Author's Note:  Short and sweet and having taken over one year to write.  I'm so ashamed and most apologetic.  I will not regale you with tales of real life and writer's block and any other glorious excuses that I would invariably be able to come up with.  Just going to let you enjoy, and on with the story…

 

Dedication:  To all those lovely readers who've persevered with such patience; are there really any of you left?  And as always to B and M.

Chronicling Babylon

4. Numbers

Tristan dreamed that he was six again, hiding in the vastness of his mother's wardrobe.  He was not yet a man – still a little boy, mommy's boy – and not yet worthy of his father's glance.  In his tiny delicate small palms (had they really been that small?) he held a bunch of lilies and narcissuses.  They were his mother's favorite flowers.

Evelyn DuGrey was the most beautiful woman in the world, six-year-old Tristan thought.  She had hair spun of gold, like from out of those fairytales she whispered in his ear each night.  She had eyes so brilliant and blue, just like his.  She had a pink bow for a mouth, which pressed lightly against his forehead to become a kiss.  Evelyn DuGrey told her son that he was her little prince, her happily ever after.      

Hiding in the wardrobe with the scent of mommy – Channel No.5, lavender oil and white wine – wrapped around him, little prince Tristan giggled in anticipation.  He imagined mommy's surprise and delight when he jumped out from her wardrobe and presented her with the flowers.  The clicking of heels was to be his signal.

Tristan heard a stomp, clunk, scuffle instead.

"Are you sure the boy's not around?" a man's voice boomed.  The voice was so loud, so loud and so terrifying.  Tristan squeezed the lilies and narcissuses until his hands were sticky with flower blood.

"Yes.  He's with his nanny," a familiar woman's voice (but could that really be mommy?) answered. Tristan decided that mommy was under a spell.  

"Then it's just you and me with nobody to disturb us," wicked evil man said.

"Make sure you use protection," mommy-who-wasn't-really-mommy snapped. "You didn't last time and we're both fucking lucky that I didn't get pregnant.  The last thing I need is another child.  Another clone of him."  

Or maybe it was really a witch that sounded just like mommy.  Yes, Tristan decided, that was it.

The man spoke again, "You do realize that if you were pregnant it would-"

"Yes, yes.  But that's not the point!" the witch screamed. "Don't you see?  Tristan's already just like him.  Whenever I looked at him, I feel sick.  Nauseated.  Daddy and daddy's little boy.  I hate him.  Fucking bastard.  Like I don't know that he screws around with every two-bit whore that'll have him.  I should leave him, just to show him."

"Why don't you?  You could run away with me," the man cajoled.

"No," she whispered. "I can't.  I need him too much."

"But you love me, right?"

The question remained hanging in the air as six-year-old, daddy's little boy, Tristan retched over his mother's blue silk dress.  Her favorite dress.  He was suffocating from the stench of Channel No.5, lavender oil, white wine and crushed flowers.        

Through a crack between the wardrobe doors, Tristan saw his mother kiss a man he would later recognize as his father's accountant.

*****

Tristan dreamed he was eight again, and Paris Gellar was his best friend.  Paris was the smartest person Tristan knew.  She always had the answers to everything; hand up first in class, sometimes even before the teacher had finished asking the question.  Paris had blonde hair – nothing like his mother's – which was a little dull and looked a little too brown.  She wasn't the prettiest girl in the world but she had a nice smile.  Tristan liked to say things, do things to make Paris laugh.

"Don't cry," eight-year-old Tristan commanded. "I don't like it when you cry."

"You made me cry," Paris retorted. "You pushed me over and made me cry."

"I swear to never do nothing to make you cry ever, ever again."

Paris smiled then laughed, "It's 'never do anything', silly!"

The best thing about Paris Gellar was that she understood everything about Tristan DuGrey; she had a mommy and daddy who hated her too.   

*****

Tristan dreamed he was nine again, smoking on his first cigar.  Surrounded by several of his father's special friends, he coughed and choked.  His father beamed, patting his back, possessively resting an arm around his shoulders and claiming, "This is my son!"

William DuGrey was a rich man majestic man smart man powerful man good-looking man dominant man charismatic man shrewd man athletic man demanding man aristocratic man strong man virile man man's man.    

In an exclusive club, women with prettily painted red fingernails forced Tristan to drink aged-old whiskey, his father cheering them on.  His throat burned from tradition, patriarchy, betrayal and alcohol. 

Nine-year-old Tristan called his father, 'Sir'.

*****

Tristan dreamed he was fifteen again, extremely cool and the King of Chilton.

*****

Tristan dreamed he was fifteen again, suffering from his first rejection.

*****

Tristan dreamed he was fifteen again, seeing the face of his father's accountant – though it really wasn't the same face: the line of the jaw should have been more angular; the eyes should have been a darker shade of brown – on a boy called 'Dean'.

*****

Tristan dreamed he was fifteen again, meeting Rory Gilmore for the first time. 

*****

Sunday and Tristan woke up to find that Rory was gone.  He found a business card slipped through the gap in his letter box; a familiar Stars Hollow address was scribbled on the back of it.  He almost laughed.

He spent the day in the café, sipping tea and staring at the vacant spot, her vacant spot.  Once, a mother walked up and asked him if the chair was taken.  He found himself replying, "Sorry, I'm saving this seat for someone."  The mother turned and walked away – annoyed, disappointed, worn out – dragging a pouting four year old boy behind her.  The seat remained empty and unclaimed.  

When he got home there was a message on the answering machine.  He pressed 'play' and Rory's voice reverberated through the hollows of his room. 

"Tristan?  It's, um, me.   If you're there, please pick up.  Otherwise, uh, hear me out…"

Tristan did not need any more excuses; yesterday's revelation had been explanation enough.  He hit the 'delete' button, cutting her off.  Cutting her out.  And it was as if Rory had never been to Malaysia.

Almost.

*****

Another Sunday.

Sitting in the middle of KLCC Park, Tristan watched the sun futilely trying to break through a dense patch of trees, vines, jungle.  KLCC Park was so obviously sculpted by man, a gesture to nature amidst the concrete, steel, glass buildings of modernity.  But this particular patch was displaced.  It did not belong.  It was shady darkness, murky with history and past and the time before.

Tristan had come to Malaysia to escape – run away little boy, run, run, run – but he had found that he could not escape.  Like a haunting ghost she had followed him here.  And now Rory Gilmore was an apparition in the crowds.  Her specter lingered in the blackness of the patch.   

Rory was the humidity suffocating him.  Rory was the motorbike dangerously zipping through traffic and grazing the pedestrian eating durian on the sidewalk.  Rory was the stench of open drains.  Rory was the burning sensation of too many chilies and Sunday abandonments.

Another Sunday.

Tristan watched the dense patch of broken yesterdays, and bit into an apple imported from China.

*****

The smell of apple pie baking hung in the air.

"I can already taste the rich buttery pastry and the spicy apples," exclaimed Rory. "It's one of Sookie's.  I'm just reheating it in the oven and then we can feast!"

"Whatever," Tristan replied.

"What's wrong with you?  You're never this grumpy in the mornings.  And I should know, having been your poor, long-suffering roommate for a year."

He hesitated before answering.  From his parents, from military school, from Rory, Tristan had learnt silence.  His DuGrey tongue was made for everything except speaking the things that mattered most to him.  He swallowed pills of muteness daily.

But today, perhaps invigorated by the apples, Tristan found a voice. "Dean came over yesterday," he said.

"So?"

He was surprised at how sound tightened his throat.  He had become accustomed to the silence.  He managed, "It was three in the morning."

"You've had people come over at all sorts of hours, Tristan.  It's not like you have any right to complain.  Besides, Dean brought gifts -- Sookie's pie!" 

"Pie does not solve everything."

"Such sacrilege.  I promise you, Stars Hollow's Honor, that one taste of Sookie's pie will make any and all problems vanish.  It is heaven in a pie!" she enthused, but he noticed that her voice was too chipper.

He noticed that her voice was too chipper.  He noticed that she was giving him an easy out -- they could forget he had ever spoken and let the silence settle over them.

Instead he chose to speak, "I saw the two of you, through a crack in the almost fully-closed door.  The bathroom light was a pale soft yellow.  You were huddled together and I thought I had never seen a more beautiful and more horrible sight in my life."

Rory's lips drew into a thin line of displeasure, "Waxing poetical while describing your voyeuristic tendencies, Tristan?"

"What are you doing, Rory?  Dean is married."

"I know that," she snapped. "But his marriage is breaking down-"

"And that makes it okay?!"  Tristan noted that her eyes were hard and angry – a cool stony blue.  They matched his eyes.

"For you information," she was grinding her teeth as she spoke, her hands clenched into fists of fury. "Nothing is going on between Dean and me.  Nothing that is except for friendship.  He came to me at three in the morning upset, and like any good friend I offered him a shoulder to cry on.  So stop making accusations and jumping to conclusions."

"That's not how he's going to see it," Tristan retorted.

"That is not true.  Why do you always have to be so down on Dean?  I thought you were over your infantile prejudicial hatred of him."

Rory was blazing with indignation, and fueled by her anger and his own anger and desire too long repressed Tristan smothered her mouth with his lips.

Moment of – 

Supple 

Buried memories bubbled, surfaced, overwhelmed with dip of tongue.

Familiar 

Slick wet friction recalled tears and anguish and disastrous unspoken their night together first kiss.

Sweet

Yearning sighed and tilted head gave way to –

In this moment, Tristan tasted apples and possibility.

The moment after and she pushed him away.  Her hand was frantically wiping her mouth, ridding herself of the touch and taste of him. 

"Why did you do that?" she berated. "That was a mistake.  It should have never have happened."

"Why?" he asked. "Why is it a mistake?"

"Because you only kissed me as part of some ridiculous competition, which you've devised in your head, against Dean.  It doesn't mean anything.  And it would just spoil everything.  What we have is perfect, Tristan.  You're the perfect friend."

"You just don't get it," Tristan croaked.  He wanted to say more but he was losing his voice to the perfect friend.

"Get what?" she whispered, as if afraid of his answer.

"That Dean still loves you."

"I know," she said, "that he still loves me.  But not the way that you're thinking.  We were each other's first loves.  Part of me still thinks that Dean was it.  The guy I could have, should have, married.  He was my idea of the perfect happily ever after.  And I know he feels the same way, especially now when his marriage is falling apart.  But we're only each other's ideals.  It's not reality."

The stench of ruined apples overwhelmed Tristan.  He did not know what to say.  How to explain devastation?  Instead he lamely commented, "I think the apple pie is burning."

Rory rushed to the oven.  He watched her yelp in dismay and throw the pie in the wastebasket.  And he made a mental note to start scanning the papers for an apartment of his own.

*****

Sunday – one month later – he woke up, missing her warmth.  He missed Rory's warmth, those blue eyes of hers that...No, he wouldn't go there.  That path lead only to madness, as someone infinitely much wiser than Tristan had once said.    

Instead, his eyes found Li Chang sitting on the other side of the room, a dark shape of a person on the bamboo chair he had once bought for ten ringit.  He felt that he had been here before, with another him and another her.  Not déjà vu, but moments recycled and strung together to make up his life.

"You're dressed," he noted.  He glanced at the clock – it was four in the morning – and asked, "You're leaving so early?"

"Yes," she answered. "I think it is time."

"Well, okay."

"No, you do not understand.  Tristan, it is time."

He wished he could see her; shrouded in the darkness of early morning he could not see her face, her tell-tale eyes.  "What do you mean, Li Chang?"

"Do you ever get sick of this?  This life we've chosen?  Battered, beaten and defeated before thirty."

"I happen to be quite successful," he told her.

"I must inform you that there are cracks in your mask of perfection, Mr. Tristan DuGrey."

"I never said I was perfect," he sneered. "There is no such thing as perfect.  Perfection is for fucked up losers.  Perfection is for those who can't accept reality; that reality is hell and there's nothing better out there."

"So it's better for you to hide in your hole and shut out reality and everyone else?"

"Obviously I'm not doing that great a job because you're still here."

He did not know who he was speaking to anymore.  Li Chang's brown eyes seemed to flash blue and there was Rory…beautiful, dreadful, haunting Rory.

"Why won't you leave me alone?" he demanded. "I don't need you.  I don't want you.  I don't love you.  I don't like you.  I don't even hate you.  I am indifferent.  You mean nothing to me.  You're a mosquito, that's what you are.  Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.  All that constant buzzing.  And the sucking of blood.  Can't forget the sucking of blood.  I should squash you and destroy you and I wouldn't even care.  You're just an insect.  You don't mean anything, so just go!"

He looked into her dizzily brown-blue eyes and saw hurt.  It made Tristan glad.  "Am I causing you pain?  Boo hoo.  Poor little you," he mocked. "You think that it matters to me what you feel?  I'm so sick of feeling anything for you.  You've drained me, my little mosquito.  You've drained me of any compassion and love.  There is no such thing as love."

"I don't believe that," she (Who is she?  Rory?  Li Chang?  Rory?) whispered.

"Do you even know who I am?" he asked, his voice cracking with the suppressed pleas of things he could not say. "I am Tristan DuGrey.  I am not Dean.  I can never be Dean.  I am not the perfect friend.  I am not perfect.  I have this fear.  No, that's not it.  Maybe it's a dream.  In the mornings after a hot, hot shower, I am staring at myself in the mirror.  The mirror is fogged up from the steam.  I press my palm against the glass – it is surprisingly cool – and wipe the mirror clean until I can see myself.  But each swipe of the hand is really wiping away the thin veil of illusion that covers me.  I am wiping away the Tristan with blonde hair, blue eyes and model feature.  I am wiping it all away and then, then, there is nothing left."

He no longer saw Rory or Li Chang.  Instead his eyes were focused on the grey moth resting on the windowsill, bathed in the glow of red early morning.

"I can hear the numbers of my life being torn off the calendar, ticking their last tick.  I can't forget you but I don't know if I love you anymore.  Rory.  Or maybe I love you too much.  Either way, it doesn't really matter.  You left me a card with a Stars Hollow address and it is time.  But you should go, though."            

The grey moth fluttered its wings.  Tristan blinked then he was looking at Li Chang, "You should go."

"Goodbye," Li Chang said.  She kissed his lips and he stood like a statute, without feeling her and without feeling anything.

That night Tristan boarded a plane, destination: HOME.