Love

Fit the First

 

Driving through a pleasant Summer Friday afternoon, along a long country road, Alex, who had black hair and the slightest of beards, said: "So, about your parents. After what they went through, are they ... normal?"

Brenda was driving; Alex was the passenger. Alex didn't know how to drive; Brenda did. Brenda was born rurally; Alex was born urbanely. Alex's parents lived in the city; Brenda's parents lived in the country.

Brenda, who wore glasses and had straight red hair to her shoulders, didn't turn her head to say: "You mean, because of the Himalayas thing? They're mostly normal, though father's respiration got affected by the altitudes, so he's been wheezing since the day I was born."

"Since before you were born."

"Since nine months before I was born."

You'd probably appreciate a précis. Alex and Brenda had met at a party. They had both been drawn there by friends-of-friends of the house in which the party had taken place, and thus the pair knew absolutely no-one in common. Together they'd pondered the math of it, drinking there on a couch, and together they decided it was all too romantic to ignore. (Though they did not use such words to one another at the time, it's what they apparently both thought.) An evening-out got planned, hastily, there at 2:28 in the morning, and the evening-out took place three days later. This all happened some six months before the Summer's drive; in fact, they'd met on February the third, and they were driving on August the first, which meant their half-year anniversary was the day after tomorrow.

A pleasant Summer Friday afternoon, and Alex saw right horses in a field but didn't point them out to Brenda. He said: "Does it feel strange to have been conceived in such unusual circumstances?"

Brenda shrugged. "A hotel room in Manang? Not really. Everyone's got to get conceived somewhere."

Alex raised his dark eyebrows. "Sure, but not the day after one's parents had encountered a Yeti, taken three rolls of film of it, of it in its den and everything, but thereafter lost the film during a gunfight with some unscrupulous Sherpas. That's not normal, Brenda, it's not normal at all."

"Be that as it may, you should know my parents don't like to talk about it. A whole bundle of troubles came out of it all. The Nepalese warrants are still valid. The Nepalese never forget, and they never give up. So you can understand references to the events are kind of hush-hush. Maybe I'll ask them to tell you about it, but then again, maybe I won't!"

The went through an intersection, a crossroads, with a bank on one corner, a grocery and a bar across, and a rustic gift shop. Alex asked: "This place have a name?"

"No."

"No?"

"No. The locals are all introverts genetically--all related to one another, naturally--and they prefer to be unfindable. So, there's no name to the place. But this isn't the only place without a name; in fact, there's more unnamed places in the world than named."

 

 

Fit the Second

 

Passively, Alex got moved, and as he got moved, a copse of trees passed, and a house came into his view. The house was white, of two storeys tall, with gray trim. The yard in front was tidy and freshly-mown. Brenda drove up its driveway and stopped the car. She sat for a moment, looking at the house.

She then said: "Maybe they're inside, watching TV. My father can get special channels."

As if on cue the front door opened, and a woman came out: an older woman, with white hair, with something of a resemblance to Brenda herself.

Brenda got out of her car, and Alex got out too. Brenda's mother hugged Brenda, all the time saying: "Oh, I'm so glad you're here, was it a good drive?, there was an accident down on the main highway," and so on. Brenda broke away, turned to look at Alex, her eyes were happy, and say: "Mom, this is Alex, who's my guy."

Brenda's mother quickly looked him up and down and said: "Well, Hello! And welcome! We've heard some tales about you, down here on the farm, so come right on in. Grab your bags, we got you a room."

Brenda's father was sitting in his green La-Z-Boy chair, TV on, baseball game, when they three went inside. He roughly got up out of his chair, and came over. He was a big guy, with short-cropped hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He said: "Hello there, and greetings, big fella. In the mood for a beer?"

"Sure, why not?" replied Alex.

As mother and daughter chatted away, and as Alex stood, metaphorically pulling at his collar, the father brought out from around a corner two bottles of beer, one of which he handed to Alex.

"Cheers," said the father.

Would Alex get along with Brenda's parents? All signs would lead one to suppose so.

It was a bit late, so dinner was served almost immediately. The food and the wine went counter-clockwise around the table. Alex took a portion that didn't look like too much or too little.

After some inconsequential conversation, Brenda's mother said: "So Brenda's told me you have an interesting story about your parents."

Before Alex could answer, Brenda stopped him, saying: "Oh, let me tell it."

Alex said, "Okay, go ahead. I'll let you know if you go wrong."

"Alex's parents were great campers and ... woods-persons. Way back when, they were hiking in the Pacific Northwest, along the Continental Divide, I think, when who should they come across but the Sasquatch himself! Who, as it turned out, was not a savage beast after all, but gentle, and kind. It even shared food with Alex's parents. They took a bunch of photos of the creature, which, unfortunately, didn't turn out, but anyway, right after that, maybe a couple days, Alex was conceived! Right there on the Continental Divide!"

 

 

Fit the Third

 

Herb (we might as well name Brenda's father now) looked to his wife (name of Helen) with a little bit of a twinkle in his eye and said: "That's quite the origin story."

Alex was chewing; he took a moment to deeply swallow something not completely masticated before saying: "Yes, and I have heard--from Brenda--that my story is a lot like yours, but that you'd encountered an abominable snowman."

Helen (Brenda's mother) said: "Ah, she told you that, did she?"

"Yeah, it's pretty wild, like, ten thousand miles apart. The other side of the world! As far from one another, oh, I think I've had enough." He put his tablecloth over his wine glass and laughed. "Anyway, so, here we are now."

As if she couldn't contain herself, Brenda blurted: "Yes, isn't it amazing?"

Herb was covering his mouth with his hand, and his eyes were twinkling. "Yes, it's quite amazing."

While Herb and Helen settled down after dinner, into their chairs to watch television, Brenda took Alex out to see the yard and the surrounding countryside. Out back, behind the house, a decrepit red barn that should have been pulled down years ago loomed over them in the twilight. They went inside, carefully picking their way over broken beams and cobwebs and dust.

Alex asked: "Did your folks ever use this place for anything?"

Brenda, looking up towards a big hole in the roof, said: "Dad tried raising elves in here, but it didn't take."

"Elves, huh? I didn't know they could thrive in this climate."

Brenda looked toward the door, where the setting sun was streaming in. "As it turned out, they couldn't. They'd get decimated every winter. Dad didn't get it. He kept trying, year after year, getting in more and more cans of elves from Germany. You ever see how they grow?"

Alex said: "No, I can't say I have."

"They come as a kind of paste of ... eggs, I guess you'd call it. There were millions of them in every can. Dad showed my them through a microscope once. Just these tiny guys, no bigger than algae, but looking exactly like full-grown elves. Only about a three dozen would live to see a hundred days, such is life. Once they were full-grown, which took about seven months, they'd play up in those rafters overhead. But they all seemed so bored. Maybe they missed their homeland, who knows? They couldn't talk to tell us. Eventually we were down to eight elves, and mom took pity on them. So many had died! They contacted a German elf farmer who offered to take them in. They got flown to Düsseldorf, where the farmer picked them up. I wasn't given the chance to say goodbye to the little fellows. One day here, next day gone. It was so sad."

She was crying lightly. Alex took her into his arms and whispered: "There, there. Maybe one day we can go to Germany and see your elves. Or maybe their descendants. Frankly, I don't know how they reproduce."

 

 

Fit the Fourth

 

"I'm so dumb. Something, melancholy, gets me," she said.

They went out of the barn. As if to lighten the mood, Alex told her: "My mother is quite like your father. She tried raising pixies for three or four years."

Brenda looked up at him, clearly.

Alex continued: "Elves, dwarves, gnomes, what have you: they're all too big for the city. But pixies, well, they're translucent, so they weigh almost nothing."

"I never thought about that," said Brenda, truly.

"She raised them out on the balcony. They seemed to like me, because they were always whispering to me. I have to say: they were awfully sexually arousing."

Everlastingly, Brenda asked: "It was all chaste, though, right?"

Alex turned a shade of red and replied: "I guess I'm retrospecting there, because I was only eight at the time. Now, when I think of them, the pixies my mother raised, I can't but be in love with them."

"Sexually?"

Alex grabbed Brenda and hugged her tight. "You're my pixie in the solid flesh," he told her. "Those pixies were too weak, back when I was eight. None of them out there on the balcony lived more than a year. I remember my mother, exactly on the day she gave up the hobby."

"You have to tell me."

"She had the last pixie, of course dead, in her hands. It was on the balcony; a bright and warm September night. She said to me: 'I am tired of seeing them die. I have to give up.'

"Those pixies, they could have done good magic. The stories say that. But no, they didn't mature enough to know how to direct their powers. Anyway, me and my mother never talked about it ever again."

"Sad," said Brenda.

In a cloud they went from the barn to the house. Inside, Herb and Helen were watching the local news broadcast. A turnip truck had overturned on Route 19; turnips were all over the road. Alex and Brenda watched Herb and Helen watching the news.

Brenda said: "We're going up."

Helen turned her head. "Good night then. Alex, your room is across from Brenda's."

Alex looked at Brenda and said: "Across from yours."

Brenda laughed as they went upstairs.

Meanwhile, Helen put out her hand for Herb to take. She said: "Did you take all that in?"

"What."

"The two of them. You must have seen what was going on."

He burped, then said: "They're obviously madly in love."

She took her hand away from his and twined hers and hers. "You got the phrase right. 'Madly in love.'"

 

 

 

Fit the Fifth

 

 

In the morning, Alex and Brenda emerged from their rooms at precisely the same moment, and so they kissed one another: "Good morning." Hand-in-hand they went downstairs to find her parents already up and dressed in country clothes suitable for walking briskly.

Herb said: "You caught up on our way out. We put some rudimentary eating materials on the table out there, but if you want something more substantial you can find plenty around."

Alex said: "Well, that's wonderful, I can't thank you enough for taking me in like this."

Helen stood up. "You're very welcome. Come on, Herb. Let's leave these two to their business."

After they'd left, Alex sat down at the table. Before him was an old-fashioned bowl in a pleasant blue colour with swirls around the edges.

"I could make some toast," called Brenda from the kitchen.

"I think that would do nicely."

He read some from a handy newspaper balanced on the corner of the table. Nothing was terribly accurate-looking, or honest to the eye; in any case, his mind was elsewhere. So, he went back to studying the bowl. A selfsame bowl was across the table. So, there were at least two.

He called into the kitchen: "I like these bowls you got here."

"Oh? Which ones?"

"They're blue with swirlies around the edges."

"Those are the Picasso bowls."

"Picasso didn't make these."

"No, but he ate out of them."

"That's ridiculous."

Brenda came out of the kitchen with the promised toast. "I don't quite believe it myself anymore."

"I mean, how could they possibly get here? Here, of all places?"

"Pablo Picasso's daughter Paloma shared lodgings in Paris with the sister of someone we know, and she left the bowls behind when she moved once."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "I suppose you've confirmed all this?"

"Well, no."

"It should be easy to check. Who was the someone whose sister shared a place with Paloma Picasso?"

Brenda shrank back a little bit, almost protectively. "It was the older sister of a boy I once knew back in high school."

Alex frowned. "Ah! Now we're on to something. Who told you these were Pablo Picasso's bowls?"

"He did."

"And you believed him?"

"Well, at the time, yes. He gave me the bowls and he told me they'd belonged to Picasso."

Alex got up and rounded the table to pick up the bowl in front of Brenda and turn it over. "Unsigned, I see."

Brenda put her hands up in the air. "Why would Picasso sign someone else's work? They're just ordinary bowls."

"I bet they've never even seen France." He sat down heavily. "How could you have believed him?"

She tenderly put her hand on his head. "I only believed him for a short while. Honestly, I only said what I did today half-in-jest."

"So you admit you lied to me."

"It's not really a lie, darling. I was only communicating a fantastic story. Strictly unbelievable."

Alex put the bowl down in front of her, then returned to his seat. "This is the first time you've told me a fib. What was the name of this boy?"

"His name was Philip."

"You had feelings for him."

"Yes, but not for very long. Soon after, we all went to Antarctica for two years; in the meantime, he moved away."

Alex brooded. "If I ever meet him, I'll ... do something drastic to him. Just you wait!"

 

 

Fit the Sixth

 

About an hour later, with no sign of Brenda's parents, the two decided to take a drive around the area.

Brenda drove over to the rural high school she'd once attended. The drive took about ten minutes. They got out of the car and walked up to the side entrance, which consisted of two weighty red metal doors with glass that had wire mesh melted into it. They tried to open the door, but it was locked. Brenda said: "No problemo! There's still the main doors; up this way."

She led him along a covered pathway that led to another set of doors around the corner of the building. However, those doors were locked, too. Brenda said: "I guess they completely closed the place this summer. It didn't used to be like that. I guess that terrorist thing a couple years back changed things."

"Wait, what 'terrorist thing?'"

"It was some group of people who were against theatre. They went around town for some three weeks, as I recall, smashing seats and ripping up carpeting. They did that to the Bijou Theatre in Barville, some twelve miles away, and they even went after the dinner theatre near that unnamed intersection we passed through yesterday. Nobody knew who these drama-haters were, and they were gone as suddenly as they arrived. To this day, the police are baffled. They have no leads, and all the theatres way down to Lake Chibushko have installed security systems."

She turned her head aside, to look at the brick wall to her right. Slowly she approached it, hands outstretched.

Alex said: "You're looking for something."

Brenda replied: "Yes, I am. Some girls and me created a secret invisible passageway, via witchcraft, so we could leave the building without being seen. Hmm, it looks like it was a one-way passage. Or maybe it's decayed or broken or something."

They walked back to the car around the corner of the building.

Alex was telling her: "I remember my friends and I found a golden tree in the middle of a tenement block. It could also be heard to sing, if you held your head right. Anyway, this tree gave us magical powers, much like witchcraft, I guess. I can't recall how we used them, but I'm certain we did. You and me, we're not very different at all."

Brenda then drove over to a lonely crossroads. They got out of the car, and Brenda surveyed the area carefully, as if expecting to find something special. The crickets and cicadas were going mad with their love-songs, in a small copse of trees in one corner. The other three corners were the edges of fields: two were cornfields, while the third was something Alex couldn't identify. What was Brenda looking for? She stooped down near the trees, and appeared to be listening intently. Then she stood up to say: "No. Won't work. Whatever it was back then, it's long-gone now."

 

 

Fit the Seventh

 

The direction of Alex's gaze aligned with the direction of Brenda's gaze. He said: "You know, it's funny, but I'm certain I've been here before. Some long time ago, I was here, at the crossroads. I remember. There was a big shopping mall here."

Brenda, without looking up, hissed: "Yes. Yes."

"It was very big. The one time I was at it, whenever that was or under whatever circumstances, I couldn't walk from end-to-end."

Brenda said: "There was a Simpsons at one end, and an Eaton's at the other."

"Their entrances were on different levels."

"Yes, a circular staircase took you from one level to the other; plus, there were ... eight escalators, all the way down to the underground parking."

"Four went up, and four went down."

Alex walked through the copse and stood, still in sight between the trees. He said: "There was a Dairy Queen right here."

Brenda ran to join him. "Do you suppose we might have seen one another in the mall?"

Alex ruminated. "I don't see how it could be otherwise. Oh, and do you remember there were three movie theatres halfway?"

"I can't remember what I saw there, but I certainly saw things there."

"Matinees, with cartoons even.... The parking lot went on for acres and acres."

Brenda was looking up. "Coloured flags on posts helped one remember where one had parked."

They were holding hands and gazing into one another's eyes.

He said: "I saw you standing on the second mezzanine."

"That's so sweet to hear!"

He broke away and covered his face with his hands. "But then, the mightiest tornado of all came."

"Now I remember! The mighty tornado, nicknamed Behemoth!"

"Fortunately, it was a Sunday, so the place was mostly empty. The tornado plucked up the mall, and even the Dairy Queen, and took them away forever!"

"Yes, that's what happened. I think I read somewhere that the mall ended up all the way over in France."

"Yes, in the south, around Marseilles. It was all torn apart by then, what with being swirled around and pulled here and there at a thousand miles an hour, all that metal and plastic indescribably ground up."

"Deposited there, in a surprisingly orderly heap, in a field to the north of the city, I remember seeing it on the TV news."

They were quiet for a moment; maybe they were pondering the evanescence of mortality. Then they touched hands, fell to the grass, and made love.

Going back to the car, Brenda said: "Maybe someone, or some future civilization, will build another mall here."

Alex replied: "I can see the future, and I can tell you that yes there will be a mall here, again, not in the too-distant future even."

"That's a relief. There's still hope for the world yet!"

They got in the car and drove down the routes and concessions back to the known world. They spoke of things that didn't involve the mall.

 

 

Fit the Eighth

 

Back at the farmhouse, they walked into a scene sombre, though they didn't initially know it. Brenda threw herself down into a kitchen chair while Alex (as pre-arranged) got out the coffee-making equipment. As he filled the modern machine with ground coffee, Brenda's mother Helen came into the kitchen and jovially said, though with something false about it: "Well, did you two have an interesting time?"

Brenda replied: "Yes! I took him by the school, and to the place where the mall used to be."

"Ah, yes," said Helen: "'The place where the mall used to be.'"

Alex said, his back turned as he filled the glass pot with cold water: "And wouldn't you know it? I myself had once been to that mall too!"

"That's surprising! but not really that surprising."

Brenda said to her mother: "Been back long?"

"For a while...."

A deep sigh was then heard from the living room: Herb, of course.

Helen said sadly: "We've received some very terrible news; we were off at the bank in town, so now you know. Bring your coffee into the living room; what happened is going to change everything we know."

Once all four had settled down, with Herb in his big green chair beside Helen in her slightly smaller orange one, and with Alex and Brenda with their coffees on the couch, Helen said: "We're going to have to move."

"Why? How?" That was Brenda speaking.

Herb chuckled, a little bitterly: "It looks like our little farm is worth a whole hell of a lot more than the ten thousand my father bought it for." He leaned to one side and rested his elbow on the oak table there.

Brenda said: "Doesn't that mean you're rich now?"

Herb didn't budge; rather, he said: "It doesn't work that way. Apparently. Your old boyfriend explained it all to us, but it was all a bit hard to follow."

"'Old boyfriend?'"

"Philip Leclair. Mr. Leclair now. He practically runs the bank in town these days."

Alex inappropriately interjected: "Wait, isn't he the guy about the phony-baloney Picasso bowls?"

Helen laughed. "So, you heard about the bowls?" She covered her face to laugh.

"Yes; and he must be lying to you. He's a habitual liar. I know that much. He's probably never told the truth in his life. With his phony bowls, and now: this, whatever it is, the bank and the land here. You really should get a second opinion."

Helen, very diplomatically, said: "Perhaps we could, yes, Alex. But I was listening, and it all made sense to me. All this area is going to become houses. We're living on a five-million-dollar property, and there's no way we can stay."

Herb quickly added: "Of course, we'll get five million dollars out of the deal: but we can't but lose the house."

Alex stood up. "This is outrageous! The girl I love, the woman I am going to marry, is going to see her parents tossed out on the ... concession line, or whatever it is! The money doesn't matter!"

 

 

Fit the Ninth

 

Helen spoke dismissively: "It's very sweet for you to be so bold; however, this has been two decades in the making. It's just the first time we mentioned it."

The conversation went on for some more time, but it truly appeared there was nothing to be done. Helen and Herb went off to rest for the remainder of the afternoon, leaving Alex and Brenda on their own once again. Alex was still seething about that Philip character.

"He's running the bank, eh? I'm a bit disappointed in you. You had a future banker for a something-boyfriend!"

"I didn't know he was going to become a banker."

"Surely there were signs. My old girlfriend, Julie, I always know what she was going to become, and that's what she became."

"What did she become?"

"I can't tell you. It's classified."

"I don't know why you think any of this is your business."

He looked around the room as if he could see the entirety of the architecture, including the closets and secrets. "I love this house, that's all."

"You hardly know it."

"Wrong! I know it well. I have been here many, many times before."

"Really?" She entwined her hands hopefully.

"Yes, really. Anyway, I want to go to this so-called bank to talk to this so-called Philip. I think I can make him see the light."

"I doubt it will work."

Alex shrugged. "Well, at least I'll have a better idea of who this lying dog really is."

And so Brenda drove themselves into town, which was a small town, and it had a name, though I'm not going to mention it here. She parked in front of a quaint shop filled with antiquities, curios, and castoffs, perhaps intending to while away some time in it during Alex's encounter with Philip. Alex seemed to not understand this, for he said: "Won't you be coming in with me?"

"I'd rather not. The fact of he and me, no matter how long ago it was, would probably bog things down."

"How could it be so long ago? Ten years isn't that long."

"It's nearly an eternity for the young."

"Well, that's all right. In any case, this encounter must me mano to mano."

"Ain't that butch."

Alex looked at her quizzically for a second, then: "This won't take very long."

"Fine. I have to buy some dust."

"Dust?"

"Yes, it's pixie dust. You know, the kind that settles onto newlywed-beds, or in the eyes of children at Christmas; it makes the grass grow in the spring, and sustains the fearsome bears through the long winter. If thrown in such a way, it can even stop the stars from coursing through the sky. It has a million uses, and there's a shop in town that sells it."

Alex nodded. "Sounds like good stuff. You go get your dust, and I'll find out what this bastard is really up to."

 

 

Fit the Tenth

 

After Alex marched off in the direction of the bank, Brenda went into the antiquities, curios, and castoffs shop. She canvassed the place methodically, looking at everything to the left wall, then to the back wall (where she found a nice pair of lace gloves which she took in hand), then along the right wall (where a mock-Tiffany lamp intrigued her), and then finally she circled the two long tables that ran the length of the shop. The gloves were the finest objects for her, so she paid for them, had them put in a brown paper bag, and continued to look around, just in case her mood changed. She glanced outside and saw that Alex had returned. She nodded to the shopkeeper politely, and went outside.

"How did it go?" she asked him.

"It went pretty okay; I think we best be going."

They got in the car, and she drove them back in the direction they had come.

He looked at the paper bag between them. "Is that pixie dust in there?"

Brenda laughed. "Yes, of course it is. Did you fix everything with Philip?"

He looked out the passenger-side window. "He wasn't how I'd imagined him to be."

"No?"

He didn't reply, and they drove all the way back to her parent's house in silence.

Once they were in the kitchen, and sitting, Alex said: "So I asked the first available teller: 'Is Philip Leclair here?' and she asked if I had an appointment and I had to say no. I took a seat: a green chair that was somewhere between leather and plastic. Finally, I got sent into a small room near the back of the bank, inside of which sat one of my demographic peers, dressed better than anyone."

"Philip?"

"It's who he said he was. I gave him the story I had to give, and he listened, or appeared to listen. Finally he said: 'It's out of my hands, really. We have creditors too, you know.' So what could I do?"

After a pause, Brenda asked: "So what did you do?"

"I was very calm about it. There was a letter-opener in a can on his desk. I picked up the letter-opener and stabbed him a couple times. We were very quiet about it."

Brenda said nothing.

"Then I left the bank. I smiled at the teller and waved."

Brenda got up to put the kettle on. With her back turned, she quietly said: "I don't believe you."

Alex shrugged. At that moment, Brenda's mother came into the kitchen to say it was about time to make some dinner.

And during said dinner, Brenda's parents were curious about the mysterious distance that had come between their daughter and her boyfriend, though they of course had been around the block enough times to know not to inquire. The mood continued through the night and into the morning, and really the mood was only broken by the arrival of the police at about one in the afternoon, who had come to take Alex away.