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Arthur cracks three eggs in a bowl, whips them to scramble. After adding pepper and salt, he takes out a non-stick pan and turns the stovetop on high. He throws a piece of butter in the pan, swirls it briskly with a wooden spoon before and dumps the eggs into it. Making the eggs lends his imagination to how Sandra must have felt when she cooked for him, when she did the little things—washed his clothes, cleaned the house. The sacrifices one makes for their significant other.
The eggs are almost done, so he extinguishes the heat.
I never did shit for her. He rarely, if ever, poured her a glass of orange juice. He never asked her to do the small things for him, but he never did those small things for her. To his dismay, she made the big and little sacrifices that he hadn’t. The culture they had made.
The eggs are perfect, except he didn’t add milk and sugar. To welcome her back into his life, he’d serve her these eggs.
With the eggs on a saucer plate, he knocks on their bedroom door. Sandra doesn’t respond. He knocks again, calls her name. She still doesn’t respond.
“I made you eggs,” he says through the door. “Haven’t seen you eat anything.”
The doorknob turns. She pulls it open, looks at the plate, and then at him.
“Surprised?” he says.
“Where’s a fork?”
“Oh. Whoops. I’ll get it.”
“Don’t bother.” She politely grabs the plate, closes the door in his face.
The door clicks locked from the inside.
Figuring he’s made progress, he makes himself some eggs as well. His eggs are more perfect than hers because the addition of milk and sugar. Sugar makes everything better. Milk makes everything fluffier.
He takes the eggs back to his computer in his office area, fires up his social media feed. There should be a lot of chatter about the horrible air quality. Not trending yet. It would. He searches the feed of his most frequent news sources. Instead of deaths, they’re talking about politics. The economy is slipping, always slipping or about to be slipping. Fear. Fear. Fear. Another disease out of control somewhere, but whatever. He finds a link to a story about a mother who has strangled her son.
The world is a ghetto with trinkets for everyone to strive for.
He turns off the power to the computer, heads outside. First, he lingers on his steps, then wanders to the curb feeling heavy and bloated. A pile of useless flesh, especially without Sandra. She doesn’t want him. Eggs won’t win her over. I’ve taken her for granted. And he had done so for a very long time.
A lanky Black man strolls in his direction on the opposite side of the street. The man looks about his age but thinner and muscular. The man has his head shaved like Raheem. Something about him seems familiar.
The man stops, drops the full black, leather duffel bag he’s been carrying. “Yo, man.”
The man’s flared blue jeans slightly cover his sandals, his exposed feet. His buttons are open on his beige shirt. From this distance, not a cotton shirt. Hemp, maybe?
“Yo, man, it’s me,” the man says.
Arthur peers across the street. He knows this familiar face, knows it better accompanied by the voice.
“Quincy?”
“Arthur friggin Lowe.” Quincy vibrantly nods his head, lifts his bag, and starts towards Arthur.
***
Side by side Quincy and Arthur walk up Arthur’s front steps. Arthur looks Quincy up and down, impressed at the great shape Quincy is in. Quincy hasn’t lost one bit of his confidence.
“Where were you going?” Arthur asks.
“Believe it or not, here. To this very doorstep.”
“Well, I guess you found me.”
“Not that hard to find.”
Quincy saunters to the couch, sets his bag near the end table.
“You want some water?” Arthur starts for the kitchen.
“Nothing a hell of a lot stronger?”
“I don’t drink.”
“In the future, know that a man has to have alcohol in the house. It’s not for him; it’s for his guests. Kind of like giving a woman a rose. It doesn’t matter if you think they like roses or not. They do. It’s not for your benefit; it’s for theirs.”
“I don’t necessarily want my guests drunk.”
“Don’t you trust the people you open your house to?”
Arthur couldn’t figure out what to do with the question. “It’s great seeing you. Somebody else in the area you’re visiting?”
“Maybe.” Quincy stands. “Can I... Can I get a hug?”
“Oh, um, sure. Sure.”
They meet on Arthur’s side of the coffee table, briefly embrace.
“It’s good to see you and how good you’ve done,” Quincy says. “Look at your home.”
After looking around the room, Quincy makes eye contact. “You’re not too happy, are you.”
“Haven’t cleaned since Sandra got ill.”
“The same Sandra?”
“The same one.”
“You married her?”
“I told you I was going to.”
“You have a house, your high school damned sweetheart, any kids?”
“Not a one.”
“Pssshhh. How about that. What do you mean she’s ill?”
“She committed suicide. She’s getting better.”
Quincy lifts his chin. “I won’t ask you how married life is then.”
“You know what?” Arthur says. “Maybe I don’t trust everyone I invite into my home. Come back later and we can catch up.”
“Nah, fool, I’m already here.” With his index and middle finger Quincy jabs at the floor. “Here. I saw your picture at the school. I was like what the hell? Found out you worked there. Looked you up to this address.”
“Why were you at the school?”
“I, uh, whadyacallit, know people there. Where’s Sandra, anyway?”
“In the room.”
“I’m going to ask. It’s harder when they’re injured, right?”
“Apparently. I pulled it off, nonetheless.”
Quincy puts his hand to his mouth. “She killed herself?”
“She’s back with us now.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your situation. Believe that, believe that.”
“Yeah.”
“You did your thing with her.”
“That’s what I did.”
“Although she killed herself, you guys were perfectly fine. Are perfectly fine.”
“She’s here. Alive and well.”
“Alive, my dude. Maybe not well. She’s not cured up here.” Quincy points to his temple. “There’s no reason to think when someone kills themselves, they’re okay. You don’t easily move on from something like that. How’d she do it?”
“Gun to the head.”
“She’s not going to be better from that. You’ve got work to do.” Quincy cracks a smile. “I’ve got some bourbon in my bag. You’re going to have some. It’ll help you open your ears to the shit I’m about to tell you. You’re going to hear it whether you like it or not.”
***
Arthur agrees to a coffee mug of bourbon mixed with some of Sandra’s breakfast tea. Sometimes she drank enough tea to keep her awake at night. She drank it in the morning, for the same reason others drink coffee. Instead of eggs, he should have offered her tea.
Mixing Sandra’s tea with the alcohol should slow Quincy’s drinking a bit. Why trust someone you haven’t seen in over twenty years to be drunk in your house?
Quincy takes a few gulps of the tea and bourbon. “From talking to you I see you’ve ignored your talent, except for in situations. You use it as needed, which would be basically never.”
“I don’t have the drive. I really don’t.” Arthur sips from his mug. “I don’t care about my ability or yours. It’s been all this time. They don’t matter.”
“They don’t matter? That would make sense if you weren’t using it to help your girl. Oh, I’m sure of that, son.”
Arthur takes another gulp from his mug. “I’m not worried or concerned about it.”
“You know what they say: denial is not only a river in Egypt, ma dude. We need to talk about me and you.” Quincy points to himself and then to Arthur. “Me and you.”
Quincy reaches forward with his empty mug, and then sets it on the counter. “Need a refill. Never had this drink before.”
Quincy snatches his bottle of bourbon from the counter, fills his mug half-way with bourbon. He plucks a tea bag from the small box near Arthur on the stove top. After extending the string connected to the tea bag, he dips the bag in his mug. “Thanks, ma dude. What I’m talkin ‘bout.”
“There’s something I want to ask you.”
Quincy gulps down half the content in the cup. “Go ahead. Shoot.”
“Are we related?”
“Hell yes. Not how you think. That’s going to take some explaining. Better if I could show you. Going to change everything for me and you. Me...and you.” Quincy finishes his drink, sets it down. “Breakfast tea and bourbon. Word.”
“Your drunk ass.”
“Not drunk. Yet. Nothing wrong with feeling good, ma dude.”
“Are you my brother?”
“Brother? Hell, no. Hell, no. We’re not related how you think.”
“How?”
“Both ways we’re related you’re going to have a hard time believing.” Quincy lifts his mug. “One more of these.”
Quincy pours more bourbon into the mug with his tea bag. “To begin explaining, I’m going to start with how I don’t think you always know when you’re using your ability. I don’t think you know. A lot of it must be on accident.”
“If we’re not related, say so. I don’t have time for all this.”
“You have to have time for this, fool, because it’s the most important thing anyone’s told you. There’s a difference when you know you’re doing it and when you don’t. I thought you were going to mature and learn this on your own. You didn’t. This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to show me what you can do. I want to see what you’re doing that you might not know you’re doing. I’ll point it out.”
“And then you tell me how we’re related?”
“I’m just gathering the balls to say it, ma man.” Quincy smiles, and then chuckles. The first sign the alcohol might be getting to him.
Arthur pictures the time back in high school, in the restroom. “Why don’t you show me what you can do, first?”
“If it’s true you don’t know what you’re doing, there are some nice sized consequences, most likely.”
Arthur sets his mug down, folds his arms. “I’ll wait.”
“Alright. Fine.” Quincy takes off his shirt and tosses it to the floor. “I look good, right?” His pectorals sag and his round belly, seemingly like a smaller version of Arthur’s, slightly jiggles. “I work out. You could look this good.”
Quincy cocks his shoulders back like a soldier waiting for inspection. His arms are far darker than his belly and chest. Curly hairs circle his nipples.
Quincy says, “See this tan line? Keep watching.” Quincy’s dark tan on his arms slowly fades to match the lighter tone on his chest. His belly slowly shrinks. “See how I’m doing everything. It’s all on purpose. I don’t think you can say the same. I have to stop.”
“I remember you saying you could set things back. You’re getting younger?”
Quincy becomes stoic, especially in his face. “Your turn.”
“You can make yourself younger?”
“That’s the point. I can if I want to. If I were younger, I’d do a few things differently. Wouldn’t you? Regret sucks. There are other approaches to some things I’ve done.”
“What is it you regret?” Arthur says.
“I didn’t have regrets until after I met, well, her.”
***
Arthur, you’ve got to understand that when I knew her, I was this guy, this thing. That’s how I saw myself. When she found out what type of thing she had been having sex with, she wanted nothing to do with the thing she would give birth to. She bounced. I had the child but gave it up to travel and look for her. Originally, giving it up was supposed to be temporary. Then I kind of figured I wasn’t supposed to have a kid in the first place.
She had ties to Boston and New York and all that. She was originally from Maryland. Came out here for warmer air and beaches. A fine, fine, damned fine woman. Everything on her was tight and firm. Trust me on that. I’m the truth.
A year after she left me, I discovered her living in a small east coast apartment. I hid from her. She had made something of herself.
She seemed happy working in a grocery store, bagging people’s food, gathering shopping carts in a reflector vest. She had made some friends. I thought they’d be my way back into her life. They could give me the intel I needed to say the right things to her. I didn’t do that part of the plan very good.
***
“She didn’t want to be found?” Arthur says.
“Not by me. She was like, fuck that guy. Your turn to show me your ability. What’s up? Let’s see what you can do.”
“I can’t picture you with girl problems.”
“Just do what you do.”
“I’ll animate something,” Arthur says.
“Okay, anything.”
Arthur gives Quincy his own version of a stoic, quiet gaze. He steps away from the counter, starts for his living room.
Quincy follows.
In the living room, Arthur focuses on the couch. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve animated anything.”
***
You say you haven’t used your ability in a while, but in this world, you do things, sometimes, without knowing it. For all you know, you did it yesterday. That’s how it is. You learn things without knowing you learned it. You forget things without knowledge of it. It happens, plenty. You affect people without knowing it. Perfect example. I was stalking her and didn’t know it. At the time, I told myself I wanted my family back, minus the kid because, in hindsight, she didn’t want the kid. If I was supposed to be with her and she didn’t want a child, then maybe I wasn’t supposed to have a kid in the first place.
I stalked her but didn’t know I was, so I did it badly. Very not on the downlow. One day after she left her work, I asked a few of her coworkers if they knew Katerina. That was her name, Katerina. I told them I was her husband. We were never married. I told them I was concerned with her mind.
I thought she’d be okay to see me. She seemed generally happy, from what I saw from a distance.
***
“I guess you’re saying you were chasing down a woman who was perfectly happy without you in her life,” Arthur says. “You should have seen that coming.”
He starts to animate.
Distinct indents in the shape of fingers form into the edge of the couch seat cushions, as if an invisible person grips them for dear life. That same invisible person presses against the backrests, makes obvious impressions. The indented material tears away from the couch, and then floats in their direction. The fragments hang in mid-air less than a foot from their respective faces. Arthur gazes on at the couch pieces that combine to form a skeleton of sorts.
The parts that were once a backrest resemble broad shoulders. They also resemble the back of an individual. Armrests dislodge from the couch and become floating forearms. Springs pry themselves away from the couch, spin into a torso for the animated sofa hovering in front of them. Yellow foam cushioning peels from the couch. The foam gathers on the animated sofa parts that stretch and pull into legs, merely inches above the carpet. Wood pegs dislodge from the couch and meet the figure. The pegs settle at the bottom of the figure’s legs and act as feet.
Arthur steps passed the animated figure to his partially dismantled couch where he violently smacks the remaining seat cushion, causing dust to rise. He blows the dust in the direction of the floating, animated thing. The blown dust circles the animated thing in a haze, promptly fills in the gaps where limbs are missing, making those areas solid—most noticeably the biceps and hands.
The thing weeps, bobs its dust-head, shuffles its pegs on the carpeted floor.
“Why are you doing this to me?” the thing whines in a little boy’s voice. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
“What’s going on?” Quincy says, in disbelief.
“This is what I can do.”
“I didn’t do anything,” the thing pleads. “I didn’t do anything.”
“It thinks it’s being punished, for some reason,” Quincy says.
“I’m not punishing it,” Arthur responds.
“I can help the both of you,” Quincy says.
“You can help me?” the thing says, in a soft curious tone.
“Think of me as being in a white coat down to my knees with a damned stethoscope,” Quincy says. “You’ll be okay.”
The thing becomes still. “You—you care about me?”
“Do you really know about this thing you’ve made?” Quincy says to Arthur. “I mean, really?”
Maybe Arthur knew less than he thought.
***
Arthur, I can see that, on a level, you know as much as you need to know about what you do. On another level, you might not know jack shit. It happened to me too. I’m looking at what you, I guess, created with your ability, which is pretty crazy, by the way, and then, staying with what I’ve been telling you, I didn’t actually know shit about her. I thought she didn’t like me or accept me anymore. I had no clue how scared she was of me. It’s why I didn’t know I was stalking her.
I found out I was stalking when I came to her apartment unannounced. Like I said, I thought she was generally and genuinely happy. But she screamed about how she couldn’t believe she let a man run so much of her life, and how she moved to escape me. My opinion is that she ruined herself, but that’s only what I think. All because she didn’t want our weird kid. How she put it, she couldn’t get her life back because of me. All this stuff about not being able to let people meet the real her. Man, real strong hate in my direction.
She sent me away, pissed off like you wouldn’t even think someone could be. I did her a favor and left.
Days later, when her coworkers saw me again at her job, it was all drama and shit. She had told them I had abused her and that I had no business in her life. I didn’t abuse her as much as she felt abused.
Still, why would I leave her alone? I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I wanted her back in my life, to accept me. Not too crazy a thing. I thought my kid and her might be able to be a family if she came back.
Point is, you don’t always know what you’re doing to someone. People see what they want to see. Hear what they want to hear. You can animate things. You still don’t have the ability to see things for what they are.
***
To admire what he’s animated, Arthur lifts his gaze. “I can see some things clearly.”
“You don’t recognize your own voice coming from that thing?” Quincy says.
Arthur thinks back to when his old bear first opened its mouth and scared him and his mother. It did sound like his child voice.
Quincy says, “If you haven’t figured this out, then you’re probably leaving energy from yourself around in places, like rat droppings.”
Arthur paces. “The wind—”
“—Don’t try to explain it. Even when I try to explain shit like this, it doesn’t make sense.” Quincy holds his index finger up to the thing hovering in front of them.
Quincy says to it, “It’s okay. Give me a minute.”
“Okay,” the little boy voice of the old bear replies.
Quincy says, “When I was younger, weird shit happened, got me? As I became a man, things happened only after I told them to happen, not on accident like when I was younger. I picked up how to do it. It’s a maturity thing. You didn’t know enough about your talent to see how you might hurt people with it. And don’t get it twisted. You are hurting people—people you don’t know.”
Quincy wags his finger at the thing in front of them. “Give us one more second, little guy.”
“Okay,” a hole of dust in the shape of a mouth responds.
Jutting a finger at Arthur, Quincy says, “There are consequences. What do you think happened to your old bear?”
Figuring this a rhetorical question, Arthur waits for the answer.
“See, you have no idea. What can happen is something my dad had to tell me and show me. Learning is always done the damned hard way. I still learn things the hard way. Even now I learned a lesson: I shouldn’t have left you back then. I was so different back in the day. I would have treated Katerina differently, if I could go back.”
***
Nowadays I would have let her be. Back then I couldn’t let her go.
She couldn’t do anything about me being around, either. She was stuck. I thought we had a chance.
When I had a chance—one last chance—I threatened her. I told her I’d use my ability on her to screw up her whole life. She couldn’t tell anybody about my threat because nobody, and I mean not a damned person would believe her if she told them that her ex was going to make her young again so he could ruin her life a second time. The point is she believed me. She believed me because she’d seen me do it to some dickhead, I don’t even remember his name. Made the dude a kid. You don’t touch my girl and talk shit. Agreed? Cool.
My threat scared the hell out of her.
Moments before Katerina’s death, I pounded on her apartment door, all tired, and drunk, and homeless, and hungry, and in love with her ass.
I kicked the door down. Inside I see her pissed off and scared of me, pressed against the far wall, in her panties. I gave her that look. I shouldn’t have given her the look. The look said, you knew it was me, and you’re in panties.
I told her straight up, “We can do this again. We can start from the beginning.”
She responded by jumping out the window. Right out of it.
Katerina lived on the eighth floor. She broke herself. Broke her face, her neck. Her legs.
I might have been able to save her, could have got to her before she was gone and made her younger, which would have healed all her injuries. I might have been able to. I didn’t try because—now listen to me on this one—the moment had sobered me up, made me see things clearly. I had to move on. She already had. That’s the lesson. Just like I did for you, I showed her my secret. It didn’t sit well with her. That was that. If love doesn’t want you, don’t chase it. Don’t bring it from the dead, is what I’m saying.
You don’t know the effects of your abilities. I don’t know if anybody knows the extent of their abilities.