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Once there was a guy named Alfred who lived in New York City. Alfred was twenty-three and decent-looking: tall, but not as tall as a basketball player -- more like a baseball player, which he’d been in high school; blond but not a twee, corn-silk-blond, more of a dried cornhusk blond; and with eyes blue like an August sky over the field where the corn had grown.
He was a nice guy, too: he liked animals; he smiled at strangers on the street, even though it kind of freaked people out sometimes; and he’d gone pre-law in college so he could one day help those in need.
Alfred had his problems. One, he had book smarts but not a lot of common sense. Two, he was perpetually broke. And three, he was lonely.
Since he’d decided he wanted to take a break from school and live in New York City instead of Indianapolis or Wichita or Cedar Falls or someplace affordable, most of the money he made at his entry-level desk job went to pay the rent on his three-room Brooklyn apartment. What little was left after rent went for phone and Metrocard and food and satellite TV and high-speed internet. Sometimes he was late on the TV bill, and sometimes he ate a lot of peanut butter.
He’d had a roommate, briefly, though that … hadn’t worked out. The lease, however, persisted. So he lived by himself and paid rent by himself and ate cheap food by himself.
But he was an optimist. And as mentioned before, he liked animals. So when he went to take his trash out one night and heard the tiny, muffled mew-mew-mew from the dumpster, of course he had to dive in and find the source of the wretched cry.
Thus he acquired a cat. Since he was a decent guy he alerted his landlord, even though he had to cut the TV to pay for the pet deposit. He then made his broke ass even broker by buying food and litter and tiny toys for his tiny kitten, whom he named Scrambles. On the upside, he had someone to talk to at night.
“Scrambles, I’m home! Yes, baby! I know you’re hungry. Who’s a good kitty? Are you a good kitty? Ow! No, get your claws out of Daddy’s pants, I’m getting the chow now. See? Thank you! What a smart kitty! Who’s a smart kitty?” was a typical conversation they might have.
Or, with a purring cat in his lap, “I love this city, Scrambles, but it’s so goddamned expensive! I thought I’d get some real-world livin’ done before I had to buckle down, but maybe I should just apply to some law school in the sticks and get my J.D., huh? Nah, you’re right, Scrambles. I’d just have to start all over with a shitload of school loans to pay off. I should make something of myself first. What a smart kitty you are.”
Or, “What a day, Scrambles. They’ve got me covering for Lili on the front desk, and I like people and I’m nice to them but some of ‘em are just assholes. Maybe if I keep smiling I’ll get a promotion and then I can buy you that nifty cat tree I saw at Speck’s, and you can stop climbing Daddy’s blinds to get to the window sill.”
One night, when things had reached a critical point money-wise, he said, “Gosh, Scrambles. Guess I should bite the bullet and get another roommate before we get kicked out. But I don’t wanna ‘nother psycho like Feliks. Havin’ all those people over every night! Someone might accidentally step on my itty-bitty kitty. Mwah. You like that ear scratching, don’t you? Hmm? What I’d really like is a boyfriend. Someone to watch scary movies with, and have sex with, and help me pay the rent!”
Scrambles did like the ear-scratching, so she decided to answer. She said, in a voice almost too itty-bitty to be heard, “You’ve been real kind to me, Al, and so I’ll tell you a little secret.”
“Shit, Scrambles! You can talk. I knew it. You’re such a smart kitty.” As said before, Alfred was an optimist.
“I’m a special cat,” she explained. “And you’re only smart to a point, so listen carefully, Al, because I can only tell you this once.”
“Ohh-kayyy…” Alfred bent his head down near his lap to hear her better.
“Go to that pond in Central Park tonight at midnight. The one you like to walk by, sometimes? Where you took me last week?”
“Uh-huh,” Al said. He knew the one. He’d carried Scrambles in a warm little polka-dotted bag.
“Well, tonight there will be a group of fairies swimming in the pond. They’ll leave their clothes lying near the water’s edge. Sneak down there and steal one set of clothing. Just one, and don’t let them see you! If you do it right, you’ll get a nice magical surprise.”
Alfred pulled back and cocked a wry eyebrow at Scrambles. “Scrambles, I don’t believe in magic.”
“You wound me, Al.” Scrambles would have rolled her eyes if her eyes did that. “Just do it. Mew. Mew!”
“Scrambles, are you sure I should? It’s snowing, and that’s pretty late to be wanderin’ around Central Park.”
“Mewmewmew!” Scrambles insisted, even though it was February and ball-shriveling cold out.
After a few minutes, when Scrambles didn’t, or wouldn’t, talk again, Alfred began to doubt she’d ever done it in the first place. After a few more minutes, he began to wonder if he wasn’t going a little crazy.
Or maybe he was getting sick? Alfred decided to turn in early, so he could get up for work refreshed and able to pretend that nothing weird had ever happened. Thus he went to bed.
Sleep didn’t come. About elevenish, Alfred decided that what he was, was stir-crazy from being cooped up. A nice walk would clear his head, wear him out. A walk in the park. Central Park. It couldn’t hurt, right?
So eleven-fifty-five found Alfred shivering in the bushes near the frozen pond. Nobody would be swimming in that mofo, not tonight.
What Alfred needed was therapy. He was just about to go home and look to see if his insurance covered mental health services when he heard tinkling laughter. Or maybe that was the ice breaking?
Somehow, a group of seven or so attractive young people, men and women about Alfred’s age, were swimming and splashing in the ice-crusted pond. Naked. Alfred couldn’t help checking out the guys. Hey, they were all kinda hot, okay?
One guy in particular drew Alfred’s eye because he was particularly cute. He had the corn-silk blond hair Al lacked, but it stuck up every which way. He would hang back from the others, staring at everyone with a grumpy look under bushy eyebrows, but when anyone did something funny or fun he’d start laughing and splashing with the rest of them.
Alfred was mesmerized, and slightly surprised that either Scrambles or his inner crazy-voice had predicted this scenario. He remembered that he was supposed to look for their clothes. So straight-up midnight found him creeping out from the bushes, careful not to be seen. He located the promised piles of clothing on the edge of the ice. He picked up the neatest stack, because it felt right, and carried it back into the bushes.
Sweater vest, wool suit: nice stuff! Alfred was feeling kinda bad about stealing warm clothes on a cold night, and was about to sneak the stack back where he’d found it, when all the late-night partiers climbed out of the pond and started getting redressed.
Wonder of wonders, as soon as boobs and butts were covered, the partiers just raised their arms and flew up into the night sky like birds, still laughing. Alfred wondered how they did that. He regretted not taking physiology back at good, ol’ U.I.
All except one guy. He wasn’t laughing.
“All right. Who took my clothes, you bastards?” he shouted at his uncaring friends in the sky.
Guilt hit Alfred like a runaway subway train. He emerged from the bushes and held out the neat stack of clothing he’d filched. There he was faced with the downturned eyebrows of the guy he’d particularly been checking out earlier.
“What in bloody hell are you doing with my clothes?”
“Um … Er,” Al stuttered, because (a) the guy was cute-- Alfred was half in love already -- and (b) he was naked, and (c) Alfred was totally a stalker and couldn’t possibly explain why he’d done what he’d done.
The fairy -- for he was a fairy, the magical kind at least -- thought about cursing the man holding his clothes. But since he was magical he could sense the basic decency and lack of ill-will in the fellow. And with his foggy glasses and blushing cheeks, the fellow was also kind of attractive. For a human.
The fairy wasn’t a complete jerk. Just a little bit of one.
“Do you make a habit of stealing things that aren’t yours?” he pressed.
“Uh, no! I’ve never done this before, I swear!” the attractive human said. And thus, the floodgates were opened, it seemed. “It’s just, I was talking to Scrambles -- that’s my cat -- and she said, go down to the pond at midnight and take a set of clothes, if that’s not crazy, and don’t let anyone see you, and I don’t even know how she spoke, let alone told me to steal things, because she’s just a cat, and she’s a smart kitty, but I should just go and check myself into Mount Sinai or someplace, inpatient, right now, huh?”
The fairy relented, because there were several things going on in that moment, not the least of which was that the human was obviously falling in love with him. Fairies love to be admired. And he hadn’t even put on a glamour!
He set his hands on his hips and sniffed. “Well, give me my clothing, wanker, and then I should probably have a look at this cat of yours.”
“You believe me!” Alfred cried. At the fairy’s look, he handed over the clothes. “Dude. How is it that you aren’t freezing to death?”
The fairy blushed. The wanker was staring at his nethers. “Magic.”
The human rolled his eyes. “I don’t believe in magic.”
“You have an odd way of showing it,” the fairy told him.
Once he was dressed, the pair of them walked to the subway station. They established that their names were Arthur and Alfred. Arthur said that he was a prince of the fairies, which Alfred thought was funny, because fairies, haha. Alfred was a talker, or maybe just nervous, and told Arthur about his quiet life so far, and his job, and his good kitty and his expensive-ass but small apartment.
By the time they reached Alfred’s place, Arthur realized two things: one, that Alfred was a moron for taking a complete stranger back to his apartment, and two, that he was half in love with Alfred anyway. That was bad. Fairies weren’t allowed to fall in love with humans.
Scrambles only cried “mew, mew!” when they arrived, but she didn’t have to speak for Arthur to easily spot the friendly spirit snoozing away deep inside the cat.
“Right. Well, I can tell you unequivocally that she is a good kitty,” Arthur said.
Alfred laughed. “I already knew that.”
And when they retired to Alfred’s bedroom and had some mind-blowing sex, Alfred moved a tiny bit closer to believing in magic.
The next morning Arthur knew what he had to do. He would have to help Alfred pay the bills.
“I made you breakfast. They’re peanut-butter scones,” he said, when Alfred came stumbling, half-dressed and half-asleep, into the kitchen-slash-front room. “You had next to nothing in your pantry, but I did the best I could. I can sell my vegan, artisan baked goods for money to help pay the rent.”
Alfred took a bite of one of the scones. He quickly coughed it out into his palm. “Dude, there’s no way.”
“Don’t be an ass,” Arthur said. He was not a very good cook, for all that he thought he was.
“Sorry,” Alfred said. He quickly dumped the half-eaten scone and kissed Arthur on the cheek. “See you later. Gotta go to work. Gotta pay for this place somehow, haha!”
And then he was gone, leaving Arthur and Scrambles alone in his apartment. As stated before, he didn’t have a lot of common sense. But he was in love.
When he came home, he found Arthur waiting for him. With Chinese takeout, thankfully, and an armful of knitty-looking things. They were hats, and gloves, and scarves.
“I can sell my artisan hand-knitted items to help pay the rent,” Arthur said, displaying them proudly.
“That might work,” Alfred agreed, fingering the beautiful hats. “Hey, isn’t that Scrambles’s yarn?”
“She said I could have it,” Arthur told him, and that was that.
Sophisticated New-York-City-dwellers love vegan, artisan, handmade shit, and so Arthur developed a tidy little business selling his knitted goods. Alfred got a small promotion, and then another, and was able to save up to go part-time so he could take some classes. And they lived together for a good while, comfortable and happy.
However, all those months and then years, the Fairy King was Not Happy that Arthur had never returned with his brothers and sisters. He sent search parties out constantly, and had hackers working week after week, search for his son on the internet.
A day came that one of Arthur’s brothers and one of his sisters were flying around, following an internet tip, and spotted Arthur sitting in his booth at a DUMBO farmer’s market. They snatched him up and flew off home with him before he could stop them.
Alfred was frantic when Arthur never came home that night and wouldn’t answer his calls or texts. Scrambles couldn’t help; all she said was “mew.” Alfred fed her and then went down to DUMBO himself to see if he could find any trace of Arthur.
He found all the usual hippies packing up the farmer’s market, but there was no sign of Arthur. Just his beautiful knitted goods sitting at his booth, and a few piles of bills where people had tried to purchase a hat or a scarf without anyone to sell it to them.
Alfred accosted the guy packing up the booth next to Arthur’s and begged for information. The guy threw up his hands. “I didn’t see nothin’, I swear!” he cried.
But he cried it in a way that made Alfred think he really had seen something.
“I have a talking cat,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” the guy sighed. “About four, some buff guy and some hot chick came right out of the sky, whoosh, and grabbed the guy sitting there, bam, and he was calling them motherfuckers but they flew straight off with him, and I didn’t see where they went, and if you tell anyone else I’ll swear I didn’t see a thing, and by the way, I’m never smoking weed again.”
Alfred didn’t believe that, but the guy’s story, he did believe. He knew exactly what had happened, because Arthur had always insisted that one day he’d have to return to his family. “Thanks, dude,” Alfred said, and went home with tears in his eyes.
After a day or two of Alfred’s dejected weeping, Scrambles, who was now an adult kitty, felt terrible for him. Also, she’d liked Arthur, who gave very good ear-scritches. So she decided to talk again.
“Al,” she said, rubbing against his legs. “Arthur has likely been taken back home to the King of the Fairies and is being held captive. You need to go fetch him, and I can help you with a tiny bit of magic.”
“Scrambles, you know how I feel about--” Alfred began, but Scrambles hooked a claw into his leg to shut him up.
“Just listen to me. Take some of my fur. Snip off a little bit, maybe from my belly or from anywhere nobody will see it.” Scrambles, like most kitties, was quite vain. “Brew it in some tea and drink it. It will give you protection.”
“That sounds pretty weird. And I don’t like tea,” Alfred sniffled. Tea was Arthur’s thing.
Scrambles would have hissed in frustration, but she’d never hissed at Alfred before and didn’t want to start. “Put it in some coffee, then. Just do it. Mew! MEW.”
“Okay, fine,” Alfred said.
He carefully trimmed some white fur from just between her front legs, and wrinkling his nose, dropped it into the Starbucks cup he’d brought home from work. Scrambles hadn’t steered him wrong before. Without thinking about it too much, he drank it all in one long gulp like he’d used to slam boilermakers back in his college days.
He felt a little sparkly, and suddenly the path to the place where Arthur was appeared, clear as a Google map, in his mind. Okay, so maybe he believed even a little more in magic that day.
The Fairy King’s castle was in Atlantic City. Alfred hopped a train, and then a bus, and then caught an Uber, and it was quite late when he finally entered the shiny building, which didn’t look much like a castle. But Atlantic City casinos never sleep. Alfred caught sight of one of the partiers he’d seen swimming in Central Park, that night he’d stolen Arthur’s clothes. It was a dude with reddish-brown hair and a little curl on top of his head. He was working as a pit boss in the blackjack tables.
Alfred put on a smile and tapped the guy on the shoulder.
“Hi! I’m Alfred. Please tell me where I can find Arthur,” he said.
“Vey! Don’t be angry, but mi papa will kill me if I tell you where Arthur is,” the guy said, cringing in fear. Then, like Arthur had, he sensed that Alfred wasn’t a bad sort. He was nice to cats. And Arthur had been so unhappy these last couple of days. Quite mean! So the guy overcame his fear and leaned in and whispered, “Go to the penthouse suite. Don’t tell them Lovino sent you.”
“All right. I won’t tell anyone Lovino sent me. Thanks, Lovino,” Alfred said. And off he went.
A pretty blonde lady that looked familiar got onto the elevator with him. When she saw him trying to press the button for the twenty-fourth floor, the button that wouldn’t light up, she asked him where he was trying to go.
“I’m Alfred, and I’m trying to find my kidnapped boyfriend, Arthur,” he told her.
“Oh, you poor dear. And you’re so cute, too. Papa will kill me, but I can’t stand to see you all so unhappy.” She slipped a security key-card into a slot that let Alfred choose the twenty-fourth floor. “Good luck,” she told him, and got off at twenty.
At the penthouse suite, a guy who looked like Lovino was guarding the huge double doors. He frowned when he saw Alfred approach.
“Vamoose,” he said.
“I’m trying to find Arthur,” Alfred told him. The guy took a surprise swing at him, but in an even bigger surprise, his fist wouldn’t connect. It just sort of slid off the air in front of Alfred’s face. The guy then tried to kick him, but his kicks never made it anywhere near Alfred’s testicles as intended.
“What the hell?” the guy bitched. “Who are you?”
Alfred sighed. He’d had enough. “I’m Alfred,” he shouted. “And I’m here to find Arthur!”
At that, the double doors flew open, and there was Arthur! He started to run out the doors, but only made it as far as the threshold before he was caught by some invisible force that held him in place. He threw up his arms and pressed flat against it, like a huge window, his anguished green eyes searching out Alfred’s blue ones.
“Alfred!”
“Arthur!”
“What’s all the commotion?” a huge voice boomed from behind Arthur.
Alfred couldn’t see the source of the voice, but it was pretty scary-sounding. “I’m Alfred--” he said.
“He’s Alfred--” the punching guy said.
“He’s Arthur’s boyfriend,” the blonde gal said. Suddenly she was standing next to Alfred, and so was Lovino.
“He likes cats,” Lovino said.
A couple other people appeared out of nowhere. Alfred began to recognize them all as members of the group Arthur had been with, the night Alfred had stolen Arthur’s clothes. (He kept thinking about that, because he was still really embarrassed that he’d done it.)
“It’s forbidden for fairies to fall in love with humans. Go away,” the booming, bone-shaking voice said.
“Oh, come on. Those bloody laws are outdated,” Arthur said, rolling his eyes at something behind him that Alfred couldn’t see.
“And it’s not like you didn’t have all of us by sleeping with half of Northern Europe, Dad,” a tall, blond guy added.
“Nevertheless, the law is the law!” the voice doomed.
“You know, maybe we could reach some kind of treaty. An agreement?” the lady from the elevator said.
The brothers and sisters discussed it amongst themselves for a short time, while Alfred and Arthur stared only at each other, unable to look away. Finally it was proposed that maybe Arthur could be let out one day a year. Yes, one day would be okay. The Fairy King agreed, in his deep growl, that perhaps Arthur could be let out one day a year to be with his partner?
Arthur tore his gaze from Alfred’s and turned to face behind him, and put his hands on his hips in that sassy attitude that Alfred so loved.
“Fuck that,” he said. “I’ll get out somehow. And if I don’t, I’ll make all your lives a living hell until the last days of your existence. I’ll cook every morning, noon, and night, and if you don’t eat what I cook I’ll hound you to the ends of the earth, and then--”
“Noooo,” the fairy brothers and sisters howled, and “Noooo,” the deep voice said, sounding not so scary for the first time.
Suddenly the invisible barrier was removed, and Arthur fell backwards into Alfred’s arms! They had a quick reunion kiss, and then they got the hell out of Dodge before the Fairy King changed his mind.
And Alfred got his law degree and Arthur built a very successful web business. They lived happily ever after, or at least for a very long time, because fairies were a long-lived people, and it turned out that the brew of Starbucks and Scrambles-fur had given Alfred not only protection and sight, but many years added onto his human lifespan.
And they adopted oodles of cats, and even a few dogs, and had to get a bigger place out in the Catskills to hold all of them. But they were always just a train-ride away from the city where they’d met.