The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (35 page)

“Page numbers, page numbers,” he mutters. “My kingdom for fucking page numbers.”

• • •

It takes nearly every available hour between that one and Sunday, but we’re not much for sleeping. At first we take breaks only for room service and so Jeffrey can smoke in the window and watch the men playing checkers. The Black Panther barely ever leaves the Place Guillaume II. At all hours we see him there, looking up at us. Watching. Jeffrey makes faces at him from the safety of the room, but only because he has me to send for more cigarettes. But by the third day, Jeffrey has stopped doing even this. His sovereign addiction is replaced by his very first—the steady rush of pen against paper.

We work in tandem, communicating in inks: mine, red cross-outs, circles, exclamation points, and question marks; his, black insertions, deletions, refusals, and acquiescences. Occasionally there is a great laugh from one end of the room or the other, or else a swift intaking of breath. Not only is it pleasant to work with Jeffrey for a change, but playing editor makes me think of Tina. Late one night I catch my reflection in the window, going line by line over a fresh page, and for a moment I am she, reading something of my own.

Jeffrey’s thousand pages are steadily milled down to five hundred, which we sift through further, until we have it at just under three hundred.

The Sunday-morning church bells have long since rung and the sun is coasting down. Jeffrey takes one last shower, and we tie each other’s bow ties, and he puts the finalized pages back into the wine box again, and tucks this lighter parcel squarely beneath his arm. Then we head out into the dusk together.

There is a small crowd waiting over in the Place d’Armes. Just a little congregation around the used-book cart, where readers from all over have come to meet the girl who broke the news of Jeffrey’s return, and, while they are at it, pick up a paperback or two for the journey home. I spot a pair of aged hippies with white ponytails and circled spectacles discussing a volume of Hemingway with a thin man in a gray suit. A squat, wild-maned lion of a man studies Chekhov through the bottom of his beer mug. Three girls who look as though they might have been classmates of Carsten Chanel’s compare translations of
The Metamorphosis
and laugh as if to wake the dead. Jeffrey’s whole self tenses as they come into view, but he keeps walking steadily, even as they all look up with one expectant face.

“Am I naked?” Jeffrey asks. “Why are they looking at me like I’m naked?”

“I’d probably have mentioned something earlier if you were,” I say.

“Probably?”
he snaps.

But on we go, past the crowd at the book cart, even when they bring up their phones and hold them out at arm’s length like so many Yorick’s skulls. Jeffrey flinches a bit when the flashes go off but never breaks stride. We march down one of the cobblestone avenues to the palace, where dozens and dozens of the paramilitary parking squad are keeping their eyes on the assembled mass. I think we’ve about doubled the population of the Old City. There must be a few hundred of them—Oakes fans from all corners of the European Union. Perhaps there are Chunnel-borne Brits out there; perhaps the sons of sons of Soviets. Perhaps some TOLSI-ites have trekked in from even farther away. And there are so many phones pointed our way, taking pictures and videos—capturing this moment for all time and for all people in all places. I wonder if Einar will watch, or simon/
, or whoever is doing simon/
’s homework for him these days. Everywhere there are copies of
Nothing Sacred
, and the air is filled with a tremendous cheering. Still, Jeffrey looks humbler than I have ever seen him. As we move toward the front of the crowd, I find myself searching for a large hat, a burst of gingery hair, a dress fifty years out of fashion—but she will not have come, not all this way. But is she, maybe, at a computer a world away, watching this unfolding in a choppy, pixilated stream?

What I
do
see, as Jeffrey moves into position under a quaint streetlamp, is a window up in the palace, with warm light spilling out. Silhouetted there is a woman in a wide-shouldered gown, guarded on one side by a slim black man with a bulb of dark hair, speaking into his sleeve.

“It’s the Black Panther,” I say to Jeffrey. “He’s with
her
.”

But Jeffrey is not listening to me. He is quite busy extracting pages from the wine box. He places the box on one end and then steps onto it. All the blood in his cheeks has drained elsewhere. But he stares into the crowd, facing the thing he’s been afraid of since I’ve known him. Perhaps longer than that even. Perhaps even longer than the shadow in the window has known him.

“So sorry to keep everyone waiting,” he says softly. The words catch the stone walls of the palace and they echo, and in an instant everyone is laughing. Is it my imagination or is he
blushing
? “This is from a work very very much in progress—”

Whatever else he says is lost in a volcanic eruption of applause. His eyes flit over the crowd, from one curious face to the next. There is a glint in his eyes that I recognize. He has them entirely under his spell now, and he’s wondering why he ever waited this long. He clears his throat, turns back and winks at me, and then announces,

“This is called ‘King Me.’”

• • •

He reads for nearly an hour. After he’s through, there is a thunderous ovation, and then a somewhat-tidy receiving line that I do my best to help corral. I stand by Jeffrey’s side but I don’t have to step in even once. He sits on the wooden box as if it were his own tiny throne. He entertains each audience seeker with wit and patience. Two more hours rush by and then, out of nowhere, the Black Panther appears at the head of the line.

“Her Majesty, the Princess, requests the pleasure of your company.”

Jeffrey stands and faces the man, appearing to consider the offer.

“It’s about time,” he says finally.

But the Black Panther holds a hand in my direction.

“Not you.”

I feel my throat go dry. I look up at the window but the light is out. She is gone.

“Specifically?” I manage to get out. “I mean, did she say she didn’t
want
me to come up or did she just
not
say, because she may have assumed that—”

But Jeffrey cuts me off. “Hold on there, Black Panther–man. He comes, too.”

The Black Panther looks Jeffrey squarely in the eye. “You would refuse a request from Her Royal Highness?”

Jeffrey snorts. “I’ll refuse it and then I’ll say she’s got an ice-pop for a heart—it makes no difference to me.”

The Black Panther snarls, and then when Jeffrey moves to leave, he gives in.

“Come this way,” he says to us both.

And that is that. We are whisked through a side door by the armed guards and shepherded down along a long, dark corridor.

“What is this? Huh? Hello? Mr. Black Panther? Are you taking us to the dungeon?” Jeffrey shouts.

“To say ‘Black Panther’ is redundant,” the man informs us suddenly with the thinnest glimpse of a smile. “All panthers are black. A panther is not its own breed but a name common to all large jungle cats that have a dominant pigment that overrides the natural undercoat of the animal. In America, you’ve typically got black cougars. In Latin America, we have black jaguars. In Asia or Africa, a panther is a black leopard. From a distance they appear to be all black, and yet—if you’ve got the nerve to get a close look—you can see that they actually still have their normal markings. Their spots. They’re just not visible against a background that is also black.”

Jeffrey is speechless, which, from the satisfied look on the man’s face, seems to have been the object of the lesson. It doesn’t last long.

“Well, thank you, Jack Hanna,” he says finally.

At last, we reach a door and the Panther motions for us to go through. He looks sweetly at Jeffrey, much less so at me, as we proceed.

We emerge into a great hall lined with tapestries and suits of armor and flowing banners bearing coats of arms. A dozen servants are lined up to greet us, all dressed impeccably. At the far end stands our old friend, and she looks not a day older than when I saw her last. She smiles and, to the shock of her servants, runs over to us so quickly that she seems to nearly trip on her long golden gown. Before I know quite what to say, her arms are around us both, and there is the most incredible charge in me as her lips press firmly onto first my cheek, and then Jeffrey’s.

“That was
fantastic
,” she cries, any semblance of royal propriety quite out the window, and then her eyes have locked steady onto mine. “And it was you, too, wasn’t it? Of course, it was. Stay here, until it’s completely finished. You must be starved. The chef will whip something up for you.”

Jeffrey strides after her toward the dining room as if he’s lived here his entire life. To an apple-cheeked maid he says, “Yes, I’d like two slices of wheat toast.
Crusts removed.
Then two poached eggs with smoked salmon.
No sauce.
And he’ll have—”

Jeffrey is gesturing in my direction. “Oh.
Uhm.
Steak, then. Bloody.”

The princess adds, “Just have Marcel throw something together for me.”

She takes us into a grand dining room, where a long table is covered in tomorrow’s fine breakfast china. On the walls hang gigantic portraits of the former dukes and duchesses of Luxembourg, milky skinned and red nosed, always looking just a bit malnourished, as if they’d left sitting for the portrait off until they were actually on their deathbeds. At the head of the table is a massive golden throne, cushioned in red velvet. I expect that the princess will sit there, but she takes a seat to one side. The Panther sits behind her, and Jeffrey and I sit across. Wine is poured and Jeffrey chugs a glass down triumphantly before I can remind him he’s stopped drinking.

“Where’s the head honcho?” he asks, thumbing his finger at the throne.

The Black Panther speaks cordially to Jeffrey, “The duke is with his three sons in Argentina.”

“Argentina!” I say. “What’s in Argentina?”

“Don’t tell anyone,” she replies sweetly. “This country’s getting a bit small for us. We’re thinking of invading the Falklands. Do you think anyone will mind?”

She raises her eyebrows devilishly at me, and while Jeffrey bursts into laughter, I feel my heart begin to flutter.

“Nothing wrong with Argentina. Some of us might like to be
in
Argentina,” the Panther says, making eyes at Jeffrey, which, surprisingly, Jeffrey makes right back.

“Don’t pout now,” she says, giving his hand a light smack. “Cyrus was left behind to guard me.”

“Seems some rather disreputable foreigners had taken up residence in the Hotel Luxembourg,” he said, eyeing me. “Do you believe that?”

“Is that right?” I cough. “Well. Foreigners. Good for trade, I expect.”

“Only if you count sales of luxury cigarettes and fire repairs to hotel rooms.”

Jeffrey tips back his empty wineglass and taps it with one finger. “We bought some theater tickets! And a lot of room service. And judging from the crowd tonight I’d say there can’t be a vacant hotel room for miles!”

Cyrus grins wolfishly, and, if I’m not mistaken, there is, again, the briefest lingering in his looking at Jeffrey.

“So,” I say, desperate for any reason to look in the princess’s direction. “Is that why
you
didn’t go to Argentina? These,
uhm
, ‘disreputable foreigners’?”

Her eyes glint like the light on the rim of her wineglass as she drinks from it. “They don’t have much need for me when it comes to things like that. Negotiating trade agreements. Four percent this for two percent that. Amortized over six years. Steel for soybeans. Very dull stuff.”

Cyrus smiles. “Her Majesty is in charge of the Get Fit Luxembourg! initiative.”

She punches the air gently, as if quite gung ho about it, and then she and Jeffrey explode into laughter.

“You know what they’re making out of soybeans now? Lemonade! And tuna fish! Out of
beans
! The other day I met three men who use it to make synthetic peanut butter. Isn’t it just as easy to grow peanuts? I asked them. Apparently not. That’s what it all is now. Everything reinvented! Nothing genuine. Next thing you know they’ll be injecting pregnant women with it so the children can breast-feed soy milk! This is how I’ll be remembered. ‘The Synthetic Princess!’”