Page 24 of Seth
Another revelation lifted his mood.He’s impulsive, but he can be reasonable.
Gustavo recalled the discomfort that rippled through Seth’s face, his wary look at the cameras, and how aversion twisted his mouth when Gustavo suggested a sexual motive for the murder.
He was insulted. I dirtied his work, negated the meaning by suggesting it. Interesting.
“It’s a relief that he didn’t eat or fuck the heart.”
“You know,” Diego’s voice changed, now liquid and smarmy, “his face reminds me of that sculpture…” He scrunched up his face, one eye closed, then snapped his fingers a few times.
“Yeah, Narcissus by Ernest Eugene Hiolle,” Gustavo replied without a second thought.
“Oh my god.”
“What?”
“You are a goner.” Diego shook his head in teasing disapproval. “What about Hans?”
“What about him?”
“You grew tired of him already, didn’t you?”
Gustavo couldn’t deny a strong attraction to Seth’s mind. Captivated by the brutality of the murder, he craved answers and was prepared to crack Loco’s skull open to see what’s inside. But to pursue him sexually? Diego’s suggestion sounded absurd.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“You bullied him. You only bully people you like. Remember how you got Hans? You basically blackmailed him into a relationship. And you compare Mayr to art. You always do when you fall for someone. Remember that girl that you thought looked like Nike2? And that boy, Apollo3, before her?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about. I never bully anyone, and I certainly don’t do … comparisons.” Gustavo snorted.
“Yeah, whatever.” With a flourish of his hand, Diego parted from the wall and strolled after Seth.
* * *
When the firebrigade arrived,Seth blended with the crowd. A thick current of people flowed toward the underground station. In the commotion, Seth had no problem with shaking off his followers. After sneaking into a double exit restaurant, he passed through a few alleys and caught a cab on an overcrowded street. On the way to the Department of Buildings, he stared into the rearview mirror, looking for a tail, seeing nothing. When he arrived at a small, unremarkable building on the other side of the Danube River, his nerves had already calmed down, shoulders relaxed, and a wandering smile stretched his lips.
He’d spent two hours in the basement digging archives. When he left, he carried a drawing case under his arm and a triumphant smile on his face.
Forty minutes later, in his studio, Seth hunched over the desk. With both hands, he spread the wide sheet of the electricity plan of Gustavo’s mansion, examining it with the utmost attention. Next to him, a floor plan hung on the drawing board, below it, on a round glass table, his laptop showed the footage from the drone frozen on the distant picture of the perimeter.
Grabbing a pencil, Seth transferred the electricity points to the floor plan, creating a master plan of Gustavo’s mansion.
On the corner of his desk, still in a tube, the graphics of water, ventilation, and sewerage system waited for his attention. Gustavo might have weapons and people guarding his back, but no one is invulnerable against an invisible opponent.
By the sunset, Seth discovered at least four weak points in Gustavo’s defense. The river, for example, had four cameras, but all of them looked straight ahead, and none covered the sides. If Seth calculated correctly, it created at least two blind spots. In his head, a plan of a break-in swelled.
* * *
The hush filledGustavo’s days. After their last encounter, the updates on Seth thinned out to nothing as if the man quietly died in the depth of his villa. Withering with the need to know what was going on behind the closed doors, Gustavo regretted never breaking into his house and planting bugs and cameras.
To distract himself from refreshing his outlook, he drowned in work, but his mundane tasks proved to be a chore and didn’t pique his interest. In the last search for distraction, he agreed to Hans’ needy demands of having a few nights out, but the noise and people didn’t fill Gustavo’s heart with joy. Quite the opposite, he felt alienated and bored. Dating a man almost twenty years younger was exhausting, and Hans was loud, spontaneous, capricious, and ever active.
I must be getting old,Gustavo thought as he sat behind his desk. The drumming of acoustics still reverberated through his head, reminding him once again how out of place he’d felt last night in the nightclub filled with young people.
He picked the remote control and lowered the temperature of the air conditioner, hoping that once cooled, his blood would run quicker and thrust the falling lethargy out of his body. After putting the remote down, he pushed the pile of paper to the edge of the desk and rested his head against the smooth, polished surface. The wood chilled his cheek and relaxed the tense muscles of his neck. He closed his eyes, letting them rest.
The nights out that recharged Hans drained the remains of his energy that wasn’t yet burned out by the cruel sun. Alone with Hans, Gustavo didn’t feel the age difference as the boy was intelligent and funny, but when other youngsters surrounded him, Hans’ behavior transformed into something Gustavo could only catalog as the social grooming of an orangutan. Unable to adapt and fake his amusement, Gustavo had inevitably drifted to the darker, calmer corners of the club, where he slowly sipped his drinks as he watched Hans dance, chat, and flirt. Back then, Gustavo had thought that for someone so easily grossed out in sex, Hans was surprisingly touchy with other people. The realization slightly annoyed him.
The mere memory made him feel bored.Or, maybe, it is me who is getting old and boring?
