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Nadia doesn’t look at Alan until the parade has overtaken them and they’re left loitering on the sidewalk with torch and scepter still in hand.
When she sees him, she squints.
There’s something different about him. Maxine would probably say his aura changed color. Ruth would say he had a breakthrough. But in Nadia’s language he just looks… happy. And not drunk happy, but actual happy.
“Alan?” she asks.
It’s a pretty idiotic thing to say – of fucking course it’s Alan. It’s always been Alan, in every loop and timeline and universe. But what she’s really asking is, “Are you my Alan?”
The one who’s hip to the whole dying-over-and-over thing. The one who got crushed by an air conditioner with her. The one who knows her as more than just the lady with cartoon character hair who convinced him not to jump to his death.
In response, Alan looks at her with the same amount of awe and asks, “Nadia?”
And that’s all the proof she needs to wrap her arms around him in the kind of hug she hasn’t given another person in, well, ever. She presses her cheek to his shoulder, and she’s sure it looks ridiculous, but she doesn’t even care.
Alan gives her a squeeze, and it’s absolutely no surprise that he’s a top-notch hugger.
They’re still clamped together when Nadia asks, “What’s with the scarf?”
She feels Alan shrug. “Lizzy’s girlfriend.”
“Ah,” says Nadia. “That checks out.”
They step back and stare at each other. Nadia wonders if her own aura has changed color, and if Alan has noticed.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he tells her in that adorably earnest way of his. “Well, I did see you. But it wasn’t you. It was another you. Please tell me you know what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, yeah,” says Nadia. “Big time.”
It’s not long before they’re walking together, side by side, with no clear destination. Nadia hands her torch off to a confused stranger and lights a cigarette, while Alan uses his scepter as a walking stick.
“We really did it,” he says, bouncing in his sneakers. “We escaped the labyrinth.”
Nadia blows smoke. “I guess that makes me Ariadne.”
“Um,” says Alan. “Why are you Ariadne?”
“Because. I helped you out of it.”
“Yeah, but I also helped you out of it. Why can’t we both be Ariadne?”
“Look, I didn’t wanna have to play the I’m-a-girl card here, but…” Nadia gestures to herself. “Plus, Theseus abandoned Ariadne while she was sleeping. And do you know what you did in the last loop?”
“No. I wasn’t there, remember?”
“Well, I fell asleep while I was keeping an eye on you — you know, to stop you from dying. And when I woke up, you were gone.”
“Wait a minute,” says Alan, stopping to face her. “You fell asleep while you were trying to stop me from killing myself?”
“Cut me some slack here, okay?” Nadia says defensively. “Time loops are fucking exhausting. I still kept you alive, didn’t I?”
Alan sighs. “Okay, but your order of events is wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Theseus abandoned Ariadne after she helped him find his way out of the labyrinth. Not to mention, I didn’t actually abandon you. I’m right here.”
“Yeah, but it’s a metaphor,” Nadia argues. “An allusion. It doesn’t have to be a one-to-one ratio for the symbolism to be there.”
Alan looks pained. “Can we stop with all the literary talk? It just makes me think of Beatrice.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault we ended up in a modern-day myth,” Nadia says as they continue walking. “I’m just trying to unpack all the references here. Like, for example, how I’m Ariadne, and I gave you a clew to find your way out of the labyrinth.”
“You gave me a clue?”
“Not a clue. A clew.”
Alan’s face scrunches up in confusion, and Nadia realizes that she should probably make a more valiant attempt at clarity.
“C-L-E-W. It’s an old-timey word for a ball of string.” She feels a lightbulb go on over her head. “Wait a minute. Ball of string. Cats like balls of string. What if Oatmeal is Ariadne?”
Alan thinks about it. “I don’t know… Isn’t Oatmeal the whole reason you died in the first place? I think he led you into the labyrinth, not out of it.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing about labyrinths,” says Nadia. “The only way out is forward.”
Well, fuck. Ruth would definitely call that a breakthrough.
“How do you know about all this stuff, anyway?” Alan wonders.
“Uh, hello? In case you forgot, I designed a whole game about it.” Another lightbulb, on. “Oh, shit. I guess that means I could be Daedalus.”
“The guy who flew into the sun?”
“That was Icarus, his son. S-O-N. And he didn’t fly into the sun, but he did get too close to it. That’s S-U-N, by the way.”
“Yeah,” says Alan. “I got it.”
“Anyway,” Nadia continues, “Daedalus is most famous for the whole wax wings fiasco, but he also designed the labyrinth. And so did I. Well, I designed a labyrinth.”
“One that even you couldn’t escape,” Alan adds.
“I’ll choose not to be insulted by that, because the same thing almost happened to Daedalus, which only makes it even more fitting.”
Nadia may have told Beatrice that a PhD in literature was totally useless, but she has to admit this is pretty fun. Maybe she should talk to Mike about auditing some classes.
“So who’s the Minotaur in this situation?” asks Alan.
“Horse, obviously.”
“Why is that obvious?”
“His name is Horse, for one. And did you see him tonight? He had fucking antlers.”
“I thought the Minotaur had a bull’s head,” Alan points out. “Bulls have horns, not antlers.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” says Nadia, flicking her cigarette away. “Like I said, it doesn’t have to be a perfect ratio.”
Alan doesn’t seem convinced. “I don’t think it’s as literal as that.”
“Okay. So what’s your theory?”
Alan suddenly stops walking, and Nadia realizes that they’re right outside her building. She didn’t even notice that they were going in that direction.
Damn, maybe Alan is Ariadne.
He’s standing there next to the gate, looking like he’s about to say some real heartfelt shit. Nadia reaches for another cigarette to prepare herself.
“I think we were our own Minotaurs,” Alan says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Or at least, some fucked-up part of ourselves was. And we had to conquer it on our own, like Theseus did, before we could help each other get out. Then we became Ariadne in the other person’s labyrinth. So, really, we were all three of them at once.”
Nadia stares at him, unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. What did she do to deserve this beautiful weirdo as her partner-in-death? She’d write a thank-you note to the universe if she only knew where to send it.
It makes sense, really — an egalitarian approach. After all, she’s known since the halfway point that this story wasn’t hers alone.
Nadia smiles. “Told you we’re the same person.”
“Funny,” Alan says, rolling his eyes. “Hey, so what was the clew you gave me?”
“What?”
“Earlier, you said you gave me a clew to help me find my way out of the labyrinth. What was it?”
“Oh,” says Nadia. She lights her cigarette, stalling. “I don’t know. I made you a promise.”
“A promise?”
“Yeah. A promise. That if you didn’t jump, you wouldn’t be alone.”
Now it’s Alan’s turn to smile. And not just any smile, but a you-were-actually-sincere, I’m-so-proud-of-you, look-how-far-you’ve-come smile. It doesn’t happen often, but she knows it when she sees it.
On just about anyone else, it would look smug. But Alan pulls it off.
“Aaanyway,” Nadia says, hoping to change the subject. “I guess I better head inside. I gotta remember to put up the white sails in the morning. By which I mean, I should pay Ruth a visit and make sure she doesn’t die in a gas explosion.”
“Oh,” says Alan, suddenly taking on the appearance of a lost puppy. “Right. Good idea.”
It’s weird to be parting ways voluntarily, and on good terms. Nadia half expects a bolt of lightning to come down and whisk them back to their respective bathrooms. But it would appear they’re done dying for now.
Alan gives a little nod. “Good night, Nadia.”
He starts to walk away, and Nadia thinks that’s pretty fucking anticlimactic. They just clawed their way out of a shared cosmic nightmare of epic proportions, and they’re going to end it like a bad date?
“Hey, Alan!” she calls.
He turns around, eyebrows raised expectantly.
There are a million things Nadia could say. How she’s glad he’s alive. How she couldn't have done it without him. How much she loved being the Ariadne to his Theseus, and vice versa.
But all of those sound too final – like they’re never going to see each other again. And that’s one part of the myth Nadia is determined not to copy.
Eventually, she shrugs. “You free on Thursday?”
Alan smiles again. It’s a good look for him.
“Sure,” he says. “Whenever that happens.”
They wave goodbye to each other like a couple of dorks, and Nadia watches him until he disappears around the corner.
Forward, she thinks to herself as she opens the door. Always forward.