Le Feu Dans Le Ciel

Gairid

4 juillet, 2002

"I don’t see why we could not have watched the fireworks over the River, Louis." I grumbled. I followed him through a crowd of literally thousands of mortals.

"There are no hills there, ‘Stat." He said patiently, as he had several dozen times already.

He picked his way through the press of people in the sodden July air of a Louisiana night. He’d had the idea days ago that he wished to view this years' Independence Day fireworks from a different place than our accustomed Riverbank location.

In truth I had liked the idea…it had involved us leaving a night earlier and spending a day in a Day’s Inn in Natchitoches. Louis had packed simply, one of the dozens of blankets in the linen closet, and a large, cartoonish picnic basket. A small bag with a change of clothing for each of us, just in case.

He had placed the items in the trunk of the ’59 Impala we’d taken to using lately, and slid himself behind the wheel, hand held out for the keys. I’d turned them over with no argument…he rarely wanted to drive, and I thought it would be nice to sprawl in the shotgun seat and watch the wind lift his hair. I was right…it had been nice…wonderful in fact.

It was wonderful now, too, following him through the crowd, watching him wind his way through the excited, running children, the sprawled bodies on their own blankets. What did it matter where we were? If Louis wanted to see fireworks on a hill, it was fine with me.

Not that it was much of a hill. Calling it a rise was being kind, but it afforded as a view of all the mortals around us and of the small lake that glimmered in the darkness, reflecting the moon and the lights that dotted the pathway around it. Miraculously there was space at the summit of Louis’ little hill and I spread the quilt on the damp grass.

"What time will it start?" I asked him. I liked fireworks.

"Nine fifteen." He said. He put the picnic basket down and opened one end of it. I sat cross-legged, watching curiously. He had not allowed me to look inside the thing. He removed a wine bottle and two crystal goblets, I raised an eyebrow.

"Le cru, mon chéri?"

" A ‘91, ‘Stat." He said, smiling.

He removed a small candelabrum and five white candles. To the amusement of the people sitting around us, he managed to get the thing set up and lighted without mishap. He’d fastened his hair back, and tucked it in his shirt, but the ride to the lakeside park had caused it to come loose, the shorter parts of it about his forehead like fragile wisps of smoke around his pale face. He made himself comfortable, tucking one foot beneath himself and stretching one long leg out.

"A glass, Lestat?" He asked.

"Yes, please."

His movements were economical but graceful, as they always are. He pulled the cork and I closed my eyes in brief bliss. ’91? Yes, indeed. 1791. Louis’ blood in that heavy green bottle. He poured the red liquid, the richness of it clinging to the side of the perfect little goblet.

"Not my very favorite." He said, pouring some for himself, and putting bottle down. "I much prefer the house vintage at Maison de Lioncourt. I hadn’t time to visit the cellars before we left, however."

His serious tone made me break out into a stream of undignified giggling.

"The cellars?" I said delighted. I struggled not to spill the precious contents of my glass.

He smiled faintly at me, raising his glass.

"Just so." He said, lips twitching.

I touched my glass to his and tipped my head back to sip. Fire. I felt it tingling through me, the unique essence that is Louis. I drank more deeply and he chuckled softly, watching me.

"Greedy baby." He said fondly.

I had the glass upended, and I was licking the sides of it so as not to waste a single corpuscle. He sipped from his glass in a leisurely fashion, leaning back and supporting himself on one elbow. His eyes fastened on something behind me.

"I want one of those." He said, pointing.

I turned my head. There was a man walking through the crowd with a canvas sack slung over his shoulder. In his hand he held long, thin plastic tubes eerily glowing pink and purple and green. All around us people had them around their necks and wrists and ankles.

"Your wish is my command." I said, rising to my feet. I looked in my wallet, and was pleased to see I had cash in it. "I’ll be right back."

"You don’t need to bring all of them back, ‘Stat." He called after me. "One will do fine."

I ended up bringing a handful back. He chose a purple one and put it around his ankle. I put a pink one around my neck and handed the rest of them out to the people around us with kids.

We could hear greetings being drawled out over the tinny speakers that were mounted on makeshift poles all about the wide field below us. Announcements about the facilities and not littering and what a great country we lived in, the usual thing, We were told that the display would be accompanied by themed music. The little speech was ended by a shout of ‘God Bless America’. The crowd around us thundered the phrase back with astonishing fervor.

Louis blew out the candles so that the light wouldn’t interfere with the show to come. I stretched out on my side and poured myself another glass of vin de Louis and watched him settle with his back against the basket. All about us were the sounds and smells of mortals, most of them enjoying themselves. The whistle of little rockets and the small pop of squibs exploding.

I took another sip from my glass, shivering a little at the taste as the music began. A flash of light above the lake and the dark sky bloomed with a great orange flower, sparkling and beautiful. The sight was followed by a deep, hollow boom, and I winced involuntarily. The orange flower was followed by a series of green and purple bursts, flashes of white. Circling showers of red and blue, and I lost myself for a while in the sheer assault such a thing takes on the senses.

Another of the huge orange bursts, the edges dropping fluttering, sparkly rain. I dropped my eyes from the sky to look at Louis…to make some comment to him. What I saw made the comment, whatever it was, die on my lips.

He was lying there, Louis, watching the sky with a look of childlike, open-mouthed wonder on his face, completely in the moment, Vulnerable, that pale face, and soft…soft as I have rarely seen him outside the confines of our bedroom. He looked dazzled by the bright, shiny color, the smell, the oohs and aahs of the crowd. He didn’t care for the noise, I knew that, but he’d already forgotten about, losing the flinch as I had after the first few explosions.

I had my head propped in my left hand and I felt my right hand spasm…I was literally itching to reach out and touch him. The feeling was one of painful ambivalence, the mixture intoxicating. That shimmering look of innocence, that wide-eyed look of simple happiness. When had I last seen him thus in a crowded place such as this?

Louis can and does enjoy himself among mortals, but I expect I have grown used to being the center of his attention, the beam that draws his eye. My right hand twitched again in longing. With his mouth open as it was I could smell his breath. When had I last done that, even, without catching his mouth in a kiss, taking the breath into my own body? It occurred to me as I looked that he is nearly always so directly focused on me that I am usually unable to observe him like this, to have the pleasure of watching him while he is otherwise engaged.

I could feel myself panting, trying to draw in more of his scent, while at the same time trying to be quiet about it. I didn’t want to break his focus. I waited, breathless for the next booming explosion so that I could swallow the scent of him whole. Another flash of color, and his smile and small gasp of pleasure, it made me ache for him. My eyes welled up, and I saw him suddenly through a film of red.

I had to tear my eyes from the sight of him, or I would be unable to keep from touching him.. To do so would break the spell, surely. I blinked against the tears, casting about for something to focus to stop the saliva from squirting into my mouth.

I looked at a family a little bit in front of us. The father, downing one beer after another. The mother, tiredly pretty. Looking after the children, a little girl of perhaps five, and a boy, maybe nine years old. The children each had on the glowing plastic things that I’d handed out before. I tried to look at them as people. Not sustenance…not meat.

Their thoughts percolated through a little bit as I concentrated. The self-medicating father, glassy-eyed, thinking only of his next beer and then the one after that. The woman, mind on her book club, and just where was the bathroom for the kids? The little girl excited still by the fireworks, but becoming irritable with fatigue, the boy, bored, squinting through the darkness to see if he could find any of his friends. The wife again, thinking about the couch, reupholstering it, and gee, could Ray drink any more beer tonight? She’d never get any, he’d be six sheets by the time they got home. The boy, wishing for his miniature video game, and wondering why his mother had refused to let him bring it, The little girl, fretful with a full bladder, but anxious about using the toilets in the park with the sickening, sweet odor they had. She hated them. The father’s breath. Sweet. And sickening.

I blinked, pulling myself out of the morass of their thoughts, back to Louis. Louis, who is my life. He’d raised his hand, pointing.

"The blue." He said. "The blue. And the gold, it’s so beautiful. So shiny. Sparkles…look."

"And the green." I said very softly. "So brilliant."

"They shimmer." Louis said. He looked so open…dewy. Young. Very young. How have I missed this? This gift? This vision? Have I always just assumed that he was looking at me? Can I have missed this before, missed him looking this way? I mourned the vision I may have missed in a life of unnumbered days.

I shook my head; the thought was so utterly painful Look at him. He is so perfectly beautiful, so exquisite. How is it that everyone here cannot see it? Unimaginable that they do not. It’s a concept that is totally beyond my grasp. It was always the seat of my jealousy and the crux of my salvation. I felt a single tear escape my eye, betrayer of my passion.

The crescendo of the show, cannons blasting, horns blaring and bells chiming in the 1812 Overture. The grand finale of the fire in the sky above us. I felt giddy, high…overwhelmed. I closed my eyes, trying to keep control of myself so that I could revel a little longer in the sight of Louis in this joyful state. I cleared my throat.

He didn’t immediately notice the sound, for I often do it when I am attempting to remain anonymous in a crowd, swallowing my comments so I can absorb…seem more normal. When I cleared my throat again, he turned to me, trusting face so open…such heartbreaking beauty. The openness was clouded somewhat in question.

I felt a question forming, unplanned yet weighty in anticipation of his answer.

"Louis my dove, my very beating heart…do you miss your innocence very much?" I asked him, trying for a light note. I failed and he heard it.

He searched my face, and though I could still see the flashes of light above us, the world had gone curiously quiet, the explosions muted and far away. He leaned toward me and cradled the back of my head in one hand, licking the tears from my face gently. Hotly. Wetly.

He put his mouth against my ear, and his throaty voice was all that I could hear. I felt the reverberating explosions in my chest, in the air, but it was only Louis’ voice that I heard.

"Non, for how can I miss what you have given me, what you hold dear for me, cherish in me, in our love?"

He brushed his smooth cheek against mine and I closed my eyes in reverence. He pushed beneath my hair and whispered into my ear.

"Understand that you have taken nothing *from* me, that you are a gift given to a mortal, an angel's visit to an undeserving man." He moved so that we were brow to brow "How could I see you but give myself to you? How could I give myself to you but love you? Non, I *am* yours. You could no more *take* something from me than you could take something from yourself."

I sobbed once, raggedly before he covered my mouth with his.

FIN