End of Story by Finn A. J

Author:Finn, A. J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

46.

“I WOULD’VE KILLED for a bedroom like this when I was a little boy.”

Jonathan is ogling the dormers, the ceiling, the museum, as Nicky sets the key on the desk. “Big fan of taxidermy, were you?”

He peels off his mask, hitches his trousers up, squats before the rank of stuffed bulldogs. “You don’t mind bunking with this lot?”

“They don’t bite.”

“S’pose not. Watson the Fourth,” he says, gently thumbing the collar of a plump coal-black cadaver. “Nineteen ninety-three to two thousand two.”

Nicky approaches, hovers. When he doesn’t stand, she tugs at her dress and maneuvers herself to the floor.

“He would’ve been the final family dog. Right?” asks Jonathan. “Wonder what he made of it. What he witnessed, even.” He strokes the bulging skull, mutters, “I wonder if Simone got to him.”

“What do you mean?”

He turns to her slowly, shoes scritching against the floorboards; then his face relaxes and he grins. “I’m just taking the piss.” Bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “Watson—present-day Watson, the Watson currently in power—she tripped a waitress in pursuit of a deviled egg downstairs. Blink of an eye, Simone’s on the spot. ‘I will murder that animal,’ she says, nostrils steaming. ‘I will murder her with a smile.’”

He echoes Simone in a voice astonishingly like hers, sliding into an upper register without strain, the wholesome vowels rolling off his tongue.

“And I ask Fred if his mother might in fact be capable of homicide. And he answers, ‘Dude, my mother is capable of genocide.’” California-speak now, slow and easy and so similar to his friend’s speech that Nicky half wonders if Freddy has ventriloquized the words, hidden in some corner of the attic.

Jonathan grins. “I’ve a talent for voices. Served me well in school plays.” Drawing closer.

Blood quickens beneath her skin, in the tracery of her veins. Something exiting is hapening!!

“Can you be me?” she asks.

His lips meet hers. His kiss is full but very gentle.

“I could be anyone,” he whispers, and he kisses her again. She likes him for it. He cups her shoulder. She presses her hand to his chest, finds his heartbeat.

They kneel there in silence, before the jetsam of several centuries and countless voyages.

Their faces part, but linger close, as if in a magnetic field.

“We should go downstairs,” she says, eyes closed, her lips grazing his.

Then she feels him smile. He rises, hoists her up after him. “Look at us, scandalizing all these dogs and one very ugly kid.”

“That’s my roommate you’re talking about.” Nicky feels strangely protective of A Child.

“I wonder if they’ve missed us,” says Jonathan, adjusting the knot in his tie. “I fear someone will notice how you’ve ravished me.”

“You should be so lucky.”

He smiles again and follows her to the door.

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