by Austin Bates
Jules laughed bitterly.
“I hear that,” he said.
He shifted on the couch, checking his phone impatiently.
“Waiting for something?” Rick asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got some feelers out about another snowmobile or helicopter. Gonna try to get us out of here before the snow stops if I can.”
“If you can… do you think we can salvage the tour?”
“Do you even want to?”
“Of course not. But it seems to be important to you and business and stuff, so I figure it would be good if we could.”
“That’s fair. Yeah, if we can get out of here by Wednesday at least, we could salvage most of it.”
“Then I hope you get your call,” Rick lied.
He wished he really felt that way. He wished he was better at the people portion of success, but he didn’t and he wasn’t, and he was going to have to deal with that one way or another. Drugs and alcohol would only get him so far before they became problems in and of themselves. Someday, somehow, he was going to have to figure out how to be comfortable talking to fans of his work.
“How do you do it?” he asked suddenly.
“Do what?” Jules said absently as his thumbs flew swiftly over his screen, no doubt texting someone important.
“Talk to people. You know, do the fame thing.”
“I don’t. The authors do.”
“Well, I mean, yeah, but you do plenty too. Talking to publishers and store managers and owners and things, hell, talking to authors. How do you make half a dozen phone calls without breaking a sweat even when you know you’re going to be telling them something they really don’t want to hear?”
Jules looked up from his phone and squinted at Rick.
“You just… do,” he said finally. “I have information, someone else needs information, I transmit the information from my brain to theirs by pushing air through my vocal chords while moving my lips.”
“Now who’s the smartass,” Rick said with the ghost of a smile.
“Well, ask a silly question….”
“It wasn’t as silly as it sounded,” Rick insisted. “People are terrifying. Talking to them… that’s something I just can’t seem to master.”
“You’re talking to me just fine,” Jules said absently, checking his phone.
“That’s different. I’ve already talked to you a hundred times.”
“So how did you do it the first time?”
Rick laughed, shaking his head.
“When you sent me the email telling me when you would be calling me, I started drinking. I didn’t stop until you’d called and the conversation was over.”
Jules looked up, suddenly realizing.
“That makes all kinds of sense,” he said. “I thought you were a stroke survivor or something.”
“Nope, just drunk. So you see… the tour means talking to literally thousands of people. I’m going to have to do that over and over again. I don’t think my liver can handle that.”
“I don’t think your reputation could either,” Jules said frankly. “The drunk artist thing is great and all, but not in public.”
“You can’t expect me to do it sober,” Rick said, shrinking into the couch.
Jules hummed thoughtfully, stroking his beard.
“Do you have a psychiatrist?” he asked.
Rick nodded, then shook his head.
“I used to,” he said. “But he cut me off. Said I was abusing the meds. I wasn’t… I mean I don’t think I was. The Xanax said take as needed, so I did.”
“How often?”
“Uh… three, four times a day,” Rick muttered.
Jules whistled.
“No wonder he cut you off. What have you been doing since?”
“Drinking,” Rick said bluntly. “Does the same thing Xanax does, and I don’t need a prescription.”
“Not real healthy, though,” Jules pointed out.
“Neither is Xanax,” Rick shrugged. “But I’m kind of out of options, aside from barricading myself indoors forever.”
“Done a pretty good job of that, too,” Jules said wryly.
“Yeah, well….” Rick trailed off, shrugging.
They sat in silence for a while, watching whatever was on. It seemed too loud and too colorful to Rick, but Jules seemed to be enjoying it.
“I don’t usually have time to watch anything,” Jules said. “Work keeps me busy.”
“Maybe it was good that we got snowed in then,” Rick said. “You look like you could use the break.”
Jules shot him a mildly irritated look.
“Breaks are fine,” he said. “The timing of this one couldn’t have been worse.”
The awkward moment made Rick suddenly conscious of his hands. He needed to do something with them. He decided coffee couldn’t hurt and went to turn the pot back on. On his way, he checked the plug on his laptop. If it charged completely he’d just take it upstairs to write so the TV wouldn’t bother him. Once those tasks were accomplished, Rick stood awkwardly in the kitchen, trying to come up with something else to do.
“So, um… are you hungry? Do you want anything?” he asked.
“Nah, I’m good. Thanks. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, well there’s coffee and….”
Rick cut himself off as the cabin was plunged into darkness. Jules cursed.
“Do you have a generator?” he asked sharply.
“Yeah, in the basement. I’ll go turn it on.”
The basement door sat in the little lean-to behind the kitchen. Rick, happy for something to do, grabbed a flashlight and made his way downstairs. He heard Jules coming behind him. A line of propane cans sat against the wall, like a lot of squat little soldiers waiting patiently for commands. Rick grabbed one. It was empty. His palms began to sweat. He checked the next one, and the next. Each was empty. He searched his mind for a reason and suddenly remembered; the power had gone out six months ago during an autumn storm, and he’d been at the cabin writing for months before the line was repaired. He’d never bothered to refill the propane cache.
An old, faded sticky note was clinging to the generator.
Empty. Refill propane please.
“Goddammit, Rick,” he cursed himself.
“What’s the problem?” Jules asked.
Rick cringed. He didn’t want to tell him. How could he tell him that they were going to freeze to death in the dark? That it was his fault, just like everything else? Jules would drop him for sure, and hate him the whole time he was dropping him.
“I, uh… hey, maybe we should start a fire,” Rick said.
“Rick. Do you have a generator?”
“Yes,” Rick said adamantly.
“Is it broken?”
“No.”
“Does it have fuel?”
“How ‘bout that fire? I’ll go bring in the wood, we’ll build it nice and big, it’ll be cozy!”
“Rick!”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Rick said. “There’s no fuel for the generator.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I’m sorry, I used it all up last year, and I forgot to refill it.”
“Dammit, Rick!”
“I know, I know. Hey, maybe that snowmobile will come through!” he said hopefully.
“It better. We’ll freeze out here.”
“No, no, we’ll start a fire, everything will be fine. It’s all fine. We’re fine here, totally fine.”
Jules only growled and climbed back up the stairs. Rick followed him, snatching a bottle of brandy off the shelf on his way up. He had a feeling they were going to need it. He set it on the counter in the kitchen, and felt his way to the front door. The snow had piled above the windows, shutting out the weak grey light of day. He checked his watch. It was barely noon, and it was as dark as night in the little cabin.
He grabbed two logs, and half-jogged toward the fireplace. He bumped into Jules, who snarled wordlessly, causing Rick to jerk and drop the logs. Jules sig
hed impatiently and helped him shove them into the fireplace. Rick struck a match and tried to ignite the wood. The temperature inside the cabin was dropping quickly, and the flames he lit shrunk into themselves as if they were frightened of the cold, disappearing completely before they caught fire.
“You know they have propane-fueled fireplaces now,” Jules said, his teeth chattering.
“Like I need one more thing to forget,” Rick said, striking match after match.
The wood was damp, and didn’t want to catch fire. Jules noticed a basket filled with newspapers sitting next to the fireplace, and tore a page off. He wadded it into a loose ball and shoved it between the logs.
“Light that,” he instructed, shivering.
Rick did so, and it caught. Jules added a second and third ball, and soon they had a miniature fire going. The tiny fire soon dried the logs enough to let them catch, and before long the fireplace roared to life. They crouched beside it, shivering in the cold in spite of their coats.
“Oh no!” Rick cried suddenly, leaping to his feet.
“What?”
“My battery! I need to finish my book, how am I going to finish my book?” Rick sat down at the desk and began typing frantically. Jules stared at him in disbelief.
“You can finish it later, assuming we survive.”
“No, no, it’s in my head now, I have to finish, I have to!”
The laptop chimed, indicating that its battery was low. Rick began hyperventilating, smashing away on the keys.
“Whoa, whoa! Take a breath, will you? Don’t hurt yourself,” Jules said, sincerely concerned.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Rick muttered.
The screen darkened by a few shades, and Rick cursed. His fingers flew over the keys faster than Jules thought was possible, and sweat broke out on his forehead in spite of the freezing temperature. The laptop chimed again, and Rick actually began to cry. Jules was helpless. He couldn’t bear to feel helpless. He paced the room, looking for anything that would help, but in the relative darkness he could barely find his own feet. He tripped over something heavy and painfully solid behind the couch. His shins, already sensitive because of the cold, radiated pain throughout his body. He cursed furiously and felt around for the offending object.
It was some kind of large chest. He opened it and felt around inside. Heavy wool blankets, he decided. He pulled two of them out. When he stood, Rick was lying in the fetal position on the couch, crying soundlessly as he stared into the fireplace. Jules dropped a blanket over him and wrapped the other one around himself, settling uncomfortably on the cushion beside Rick.
“Hey, um… you okay?” he asked lamely.
“It’s dead,” Rick said mournfully.
Jules didn’t know what to say. He expected the tiny house to warm quickly, but the cold was thick and oppressive, pressing through every crack and seal in the house.
“How old is this place?” Jules asked.
Rick didn’t answer right away. He was lost in his own mind, staring absently at nothing. Jules cleared his throat and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. There had to be something he could do. Something he could fix, but he couldn’t think of anything at all. He was stuck. He hated being stuck. He repeated the question, more to fill the space than to get an actual answer. But Rick surprised him, and spoke.
“‘Bout sixty, I think. It’s a good little cabin, most of the time, but I’m pretty sure it’s intended for summer use. There’s a lake at the edge of the property, and a dock for boats. I got a houseboat with the property, too. It needs some work, so I haven’t used it yet. I’ve only had the place a few years, and I didn’t really start using it until the series took off.”
“Why do you use it? Wouldn’t it be easier to write from home?” Jules asked, desperate to keep Rick talking about anything but the laptop.
“Sure,” Rick said. “If I could concentrate effectively. The problem with town—”
“There’s people there,” Jules finished the thought for him.
“Yeah,” Rick sighed. “You’re starting to get it.”
“Not really,” Jules admitted. “I can’t relate. I seem to need people. Maybe too much.” His thoughts drifted to Steven, which was the last place he wanted them to go. He shook himself, and realized there was something he could do.
“You hungry?” he asked.
Chapter Five
The cabin had warmed enough to make movement comfortable, and Jules had gone to the kitchen to scrounge up something for lunch.
“So what I’m getting,” Jules said as he worked, “is that people… around you, talking to you, expecting you to interact with them… are your greatest impediment to being a successful author. Even though your stories are about people.”
“Well… my stories aren’t really about people, from my perspective. They’re about ideas. Anthropomorphized ideas, sure, but they aren’t really about people. I mean, look at the dialog. Nobody really talks like that. Nobody reaches into their soul and pulls out their innermost self for other people to reflect on. It just doesn’t happen. Real people are cloaked and shrouded in social mores, fears, the drudgery of everyday life… nobody cleans a toilet in my stories, or goes grocery shopping, or any of the little mundane things that make up the majority of people’s lives. Nobody’s ever too tired to finish a quest, nobody ever slays dragons while battling the sniffles. That’s reality and it has no place in these worlds.”
“So… it’s sniffles and grocery shopping that bother you?”
“No, it’s….” Rick sighed, running his hands through his hair. “I can’t explain it. I can try, but you’ll never understand. It’s not your fault. You like people.”
“Eh… I wouldn’t say that. I like individuals. People as a group are infuriating.”
“But not terrifying.”
“Occasionally, yes, terrifying. Not the individuals themselves, but the groups. A country is capable of a lot more evil than the individuals who populate it,” Jules said, finding the last ingredient for what he wanted to make.
“I see little difference between the two,” Rick admitted. He wrapped the blanket around himself and shuffled to the kitchen, his interest in the conversation overriding his sudden and oppressive depression.
“A country is simply a collection of individuals. It has moods and behaves unpredictably based on who controls it at any given time. A country is a schizophrenic giant with multiple personality disorder and long-term memory loss.”
“That is terrifying,” Rick agreed.
“You see? Do you like mustard?” Jules interrupted.
“Yeah, I’ll eat it. What’re you making?”
“Chicken salad. Figured I better use the cold stuff right away.” Also, he’d been craving it since the day before and hadn’t had an opportunity to indulge until now. He’d been thrilled to find a whole roast chicken in the fridge.
“We should pack the fridge with snow,” Jules suggested.
Rick stared at him, not comprehending.
“To keep the cold stuff cold?” Jules explained.
“Oh! Okay. Um. Yeah, Okay.”
Rick left and returned moments later with a bucket full of snow. Jules took it and packed snow firmly along the edges of each shelf, filling the top shelf and vegetable crisper with the stuff.
“There,” he said, satisfied. “We’ll just have to remember to clean it out when the power comes back on.”
Rick pulled his sticky notes from his breast pocket and wrote, Clean out when power comes on, please.
“Are you always so polite to yourself?” Jules asked.
“I find I’m more likely to do it when I ask nicely.”
“That’s funny… I have to cuss myself out when I need to do something I don’t want to do.”
“And that works?”
“Only thing that does. If I don’t call myself a miserable twat, who will?”
Rick laughed at that and pulled a loaf of potato bread out of the cupboard. Jules made four sa
ndwiches, piling them on plates.
“Coffee?” Rick asked.
“Please.”
“It’s cold,” he realized belatedly.
“That’s alright,” Jules sighed. “We’ll manage. Throw some extra sugar in, it’ll seem like the cold was intentional.”
Rick paused, his hand outstretched toward the sugar.
“You have to pretend it’s intentional?” he asked.
“I don’t have to,” Jules said with a shrug. “Just makes it taste better, I guess.”
“Interesting.”
Rick dumped sugar into two cups and topped it with the cold coffee. Jules carried the plates out to the living room, and Rick kicked a small side table toward the center of the couch. They deposited their burdens on the table and sat, close together by necessity. Rick seemed unbothered by this, and Jules made an effort to ignore it. Rick’s scent mingled with the fresh, clean scent of soap and the natural, earthy aroma of the fireplace, and it did something to Jules’ belly. He was sure Steven would have been able to tell and respond in a way that appealed to him; Rick, however, seemed utterly unaware that Jules was feeling anything at all, and he found that fact irrationally annoying. He took it out on his sandwiches, demolishing them like a voracious teenager.
“Wow. Haven’t you eaten lately?” Rick asked.
“Had dinner,” Jules said shortly.
Rick shrugged and went back to his food. The silence stretched between them, and it made Jules uncomfortable. Rick, again, appeared to be unfazed. Jules finished his meal and stared at the fireplace. He checked the charge on his phone and groaned internally. He had maybe an hour of battery life left, and he hadn’t heard back on a rescue. He’d known the chances were slim, but once the phone died they would be slashed to nearly nothing. Somehow, he was going to have to get comfortable.
“So tell me about the book you’re working on,” he said, breaking the silence.
Rick jumped, startled, as though he’d forgotten that Jules was there.
“Oh! Um… well, Luther travels to North Outland, where vampires are tormenting a town. Long nights, short days, lots of opportunities to hunt. He meets a girl, Austerity, who….”
“Hold on. What happened to Belinda?”
“Belinda?” Rick asked, blinking.