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Jamie stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror. He didn’t look good, and he wasn’t sure when he had last looked good. Maybe in the summer? But when the hell had it last been summer?
Probably years. Whatever. He curled his lip and grabbed the sides of the stained sink. His threadbare blue robe fell open, revealing his thin chest. Just a few bruises, nothing unusual. The bruises kind of looked like pictures he’d seen online of frostnip, though. Was that normal?
Wind and snow blew through the gaping hole in the wall, the snow settling into the drift already in the bathtub. Jamie laughed, then he laughed a little more. Normal? God! When he laughed, he sounded like Jack. Jack, who he had met when this years-long winter had started. “Time is out of joint,” he said in an overly pretentious voice, the relic of some education which clearly hadn’t done him any good. “Fuck.”
He brushed his teeth quickly. There was always toothpaste in the house now, of all things, huge full tubes, Crest and Colgate and Aquafresh and Sensodent and Aim and Arm and Hammer, gel and paste, whitening and multi-benefit and high fluoride. All courtesy of one of the people downstairs that lived with him and Jack now. He was almost sure none of them had been there when he moved in with Jack, but what was he really sure of, anyway? He wasn’t even sure Jack actually owned this house. Pretty shitty thing to own, wasn’t it, full of holes and falling apart, hardly a room out of the wind. Had he really been squatting here for several months with Jack?
Again, whatever. So he had become one step above a hobo. At least he had fresh breath and the woman downstairs would let him leave for work without harassing him.
In the kitchen, the short, round man with blond hair that Jamie couldn’t remember ever saying a word bent over several piles of dust in varying degrees of goldenness and sparkliness. “Morning,” said Jamie, heading to the pantry. “You making drugs?”
The man nodded solemnly.
“Yeah? What kind?” One ought to show interest in one’s roommate’s hobbies. The man lifted up a piece of paper with an incomprehensible chemical formula written neatly on it. “Cool,” said Jamie. Several tubes of toothpaste fell on him when he opened the pantry door, and more fell out when he shoved his hand to the back, groping around until he felt something that wasn’t shaped like a tube. It was a Reese’s peanut butter egg. Carbs and protein. He stuck the candy in his pocket and kicked at the toothpaste on the ground. He certainly wasn’t going to pick it up. Tooth would be angry, but what could she do? Or Jack could pick it up, it was his house, right?
Speaking of which. “Hey, little man,” Jamie said, “Have you seen Jack?”
The drug maker only stared at Jamie like he had asked the strangest question in the world.
“I’ll take that as a no–dammit.” The phone rang like it was possessed by a tiny Quasimodo who absolutely hated his job. Jamie growled at it, but it didn’t stop. Well, why would it? Growling at the phone didn’t do anything at work, either.
He hated answering Jack’s phone more, though. But maybe it would be Jack when he picked up, saying that he was on his way back to the house to answer his own fucking calls. “Hello, you’ve reached Jack–”
“Jack? Look, I want to speak to Jamie. I don’t care what’s going on, I–”
“You’ve reached Jack’s house. This is Jamie. Who is this?” He turned and leaned against the wall, trapping himself in the coils of the phone cord.
“Jamie? Jamie! God! It’s Sophie! Can’t you even recognize my voice? No, I don’t care. Jamie, you have to come home, Mom’s losing her mind, we saw you on the news–”
“The news? Sophie, I haven’t”–he lowered his voice without knowing why–“I haven’t been anywhere or done anything in ages. How could I have ended up on the news?”
Silence from the phone. “When was the last time you watched the news?” Sophie asked finally.
“I can’t remember,” Jamie admitted. “We don’t actually have a TV here.”
Sophie sighed. “Look, Ja-Jamie. I need to talk to you. In person. You still go to the office, right? We can meet at the cafe in the Fickle Finger of Fate bookstore. Anytime today is fine, you don’t even have to tell me when. I’ll work from my laptop there.”
Jamie hesitated. Surely there wasn’t any reason not to meet his sister, was there? He was an adult, he could make that choice. He had a job, he had–the man in the kitchen offered him a contact lens case full of glittering golden powder. He had ended up here, somehow. He had ended up in this wreck of a house full of toothpaste and drugs and Jack instead of somewhere normal people lived. He shook his head. How in the world did someone like him still have a sister who cared about him?
He fished the candy out of his pocket and tore it open with his teeth. “Sophie, I–” The back door started to rattle, showing that someone was starting to wrestle with its sticky frame and eccentric handle. Cold wind blew in after only a few seconds, so whoever was out there must be very familiar with the door. “I think I have to go. Jack’s here.”
“Jamie, please–” Please what? Please whatever, forget about that now.
“Morning, morning, morning!” Jack sang out, slamming the door open. Wind gusted into the kitchen and blew whatever had been on the table around them all. The silent man’s eyes widened in alarm and he put his sleeve over his mouth and nose and left hurriedly, giving Jamie a strange look as he did so.
Why not glare at Jack? Jamie wondered, covering his own mouth and nose and trying not to breathe as he rushed outside.
Jack laughed as he followed him. “Come on, Jamie! I thought you might’ve finally started to live a little!” His voice sounded too loud in the freezing air, and the bright sunlight on the new snow shining off his bright white hair made Jamie’s eyes water.
“That little guy ran away, too!” Jamie protested. “And you’re not staying inside, either!” He didn’t want to argue with Jack. Why the hell did he ever argue with Jack? Why was he living in Jack’s shitty house full of drugs and toothpaste?
“Sandy and I have a different relationship than you and me,” Jack said. He drew a smiley face in the fresh snow on the collapsing porch with his bare toes. “He doesn’t need me the way you do.”
“Good for him. Jack, where–where have you been?” Did he really care? Was Jack likely to tell him? The answers to both questions seemed like they would have, or should have been, "no"s. But Jack grinned at him with that blinding white smile that promised anything and everything, the kind of smile that Jamie hadn’t had the teeth for since a childhood accident, and had never managed to gain the confidence for, regardless. Maybe he’d never had anyone he’d wanted to offer such a smile to, either. But Jack offered him that smile along with everything else. With a smile like that, even the toothpaste and the drugs and the gaping holes in the walls didn’t seem to matter. So, sure. He did care. Maybe he only cared about Jack.
“Here and there,” sang Jack. “You should have come with me.”
“You didn’t invite me. You didn’t tell me when you left.”
Jack shrugged. “You’ve got to stop waiting for those kinds of things, Jamie.” His smile grew sharper. “But then, if you’re waiting to be asked, maybe you wouldn't have had much fun with us, after all.”
“Us, who? The people in the house? Is that where they were? Why aren’t they with you–okay. Okay, you know what, that doesn’t matter.” All that mattered was, “I’m coming with you next time. Even if I have to stare at you while you sleep to catch you when you leave.”
“Wonderful!” Jack laughed. “We’ll have a good time, you’ll see. We had a great time last time.” He leans back on the porch railing. “We even ended up on the news.”
Jamie was almost sure that the tremor he felt had nothing to do with Jack destabilizing the half-rotted porch, but he took a step back onto the ground just to be sure. “Amazing,” he said. “Well.” He took another step back, like it meant something. “See you later.”
“Sure you’ve got to go to work?” Jack asked with that smile again.
“One more day,” Jamie said. He hoped he was lying.
He hoped he was going to meet with his sister for lunch that day.