Quasi-fictionconstruction
Etymology of the Phrase Sky Rocketed
A Phone Call
At 5:22 AM, on a Saturday in late February, Frederick Getchell woke up to the first phone call on the apartment's land line in over three years. The ring sounded quaint and exotic; it was more urgent than the sweetly inobtrusive beeping of Frederick's cellphone. It was easy for any unusual noise to rouse Frederick, because his recurring nightmares kept him on the verge of wakefulness. The nightmares, of late, had been on the topic of bombs.
The phone call turned out to be as weird and as relevant to his life as Frederick hoped it would not be as he stumbled down the hall and tried to remember where exactly the land line extension was. It was somewhere in the kitchen.
Frederick's nightmares used to be about planes running into things--buildings, birds, mountains, each other. The last one on that theme had taken place over a year earlier. So when the voice on the phone explained that flight 621 has, that very morning, careened into his Great Uncle Preston's apartment, he was shocked but not too shocked; expecting it but not really. What he found the most curious is that the old man decided to call him, of all people. He wondered how the man even got his phone number, and then he decided that the apartment's land line must have been included in the phone book.
Preston's voice was quiet and calm with an odd timbre. It sounded wooly. He spoke in distant vagaries. It seemed to Frederick that the problem was the man did not use enough words. He was so vague that it took Frederick several minutes to figure out what had even happened. Frederick listened and gamely agreed to come to the emergency room. He told Preston, his voice cracked and inarticulate from sleep, that of course he could stay in the living room as long as he needed to, that he had no extra bedroom, this being Manhattan and all, but that the living room could be his for the taking. Or the staying. Or, you know. Preston's response was: "Fine." Frederick felt a mysterious centripetal force of inevitability around this whole scenario, the way people do when their weirdest dreams unfold in three dimensions around them, when we pinch ourselves, but we are already unfortunately awake, so it hurts. Frederick has often felt cursed with the innate understanding that a dream, if you have it often enough, can come into the realm of reality through sheer force of its own will. He recognized it is a concept most people never quite grasp, more to their benefit than to their detriment.
Luck is Relative
"He's really lucky to be alive," the ER doctor told him, when Frederick showed up to retrieve Preston, who remained silent. Preston looked at him with round, still, milky blue eyes, as though he knew it to be true, that he was lucky to be alive, but that he needed to chew on it for awhile, didn't quite believe it, as we are all wont to do when confronted with information that is both very large and very close to home.
The other person inhabiting Frederick's apartment, notMadeline, said the same thing shortly after Preston's arrival around 7am, the thing about luck, but she said it in a more accusatory manner. notMadeline was smart. It was obvious to Frederick that she intuited that something was amiss. Her expression was pure incredulity. She knew Preston should not have survived. She knew something was out of place. Frederick could tell she was a little put-off beyond the simple fact that she now had to share the apartment with another person--her exgirlfriend's roommate's uncle, even, which was somehow worse than a perfect stranger--the way she was any time her principles of logic were violated. She was a hater of magic.
Frederick was ambivalent about magic; he always took to the most banal interpretations of his horoscope. He was a Scorpio.
Motion For the Sake of Not Being Still
The apartment, a small two-bedroom in Hell's Kitchen, had been Frederick's for three years. He'd moved into it with his best friend Karina: six feet tall, Czech, gay, blonde, an agonized poet, extremely quiet, stoic in her emotions, ascetic in her lifestyle, and wont to date women who were young, small, and crazy enough to be medicated. notMadeline was one of them. She was nineteen. She was the type of person who had a 'thing,' and her thing was that she had neglected to tell anyone in the entire city her real name. She made it known that she responded to notMadeline but remained adamant that this was not really her name. She'd moved to the city six months prior to pursue her dreams, but she also refused to tell people what her dreams entailed.
Three weeks before Frederick received the early morning phone call from Preston, Karina had broken up with notMadeline and moved to back Kolin, the town in the Czech Republic where she had grown up. She left notMadeline three thousand dollars for several months' rent. She left Frederick a note that said:
"Dear Fred,
I had to go. I bought a ticket to Prague. Going to stay with Milada and write a poem. I'm writing a poem.
I'll call.
Please let M. stay in my room. I left her money to cover. She has nowhere else to go.
I'll call. I swear. Please don't be mad.
K
Milada was her sister. Karina hadn't written an actual poem in two years. Frederick found the use of initials typical but pretentious.
If You Have To Try, You Don't.
Karina truly did want to love notMadeline. She tried. She knew, logically--even more than logically, she knew in her heart, which was really puzzling--that notMadeline was completely lovable. The ideal girl. And not ideal in quotes. Not perky and sweet and pretty and kind and boring. No sweetness. She was gorgeous in an odd way, all asymmetry and angles and weird, too-light eyes, that were, Karina knew, completely captivating.
Madeline was characterized by great clarity and also great complication. Her personality was as intricate and exact as the innards of a supercomputer. By comparison, Karina felt muddled and lurky next to her, as though she were a dirt-encrusted, lumbering Bigfoot trailing her tiny Thumbelina.
Madeline was the kind of girl, on top of that, who left in the bathroom scrawly notes reading things such as "Karina--I know it looks like I shat on my towel but I didn't! I put on too much bronzer and I had to wipe it off and I just noticed it looks like I shat there. And I had to let you know that. Love M." And she thought, she is the one. This is the girl for you, Karina. Even Frederick likes her, Karina. She thought it over and over until he almost believed it. Though she did find it odd that notMadeline wore bronzer. She was the pale that was so pale it was proud to be pale. Perhaps it was a failed attempt. Perhaps she really did shit on the towel and it was a ruse.
She wanted to love notMadeline so much that it made her stomach hurt. She realized she didn't one time right after notMadeline had looked at her, in the bathroom mirror, for the first time, with that loveish look in her eyes. Too open and looking slightly up, the rest of the face angled slightly down. She'd tried to return the look but when she realized she was using science--analysis of facial positioning--rather than feelings, to do such a thing, she knew the actual truth.
She did not, in fact, love notMadeline.
She knew she had to leave when she realized it. It was impossible to be in the same country with that girl and not love her.
Karina's absence made the apartment less strange than Frederick expected. He and notMadeline had fallen into an easy camaraderie over the past few weeks--when Karina had been around, Frederick hadn't paid notMadeline much attention, but now he found her quirks, if not endearing, at least interesting.
And she was very smart.
It was she who pointed out, quite accurately, that the apartment's land line was not, in fact, in the phone book. She noted this in a hurried whisper that barely contained her excitement. Her eyes, which were the color of pistachio ice cream, darted to where Preston was sitting on the couch. His gaze met hers and he nodded. It was the first act of communication he had committed since the phone call at 5:22 am.
A Progression
As a young boy in the nineteen-twenties, Preston, not yet an uncle, had been defined by his fear of horses. He'd grown up in an equestrian setting, complete with a barn in the backyard and a comical montage of his two sisters and three brothers all in full riding attire, staring from a gigantic wooden frame resting on the mantel of the fireplace. As he got older, his fear matured much on the same path as technology: just as horses had given way to trains and cars, Preston's fear moved on to trains, then cars, and he refused to ride in them except when absolutely necessary. By the time he was forty, it was airplanes that did him in most of all, and it remained airplanes for the rest of his foreseeable life. At eighty-six years old, he figured he didn't have much of a reason to be newly afraid of something else
Flight 621 had been en route from Boston to Philadelphia. It had been a commuter jet.
Preston's apartment had been on the 45th floor.
Preston had been in the shower.
That was all that anyone knew, aside from the bit of news coverage around the crash. Preston did not talk. His secret was that this was all he knew, as well. He did not remember what happened, but the idea of not remembering what had happened deeply embarrassed him.
A Phone Call
Frederick had not recognized his uncle's voice on the phone, since he could barely remember ever hearing it before. This not talking was not new: Preston had never talked much. He was the kind of great uncle who smiled thinly at family reunions and sent a card for high school graduation. His mother's uncle: Frederick hardly even spoke to his mother. Frederick had interacted with the man fewer than a dozen times in his thirty three years.
"You're not going to believe what happened to Uncle Preston," Frederick told his father over the phone, the day Preston moved in. He used the land line, now that he knew where it was.
"Uncle Preston? Uncle Preston.... Oh, Beatrice's brother?" Beatrice was Frederick's maternal grandmother, long deceased.
"Yes."
"What happened with Preston?"
"Well, you know that plane crash?"
He didn't. Frederick explained. "And it was into his building. His actual apartment. And he was there, in it. In the fucking shower, can you believe that?"
"So he's dead, then?"
"No. He's here."
His father laughed.
Putting the 'Stay' in "You Can Stay on the Couch."
Preston came to spend all his time on the living room sofa, which was not all that comfortable. It was a second-hand sofa, given to Frederick by his parents after he graduated college and could ill afford furniture for his new apartment. It had somehow managed to stick around after that, despite that it was the quintessential second-hand couch from one's parents: dirty faded-avocado fabric, rife with pills and stains, and its lumpy cushions that did not do well to disguise the broken springs beneath.
Preston did not do anything on the couch. The day he moved in, Frederick had handed him the television's remote, helpfully, helplessly. Preston looked at him as though he had committed an offense, and he shook his head. His arms were crossed over his short sleeve white button down shirt, which was spotted with pale green stains of indeterminate origin.
"Is he just going to sit there?" notMadeline asked after the first four hours, pulling Frederick aside, into the bathroom.
"I don't know," Frederick said. "Why don't you ask him?"
"I don't want to be rude to your uncle. And he's been through, well--"
"So don't."
"Fine then." notMadeline made her mouth small and her eyes big before she turned around and stalked off to Karina's room.
Her room.
Her room. Not Karina's room. notMadeline had just moved in two months ago, and even though he was growing to like her more and more, Frederick was having a hard time thinking of her really being someone who belonged there, especially without Karina around to lend her presence legitimacy.
Preston did not seem interested in leaving the couch to eat, so at 6pm, Frederick brought dinner over on a tray. The tray was silver with red balloon painted on it in the upper left hand corner. Dinner was a frozen pot pie, thawed to edibility in the microwave. Preston moved his arm to stab at it with a fork, and ate it so slowly that two hours later, he was still not finished.
Frederick would bring each of Preston's meal to the couch on that same tray. The meals were never very elaborate--they comprised, more often than not, oatmeal or a frozen pot pie, a piece of fruit, a salad, and a few cold cuts.
It was strange, but by the second week of Preston's stay, he already seemed like he belonged in the apartment more than notMadeline. Frederick did not say this to notMadeline, but he thought it as he sat at the kitchen table eating Cheerios, watching notMadeline flip television channels from the end of the couch that was not Preston's.
Maybe it was a confidence issue. Preston's continued silence, his continued inaction, lent him a certain authoritative glow.
Preston continued to not talk and continued to stay for what felt like forever, both to him and to Frederick and Madeline. By the third day, Preston could feel tension in the air, but he did not know what to do about it. He did not talk because he did not know what to say. He sat on the couch. He slept on the couch. He remained on the couch and in Frederick's apartment because he was not sure where else to go. The first night, Frederick had offered him, with obvious consternation in his voice, his own bed, but Preston had shaken his head. Both men were grateful for that--how much more difficult this would be if he'd inhabited Frederick's actual bed.
Preston began to smell in about a week, and Frederick realized it was because the man hadn't taken a shower or changed his clothes. He blamed himself for the latter, having not even offered clothes to change into. He could barely believe he'd forgotten that--Preston had shown up to the Emergency Room with nothing. He had nothing. His apartment had been hit by a commuter jet. But Preston was difficult. He wasn't opening himself up to being properly hosted. He hadn't said a word. Just that blank stare towards the turned-off television, as though he were watching a program that no one else could see.
Frederick went to the Target in Brooklyn and purchased three pairs of pants, three shirts, a package of underwear (briefs) and a package of socks (black). He brought the bag of clothes to Preston, supplicatively, along with a towel and a bar of soap. He apologized for his neglect, but it sounded hollow. Preston rose with difficulty and ambled down the hallway to the bathroom. He left the bag of clothes behind, but later, when Frederick came home from a dinner out, he noticed that his uncle was wearing one of the new shirts. It was inside out.
Luck is Relative
Frederick had begun to find it more and more difficult to be at home without having a precise reason for his presence. He recognized the illogic of this--he knew it was his apartment and that really he was doing Preston a favor by letting him inhabit the couch, and further, he was really doing notMadeline a favor by letting her remain in Karina's room--but it did not change that he felt deeply uncomfortable in his own apartment. So he now saw time in multidimensional blocks that also bore the aspect of space. 3-4pm was not just a when, but a where. And whereas before, time did not demand a what, now it did. 3-4pm--when, where, and what is to be done.
Work provided most of this where and what, and for that Frederick was grateful. Frederick worked as a trader at a brokerage firm in midtown, which is something that happened to him by accident, insofar as something so specific could happen by accident. He didn't mind it, and he was not terrible at it, though he was also not great. He was pleasantly just above mediocre.
"I feel weird leaving him here alone," he'd said to notMadeline, who perched on the kitchen counter. She was painting her toenails a garish shade of purple. It was Monday morning, the first workday since Preston had moved in.
"So don't leave," she'd replied.
"I have to go to work."
"Well, me too." She'd looked at him, stopping the toenail painting. notMadeline was a freelance writer. Work was at home, when she chose to do it, which was rarely. Frederick shook his head. He hated this kind of weird lie notMadeline always told. The ones that were really obviously lies. He never knew how to reply to them.
He'd rolled his eyes at her.
"Listen, I'm not going to sit here and babysit your uncle all day. I really do have stuff to do."
"Like?"
Madeline had hopped down from the counter. "Like work." She'd opened the cupboard and grabbed a tiny juice glass.
Frederick had gone to work, and sometime during the late afternoon, it dawned on him that every trade he'd made throughout the day had been an especially good one. He'd had good days before, but by 5pm, his profit over thirty million dollars.
The next day, his profit was fifty million.
The day after that, his profit was seventy four million.
The day after that, his profit was ninety six million.
The day after that, he got called into the Senior VP's office and while in there, he got promoted. "You're going places, kid" said the guy, who Frederick had met once or twice at company events. He had thin, congealed strands of grey hair wrapped over his bald head like strings on a violin. He made a taking-off gesture with his hand. "I gotta tell you, kid, your career is sky-rocketing, from here on." He pounded the desk.
Frederick stared and was just barely able to muster a smile.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he said. "Just..." he scratched his face self-consciously. "You know that plane crash last week?"
"What plane crash."
"The small one, into the apartment building in the west 90s."
The Senior VP grunted affirmatively, quizzically.
"Well..Nothing, I guess."
Brooding is Best Done in Crowds
He thought of this conversation, and his promotion, and how weird everything had become, as he sat in the middle of a crowded coffee shop in Midtown and mentally recorded bits of conversation. This had become a typical lunch break, now that he was too uncomfortable to go home and eat a sandwich, now that Preston's presence has made eating a sandwich at lunchtime seem like a rude thing to do. As though eating in one's own kitchen could be a great imposition on the man who has taken over the couch.
He noticed three things:
Man in a suit, on the cell phone, waiting for his triple espresso. "Honestly, it kills me. You have no idea how much I hate it. Every morning I wake up and wish that I hadn't, really." He gestured. He grabbed his drink. He walked, bobbing like a penguin.
Guy sitting three tables over, by the window. "No, you don't understand--it's expected to sky rocket in the next few weeks. SKY rocket." Emphasis on sky. Some asshole trying to sell penny stocks to a gullible unfortunate. "Really, I swear to you. You are going to regret--" The guy held the phone away from his ear, looked at it in disbelief. He'd been hung up on before, but every time, he pretends to be offended. It was obviously part of his character. He looked around at the other patrons of the coffee shop, hoping to meet the gaze of someone who will sympathize with his plight. But no one would.
The girl who was making everyone's coffee had obviously been crying recently. She was very skinny and auburn-haired. She had metal rings in her eyebrows and on her lips. Twin black lines like tire treads run from her eyes, over her cheekbones, to her jaw. She is wearing her nametag upside-down. It makes it look like her name is "wed."
He does not know why these things stand out to him.
He wished Karina were in the country. She would know what to do.
The Beginning of Karina's Poem
Etymology of the Phrase Sky Rocketed--
A dream, to be passive. On pavement
Limbs splayed in grotesque
Attitudes, broken and weighty
Ungainly like
a sack of potatoes.
You are free, finally, of having
To put forth effort. Your heart is free
Finally to rest--
Brooding is Best Done In Public
notMadeline also had a difficult time being in the apartment with Preston. It was more difficult for her, because she had no job and nowhere else to go. She mostly wandered the streets, sat in parks, meandered through stores. She rode trains and stared at their floors and thought about how they look like the night sky viewed through tears.
She lay on the grass in Prospect Park, staring straight up. The sky--daytime--was the kind of blue that swallows you if you let it, and she was letting it. It seemed as though it were only an inch from her face. As though she were buried, head first, in the blue. As though it had fallen on top of her and smothered her like a heavy blanket.
She had to go to this part of Brooklyn, because it was one of the only nice areas in the city that did not remind her of Karina, and thus make her break down in tears.
In her relationships before, notMadeline preferred to stay home and fuck, because that way, after the eventual breakups, she would not find herself roaming the city and crying everywhere she and girl had gone together. However, by having so much sex, she unwittingly turned her own body into the city itself, and she'd find herself, instead, crying in the shower as she washed her calf, or her belly, remembering her hand or her mouth on each part.
With Karina, she had not made that mistake. The entire city reminded her of Karina. Karina's eyes were in every pair of headlights that stared notMadeline down as she played imaginary games of human-car chicken on Houston street at 4am.
A Fable Of Sorts.
Once upon a time there was a girl who wanted more than anything for the boy she loved to love her in return. The boy's name was Cake and he had very black hair and very black eyes and was loath to speak. The girl's name was Pie and one day, she had a dream. Truthfully, it was more of a vision than a dream, because it was while Pie was awake--though it was late at night--and it lacked certain properties necesary in a dream, namely, dreaminess, which comprises otherworldiness, a lack of the dimension of time, and the feeling that the thing in front of you isn't really there. In contrast, the vision took place in real time and that which appeared before her was quite solid. The vision was that of a wizard stepping out of her closet in the middle of the night. Pie started to scream, and the wizard said, "shhhh, Pie," and then sat at the foot of her bed and told her that if she did one thing, one tiny thing, that the thing she wanted more than anything would come to be. She asked the wizard, just to make sure they were, as they say, on the same page, what he thought she wanted more than anything, and the wizard replied, why, the love of Cake. And since he was right, Pie asked the wizard what was the tiny thing to do. And the wizard whispered it into her ear--and it was, in fact, very tiny, and very easy, and something she might have done of her own accord anyway, so she smiled, and the wizard kissed her cheek, and she went back to sleep, confident that soon Cake's love would be hers.
Pie woke up the next morning with a mark in the shape of a kiss on her face--brown, the color of a flat birthmark. She thought about doing the tiny thing immediately, but then it seemed so tiny, and other things she had to do seemed so large and important, that she decided to do it later. Later came, and she almost did it, but something stopped her. She did not know what. But she couldn't do it, and then she knew that she never would do it, and she did not know why. She cursed the vision, because had she not known that the tiny act were so consequential, she probably would have done it on her own, in ignorance and innocence, and won Cake's love on her own.
Stasis Has A Hyperbolically Decreasing Amount of Charm
Something about having Preston living on the couch made Frederick and notMadeline very uneasy about their own day-to-day lives. It was not that he was an imposition so much as he was an intrusion--imposition as a concept placing emphasis on the physical, which, of course, Preston did not lack, and intrusion as a concept placing emphasis on the psychological, which was, for Frederick and notMadeline, the bigger problem. Preston did something to their psychic space. His eyes wandering the walls were as disquieting as cockroaches doing the same. His immobility depressed them. It somehow called to mind, or symbolized, their own. They both took to collecting bottlecaps from the poland spring bottles they brought home in six-packs as though to quantify the terrifying mundanity of their everyday lives.
On weekends, notMadeline sat across the room from Preston and scratched her mosquito bites until they erupted blood from their tiny craters. She sometimes allowed mosquitoes to bite her because she got so much pleasure from easing the itch. She got pleasure in making herself bleed in front of Preston. She knew he saw and registered but would do nothing. Somehow, this was supremely satisfying.
A Phone Call
Karina and Frederick spoke on the phone once a week, usually Sunday nights. She called him from a pay phone at the corner of her street, near the town's police station. He could hear the foreign sirens in the background sometimes, and it had the effect of making him feel sad.
"How is she," Karina asked. Her voice had become strained.
"All right. She's all right," he lied. "She's great."
"Hmm," Karina says.
"Yeah."
"And your uncle. How is that?"
Frederick snorted.
Luck Is Relative
"And there's this," Frederick says.
"What." notMadeline scratches her ankle. There's a growing welt on it.
"The thing with Pauline and heights."
"Pauline who?" notMadeline has a very bad memory for human beings.
"Pauline Karina's ex before you." Frederick is sure she remembers this, sure that she is demonstrating willful ignorance again.
"Oh, her."
"Yeah."
"So, what about her."
"She was always completely terrified of heights. Like she couldn't even be on a high floor in a building or she'd freak out.
"She picked the wrong city to live in."
"Well, she moved. To LA."
"LA has tall buildings too."
"They're more avoidable."
"Anyway, so what?"
"Well, after she and Karina broke up, she moved to LA"
"Huh. So you've said."
"And guess what."
"What?."
"Someone, somehow, convinced her to get on a Ferris Wheel at a carnival out there. And she looked over the edge, leaned too far, lost her balance, fell off and died."
"What? Wow."
----
If You Have to Try Not To, You Do
It comes out, in April, that Karina has lied, and in a sneaky way. She is not staying with her sister, Milada. She is instead staying with her new girlfriend, Milada, a girl she has known for years, a girl who began to frequent the same literary gatherings as Karina, strange readings to sparse audiences in dank little holes in the grey areas on the egdes of neighborhoods.
She confesses it to Frederick, and Frederick, surprising himself with the amount of tenderness he now feels for notMadeline, convinces Karina to call notMadeline separately and tell her the truth.
notMadeline comes home an hour later, mascara fans under her eyes. She slams the door and glares at Frederick.
"I suppose you know."
Before he can respond, she is in Karina's room. Another door slams and there is sobbing. Frederick realizes he is looking at Preston for sympathy, for some show of solidarity, but of course, there is nothing there.
By eleven, notMadeline has calmed a little. She is curled into a ball at the head of her bed. Frederick sits at the foot.
"She's not better than me."
"No, Maddy, she's not."
"Her teeth are too far apart." One of notMadeline's specialities was analysis of people's various physical flaws. "One of her eyes is way higher up than the other one. And she's fat."
"These are true," Frederick allows. Milada came over for dinner once with a large group. He is having a hard time remembering anything about her.
"And she's boring."
"We don't know that."
"She has to be boring. Look at her." notMadeline points to the girl's smiling face. "Her smile is boring. She seems like a Girl-girl. How could she go for a fucking Girl-girl."
Frederick displays the palms of his hands in a way that indicates he has no idea.
"Why." notMadeline is tearing.
Frederick sighs. "Honestly, because of ease. I think it's because of ease. Karina is complicated enough. She needs love to be easy."
"I'm easy!"
"No, you're really not."
"I am so!"
"You are the opposite of easy. Did you and Karina even have one day without a fight?"
"Maybe she's the one who isn't easy."
"Easy is contextual."
"Easy is a cop-out. She's giving up. I am worth more. This girl is not worth anything. She's boring and ugly and easy."
"Maddy." He reaches for her hand, which is very small and cold. "I think we're being unfair. Assuming that easy is always bad... that is an error. This idea that with difficulty comes value, as though depth of love and happiness in love is something which has to be earned--"
"It is!"
"--no. It isn't. Love isn't a prize. It just happens."
Motion For the Sake of Not Being Still.
Frederick comes home from work and notMadeline is sitting on the coffee table, directly across from Preston. Preston's eyes are as watchful as always, but his hands are splayed about five inches in front of his chest, and between his fingers dart loops of different-colored yarn. notMadeline holds the other end of these loops and, moving very quickly, is weaving them around each other. Preston seems to have become a loom.
"What are you doing to my uncle?"
notMadeline starts. She smiles brightly. Too brightly. "We're making pot holders." She holds up a square of knotted-together red and yellow yarn. It comes from a pile of similar squares."See!? Neat!"
"Why?"
"Why not? It's something to do."
He ignores this argument. He knows notMadeline knows that there are other things to do, too. "How did you get him to hold his hands up like that?"
notMadeline stares. "What do you mean?"
"His hands. They're in that weird position. How did you get him to do that?"
"You know, the gentleman speaks English."
Frederick sighs. He turns and goes to his room.
Putting the 'Stay' in "You Can Stay on the Couch."
It feels like the apartment is getting smaller every day. The ceilings, especially, seem lower. Frederick wonders if this is due to Preston's intolerance for natural light, or if it has something to do with the psychological conversion of the living room to a man's doorless bedroom. Either way, the apartment, which was never luxurious, has begun to feel like a slum.
Motion For the Sake of Not Being Still
It turns out that Preston does not sit all day and do nothing. notMadeline comes home from an audition and finds him taping a card house together. He's built the entire thing and it's six stories high, and he's taping it together with scotch tape he must have found in Frederick's desk.
The next day, Frederick comes home from work, and finds Preston burning the card house in the stove. The smoke alarm is wailing. notMadeline is not home. Preston's face is completely calm. Smoke fills the kitchen and the living room. Frederick pulls the fire extinguisher from the wall and shoots it into the oven. He looks at Preston. He wants to yell at the man, but he can't. The only thing he can get out is "Please don't do that again." Preston's face imperceptibly changes for the horrified. "Or at least," Frederick says, hating it, "if you have to burn something... do it in the bathtub and put it out with the water if it gets too big."
Stasis Has A Hyperbolically Decreasing Amount of Charm
"You know, you can't stay here forever," he says softly, brushing her hair out of her face. She's been crying.
"You're kicking me out? I can stay here as long as I feel like it. Karina will pay for it out of guilt. I might just stay here forever."
"That's not what I meant. I don't mind you here. I meant that you have to..."
"I have to what."
"You have to figure out what you're going to do." He nods his head towards the living room, where Preston is taping together another cardhouse, ostensibly for burning later in the bathtub, or god forbid, in the stove again. "This can't be your life."
"Well, can it be yours?"
He thinks for a minute. She has a point. It is terrible. "No. No, it can't."
Stasis Has A Hyperbolically Decreasing Amount of Charm
notMadeline decided to move out one morning when she reached into her sock drawer and pulled out a pair of underpants that belonged to Karina. Karina had not been very good about clearing her things about of the room before she left, but this was ridiculous. It was three months later. It was never going to stop.
Karina had a desk drawer labeled "Heaviness et.al" ("Heaviness" was the name of Karina's prospective book of poetry) and notMadeline always read it as "heaviness, essential." She supposed it was, to a point.
She told Frederick she was leaving, and he hugged her more tightly than she had expected.
"One thing," he asked.
"What."
"What is your real name?"
"Madeline, of course."
He stared at her.
"I just felt like being contrary."
By the next morning, she was not there.
Brooding is Best Done in Public
Frederick found it completely unbearable to be in the apartment without Madeline and with Preston. It was so bad that he sometimes rented hotel rooms just to get away.
It wasn't that Preston was doing anything wrong. Frederick couldn't figure it out: what was so bad? 95 percent of the time, the man just sat on the couch and stared. The card house thing was notable but not usual.
Frederick considered asking him to leave. He considered it every day, and he'd been considering it every day since day two. But something in him couldn't do it. Preston's silence, his lack of motion--asking him to leave was like asking a boulder to leave. He hardly seemed alive at all.
A Progression
Frederick stopped going to work on Tuesdays.
Then he stopped going to work on Thursdays as well.
By May, he was only going to work on Mondays, and he was fired.
His trades had been so profitable that he had been paid so well that he did not have to get another job.
He decided, one day, while eating his breakfast on a park bench, that it was time to start moving. There was nothing left: his job was gone, and he hadn't cared about it anyway. His friends were not close enough friends to tie him to this city. His closest friend was in the Czech Republic. He hadn't had a girlfriend in years. His apartment had been taken over by an offensively taciturn great uncle. He was still having nightmares about bombs. It was time to go. It was time to travel until he found something to do.
Frederick arranged to have his furniture put in storage, and he bought a plane ticket to Memphis. Memphis, he thought, was as good a place to start as any.
Stasis Has A Hyperbolically Decreasing Amount of Charm
This decision was freeing, but it did have its problems. For one: Frederick worried about Preston--the man was capable of caring for himself, but would he? Frederick had been preparing all his meals for months. The worry was irrelevant, though, because when Frederick came back to his apartment, Preston was not on the couch.
A Phone Call
Karina says, "I'm coming home in a week. I finished my poem."
Frederick laughs. "Everything else is leaving."
She asks what he means.
Gone
He tries to explain. He says that it happened really fast, and he's sorry, but that in the past week or so, everything that she would have come back for is suddenly, magically, gone.