Inconvenience

Chapter 7: Debt

Chapter 7

The next day rolled around like nothing special, and once again Max was standing outside that office door, about to go into his lesson with Walter. Only it wasn't Walter today, it was Damien, Walter's husband. Thinking about it rationally, Walter had said that he'd met Damien as a sort of caretaker for the blind, so he must be as good as the other man? Right?

That wasn't really what made Max anxious to go in though. He knew he could trust Walter from the moment he knew the man was blind too. He knew the struggles Max had, and the ones he'd have for the rest of his life. He could relate and sympathise. Damien couldn't. He might feel sympathy for Max, and understand his trials, he was married to a blind man after all, so he'd hafta know. Right?

When he decided that there was no putting it off any longer, Max felt around the door for the knob and twisted it. The door squeaked open on it's old hinges and stopped with a dull thud. He made sure the doorway was clear with his stick before walking in.

"You must be Max." A deep, booming voice. Max was taken aback, nearly stumbling as he heard the words. They absolutely dominated the room, drowning out everything else and making you give them their full attention. Then, Max had a thought, a bizarre thought but a thought nonetheless.

"Liam, Liam Neeson?" He asked, absolutely sure that the actor had somehow managed to disguise himself as the gay husband of a blind blindness-instructor.

"Ha." The man chortled. "You're not the first to think that, not even the first blind person."

Max heard the legs of a chair scrape against carpet and the heavy footsteps of the man approach him. He stepped aside, letting the man go as he wanted. He certainly wasn't going to stop him. If he was Liam Neeson, and Max was almost certain he was, then he wasn't going to challenge the Irishman. They were raised on bar-fights, war with the English, and whiskey after all. He wasn't stupid enough to try and challenge that.

"I'm afraid I'm just plain old Damien Duval. Please, take a seat."

Max sat in his usual seat. He heard "Damien" sit across from his and shuffle a few things around.

"So, Walter tells me that you're reading fairly well. Is that true?"

"I guess. Walter says I'm doing pretty well for how long I've been learning. So, yeah." He didn't really know what to say to this guy. Since he couldn't be sure he wasn't Liam Neeson he couldn't say anything stupid or embarrassing. The man's an unstoppable badass.

"Okay." He paused. "You have the braille block with you, yes. You've been practicing at home?"

"Oh, yeah!" Max pulled his bag up onto his lap, zipped it open, and felt around for the cold piece of metal. "Here it is." He lay the sheet down carefully, not wanting to drop it from too high and give Damien a fright like he did with Walter a few days ago.

"I'd like you to start by reading these few lines. Can you do that for me, Max?" He heard something be placed in front of him, and his hand be guided to the top of it. It felt like a really thick sheet of paper, not quite cardboard, but something a good bit thicker than usual. He ran his hand over it and felt the solid bumps of braille.

"Okay, this is, um..."

"That's a 'h', an 'e', 2 'l's and an 'o'."

"Hello, my, name, is, John, Doe, period." He finished.

"Good. Keep going." Max continued to feel the bumps but was distracted by "Damien's" movements. He heard a thump of something heavy being set on wood, a slight scratching, and then music filled the room.