Free The Door to Lost Pages by Claude Lalumiere Page A

to the airport. The terminal was bustling. Long lineups writhed in irritated impatience. Indecipherable announcements fizzled from unseen speakers. Travellers and personnel crisscrossed the huge room every which way.
    A hand brushed against mine. I was aroused by the intensity of that elusive touch. I looked around, in vain, hoping to find the source of this furtive sexual thrill. I shivered—like an eager teenage boy.
    Frustrated, I joined the lineup for my airline and eventually secured a boarding pass. My plane was scheduled to start boarding in fifty minutes. I settled on a bench and savoured the anticipation of cracking open my new acquisition, eager to find answers to questions I’d long neglected.
    About ten minutes later, I suddenly felt very dizzy, as if all the blood had rushed out of my head. I had to brace myself on my neighbour. At the contact, he turned his head toward me.
    His face was beautiful. He now appeared to be about my age, but how could I not recognize the features of the boy who had been the first to kiss me? His greying hair had lost some of it lustre, but I thought I could still glimpse hints of green, blue, and brown.
    Staring at the bulge in my pants, he laughed. With the embarrassment of a boy, I noticed my conspicuously large erection.
    I regained my composure—partly because of the pleasant nostalgia his good humour called up, but also because I recognized the comical nature of my situation. I chuckled, but then a spiky chill tore down my chest.
    I knew who he was, now. What he was.
    I opened my mouth, ready to . . . interrogate him? Plead with him? Or . . . I never found out what I would have said. He placed two fingers on my mouth, tenderly silencing me. He looked hurt. No. Something else. Some emotion I couldn’t grasp. I longed to know him better, to understand his every gesture, his every expression.
    He seemed to shrug off whatever he was feeling, and he smiled. He gave me a look—of deep compassion, perhaps? It made me feel profoundly lonely.
    I realized then how, these past few years, I still hadn’t learned to care about anyone. I still protected myself against intimacy. Now, I was overcome by how much I wanted to care about him, care for him. It suddenly seemed so obvious to me that I’d spent all these years trying to recapture the transcendence I’d experienced when he’d seduced me and, failing to ever again reach those heights of ecstasy, how I’d shielded myself against my inevitable disappointments.
    He clamped his hand behind my neck and gave me a fierce kiss. He released me, and nodded upward, silently telling me that I should go. My flight was being called.
    I looked into his eyes, but they refused to yield any answers. Stifling tears, I nodded back, got up, and walked toward the gate. I didn’t look back. I was afraid to see in his eyes the gaze of a stranger. The sound of beating wings drowned out the ambient noise around me. Did I imagine that?
    I told myself that it was his wish that I leave.
    Two days later, in my house, in this upstairs room that was still not organized to my satisfaction, I sat with my eyes shut; the book,
Ambrosia: The History of a Cornucopia of Transformation
, closed on my lap. I studiously read every word. How had the author found all that information? I felt a surge of envy at his ability to uncover so much about my seducer’s mysterious life.
    The book revealed many of the identities Behl Jezath adopted and speculated on many more. It detailed years, centuries, millennia spent in solitude—hiding and fleeing from the pride of his youth and its consequences. It told of epochs wiped from human memory. It described how Behl Jezath’s continued life depended on the bottle of ambrosia, the memento of his terrible moment of weakness.
    What would happen to him now? Why did he give me the bottle? Why had I been such a coward at the airport? Too many unanswerable questions. . . .
    I stared at the bottle. It rested on the side table next to my