an instant photo of a bag of takeaway food [https://i1.wp.com/theendandtheinstant.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Instant-14-min.jpeg?w=1500&ssl=1]
“Come outside with me,” Oli says, standing up. “I want to show you something.”
Lark follows him without speaking and puts on his Converse at the back door when Oli steps into a pair of Birkenstocks. They walk through the backyard to a haphazard-looking shed. It’s a new addition to the property, an easy-clean hut built of interlocking plastic instead of wood.
Lark waits while Oli fiddles with a combination lock. It’s summer and, even in the dead of night, there’s a tropical warmth in the air that surprises Lark. He’s gotten used to shivering in over-airconditioned interiors and is surprised by the physical relief he feels being outside.
His muscles unclench. The sky is clear.
“Our location isn’t great, but it’s a good night for it, and it’s as dark as it’s going to get,” Oli says from inside the shed. When he emerges, he’s holding a fat telescope with a series of digital complications. He hands it to Lark to hold while he sets up its tripod in the center of the yard. The weight of the scope is too much for Lark and he has to rest it on his feet. Oli helps him carry it, does most of the work to lift it up onto its stand.
When Oli has everything set up, he shows Lark the computerized display, the input pads. “What do you want to look at?” he asks.
Lark doesn’t know, so Oli shows him the rings of Saturn, making Lark gasp at the level of detail he can see through the fancy equipment. He had never looked at the sky with anything more than his naked eyes before.
When Lark finishes with the planet, Oli inputs something else into the telescope and looks through it himself. “Perfect timing,” he says, and ushers Lark back. “You’ll like this.”
Through the scope—which is moving a little on its own, making adjustments according to the mysterious instructions of the computer—Lark can see a man-made object flanked by shimmering solar panel wings. “Is that a satellite?” Lark asks, squinting against the eyepiece.
“It’s the space station,” Oli tells him. “There are people up there, looking down at earth or up at the stars.”
It’s been strange for Oli to look at Lark’s photos. Their perspective is so small, so limited. His eye is obviously trained on the tiniest detail; there’s a specificity of memory, an obsession with small kindnesses.
Oli, though, looks at the stars, and when he is not looking he is at least thinking about them. He knows the earth is small and he himself is a speck; the things that Lark is grateful for or hurt by are negligible. Though he understands that anyone’s interior life can grow to fill the whole of their universe, Oli likes the possibility of offering Lark a new perspective, an escape from the close scrutiny of his own feelings.
Lark tracks the ISS hurtling through its orbit until it disappears beyond the line of roofs that obstructs his view of the horizon.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
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a bag of takeaway, a note attached reads: Lark! Ordered too much. Please eat! J&Q [https://i0.wp.com/theendandtheinstant.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Debt-Management.jpeg?w=1500&ssl=1]
When I finished high school, my parents started charging me rent. They refused to help me with the financial aid papers when I decided to go to conservatory, too. Though the seeming cruelty of that decision left me disoriented for weeks, I was eventually able to contextualize it as part of a campaign of tough love. My parents never missed a chance to remind me that I lived under their roof, and I understood by the time I was eighteen that anything I hadn’t earned with my own sweat could be taken from me.
I moved out six weeks after graduating, paying pennies for Reed’s box room in the duplex he rented on the other side of town. I barely spoke to either my mother or father, aside from brief exchanges on holidays and birthdays; I didn’t, though, forget their lesson.
Whatever harsh world they thought they were preparing me for, it was not Portland, not the sweet enclave of artists and academics that orbited Jules and Quinn. They had friends over for dinner or games nights, welcomed quick visits from school friends on their way home from work, hosted whole bands en route to gigs. Friends, who came with books and cakes and new music, left with borrowed recording equipment or Criterion DVDs from Quinn’s collection.
Even when I was well enough to be sociable, I hid away in the guest room during these visits. I felt crushingly embarrassed that I was being given so much by this clearly beloved couple, certain that everyone else would see me for the pitiful drain I was.
I told myself I was giving them space, respecting some boundary, but I felt aware even then that I had some maladaptive conditioning. Jules was always offering to introduce me to local bands, and still I kept myself to myself, pretended to be asleep whenever Quinn checked in on me.
Still, the next day, there would always be food left over for me from takeaway meals, a slice of someone’s apple pie, a demo tape Jules thought I would like.
I ate by myself and played the upright piano when the house was empty. Jules kept regular hours, either in the studio with their artists or hot-desking at a local collective for freelancers and artists. Quinn spent more time at home, absorbed in his laptop, sometimes dozing on the living room sofa, but he still left a couple days a week. I tried not to be caught practicing when he returned, or he’d tell me not to stop and I’d hesitate with my hands on the keys, mind blank with anxiety.
I played a lot of Chopin, shuffling through preludes that had been in my repertoire for years already. It comforted me to think about the composer in similar situations, sick and dependent in the house of strangers. Still, some days all I could do was sleep.
Quinn had bad days, too. These were events I was only obliquely aware of: days he spent in the master bedroom or bent with a pain I didn’t ask about. Once, he called for me when we were alone in the house, asked me to bring him a glass of water. He was sitting up in bed, pale and sweating, his hair stuck to his face, snarled around his shoulders.
Thank you. For asking me, I said to him, even though it sounded weird out loud, clumsy. I meant it, though; I was grateful to have something, even something pitifully minor, to do for him.
Quinn laughed at me, dredging up a smile. You see? I’d want you to ask me, too.
He would tell me, again and again, that I didn’t owe him a debt, that I needed to stop apologizing for taking up space, for taking the rest I needed, for living, but the ledger in my mind didn’t go away, even as I knew, with ever-increasing certainty, that it couldn’t be squared. I wasn’t sure what that meant for my future, what I could count on.