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“I know you’ve looked up my DNA,” Eugene said waspishly, “so you know my basic capacities, and I’m sure you did a full background check too. Seeing as you were so interested in Jerome Morrow.”
Irene, who had been interested in the person of Vincent, not the identity of Jerome, felt vaguely offended, but she couldn’t deny it. Only, “Still—”
“So you know my records, my IQ, my history, my various areas of specialty. Why exactly do you think I will be deficient at this?”
Irene took a deep breath. “Of course I’m not denying your intelligence, Jerome.”
“Eugene,” Eugene corrected sharply.
“Eugene. I’m only saying that for a beginner knitter to start out with a sweater is not generally recommended. Something of a lower level of difficulty, such as a scarf, or a hat, or a washcloth…”
“You literally think I won’t be able to do anything more complicated than a square,” Eugene said. “So little faith. If Jerome were here, he’d believe in me. I only want to knit it for him, you know.”
If Jerome—Vincent—were here, maybe he would have been able to lend Irene some patience. Unfortunately he was in space, not yet on Titan but well on his way. Before leaving, he’d told Irene to drop by and visit Eugene from time to time.
“We’ve had so little time together since you found out. Get to know him, and maybe you’ll know a little more about me.”
“I’ve known you had another lover for some time now.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. Vincent and Jerome… they’re both parts of me. Eugene is, too. I want you to know all my parts. I hope you’ll be able to love them.” Vincent had looked so terribly sincere. “Also… there’s another thing. I’m a bit worried about Eugene, to be honest. He’ll be alone in that big house, and sometimes the way he talks—it’s like he doesn’t expect to still be around when I get back.”
He hadn’t elaborated on this, but it had been enough to convince Irene that he thought this was important, and not just for Irene’s sake. So Irene had promised to drop by Eugene’s house now and again, keep an eye on him, keep him company.
Her main impressions of Eugene so far were that 1) it was pretty clear Vincent had been pretending to be Jerome Morrow in the abstract, not in the specifics, because Vincent’s version of Jerome was nothing like this sarcastic asshole at all, and 2) Eugene was very, very, very bored.
To such an extent that one day, when she’d brought over knitting, he’d demanded she teach him. When she at first demurred, he’d cast her a vicious smile and said, “Oh, you’re worried that Jerome only likes you for your domestic talent? Think he’ll leave you if I have that too? I’ve been his housewife a lot longer than you, darling—trust me, you’ll be safe.”
They had then yelled at each other for almost a whole hour, ending with Irene storming out. She’d stood outside the door breathing hard, fists clenched, feeling like this house was a nightmare and she never wanted to go back in again. Then she’d come back the next day with a how-to-knit book, a pair of needles, and some yarn.
Eugene had even been apologetic and even amiable as she taught him the basics. A fairly peaceful week had passed. And now this.
“I won’t stop you then, Eugene,” Irene said, folding her arms. “I’ll even get you some patterns, and some circular needles. But perhaps you should worry about the sweater curse.” When Eugene raised his eyebrows, she added, “They say that if you knit a boyfriend a sweater, he’ll leave you for good.”
Eugene scoffed. “Jerome’s not my boyfriend.”
“Oh? What is he?”
“He’s…” Eugene threw up his hands. “I don’t know, what would you call him? The guy who showed up in my house, took my identity, fucked me, and ran off to space. Ladder borrower is I believe the correct term.”
Irene snorted.
“What’s he to you, then?” Eugene demanded.
Irene considered. She didn’t really have a good term either. “Boyfriend,” she said at last, because she felt ridiculous being melodramatic about it. “Or significant other.”
“Then you don’t knit him a sweater. But there’s no curse I know of on ladder borrowers, so I’ll do as I like, thank you very much.”
“Irene,” Eugene said, “I should stop knitting the sweater.”
Eugene appeared to be slightly drunk. Irene, who had just arrived, said, “Really? You seemed very determined.”
“Thinking it over, it might be selfish,” Eugene said. He waved the empty shot glass in his hand. “I mean, Vin—Jerome isn’t my boyfriend, but I don’t want to curse him to never come back. Space is dangerous. He might die.” He stared moodily off into the distance, and then said, very sadly, “I don’t want Jerome to never come back, Irene.”
Irene sighed and sat down in the sprawling chair next to him. “Jerome, the sweater curse isn’t—it’s not a hex. It doesn’t mean your boyfriend dies or has something awful happen to him. Mostly it means that sweaters tend to come out badly, so they might well drive your boyfriend away out of horror. It’s mostly a joke.”
Eugene coughed. “That too.”
“What?”
“It’s also—it’s not going very well, Irene. I think I should probably give up.”
Eventually Irene persuaded him to take the sweater-in-progress out of the knitting bag she had lent him. He was right; it was quite dreadful.
“Irene, it’s not supposed to be this large,” Eugene said. “In the illustrations it’s not this large! It’s barely fitting on the needles. The circular needles. Do you know how big Jerome’s waist is?” He made a tight circle with his arms, not very big at all. “It’s about that big, and I know because when he’s home we sleep together, and I’m the big spoon!”
Irene was too done to really feel jealous over this information. (Though she did wonder, when Jerome got back, whether she’d get to sleep with him like that too. If she did, how would Eugene fit in? Did they have a big enough bed for all three of them? Why was she vaguely hoping they did?) She cleared her throat. “Yes, that does appear to be too large,” she said flatly.
“How do I fix it?”
“Well…” It was honestly beyond Irene’s expertise. She didn’t knit sweaters herself—largely because she didn’t wear sweaters and didn’t know anyone who did, and because she always worried something like this would happen. “You really could just give up,” she said.
“But I’m Jerome Morrow,” Eugene said. “Jerome Morrow doesn’t just fucking give up, Irene. I mean. You’ve met him.” He waved his arms. “Doesn’t matter which Jerome Morrow, we don’t just fucking give up.”
“You could—you could convert it,” Irene suggested. “Something that wide, you could make it a blanket. Or—a quarter of a very large blanket, and then make three more like it.”
Eugene frowned. “But that’s just a square.”
It was. Irene said coaxingly, “Many of the best knitters I know knit blankets. It takes a lot of time and patience and commitment. These are things Jerome values very much.”
Eugene nodded slowly. “All right. Maybe that will work.” He dropped the sweater-now-blanket-in-progress on the ground. “I’ll need more yarn, though. Fuck—you know the budget I’m living on until Jerome gets back. We don’t get a check through until his return.”
“If you want, I’ll buy it for you,” Irene said.
“No thank you. No need for charity.”
“We could work on the project together,” Irene offered. “I could knit two quarters, and you could knit two quarters, and then we could sew it together. I’ve been wanting to come up with a proper gift for when Jerome returns. I think he’d be happy to see we worked together on something while he was gone.”
Eugene sighed. “Yes, he’s very attached to the idea of us getting along.”
“He talked to you about it too?”
“He talked to me about you all the time, even before the two of you started seeing each other. He was convinced I’d like you.” He smiled bitterly.
“Ah. How presumptuous of him.” Vincent always seemed to assume that if you just pushed hard enough, everything would work out—and that everyone would eventually agree with him. Then again, “You do like me, though, Eugene.”
Eugene’s laugh was a little bit startled. “Yes, I guess I do.”
Irene smiled. Reluctantly, she realized she had come to love all parts of Jerome Morrow too.
What to do about it?
When Vincent got back, he was baffled by the amount of knitting paraphernalia that was now scattered around the house. It was almost as much as the amount of supplies dedicated to disguising Vincent as Jerome, or Vincent’s space-related trappings. “Eugene, you can’t really have bought this many things in one year,” he said, staring at a wall that now had a knitting poster on it, and then the sack of yarn balls in the corner.
Eugene coughed. “Well, they aren’t all mine.”
“Oh?”
“Some of them are Irene’s. She’s moved in with us.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, is that so?” He turned to Irene, who had driven him back from Gattaca and had not said a word about this.
Irene was still wearing a poker face. “Well, I did tell you we had a surprise.”
“And the surprise is you moving in?”
“That, and we made you a cake. And also…” She picked up a box from the corner. “Here. We’re glad to have you back.”
Vincent unwrapped it. Inside was a big blanket made of four big squares of navy blue. “You guys knitted this? Aw.”
It was really fucking big.
“It fits a king-sized bed,” Eugene said.
Vincent raised his eyebrows. “Ours is a queen, though.”
“Not anymore!”
Clearly a lot of things had changed in Vincent’s absence. Like Titan, Earth, and even his own home, had developed a capacity to surprise him—had developed mysteries he’d need to explore. Such as whether it was Eugene or Irene who had baked the welcome-back cake, and who had frosted it, and why did it look so terrible? Shouldn’t people who knitted be good at other homely arts? Why was it so hard that he couldn’t get the knife into it? And why, despite this, were Irene and Eugene grinning at him so damn smugly? And could the warm feeling in his chest possibly get any warmer?
All of these were questions Vincent was sure he would learn the answer to in time. And despite the rock solid cake, he was feeling optimistic.