When Sunday arrived, there were two similar conversations happening nearly simultaneously in two very different places. On one side of the school campus, Josh and Kerry sat across from each other at their tiny kitchen table where they had eaten breakfast. But now all that lay on the cracked laminate surface between them was Josh’s phone. On the other side of campus, in Connor and Sara's penthouse apartment, two best friends marked apart from the world sat on opposite sides of a coffee table in their living room. On the table between them was Sara’s phone.
“I’m just going to do it.” Sara and Josh both announced as they reached for their phones.
“Okay. Do it.” Connor nodded in agreement with his best friend.
“Hold up. She said she’d invite you, right?” Kerry held his hand up to signal Josh to stop. “And they all made a big stink about her being impulsive and chatty, right? So let her be her natural self so they don’t get suspicious.”
“Right.” Sara and Josh both nodded slowly, hesitating for very different reasons.
Josh put his phone back down on the table and leaned forward with his head in his hands so he could prop it up on the table over his phone. He was nervous, but he had gradually become less afraid of the unknowns that he had encountered as he and Kerry had talked. And they had talked for a long time. As stereotypical as Kerry often was, he was always a good listener. That trait alone was what often attributed to his various social successes.
Sara, on the other hand, flexed her fingers and shook her head slightly to loosen up her neck and shoulder muscles. She had never been so nervous about talking to someone before.
“How about…, hey did you finish up your studying? We’re trying to pick out a movie and can’t decide what to watch.”
Sara had typed the message up as a draft on her phone and tried to show it to Connor but he leaned back and pulled away from the screen.
“I can’t write it for you. He’s smart. He would probably realize it wasn’t you.”
Josh’s phone buzzed and he shot up in his seat as he saw the notification illuminated on the screen in front of him.
“Should I tell her I finished studying early? Maybe I should offer a movie suggestion?” Josh hadn’t even opened the text properly, just read it through the notification just in case Sara’s phone would alert her that the message had been read.
“Chill out dude, just tell her you found the time and that your roommate is bored and wants to come with you… ooh, and ask her if we should bring snacks.” Kerry had been distracted by the thought of food, and he started ramble off the snacks he was craving.
Josh was hardly listening at that point. He was typing out a response in a notepad on his phone, so uncertain of how to phrase his response that he had made it through several revisions before he copied the last thing he’d written over to the text messenger and pasted it in to send while he closed his eyes. And after sending it, and finally opening his eyes, Josh scrambled to fix the errors he had typed. But of course he couldn’t edit the text, and he ended up sending more messages with asterisked corrections.
“It turns out the studing wasnt as bad as I thought it’s be, so I have the rest of my day free.”
“*the studying wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be… sorry.”
“I officially invite you to movie night then.” Sara added a smiley face emoji at the end of her text, but she had agonized so hard over which one to use that she accidentally picked the one that stuck its tongue out.
“What time? And should I bring snacks?”
“We start early, 4pm. No snacks required. We’re ordering in.”
“Four o’clock, and no snacks. They want to order dinner in.” Josh looked up to Kerry to see what he should say next.
“Okay?” Kerry, conversely, had no idea what Josh was expecting from him. “Say cool and make sure they know I’m coming. I don’t want to show up and them not be prepared for me. They need to be comfortable if we’re going to dig to the truth.”
“Right. Yeah.” Josh nodded as he began to type a response text.
“Is it okay if my roommate comes too? I promise he’ll behave.”
“The one you were talking to during class?”
“Yeah. The obnoxious one I was talking about yesterday.”
“Oh, let them know I’m bringing some booze.” Kerry pointed a finger back to a his series of glass bottles on the kitchen counter. “It should help them loosen up.”
“He says he’s bringing booze.”
“Oh. Maybe don’t do that. Connor’s still only 20, and he probably can’t drink any of it anyway. And I feel bad getting drunk when he can’t”
“Right, sorry. No booze.”
“You can’t bring drinks.” Josh looked up at Kerry, who had become instantly deflated.
“Dude, what the hell? Why not? Are they religious?”
“No, her roommate can’t eat a lot of stuff like soy and corn, and she feels bad if she gets drunk when they can’t.”
Josh was intentionally avoiding mentioning that Connor was not a girl. He had eventually realized that he had called Connor cute, mostly by accident, and he did not want Kerry to pick up on it. Josh was fully prepared to let Kerry figure that out on his own.
Kerry groaned and rolled his eyes but waved the issue away. “Fair enough. If I can get through a date with the only sober vegan on campus, I can deal with sober rich girls.”
“Also, the roommate’s twenty.”
“Oh. Yeah. No. I’m not giving booze to someone that can’t drink it for medical reasons, and I’m definitely not getting someone drunk that can’t legally drink. It’s a crime. A dumb one. But a crime. Also sleazy as hell.”
“Good to know that your boundaries on drinking are serious bodily injury ranging to death and federal crimes.” Josh laughed. It felt like the first time he’d done it in ages.
Kerry let off a grin, but resisted the urge to laugh loudly. “What can I say. Drink responsibly is a very subjective guideline.”
While Kerry and Josh managed to chatter off and on throughout the rest of the day leading up to four o’clock, Josh found himself unable to do anything else of importance.He was waiting, hours in advance, for something he couldn’t help but dread.
Likewise, Sara was waiting as well, slowly pacing the lengths of the apartment while trying to make her path look discrete. Connor seemed patient enough as he read a book, but Sara couldn’t sit still to save her life. She was tormented by an odd mix of anxiety and excitement. On the one hand, if Josh could see the marks on her and Connor’s arms, they might have been responsible for ruining his life, but she would have a more likely friend than enemy because of it. And if he couldn’t see? Then he would be just fine, but it meant that her identity was a confusing and bizarre amalgamation to someone she had wanted to be friends with and he would likely stop talking to her.
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And eventually, despite the eternity that passed as the two waited, three o’clock rolled around in that way that disliked relatives do around the holidays. There is some mild excitement and definitely anticipation, but also dread. It is the sort of excitement, anticipation, and dread one experiences at the top of the first drop of a roller-coaster when one is particularly squeamish. But in a situation such as Sara and Josh were now in, it was an ideal time to begin preparing for the evening in earnest. Ordering food, putting on socially appropriate clothes, tidying spaces, and getting yourself cleaned up. And then a short wait while you decide if you want to risk arriving early or not. Or maybe you worry about arriving too late. Kerry was concerned about Josh and his obsession with arriving at the perfect moment. Sara was worried that they might not show up at all.
When the time came (which was three-thirty for Josh) and the walk to the apartment began, Josh could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Kerry felt nothing. Nothing abnormal at least. He was already prepared for the worst and expected a grand total of nothing to happen.
“Wow…” Kerry let out a light breath as they walked up to the front of the Benedictine. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually been this close.”
“It gets… bigger.” Josh muttered. “Somehow, on the inside I mean. It feels bigger.”
The two walked into the lobby, were greeted by an employee of the building, and stopped at the center of the lobby. The whole time Josh had been moving boxes he had never once looked up. It was like a scene out of a movie, like a royal ballroom with a chandelier… but also with more stairs and slightly bland furniture. It seemed the gap between what Josh had expected and what he continued to see.
“Whoa… you were right… it is bigger on the inside.”
“Yeah… the elevator’s…” Josh paused and shifted his view from the hallway that held the freight elevator to the center of the far wall of of the lobby where a line of elevator doors stood. Josh hadn’t looked back on his way out and wasn’t entirely sure if it was the right place. “One of those should go all the way up.”
The ride up was long. It was plenty of floors to ascend. More than either Kerry or Josh would have walked up. And when it stopped and the two passengers cross the hall to the apartment door at the top of the Benedictine, and then they knocked on the door, there was only a second or two before it opened. Neither commented on how someone must have been waiting for them behind it, but they both knew.
“You’re here, great, we’ve narrowed it down to two movies but we need a tie breaker.” Sara had opened the door and was doing her best to be cheerful and nonchalant.
“Awesome.” Kerry made his way past Sara as she stepped aside to welcome her guests. “This is a beautiful apartment, thank you for having us over.”
“This is Kerry, by the way.” Josh introduced his roommate awkwardly as he followed behind. “Kerry, this is Sara.”
Once they had stepped through the door and the apartment was open before them, Josh could see Connor across the room, sitting in a small nook in the study area with his feet up. It had been quite the site out the three windows that walled in the trapezoidal nook during the day when Josh had helped them move, he could only imagine how amazing it was at night with the view. Connor was also doing his part and acting nonchalant, or rather, he was actually being nonchalant and reading a book.
“And that’s Sara’s roommate, Connor.”
Kerry turned to give Josh a dirty look, but didn’t make a comment. That was the ideal scenario for Josh. It was just enough of an audience to keep Kerry in line. It also occurred to Josh, midway through the walk there, that Kerry probably wouldn’t have come if he knew it would be mostly men present with only one woman. He detested male prominent gatherings, or so he said when Josh had asked him about fraternities at the start of their time as roommates.
“Good book?” Kerry asked casually.
“It’s homework. So no.” Connor smirked. “But it is interesting.”
As Connor sat up and put his book down, Josh had a clear view of his left arm. And Sara’s arms for that matter. They were both suspiciously sleeveless. And Josh could see, just as clearly, that they both had the exact same tattoo in the exact same place. Their left forearms had a tattoo that covered from just above the wrist to just below the elbow. And now that Josh was looking at it again, and looking with less fear, he could describe it; a task he had been unable to do after leaving the apartment the previous day.
Just above the wrist was a solid black line. And, beginning at four equidistant points on that cuff of ink, four lines that made tight spirals wound up their forearms. Just below the elbow was another solid band that encircled their arm. But it wasn’t black, it was a dark gray with opalescent shine to it. But as Josh looked at it, that shine seemed to travel down to their wrists in unison. Maybe it was some trick of the light and special ink, but the tattoos seemed to move. As he looked at them, the winding spiral lines seemed to twist and spin in a hypnotic way. And, for a moment, as Josh looked at Sara’s arm, he was transfixed.
“So what movies did you two stall out on?” Kerry made his way over to the sofa and living room area of the apartment. “I half expected chic flicks, but now that I know we have a majority of men here, maybe there was at least one good option?”
“Well, I was voting for Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Connor began as he made his way over to the small table just underneath where the TV was mounted to the wall and picked up the DVD case for the movie, “but Sara was adamant on watching a Bond film.”
“A View to Kill is my favorite.” Sara smiled as she put her hands together in excitement. “It’s Roger Moore’s last appearance as Bond, and Walkin gets to be the big bad. Also, we get a hench-lady… which is not as good as a female villain, but we all know the villain never really fights the hero. It’s pretty much always the henchman.”
“We’re not watching Hepburn tonight, are we…” Connor sighed.
“Sorry dude. I don’t know how you can top that.” Kerry shrugged as he sat down. “But you could still try to win me over.”
“We do have probably five-ish minutes before food gets here.” Sara held her hands up to cover her mouth and give Connor the floor to fight for his movie.
Rather than fight for it though, Connor tossed the DVD case back to the table he’d gotten it from. “Not mad, but this does mean I get the pick next time.”
“Done.” Sara held up her hand as if to swear it. “But don’t forget your consolation as the loser of the movie night vote, you still get to interrupt whenever you want and we can’t stop you.”
Josh sat down on the couch and sank into the plush cushions. “I didn’t know there were special rules for movie night…”
“There are.” Sara nodded, before gesturing for Kerry to sit down as well. “And they go back years to when Connor and I were kids. We always used to fight over what to watch, and my mom would always say you don’t have to like it so long as you get along. And it just sort of grew from there.”
“Honestly, it’s my favorite part of movie night, because talking about the movie is way more fun than actually watching the movies we have.”
Josh watched with interest as the two roommates talked casually while he and Kerry absorbed the rules of the event they had been invited to. They seemed more comfortable around each other than they had the previous day. Less like roommates and more like genuine friends. Almost like siblings that had finally grown out of the stage of being at each others throats.
And for a moment, as he watched, Josh noticed something.
It was subtle, and he wasn’t sure what it meant. But he saw Connor and Sara’s eyes lock onto his at the same moment and then shift away a second later, like they were making sure they knew where his eyes were looking. And they had caught him looking at their arms again.
“That’s a weird story…” Kerry jumped in on the conversation casually. “Weird because I did pretty much the exact same thing in high school. I was in the film club, and there was always this one big punk rocker guy that hated every movie we watched but he showed up every week to watch with us. He never offered a choice of movie, and he was never mean about it, but he always criticized the films and talked over them while we were watching. It was the weirdest thing, because he did it really eloquently too and we had some amazing conversations as a club because of him. But it was always so weird to hear that kind of intelligent critique from a guy with a terribly done neck tattoo and all those piercings.”
“You can never really tell with people like that.” Connor chuckled. “Appearances don’t mean much.”
“Well, I mean, in high school.” Kerry pushed back. “But yeah. Once you get to be on your own, no one really cares what you look like or if you have tattoos or piercings… or if you wear jeggings everywhere.”
Sara laughed. “He wore jeggings everywhere?”
“He said they were skinny jeans, but if the tags on them said denim I would be surprised.”
That line got a laugh from the whole room.
“You guys look respectable though. No tattoos, no piercings, no jeggings.” Kerry sighed. “So we’ll probably have really crappy conversation.”
“Yeah. I don’t think we’ll talk much… at least I won’t. I’ve never actually seen any of the old Bond films.” Josh smiled nervously.
Kerry clearly wasn’t seeing what he was seeing. The tattoos were so clearly there, Josh had no idea how his roommate wasn’t seeing them. But that had been his signal, though they had never agreed on one. Kerry was discretely telling Josh that he was seeing things. But he wasn’t. Connor and Sara had weird tattoos, and they were keeping track on if he was looking at them. It was a discrete investigation on both sides, as Josh took in every detail of the tattoos and was in turn watched by the owners of them.
The sight of the black ink marks on their arms gradually began to make Josh’s arm itch. Even as Sara stood up to answer the door and pay for food. Even as Connor made his way to the kitchen to heat up his own dinner. The marks themselves were out of his line of sight, but they still felt like they were there, close by. But the longer they stayed out of his sight, the harder they became to visualize. Josh gave Kerry a look, as if to say that he was wrong; that there were tattoos, and that he wasn’t crazy but Kerry was just going blind. But all he received in return was a worried look from his friend and roommate.
And it was a worried look that was well warranted.