Reign

Hamilton knew more than he let on.

~* ~

After the police and ambulance left with Harry Ruhl's ruined body, Sid and Curt drove Abe Kipp to Kirkland General Hospital, where he was given a sedative and put to bed in a semi-private room. When they returned to the theatre and Sid checked on Dennis, he found that Robin was in the bedroom, trying, like Abe Kipp, to sleep away the horror. Dennis, however, was wide awake, sitting in the living room with a tall drink in his hand, staring out the window at the darkness.

'Let's go out,' he said to Sid. 'Let's go to that bar two blocks over.' He looked at Sid then, and went on, as though he owed him an explanation. 'I don't want to celebrate, Sid. I just want to get away from this place. It seems… terrible tonight. God, poor Harry.' He shook his head and stood up. 'Let's go, huh?'

There was no reason not to. In all the years Sid had been with him, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times Dennis had too much to drink. Besides, he really wanted a drink himself.

The name of the bar was Riley's, and there were only a few people in it on this Monday night. When Dennis sat at the bar, the bartender recognized him and greeted him by name, then asked what they wanted. Sid had a bourbon, Dennis a scotch.

After a few sips, Dennis said, 'I never would have thought it of Harry. He just didn't seem the type.'

'Suicidal?'

Dennis nodded. 'He always seemed happy, so simple.'

'He was simple.'

'I don't mean retarded, I mean his wants seemed simple.'

'You don't think someone else killed him?'

'Someone else?' He snorted a bitter laugh. 'Who, Sid? The building was locked, everybody was accounted for, and even so, which of us could have done something like that? Marvella? Donna? John? Hell, me?' Dennis shook his head. 'No, he did it himself. The poor man. Poor dumb man. Couldn't even spell his own suicide note right.'

Sid felt very cold. He had seen the body, Dennis had not. 'How did you know the words were spelled wrong?'

'Didn't you tell me? Or Munro?'

'No, I didn't, and I don't remember Munro mentioning it when he talked to you.'

Dennis frowned. 'I don't know. Maybe I just assumed it, knowing Harry. I can almost see it if I try,' he said. 'And I don't want to see it, Sid. I really don't want to.' He finished his scotch in a single swallow, then held up a finger for another.

They continued to drink in silence for some time, their eyes on a football game on the TV mounted over the bar. Finally Dennis spoke.

'What makes a person do something like that?' Sid said nothing. Dennis's impeccably clipped speech was starting, very slightly, to slur. 'You'd have to hate your life so much to leave it on purpose.' He looked at Sid from weary eyes. 'You ever think about it, Sid? About suicide?”

“No. Never have.'

'I did,' Dennis said quietly. 'Few years back. When we first went out on the road with Empire, remember? I really thought about it. In Chicago. I was standing on the balcony of the suite, and I leaned over the rail, and I looked down, down, and I knew that if I jumped from there it would all be over so fast with just a moment of pain, and then nothing. I climbed over the rail and leaned into the wind holding on with one hand, and I was all ready to let go. But I didn't. I didn't because I was scared. I was scared of the fall. I didn't think I'd like it.'

'Why did you… want to do it?'

The words came slowly, as if Dennis was forcing them out. 'I thought my life was over anyway. I mean, in all my life I had created only one thing – I mean one thing that was real. And that was the Emperor. The character. I mean, that really was something. And it was mine. Nobody else did that for me, Sid. I did that myself. And I never did anything else. And that's why I wanted to… to die. Because I was afraid I'd never do anything else.'

'Maybe that was enough.'

'It's not enough.'

'Dennis, most people go through life not creating a damn thing, and they're happy. But you took a character that only existed on paper, and you made it live. You made people laugh and cry and dream with it, and that'll never go away. The Emperor is really alive because of you.' Sid chuckled. 'Long live the Emperor, huh?'

Dennis shook his head sadly. 'The Emperor's gone, Sid. That's all over. But I found something else to make me want to live. I found Robin, and I found the project. The shows are here now – the new shows, the shows that wouldn't exist if it weren't for me and my money. And my direction, dammit. I'm gonna direct these shows and they're gonna be my shows, aren't they? I'm gonna create these shows. ..” He drained the glass of another drink. Was it the fifth? Sid wondered. Or the sixth? He couldn't remember, and it didn't seem to matter anyway.

'If it weren't for that,' he heard Dennis mumble, 'I might still try to fly off a roof. Man's gotta create… gotta create something

… make something before he… before he dies.' And then Sid heard Dennis start to cry softly. 'Poor Harry,' he said between gentle sobs, 'Aw, poor Harry…'

~* ~

Although he knew it was a dream while he was dreaming it, that made it no less frightening. He was wearing his costume, the costume of the Emperor Frederick. He held a fat pocketknife in his right hand, and with the other he held down some kind of animal on an altar of black metal. Was it a sheep? It seemed to be, for the eyes were the eyes of a sheep, dull and mild. The body was docile, yielding, like one would expect a sheep's to be as one held it down to be slaughtered. Even its cry, a pitiful, braying lament, was sheeplike.

But its cry had no effect upon the Emperor, who demanded his sacrifice, the sacrifice to the God among men, to Dennis Hamilton who was the Emperor, to the Emperor who was Dennis Hamilton, to both, to neither, but something made of both, and he was so confused, was he still drunk even in his dream?

No, he was more than drunk, he had to be, for even drunk he would never have taken the knife and driven it in, not into the heart, but lower down, where what he savaged told him that this was not a ewe he butchered, but a ram.

Then the sheep transformed beneath him: the bloodied wool became flesh, the wide, wet, terrified eyes eddied from brown to blue, the tortured snout shrank, the pumping forelegs turned to writhing arms, and there, untouched by the knife, the skin whole and unmarked, she lay, still twisting in agony as though an unseen blade was channeling through her from within.

'Ann…” he whispered, and it seemed to him that he spoke with two voices. 'Ann…” He was struggling now, trying to bring himself up from the dream, knowing that to end it would end her torment.

'Ann…”

And he was free. The brutally honest light was gone, and all around him was the darkness of night and its reality, and he turned to the warm, living body by his side, that sweet body free of pain, and he held it and murmured, 'Ann…'

And Robin stiffened, awake, next to him in their bed.

'What?' she said in a voice muted with interrupted sleep. 'What did you say?' The distance in her voice made him tremble, and he could not answer her. 'What did you call me?'

'Robin…'

'You called me Ann. You called me by her name.'

Light blinded him, and he pressed his eyes closed. When he opened them again, he saw her sitting up in their bed, staring at him with wide-eyed fury, as though her anger were greater than the pain of the light. 'Tell me, Dennis,' she said, and there was no sleepiness in her voice now. 'Tell me everything.'

He coughed, tasted the scotch far back in his throat, swallowed, coughed again. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'There's not that much to tell.'

'Are you… seeing her?'

'You mean having an affair? No, Robin. And we never did.'

'You never did.'

'No. But I loved her. I admit that.'

'You admit it.'

'Yes. She was the first woman I ever loved, and… and I guess I still feel some of that.'