Amanda Filipacchi - Vapor

They tried to make me regain my senses. They threatened to have me kidnapped by a cult-deprogrammer.

Finally, the half hour was killed, and I got the outfit from the tailor in the fabric shop. My parents immediately tried to take it from me. I threatened them with the pepper spray. They drew their swords. I drew mine. I backed out of the shop. The salespeople stared.

It suddenly dawned on me that perhaps I should consider getting a bodyguard. I was, after all, a star. And I could afford one. A bodyguard who would carry a sword around and fight my parents on their own miserable level.

I hailed a cab and shook my weapons at my father, preventing him from getting in with me. “I’m twenty-eight years old!” I shouted. “Leave me alone! I can do what I want!”

He hailed another cab and hopped into it with my mother. They sped after me. This time it took a while to ditch them, their driver being more skilled than mine.

I eventually went back to the Pierre Hotel and gave Damon the precious outfit. He liked it, and it suited him well, although it looked even more strange than his usual costume of translucent white silk.

When I told him all the trouble I had had with my parents, he grew sad and sullen, but didn’t want to talk about it.

We returned the curtain to Stress Less Step, and that night I decided to take him to dinner at Auréole, a very good nearby restaurant that I hoped would cheer him up. But it didn’t. I asked him again why he seemed so down.

He said, “I think I should leave. I’m causing too many problems in your family.”

“What do you mean: leave?”

“Just for a while. To let things settle down, to let your parents calm down.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ll talk to my parents. I’m sure I can improve things.”

“I doubt it. And even if you can, it’ll take time. On top of it, there’s a project I’ve been wanting to work on. Unbeknownst to me, what I needed was time to do nothing but think, and my stay in the cage gave me that time. I came up with ideas. And then our last few weeks of happiness together inspired me, they opened up my imagination even more. It may sound corny, but they provided me with the poetry I needed to give life and meaning to my ideas. But I’ll miss you.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a month, maybe less, maybe a little more. But we can visit each other, perhaps, after a while, when your parents aren’t stalking you as much.”

That night, in bed with him in the hotel room, I cried.

I hoped that by the next day he would have changed his mind. But he didn’t. When we had lunch, he seemed even more depressed than the night before. He said he was sad to be leaving, especially at a time like this, and that he would miss me. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to concentrate on his work.

“Then don’t go. Or let me go too.”

“Your parents would suffer. This is really the best thing to do, for now. I’m sure you can see that.” He was speaking in a whisper, his head bowed over his plate, and I almost expected to see tears splatter into his soup. In his lace, he was beautiful and foolish-looking at once.

I could take it no longer. I said, “Damon, I saw your brother.”

He slowly lifted his face and gazed at me stunned, so I went on: “I met him, I spoke to him, and I know all about your past.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?” he asked, his tone growing urgent.

“That time I went to L.A. Before I freed you.”

“How is he?”

“He’s fine.”

“What did he say about me? Does he still hate me?”

“No. Never has.”

“But he hasn’t wanted to see me in years.”

“I know.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you saw him?”

I was hurt by his tone, but understood it. “I didn’t want it to affect what was happening between us. I’m sorry. I meant to tell you, so many times, but I didn’t want it to change things. We were so happy.”

“You were selfish.”

“Yes, for both of us.”

“No, not for me. I would have appreciated knowing.”

After a long silence, he added, “And that’s why you came into my cage.”

“Yes.”

“You felt sorry for me.”

“No. I mean, of course I felt sorry for you, but that’s not why I came in. It’s because your past gave me an excuse to forgive you. And I did want an excuse. I had been wanting one for a long time.”

“I can’t blame you for being selfish and keeping this from me. At first you were more selfless with me than I deserved.”

“I hope you’ll still feel that way after I tell you that your brother wants to resume contact with you. I’m sure it’s something you would have wanted to know sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away.”

I never saw Damon so surprised and excited. “Are you sure? Did he actually say it or are you assuming?”

“He said it. His words were, ‘Tell Damon I want to resume contact. Maybe it’ll help him regain some of his sanity.’ The reason he added that last part was because I told him you had kidnapped me and all that.”

Damon insisted that we pay for the bill right then, before we had finished our lunch, so he could go back to our hotel room and call his brother.

I offered to wait in the lobby to give him privacy while he talked on the phone, but he said he no longer wanted to hide any part of his life from me.

He was able to reach Philip at home, and they talked for about half an hour, catching up on the last eight years of their lives. He told Philip he’d been watching him on The Bold and the Beautiful every day, and then added, “Oh, she told you already.” He also told him about his invention of small clouds, and that he was trying to make them solid. “You’ll have to see them,” he said. Finally, he told Philip that we were in love, and then he laughingly informed him that I had kept him in a cage until just a few weeks ago. At that point Damon handed me the receiver; Philip wanted to speak to me.

“So,” said Philip, “you didn’t tell me you had my brother locked up while you came to visit me.”

I chuckled.

He quickly added, “I’m very happy for the both of you, and I hope you’ll come and visit me again. And don’t tell him you threw me off the diving board or he might get jealous.”

I laughed.

Damon discussed with Philip his plan to fly out to L.A. that evening to visit him.

As soon as he hung up, Damon made love to me, adoringly and cheerfully.

Then he wanted to go to Bloomingdale’s.

“Why?” I asked.

“I can’t keep wearing this outfit; it’s too embarrassing, this lace.”

“But I don’t think they have transparent clothes for men there.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage to find something better than this.”

“I doubt it,” I said.

At Bloomingdale’s, he headed for the men’s department, on the main floor, where there was not the slightest piece of transparent clothing in sight. I knew; I had searched before.

But Damon didn’t look around. He went straight to the turtleneck department and grabbed a very opaque, dark blue one. I looked at that piece of opaque clothing as if he had lost his mind and was handling a very dangerous material that he was highly allergic to and that could have disastrous consequences when handled improperly, like how a nut is, for people allergic to nuts. He took off his lace shirt with almost as much eagerness as he had taken off his clothes for my parents two days ago. He donned the hazardous turtleneck.

He then grabbed a pair of pants from a rack, took off the turtleneck and handed both items to the salesman in order to pay for them. The salesman eyed his bare chest, and mumbled some kind of disapproving comment like, “The store doesn’t approve of improper attire.”