by Cameron Lowe
After their blowup over whether to invite Nic or not and the subsequent sweaty and fervent makeup sex, Gwen and Malcolm called up his friend to invite him. Gwen spent a very long time explaining in excruciating detail what would happen to Nic if she found him dealing to any of their guests, in their home or outside it. Nic, amused and bewildered, agreed to never, ever deal to anyone even remotely connected to Gwen or Malcolm, and reiterated the fact that he was doing nothing illegal those days. That in no way placated Gwen, but he made the effort.
They invited their neighbor friend Ian, but he would be on vacation to the Black Hills that weekend and couldn’t make it. Juliet was an immediate yes, so long as she could invite her boyfriend Merry. Gwen thought she said “Gary,” but no, as it turned out, Juliet’s new boyfriend was really named after a Lord of the Rings character. “Sounds like a winner already,” was Malcolm’s response, and Gwen couldn’t help a giggle.
Last but not least was Alicia. The invitation was extended to her and her Tito, but she said dreamily Tito might have to work. Then, much more focused, Alicia asked if Nic would be there.
“Sounds like,” Gwen said.
“Oh, that’s nice. How’s he look these days?” Alicia asked.
“You are not seriously thinking about hooking back up with your convict ex.”
“I’m just, you know, asking.”
“So will you be there?”
“Mm hm,” Alicia purred. “I think I can make it.”
* * *
Pots full of water waited on the stove to be heated up for the pasta bar. Three different types of sauces – marinara, alfredo, and pesto – would be kept warm in a sectioned chafing dish borrowed from Gwen’s mom. The chicken breasts were unthawed and seasoned, ready to be tossed into the oven. For a budget party meal, they felt like they’d done pretty all right.
Gwen glanced again in the fridge to make sure the chicken hadn’t somehow refrozen itself. Sometimes she got like that, searching for things to worry about even when she knew in her head everything was okay.
“Dear God,” she said to Malcolm as he pulled out paper plates from the cupboard. “I think we’re actually ready to do this.”
“Weird. I can’t wait to see what explodes.”
“Right?” She glanced around, suspicious maybe there would be an earthquake and the walls would fall down around their ears, or that the radiator would suddenly spring a leak and scald the skin of one of their guests, or that the damned apocalypse would come and wipe away the city just when she finished up the pasta. “We should start a dead pool on what goes wrong tonight.”
“Are we counting Alicia and Nic sneaking off to have sex as a disaster or a win? Because that’s happening.”
“Oh yeah. Absolutely. I made sure there were condoms visible in the bathroom.”
“Good call.” He winced. “Oh gross, you think they’d do it in here?”
“Better our bathroom than on our bed.”
“Well, technically, it is his bed, so…”
“Darling,” Gwen said, staring at him.
“Not helping, I know.”
Someone knocked. Their guests had started to arrive. Gwen squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh no, here we go. Hold me.”
Malcolm laughed, and did just that, squeezing her in a tight hug. They’d been fighting so much lately, it felt nice to just have this little moment of happiness. He pulled back and kissed her nose. “Have kids with me.”
“Of course,” Gwen said, smiling up at him.
But Malcolm was entirely serious. “I mean it. Let’s stop waiting and do it.”
“Well, now?” she asked, her smile turning wicked. “I suppose we could keep whoever that is waiting, but… I don’t know, I’m awfully hungry.” She couldn’t help it anymore, and wrapped her hands around his neck, pulling him in again as whoever was outside in the hall knocked again. “Yes,” she breathed as Malcolm slid his fingers through her hair. “Yes, absolutely, yes.”
* * *
Juliet sank deeper and deeper into the couch, her chin dipping as far as it could go into the expanse of skin across her breastbone as her boyfriend tried to explain, again, the secret cult around the city abducting everyone they could get their hands on.
“So they hang around the shelters, the bars, the camps under the bridges, and they take who they can. And no one ever sees the people again.”
“So…” Gwen asked, a glass of wine in hand. “What, uh, what do these kidnappers do with them?”
Merry peered at her down his wide, flat nose. He was mostly handsome, save for that unfortunate nose. A textured haircut that, at first blush, seemed unkempt and wild, but which had been touched with far too much styling product to not be deliberate. A wide, disarming smile, but the eyes never quite matched. He was kind of the extreme polar opposite of Malcolm, Gwen thought, except that they were both tall. She could understand Juliet’s attraction to Merry right up to the point when the man had opened his mouth.
“Nobody knows for certain,” he said, emphasizing the “for certain” with a certain degree of contempt Gwen couldn’t figure out, “but some very smart people in circles I follow think they’re being experimented on.”
“Question,” Nic said from a plastic lawn chair across from the couch. The plate of pasta in his hand had long been forgotten about as he took in the conspiracy theories with wide, delighted eyes and a goofy grin on his face. This was his crazy person Christmas, and he was loving it.
“You only have one?” Gwen muttered, and beside her, Malcolm choked on a laugh.
“Go ahead,” Merry said somberly, gesturing at Nic with his hand as though he were some grandiose professor granting a student a boon.
“By very smart people in circles you follow, do you mean dudes on Internet forums with stories about seeing ghosts and lizard people and the Chupacabra?”
Juliet chugged the entirety of her glass of wine. It had just been refilled. “Oh look. I’m empty. Again.” She got up and headed for the connected kitchen, her shoulders slumped like a boxer knocked out in the first round making for the locker rooms.
“Well, some of them,” Merry said, his lips pursing.
“Follow-up question,” Nic said, and across the room, Alicia started giggling.
“I don’t think-” Merry said, but Nic plowed forward.
“Who are the rest of them, if not weirdos… sorry, that’s crass. I mean who would the rest be apart from Internet chatty Cathy types who’ve probably smoked a little bit too much weed?”
“I’ve never smoked weed,” Merry snapped, and rose to his feet.
“No shit?” Nic asked, and his belly bounced from a silent laugh.
Gwen stood up. “I think I’m going to, uh, go help Juliet with the wine.”
She darted for her friend as Merry launched into a dry rant about keeping their eyes shut to the world of weirdness around them. Juliet had filled her glass and was staring despondently into the vat of alfredo. “Oh, screw it,” she muttered, and grabbed another paper plate and the ladle for the pasta.
“He seems…” Gwen started, keeping her voice quiet. The kitchen was essentially part of the living room and they couldn’t talk much higher than a murmur, not that Merry would have listened to anything they said. He was too absorbed in smiting the unbelievers. “Um… he seems… well…”
“Shut it,” Juliet said, dropping penne pasta onto her plate practically by the pound. “Just… shut it. Where’s your brother?”
“Don’t know. Traffic, maybe. So… uh… we’re, uh, gonna start trying,” Gwen said.
Juliet snatched at the ladle for the sauce and started slathering alfredo all over the penne pasta, her hands making tiny cutting motions like she was stabbing someone. “Like for a baby?”
“Yup.”
“Yaaaaaay,” Juliet said miserably.
* * *
With Merry glowering at the rest of them from the couch, Nic finally relented his needling and started to engage Alicia more and more directly. They were like a couple
of eagles circling around each other, getting the ritual out of the way before doing something wildly reckless and stupid to get themselves off. Finally, Nic muttered, “Ah screw it,” and asked Malcolm where the laundry room was and if he could borrow some quarters. Juliet started to ask about that one, figured it out, and snapped her mouth shut again.
“Tito,” Malcolm muttered to his friend as he passed over a buck in quarters.
“…is a name she’ll never say in bed again,” Nic said right back, not bothering to mute himself. Alicia blushed furiously and had just enough decency to look away, but when Nic made for the door, she followed him, her eyes locked on his butt.
Gwen joined Malcolm as he leaned against the kitchen counter and rested her head against him. “You know, he’s cute in a way, I guess, but I never got what she saw in him.”
Malcolm held out both his hands, leaving a long length of nothing between them. Very long. Gwen stared at his hands, then his face, then his hands again, and it hit her. “Oh! Him?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah. We used to give him shit about it in the locker room. Also, you know, he’s a decent guy.”
She grumbled something vaguely disapproving, but leaned in and whispered into his ear, “If he keeps this up with Merry, I’ll talk to the Pope myself for his sainthood.”
Malcolm laughed. Someone knocked, and he started forward. “Probably forgot the condoms.”
Turned out it was Hugh, carrying a small vegetable tray that looked as though he’d been picking away at it on the car ride. “Present from Mom and Dad,” he told Malcolm, pushing right past him. Immediately it was obvious something was wrong with him. His eyes were bloodshot and his voice hoarse.
Malcolm stepped aside. “Well, that was cool of them. Come on in.”
“Thanks, but I, um, don’t think I’m going to stay.”
Gwen stepped over, her smile at seeing her brother disappearing. “What’s the matter, Hugh? You’re not, um…”
“High?” Hugh asked. He smiled faintly and shook his head. Juliet was standing now too, concerned. Only Merry was left seated and he could rot as far as any of them were concerned. “Shit, I didn’t want to do this here.” He shuddered. “Vanessa called. She’s… she’s getting married.”
Silence fell across the room, broken by Merry. “Who’s Vanessa?”
“Okay,” Juliet said, gritting her teeth and smiling at him. “Do you have money for a bus ride?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because this ain’t working and we just broke up.”
“What?” Merry screeched.
Malcolm and Gwen stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind them. Hugh leaned against the wall and fell, sobs wracking his whole body. “I fucked it up, the best thing in my life and I fucked it all up!” he cried.
“Shut up or I’m calling the cops!” one of their neighbors shouted.
“Jesus, we gotta move out of here,” Malcolm muttered. “Grab his other arm, Gwen. We’ll talk outside.”
They carefully guided Hugh down the flights of stairs. From the basement they could hear the washing machine thrumming, along with a heavier banging noise. Malcolm nearly coughed out a laugh, despite his empathy for his brother-in-law.
As Hugh sat on the stoop, he glanced up at them, miserable. “I don’t know how I process this. I thought maybe she was calling to try and, you know, be sly about us getting back together, but she was so… happy. I spend all this time, Malcolm, telling you not to bother trying to make Gwen happy-”
Gwen glanced at Malcolm questioningly, but he shook his head.
“-and here I am, completely miserable because I couldn’t do that for Vanessa. Karma can eat me.”
His sister settled down next to him on one knee and took his hands in hers. “Hey. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
“How?” Hugh asked bleakly. “There’s no silver lining here. I got high and stupid and she got tired of my crap. Who can blame her?”
“You learn from this,” Malcolm said. “You know? You move on. You prove to someone else you can be a good man.”
“Right,” Gwen agreed. “It may not seem like it now-”
“Don’t you compare anyone else to her. There’s never going to be another Vanessa.”
“That’s just it, though,” she said. “There’s a Justine or a Mary or a… a… Phyllis out there. And there’s never going to be another one like that, either.”
“A Phyllis?” Hugh asked, a tiny hint of a smile breaking.
“A Dottie,” Malcolm offered.
“A Myrtle,” Gwen said.
Her brother shook his head. “I don’t want to move on. I want her.”
“I know,” Gwen said. “But you said it yourself. She’s happy, right?”
“Yes.”
She rubbed the back of his neck. “Then you try to be happy for her, because for what you two had together, she deserves that.”
Hugh nodded, sniffed, and reached back to pat her hand. “You’re right. I just think about her going down that aisle to any other guy and… the universe feels wrong. I know I’m not… not healthy for her. But I wish I was. There’s no way to take back the pain, is there?”
“No,” Malcolm said. “But maybe you can hurt someone else a little less.”
Hugh sighed. “Phyllis awaits, then.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Thanks, you two.”
“Any time, buddy,” Malcolm said. “Come upstairs and grab a bite. We have lots of-”
From a window suspiciously near where they lived flew out a big fat wad of pasta, followed by a fluttering paper plate and a lot of shouting.
“-less food,” Malcolm amended, “but I’m sure there’ll be something left.”
Gwen squinted up at the window. “We are so getting the cops called on us.”
“Never hosting a party again,” Malcolm agreed.
Hugh stood up and hugged them both. “Hey, what was the banging in the basement? I could take a look at your washer and see if I can fix it.”
“Uh… should work itself out,” Gwen said.
* * *
The evening wasn’t done quite yet.
When they’d placated the neighbors, thrown out Merry, explained the bizarre existence of said crackpot to a disbelieving Hugh, and when Alicia and Nic returned upstairs, her hair mussed and wild, him with a bloody lip none of them dared ask about, they settled in for dessert and beer.
“We have a selection of the finest cookies and little cakes the discount bread section of the grocery store has to offer,” Gwen said, settling down two plates of said delights. Nic and Alicia in particular seemed to have worked up quite an appetite, and despite the plentiful seating in the room, she opted to sit on Nic’s lap and feed them both bites of cookies, stopping to explore his mouth every now and then in great detail.
“Poor Tito,” Gwen said, kind of meaning it.
Alicia blushed. “Um. The existence of said Tito might have been, ah, slightly exaggerated.”
Nic blinked up at her. “What?”
“I knew you were getting out, and I wanted to punish you a little bit. Plus, tonight? Really freaking hot.”
“You naughty girl,” Nic breathed. “God, I love you.” His eyes bulged when he realized what he said, and the room fell silent again for something like the dozenth time that night.
Alicia though took it completely in stride, stuffed half a cookie into his mouth, and kissed his nose. “Love you too.”
As cute as the moment was, it might have been the wrong thing to say in front of Hugh at that time. His face fell again, and it wasn’t long before he excused himself from the party. Gwen walked him out to his car, and when she came back, she gave Malcolm a brief shake of her head before she ducked into the bathroom to splash some water on her face.
When she came back out, trying to smile, Gwen headed towards the group. “Okay, we’ve got board games-”
Blink.
“-wen!” Malcolm said, standing close to her. He’d just been sitting down, hadn’t he? Juliet looked wo
rried. Everybody looked worried.
“What?” Gwen asked, frowning.
“Let me up,” Nic said urgently to Alicia, who slid off his lap. He stood and rushed over to her. “Gwen, has this happened often?”
“Has what happened often?” she asked, confused.
“You don’t remember fuzzing out?” Nic asked. “You haven’t bumped your head or anything recently, have you?”
“Nooo… why?” she asked, growing nervous.
“Shit, I saw this before in the infirmary at the prison,” Nic said to Malcolm. Back to Gwen, he said, “You stood still for about, I don’t know, ten, fifteen seconds or so. Just mashing your lips together. Has anybody ever noticed that before here?”
“Yeah, a few times,” Malcolm said.
Juliet nodded. “I caught it once but I forgot all about it.”
“Nic, you need to stop,” Gwen said. “Seriously, I know we have our problems with each other, but this isn’t funny.”
“No, it’s not,” Nic said flatly. “You have one of those when you’re crossing a busy street or something, it’s most definitely not funny. You’re having seizures, Gwen.”
Chapter 24
Juliet drove her to see the neurologist.
Gwen wanted Malcolm to be there for her, but they both understood the necessity of him working. Only months into her new job at Moccasin Twin Veterinary Services, she was still on a hiring probation and she heard rumors they usually let new employees go before they had to be paid the additional two dollars an hour their regular employees received.
He’d stalked the apartment that morning, his feet thumping hard enough on the floor to draw a shout from their neighbor downstairs. “Call me the minute you hear something.”
“Honey, we won’t know the test results for days.”
“I know, but I want to know word for word what this doctor says.”