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Myka trudged up the stairs toward her room. Steve trudged behind her. Their flight from Minneapolis had been three hours late, so here they were, finally trudging to bed—their own beds, at least, and Myka was certainly thankful for that—at two in the morning… “Bad enough that it’s two a.m. here,” Myka had groaned to Steve in the car, “but I really do feel like it’s much, much later. Much, much later.”
“I can’t disagree with you,” Steve had yawned.
She barely had the strength to wave at him, could barely even see him in the dark hallway as he went into his own room; she turned to her door and opened it, went inside, dropped her bag, didn’t bother to flip the light switch. She would stumble into the bathroom and brush her teeth, then stumble into bed, and everything else could wait till morning, or later morning, or—
—and then she was flat on her back, with her face smarting, because she’d run smack into something, something solid enough to knock her down… she wondered if she’d gone into the wrong room, if she had maybe got herself turned around somehow—but then she heard a soft “Myka? Is that you?” And she was pretty sure that was Helena’s voice, and if it was Helena’s voice then this had to be her—their—room, and that in turn meant—“Oh my god, Helena, you’re here? You said you couldn’t make it!” and she scrambled to her feet again—and was promptly felled again by—what was she running into?
One of the bedside lamps clicked on, and Myka saw, from her supine position, that she had been knocked down twice by a… door? Yes, a door, standing in the middle of her—their—room, and now from around one side of it, Helena was leaning, wearing what looked to be a very… uh… brief silk robe. Lilac. It was lilac, and Myka would have been happy to forget about the door at that point and just bask in, and do other things with, the fact that Helena had managed to be here for Valentine’s Day, which it was technically not anymore, since it was now two in the morning on the day after Valentine’s Day, but still, here, here in Myka’s—their—room… wearing a very brief silk robe in a color Myka was pretty sure she’d never seen Helena wear before, so it was clearly special…
“Are you all right?” Helena asked.
“I might need a minute,” Myka said. The bridge of her nose was beginning to smart, just a little pulse of pain, but she’d been punched in the face enough times to feel reasonably secure in the knowledge that black eyes were going to decorate her future.
Pete peeked into the room. Myka, from the floor, saw him upside down. “That really didn’t sound like the right kind of commotion,” upside-down Pete said, and then he looked down and saw Myka. “Jesus, Mykes, what happened to you? Did H.G. punch you? H.G., why do you do things like this?”
Helena stepped out from behind the door, and Myka figured that she herself and Pete were now thinking the same thing: that robe was really brief. Helena, oblivious or, probably, indifferent to the effect of her almost-outfit, declared, “You helped me to do this thing! You said it sounded romantic!”
Pete tilted his head at her. “You only ever remember the words that you wanted to hear in the first place. I said it sounded dumb but that Myka would probably think it was romantic because it was you, because she thinks it’s romantic when you boil water.”
“I use the radiant heat of my love for her to do so. Thus it is romantic, thank you very much.”
Myka had been trying to lift her head up, but now she let it fall back onto the floor. From that vantage, she now saw an upside-down Claudia in her doorway. Her actual doorway. Claudia said, “I saw the light and heard the voices, so I figured either it was time to meet my maker or it was safe to come in and ask: Did she like it?” She raised her voice. “Jinksy, come on! We’re finding out!”
Steve appeared a moment later, but he was grumbling. “I don’t want to find out. I want to go to sleep, and I bet Myka does too. Didn’t you get my text? I told you to take it down, because we were going to be so late!”
“That isn’t what autocorrect thought you wanted to say,” Claudia told him. “Just how big and clumsy are your thumbs?”
Steve held out his thumbs. “They’re not that big, are they?” he asked.
Pete said, “Beats me, Fonzie. I’ve heard size doesn’t matter.”
Helena said, “They don’t seem disproportionately large.”
Myka pointed upwards. “That door does. Or it did when I ran into it.”
“It’s Gigantor the Door!” Claudia enthused. She stepped over Myka, to the door, and smoothed her hand down its surface. “It also has six panels, which is very cool and pricey. I know that because I’m the one who put the order in for H.G.”
“The order,” Myka repeated.
Claudia nodded. “Online. With the manufacturer. You don’t think you can just walk into dinky little Univille Hardware and get a door like this, do you?”
Myka said, “That is not something that I’ve thought about extensively. Or at all.”
“We did have a hard time figuring out how to make sure it wouldn’t fall over.” Claudia poked at it gingerly, then pushed harder. Nothing happened. “Although we were more concerned about you opening it than you running into it, but I think we should all pat ourselves on the back anyway, because look! Still standing!”
“I’m not standing,” Myka complained. “And I’m going to have a black eye. Probably two. I just know it.”
Pete looked down at her face. “Maybe not from running straight into a door. Hey, but, you ran gay into it, so maybe you will.”
“Hey!” Steve and Myka said at the same time.
Helena knocked on the frame of the door. “If we could focus on the issue at hand. My symbolism is being lost!”
“My consciousness was almost lost,” Myka said, “so I feel your pain. No, wait, that’s my pain I’m feeling. Because I ran into a door.”
“A big-ass six-paneled door,” Claudia supplied.
Myka said, “Yes, ordered online from the manufacturer. I got that part.”
“You want more specs?” Claudia asked. She patted the monstrosity again. “This is a pretty sweet door.”
“It wasn’t very sweet to me. I mean, okay, it seems really really solid, but—”
“That’s because the idea is that we could replace your regular old door with it,” Claudia told her.
That seemed to Myka to be the most reasonable thing anyone had said so far. “Why didn’t you just do that?”
“H.G. thought that was too major,” Pete said. “That we shouldn’t do something like that without asking you first.”
“So instead of putting a door in my doorway, you stood it up in the middle of my—our—room. Which is less major.”
Pete grinned. “Do you know how we could do that, though? I mean make it stand up in the middle of your room? It’s because it’s…”
Claudia clapped and said, “Wait for it…”
Pete, in ecstasy: “Pre-hung! And if you don’t think that made me laugh for days, you’ve never met me.”
“Some days I wish I’d never met you,” Myka said. “Honestly, some days I wish I’d never met any of you.”
Pete clucked at her. “Now you’re just being mean. H.G. really has been at this for weeks, so you could give her a little sugar.”
“I’m generally perfectly happy to do that, but right now I’m trying to figure out why there’s a door standing in my room.”
“Our room,” Helena said. She sounded put out, which Myka found completely unfair, since she was upright and wouldn’t be developing any black eyes. She should have been a little more forgiving about possessive pronouns… but Myka tried. She said, “Right. Sorry.”
That clearly wasn’t sufficient as far as Helena was concerned, because she uttered words that rarely went together for her as a sentence: “Pete isn’t wrong.” Pete started doing a small victory shuffle, and she went on, “Also, do you have any idea of the machinations we have had to undertake to ensure that I would be here when you saw this? Do you have any idea?” Myka figured it was better to keep quiet, so she just moved her head back and forth against the floor. Helena declared, “I even had to ask Artie for his help!”
Claudia snickered. “And oh, you should have seen both their faces. Lemon-sucking convention.”
“I still don’t understand why,” Myka said.
Helena was now completely wound up. “You don’t understand why I would want to be with you on Valentine’s Day?”
“I don’t understand why you wanted to watch me see a door!” She sat up halfway. It was a struggle.
“If you would think for a moment about the symbolic interpretations of doors!”
Myka snorted. It made her nose hurt. “Well, they’re things that you close and lock. Sometimes to keep people from putting weird stuff in your room.”
“How does a door qualify as weird stuff?” Helena demanded.
“When it’s in the middle of my room!”
“Our room!”
“A door!” Myka protested, but it was halfhearted, because Helena was starting to get that look to her, that hot and bothered look, and Myka found that look extremely compelling, regardless of what she was hot and bothered about.
“Pre-hung!” Pete shouted.
“Please stop,” Myka said. She moved to the side, so that she could sit back against her dresser. That had the admittedly positive effect of giving her a clearer view of Helena’s attire. If you could call it that… if it was really silk, then no silkworms had had to work overtime on the project. And regardless of this door situation, Myka was really not so addled that she couldn’t appreciate the fact that some silkworms decided to knock off early on a Friday…
“You know what we had to buy separately?” Pete said.
“No…” Myka said, still thinking of what the silkworms hadn’t done.
“The knob,” he said, in a salacious whisper.
Helena shook her head. “I don’t believe that helps me in the symbolism arena.” She was calming down. Myka would have pouted, but she thought it would probably hurt her face.
Pete shrugged. “As far as I can tell, the door’s not helping you all that much either. I told you: everybody wants candy on Valentine’s Day.”
“Myka refuses to admit that she eats sugar! And she likes interpreting things!”
Claudia said, “Your actual point, H.G., was that she likes interpreting literature. I’m pretty sure one of us said you’d be better off getting her a book.”
“That was me,” Steve said.
“Steve, I love you,” Myka told him.
“Thanks. I’m pretty fond of you, too.”
Helena—joking, but with a slightly surly edge—said, “Perhaps the two of you should be valentines, then. If your relationship is so amiable.”
Steve sat down next to Myka. He gestured up at the others. “Those guys nearly had a three-way fistfight about whether the door should be solid wood or some special recycled molded solid-core thingy.”
Steve’s shoulder looked very comfortable right then, so Myka leaned her head against it. She said, “I almost hate to ask what the verdict was, because I’m pretty sure Pete’s planning on saying the word ‘wood’ about a thousand times.”
Pete pointed down at her. “You,” he said, “are a killjoy. And anyway we went with the special solid-core thingy, and do you know why? Huh, do you?” And just like that, he was an excited puppy again. Myka shook her head. Pete crowed, “Because it’s practically soundproof!”
Claudia nodded. “H.G. found that really persuasive.”
Helena faked a sheepish look… it was halfway decent, particularly for someone who Myka knew didn’t actually feel uncomfortable at all about being overheard.
Pete said, “Now all we have to do is get the rest of your walls made out of this stuff, and we can finally throw away the earplugs.”
“I usually just put my headphones on,” Claudia said.
“I chant mantras,” Steve said, looking like he’d much rather be chanting one now.
“I want to die,” Myka groaned, because Helena could be as exhibitionist as she wanted, but that didn’t change how Myka felt about it all. (All right: it did slightly alter how Myka felt about it all.)
“Well,” Helena said, philosophically, “they do call it the little death, don’t they.”
Myka scowled, which made her sinuses throb. “Right now I’ll take the bigger one, thanks.”
“I bet you would,” Pete snickered.
Myka ignored him. “I almost did. Because somebody, for Valentine’s Day, got me a big, white, six-paneled thing that tried to kill me.”
“It isn’t white,” Claudia said quickly. “Hey, H.G., can I tell her what color it is?”
Helena said, “I really think it would be more appropriate if I tell her. I discovered that there is a song by that name, and I had been imagining that if the topic came up, I might play it. I mean, despite all appearances to the contrary, this was meant to be romantic.” She crouched down next to Steve and said, “Would you mind terribly if I took your place?” He smiled, shook his head, and moved out of her way. Helena looked at Myka. “Are you really in that much pain?” she asked.
“Not anymore,” Myka said. It was the truth, because Helena was touching her face gently, and her hands were just warm enough to be soothing, and if Myka was not completely sold on the idea of all of this being symbolic, it actually was starting to feel a little romantic… she ran her hand up Helena’s arm, just to find out if she’d been right about the silk. She had.
“Cue to leave,” Steve said. And he did.
“Yeah,” Pete sighed. “When they start getting all handsy, it’s time to find the ol’ earplugs.”
“Headphones,” Claudia agreed.
And from Steve, in the hallway, Myka heard a loud “Om!”
When they were all gone, Helena said, “We haven’t seen each other in twelve days. Would you kiss me so that I won’t die of wishing you would? We can talk about the door after that.”
“I think that would be fine,” Myka told her, and it was fine, fine to be kissing sideways, sitting here on the floor, fine to be feeling silk under her hands, fine to no longer be counting how many days it had been, even somehow fine to be aware of a looming presence in the middle of the room. Myka was happy to stay in the kiss, to let it rise and ebb, until Helena pulled back and opened her eyes. Then Myka said, “Okay. Why?”
Helena said, with a schoolmarmish tilt to her head, “I told you. It’s symbolic!”
“Of…?”
Still pointedly: “You have no interpretational thoughts whatsoever?”
“Severe” Helena wasn’t quite as alluring as comically overwrought Helena, but she had her charms… “Honestly,” Myka said, “I’m interpreting that door as kind of… out to get me. But after that kiss, most of my interpretational thoughts involve what you’re wearing. Or not really wearing. Or almost wearing.”
That made Helena laugh. “Those thoughts aren’t unwelcome; after all, what I’m almost wearing is part of your present. And I can see why your thoughts about the door might be the tiniest bit uncharitable at present. But you can see, can’t you, what I intended? You can see it?”
“Not with my eyes swollen shut, no.” But Myka smiled. She covered Helena’s mouth with hers and started thinking more thoughts about what she was almost wearing.
When the kiss ended, Helena said, as if she’d been interrupted midsentence, “—you would have opened the door—the door I gave you! And there I would have been.”
Myka argued, “I would have opened the door to the room anyway. And there you would have been.”
“But you wouldn’t have apprehended the symbolism.”
“You could have told me about it later. And I wouldn’t have gotten a black eye. Or two.”
Helena asked, mildly, “Why didn’t you turn on the light?”
Myka shrugged. “I didn’t think I needed to. I thought I knew where everything was.”
A pause, as if Helena was waiting for Myka to say something. Then Helena sighed and said, “Well, that’s rather symbolic as well, isn’t it. I have upset things.”
“I like running into you. The door, less so.” Helena just raised a skeptical eyebrow, and Myka said, “You’re annoying. You’re right, but you’re also annoying. Okay, Miss Symbolism. You win. We have the new door installed, and we… I don’t know. Move the furniture around? So it looks different in here?”
“You really won’t mind that?”
“Of course I’ll mind. And I’ll trip over the bed constantly if it’s in a different place. But isn’t that the point?”
Helena smiled widely. “Now that is a benefit I hadn’t considered.”
“What?”
“You tripping and falling into bed. Constantly.”
Myka kissed her again. “If only you were in that bed more often, so we really could take advantage of all that tripping and falling…” But thinking of Helena not in the bed made something click in her brain. She said, “Wait.”
“Wait? I thought we might try tripping and falling into bed.”
“Just a minute. You’ve given me my… ah… present? So I should give you yours. Keep in mind that I thought you wouldn’t be here till next week, okay? So it isn’t wrapped, but I guess I can just… hand it to you.” Myka reached up to the top of the dresser, and felt around until—yes, that, at least, was exactly where it was supposed to be, exactly where she’d left it. She brought her hand down and held out to Helena her small—comparatively minuscule—gift.
Helena took it. She said, “Thank you.” She squinted at the gadget now settled in the palm of her hand. “What is it? I see a small screen and a ringlike… attaching device.” Then she looked offended. “You bought me a telephone that is meant to be attached to my person? Now that is simply insulting! You know very well that none of my telephones have been lost through any fault of mine!”
Myka goggled at her. “That’s just… you’re just lying.”
“I’m defining ‘fault’ narrowly, and every mobile-phone disappearance falls outside that narrow definition. That isn’t lying.”
Myka knew she had no prayer of winning that argument. “It isn’t a phone; phones aren’t that little. It’s a keychain. Turn it on.”
“Why? What does it do? Open one’s door for one?”
“I wish,” Myka said. “Would’ve come in handy a little while ago.”
“Fine,” Helena said. She pushed the small power button. She blinked as the tiny screen came to life. “That is a photograph of Pete. For Valentine’s Day, you’ve given me a keychain that features a photograph of Pete? I would say you were having symbolic fun at my expense, but given that we’ve established that you didn’t know about the door, I don’t see how you could have—”
“Keep watching!”
“Fine,” Helena said again. “Oh, I see, it’s several photographs. Claudia… and Steve. And Leena. And Jane and Irene and Dr. Calder. And… Artie?”
“It seemed important to have everybody represented.”
Now Helena was pouting. “But where are you?”
“God, you are so impatient. Just wait a minute!”
“Trailer? Really? And the ferret? Where precisely do you think you rank on my list of—oh, there you are. Now it’s a Valentine’s Day present.” Myka warmed to her tone, because black eyes aside, this was the woman who had made elaborate Valentine’s Day plans… plans that involved not quite wearing silk… “And that’s us. The both of us… several of the both of us.”
Myka cleared her throat. “Apparently Claudia and Pete have been taking a lot of us since we… you know. Because they say we’re… you know.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do. They say it all the time.”
“Perhaps, but I’d like you to say it.”
Myka sighed. “Disgustingly cute.”
“Mmm…” Helena smirked. “You might accurately be characterized as disgustingly cute when goaded into saying the words ‘disgustingly cute.’”
And when her mouth said it, it sounded like something one might want to be, but… “It wasn’t one of my life goals, to have my coworkers, or honestly anybody, think I’m cute,” Myka complained.
“Disgustingly,” Helena reminded her.
“Any variant.”
“Nothing says that is all we are, correct? Perhaps we might be cute—disgustingly or otherwise—for at-home consumption and then be something else again in the wider world.”
“When you put it that way…”
They kissed in that way that was different now, different despite all of Myka’s reservations, which she did still have, and all of Helena’s reservations, which Myka knew she still had. But things between them were different now, and with every new thing, every stupid door and keychain and effort, large or small, they changed again, carrying her and Helena farther away from the past, and settling them more firmly in a present that had a future.
Yet still a problematic future, a future in which they would soon, again, have to start counting the days since they had seen each other. “I wish you hadn’t had to move heaven and earth to be here for Valentine’s Day,” Myka said.
“I am working on that,” Helena told her. “Eventually Jane and I will wear the rest of the Regents down, and my position will be redefined again. For example, Claudia-as-eventual-caretaker may need an amanuensis of some sort. Trust me when I say that the status quo will not remain so.”
“I’ll still be an agent, though,” Myka sighed, “and things will still happen. Flights will still be delayed. I wish I hadn’t missed seeing you on Valentine’s Day itself.” She tried to give Helena a wistful smile, but that made her face hurt. “If only because then I might not have run into a door.”
“Twice,” Helena said. Then she made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a chortle.
Myka knew better, this time, than to scowl. “You are the worst and I can’t stand you.”
“And yet… in the pictures… we both look—dare I say it?—somewhat happy.”
“Just because I love you doesn’t mean I can stand you.” She shook her head. She looked at the door again. “Okay. So what color is it?”
Helena said, “Given that the sun’s on the verge of rising, it isn’t entirely appropriate, but—moonglow, they call it. Will you still be my valentine if, in the interest of everyone being able to get at least a short nap, I decline to put music on right now?”
Myka countered, “Will you still be my valentine if, in a few hours, I look like a raccoon?”
“Given that it will have been largely my fault, of course. But…”
“But what?”
“Will you let me take a photograph for the keychain?” This was asked with truly annoying eagerness.
“Absolutely not.”
“Spoilsport.” Then Helena said, in her casual-not-casual voice, “Why a keychain, incidentally?”
Myka said, “Honestly? It occurred to me, and then for some reason I couldn’t shake it. It’s not hugely ostentatious, and I mean I know you could have pictures on your phone, but you do lose your phone constantly, and I don’t think you’ve ever lost your keys.”
“Is it also perhaps the tiniest bit symbolic?”
Myka pretended to consider. “Well, it’s no pre-hung, six-panel, moonglow-painted soundproof door.”
Helena preened. “True.”
“But it’s something you… carry with you.”
“Yes. And so are you. Always.” Helena stood up. She offered her hand to Myka, who took it and scrambled up too. Helena kept hold of Myka’s hand; she pulled her to face the door. They stood together in front of it. “And a door…” Helena prompted.
“Gives you a black eye?” Myka said. She wasn’t actually trying to be funny.
Helena seemed to understand that. She nodded. “Sometimes it does. But sometimes…”
“Sometimes it opens,” Myka said. But then she realized: no. It doesn’t open by itself. Someone has to open it… so she reached out, and she tried the handle. It didn’t turn, not on her first attempt, so she tried again. This time, success: and when she pushed, the door swung open. And there was the bed, framed perfectly, as in a painting, and in a vase beside the bed were flowers: lilacs of course, but also roses that earlier this evening Myka would have said were white. In the bedside light, they showed pink undertones here, muted yellow highlights there… she was sure that if she asked Helena, the answer would be “yes, moonglow.”
She looked at the bed, the door, the flowers, the woman in lilac—almost in lilac—beside her. “You could’ve warned me that that door was a little tricky,” she said. “But okay. I get it now.”
“So do I,” Helena said. She held up the keychain and showed her the picture on its display. It was a photo Claudia had taken in the Sioux Falls airport; she and Myka had volunteered to pick Helena up after a three-week absence. Myka and Helena hadn’t even reached each other yet—they were a good yard apart—but Myka had never seen herself wearing a smile so unrestrained, and she had never seen Helena look so… unmasked. She’d wanted Claudia to delete the photo, because it seemed too revealing, too intimate, but now… now the look on Helena’s face matched that in the picture. “So do I,” Helena repeated.
END