“Henry?”
No one in the bathroom. Only one more room in the place.
The bedroom door stood slightly ajar. Faye pushed on it softly, peeking inside. It was hard to make out anything. Shadows layered on shadows. Faye whispered Henry’s name once more as she walked through the door, but her stomach was already sinking. It was so quiet. No hiss from the radiator, and the sound of the refrigerator running didn’t make it to this side of the apartment.
No breathing sounds came from the bed.
“Oh, God,” Faye said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Henry…”
He lay still on the bed. Bundled in blankets. Only his head uncovered. His shoulder-length dark hair, threaded with gray, hung in strings to the sides of his face. Unwashed for days.
For a brief moment, Faye thought maybe he wasn’t dead. His cheeks seemed rosy in the dirty light filtering in through the window from a streetlamp. She moved forward, tentatively put a hand on his forehead. He was warm. Not only warm – burning up. But somehow there was no life in him. No breath. Just a wall of heat, emanating from his body.
She stood like that for a long while, looking down at him, feeling the warmth still coming from his body in waves, as if something inside were generating it. Gears spinning. Clockwork, winding itself up.
Impossible.
“Where have you gone, Henry?” she said, though she didn’t understand why she’d chosen those particular words.
No breath, she thought. He is dead. He must be dead.
Faye quietly left Henry’s apartment, tears just beginning to form in her eyes.
* * *
Later that night, a dark, heavy shape rose from Henry’s bed, moved around the room as if waking from a deep sleep.
Outside Henry’s bedroom window, a single snowflake drifted down, stuck against the pane, melted.
Vanished.
The first of a new storm.
F O U R
“I know this sounds terribly corny, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Like, legitimately?”
Henry turned toward the voice. Wow, a girl is talking to me, he thought, cleared his throat, and said, “Uh, hopefully?”
She frowned.
“I just mean that, well, if it keeps us talking, then yes, you’ve seen me somewhere before.”
She grinned a little, maybe blushed just the tiniest bit. “Well, OK. Where was it?”
They were in a shitty little bar downtown. Henry frequented it often to unwind after Runs, and Faye occasionally came in when the loneliness of her apartment became too much to bear.
“Maybe…” Henry began, turning fully toward Faye where she sat on a stool next to his at the bar. “I dunno.” He took a shot in the dark: “Milo’s?”
“Don’t know anyone named Milo,” Faye said.
“Oh.”
“Maybe if we tell each other our names, that might jog something,” Faye said, and smiled.
Henry laughed. “Yeah, that might help. I’m Henry.”
“Faye.”
They shook hands, awkwardly.
“Lovely to meet you, Faye.”
“Likewise. Now, let’s see,” she said, taking a sip from her rum and Coke. “Where do you work? Maybe I saw you there.”
Ha. Where do I work.
“Um, you haven’t seen me at work,” he replied. “Pretty certain.”
Warning bells sounded in Faye’s head at this evasion, but she decided to press on. “OK, well, I’m a nurse. Maybe you were recently hospitalized?” She’d intended it as a joke, but Henry didn’t laugh.
“Actually, that coulda been it. I go there more often than… normal people.” He smiled, and did manage a little chuckle that calmed Faye’s nerves a little.
“Street fights?” she said. “You a big badass?” More joking.
“People shoot me a lot.”
He’d talked like this before to interested women. He found that telling the truth disarmed them, since they always thought he was just joking. The relationships never got much further than this because he kept strange hours and didn’t have much of an interest in pursuing a relationship anyway.
“Well, I like people who get shot a lot. Gives me job security.”
Henry laughed loudly at that. They continued chatting for hours, till the barkeep called for last orders.
They walked out together, awkwardly shook hands, then, taken by an impulse neither of them understood, they hugged. They knew it was strange, but they held each other for much longer than two people who’ve just met normally would.
And then it didn’t feel so strange anymore.
* * *
Half a year later, Henry was reading over Faye’s shoulder where she sat at her computer in her apartment. Henry had brought her some tea, and as he leaned over her shoulder to set the cup down on a coaster, he glanced at the document, said, “Hey, what’s this? Are you cataloguing my hilariousness?”
“Yep,” she said, kept typing.
Henry looked closer, read a little, then stood up straight again. “Oh, come on. No one else is going to find this shit funny.”
“They did when I posted them on social media.”
“People on social media don’t count. For anything. Ever.”
“Says you.”
“It’s true. I did just say that.”