“I can’t wait until tomorrow,” said Brian, still with a dreamy smile. He had never been furniture shopping before in his life, and getting to spend more time with his middle brother after two days of Barrett hogging him sounded like heaven. Angels and all.
THIRTEEN
Barrett arrived at his office at 9:00 AM on the dot, wavy hair a little less under control than usual, the warm morning needing only a dress shirt, no jacket. And it wasn’t as if he noticed differences in temperature any way. A hot shower was still deliciously hot, ice cubes were still wonderfully cold, but ambient temperatures no longer affected him and his brothers. He’d made a mental note about this, reminding himself to pay closer attention to what other people were wearing as a cue to what he should wear in the future. Forgetting to bring a warm coat to lunch if it were in the 30s outside would surely get a few comments from his coworkers.
He missed his brothers, but consoled himself with the knowledge that he could mentally talk to them whenever he wanted, and even though he’d be returning to his condominium for his stuff, he wouldn’t be living there any more. They were creating a new life together, and the time he’d spent with his wife now seemed like a waste. Time spent waiting for his real life to begin.
He whistled to himself as he made his way to his office, leaving his door open and his blinds up. He felt like a new man, and of course he was. Leaning back in his familiar normal chair, behind his normal desk, inside his normal office, however... something was missing. He realized it, and couldn’t put his finger on it at first. Everything was the same as before. Same chair, same desk, same office, same buzz of workers and phones and copy machines and conversation outside his door.
And that was the problem.
The circumstances were pleasant enough, but seemed so lacking. Sitting and looking at the inside of a door frame when he could be outside spreading his wings and taking to the air...
“Barrett? You have a second?”
David’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts – he hadn’t even heard the soft tap on the open door.
“Yeah, sorry,” he said, sitting up straighter. “What is it?”
“I’ve got the new display sketches. You want to look them over now? Or is this not a good time?”
“No, I’m good. I’ve been dying to see these.”
The two men examined the designs, discussing which materials would showcase the products better, getting into a slight argument over wood versus glass. And the longer it went on, the more Barrett’s train of thought shifted from the designs to David himself.
The ball of energy had worked at Mason imports almost since day one, and he knew the business just as well as Barrett did, if not better in some areas. David was his right hand man, office manager, and yearly Santa Claus, both dressing the part and in terms of kindness and generosity. For every blunt word he uttered, he had a kind one as well, especially in a pinch. He’d practically turned into the resident therapist when one of their co-workers was lost to cancer two years before.
“...So glass, if you put the logo on the reverse side of the crest, like you etched it in and then colored it... I think that’d look pretty sharp. You can’t do that with wood.” David looked up and realized Barrett was looking at him, thoughtful. “What?”
Barrett closed the door, went to his chair, sat down, and motioned for David to sit across from him. He did so, slightly confused.
“What, are you going to fire me?” David chuckled, but there was a little nervous undertone to it that Barrett could sense. He tried to send calm back toward the man, and noticed that he did relax his posture a bit.
“No way,” he said, smiling warmly. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“Oh?” said David, a little suspicious.
“Yes. A little bird told me that Margo has an application in at another place in San Francisco. If she gets it, we’re going to need a new buyer.”
David’s brows lifted, still a little suspicious. “Wait, you’re not saying that I should... planes and I don’t get along well. I’m not a good flier.” His hands were already fidgeting on the arms of the chair. Barrett smiled a little more.
“I know. I love to fly.” He chuckled just a bit at his own inside joke, then sat back comfortably in his chair, his wings just under the surface at the thought. “I was talking about me. I’m kind of tired of being stuck here all the time. It’d be nice to travel again, and I can show my brother the ropes, too.”
“So what does that have to do with me?” asked David, brow creasing.
“Somebody has to hold down the fort. That’s you. The new Chief Operations Officer. Senior VP. You’re already doing all that anyway, may as well make it official. Oh, and I’ll bump your pay for the title.”
All David could do was stare, a little smile creeping up. “You’re serious.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’d be stupid to refuse, wouldn’t I,” he said with a little laugh, reaching out to shake Barrett’s hand, a twinkle in his eye.
“Probably.” Barrett grinned and shook his hand, then went around the desk and pulled him into a hug, patting his back. “Everybody wins. Thanks for accepting.”
“Does this mean we’re going with glass on the displays?”
Barrett smirked at David’s smirk, and the negotiations started all over again.
“I really prefer wood to glass,” Brian said as he stood with Mike in the furniture store, bewildered by all the choices.
“That’s ironic.”
Brian looked at him in confusion, then snorted. “I mean in furniture, not what I do for a living.”
They looked a while longer, then sank down together into a couch that looked comfortable, but was little more than stiff foam hidden by some inexpensive upholstery fabric. The looked at each other, and Brian made a face.
“I know,” said Mike. “It’s all either overpriced, or cheaply made, or ugly, or not what would work in the house.”
“Or all of the above. Crap. You want to get a coffee?”
“Sounds good.”
At the local Peet’s they pored over the list of furnishings they’d made that morning on their stopover at Barrett’s place. One hurdle they had to overcome was the fact that the only one that liked most of Barrett’s stuff was Barrett. Mike could live with it, Brian hated it. But one thing they wouldn’t have to get was a lot of kitchen gadgets, and they were both grateful for that. Even if they were all brushed chrome for the most part, with a little red and black thrown in.
Brian idly stirred his coffee and looked out the window, spotting an antiques store. Out front was a chair. But this chair wasn’t just a chair, it was quarter-sawn oak, the arms terminating in lion heads, the back slightly geometric with scrolled inlay hinting at an Egyptian lotus influence. Mike looked up, followed his brother’s rapt attention, then spotted the chair himself.
They spent the rest of the afternoon buying furniture there, including a cherry dining table, a set of six chairs that mostly matched it, a sizable oak buffet, a mirror with an unusual gilded plaster frame, two bed frame sets, and, of course, the chair out front. They grinned like kids as they walked down the street, then slipped into an alley and disappeared.
“That stuff is going to look great in here!” Brian let his wings back out, Mike following his example. Somewhere in the distance they could feel a tingle coming from Barrett’s direction.
“It really is. Perfectly suits the place. We need to finish cleaning up the kitchen first, I think,” Mike said, walking in and opening up the fridge. “Because we... need... t...” He stared into the empty space of the appliance, confused.
“What’s wrong?”
“Did you...? Nobody’s been here, right? Bear’s at work, you’ve been shopping with me. But the fridge is spotless.”
Brian came in to see what he was talking about, and blinked at it. It looked like new. “I haven’t touched it.”
“Last night it was still kind of a mess after we threw out the food, right? I mean, you saw i
t...”
“Yeah, but it’s not like it could have cleaned itself. Maybe he came home on his lunch and did it?”
“That has to be it. Huh.” Mike shrugged and turned to see what needed working on the most so that they could fix dinner that night. Or at least have a clean surface to set things on. The countertop with its subway tile seemed to need the most help, so they set to work scrubbing at it with the cleaning supplies Gail had left for them.
An hour or so later, Barrett suddenly appeared in the living room, greeted by the smell of cleansers and the sound of Brian’s iPod that had been plugged into small speakers for the time being.
“Bear! Nice job on the fridge,” Brian exclaimed, running over to hug him.
“Fridge?” He hugged back, undid the top button on his shirt, and let his wings out with a sigh of relief.
“Yeah, it looks like new. What did you use?” asked Mike, grinning. “Elbow grease mostly, I imagine.”
“I haven’t touched the fridge. Haven’t been here all day.” Curious, he went in and opened it up. Absolutely spotless. “Huh.”
His brothers stopped and looked at each other. “But... we didn’t... and if you didn’t... then who did?” stammered Brian.
“That’s a little creepy,” said Mike, looking at the now-closed fridge as if it would explain itself if he stared long enough.
Barrett shrugged. “Have to call Scooby Doo to solve this mystery. I’m starved, you want to order a pizza?”
One phone call to the local delivery place and a few trips to and from Barrett’s condo later, they were sitting comfortably on the couch, admiring the brickwork of the fireplace. They’d discovered that it still took two of them and a very coordinated team teleport to bring the couch over, the house becoming a little less of an empty shell and a little more of a home.
“You should have seen the look on his face.” Barrett was finishing the story of David’s promotion when the pizza arrived, and shortly afterward, the furniture delivery. Getting the truck into the narrow driveway and around the dumpster was a tight fit, but soon, they were bringing in their new treasures, Barrett grinning at both them and the furniture they’d picked out.
“What, you don’t like it?” said Mike, sensing that part of the smile was amusement over their choices.
“It’s a little... grandma’s house for me.”
“We never had a grandma. And it totally fits the style of the house, unlike your modernista stuff.”
Barrett’s smile faded and he crossed his arms. “I wish you had let me...”
“All right, stop. Just stop.” Mike went over to him and looked him in the eye. “You were at work. You said we could get furniture. This is the furniture we got. You didn’t give us any limits or parameters. You won’t have to suffer with the beds, those will be in our rooms. There’s nothing wrong with the dining room table, it goes with the dark paneling you’re all nuts about. We’re still using a lot of your stuff. So just chill, all right?”
Barrett merely put up his hands and silently walked away, leaving his brothers to do all the moving themselves.
Once the furniture truck was gone and the door closed, they returned to what was starting to become their normal state, with wings out. It was almost second nature to put them away when anyone was around and let them out when at home. Barrett quietly wondered to himself if any of them would ever slip and someone would find out what they really were.
One last trip for each of them to their respective kitchens, and the night’s moving efforts were called on account of tired. Food and utensils and plates and a mountain of tea boxes were piled up on the new dining room table. Anything cold was put into the mysteriously spotless fridge. At last they flopped back onto the sofa, resting.
“Getting late,” observed Barrett.
“Only ten. Not that late,” said Brian. “And besides, you don’t sleep that much anyway.”
“You know,” Mike said slowly, thinking, “I’ve been needing less sleep myself, come to think of it. It may be ten, but the only kind of tired I feel is from moving furniture around.”
Barrett nodded, and wondered to himself if there would come a time that they didn’t need to sleep at all.
“Can we sit up and talk a little?” said Brian, nudging Barrett out of his thoughts.
“Sure,” he said, “What did you want to talk about?”
“The next thing. The void. I feel like we should do what you said, Bear, and be more proactive. Maybe we should figure out where it is, and how we get there, and what’s in it.”
Mike snorted softly. “If it’s a void, there’s nothing in it.”
Brian looked at him, slightly annoyed. “We don’t know what it is. What may or may not be in it. We’re going on what little we know about the Kabbalah or something.”
“Uncharted waters without a map,” added Barrett.
“Right, so I say we fix that. That’s my whole point,” Brian said, turning to a clean sheet of paper.
They spent several more hours discussing the issue before finally wandering off to their bedrooms for a few hours of sleep before work.
Lunch in San Jose sounds great, Brian was saying to them both, still trying to hold a conversation even though he was starting to fade. Being in the same house helped soothe the feeling of unease whenever they were apart, as did the ability to speak right into the others’ heads. It was more personal and intimate, another way they connected deep.
Anywhere in particular you’d like to go? came Barrett’s voice, a low murmur of near sleep.
Something... Indian maybe... sandwich... don’t know... His thoughts trailed as he finally drifted off.
Mike smiled softly to himself as he felt his baby brother fall asleep, then started to realize that he was actually feeling it happen. Whatever link they used to speak to each other was left wide open, and he distinctly felt Brian’s calm state of rest as they touched each others’ minds. A shiver went up his spine, making his feathers fluff a bit. Mentally reaching out, he found Barrett, still barely awake. The technique was the same, the link was the same, only no words were being spoken.
Mike...? said a sleepy Barrett.
I’m here, he said back, then purposefully left the connection open, almost as if he’d drawn in a breath to speak but then stopped with his mouth open. It took a moment for their eldest to realize what was going on, but when he did, he opened up the same to them both. Brian stirred a little in his sleep but didn’t wake. It was a little reassuring touch, each of them resting gently in each others’ minds as they finally dozed.
A few hours later, the house began to stir with the usual morning sounds of getting ready for work, times three. Mike and Barrett reached the toaster at the same time, then nudged each other, then jostled, then wrestled, until finally Mike had Barrett pinned on the kitchen floor, both of them snickering and red-faced. Barrett smirked, then smacked his brother cleanly in the face with the one wing that wasn’t pinned, sending him sprawling in surprise, starting a whole new round of wrestling.
“Better than TV,” said Brian, leaning on the door frame and sipping his tea.
Eventually enough buttered toast was made for all of them and stacked high on a plate, Mike adding a colorful cereal to his side of the table, munching happily on the wildly artificial fruit flavors that he’d missed having in the Navy. Barrett opted for oatmeal as usual, Brian going with some fruit.
“That’s a nice touch,” he said, nodding at the single yellow rose in a milk glass bud vase on one side of the table.
“Yeah, I saw that,” said Barrett. “I haven’t even seen the back yard. Are there a lot of roses?”
“I haven’t been back there either,” Mike said, staring at the rose, then looking between them. “I didn’t pick it.”
They looked at each other, then at the lone flower in the slender vase, sitting there innocently. It was obviously fresh from that morning, still only half open, a little dew on some of the outer petals. None of them remembered seeing any vases in the cabinets th
e day before, let alone a rose on the kitchen table.
Mike stood up, a cold feeling in his stomach, wings opening a little. “Okay, if none of us... then who...? Where did it come from? Is somebody watching us? Sneaking in and leaving things like in the alley at your place?” He looked at Brian, who was still staring at the thing as if it would start moving on its own.
“The fridge,” said Barrett. “There’s that, too. We never figured out who cleaned it.”
“Haunted!” Brian stood straight up, knocking the chair over backwards. “The place is haunted!” Mike’s wings spread in alarm at the sudden action, then he sighed and picked up the chair.
“I really don’t think...”
“Would explain the rose and the fridge,” Barrett said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Then he caught sight of the time. “Crap! And I gotta change my shirt.” He darted off to his bedroom and rummaged around, leaving his brothers alone to puzzle over the situation, breakfast unfinished. Eventually, after getting nowhere beyond the guess that the house was haunted, they all ended up at their jobs, Barrett and Mike at the San Jose office, Brian at his studio.
He was making great progress on the Saint Joseph of Cupertino window. Between the music and focusing completely on what he was doing, any thoughts of mysteriously clean refrigerators and unsettling yellow roses disappeared like ghosts. His only interruption of the morning was his metalworker friend calling to schedule when to come and check the fit of the new skylight frame he was working on.
Lunch in about a half hour? Barrett’s voice in his head was less startling than he would have thought, and Brian looked up at the time.
Yes! Just let me get changed. Where should I meet you?
Good question. How about at home, then I can show you some good places to appear for future reference?
Great! See you in a few. Brian turned off the soldering iron and music, took a last look to see if he was forgetting anything, and then suddenly appeared in the living room of their new house. He headed for the stairs, but then stopped with his foot on the bottom step. Something wasn’t right.
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