The pizza night table
Joe
Joe Garcia was slowly but surely getting the feeling that his big strong wet emotion for the person of Eugenie White wasn’t exactly reciprocated. He might have been a little desperate, asking her to stick around after their drunk one-night stand in Las Vegas, but he clearly liked her, possibly adored her. Time spent together had flown above the weather topics, summer, autumn, winter, and had quickly picked up speed to go deeper, where he had encountered her tall standing walls. That woman was keeping some fucking secrets, he was sure of it.
What did they share in terms of personalities? A ton of things. They didn’t eat meat, for one, and they shopped local eggs and milk, to avoid the cruelty inflicted on some poor animals in intensive farming. They liked horror movies, they dreamed to go to space, they had memorized some dance moves from some famous 90’s iconic pop songs, they were into Eastern European politics. They enjoyed to walk around in silence, appreciated the weather they were no longer discussing, feeling the wind and intertwining their fingers out of mittens. Sometimes, Joe thought that perhaps he loved her, but there was always this secluded double-locked door he couldn’t open on the highly erected walls, even in the most intimate and shared moments, something she kept shut, and he felt that this thing was dark.
But he so wished to knock it over! First of all, she was one of those people who didn’t know her own beauty. She kept dressing in some second-hand garments that made her look older than she was –they were the same age, forty years old. She didn’t know how to use conditioner on her hair and she smiled shyly, when she should have shown the world her sparkle. She was drop dead gorgeous, her face perfect, her curls unkempt but keeping her looking wild, her eyes bright, her body, a dream of curves. Joe would never argue against the fact that he could sometimes he a shallow man and succumb to traditional and nontraditional beauty. He liked women a lot, he liked to chase them and ask them out and conquer them, but he also dreamed of finding the one woman that would put a stop to that immature behavior of his.
He had merrily accepted to cat sit for her old Terence while she made the quick trip to Scandinavia to attend the funeral of an ancient one passed, and he had imagined that the ceremony would include some bottom of a Viking ship, decorated with vines and decapitated horses and an iron sword and lit on fire in the fjord before sinking. She didn’t talk about Sweden much, or about anything, actually. Joe had hoped that one of the keys to her revealing herself more could be her cat, although the animal was hard to love, always hiding, always hissing, always just eating his food and sliding back to the shadows, lapping his water and eyeing him suspiciously, licking his paws and judging him.
Eugenie was due back this evening, and he had prepared his best homemade vegan pizza for her, half opened a bottle of white wine. He had cleaned the house and found nothing suspicious in it. She had shared her live location on the messenger app they used to communicate and he had initially thought she was the one breaking into her own home but, presently, he was standing in front of someone totally unexpected.
“Sir?” he asked politely –one thing about Joe was that he had etiquette, he had loads of patience, he was a teacher, like Eugenie used to be. It occurred to him that sir was a strange way to address the intruder, who was brandishing a shiny boot from the entrance with a shaky hand. He looked way younger than a sir, and haunted, and haggard.
“Don’t sir me” the boy replied, imperceptibly sliding against the wall near the door, “you heard me, where is Eugenie”
“If you’d let me get my phone, she shared her location with me, she’s on her way”
That seemed to give the young man a pause, something to swallow on inside his mouth, “you must be Jeffrey” he lowered the shoe in a growl.
“Joe, that’s my name. I’ve been cat sitting for Eugenie” As if called by some supernatural voices, Terence materialized at the threshold of Eugenie’s bedroom next to the entrance door of the apartment and ruffled his back fur against the intruder’s lower leg, “the cat seems to know you” Joe managed an envious smile. With incredulity climbing as tall as the Empire State Building, he watched Terence scratch his nose on the boy’s shoes, and he thought he was hallucinating when the sound of a purr reached his ears.
“Are you armed?” the boy asked
“Armed?” Joe recoiled. There was something odd about that person. His face was glistening with sweat, and his condition was tense. Why would I be armed LOL
“Sorry I… didn’t expect anyone home”
“You… do live here?”
“Yes” the boy said, pushing the dropped shoe back into its rack with the tip of his own sneaker, “I’m Eugenie’s roommate”
“She… never said anything about having a roommate”
Some weird light shone at the bottom of the boy’s eyes, which gave Joe some chills, “well, Eugenie has a lot of secrets”
Oh. My. God. Right? “Right?” he couldn’t help but hope to get to know more, engage in the topic, and Joe bit his lips remorsefully. He didn’t mean to gossip right away, “where are my manners I’m… sorry I… thought Eugenie lived alone, so I cooked some food for her when she gets back from her trip. Her grandmother died, you know”
Boy glanced at him from down below, “that old witch?”
“Pardon me?”
“I mean oof, sorry to hear” the boy rephrased. Joe watched Eugenie’s roommate take a couple of unstable steps into the hallway, forced himself to hold his ground and not grant any passage yet, out of principle. Joe crossed his arms on his chest and the boy noticed, jerked backwards slightly, and their eyes met. Joe owed it to himself to at least gauge the person in front of him before allowing entrance into the home of the woman he was dating, and he had to protect that home, but he wasn’t sure. The boy had a wild air about him, something that felt unpredictable, jolty. He held his breath, tightened his fists.
The boy nodded, “I’m sorry, where are my manners. I’m Barry” he presented his left hand to Joe, who usually utilized his right hand, so he switched sides and greeted Barry on his own terms, right for left, left for right. Men understood each other like that. Something definitely feisty about that Barry, but for now, he had accepted Joe as the greeter, the welcomer, the master of the house. He had introduced himself. Joe stepped aside to let him enter the kitchen and main space of the apartment.
“What do you mean secrets?” Joe went for it, watched Barry spin in the middle of the living room, aim at the armchair next to the couch, step cautiously towards it. Joe noticed that he was glancing around, inspecting the place, perhaps searching for subtle differences between the last time he had been over and the present time. Had he occupied this space during the start of Joe and Eugenie’s romance? How often was he at home? The words sounded strange inside his brain. Why had Eugenie never mentioned she had a flatmate, why had she never been careful when they were sharing a flirt or a kiss, about someone possibly irrupting inside with their own key, therefore without warning, and catching them in the act?
“I was just joking” Barry sniffled loudly. He wasn’t wearing a winter gear, on this extremely cold day, only dressed with an oversize black hoodie, and yet, he was sweating heavily “I was a little afraid when I saw you” For some reason, Joe found that impossible to believe.
Isn’t that right? Joe thought, glad with himself, “I guess we both startled each other”
“I don’t know of any secrets” Barry said in a tone that clearly said he knew a lot of secrets. He ran his left hand on the top of the armchair, along the back of the velvet, sharply looked back at Joe, “you’re Eugenie’s date or something?”
“Yes I’ve… it’s no big deal, it can be a dinner for three, I have made a lot of food”
“It smells really good” Barry smiled and the smile tugged at Joe’s heart. There was an honest spatter coming from that heart that derailed his suspicion, “you must be a good cook”
Joe danced clumsily from one foot to the other foot, unsure, “I don’t want to… keep you or… invade you, I’m sorry, where in this flat are your sleeping quarters?”
“Here” Barry tilted his head in the direction of the sofa next to the window, “it opens into a very large bed. It was an early agreement, ‘cause Eugenie goes to bed early, she didn’t want me to not have access to the living room and kitchen when”
“I’ll clean” Joe said, realizing his mistake, “I mean if you need the space, I will”
“NO I mean we can both wait for Eugenie. I’m glad to meet you” Peculiarly, he kept his right hand shoved in the front pocket of his ample sweatshirt.
“Sit, have a bite”
“Really?”
“Of course” Joe’s voice was a little too high-pitched to his own taste, but he felt, again, peculiarly, that he was stepping into some delicate territory.
The boy –Barry, the roommate— stumbled to a chair at the table and dropped himself in a heavy sigh, “just water would be nice for now” He grimaced and shook his head, as if he was annoyed at the chair for being there, as if he didn’t enjoy the sitting. Joe wondered if Eugenie and Barry had designated chairs, and he wondered even more: How long have they been living together as roommates?
Running the faucet, Joe grabbed his cell phone from his belt, saw that Eugenie was still ten kilometers away. He presented Barry with a glass and slowly took position in the chair on the other side of the table, “you haven’t been here a while, it seems. I’m sorry again, if I had known”
“It’s no problem” Barry said, and the glass was empty in the blink of an eye, “Jesus, I was thirsty”
“Soo” Joe inhaled excitingly, Silence filled the room. He had not launched any playlists yet, waiting to see what mood Eugenie would be in at the moment of her return, to match her energy with the music. He couldn’t help but scan the boy, Barry, with avid eyes, fascinating by his presence. Not only Eugenie had a roommate but, on top of things, that guy was a weirdo. Perhaps even a junkie, or someone suffering from a mental illness, seeing the posture of his back, half hunched, half risen and stiff, moving like he had a broom up his ass, seeing his perspiration and drained face, his hollow cheeks.
But there was also a nonchalant thing about him that he couldn’t put his finger on, something reassuring, and the mystifying impression that he had seen him before, and in a good way. Plus the fact that the cat was obviously familiar to him, Joe didn’t struggle to believe that Barry was accustomed to this place and that he must have proven himself worthy of the lodgings, but still, he couldn’t just trust the newcomer, “you uh… live here off and on?”
Barry tensed, wet his lips, “it depends. I uh… was in a hospital for a while”
“In the hospital?” Joe was intrigued, with a mix of boredom. People who had been in the hospital usually had long stories to narrate, where nodding sympathetically and pretending to give a damn was required. But he wondered whether that had anything to do with addiction, overdose, or rehab, or, God, forgive me for thinking this, whether the hospital in question was simply a loony bin. He couldn’t repress the question “for what, if I’m not being too curious” There was a way that this opening could lead to a path towards more stories and Eugenie-oriented details.
“I was uh… in a shooting, in Grand Central Station. I was shot like, three times”
“YOU WERE”
Barry nodded, stared at the empty glass, “yes, that was terrible”
“THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION WHICH W” Joe realized that he was almost yelling, “the station which was destroyed?” Barry nodded somberly, “like on the news like LAST WEEK?”
“It was three weeks ago” Barry specified, “ten out of ten don’t recommend”
“You were shot where?”
“In some stairs” Barry became dreamy with his tale, in a nightmarish way, one finger lingering on his chin, “and then I rolled down”
“No I mean” Joe touched his face, his abdomen, his lap, the top of his skull, “where, for the love of God” he was horrified.
“Ah I mean, in the heart, I mean, on the other side”
“I don’t understand”
“Where there is no heart”
“On the right side”
“Yes, I was shot two times in the chest like here” Barry recoiled with the memory, touched a dot under his right shoulder, which explained why he kept his hand inside his pocket, “and here also, it’s my bol… my normal working arm, you see? But it’s fine” he scratched his head, “I’m amphibious”
“Amphibious?” That story was becoming truly insane. Joe was frozen on his seat and a little concerned, to be honest. Was that Barry individual sick in the head, or dangerous? He didn’t dare consulting his phone to check Eugenie’s location, he didn’t dare moving.
“I can do things with both my arms”
“Ah, ambidextrous!” Joe exclaimed, relieved that the boy didn’t actually pretend to be able to breathe under water.
“You must be a teacher, like Eugenie” Barry smiled
“Yes, and your job? I mean, why… were you at the train station, are you like… law enforcement or a fireman or from the railway brigade?” Joe asked. Barry stared at him blankly with the look on his face that was so well-known to educators, the one of the student who has built up a grand story but not thought of the details. “Superhero” Joe joked, and he saw Barry’s eyes shine with panic for a nanosecond, a burst of obscure light that gave him the shivers. He was not indifferent to that word.
“I’m a… I’m a volunteer firefighter” and then he blurted: “by the way, Eugenie was there too”
Joe’s captivated smile expanded awfully between his two ears, stretching his cheeks, digging into the skin, “excuse me” April fools, he waited for the boy to say, but no such thing came out of him.
“Oh I thought she… would have told you”
“Told me? You said yourself she is secretive” Joe was feeling a real shortening of his breath, “Eugenie… definitely didn’t tell me anything of the sort, how… how come, if you don’t mind me asking I mean” he watched Barry sit back and relax without an answer, kind of like, measuring the impact of his words, and Joe prayed the heartbeats exploding inside of him didn’t sound as deafening to the outside world as they were to his own senses, “I mean I don’t wish to pry or anything but, how, how, how come she was th”
The keys jiggled into the lock of the apartment door and Joe comprehended that Eugenie was home. Barry casually wiped his nose with the back of his left sleeve, looking distracted. Joe’s head slowly turned towards the opening of the kitchen leading to the entrance corridor. “It smells SUPER GOOD here” he heard Eugenie, “oh my god I am starving” Come on, he encouraged himself, don’t show anything, you suspected that she was hiding things, it’s normal after all, after a certain age, everyone has stuff that they bury under the surface, you are just “Joe?” Eugenie called, followed by the sound of two shoes dropped messily on the wood of the floor, “how is Terence, anything new, anything I m--”
In a savage half-second, Joe faced her, although still sitting in front of Barry at the table, as she stepped into the kitchen space, one hand on the scarf still rolled around her neck, pulling it absent-mindedly, monopolized by her hunger and the delicious smell from the oven and then, she gasped and let go of the scarf like it was fire, and the red of her cheeks, from the assault of the bitter cold wind of the season outside, dissolved into a white color not so dissimilar from the paleness of Barry’s face. They endured the silence one more second on the time plane and in this awkward dimension, then Eugenie’s voice trembled, “is this a joke” she asked flatly, while quivering. Both things were possible.
Joe tilted his head toward Barry to see if he would be of any help to his roommate, Joe’s current girlfriend, but the boy just presented her with a brisk smile, spoke softly, “happy new year I mean… sorry”
“You came here to apologize?” Eugenie seemed scandalized.
“No I mean, sorry about your grandma”
To Joe’s astonishment, she didn’t react per se to the remark, but directed her accusatory stare in his direction, “Why did you invite Barry” Randomly, Joe took awareness that the early evening had transformed into night and, all of a sudden, he felt stuck, cornered. He must have been busy with thought and taken too long to respond, because Eugenie went on, “I mean say something!”
“Darling, I didn’t invite Barry, he”
She wasn’t listening, “you invited Barry like why”
Why would I have thought she’d like another guy present at our dinner Joe asked himself. “No baby he lives here, he told me”
She cringed and seemed to shrink a little bit, “he what, Barry” she closed her eyes, re opened them facing her young volunteer firefighter friend, “ah yes I understand of course you live here” the words in her mouth made it sound like she was saying that he lived here and crushed little baby chicks with the soles of his dancing shoes for a living, “aand coincidentally chose to come home on a special day for me and Joe and”
“Yes and I’m sorry, but you know, I don’t have a phone” Barry said
Eugenie’s nostrils retracted, this time, with animosity “and you came through the balcony I suppose” she hiccuped on her own sentence, put a hand on her lips, which she had shaped as a heart and a pinkish color.
“The balc--” Joe started
She cut him off quickly enough “I mean you probably inspected the balcony, knowing you” and Barry shook his head and she pinched the bridge of her nose, chuckled horribly, “I should have known I couldn’t have nice things, I couldn’t” she inhaled sharply, “sorry! I’m just jet lagged”
“Sweden is only one hour different on the clock” Barry positioned the empty glass of water in front of his eye like a telescope
“Oh now you remember that I’m from Sweden and not from Spain or Switzerland or Samoa or Slovakia”
“Slovakia” Joe heaved
“Or Saudi Arabia” the boy giggled and the sound of his fresh and spontaneous laughter sent chills the size of watermelons up Joe’s spine. Roommates, the word flashed on the screen of his eyes, but blurry, with weird colors, like turquoise, Bordeaux, fushia. “I’ll leave” Barry said, but he didn’t move one centimeter.
“No” Joe heard himself say, “come on” he walked to Eugenie and put his arms around her. The bones of her frame under his hands were hard as stone, or ice, “we can have this nice dinner for three and I get to know your roommate, seems you have been living together for quite a while, that’s very nice” he felt her angles harden even more, “darling it’s okay, it’s okay that you didn’t reveal all at once, everyone has things that they keep undisclosed” Inside his heart he felt a repulsion toward her which he had not expected, but there was also this sudden curiosity about everything.
“I’m sorry” she said but, his arms embracing her and with her chin resting on his shoulder, Joe knew very well, he couldn’t repress the knowing that, inside his hug, she was looking at Barry. His mind didn’t go to lovers yet, no, that, he couldn’t digest, not even approach without a taste of puke basking his molars, but he did see the possibility of the classic double life plot, such as, spy, secret agent, undercover cop. Joe stepped away from Eugenie, nodded benevolently, pushed by the desire for the truth, “I’ll get the pizza”
“I’m sorry too” Barry said
“If you are sorry” Eugenie remarked, “just leave, I mean forgive me for being blunt but why not go back to Hobbes” Hobbes? Joe’s heart skipped a beat, “hobbeviously” Eugenie reworded, “obviously I’m thinking about your aunts Marlene and Darlene”
“Marlene and Darlene” Joe sneered while retrieving the pizza with his two oven mitts, “that sounds funny, come on” he made the decision to take better control of the situation, “let’s have some food, don’t he rude, Eugenie” he glanced up at Barry, whose demeanor was resolutely not engaging in the idea of leaving and joining some bizarrely named aunts anywhere, trouble maker, his teacher brain identified, volatile.
“Rude?”
“Barry’s not well, as you know, he’s unwell and he’s super tired, and famished, I mean look at his face –one up for Joe, he thought, sensing the irritation in the boy— “he needs some nourishment and a warm bed”
Eugenie finally touched him on her own volition, seized his elbow, “I’m sorry what do you mean as I know and he’s not well”
“I thought you told him everything” Barry abruptly said, “seeing that you are close”
“What did you say to him” she stared at Barry, unable to mask her apprehension
“I apologize if I overshared”
“Oh you would, wouldn’t you” she almost spat at him
Joe redirected Eugenie’s hand inside his, still covered by the oven mitt, “it’s okay, sweetie, Barry explained to me that he was hurt in a shooting and that you were there too”
The shock on her face almost made him sad for her, what she appeared to be going through right after burying one of her relatives in a faraway land and having these explosive revelations made about her without consent, but he couldn’t stop thinking, lies, lies, liar, liar. Perhaps she sensed it because he noticed the discreet layer of water conquering her eyes when she searched his face for something reassuring, some anticipated forgiveness or compassion, and he smiled back at her comfortingly, but as a teacher does to a student who’s going to fail the class. He would either love her more or leave her after that. “Do we have any like, alcohol” she asked
And in a matter of minutes they were all seated at the table with plates and towels and a slice of pizza and a tall glass of wine. Joe brought the pitcher of water in the middle. It felt like a class council, or disciplinary meeting, but for what?
“How was the funeral” Joe asked, cutting through his slice
“Great” Eugenie took a big sip of her rosé, “so many people came from the village”
“They’re still afraid of your grandma in the grave” Barry chuckled, his finger following the rim of his own glass
“I’m sorry?” Joe did his best to appear amused
Eugenie sighed, “my grandmother was into Seidr, it’s a modern version of old Norse witchcraft, and she wasn’t very social, she wasn’t really into people” she smiled with something genuine pulling on her lips for the first time since she came back, “so she scared a lot of those neighbors that she didn’t want to deal with like that with some… spells”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Why didn’t you tell me that story?”
“I thought it was a little uninteresting to be honest, and a load of bullshit”
“There was this case of illness befalling the town, after she sang that weird song” Barry objected
“Barry, I just spent two days hearing all this gossip already from all the idiots there, I’m bored with them. By the way this pizza is divine” she said to Joe. The wine seemed to help her. He took a sip and welcomed the burning in his esophagus.
“Joe, do you have any strange grandparents?” Barry asked him
“You could say that” he chuckled, “on my mom’s side they were punk and on my dad’s side they were anarchists” It made Eugenie laugh lightly too.
“What’s an anarchist”
“It’s a person who doesn’t believe in vertical relationships of power” Joe explained, “they’re fond of thinking society would be better off without any god or master or just any leader”
“And you didn’t take up to that?” Barry seemed sincerely interested
“In the back of my mind, maybe” Joe mused, “but I like structure. I like having a system over my head. How about you” investigation mode, he switched to a hidden agenda, refilled the glass of Eugenie in a stealth move, “you have a big family? Those aunts, that Eugenie just mentioned?”
Barry hurried to swallow a big chunk of pizza, “really delicious” he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. His right hand remained buried inside his sweatshirt, and it reminded Joe of those bank robberies when a criminal walked to the front desk with a gun in their pocket, pointing the pocket at an employee and sneakily asking them to cooperate without causing a panic. Hidden things, he thought, but Barry went on to answer, “my aunts, they’re really like my fairy godmothers” he specified, “and they can be really overprotective, even suffocating”
“I wonder why” Eugenie interjected between two gulps of wine
“Anyway my father is in prison, but it’s alright” Barry said, “he is totally unable to live on the outside. Too many vices, temptations, you know, that kind of man”
“Oh lord”
“We are not close” Barry shook his head. He wasn’t drinking at all, “let’s say, you know, the way people summarize it: we love each other but we don’t like each other”
“That’s cleverly put” Joe approved, “I’m not close to my father either. He’s sort of an ass”
“There is a mentor in my life, kind of a fatherly figure, who is also an ass” Both Joe and Barry laughed, and Joe threw a sneaky glance at Eugenie. She was smiling too, and it was possible that everyone was finally relaxing.
“Where did you guys meet?” Joe asked, trying not to look too eager
Eugenie suspended her slice of pizza one centimeter from her face with her mouth half opened, alarm in her eye, then blurted “An ad online”
“School” Barry answered at the same time, “I mean an ad online, then school”
“Yeah I uh was looking for a guest-speaker for my group and uh Barry came up”
Joe scoffed, “for a second I almost thought you meant like, student and teacher”
Eugenie laughed and shook her head, still didn’t move the pizza into her mouth. She clearly was waiting for what Barry would say before starting to munch and Joe was becoming increasingly suspicious.
“It was quite nice, that guest speaking, wasn’t it?”
“Joe doesn’t want to hear about those work stories” Eugenie brushed it off and replaced the pizza untouched in the middle of her plate, then sipped more on her wine
“No I do, I had many guests speakers in my classes myself” Joe said, “it’s always a fun moment”
“You tell him Barry”
Barry was trying to roll his paper napkin into a tornado shape with one hand, which was quite an arduous task, but he was slowly making progress. On the contrary to Eugenie, he didn’t seem outrageously put on the spot or stressed out about being grilled by Joe, but rather entertained. Something was clearly wild about that guy, and Joe was in a haste to get to the juicy parts involving Eugenie. “She was looking for uhh a volunteer firefighter, which is my job, as I have uh stated before you got here, Eugenie”
“Volunteer firefffyeah” she frowned, then nodded precipitately, “yeah that’s right”
“How does it tie to Geography class” Joe was trying very hard to not make it look like he had an already established list of very specific questions.
“Volcanoes” Eugenie said, nodding so energetically it seemed to be hopelessly. She swallowed her wine in one time and put a calming hand on her throat, “vol… canoes, excuse me”
“Your job takes you to explore volcanoes?” Joe asked Barry
“Many, many volcanoes” Eugenie assured
“I mean not that many” Barry cocked his head, “I’ve seen a.. couple”
“Which ones?”
“Arf” the boy meant to gesture widely above the table to skip the volcano-naming part but his movements were limited, so the manoeuvre gave him the air of a short-armed dinosaur, “you know the usual ones. I just” he sniffled, tapped his fingers on the edge of his plate, “I like lava, fire, all that stuff”
“Especially fire” Eugenie added
“Seeing that I am a firefighter, it makes sense”
“He likes to play with fire” Eugenie added
“In your mouth it sounds like something bad” Barry noticed. Yes, Joe thought, it did sound like a jab
Eugenie
Thankfully, Barry and Joe let her dissipate slightly from the conversation when they finally found that they had tons of things in common: science, electronics, nature, things that didn’t make Eugenie’s heart flutter. She asked a lot of questions to prompt them and launch them into acknowledging that fact and then, they were flying. This was on of her basic teacher’s talents.
She was praying with all she had that the dinner would soon end without having to explain that story which, perplexingly, Barry had told Joe about their presence at the now destroyed Grand Central Station a couple weeks before. Then, she hoped, she would have time to decide what to do, but she knew already that her decision could never include the truth. It would either be dumping him (although he might as well be the one on the active end of the breakup, displeased by everything he was learning) or lying to him but, at least, she would have time to fabricate something.
After two glasses of rosé on an almost empty stomach, she was definitely feeling tipsy, so she appreciated the small break the men were giving her from participating into the talk and devoured her entire slice of pizza to soak up the booze. She felt better, and tipsy. As usual, when she was a bit inebriated, she started excessively rolling her hair under her earlobe, which was such a pleasant sensation, so soft, so rocking, in a way, so soothing. She knew her autism was making her stim, but she could hardly help it. And now, she was sitting in the middle of Barry and Joe, and finding herself thrown off her axis. The hair was floating under her ear like a cluster of clouds.
What was Barry doing? She asked herself, observing him. Throwing you off your axis, evidently, her inside voice informed her. Strangely, she noticed that the voice sounded a little bit like her interred grandmother. Eugenie glanced at Joe and, because she was starting to really appreciate her alcohol, she discreetly checked him out. Then looked at Barry in the same scanning, undressing manner. Repeated the motion with her eyes. Ingesting the beverage helped mixing amusement to apprehension and the feeling of urgent damage-control, trying to forget that she had just been denounced as partaking in train station destructions and shootings a few minutes earlier.
Had she let her heart open to a new person, finally? She watched Joe. He was such a refreshing arrival in her existence. A man that was not a mutant or a teenager (like Barry’s mutant teenage or teenager-like friends) and not a geezer (such as Alphonse) and also not a psychopath (compared to Hobbes). That they were both in their forties was reassuring to Eugenie, and she meant to keep it that way. It had been so long since she had dated that she felt like she pretty much skipped the thirties’ dating to get to the forties part, the midlife part. And discovered that there was no such proverbial crisis about it, when you shared that same age with a normal person, a boring person, would have said the grandmother she had just buried in her little village in Sweden. A teacher! She heard the old lady, SO BORING.
You are dead Mormor, shut your mouth.
Bo-o-o-oring she had the vision of the witch blowing smoke rings with her mouth shaped by all the O’s.
Zip it! Then she thought, Where will Barry be when he becomes forty? Dead, she heard and swallowed her bite of pizza crookedly, muffled her cough by chugging a big gulp of wine. Jesus Christ, where did that come from, she wondered, and she did her best to recenter on Joe. He was a very attractive man, especially when he was wearing a simple back tee shirt like he was tonight, and when his thick short hair was hanging out at the top of his skull with no sort of order in it but still giving a clean cut flow. A vegetarian man, a jogger, a hiker, someone who breathed the open air every Wednesday out of leisure, his body tight and nimble with an exquisite roll of fat on top of his belt, the kind of belly flap she found a major turn-on. He was energetic, athletic, but also capable of potato-ing on the couch, which was admirable.
They liked to go on long walks and hold hands and wear some knitted hats, they didn’t need to be talking all the time. Having the same profession, they both knew what it was like to spend the day in the middle of screams and shuffles and doors slamming and bolts jamming and whistle blowing and constant horrendous level of decibels, and both appreciated to tread inside a bubble of quiet and breezy vibes. Who would exchange years for youth regained, at the cost of surrendering that understanding and those wiser ways. No one, she comprehended, she hoped. He smiled a lot but not the unbearable American way which, as a mixed European, she couldn’t agree with, and it magnified the little wrinkles at the fold of his eyes, dug deeper into the big line barring his forehead, cut into his cheeks. Rendered his eyes more serious above his smile. More yin to the yang.
Those things awoke a moved feeling inside her heart, like the graying sides of his short beard, climbing up to curl the color at the tip of his mustache. When they made love, he was strong, audacious, in charge, but he wasn’t afraid to show his soft side either. Plus, he taught math and even advanced math, which was really sexy. It was like a superpower only, not a deadly one or one that put someone in constant danger.
So you like him because he stayed alive for forty-three years, is that it?
Fucking Grandma, Mormor!
Joe’s current mannerisms showed that he was fervently getting into it, and he and Barry were reviewing some waterfalls in Brown County, which adventure-seekers could either raft down or climb up if equipped with the right gear, and she nodded to the both of them to pretend that she was listening. “A woman had a near death experience there, though” Joe reported, “she got pinned under some rocks when falling on the wrong side of her kayak, and she was deprived of oxygen for twenty minutes, but she survived, against all odds, and she wrote a book about it”
“Oh my god, what’s the book”
“Well it’s called Life After Death”
“Good title”
“Good title isn't it”
“Would you try rafting it down?” Barry asked
“No” Joe giggled, as he was a bit tipsy too. Barry had not touched his glass of wine, and Eugenie could easily guess that it was because he was still taking too many crazy pills at the moment.
“Why not” Barry said, “I mean, brushing against death, the promise of life after death” Barry was not drinking but he could match the depths of someone’s boozy conversation, actually, he could match anything, Eugenie thought, get another slice of pizza, you need to eat, she heard. She obeyed.
“Because I… don’t want to die that way” Joe laughed with candor, “and honestly, I don’t know what life after death exactly means”
“Me neither” Barry lied.
They shared this moment, Eugenie grinning ferociously at them like a dog mom who managed to introduce two different breeds to each other, and then they started listing all the hiking trails they knew that were more perilous than the ranked scenic waterfalls of the state park, so she retreated again into her own hidden corner, drinking slowly and chewing and munching and watching them. She remembered Ram Dass, one of her favorite spiritual teachers, saying: ‘When one can allow themselves to step aside a crowded bus stop or an animated dinner table, ask the creatures of God around the table or waiting for the same ride, ask their soul, mindfully: hey, How did you end up here?’
Then her eyes laboriously rolled inside their orbits, because she knew they were following the sound of Barry’s voice on her left side. Almost reluctantly, they rolled, Granddaughter of mine is a coward, the grandma had never been so vocal before, granddaughter is a fucking chicken. When Eugenie had visited her before, as a child and then as an adult, the woman had always been sulking, sucking on a straw from a mysterious smoothie in a ceramic mug, not saying a word, sitting in her wooden chair like a statue. And now, she was talking, like, a lot.
Eugenie asked Mormor, Mormor why is Barry obsessed with me? Why is Barry pursuing me like that?
I always preferred your mother to your aunt, those sisters, they were like day and night, sun and moon. Your birth mother was a witch like me and, my other daughter, she’s always been a chicken too.
Mormor, CONCENTRATE! Why is Barry like that with me?
Because he’s insane.
Is that IT??? Nothing more to say?
All of a sudden, the dead ancestor was gone. Convenient, to be evaporated like this, one second, a chatty ghost in the physical realm and the other one, too busy with something in the ether to answer important questions from your descendants.
Barry was fiddling with some crumbs from the pizza dough in his empty plate, saying yes or no, the promise of life after death channeled into his very being, his persona. Eugenie was not sure how he had successfully escaped Hobbes’ vault with the indefatigable scrutiny of Alphonse’s surveillance, paired with Uberwoman’s watchful eye, but she could bet it was not through bolting. It might have cost him a lot, though, she saw in his disheveled appearance, and felt a tug of guilt inside her chest, about her initial rejection to his presence between the walls of the apartment. He was interacting with Joe as if everything was casual, simple, unbothered, but she could see he was very focused on his movements, tense and stiff on his chair. Only a trained eye would notice, she guessed, and something stirred inside of her, something warm, something at the bottom of her. She changed sitting position by uncrossing her legs and switching the leg up.
Eugenie thought back to the funeral she had just attended, all those distant relatives that knew of her –she was the girl who’d lost her parents right after being born, raised by her hippie uncle and aunt— more than they knew her, followed by a selected few who had shared many close years together with her and remembered she liked pink, orange colors, and that she was a teacher, that she lived in Indiana, that when she was a child, she dreamed of becoming a crab fisher. All those people had one thing in common though, now that she was well swallowed into adulthood and preserved from any adolescent phase or youth period of perdition: they were continually bewildered.
During her years without dating, which had amounted to almost a decade, as Eugenie was openly showing fewer and fewer interest in romance, her aunt and uncle had teased her ‘Girl, you think you will find love without going out, without attending your colleagues’ parties, and when you are not accepting invitations from your friends? A man will not appear magically on your balcony, you jjust waiting there’ Well, she nodded at no one in particular, just herself, how wrong had they been.
“I’m saying” Barry said to Joe, sticking a thumb up, “that was so persuasive a friend of mine even tried the putting AI into a robotic body”
“You can’t be serious” Joe retorted, frowned, “what kind of friend?”
“A nerd”
“A… really big nerd I suppose”
“He didn’t succeed, okay” Barry presented his one active hand in moderation, “it’s bordering to like, mrai moumou entity, so he was careful and stopped early enough but I’m saying, it can be done”
“I’ve always believed so. How old are you Barry, if you don’t mind me asking?” LANKY
“I’m twenty five years old”
Eugenie was always depressed by that number. Grandma Mormor had not stuck around to help her dig out why exactly the number depressed her so much so she was left alone to ponder about it. He was so old, she guessed, compared to the little Barry, Douchebarry, she had encountered at school. She missed the simplicity of their relationship back then, he was just a very annoying student and she, on the other end, was just an annoyed teacher like a thousand others. And yet he was still so young now, today, she felt, and she didn’t understand her own heart, why she loved him so much.
“Well you sound very wise for your age” Joe said, almost pushing her in that direction, “when I was twenty-five, man…” Barry waited in anticipation, then Joe darted a look at Eugenie, “I’m not even sure what I was doing!” he laughed generously, “Eugenie do you recall precisely what you were doing when you were Barry’s age”
“NO” Eugenie replied with a bright smile. Exactly, that was centuries ago. That was another era. NOTHING remembered.
“I thought you said that, according to Swedish tradition, the day you turn twenty-five, if you are not engaged or married, the women of your family make you a giant green hat that you have to wear for a whole week?” Barry said
She forced her eyebrows to remain motionless, and with so much energy contained above her eyes, this was a very challenging task. Sent him a reptilian smile, an iguana smile, the smile of a lizard eyeing a line of ants on the next branch, but too lazy to throw a long and sticky tongue at them yet, oh NOW you remember my country, NOW you remember my stories, you little shitbag.
Why are you obsessed with him? And presently, grandma was back. Of course, at the precise moment that Eugenie was cornered. It was Barry’s face, probably, that was the face made by some angels. They had stumbled upon some very ordinary facial traits and assembled them all divinely. His eyes were soft, sleepy, droopy, his smile was wild, it was a crazy kitten smile, the smile of a kitten who’s just learned he can spin around during a fall and land on his paws, the baby jaguar who can walk through fire, the little lion cub who just realized he has incarnated on this earth as a killing machine.
“Wow, you know a lot about… Sweden” Joe was sitting on his left butt cheek, followed by the right one, perturbed, sliding from one side to the other. Barry was not moving one millimeter.
“You see I even forgot that I remembered that” Eugenie laughed horrendously. Speaking of forget, Mormor sneered, here is a gift, a memory. Eugenie jumped on her chair. She saw the same Barry who was sitting on her left side but this time, he rapidly lost altitude to slide under her, his whole entity alight by a harsh white handful of sun rays from above. Is that heaven, Mormor? It was Grand Central Station. Barry’s eyes were this dirty pool color under the glow, his pupils anchored into hers, half of his face splashed with bright red blood. His lips parted and she heard ‘run’.
I gotta stop drinking right now, she pushed her glass away from her, comforted by the presence of the table, the plates, the living room around them. It was a just a vision, a snap, “you’re okay Eugenie?” Joe asked, preoccupied.
“Yes I… m just tired, from traveling, that’s all. But at least my stomach is happy, this pizza has some piquant aftertaste, I love it Joe”
“Actually, I recall now” Joe said, Thank Goodness, “At the start of my twenties, I used to work for a pizza place, then deliver the pizzas on my bike. I lived in New York City back then, can you imagine? Sometimes I had to bang on the accordion buses to get them to let me pass through the traffic”
“Bang with your actual hands like, punching it?” Barry wanted to know
“Yes like, in my younger mind, I imagined it was like the knight against the dragon”
Eugenie got her second reprieve of the night, the feeling lingering inside her that it would be the last and then she would have to start working on the convincing, clarifying, deconstructing and rebuilding phase. What a waste, she had a thought about the pizza, a piece of homemade meal that had been attentively assembled and which deserved to be savored, bite after bite, rolling inside one’s digestion track, and not absorbed by the body in between shakes and gurgles of stress.
Barry asked a couple of questions that sent Joe on a path of answers and anecdotes. Stop drinking wine, she told herself but, Eugenie was in such a state of distress that she emptied yet another glass. Three glasses and two slices of pizza, she didn’t run the chance of being drunk yet but, certainly, she was getting closer. She wasn’t a big drinker, she didn’t have enough practice, what the fuck am I thinking about.
You are in awe of him. The voice spoke plainly. Whether it was her own or Mormor’s, she couldn’t tell. That was true.
Don’t think now, you have had too much too drink!
She was in awe of Barry. She blamed him for getting his ass kicked majorly but, without it, would she ever have known his resilience, his combative spirit? The flash of blood spattered on his cheeks underneath her re-appeared, and vanished again. Don’t sweat the small things, just see the big picture, my little doll.
Grandma, what is the meaning of this? She loved his face, it was driving her mad, she loved the kindness that radiated through it, she loved his confidence, his goofiness, she loved how the light fell on it. Looking at him while he was sleeping, scanning all the details of his face, she was sometimes breathless, punched in the gut. Such a mix of peace on the outside with a burning head on the inside, beyond the envelope of his skull. The times where she had watched him in his slumber from the observation point of her pillow, she had felt the bed dissolve under her, she had felt her heart melt. She swallowed yet another sip of her wine. She had felt like she was falling in love.
And in spite of being occasionally chopped, fissured, notched, Barry’s body was striking too. He had been carved out of a marble piece, without mercy for the audience, without the concern that the shape of his broad shoulders, their wave-like rhythm, their ripples, the arch of his back or the the way he leaned over things could possibly lead an audience into craziness. Eugenie suddenly so near crying that she grunted and made another attempt at pushing her glass away, although a thin line of wine was still appealing to her at the bottom of it.
“Stop drinking” she commanded herself, “I mean” she cleared her throat in front of Barry and Joe, “I’m going to stop drinking for tonight I… I don’t know I usually don’t drink that much”
“It’s because of the extra pinch of salt I put in the pizza” Joe reassured her.
“So, water then”
“Hum” Joe passed her the water and said: “so what happened at Grand Central Station?”
Then Eugenie was completely sober.
Listen. She became lost in a vision again, she was on top of Barry and the dust and glass morsels from the ceiling were pouring on them, creating a veil on everything that seemed to be sparkling and making everything soft, faded, a mist of glitter. The sound of the glass cascading, jingling, clattering, was deafening. Listen. He smiled at her from very far, far away, he was slipping away, he was losing his strength, his vitality, the things that usually made him jump around and be merry, he was dying, she could see it in his eyes, under some very heavy eyelids. ‘RUN’ she heard.
Then she lost it once more. The memory was sucked out, so vividly erased that she counted down the pixels that disappeared into oblivion. Eugenie held her breath and searched for it inside her mind, it was a tiresome brain trick that made her feel like she was flipping the pages of a hundred books all at once, sitting on a vibrating swing in the cosmos, but she couldn’t retrieve the memory anymore. It was again forbidden to her. She had the feeling that she was letting time pass dangerously while a lot was happening in the real world like, Joe bending on the table to show something on his phone to Barry across the table.
Now, Barry was back and no longer dying, undeniably here with one elbow on the dining table, a piece of furniture that he had actually assembled with his own hands after breaking her old one. She wished the food would erase itself from it, she wished the table was clear and they could embrace on the rectangle of it, feeling his heartbeat just because they’d be so near, stuck to each other, hearing, I’m alive, you are alive, switching her nose from the right side to the left side of Barry’s nose, feeling his smile with her own lips, something exploding in a series of blasts from her lower tummy to her belly button, dilating inside her chest.
“What are you guys talking about” she asked them, the more reasonable version of herself dragging her other self by the hand like a reluctant child to school
“Good of you to join us” she heard the resentment in Joe’s voice or, rather than that, she quaked with the contagion of his confusion. She was confused too.
“Sorry I was… lost in my thoughts”
“I was showing Barry this article I saved when the train station was attacked” Joe explained. Why would you save that? She wondered, and he seemed to be reading her thoughts, went on, “I saved it because I genuinely feared it was the end of the world” he laughed lightly or, more believably, with an undertone of relief.
She squinted at the small screen of the phone, which displayed an old photo of the team under the headline, Team of Superheroes makes it out of Leveled Train Station, Repels Alien Droids. At the middle of the picture was the Bolt, the lower part of his face the only thing not covered by his suit and mask. Presently, it was impossible for Eugenie not to see all the Barry Masquevert details of that half of a face but she recalled that she had not computed two plus two back before Barry entered her life again. It was not so obvious to people who didn’t know him. And yet, she couldn’t ignore the skills that Joe possessed at being a great physiognomist. She smelled peril.
Why in the world was Barry not saying anything? Just letting it all happen. Where he was sitting at the table wasn’t his usual spot, it was the side which was reserved to guests and, positioned this way into the darkness cast by the wall behind him and the black screen of the television, he could hide and display only a shadow of him. The potted plants placed on and around the fireplace behind him stuck their long stretchy stems out, ornamenting the head of Barry’s silhouette with a crown of round and pointy leaves. Joe continued, unstoppable, “another website talks about some bolting energy being recorded during the shooting at the station”
“Bolting?” she said timidly, as if she had never heard the word before.
“Yes and then, this one, saying that the Bolt hasn’t been seen in a couple weeks”
Eugenie darted a panicked eye at Barry, interrogating him, did you know that the local newspapers wrote so much about YOU? He didn’t reception her alert, staring at Joe without much of an expression, his left hand relaxed on top of the table cloth. He had a full glass of wine in front of him, and Eugenie very much wanted to grab it and chug it. “What were you doing at the train station when the shooting happened?” Joe asked.
“Oh lord” she sat up, feeling the complete absence of the alcohol, as well as the total desertion of the memory she had just been shown and cut off from, “it’s a long story, I’m not sure that… that… that uh”
“That what” Joe interrupted her from her trailing off
“I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it”
“We met right after that, Eugenie” Joe opposed, “I believe I need to know what the hell took place like” he looked down at his phone’s screen, back up at her, “right before we met”
Finally, Barry spoke: “I will say something”
Eugenie and Joe threw their faces at him, in shared but different states of despair, so he nodded and said, “I understand, Joe, that you are implying that I am the Bolt”
“Indeed I am”
“Well he’s a pretty boy, so I can see that association in my mind, but that’s not the case”
“Not the case?”
“No” Barry shook his head, brushed some pieces of pizza crust from the rim of his plate with his left hand, “I’m flattered that you think I could be a possible candidate for a mutant vigilante, but no. I’m just a volunteer firefighter, so that’s why I was there”
“But there was no Ladder, Whatever Number it Was, present at the scene”
“What can I say I.. am passionate about my job. I needed to intervene”
“Intervene?”
“Try to stop the robots” Barry shrugged magnificently even with his shoulder being stiff, a masterpiece of blasé high school student restored from the past, reverberating with boredom in all his being, “obviously it was idiotic, I paid the price of my foolishness”
“I didn’t mean it this way” Joe’s hands joined palms in a gesture of guilt, “it’s very respectable. But I don’t believe you”
Idiotic, Eugenie replayed right away, I paid the price of my foolishness. “I’m a rookie” she was surprised at Barry’s attempt to persuade Joe, as he kept going, “I guess I have to prove myself to my t… to my company. Of firefighters. Not superheroes”
“Right. And Eugenie was there because…?”
She felt their faces madly swing towards hers, almost catapulted. You’re not fast enough, stop dwelling, start talking.
“Wrong place, wrong time. She was getting a train ticket for—”
“Nice try Barry” Joe said, “but ticket sales had been suspended the day before the assault for reasons of threats”
Eugenie intercepted Barry’s eyes, ah shit. She was angry now. She couldn’t locate the memories that had been played from the lowest levels of her subconscious, now, and she was grieving them. She was mourning her nice, Saturday-evening-on-planet-Earth tipsiness. She was enraged at Barry and his revelations, baffled by his forceful attempts to fix the situation at the moment, which were too little too late, she was irate at her grandmother for parading key pieces of her time frame in front of her and then snatching them away. Anger was growing into her and she said “you know what?” Eugenie faced Joe, her hands glued on to the table cloth, “I don’t remember a thing about it”