Chapter Text
It’s gone past sunset and there is someone singing just outside Chris’ window. A soft, warbling voice and gently plucked strings rise above the constant din of the streets below and Chris frowns.
For a distracted minute, Chris thinks his Pandora station has somehow wandered away from his soundtrack playlist, but when he checks, Pandora has gone to sleep anyway, waiting for him to confirm that he’s still around. But the singing continues, muffled just enough that Chris can’t quite catch the words, and the distinct smell of pot has started wafting through the open window.
Chris sighs, hands flexing over the keyboard he hadn’t been typing on. A distraction like this is the last thing he needs. He’d gotten another call the other day from his nervous agent, asking about his progress, and all he has are 76 pages he doesn’t even want to re-read himself, let alone give over to one of the people in charge of his career. He doesn’t need some bored kid outside adding to what he refuses to call writer’s block.
He sits up straight and a twinge races down his creaking back. He really does need to watch his posture. The expensive desk chair he was convinced to buy can only do so much if he sits in it like Gollum.
When Chris sticks his head outside, there is a man sitting on the fire escape of an apartment in the building next door, with a tiny ashtray next to him and an oddly small guitar in his hands.
“Do you think you could keep it down?” Chris calls out, just loud enough to get the man’s attention.
As he looks up, the man’s eyes are luminous in the dying light. “Hey man, you wanna jam?”
Chris blinks and then straightens his shoulders. “No, I don’t want to jam.” The acrid scent of pot is stronger out here and Chris wrinkles his nose.
The man shrugs like it’s really Chris’ loss and plucks out a few notes on what Chris finally recognizes as a ukulele. He hadn’t realized anyone actually played those outside of a college quad. But the G sharp that twangs out, bouncing across the narrow alley to the buildings across the way, strikes its own chord of familiarity.
It’s the same sound he’s been hearing off and on for weeks – the thing that’s been getting under his skin and making his eye twitch.
New York is loud and he knows it. When Chris crossed the country to put some distance between himself and his family, and to close the gap between his work and the world he wanted be a part of, he knew he was leaving quiet behind. In the years he’s been living in this apartment, in this decidedly subdued neighborhood, he’s grown used to the trucks and the people and the sirens that don’t care what time it is. Usually, if he needs to, he can shut his windows against the world and drown the rest out with his headphones.
But not this. It’s too close, too insistent. It’s not some distant annoyance on the street that passes by and around the corner before dissipating. This has been right outside his window – late at night and early in the morning. He doesn’t know why no one else has complained about this before.
“Are you the one who’s been out here making this noise?” Chris asks and the man shoots him a sharp look barely belied only by the softness of his cheeks.
“I play music.”
There are certain things Chris is good at. Baking chocolate chip cookies to just the right golden brown. Getting his mom off the phone before he loses his voice. Remembering which coffee shops to avoid on Sunday mornings if he wants to get in and out of there in less than fifteen minutes.
And knowing just how to hit at someone’s sorest spots with deadly accuracy. Chris swallows back his next biting comments.
“Why are you doing it out here?” He asks instead, gesturing to the fire escape the man is perched on. Chris finally notices that he’s not even wearing any shoes and that his toes are very long. And he has ridiculous hair.
“Well, my roommate doesn’t always appreciate my musical stylings.”
Chris rolls his eyes. “I can’t imagine why not.”
The man with the ukulele on the fire escape says nothing, just blinks, and Chris feels shame tighten in his belly. He really needs to work on the way he talks to people. Too often he blurts out too quickly the things he doesn’t even mean to think, let alone say.
“Well, can you stop? It’s hard to concentrate.” Chris is sure every neighbor on this side of the building and across can hear them and he doesn’t want to be the next one getting yelled at. He’s kept up fairly good relations with his neighbors over the past few years of living here – mostly by ignoring them and being ignored in return.
“You live in the middle of New York City,” the man points out, a smirk landing on the edges of his mouth. “And you’re complaining about a little music being too loud?”
“I am when it’s right outside my window and I’m trying to work.” Trying and failing, but this guy doesn’t need to know that. Neither does anyone else except for his cat. And Brian doesn’t care what he’s doing most of the time.
The man’s gaze flickers down Chris’ body where he’s leaning out of the window, to the ratty Star Wars t-shirt he’s been wearing the last two days, and his smirk widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“Oh, shut up,” Chris snaps, blush crawling across his cheeks. “I work from home.” He doesn’t have anyone to impress, not in that regard, at least. His cat certainly doesn’t care if he puts on decent clothes or not.
“I said nothing.”
“You didn’t have to.” At least this guy can’t see the coffee stain on the sweat pants he’s also wearing. The ones he’s had since high school and are so worn at the hems they’re almost embarrassing. Laundry is on his to-do list. Somewhere. Somewhere after getting his head out of his ass and finishing his goddamn book. So…never.
“I have work to do,” Chris states, not directed entirely at the man. “Think you can keep it down? And stop smoking right outside my window.”
The guy shrugs and a C minor echoes out, plucked by long fingers against the strings. Chris wishes it sounded awful. “We’ll see.”
Chris huffs and ducks back under the window frame. He considers closing the window, but it’s a nice evening out, a cooler one than it has been and Chris likes the fresher air than what’s been blowing from his AC unit all summer. And besides, he likes being able to hear some life outside his apartment. It makes him feel a somewhat less like a cave-person during the weeks he hardly leaves at all.
He’d never anticipated becoming an author and he’d certainly never planned for the days when he sat at his computer morning until night, forgetting that the world was carrying on past the edges of his desk. When he thinks about it now, he can’t imagine doing anything else.
Chris is standing close enough to the still-open window that he can hear the creaking and groaning of metal as a weight shifts before the shuffle-slide of another window closing.
He rolls his shoulders and turns around, back to his living room. It strikes him then how dark his little apartment has grown as the hours slipped by while he was staring fruitlessly at his computer screen. A flick of a switch brings up the warm light of a floor lamp and Chris glances around.
He’s been living in this apartment for going on three years and he realizes how little he has to show for it. The beige walls are suddenly distressingly blank. Framed pictures sit propped against he walls, waiting to be hung on hooks. Bookshelves are left haphazardly half-filled with packed boxes waiting at the base. His desk is the most lived-in part of his home, an organized disaster of tea mugs and notepads and Post-Its scribbled with notes. The apartment has a spare room meant to be an office, but the windows are too small and Chris had directed the movers to set up the heavy, old-fashioned desk in the living room, near the window where fresh air would ease across his desk.
A corkboard still hangs in the unused office, with the supposed timeline of his novel sketched out and pinned up on color-coded note cards. He goes in there sometimes, to stare at the story he’s supposed to be writing – the one that’s supposed to make up for the one he already wrote.
Chris runs his hands through his hair. He knows he won’t be able to get anything else done tonight, even without the twanging of music or the stench of pot invading his apartment. Not that he was working much to begin with. His cat is asleep on a pillow on the couch when Chris collapses down on it with a heaving sigh. Brian doesn’t even stir or open one discontented eye at him.
Chris looks out the window and thinks about the guy on the fire escape.
***
When Chris was younger wanted to be an astronaut because he saw a PBS special about the Apollo 13 disaster and thought he could have done better.
And then his sister died. After that his dreams fell much closer to the earth.
Books came when his parents left, disappearing into their grief for long, cold months. And writing followed when the pre-imagined fantasies weren’t enough any more. The worlds weren’t right; they didn’t sing the way they were supposed to. The heroes weren’t the ones he’d imagined with his sister. But he’d missed his chance without ever having known something was there for him to take. He’d have to write the words down for himself if he couldn’t write them for her.
The first book bled itself out of him in months, words spilling across the pages, dropping like November rain. When he thinks about it now, he worries it was a fluke.
His second book. Well, lightning doesn’t always strike twice.
***
Barely two days later he hears it again, a song being played just outside his window, and this time someone is humming along. He thinks to block it out with headphones, determined to keep pretending like he’s writing, but the idea that he should have to change what he was doing because of some asshole makes him bristle. This is his home, his space he pays for, and he shouldn’t have to fight for it. Not more than he’s already fighting himself.
At least the guy next door has the decency to look mildly guilty when Chris leans out of his window to glare at him.
“Do you mind?” Chris snaps.
“Not at all,” the man grins as his fingers continue their slow movements against the strings. He has a guitar this time, instead of that ukulele, but he still looks ridiculous with his mess of hair and his dark stubble and the fact that he’s sitting on a fire escape in the middle of the city like that’s not completely weird. Or dangerous. Who knows when the last time those things were checked for structural integrity.
“Seriously, I’m trying to work.”
The man shrugs. “Then work.”
“This is a little distracting.”
For some reason that make’s the guy light up, eyes going bright and teeth white as he smiles with interest. “So I got your attention?”
Chris stutters on his breath. “I. No. I mean, yes, but because you’re right here. It’s kind of hard to ignore.”
The guy seems inordinately pleased with himself. Chris is somewhat familiar with the look – it’s the same one he remembers playing on his sister’s face whenever she got away with something Chris got blamed for.
“Cool,” he says, grinning and slipping his fingers across the strings. The notes of it sing off the brick walls, echoing across the narrow alley, and Chris suddenly wonders if anyone is watching them. There’s very little privacy when the world lives so close.
“No, it’s not cool. It’s annoying,” Chris stresses. “Can’t you, you know, do that inside? Somewhere that’s not next to my window?”
The man’s eyebrows twitch. “I don’t think you own this space.”
Chris breathes in sharply. The windowsill is rough beneath his palms and the man’s eyes are very intense. “I’m not saying that. I’m trying to ask nicely here if you would-”
“Nicely?” The guy scoffs. “Before you called it noise. That’s not very nice.”
“It is noise!” Chris shrinks back from his own voice, too loud in the late afternoon, and the words are all wrong anyway. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
But the guy is already standing up, clutching his guitar in one big hand and turning away. “Yeah, sure,” he mutters and then he’s gone, crawling back through his window and into his own apartment.
Chris sighs, hanging his head against the guilt that surges up his throat, before shuffling back to his living room, bypassing his desk for the soft cushions of his couch.
He’s never been quite adept at talking to people, not the way he wants to be. Invariably he says something stupid or the words don’t come out quite right, somehow just left of what he really wants to say, and he ends up looking like an insensitive, thoughtless dick. The words he wants to use are often half a step behind the ones he’s already said. It’s part of why he writes, he thinks. He has the chance to edit.
After his first book came out, and after they realized it was selling, his agent had him do a book tour across the country. Nothing huge, just the major cities, but Chris spent the entire time in a blind panic. The awkwardness of an empty table set up just for him, a line of people waiting for his signature. His agent has rehearsed with him what to say, how to make things personal, but short enough to keep the line moving, but each day had been a blur. All Chris remembers is mumbling gratitude and shaking hands and hoping that he wasn’t making a fool of himself in front of each person.
There was no way to explain to the people buying his book that he’d written it for his sister. Those words were beyond the scope of a 20-second interaction. There was no way to truly tell a girl wearing a shirt that his sister had once owned how much he appreciated her buying the book and coming to see him in person.
“I like your shirt,” he’d said to the girl, choking on it, remember that same shirt stuffed in a laundry basket and folded in a drawer. “Thanks for coming.” The girl had smiled like it had been enough, taking the signed book into her arms, but Chris knows it hadn’t been. He should have said more, but he couldn’t. It’s always later his tongue finds the words to use.
And now he has this neighbor, this guy who lives just a breath away, and Chris couldn’t find the right thing to say to him either.
He drags a pillow over his face, wrapping his arms around it to muffle his frustrated groan.
***
It’s not like Chris doesn’t have friends. He does. Monday night he goes out to a late show in SoHo with someone he met in college and reconnected with the year before. Thursday he hangs out with some friends in the East Village and drinks way too much wine and has to take a taxi home. The doorman smirks at him when he drags his ass out of the cab and stumbles over nothing and Chris leans his forehead against the cool metal of the elevator as he rides up to the fifth floor.
Sunday he gets coffee with his editor because he doesn’t have that many friends in the city.
Sera meets him at a café on 2nd and when she walks in the door she brings a swirl of fall leaves with her. Chris has always admired her way of making an entrance, even if, as of late, she tends be carrying bad news with her.
“Christopher,” she says, sitting down across the tiny table from him.
“Seraphina.”
She rolls her eyes as she crosses her legs. “Must you?”
Chris just smirks and pushes a cup of coffee towards her.
“For me?” She asks, taking the mug.
“No.”
Her lipstick leaves a red stain on the porcelain. “Thanks. So, what do you need from me? Or want?”
“Can’t I just want to enjoy the pleasure of your company this fine Sunday morning?”
The sky is a pregnant grey and it’s been trying to rain since the night before. Gusts of wind send dead leaves skittering across the pavement and it’s the kind of day Chris knows will last for a week.
“You’ve never been a good liar,” Sera chides and Chris cannot deny that.
Chris sighs and leans back, shifting. The chairs in this café are not his favorite. The backs are too straight and he can never quite get comfortable, but the coffee is good and the pastries even better, and it makes up for the rest.
“I don’t know…” Anything. “What to do about the book,” he admits on a rush of breath. It’s enough of the truth. When’d he texted Sera to meet him he hadn’t really had a plan, not reason for this that he’d admitted to himself.
“I figured as much.” Sera pokes him with the toe of her boot underneath the table. “Have you made any progress at all?”
Last week he wrote a chapter. It took him five days and on the sixth he deleted every word of it. He has no backup.
“No.”
Sera rests her chin on her palm and stares at him until Chris is squirming uncomfortably in his seat. “Okay, so talk to me about it.” There’s a reason she’s still his editor.
“I don’t know. I think I’m…” A failure. A waste. A fraud. “…afraid.”
“Of what?”
Chris pushes his hands through his hair. “That it’s going to be the second book all over again. And it’s stopping me from even starting.”
The astounding, wholly unexpected success of his first book had been a baffling surprise. He’s written it with no hope, no expectation, no plan at all. He hadn’t even thought of it as a book. His sister was gone and her body buried and all he had left was the story they never finished telling each other.
But he’d turned a chapter in as his senior thesis because he’d been too absorbed in his writing for his actual schoolwork. Classes don’t stop for grief. Part of him had expected to be expelled with just weeks left until graduation, or at least told he’d failed his seminar and would have to take it again in the fall. No part of him considered his advisor would have a sister who worked at a publishing house. And no part of him ever anticipated a call from an agency in New York City asking to speak to one Christopher Colfer.
Second star to the right dreams were for other people, people with whole families and obvious choices to make.
But she’d called, and Chris had answered.
“You know what I’m going to tell you,” Sera says.
“To shut up and write?”
“Yes, because it’s my project too,” she reminds him. “Your successes are my successes and your failures are my fault too.”
It’s a thing they don’t much talk about – how he hadn’t taken her advice, her guidance during the second novel, too assured of his own capabilities to turn an ear towards the woman who helped him get where he is. He’ll apologize to her one day, when the words mean something more than just I’m sorry.
“But more importantly,” Sera continues. “It’s okay to be afraid. This business is a fucking minefield and now you know it. So many come through with a great story under their arm, get a pile of money and a lot of praise, and are never heard from again. Because deep down they’re afraid. They’re afraid they can’t do it again, can’t recreate the thing that made they loved. And they’re right. They can’t. You can’t. It can’t be recreated. Never. And it shouldn’t be. You can only write a book once. The trick is to figure out the next story you want to tell and find the way to tell that story.”
Chris looks up from the napkin he’s slowly shredding. “And what if I only had the one story in me?”
It was a good one, he thinks. And his sister would have loved it. Whatever he knows and doesn’t know, it’s one of the few things he’s certain of.
The look Sera levels at him from across the table is his dad and his Pee-Wee soccer coach and his second grade teacher who taught him cursive. “You know that’s not true.”
Chris swallows and does not think of the document open on his laptop at home.
***
It’s another week or so of writing, editing, deleting, and re-writing and Chris is seriously considering getting a typewriter, or even just a pad of paper and pen to see if that makes a difference at all. When a low, dull-toned clanging starts up – like someone tapping against metal – Chris isn’t exactly surprised to see who it is.
He’s sitting on the fire escape, beer in hand while his legs dangle over the side, feet aiming six stories down. Chris hates that he has to crane his neck to look up at this guy who lives one floor up in the building next door.
The man taps his beer bottle against the metal railing of the escape and that same low clanging rings out, poignant and obnoxious at the same time.
Chris blinks and forces himself not to smile. “So, now you’re playing drums over there?”
“I’ve always played drums,” the guy counters and his amusement is palpable.
“You know what I mean.”
“Do you want a beer?” He asks.
“No, thank you,” Chris demurs, trying not to be thrown by the question. “I’m working.”
The guy makes this noise – this sound that hovers somewhere between mocking disbelief and mirth – and Chris wrinkles his nose.
“I am,” he says, more emphatically than he intends, but probably more for his benefit than his neighbor’s.
“Of course you are.”
Chris opens his mouth to tell this guy to fuck off in gentler terms, but he finds he has no idea what he really wants to say. Because this guy isn’t wrong in his completely unsubtle insinuation. Chris wasn’t working. Not really. Sitting in front of a computer listlessly tapping at keys and refreshing his Twitter feed doesn’t count as working.
“What’s your name?” Chris asks instead. He has to have something to call this guy that isn’t this guy.
“Darren,” he says, tipping his beer towards Chris. “At your service. And you are?”
“Chris. Colfer,” he adds, like it makes a difference. He doesn’t except Darren to recognize it.
Darren repeats his name and the sound of it rolling off his tongue does not make Chris shiver.
“What are you doing out here?”
“My roommate’s got a girl over.”
Chris blinks, looks between Darren and the window behind him. “So, you’re just… waiting?”
Darren shrugs and then pauses like something has caught his attention. He twists and cranes back to look through the window. “Oh, wait. No. They’re done.”
Chris fumbles for something to say – mouth opening and closing in what he’s sure is a comically stupid look – and then he laughs. This kid – Darren – is sitting outside on a fire escape drinking a beer while he roommate gets the run of the place to have sex. Either Darren is the best roommate a guy could hope for, or he’s incredibly weird. Chris isn’t entirely certain that both scenarios aren’t true.
Darren laughs too and Chris is struck by the odd notion to invite Darren inside. It comes from nowhere, but his brain is spinning on the thought of Darren in his living room, sitting on his sofa, looking at his things. What they would talk about he has no idea. He doesn’t invite people over; he doesn’t make small talk. But for a moment he could so easily say it – could ask.
But he doesn’t.
“You could come over some time,” Darren says before lifting the bottle to his lips. His eyes are bright and Chris does not watch his throat as he swallows.
“Thanks, but it looks like there isn’t even room in there for you let alone me.”
Darren laughs. “Eh, it’s bigger than it looks.”
Chris presses his lips together. “I’m sure.” Darren just smirks and takes another drink and Chris kind of wishes Darren would offer him a beer again so he could accept it this time.
“So what do you do?” Darren asks and it’s the kind of question Chris remembers from the last time he attempted something like dating.
“I’m a writer.” It still sounds so utterly implausible when he says it that the word sticks in his mouth.
“Cool,” nods Darren. “Anything I’d know?”
Chris shrugs. He’s never quite sure who might know his books, let alone read them. The signings were decidedly skewed towards one demographic, though when he thinks about it, the girls who showed up would have been in his sister’s cohort. Not for the first time he wonders what she would have thought about her brother making money off their shortened childhood.
“Probably not,” he says.
Darren just hums and doesn’t ask anything more about it. “Well, since the roomie is done, I’m going to go back inside before I freeze my balls off.”
Chris hadn’t noticed the cold, only the pink in Darren’s cheeks and the way his nails didn’t look bitten to the quick like Chris’ own. It’s his job to notice the details, is what he tells himself when he makes himself look away from the veins in Darren’s hands.
“Yeah. Okay.”
“The offer still stands,” Darren says as he rises. “If you ever wanna come over and jam or hang.” Darren pushes his window open enough to crawl through. “Or work, you know where I live.”
“Yeah,” Chris repeats, watching Darren slip back into his apartment, because what he thinks he might want to say gets stuck somewhere in his chest.
***
The next day Chris wakes up at 7:05 am without his alarm and writes three pages he doesn’t hate.
And then he does his laundry.
***
Maybe it’s a cliché, but Chris likes to walk around Central Park when he gets a touch of cabin fever. It’s not so much for inspiration but fresh perspective. Trees and grass and water instead of the blank beige walls of his apartment and the crushing obligation of his work waiting for him.
He’s seen dozen and dozens of buskers in the Park over the years. Some are good, others still learning how to capture an audience. And there are always those guys who are, well, just left of talented.
Chris doesn’t listen to his headphones on his walks, preferring instead to catch snippets of conversations that might eventually make their way into his dialogue. He almost misses him, the notes of his song fading into the background as he eavesdrops on a mischievous elderly man telling a young girl that she can have a sweet treat if she doesn’t tell her mom and dad about it when they get home later.
But it’s Darren, standing on the edge of the winding pathway in a brightly colored shirt and no jacket with a guitar in his hands and a case at his feet. His hair flops over his forehead as he plays some upbeat tune and Chris gets it. He does. There’s something stupendously, effortlessly charming about him. Some ineffable quality that makes him look approachable playing 90s pop hits for change rather than an asshole who needs to get a job.
There are pink-cheeked girls gathered around him, standing at the front of the gathered crowd, and Chris gets that too.
When Darren looks away from them, drawn by something, and sees Chris standing there, his whole face lights up, but his fingers don’t miss a note.
An odd feeling settles in Chris’ stomach, rooting his feet to the pavement even though his legs want to take him away. He doesn’t know this guy – not really. He’s one of thousands living in Chris’ little corner of the city. He’s watched musicians play before – scruffy buskers and polished performers and Broadway stars alike. This is no different. This man is no different. And yet Chris cannot look away. He’s sure he knows the song, but he hardly hears the words. He is stuck still watching Darren play – the rhythm of his hands and the joy on his wide-open and honest face as he reaches for a higher note. He is not the best Chris has ever heard and yet he doesn’t want it to end.
If he closes his eyes he can see Darren center stage in front of a packed house opening night. And if he blinks again he sees a young troubadour playing for a royal court. If nothing else, Darren has found his way into Chris’ imagination.
“Can I play you a song, good sir?” Darren calls out and Chris’ flushes a violent red as the crowd turns to look at him.
“I don’t have any change,” he answers.
“This one is on me.” Darren winks, he fucking winks.
“You don’t have to do that,” Chris wants to say, but Darren has already broken into another song.
He sees people – women, men, an old lady in a shawl – dropping money into Darren’s guitar case and he wonders how much he’ll make today. And then he wonders how much Darren makes every day. He doesn’t know if this seemingly fancy-free street musician has a job to pay for that apartment of his or if he’s just another kid in the city living on his parents’ wages. He can see both so clearly. He can see Darren working two jobs to find rent every month – making coffee in the morning and waiting tables at night. And then teaching guitar lessons to wealthy kids on the weekends, all for the chance to do whatever it is he wants to do with his life.
But Chris can also see Darren floating through the city on a trust fund. Sleeping in late and staying out later. Spending his parents’ earnings on tuition for classes he doesn’t attend while he buys drinks for people he doesn’t know. Chris doesn’t know which is closer to the truth.
He waits until Darren catches his eye again to hold a hand up in farewell. Darren exaggerates a pout, but does not stop playing while Chris turns away. It’s a long walk home, but Chris doesn’t think to take the train.
***
When Chris was younger he loved Halloween most of all.
Thanksgiving and Christmas meant family he only saw once a year and names he couldn’t remember, a stress-filled kitchen and food he didn’t want, and an aunt who pinched his cheeks like it was something people really did outside of holiday movies.
And after his sister died, it all got so much worse. The endless sympathy. The eggshells everyone walked on. The way the stilted silences said so much.
But before – before Halloween was the best.
In the years before he knew what writing could do, Halloween was his chance stretch the parts of him that needed more than algebra and geography to be satisfied. He could dress up in whatever costume he wanted and act out whatever story was in his head. He could be whatever he wanted. For that night he wasn’t just Chris. He was more.
But like everything else in his life, Halloween changed too.
When he wakes up that October 31st, he doesn’t remember what day it is. Not right away. There are no decorations about his apartment and it’s not like he’s going to any parties. He sleeps in a little and when he finally rolls out of bed his one consolation to the season is the bag of pumpkin spice coffee he bought from the store. As the smell of it brewing fills the kitchen, Chris leans against the counter and closes his eyes.
He doesn’t miss her every day, not anymore. The soul deep pain of it has faded with the years. But it returns now and again, brought screaming to the surface by the things she touched, the things she loved. Chris hasn’t been able to watch Hocus Pocus since it happened.
He writes a little that day, between pacing the length of his apartment as his cat watches him and staring at the empty stretch of wall that was always supposed to have another bookshelf. He’d had all these plans for his home when he moved on, buoyed by the cash from his book deal and the fat checks rolling in on the sales. The books are there, though, taped up in boxes on the floor where the extra bookcases were intended to go.
But he writes that day. Four pages he doesn’t delete.
If some men measure their lives in coffee spoons, Chris measures his in pages.
The first book came like drowning. Ragging gasping paragraphs that choked him until they were on the page. He hardly remembers writing it, just knows that when it was done he could breathe for the first time since she died. Whatever it was, whatever he did, resonated with people in a way he never understood. But it meant he could move to New York. It was more than enough.
The second book was like skipping stones across a pond. Carefree and easy, but just as fleeting. The reviews were the worst part of the whole thing. That the book didn’t sell hurt his bank account and his pride, but the reviews hurt his soul. Disappointing, they said. Lacking heart, they sighed. A failed attempt at making lightning strike twice, they shrugged. And worse of all he cannot say that they were wrong. He’d written with vanity that time, too assured of his own skill to try the way he could. And it had shown.
But he writes four pages that day and that’s something to celebrate in his own way.
The evening is settling in when Chris hears something shuffling and shifting at his living room window. He frowns, but gets up from the couch, mind racing with all of the possibilities. He knows the smart thing to do would not be to approach a potentially dangerous situation. But he’s five floors up and it’s not like someone is going to Spider-Man up the façade and randomly picked his apartment to rob.
When he pulls the blinds up what he sees is exactly the last thing he expects.
Sitting on the wide ledge he keeps potted flowers on during the spring and summer is a perfectly round and orange pumpkin.
Chris blinks. A face has been carved into the pumpkin with care, if not complete skill, and a candle is burning merrily inside. No matter how ridiculous it is there is only one explanation for this.
Chris throws the window open and leans out, but Darren isn’t perched on the fire escape. Disappointment floods Chris’ belly, but the sight of the pumpkin and its cheerful face makes him smile.
“I know you did this,” he calls out into the night, but no one answers.
He’s careful when he brings the pumpkin inside, not wanting the candle to splutter out. He supposes it would be better to leave it outside, but he wants to enjoy it. It’s been so long since he’s had one.
Chris sits on the couch and stares at the flickering firelight through the pumpkin’s wide, happy grin.
***
At six years old, Chris’ sister tried to fly.
Their backyard had a tall tree with low branches and she’d always had a fascination with birds.
She’d laughed at the emergency room when Chris had told her that the doctor was going to clip her wings when he put the cast on her arm.
But the thud of her body hitting the rain soft ground and the scream that punctuated the late afternoon echoed across the pages of the book Chris wrote more than a decade later.