It had been a while since I’d indulged to this extent. After all, I’d been so very good this year. However, I’d been correct in my surmise that I could either exist in the outside world or maintain my sobriety, but not both. I sat down heavily on the couch for a moment, waiting for my body to start working with me again. Once its anger subsided somewhat, I pulled myself to my feet and headed toward the kitchen and caffeine. I boiled water in the kettle and was rewarded in my search by a substance resembling instant coffee.
However, once I turned toward the fridge for cream, I came up against something square and yellow. I squinted at it for a few moments before realizing it was, in fact, a note.
Written in a sprawling cursive a bit too loopy for its own good was a block of text that took me several read-throughs to fully comprehend:
Hello, Armand!
I would’ve preferred to meet in person, but it’s pretty clear our schedules don’t overlap, to say the least. So I decided I might as well introduce myself! I’m truly looking forward to getting to know you, and I believe this will be a beneficial and educational experience for us both. Have a wonderful day! Hope to meet you soon.
P.S. Help yourself to any of the fruits and veggies I put in the fridge. Oh. Except the avocados, I want to make dip. And leave the spinach leaves too—for salads.
P.S.S. Say hi to Gaston and LeFou! They’re in the living room.
“‘Beneficial and educational experience’?”
Whowasthis person? And how did they know my name?! I eventually managed to decipher the enormous scrawl as:Lucas Anthony Barclay.
Wait a minute—Lucas?
I blinked at the name again. Perhaps Finch had mentioned him?This is what you get for giving the paperwork nary the briefest of glances, Demetrio.
Lucas, eh?
Lucas with enough hair and skin products to serve multiple pre-bachelorette spa outings, Lucas with floral-print furniture coverings and unicorn magnets, Lucas who was going to make avocado dip and was apparentlynota woman in her roaring forties. Served me right for making assumptions—the aforementioned Sam (and honestly Lakshmi, Craig, or any of my other friends) would have hit me, called me a tosser, and reminded me once again that “patriarchy is a chronic condition.”
I leaned one arm against the refrigerator and clenched a hand in my hair, staring down at the note in consternation. I would have been perfectly all right never encountering my obviously somewhat pedantic and finicky flatmate, but it seemedLucaswas not going to let that happen.
Something was nagging at me though; I squinted down at the second postscript ... Gaston and LeFou? I looked up—I’d just come from the living room; there hadn’t been anyone in there ...
Right?
I peeked around the corner tentatively. Should I perhaps have put on some more clothes before venturing forth from the bedroom? For all I knew, there were two traumatized Frenchmen sitting in my living room at this very moment.
But the living room was empty.
Who the hell were Gaston and LeFou? Was Lucas the type of person to name the furniture?
... Bet he was.
But then I noticed something in the corner. Something that glittered in the few rays of sunlight that were still making it past the curtains. Something made of glass ... I stepped closer and realized there was movement behind that glass—fish.
There were fish in a fish tank.
With a little sticky note against the side that said:Hi, we’re Gaston and LeFou!
I stared at them for a few moments, and they stared back.
This felt exactly like being introduced by someone like Lucas to someone like the fish: we were all—sans Lucas—rather embarrassed by the whole affair. Despite myself, I felt an immediate kinship with Gaston and LeFou.
“Hello, lads.” I waved at them. “I’m Armand, but I’m sure you’ll come to know me as ‘the one who doesn’t feed you.’”
They made tiny silentOs.
I finished making the coffee, spiked it, and settled down with my lapdesk on the floor across from Gaston and LeFou, finally set to ink the pages I’d drunkenly penciled the day before. Lakshmi had begged and borrowed me an extra week on this month’s deadline, and there were only so many threatening emails the editors could send me. Despite holding the contract renewal over my head, they’d approved the anniversary-issue story and layout weeks ago; I’d finished penciling last night, so my work was all ink and sable brushes for the foreseeable future.
This was the part of the comic that demanded the most of my skill, and the least of my brain.
I tucked my hair behind my ears, settled my reading glasses firmly on my nose, and loosened my shoulders, getting ready for a good couple of hours of drudgery until I had to head back to the university and ... I swallowed back a shudder. A lot of grade-A whiskey had gone into blocking out my last teaching experience. It’d be a damn waste to dredge it all back up again.
