Page 52 of Tendu: Dancing in the Castle

“Don’t call him a fag,” I said.

“Simone, enough!” said Aleks, shocked. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Good as it was that that he had said something, it was too late. And I didn’t like hearing him say her name.

Will followed our comments up with: “Is there anything you’re not bigoted against, Simone?”

She grimaced at him, and simpered up at Aleks.

“Simone. Darling,” Justin said sweetly. “We all know you lack the talent required to, you know, get a job, and will ultimately have to sleep your way into one.”

Her mouth dropped open.

“But if you could refrain from practicing at the breakfast table, for just one morning, it would be much appreciated.”

Simone touched Aleks’s arm, as if for support. “But we all have to watch the ‘woman in love with her two gay best friends’ act?” she sniped.

“Don’t bring Hearst into this,” said Justin. “Straight as a Roman road, that one. And just as busy.”

“Huh?” asked Will.

“Many have marched down it,” I said, glad of the opportunity to laugh, which was as much at Simone suggesting Will was gay as anything else.

“I meant nothing derogatory,” assured Justin. “All this sophistication rubbing me up the wrong way, is all.”

“Huh?” Will repeated.

I waved a hand in the direction of Aleks and Simone. “While you were shut in that cupboard, Aleks told Justin and me that we lacked sophistication.”

“That wasn’t very nice, Zolotov,” said Will.

“True, though,” said Simone, touching Aleks’s arm again.

“I had far too much to drink,” he said while trying to push her hand away. “I behaved badly.”

An electronic downward scale of music from an old retro computer game played in my head. The words ‘GAME OVER’ flashed red in front of Simone’s face. She’d been the game. Not me. Not really. But what difference that made, or what it all meant, I neither knew nor cared at that moment.

Will and I recounted a severely edited version of our sunny exploits to the table.

“I cannot believe you didn’t call me,” said a disgruntled Sun. “I had no idea we were near such a site. And the deer are straight out of a Pagan fertility tale. So what was the circle like?”

“Snowy,” I said, looking to Will for help.

“There were big stones,” he said. “Some fallen over.”

“Sparkly bits…”

“Sunshine…”

“Hallucinogenic mushrooms, perchance?” enquired Justin. “You seem like you’re on something, both of you.” His eyes narrowed. “What did you get up to in there?”

“We danced,” I told him.

“Ballet?” he asked.

“That didn’t go so well,” I told him. “It was more like a mad, kind of circular…”

“Tribal,” said Will.

“Primal,” I agreed.

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