Page 83 of Playing By Ear

Jamie entered with tentative steps. “Okay if I put on the lamp?”

“Oh, yes.” Perry turned his head, revealing an opaque blue eye mask strapped over his forehead. “Sorry about that.”

Jamie fumbled with the lamp switch. “Still got that headache?”

“How did you know?”

“Your mask. It looks like one of those frozen gel things.”

“Christ, I forgot I was wearing this.” Perry took it off and tossed it aside.

“Is that why you were sitting in the dark? Your headache?”

Perry scoffed. “I was sitting in the dark because I might as will get used to it.”

Jamie ventured closer. Nearly all the books had been taken from the shelves and arranged in precarious stacks forming a fortress around Perry. “Spring cleaning?”

“I made a pile of music books.” Perry touched the slim David Bowie biography atop the tallest stack. “Do you want any? I know you don’t like to read, but many people who make that claim still enjoy reading in their area of interest.”

Jamie knelt on the floor beside the stack. “You don’t want them?”

“Why would I want them when they’re all empty?”

A profound question, or maybe it was the beer sloshing about in Jamie’s brain. “Then why would I want them?”

Perry finally looked at him, with a gaze that could drill through concrete. He rose onto his knees. “Come here.”

“I am here.”

“Closer. Please.”

Jamie mirrored his posture, with nothing between them but the tower of music books.

Perry grasped Jamie’s face with both hands. Jamie braced himself for the questions, with Perry close enough to see his lies. Instead Perry scanned Jamie’s forehead and cheeks, his eyes making quick, horizontal sweeps.

“What are you doing?” Jamie asked.

“Storing your face in my mind,” Perry said, “while I still can.”

“What? Why do⁠—”

“Shh. Nearly done.” His gaze swept across Jamie’s chin, following his jawline from ear to ear. With the light from the lamp, Jamie saw his own reflection in Perry’s deep, dark eyes.

Then Perry squeezed them shut, lashes fluttering against his fair skin. “There.” When he opened them again, his eyes glistened like twin puddles in a streetlight.

A chill zipped through Jamie, careering between every drop of dampness in his shirt. “Perry, what’s wrong?”

Perry let go of him and turned to the last full shelf. “I think this is Camus, but would you tell me which one, please?” Perry held up a tattered white paperback of L’Étranger.

Jamie had read the novel during his final year of prep school. “It’s, erm, let-ranger?” He reflexively mangled the French pronunciation for the same reason he’d feigned ignorance of wine, to hide his upbringing.

“So I thought.” Perry pulled the English translation off the shelf and handed both books to Jamie. “These go atop the stack with The Little Prince and Le Petit Prince.”

Jamie picked up the children’s book that wasn’t really for children. “When I was a wean, my dad used to call me ‘The Little Prince.’” Soft lad, given everything, never had to join the Bhoystons and fight the Billy Boys across the bridge, never had to kill for respect. “My hair was lighter and curlier than now, so I did kind of look like the wee boy in the drawings. But I think he only called me a prince because that made him the king.”

Perry examined him. “You do share le petit prince’s tendency to answer questions sideways.” He handed Jamie a pair of Martin Amis books. “These go on the piles of novels next to the shelf. I’m organizing them so they’ll be easier for a secondhand bookshop to sort through.”

“My mate Katie—the Warriors left fullback?—works at a bookshop not far from here. I could ask if they resell.”