Chapter 1
Vagrant Traversal
The more Oudom stared at the man’s face, the more features he catalogued, all the more reinforcing his initial notions — the man standing before him was handsome. Oudom was unsure as to what cosmological whim he owed this greatest of privileges, so silently he counted his blessings as the man continued to speak.
“You’re sure we haven’t met before,” the handsome man would come to ask when first he stepped up to the bar. Oudom had been alone, sipping from his bourbon as it burned in his throat on the way down. The music wasn’t so loud that it bothered him any, but the atmosphere had been mostly lively, each of the establishment’s thirteen tables full to the brim. There was a celebratory air to the place, of course. The Academy Orchestra had a performance earlier that evening and most of its eighty performers had chosen this bar for the night’s after party. Oudom stood alone keeping to himself, content to spend the night in solitude. It was a welcome diversion when the handsome man came his way.
Oudom only shook his head — officially, the two had never met before so one might imagine that the handsome man shouldn’t have reason to find familiarity in Oudom’s face. And Oudom’s wasn’t your typical fare, as far as faces were concerned. His face was angular with cheekbones placed fairly high, his jawline narrow and sharp. There wasn’t much of a chin to speak of but it was there, a modest peak with nary a dimple. He had something of a wide brow and eyes somewhat masked by the Mongolian flap that was typical among his particular ethnicity. All of this, the handsome man wouldn’t have known, but Oudom’s was a distinct face, so it had come as no surprise to Oudom that the handsome man might’ve found it somewhat remarkable. Oudom, silent, took another sip from his glass and, again, it burned, but it was a sweet burn of the sort that he liked.
“It’s just, y’know, I’d like to think that I’m pretty good with faces,” said the handsome man. Oudom hadn’t felt much like interrupting him. The more he talked, the more Oudom got to admire his features and this wasn’t a problem in the least. “You don’t speak very much, do you?” he asked after taking a sip from his own concoction. “I mean, if I didn’t know any better, I might assume you were Observant.”
Oudom took another sip. “And you’d have right, the measure of it.”
“Oh, shit, you are?” the handsome man smiled handsomely, flashing a pair of pearly white canines. “I didn’t see an Index so naturally I had assumed you were, y’know…Blind, like me.” The handsome man lifted a finger and flashed his bare wrist, no Index of his own in sight.
“So you’re here on scholarship?” Oudom gave back.
The handsome man swallowed his drink and said, “Correct-a-mundo.”
“You’ve been here, what: a semester?”
His eyebrows piqued. “That’s a good guess — yeah, just this fall.”
There was always a steady population of Blind exchange students attending the Academy. The Citadel of the Observant wasn’t a totally reclusive enclave. They championed an inclusive foreign policy, adopting a sort of open-source policy when it came to research and development and education. But earning a scholarship was no easy feat, for most, the process would take years of unyielding effort. Whatever this man’s chosen field of study, he most assuredly was among the top of his field, in order to compete for and eventually earn his own placement. He might be Blind, but he was well on his way to someday earning his own Index. When that day came, he’d be one of them — Observant (styled: OBSVNT). “And what is it that you do, here?” Oudom asked him.
“Well actually, I’m a musician, majoring in Diegetic Analysis and Composition.”
This, Oudom had figured. But still, he raised a brow and said, “That’s not a typical combination.”
“I know,” the handsome man offered, raising his voice a bit over the swell of the bar’s music. “Most of my classmates, they’re writers and the like. A great deal of them fancy themselves potential ombudsman, which is cool, I guess, but my sights aren’t set quite so high. I got into this thinking I might someday score music to film. You might say I’m a fan of the traditional narratives.”
“So you’re in the orchestra.”
“That, I am,” he gave with a smile.
“I liked it, your solo. It was very idiomatic, not easy to pull off, I’d imagine.”
The handsome man’s expression screwed into something akin to confusion mixed with a wry, one-sided smirk. “Pardon me?”
“You’re the principal oboist. The recital. The venerable Ethan Ramos conducting. You played an original piece of his, a concerto, exquisitely written. The thematic material bears a structural resemblance with Hindemith. The harmonic language, though, was more likely borrowed from the likes of Grainger’s wind ensemble works. Throw in some of John Williams’s orchestration techniques, it was lively, diverse, even.”
The handsome man was stunned into silence, a smirk frozen on his face. He let out a nervous chuckle. “You could…you got all that after one listen?”
Oudom took the last sip of his bourbon. “Well, not exactly, no. But you guys have been rehearsing at the convention center about a week now.”
His face came alive. “I knew I knew your face, you’re the guy! The one who’s been at the rehearsal space!”
Oudom smiled. “You got me.”
The handsome man laughed. “You’ve just been fucking with me.”
“That’s fair to say.”
He crossed his arms and shook his head with a smile. “The whole time, I’m standing here thinking I’m talking my head off…”
“Well, I’m not one to stop you.”
He laughed. “That, I can see. So you were at the concert, then? Well, what did you think, how was it?”
Oudom looked away as if to give it some thought. “It wasn’t bad, that principal oboist could use some work.”
The handsome man laughed, despite himself. “And to think, half the world doesn’t think the OBSVNT capable of humor. Hey, what’re you having?”
“Uh, vanilla Jim Beam and coke.”
“Yeah? Alright.” The handsome man whistled at the bartender and ordered one each for the two of them. Oudom wasn’t about to turn him down. It wasn’t the usual sort of thing, for him, to go out on the bar scene, let alone the general public. Generally, he didn’t like to expend the energy for the upkeep of appearances and social facades, but he’d be lying if he said this hadn’t been what he wanted, what he’d hoped for in following their rehearsals and choosing the very same bar as that of the orchestra’s. It was common knowledge, after all, for those who would keep up with the orchestra scene. Oudom found himself wondering what it was that drew the interests of this most handsome of men.
Oudom wasn’t looking for anything in particular, neither did he bear any presumptions as to the handsome man’s tastes or proclivities. Oudom had his curiosities, but the interest was purely professional. The handsome man had been the night’s feature performer, it was an oboe concerto after all. And the oboist had been nothing short of virtuosic.
The overall tone of the piece had seemed to Oudom to be mournful, as if something delicate had been lost. And it was that very delicacy which was expressed with a careful discretion not only in the writing of the oboe’s solo but also in its performance. It was the vibrato that really sold the tragedy of the piece, and this handsome man wielded that vulnerable fragility with an exquisitely adroit control. It was so authentic that Oudom was left with no choice but to wonder as to the sort of man capable of accomplishing such a feat.
And here he was, standing not two feet from him, leaning over a casual elbow on the bar as he grabbed their drinks. Oudom was sure to take opportunity of this moment to compliment the man on a very artful performance.
“Why, thanks. You’re very kind to say so,” he gave back with a lopsided smile. His gaze met Oudom’s for the slightest of seconds before he averted, but still he smiled almost as if to himself. He handed Oudom his drink and said, “So are you a musician?”
Oudom gave a modest shake of the head and the man’s brow furrowed.
“Now how is it, then, that you come to know so much about music? I mean, Hindemith and Grainger aren’t exactly mainstream pop figures, y’know.”
“Occupational hazard, I guess,” Oudom gave back. The oboist seemed perplexed as if he didn’t quite understand so Oudom elaborated. “You’re in Diegetic Analysis, right? Well, as far as ordered systems go, music is among the most artificially ordered systems we have.” Oudom took a sip of his bourbon to give the handsome man a moment to take in his words then continued. “Early on when first began this endeavor, the OBSVNT found that one of the best ways to study narrative threads was to look at music — have you read Joseph Schillinger?”
The handsome oboist smirked and shook his head. Oudom was shocked and said, “Really, you’ve never heard of Schillinger? The Schillinger System of Musical Composition? Nothing?” The oboist’s head continued to shake as Oudom made his way down the list. “Oh, well it’s totally right up your alley, I recommend getting your hands on the text as soon as you’re able, it’ll really change the way you think about music and stratum organization…what, did I say something funny?”
The oboist had been looking at him with this inscrutable, indiscernible smirk so blatant that it bordered on the distracting and suddenly Oudom found himself self-conscious. The handsome man took a sip of his own bourbon, “Oh wow, that’s good.” Then directed his attention towards Oudom and said, “No, it’s nothing funny, it’s just, I don’t know…it’s kinda weird to say…”
Oudom pursed his lips and cocked his head to the side. “Well, spit it out, then.”
“It’s just,” he started, then he shook his head as if to clear it of all doubts. “You came alive, there, for just a moment. It was, it was a far-cry from how I first found you here, standing there all lonesome-like.”
Perhaps he’d forgotten himself. It was known to happen. He had to shake his embarrassment. “I don’t normally do this,” he admitted to the handsome man.
“You don’t do what, exactly?”
“Come out. Socialize. It’s not really a thing that I do.”
“How come?”
Oudom looked away as if the query’s answer might be found in some dark corner of the bar. “It’s a game, mostly, for most people, I guess. It’s all very…predatory.” Oudom shrugged his shoulders then looked down into his drink, as if in its contents might be found the universe’s closely guarded secrets. All he found were the large chunks of ice and the deep, swirling brown of the bourbon. He shook the glass to hear the clink of the ice. “I guess I just never acclimated. Makes me uncomfortable.”
It was the oboist’s turn to cock his head to the side, his brow more than sufficiently furrowed to express what had seemed to be to Oudom’s eyes piqued intrigue. He blinked his eyes for a sec and said, “D’you really mean to say that you find social interactions to be predatory?”
Oudom gave him a one-sided shrug then nodded his head. “Yeah, pretty much.”
The oboist brought up either hand and said, “Well, now you’ve gotta explain that to me.” He laughed, flashing those sharp canines once more. Oudom laughed too.
“Are you sure? I mean, I can go down that road but it’s quite a journey, if you’re up for it.”
The handsome man laughed again. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Oudom raised his brows. He took another sip of his bourbon and then set the glass on the counter, leaning his weight on the bar and bringing his hands together, interlocking the fingers. “You’ve got the text, right?”
“Diegetic Principles, yeah, I’ve got it.” The oboist shifted his weight, mirroring Oudom’s posture, leaning his own elbow on the bar.
“First principles: Simplicity, you know the principle question, yes?”
It took the handsome man a second but eventually he got it. “For…any particular thing, ask…what is it in itself — what is its nature?”
“You got it. So follows the question — what do we do, in our interactions, why interact at all?”
From side to side shook the handsome man’s handsome head, he seemed at a loss, but that was okay, it was to be expected. The point, anyway, was to get him thinking on the notion, for him to encounter the truth on his own. After all, it was a foundational principle of the OBSVNT: discovered truths are better held and better remembered and instilled than those truths which are given. Like the rest of them, Oudom was not for want of depriving this handsome man of what was bound to be a valuable opportunity in self-edification. “Well, why do you interact with people?”
Still, he gave back nothing.
“Why are you here, right now?”
He raised a handsome brow. “You mean, what, you mean at the bar?”
“I mean right here, right where you stand. Why are we talking, the two of us?”
“Well, I…what, we’re getting to know each other…I guess?”
Oudom shook his head. “No, that’s incidental. What is the first and principle thing we do — what…needs…do we serve by this interaction?”
Those shoe-button eyes of his began to dart in search of an answer. Oudom would be lying were he to deny some small sense of satisfaction in seeing the display before him. The answer was, to Oudom, obvious, but naturally, the handsome oboist was likely thinking on it too seriously, putting in more than the requisite amount of effort, building up the query to be more complicated than it truly was. Finally, the oboist gave his reply, “I dunno, I guess I was just…what, well I was curious, wasn’t I?”
“And what is it to be curious if not to find oneself in want of something? You’re here because you want — everyone here is here because they want something. People act because they want…”
“Conviction,” the oboist said, finishing the thought.
Oudom nodded his own head in a slow affirmation. The handsome man let out a bemused huff as he looked away. But then he turned back to Oudom and said, “So I’m standing here, talking to you: and you think I’m here because I want something.”
“You said you were curious: your words, not mine.”
“Touché,” he gave back.
Oudom picked up his glass and took another sip. “There’s no shame in curiosity. It’s only a natural impulse, after all.”
“Does this mean that you presume to know what it is I want?” he asked, crossing his arms, head cocked back.
“I’m an arbiter, I work over at Specter and I specialize in raison dire, discerning what people want is something of a speciality.”
“Alright…alright…so, you’ve watched us rehearse, you were at the recital. You knew the bar where we’d choose to celebrate and you came along. And here we are, there you stand, talking to me…lemme ask you this: is this what you wanted?”
It took the space of a breath for Oudom to consider his following words. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t at least hoped for just such an occurrence.”
The handsome man smiled. “Seems a long-winded way of saying ‘yes.’”
“Predation makes me uncomfortable. It’s not…it’s not something that I enjoy.”
There was a pause, so before the handsome man could fill it, Oudom spoke up, “But I’ve enjoyed this: talking with you. It was…it was fun, if I’m being frank.”
“Yeah?” he said with a smirk. “I’m happy to provide amusement.”
Oudom chuckled to himself as he crossed his arms, averting his gaze. He doesn’t often get this far, even with his experience after all these years. His rhetorical strategies were insufficient in providing for him a clear trajectory from this point onward, so he said nothing.
But the handsome man spoke just before the pause had grown to be too pregnant. “So this doesn’t happen often for you, then?”
Oudom met his gaze and then nodded without a word.
“Well, you know why I’m here, I guess. But I guess, I don’t…I guess I don’t know why it is you’re here, what it is you’re looking for. Is it too forward of me to ask?”
Oudom gave him a shrug of the shoulder. “I don’t want anything, I mean: I came here tonight with…zero anticipations, y’know? I’m just…I’m not…”
“There’s no shame in curiosity,” he gave back.
Oudom laughed nervously and said, “Touché.”
“I wasn’t looking for anything, either,” he said again. “For what it’s worth. But I can tell ya this: I’m always in the market for new friends.” He offered Oudom his hand. “I’d be remiss if I ended the night without at least asking your name.”
“You can call me Oudom,” he said, taking the handsome man’s hand. He gripped it tight and the handsome man responded in kind and with a gentle smile.
And it was that smile Oudom would remember most, its lopsidedness and those sharp and white canines, warm and reassuring, a veritable testament of the night when first he met Jonas Stevens.
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