Page 55 of King of Hollywood
We finished setting the table together in silence. As I carried dinner in I couldn’t help but wonder what had caused him to collect so much in the first place. There had to have been a lack in his life, right? A hole that only items from the past could fill.
Before I’d even come over, it seemed he’d begun to change, however.
Ready to move on.
And now that I was here, I could help.
Felix had an entire ornate dining room table, bedecked in dripping candles. It was far longer than any one person would ever need it to be, even considering the amount of visitors he had. There was only one chair at the table, however, which made it clear that he didn’t often bring guests here.
I could so easily picture him sitting there, quietly eating his dinner, the giant house far too quiet. As alone as he’d been on Christmas Eve, a silent, solemn figure.
When the candles dipped low, I asked him about his cats.
Part of me was curious, because I couldn’t fathom why anyone would keep cats indoors. We’d had barn cats growing up—kept around for the mice, of course. They served a purpose.
These cats…didn’t.
Dolly was a fat, fluffy, white thing who Felix told me had a penchant for hiding atop the fridge and spooking him when he least expected it. Tiffany was her slimmer, friendlier counterpart. Which wasn’t all that friendly—as neither cat did anything but glare at me like the intruder I was.
I supposed I could understand their reluctance to trust me.
I didn’t trust strangers either.
“Two cats,” I said, by way of conversation starter.
“Two cats,” Felix repeated, obviously amused. “What about them?”
“Why—” Do not be an asshole, Marshall, you are trying to woo this man. “In God’s name would you subject yourself to that? Twice over.”
Christ.
Fuck.
Felix laughed, his eyes dancing with mirth, head tossed back. The long line of his throat bobbed, those extraordinary twin scars on his neck flickering as his delight filled the room.
I’d gone to a symphony once in the city. The trill of the violins had lit my soul on fire, and the smooth crooning of the bass had buzzed beneath the surface of my skin. At the end of the performance, I’d been tempted to cry. Which was unlike me, as I couldn’t recall ever crying. Not once.
That was one thing Felix and I had in common.
Our aversion to tears.
Felix’s laughter was far more beautiful than the symphony had been. I’d thought then, sitting in my assigned seat, surrounded by the lithe dance of notes flitting through the air, that I would never hear anything prettier in all my life.
I committed his laugh to memory, locking it away in the back of my mind. Deeply hidden inside the space where I sometimes retreated when my thoughts were a mess and I needed a reminder that the world carried beauty as much as it carried filth.
When he dropped his head down to look at me, his expression was…fond.
I locked the memory of his laughter away, replacing the symphony as my new favorite sound—settled, precious, and perfect into its space inside my head.
Unaware that he was the second coming of Christ, Felix spoke, “I found them,” he said simply—referring to the mongrels that were currently giving me what Winnie would refer to as “side-eye”. “There was this shop I drove past when I was coming home a few years ago. My car broke down. It was raining, so I went inside,” Felix continued.
A far away expression crossed over his face as he described the shop he’d stumbled upon by accident. It had been a stormy day—like the night we’d driven around town in his car. The clouds had been dark and angry, a torrent of cold rain spattering his windshield. The moon had been hidden between the gaps in the trees, and Felix had been frightened.
He’d entered the shop looking for a good Samaritan and was lucky enough to find one. It was a book shop—or what appeared to be one. Tall, musty bookshelves. A dust-coated snack counter with a closed sign. The narrow aisles and two checkout counters he described struck a chord within me, but it wasn’t until he talked about the thin but tall shopkeep who worked the floor of the shop that I realized why.
I’d been there.
“Both the cats were sitting in a little basket behind the counter, and before I left, the owner asked me if I wanted to take them home.” Felix smiled wistfully, like remembering Dolly and Tiffany as children made him blissfully happy. I would’ve found it adorable, if my thoughts were not spinning. “Turned out I just needed gas!” Felix laughed again, tinkling and bright. “He was happy to provide that, as well as the two kittens.”
