’s secret.” He pulls my face very close to his mouth—God, his breath smells flammable—then says at full volume, “Everyone hates me.”
“That’s not true.”
“I know,” he moans. “But they should. You should. Percy should.”
“What does he—”
“You know when you find a puppy,” Monty says, looking into the middle distance with a hand raised like a philosopher. “And the puppy has a really great ass—”
The thought occurs—Should I just leave him here?
“But you can’t keep him because you know you won’t remember to feed him—you hardly cook for yourself, and sometimes all you eat is those really expensive caramels you can’t afford but you buy anyway, and those aren’t good for puppies.” He sucks in a wet breath. “So you try to be mean to him so he’ll leave you and go to someone better who will give him flank steaks and blood pudding and”—he wafts his hand through the air, struggling for a word before finally finishing—“other foods for puppies. But he’s goddamn stupid and he just keeps following you around and telling you he loves you and he wants to marry you even though you’re not a good dog owner, and then you feel like you’re cruel for making him think he’s happy when he must be an absolutely miserable . . . puppy.” He belches, somewhat into his fist, somewhat onto me. “The puppy thing got away from me. It’s Percy. The puppy is Percy.”
“I worked that out.”
“He’s got such a great ass.”
“You’ve mentioned.”
He lets his head fall forward on his chest. “Everything is such a bloody mess. The business and money and losing the investors and Percy just keeps goddamn proposing like he’s not going to regret it—I’m saying no for his own good, you understand that? I’m sending the puppy to a farm! And then I kept seeing Dick.”
And here I had just begun to wonder if he’d notice if I stopped listening. “Excuse me?”
“Richard Bloody Peele, that bastard.”
“Did you . . .” Dear Lord, now here’s a question I hadn’t considered I might have to someday ask anyone, let alone my brother. “Did you shag Richard Peele?”
“Yes.” He starts to plummet toward the table again, then sits up violently. “But a long long time ago. When we were fifteen or something. Your age. How old are you? Ten? Forty-five?” He places his hands on the table in front of him, palms facing each other, then pushes them together like he’s measuring something. “Richard Peele has got a . . . really tiny penis. Percy doesn’t, though.” He starts to expand his hands for reference but I shove them off the table.
“What happened with Richard Peele?”
“I saw him once—once! At this stupid club. And I was only there so Percy wouldn’t propose to me again.” He opens his hands, waiting for me to applaud his virtue. I don’t. “And then he kept showing up everywhere and buying me drinks and then one night we were at Jack Dalton’s and he showed me his tiny penis.”
I deeply regret leading him further down this road.
“But I didn’t do anything with it. And now we’re going to lose our business and our home and that stupid puppy won’t go find someone better for him than me.” He leans into me again, another secret. Somehow his breath is even worse. “I’ve mucked it all up again.”
“You haven’t mucked anything up,” I say.
“I know. It’s Felicity’s fault.”
“We’ve all made bad choices.”
“Especially me. I’ve never done a goddamn thing right in my whole life.” He hiccups. “Couldn’t hack it in the peerage. Can’t stay sober. Or run a business. Can’t tie my shoes. Don’t really know what a fraction is and I’m too afraid to ask now. You don’t like me.” He smashes his face into my shoulder, snuffling around and slobbering nearly as much as Johanna’s dogs. “Do you ever want to not be yourself? Just for a night?”
I laugh faintly. “All the bloody time.”
“No, no,” he sits up. “Don’t say it like that. You’ve got to say, ‘Abso-bloody-lutely I do.’”
“Abso-bloody-lutely,” I say, my voice breaking into a laugh on the final syllable.
Monty grins. “See? Then it’s not tragic—it’s just funny.”
“It’s still quite tragic.”
“I know. We are so goddamn tragic, aren’t we? Bloody operas, we Montagues. At least we’re pretty. You know, Goblin—”
“Adrian.”
“I wish you were right.”
“What about?”
“I wish we were cursed.” He stacks his fists upon the table and rests his chin atop them. “Then at least I’d have an excuse.”
He’s drunk—a command of language is likely one of the first things to go. But a flag goes up inside me, like a warning between ships. Danger ahead. “What do you mean, you wish?” I ask carefully. “We are.”
He rolls his neck so that he’s facing me. “Come on,” he says with a wet giggle. “Surely you must have caught on by now.”
“Caught on to what?” I ask.
Monty stares at me, tipping his chin down, like he’s trying to work out if I’m having him on. Finally, his mouth quivering with another suppressed laugh, he says, “It’s not real.”