Nanowrimo 5

More literary action!

The Froid household was a modest house with a lavish interior. Froid’s mother was an interior designer, and her father was an architect. The two basically made a challenge out of taking the ugliest house they could possibly find and converting it into a yuppie paradise. Callahan marveled at the posh rugs, the patina on the bronze tiffany lamps, the expertly coordinated furniture and the warm caramel tones of the wall. Callahan looked back at the rug. Mrs. Froid’s favorite phrase was “the rug really ties the room together.” He would hear it five times over the course of the next two hours.
“The rug really ties the room together!” Mrs. Froid called as she walked towards Callahan with arms outstretched. She pulled Callahan down to her level and kissed him on both cheeks. Callahan blushed. He was hoping that another Froid would have kissed him first.
“Mallory Froid,” she said finally. “So good to finally meet you, Callahan!”
“Finally?” Callahan asked.
“Well, we saw at dinner once you texted Ambrosia and of course anyone who texts her is a big enough deal in our book! Come in. I’m making some vegan yeast cakes!”
Mallory Froid’s body was shaped like a squash topped with an androgynous caramel auburn haircut. This was all highlighted by her choice of an eggplant purple shift dress and mud brown boots. On her earrings were bison-shaped turquoise pendants, the only thing almost as ostentatious as the enormous jasper ring that eclipsed her wedding band on the same finger.
Callahan could not stop looking at her haircut, which looked like a cross between Samuel’s and Froid’s. It was obviously blond, but she had been so fixated with matching the rug that…
“It really ties the room together, doesn’t it?” She was fishing for compliments from Callahan. Callahan dutifully nodded and smiled at her. “It’s a beautiful rug.”
“Thank you! I had to basically sneak it out of Nepal when we went there the first time. Customs would have had a cow had they known that we were taking something so valuable out. The kids were really small, and Ambrosia got lost in one of the temples and was almost adopted by a couple nuns. Cara, you probably don’t remember that trip, don’t you?”
Caracolle rolled her eyes. “No. All I remember is falling off that stupid yak and you guys laughing at me for the whole car ride back to the hotel!”
Mallory laughed. “Ah, our Caracolle. What she lacks in brain she makes up for in cuteness!” She tugged at Caracolle’s cheeks and Caracolle yanked her head back, unabashedly repulsed.
Mallory had Callahan sit down on a sofa that was connected to the rest of the décor through the Nepali rug.
Caracolle reluctantly trailed her mom into the kitchen. She did not want to feed Callahan Grossherz vegan yeast cakes. She had lived on them thanks to her parents’ obsession with the organic and the healthy. Ambrosia hadn’t cared enough to balk, but Caracolle made her opinion on their food options almost every mealtime. Mallory and her husband could not wait to ship Caracolle across the country to UCLA and never hear from their reject daughter ever again.
Callahan watched as a tall blond man with thick black glasses walked into the room as well.
“Nice to meet you! My name is Hamline Froid, Ambrosia’s father. You must be the Callahan we are so anxious to meet!”
Callahan smiled meekly and reached out to receive a handshake. He instead got the same greeting as Mallory’s, as Hamline squeezed Callahan’s torso and kissed him on both cheeks.
“You must be starving! I bet an athlete like yourself has a metabolism of a baby squirrel!” He patted Callahan’s stomach with the back of his hand.
Callahan nodded absently. He was always hungry, but he was never burning any of the calories he consumed. And he was certainly not hungry enough to ingest more than a couple polite nibbles of a vegan yeast cake, whatever that was.
Mallory returned into the living room with a pot of rooibos and a silver platter of doughy patties. They were as smooth as river rocks, and Callahan really wondered if they weren’t just uncooked buns or something. He accepted tea and saucer and hesitantly took a yeast cake, pep-talking himself into optimism. He took a bite. Nope. They tasted exactly like he thought. He smiled with effort and set the rest of the cake down on the saucer.
“So tell us about yourself, Callahan,” Hamline said warmly. Callahan took a big swig of rooibos to prolong his response.
Callahan gave them quick and minimal details about him. He was from Iowa and switched from athletics to poetry after encountering Robert Frost’s North of Boston. He had gone against his parents wishes and applied to a liberal arts school, got a minimal scholarship, and happily trotted to Murkvein, optimistic about pursuing what he really wanted for the first time in his life, set on recreating himself as an artist. He wanted to be different and defy expectation for the first time in his life.
The Froids looked at Callahan with uncomfortable euphoria. Hamline passionately interrupted him at the very end of his story and declared that this was what the population had to do: abandon the uncivilized and gravitate towards the arts, that every problem in society was rooted in its preoccupation with the basest of entertainments.
Callahan would have shoved a yeast cake in his mouth had Mallory not interrupted her husband to give an elaborate metaphor about how society was tied together through art like the living room was tied together through the rug. Callahan looked at Caracolle. Caracolle drank a huge gulp of tea every time her mother mentioned the rug. She clearly wished the tea were alcoholic.
Mallory’s speech suddenly stopped and she bombarded Callahan with more questions about Froid at school: what was she like? Who were her other friends? Did she eat enough?
Callahan set the yeast cake down and began.
“Well, I wasn’t all that close with Froid, but I knew her well enough, I guess. You know she was dating-”
Mallory and Hamline sighed as they simultaneously fanned themselves. “Samuel.” They gushed. “What a catch!”
Callahan squeezed the cake in shock. Caracolle got up to go to the bathroom. She had drunk three cups of tea already. She must have been making a drinking game of other idiosyncrasies her parents had.
Mallory leaped up and grabbed an album from under a coffee table. It was labeled “Thanksgiving of Two Thousand and Twelve,” so last year around this time. There were hundreds of photos, many of them the same, chronicling every unforgettable moment of that Thanksgiving, from the arrival of guests to the carving of Turkey, to Caracolle’s countless annoyed expressions and candid shots. Most of Caracolle’s photos were of her eating, as if that were some kind of family inside joke. Callahan watched as Caracolle returned from the bathroom, saw the three of them huddled around the infamous album, and retreated back into the hallway.
Finally, towards the middle-end of the photo album, two familiar faces appeared. Froid and Samuel arrived for dinner together, both wearing dark colors to play off how casually they had dressed for the event. Samuel seldom looked at the camera during a photograph, but somehow each shot favored him. The flash highlighted the contrast of his pale skin against his silver blue eyes, which was surrounded by a coast of nearly jet-black hair. His neck was long and his features were delicate, almost feminine. This is my brother. This is my beautiful, androgynous, son-of-a-bitch brother.
The contrast between Froid and Samuel was striking: blond against dark brown, green against blue, black on gray against black on brown. Samuel looked like a poet, but even more like a poem.
“Oh, having Samuel over was such a treat! We had to basically force him to recite one of his poems for us. We have all of his volumes, don’t we?” Mallory nudged her husband, who agreed enthusiastically.
“We’re real fans of Samuel’s work,” he expanded. “It was so nice that he let us call him Samuel instead of Mr. Samuel Tyler Coldridge. Everyone’s so preoccupied with titles these days… It’s refreshing to see one who doesn’t mind being of the people. You know, just an artist who is first and foremost just a person, just a human being!”
Callahan suppressed a chance to scoff. If there was one thing Samuel did not consider himself, it was human. He was not of the people or a person. He was King Samuel, lord sovereign of his tiny kingdom of poetry. Callahan nearly nodded in passive agreement, though it wouldn’t take long for him to vehemently disagree with them.
The afternoon aged quickly, between the yeast cakes, the rooibos, the hundreds of paparazzi-esque pictures of Samuel reluctantly eating turkey, and later the most unpleasant kelp salad that Mallory insisted on feeding Callahan. Something about cleansing the body of toxins. Callahan almost vomited in his mouth. Caracolle’s conscious disappearance was from personal experience.
Mallory insisted again that Callahan stay for dinner, but Callahan declined, both passionately and politely, saying that he really should go back to campus. They relented, only making Callahan promise that he will come for Thanksgiving the next week. Callahan quickly promised and headed for the door.
Mallory and Hamline hugged and kissed him again as if he were going overseas to fight in a war he couldn’t vote for, while Caracolle was nowhere to be found. Callahan speed walked to his car, and as he approached it he noticed the outline of a human.
It was Caracolle.
“Hey, uh, tell your folks thank you again. That was really nice of-”
“I can’t believe they’re not worried for her! It’s like they’re okay that she just decided to disappear. They’re probably giving her a couple days. Mark my words: when you come back, it’s because they want to know where she is. If you don’t find out where she is, don't bother coming here. They’ll just push you out the door with weird vegan crap and talk about Samuel like he’s their son-in-law.”
“So the point of me coming here today was…”
“For them to see another link to my sister. They want to find out where she is, but they’re too big of hippies to go look for her themselves. Trust me. They’re my parents, and they’re crazy.”
Callahan nodded and got into the car. He began to pull out of the driveway before Caracolle ran up to meet him again.
“One more thing! Even if you have nothing to show my parents, do come up and see me. At Starbucks. We can try to find her together.”
“You’re sure enthused to help now, aren’t you?”
Caracolle smiled sheepishly. “She’s my sister. I hate her to bits, but what can you do? I need to be around someone who doesn’t think the sun shines out of Samuel’s ass.”

Froid slowly begins to move as I wake up from a nap on my chair. I hear the sheets rustling and I immediately walk over to her side. It’s now six o’clock, and we have two hours to go phone shopping.
“Good evening, Ambrosia!” I say her first name awkwardly. Maybe this is why everyone calls her Froid except for that imbecile Callahan.
She looks up at me and smiles faintly. Already the color in her face is looking much healthier, her eyes less bloodshot, her dark circles less pronounced.
“Your phone did a strange thing while you slept,” I tell her.
She walks over to her phone, and sure enough, the screen is shattered and she opens the back to find the circuit board charred in some sort of suicidal arson.
“How did this happen? I got this phone last year for Christmas,” she says quietly, weighing the phone in her hand, watching the cracks reflect the light.
I shrug my shoulders. “It can’t be helped. Phones these days are so unpredictable. Tell you what… Let’s head downtown and get you a new phone. It’s all on me.”
She’s shocked. “Oh, no, I couldn’t! I couldn’t make you spend all that money on me. It’s not right. Let me pay for it.”
“I insist!” I reply. “This is but a small price to pay. Think of this new phone as a new beginning. We can even get you a new phone number. You’ll be so far away from your past you won’t even remember anything.”
She nods slowly, tempted by the prospect of leaving all the connections behind. She would have none of the phone numbers of Murkvein people, people from her high school. And best of all, none of them would pick up the phone to contact her.
“Sounds like a plan. But… why are you doing all of this for me?”
I say nothing as I hand her her coat.

By that Monday normalcy resumed in everyone’s life. Callahan prepared for his final exams and began packing things up to head back north to Maine. I went back to the office, leaving Froid at my apartment alone but in the company of countless science journals for her to brush up on her physics. Quentin followed Samuel’s daily route with renewed vigor, convinced that this was somehow the best for Samuel.
With Quentin always in close proximity of Samuel, I knew of everything that Samuel was up to. Quentin accompanied him to from the office to home to the supermarket, and back home. Samuel hardly acknowledged Quentin but would have Quentin carry bags of bread and milk when he was nearby. Quentin was not quite sure how this was for the best but he figured that as long as someone thought so it was not his responsibility.
A long day at the office makes me excited about coming home to Froid. I skip down flights of stairs and listen to big band music on my drive home. The traffic is heavy, but it’s nothing. My empty apartment has a small inkling of life. It has Froid.
I enter the apartment and throw my arms up in the air. Froid gets up off an ottoman and walks over to hug me. I pick her up and twirl her around the room as she latches her thin arms around my neck. The way she smiles at me is so different than how she had a mere two days ago. Her eyes are verdant and fresh. She looks like a twenty-one year old. She sleeps much better now, now that I’ve taken active roles in her nightmares. I kill Samuel before he can bring harm. I save her from impossible decisions. I destroy her regret when she does something wrong or fails a challenge she cannot possibly succeed. Every dream has been rewritten. Now that I’m beside her, nothing, not even the Samuel of her subconscious, can hurt her.
For once it is not raining in Seattle, and I suggest we go on a joy ride. She agrees, since she has seen little of the city since arriving. I tell her about the wonders of the coastline and all the amazing seafood places. Her eyes glisten when I mention lobster. She says she’s never had lobster, even though she’s from Maine. I drop my jaw in cartoonish shock and tell her we have to have lobster and some oysters from an oyster bar. She smiles wider. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful. She holds my hand as we exit the apartment.

By Tuesday Quentin had begun feeling his lack of sleep. Apparently I had intimidated him so much that he had neglected every biological function possible. He hadn’t eaten, he hadn’t rested, he hadn’t done anything that would distract him even momentarily from Samuel. Samuel had gone about his daily life with complete indifference, every now and then looking at Quentin but with no suspicion whatsoever. No one, especially not Quentin, could bind Samuel to reality.
As I lay in bed I think about Christmas many years ago. I change my statement: nothing could bind Samuel to reality.
At seven in the morning Quentin assumed that Samuel was at his apartment. Samuel slept if and when he felt like it, which made for long periods of consciousness before a couple days of perfect slumber. Unfortunately Quentin was tasked with watching him after a weekend of sleeping. This meant that Samuel was at his most alert, going to the grocery at all hours of night, pacing around his mattress, sitting on every bench on campus and trying to attach himself to his surroundings, and making hundreds of new leafs of paper.
Samuel was not at his apartment, as Quentin saw walking down a sidewalk. Samuel was sitting on a bench, eyes closed, fingers twitching. He was deep in sleep and had been like that for hours. Quentin smiled as he sat down next to him. He closed his eyes as well. If Samuel would permit himself to sleep, then so could Quentin. Within moments of leaning his head on Samuel’s shoulder, he was fast asleep. Even if Samuel were to move infinitesimally, Quentin would notice it. He could sleep safely.
Even if Samuel were to burn another Prius because Quentin drooled on him, Quentin didn’t mind entirely. With the reward I’ve promised him, he correctly assumed he could just buy another one.
The minutes ticked by. Quentin is of little more interest to me at the moment. I roll over in bed and sleep a little longer.
With Froid so close to me, her dream starts playing in my mind. She hasn’t dreamed in a while. I’m looking forward to what’s in store.

A metal box. Lidless. It’s large enough for a human to sit in uncomfortably. It moves closer until Froid is set in it. She touches the wall. Cool. She hugs her knees to her chest, wondering what should happen next.
The metal box is lowered on a pulley and hangs in the maroon-tinged darkness for a brief moment, in the silence. Froid begins shivering.
Suddenly, the surroundings are bright. Froid looks straight up at a round opening and sees the night sky. She starts feeling warm. She stands up in the box and looks down.
She is in a volcano.
The heat begins growing. The metal begins to glow and contract, against all mention of Froid’s abrupt screams. She has had this dream before.
Her skin melts and pools onto the bottom of the box. Her hair singes and catches fire. She reaches outside the box for anyone to help her.
The silhouette of a figure. It approaches her and she stops screaming and moving but keeps burning.
The figure gently pushes her back into the box.
“Stay,” it says.
Froid nods and sits in the box, the heat too much for tears that evaporate before they even leave her eyes.
“Good girl,” the figure says. “Good girl. Good girl. Good girl.”
Froid looks up. I know who it is. I recognize that voice.
Samuel is so close Froid can almost see his face. A flame leaps up between them and alights their eye contact.
But it is not Samuel.
It is me.

I awake so rapidly that I almost throw myself off the bed. I’m tangled in sheets, stuck to my back with cold sweat. I know it was a dream, and not even my dream at that, but the heat, the pain, the suffering was too real to calm me down.
I turn on the light and look over at the other side of the bed. It’s empty. Froid has gone.