Art by Eva Black
An example of something glorious: A solitary note resonating in the air like the bass sigh of an exhausted ghost before an unexpectedly theatrical song crashes into the startled room. Somebody shouted: Perform a capriole! (But we’re none of us horses!) Everyone attending the soirée was suddenly jolted into life as though they were the sons of Shelley, thunderstruck. More than a quattro had been spiriting themselves with the revenants of the rarest grapes as they waited for the remaining guests to arrive. They were asked not to roll any fags as many were desperately afraid of cancer; indeed, some eyed the ashtrays charily while others hoofed it on the floor. The thud-thud-thud of enthusiastic footsteps animated the very walls, ceiling and floor of the front room, and an appurtenant number of introverts watched the impromptu danseurs and danseuses through solipsist eyes whilst fiddling the most serenely soundless tunes on their pale fingertips.
Henrietta, the hostess, called for everyone’s attention, asking them to bring in the new year as wildly as they could: ‘Did everyone enjoy themselves this year? Was two thousand five as filled with love and death, life and birth for all of you as it had been for me? Our memories, whether good or bad, are the authors of our lives: they’re the basis for our thoughts, dreams, imaginations and thus our very personalities. Without the ups and downs of two thousand five we wouldn’t be the people we are today, and with two thousand six the people we are today could end up being very different people tomorrow. Does everyone have their resolutions on hand? It’s time for us to renew ourselves. The old man of two thousand five needs to be kicked out of the building!’
‘Yeah!’ everybody cheered.
‘Go home, old man, you’re not wanted anymore!’ a drunken young man shouted to the collective laughter of the room.
Henrietta shook her head in amusement. ‘Long live the naïve baby of two thousand six!’ she continued. ‘Baby power!’
After her enthusiastic words, the former elementary school bully Dustin signaled for some passing strangers – silhouetted figures in the frigid noir of night – to join in on the warmth of merrymaking. Dustin was a burly and lively fellow, a most especial fiend for attention – he nearly tore the front door off of its hinges when he threw it open for the shivering refugees, who were then revealed to be latecomers.
‘Ben!’ Dustin called back to the party. ‘And somebody else!’
Ben was a gallant young man in a darkly violaceous suit. He had the spikes of a hedgehog and a scar along his chin, two items unseen since the mid-to-late-nineties – in essence his specialised appearance was a steady reminder of the most fashionable fashion of his high school days. He handed his arctic palm to Dustin for a stiff yet friendly greeting; in return, Dustin offered a smile so wide that it seemed like it wanted to show teeth but was thinking better of it, and Ben responded with a slight curl of the lip.
The fragile and diaphanous dove accompanying him was the most stunning embodiment of Ben’s antithesis: wrapped in her winter wardrobe, her appearance and demeanour could not differ any further without eclipsing him entirely. Hidden inside the large blue coat and toque was a teenager with the stature of an injured princess, her docile and innocent eyes reflecting the soul of Nausicaa. Her hair beneath the woolen hat was the pale gold of a sun kiss, prettily illuminating the soft blues of her eyes and the pinks of her face. Tucked in her sleeves were the adorably diminutive fingers of a snow fairy, reluctantly peeking out to undo her zipper and remove her hat. She held her hat before her like a child who had done something wrong and knew that they’d be punished for it.
‘This is my sister, Nicole,’ Ben explained. ‘She’s underage and not allowed to have any drinks. I’m sure she’d refuse any that might be offered to her, but I’m not kind enough to believe that nobody will try to slip her something as a joke. I was supposed to stay home tonight and look after her.’ But Dustin seemed to be too distracted by something behind them to fully listen.
‘Excuse me one moment,’ Dustin said, shouldering past them to poke his head out of the entrance as a multitude of snowflakes voyaged triumphantly into the house. ‘Party!’ he bellowed jovially into the street before closing the door. He shivered and stomped his feet, then took Ben and Nicole under each of his heavy arms. ‘Man, we gotta get you guys some drinks.’ Nicole looked round to her brother for help but all he could do was smile nervously.
The trio passed by the varicose brains of Alex the poet and Stanley the dishwasher who were discussing the finer points of love whilst dancing in spot. Alex wore telescoping glasses to help him better obsess over every little detail that came into view, cataloguing all of it into the infinite cabinets of his mind. He wore a black tuxedo that painted him as a penguin and thus humourously accentuated his waddling dances.
Having just left work, Stanley still wore his dirtied white clothes, so nondescript in appearance that you’d be hard-pressed to decide whether he was a gas station attendant or a janitor. His black oil spill hair had been a trademark of his since childhood and some still disparagingly referred to him as Greasy Joe; many were impressed by how he could so easily ignore all of the insults that had been so cruelly piled upon him throughout his harmless life, while others explained that he simply knew well enough than to stand near any open flames. Alex was one of the few who took him completely seriously.
‘Do you think love can exist without physicality?’ he asked Stanley between the trailing lines of his bony fingers.
‘Sure,’ Stanley replied as he lifted his leg and spun around. ‘You can love your family without being physical with them.’
Alex shook his head. ‘But obviously that’s an entirely different subject line. I’m speaking of amorousness.’
‘Well, if you’re speaking of amorousness, then it cannot possibly exist without physicality. That’s a very simple truth that cannot be denied – it’s like calling yourself a dishwasher and then never washing any dishes. You can’t be a lover without expressing that love in tender and beautiful ways.’
Alex spun around three times for the finish. ‘Would you say that you’re a lover?’
Stanley ceased dancing in time to the fading music and caught his breath. ‘I would say that I’ve never gone a single day without washing dishes,’ he said. They then sat on the floor together and played a game of jacks that Stanley had been keeping in his dirtied pockets; Alex was dismayed at how easily the metal pieces kept slipping through his scrawny fingers. Henrietta replaced the previous bombastic record with the sweetly rhythmic styling of an old waltz vinyl and joined them; her smile was the white of gentle clouds whilst her hair was the black of calming nights, the supreme juxtaposition of the darkest days.
‘So what are your dreams for two thousand six?’ Stanley asked her between throws.
‘I never remember any of my dreams,’ sighed Henrietta, ‘but I hope that I’ll be able to see my cousin again. I haven’t seen her since we were little kids; she was always one tiny little footstep behind me. She’s about four years younger than me so I suppose she’s a teenager now.’
‘Where is she?’ Alex asked her sympathetically. ‘Do you know what she looks like?’
‘No,’ Henrietta admitted sadly, ‘and I can barely even remember how she looked back then. But she’s supposed to be back in London sometime this year.’
‘This year or next year?’ Stanley inquired.
‘Both. Five and six,’ Henrietta answered cryptically before opening up more: ‘I honestly don’t really know exactly, just sometime soon. Her family is coming to visit our grandmother.’
‘Perhaps you’ll see her,’ said Alex, looking distracted. Stanley nodded as he slipped the jacks back into his pocket.
‘Perhaps,’ Henrietta reluctantly agreed.
Alex then stood, pulling Henrietta and Stanley up with him. He chuckled a little before taking Henrietta into his arms and waltzing with her, stepping elegantly to the musical arc-en-ciel. They bobbed to the beat and laughed merrily; Alex and Stanley passed Henrietta back and forth for the final waltz of the year, sharing the lithe and tender feel of her body in their spare and sudsy hands.
Sam, an artist who had been invited by another guest, watched jealously from the shadows as the two young gentlemen danced rapturously with the darling Henrietta. He had been watching her since the party began, steadily growing a particular fondness for the accommodating hostess despite being unable to summon forth the courage he needed to meet her. The twisted yellow lamp across from him had been the sole fixation of his diminishing social skills as he engaged in a telepathic battle of wits; always the twisted yellow lamp won, leaving Sam to fall further into the inky brushstrokes of the room’s few remaining shadows. For the past hour everyone who walked past him had done so without the slightest hint of recognition – he simply stood impotently and dumbfounded in the wake of Henrietta’s liveliness.
In a moment of impressively controlled muscle movement and surprising swiftness, Stanley lifted Henrietta and spun her in spot to a flock of sighs, her raven plumage trailing gracefully after.
‘You’re far more exciting than dancing with dishes!’ Stanley shouted, beaming.
‘Oh, if only!’ giggled Henrietta.
Sam rubbed his throbbing temples before stalking past Dustin and Nicole to reach the bathroom. Dustin’s rationality was overthrown by the disinhibiting Trojan of alcohol – he slapped Sam on the back as he flew by, though Sam didn’t bother confronting him about whatever drunken reasons he had in his deteriorating mind for this attack (something about male companionship), and he was also spending an inordinate amount of time with Nicole, of whom Ben asked him to look after from a distance. He was, as he would say, ‘out of his gourd.’
‘So you’re Ben’s sister,’ Dustin said to her for the fourth time that night.
‘Yeah,’ admitted Nicole reluctantly once more. She had never been around drunkards before, though she had sometimes woken up to her parents quietly sharing a beer in the kitchen.
‘Why are you in your pyjamas, again?’
‘We were supposed to stay at home for New Year’s Eve but someone called Ben up and invited him over,’ Nicole explained to him for the second time. She was wearing dark blue Katamari Damacy pyjamas with a pair of mismatching socks that she had managed to throw on before her brother dragged her out of their house. ‘We live outside of London so he had to drive us here quickly, and our parents went out of town for a business party so they don’t know about it; Ben’s probably gonna get in trouble if they find out.’
‘Haha! Really? That’s hilarious,’ Dustin said with a joyous grin. ‘He’s been an adult for what, about five years now? I know he’s about two years older than me. That’s hilarious. Do you really think he’ll get in trouble?’
Nicole paused to give it some concentrated thought. ‘No, I guess not,’ she said.
‘Ah, that’s no good,’ Dustin said in dismay. ‘You had me all worked up.’ He gazed into his glass of wine, lost in thought. He remembered Ben telling him not to let Nicole have a particular something, but he couldn’t quite remember what that something was. ‘Hey,’ he said suddenly, catching her off guard. ‘Do you like apples?’
Nicole tapped the tips of her index fingers together as she mulled it over. What did she like about apples? The way the juices rushed into her mouth when she broke the skin. What else did she like about apples? Apple cider, apple crisp, apple pie, apple sauce – the list was almost too much to bear. ‘Yeah,’ she finally answered with a pomaceous smile.
Dustin immediately regained his previous enthusiasm. ‘You’d probably love this apple wine, then.’
A little rubber ball came bouncing towards them and then rolled between their feet. Alex hopped from out of the crowd to reclaim it, nodding to Dustin and Nicole before formally greeting them in turn as he flicked the ball up into the air and caught it. He was still out of breath from the waltz that had escalated into an intense myriad of swing and ballet.
‘What better way to bring in the new year than with the disorderly dancing of dilettantes and dishwashers?’ he said to them smartly.
‘What is that?’ Dustin asked accusingly. ‘That’s alliteration. You just alliterated.’ He shook his head in disappointment.
‘I couldn’t see it because of all the people,’ explained Nicole. ‘What’s a dilettante?’
‘Someone who’s not a cognoscenti,’ Alex said as he flicked the ball upwards and caught it once more.
‘I don’t know what that means, either,’ she admitted sadly. Her confusion was founded in breathtaking sincerity; she was a fragile fairy with clipped wings, surrounded by the strangest strangers.
The bathroom door opened and out walked a moping figure – barely half a ghost – wiping stray water-droplets from his face: Sam brushed past the trio of partygoers – just as Nicole was being offered a glass of wine – and comfortably repositioned himself in the corner shadows. On the table beside him was a stray napkin; he pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and sketchily sketched a likeness of Godard on it. He then smirked at the finished doodle, pleased with himself.
‘What are you doing hiding in the corner?’ asked a voice sweeter than sorbet.
Henrietta – always the hospitable hostess – had detached herself from the party to greet him. She held a glass filled to the rim with sanguine liquid like a lollipop, and her hair was a swell mess from the dancing as apparently everyone liked it well enough not to point it out.
He wanted to say: ‘Longing for you as a shooting star longs to be caught and cradled by those who still believe in wishes coming true.’ But instead he shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’m Henrietta,’ she introduced herself. ‘But you probably already know that since this is my party. I can’t say I’ve ever seen you around before, though. What’s your name, stranger?’
He wanted to say: ‘The most common epithet applied to me comes in the form of Old MacDonald, though in actuality I am a young man named Samuel MacDonald; my sobriquet is Sam and Sam I am.’ But instead he said: ‘Sam.’
‘You’re kind of a quiet guy, Sam. Are you doing okay?’
He wanted to say: ‘I suppose this is just an off night for me. I’m usually compared to surface-to-air missiles in conversations, saying things of visionary importance and profundity that are completely detached from the immediate proceedings: for example, suddenly expounding my stance on the current state of art and animation whilst talking tête-à-tête about Tootsie Rolls. I blame this association on the antediluvian yet widely known commercial featuring that damned owl.’ But instead he shrugged his shoulders again.
Henrietta flashed a reluctant smile. ‘You just tell me if you need anything, Sam. Enjoy the year while it lasts.’ She then left him alone with his regrets.
Through the speakers came the thick bass of electronic music (Stanley’s choice). Alex and Ben sat loftily in twin leather chairs as they sipped their glasses of wine; Henrietta waved to them in passing before heading into the kitchen for a bag of chips to refill the trough. As soon as she reentered the living room Ben took her gently by the arm and led her aside for a private talk.
‘Henri, it’s been so long. You walked by me without even saying hello.’
Henrietta searched his face in silence as though it were a map to a place she had only previously visited in a dream; they stood quietly looking at each other as the recognition gradually dawned over her. The lines and shapes of Ben’s face had changed since the last time she saw him, but they were still nothing other than mere changes and she could now clearly see her eldest cousin underneath.
‘I didn’t know. I haven’t seen you since you left for America,’ she quavered. ‘So many years have passed. I almost forgot about you, Ben. I need to take a look at you – you look like a real man, now. I know that’s a cliché thing to say but it’s true, I haven’t seen you in forever and now you’re back and you’re a man. Here, take my drink. This is too much for me.’
Ben obligingly took her drink into his free hand; Henrietta took advantage of the situation by dropping the bag of chips and wrapping her arms around him in a loving embrace. A single drop of claret spilled to the floor like an elegant nosebleed.
When Henrietta disentangled herself from her stolid cousin she was wiping tears from her eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ Ben asked.
‘I’m fine. I’m just being girly and crying happy tears; it’d be a huge understatement to say you took me by surprise. Who invited you?’
‘Alex.’
‘Yes, I suppose you two have always been close. I’m glad he invited you. Listen – I’m sorry I said I almost forgot about you.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ Ben said as he literally waved away the apology. ‘I’m sure Nicole will be just as happy to see you as you are to see me. She doesn’t even know whose house this is.’
Henrietta’s eyes suddenly bloomed widely. ‘Nicole? Nicole’s here?’
‘I would not have come without her.’
Ben set the drinks onto a nearby table and led Henrietta to where he had last seen Nicole; she was no longer there but was found sitting in a nearby chair, holding her stomach with a worried look cast over her fleecy features. She was out of focus like a blurry photograph and had to be asked twice to look up. When she did she smiled faintly at her brother.
‘Nicole, are you all right? Nicole, look who it is – it’s Henrietta.’
As quick as a snapshot her eyes zoomed in on Henrietta; she would have jumped out of her chair to hug her but felt like half of her strength had temporarily left her body. However, that didn’t diminish her enthusiasm in the slightest.
‘Henrietta!’ she gasped. ‘You look just like your photos, I can’t believe it. I always thought about you after we left London; I even keep a photo of you in my diary. What are you doing here? I can’t believe you grew up so much; I feel like a little kid when I look at you. Oh, Henri! Why are you here? I can’t believe it – I missed you so very much.’
Henrietta leaned forward to buss Nicole’s forehead, her lips feeling like the wet wings of an exotic butterfly as they brushed against her skin. ‘I missed you too, Nicole.’ Her cousin’s forehead felt nearly feverish to the delicate skin of her lips. ‘Are you feeling okay? You’re very hot.’
Ben tested the temperature of her forehead with the back of his hand; he stepped back as a hint of concern came close to cracking the steel mask of his serious face. ‘Do you have a cold?’ he asked her, retaining the unbreakable wall of his steady voice. ‘Do you know what’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, giving it some thought. ‘I was feeling okay until I drank the apple wine.’
Ben paused, still as a still, in a rare moment where he was obviously disconcerted about what he had just been told – his mask finally cracked, if only a little, and a few stray stones fell from his wall. ‘Nicole, you’re not supposed to drink. It’s not good for you. Who gave you the wine?’
‘Dustin let me have some,’ Nicole said, unaware that he had done something wrong. ‘I thought it tasted sour so I didn’t have much.’
Ben faced away from Nicole and turned his face to Henrietta. ‘Please look after her for a little while,’ he asked in a voice one notch slightly above a whisper.
Henrietta nodded and coaxed Nicole from the chair; she led her long lost cousin by the hand to the second floor staircase, and Ben kept them in view until they ascended. He then began searching for Dustin with tremendous intent. Dustin, a teetering rotund seesaw at this point, was found picking the bag of chips up from the floor; more than once he gave the impression that he was about to crash voluminously onto the carpet, but every time somehow managed to maintain his precarious balance.
As Dustin was bringing the chips to the large bowl on the coffee table, Ben sidled up to him with his hands in his pockets. ‘Dustin, do you remember what I told you?’
The mountainous drunkard tore open the bag of chips and poured it into the bowl. ‘Watch over your sister,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been doing that. She wasn’t feeling well so I had her sit in that big comfy chair – I got everything covered, man.’
‘No, you idiot. I asked you to watch over my sister, but I told you not to let her have any drinks. Now she’s ill, or maybe just drunk, I don’t know. They’re both the same,’ Ben said, tender concern showing through like glimpses of a chick between cracks in an eggshell; realising it, he paused to regain his composure. ‘Dustin, were you the one who gave her the drink?’
‘Yeah, man,’ Dustin admitted, without realising that he was in fact admitting to anything.
Releasing all reservations, Ben focused all of his muscle momentum and force into a single fist – then drove it faster and heavier than a barreling freight train before crashing it into Dustin’s nose.
The crunch of bone was as quick and loud as a bite of children’s cereal, and when Ben removed his fist from Dustin’s nose a rapid stream of blood cascaded over the lips of his friend’s face, spilling to the floor like a carelessly held glass of claret. Dustin clutched his nose as he stumbled backwards, and tripped over his own feet before falling into a chair behind him. He slumped down and looked up at Ben with suddenly lucid eyes. ‘I’m sorry, man,’ he apologised as blood seeped into his mouth. ‘Man, Ben, I really am sorry. I’m really sorry. I only gave her a few sips – I didn’t think anything of it.’ Tears were welling up in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Ben. I’m sorry.’
Everybody in the room was staring at them in shock. ‘Damn it, Dustin,’ Ben said as he unclenched his fist. ‘You’re an idiot, but you’re still my friend. Stop crying.’
Dustin leaned forward in the chair, still clutching his bloody nose and gazing up at Ben apologetically. ‘I don’t think I can,’ Dustin blubbered. ‘My nose is broken.’ He then looked around the room at all of the stone statues, their worried eyes set with jewels of sympathy. ‘I’m fine,’ he told them. ‘Somebody turn the music back on.’
Somebody handed him the Godard napkin and Stanley offered to set his nose in place. As Ben walked away from the scene, Alex fiddled with a Stereolab record and set the stylus to The Black Arts. Everyone was soon laughing again as though nothing had happened.
Ben ascended the creaking staircase to the second floor. The hallway was lined with photographs of Henrietta and her family; a few of them had her sitting, standing or playing with a very young Nicole as well, and at least one of them had Ben in the background, though he had trouble recognising himself. He pressed his ear to the door framed in a soft glow and listened in as Henrietta spoke in her gentlest and most caring voice; she was relating to Nicole everything that she had been up to in the interim years since they were last together. Ben tapped on the door and then slowly opened it.
The room quieted down as he entered: he found Nicole looking comfortable curled up on top of the bed’s comforter, with a smile on her lips and in her eyes; Henrietta was sitting in a small wooden chair by the bed, looking completely content. The only light in the room came from a dim reading lamp by the side of the bed. Ben could see that it had stopped snowing outside through the window; it looked like a completely black painting framed in ice.
‘How are you feeling?’ Ben asked his sister.
‘I’m a bit tired but that’s it,’ answered Nicole.
He could see that she was right, and that Dustin had been as well. She could not have had more than a few sips at most. Henrietta asked Nicole’s permission to talk with her brother for a moment outside; Nicole obliged and nestled her head more fully into the down pillow. Henrietta rose from her chair and led Ben outside the room.
‘Thanks for bringing her, Ben,’ she said to him as she held the sides of her arms.
‘We’re all adults now,’ Ben said. ‘Though Nicole is still just a child – still innocent and naïve. But I’m aware of the mistake I made; it was a dreadful error in judgment, completely rash. I’m sorry, Henrietta.’
‘You shouldn’t be apologising,’ Henrietta told him. ‘It was my fault for telling you I loved you – I was a stupid kid back then and didn’t think things through. I never really thought of you as a cousin.’
Now that they were openly talking about it, Ben was at a loss for words. He found that he could barely open his mouth. Instead of saying anything, he reached out to Henrietta and touched the side of her arm, and then he hugged her. He held her in his arms until the countdown began downstairs.
Henrietta then released herself from him with pleasant tears and a pardoning smile. She quickly returned to her room to make sure Nicole was awake before the last second of two thousand five could sound off, but found her serene cousin sleeping far too peacefully to be stirred from whatever fairy tales were unraveling inside her head. Henrietta wistfully remembered her visits to their grandmother’s apartment when they slept together in the same bed; they had been like the pretty and diaphanous wings of a butterfly, functioning best when joined together.
With her slender fingers Henrietta brushed some stray strands of hair away from Nicole’s face and kissed her forehead. She could see that her cousin was still very young, like Ben had said – in terms of kindness and sincerity she was still the same Nicole that Henrietta remembered so fondly; only her body had grown out of adolescence, becoming the angelic form that Henrietta saw before her.
Her cousin’s lips parted slightly as a look of concern passed over her face: That look of concern, brought forth by a dove’s dream, signaled the end of two thousand five and marked the beginning of the new year. Firecrackers pop-pop-popped and pop-pop-popped and pop-pop-popped outside the window, rousing Nicole from her slumber – her eyes slowly blinked open as a flash of light filled the sky outside the window, followed by the sound of applause.
‘Is it raining?’ she asked sleepily.
‘No, it’s just some fireworks,’ Henrietta told her, smiling gently as she lay a loving hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘Happy New Year.’
‘Happy New Year?’ Nicole asked with disappointment in her voice. ‘I missed it. I fell asleep.’
‘Don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything,’ Henrietta assuaged. ‘We were with you when it happened.’
‘I guess it’s okay, then,’ said her cousin as she sat up in bed and wiped the sleep from her eyes. ‘If we were together when it happened then that’s all that matters to me. I missed you, Henri.’
She smiled as tears unexpectedly formed in the corners of her eyes, and from the bed she wrapped her arms around Henrietta. ‘I missed you, Henri,’ she repeated. ‘Henri, Henri! I really did miss you. Did you know that? Did Ben ever tell you? I really did miss you – I missed you so much!’
Henrietta returned her cousin’s enthusiastic hug. ‘I missed you too, Nicole,’ was a phrase she had spoken in a thousand different variations that night, and each time she said it she came to accept more and more that they really were by each other’s side again. As the shock gradually dwindled, her appreciation of their newfound moments together increased tenfold – she felt like a long lost and most cherished part of her had just been reattached, and in relearning why that part had been so cherished, she came to love it even more. ‘We still have so much catching up to do. I need to know everything you’ve done. Do you have a boyfriend yet? Do you still read lots of books?’
Nicole began telling her everything that came to mind as firecrackers continued to pop sporadically outside. The suiting sounds of singing and leaving rose up merrily from the main floor; Ben decided to take up the role of the dismissive host, leaving the girls locked together like a touching statue of two sisters.
He descended the staircase and found Sam standing by the first step with his eyes closed, looking like a corpse that had been balanced on its clammy feet. With the pull of reluctance tugging at his heavy hand, Ben pressed his fingers forwards through the intervening air and tapped Sam on the shoulder, startling the poor boy into unexpected animation.
‘I’m going to need everyone to leave,’ Ben told him. ‘Have a happy new year.’
Sam nodded before slinking away. He had looked to Ben like he had something rather important to say, but apparently those words frightened him so much that he refused to let them pass through his lips. To Ben it was just as well: Everything important that needed to be said that night had already been said, he thought. He walked around the house asking stray guests to leave as though he was exorcising lingering spirits. Dustin had already left in the care of some friends who were to belatedly drive him to a hospital.
Through the lightly frosted front windows could be seen the glimmering eyes of Sam as he gazed in dejectedly from the snow-covered sidewalk. Taxis and cars went by in alternating directions along the road behind him as they carried everyone to the warmth and comforts of their own homes. As all of the taxi lines had rapidly become impossibly busy, Sam had no choice but to prepare himself for a walk of several blocks in the chill of night to return to his house. Before he began his journey, however, he persisted standing on the sidewalk like a skinny overdressed snowman, looking at the house in front of him with quiet yearning.
He wanted to break his lazy scarecrow stance and stalk up to the front door: Without knocking or ringing the doorbell he would simply march inside confidently as though he were a mindlessly honourable soldier breaking through the front lines of a battlefield; then he would place a hand firmly on the handrail of the staircase and step up the steps, never looking at anything other than the invisible dotted trail that led to the goal ahead of him. Once upstairs he would throw open Henrietta’s door, stroll up towards her as she stood in awe and clasp her shoulders. Peering into the tranquil soul behind her radiant eyes, he would then tell her that he loved her as sincerely and eloquently as he could; he would then close his eyes as he leaned in to kiss her more passionately than any other kiss that had come before or after. ‘I love you more than you could ever truly know,’ he would say finally, and then leave the house as fireworks burst loudly in the sky outside, never to be seen again.
But instead he walked away.
In her room Henrietta was sitting with her back to her bed as Nicole slept with the comforter covering half of her body. Henrietta gazed silently ahead of her, both into and through space, the complex circuitry of her mind lighting up like the sun-kissed limbs of Yggdrasil. Space folded into time as she thought back to a day twelve years ago when she had spent every waking moment with Nicole: she recalled playing with her many cousins amongst the autumnal leaves of their grandmother’s apartment building’s courtyard; reading Moby Dick by her cousin’s side before enjoying a feast cooked solely by their grandmother’s weathered hands; talking about Ben and the other young wolves while sitting together at the secret arbour by their elementary school, then racing home in the rain; listening attentively as Nicole practiced her recorder; then finally splitting the two halves of a bed after warming up with hot chocolate and recently laundered clothes.
Now Nicole was as close as she had been on that memorable day, while Ben was both downstairs and welcomed in Henrietta’s thoughts. She sighed happily, sadly, and with relief, as though the last twelve years had never truly happened. With a slender finger she turned off the reading lamp and climbed onto the bed. She lay silently beside Nicole as she listened to her tiny breaths, focusing her eyes on the darkness where she rested; all she had to do to prove that she existed was reach out and touch her. As she had done twelve years ago, Henrietta closed her eyes.
Alex and Stanley remained the longest of anyone outside of Ben, Nicole and Henrietta: they packed away the records as Ben went around the room picking up dirty glasses.
‘And what about happiness?’ Alex asked Stanley, ordering a Smiths record behind Neutral Milk Hotel. ‘Do you think happiness can exist through the intangible idea alone, without having to manifest through something physical?’
Stanley paused in thought for a second, rapping the sleeve for Music Has The Right To Children with his fingers. ‘If you mean whether or not happiness can stand solely on its own legs, then I think it can. I think I’m happy without anything to make me happy other than happiness itself. I’m happy because I’m happy.’ Stanley smiled as he said this as if the word itself gave him great joy.
‘Love makes me happy,’ Alex said. ‘Yet both are only ideas. One idea makes me happy and the other idea is happiness itself. How does that make you feel?’
Stanley only continued to smile. From the record holder he pulled out the Smiths album that Alex had just replaced and set it in the record player, positioning the stylus to There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. ‘Well, it’s time to go,’ he said as the song played.