SHORT!!!! STORY!!!!
alright. so here is my short story. i'm honestly not expecting a single person to read this, i just like to have it in my livejournal. as you know, i enjoy compiling my life into one location.
here are a few notes.
1) this is inspired by the franz ferdinand song "wine in the afternoon"
2) you can watch/listen to that here:
3) yes, the main character does have the real name of alex kapranos of franz ferdinand.
4) yeah, he kind of IS alex kapranos.
5) yeahhhh...the girl DOES have the same name as his girlfriend, but i adore the name eleanor anyway.
6) i haven't removed all the typos yet...so yeah.
7) it's long.
8) alright, here we go.
The sun shined through the dingy windows on a Tuesday morning. The rays were buttery and warm, cutting through the springtime chill that seeped through the apartment. The scene was all too beautiful, as long as you kept your eyes averted to the ceiling. Yes, that was quite beautiful and perfect.
With eyes averted, the picturesque setting became anything but picturesque. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but this was something that not even a garbage diver could relish. The kitchen floor was covered in remnants of the previous night's attempt at culinary exploration - some beef in wine sauce with a side of sautéed vegetables was splattered across cabinets, and running down table legs. A slinky, orange cat tracked through it all, sloshing its bristly tail though the mess behind him.
The living room was a living museum, with every piece of memorabilia from Paul Huntley's past three years of living stored away in boxes, random books, and under couch cushions. A receipt from the pharmacist - three pounds for a bottle of rubbing alcohol, twenty for a new inhaler. The evening of Friday, October 17, 2008, was spent enjoying carryout from an Indian restaurant. Curried chicken. Paul enjoyed that dish. A brochure to the Glasgow art school sat atop a newspaper clipping of a man who raised his own chickens.
Did anything really seem to connect in his apartment? No, unless randomosity could be classified as a connecting thread. It was just a mishmash of oddities and curiosities.
If you knew the man who was curled up in the bed, down the hallway, past the teetering stack of wooden crates, everything would begin to make a bit of sense.
He was an oddity, and most definitely a curiosity.
Paul sat up in his sea of pillows and unmatched blankets. His honey brown hair was ruffled by his pale, bony hand, and it fell into his peculiar shade of hazel eyes. He yawned, cracked his neck too many times to count, and then looked at the calendar opposite his wrought iron bed that featured pictures of picturesque views in Scotland. He frowned. The day was marked with a giant, definite red circle, and inside it, a small black "x".
Today was going to be a doozy. It was going to be much more than Paul could possibly handle. Today would be hopefully a new beginning. Hopefully. Paul liked to stay positive. It could possibly be a messy ending, but Paul didn't like to dote on that possibility.
Rent. It was April 23. Rent was due today for this apartment that had began to resemble a New York City tenement circa 1910. Rent was due for the past three months that he hadn't paid. The landlord had let him get away with far too much. But oh, no, not this time. This time, all the favors were going to end. His place was supposed to be spick-and-span, a model apartment, by ten o' clock am. Paul muttered out a few explicatives and laughed in spite of himself.
"I'll get to it, yeah?" He said, speaking to the food splattered cat that rubbed against his bird legs. The cat didn't seem to mind the mess, did he? No...not in the least. He traipsed over the mess like a wild animal. Cats were never supposed to be domesticated. This place was only natural.
Humans, though, were weird about messes and trivial things like paying rent. Paul knew he would definitely get kicked out of the apartment once the landlord made it upstairs. He'd definitely get thrown in jail. The trick here was to evade punishment. The window and the fire escape were the perfect tools to utilize while becoming a first-time convict.
The problem was, he wasn't quite ready for the big move. Things like this usually took time. He couldn't locate essential papers in the few minutes he had left before the landlord came beating at the door. He couldn't quite gather his clothing, or his writings, recordings, or drawings. Everything in the living museum was essential inspiration he couldn't quite part with. The piles of junk were the equivalent to a treasure trove in his mind. Both figuratively and literally.
Somewhere in the piles of...treasure...was the place he had been saving a hoard of money. Thousands of pounds. The payoff of months of working nine or so jobs at a time was laying somewhere in this room.
The realization that he had a miniature fortune to recover hit him only moments before a knock came at his door. He responded to the stimulus like some animal you'd see on a safari. A cheetah. Something cat like. His head snapped up and he grabbed the closest clothing he could get his hands on and slid the fabric over his spindly limbs. A too-short green T-shirt and blue and orange striped trousers were hardly attractive, but they did well enough. His escape would be pointless if he were apprehended for indecent exposure shortly after going down the fire escape.
The doorknob began rattling and he only gave himself seconds before the old man was standing in the doorway, shaking a knobby finger, threatening to call the police. He had no time to search for the money now. He could sneak right back through the window when the whole scene blew over.
"C'mon," he grunted at the cat, and swooped him up in his arm. Paul snatched a bottle of red wine off the kitchen table, and stuck a glass into his trouser pocket. "We're gonna celebrate this eventful day, aren't we?"
He talked to that cat far too often to be sane.
Paul haphazardly slid open the rattly window, cringed when his bare foot came in contact with the cold, metal grating, and then heard a voice.
"Is that...? No. It couldn't-," he warily laughed his hallucinating mind off.
"Paul!"
"God."
It was.
He awkwardly maneuvered himself back through the window frame, and moved down the hallway, attempting to not disturb a thing that could give away his presence.
"For God's sake, Paul!"
It was definitely not an angry landlord. It was definitely his angry girlfriend coming to visit. It was the first visit in months. The black "x" on the calendar signified rent being due. The screaming red circle signified Eleanor was flying in from America.
He cringed. He had completely forgotten to pick her up from the airport. If she saw the state the apartment was in, she was bound to snap. She would swiftly snap Paul's toothpick frame in two.
Eleanor was usually a gentle kind of woman. She was tall and pale, with long espresso colored hair. She turned into a not-so-gentle kind of woman when she felt neglected. When she felt pushed aside and unimportant. The fact that Paul wouldn't move from Scotland to live with her in New York City incited all of those touchy emotions. Paul forgot her at the airport. That certainly didn't help his case.
He pressed his eye to the peephole, and there she was, clad in a red jumper with a black paisley print, rocking back and forth on the heels of her motorcycle boots. She folded her arms tightly across her chest like she was trying to keep all her rage pent inside.
He'd have to something to keep her satisfied, and do it quickly before she got the notion to use her return ticket home prematurely.
Paul opened the door, slid out into the hallway and promptly closed the door behind him. He smiled at her as believably as possible. When he smiled, it accentuated his narrowly cut face and his angular cheekbones.
Eleanor scowled.
"Darling," he whispered as he buried his face into her shoulder. "How was your flight?"
"Decent. It was decent, Paul." She didn't soften her stance. "I'd really like to sit down and skip all this small talk. I've been standing around in these for the past three hours." She gestured down at her killer shoes.
"Ahhh...oh," he muttered. "I'm sorry, Eleanor. You've got no idea."
She reached for the tarnishing doorknob, but he swatted her hand away.
"Errrr...bottle of wine?" He elatedly raised the bottle in the air, trying to mask his panic.
She glared.
"Wine in the morning. It's spontaneous." He waggled his eyebrows, despite the fact they were hidden beneath his long fringe. "It's fun! That's us!"
"I like my wine in the afternoon," she sarcastically retorted as she shoved Paul's skinny frame out of the doorway. He braced himself for her initial shock.
She slowly walked into the living room, mouth ajar and fists clenched. Her eyes endlessly darted from one thing to another. Over all the books, empty carryout boxes, pamphlets, broken pencils, and ink stains.
"Paul Alexander Huntley," she said, her voice shrinking. "You mean to tell me that this is what you've been doing here in Glasgow?"
"Sweetheart," he pleaded. "I've been doing plenty."
"You've passed up all the time you could've been spending with me at my clean apartment to be here. In this dump."
"Well, yes," he hesitated. "And no." Cue nervous laughter.
"Oh my God, I'm leaving!"
She took off for the door, but Paul catapulted himself in front of her, using all his limbs to restrain her. She didn't understand how essential all this mess was to their happiness. He had to tell her, but not here. The landlord busting in would not be the best way to impress Eleanor. She'd surely be far past persuasion by that point.
"N-n-n-no...wait!" She kept shoving. "Eleanor, listen."
"What?" She demanded. "What is it? Go on!"
"This stuff is important. This stuff is going to seal our relationship! This stuff has been fulfilling all of your dreams," he said.
She kept staring at him, her toe tapping impatiently. That apparently wasn't good enough.
"Aw, don't walk away, Eleanor. Darling." He bolted after her again.
"Explain. Now. Stop calling me darling."
He couldn't just stand here and explain all that he had been doing for the past ten months and why he had suddenly developed pack rat tendencies. He didn't want it to happen like this. It was supposed to be a surprise. It would take at least an hour to properly plead his case, and he didn't have an hour. He glanced up at the clock and saw it was ten o' clock. Bad timing. This was bad timing. Someone was stomping up the stairs.
"Come with me. We'll go for a walk and I'll will explain everything," he said hastily. He grabbed her hand and drug her through the maze. "I'm sure you'd love a nice, romantic picnic." He grabbed a picnic basket off the table and kept on pulling her.
"I mean, how is this important? A R.E.M. cassette?" She threw it across the room. "Who listens to R.E.M.? Who listens to cassettes?"
"They've got good lyrics! C'mon, Eleanor. We can't keep this beautiful day waiting!"
The footsteps got closer.
"A welding mask?! A collection of sable hair paintbrushes? And all these notecards? Why do you have so many note cards blabbing on about the medicinal properties of tea? You don't even like tea." She threw those across the room too.
"I do so like tea, I'll have you know. Now let's go," he begged.
This was going to end badly.
"And this? A book on different kinds of cuts of meat? Really! Why?"
About that time, a light bulb went off in Paul's head. That's where the money was. He had cut a rectangular shape inside the pages of that book and stuck the money inside. If she picked that book up and saw tons of money float out, this relationship was as good as done. Then there was definitely no chance of reasoning with her. She'd whine and say that he had all this money and he could afford to help her rent a better apartment. You really don't love me, she'd accuse. You've just been planning to take all this money and move to away so I can never find you again.
She jumped to conclusions easily. Obviously.
Paul gently scooted the book across the floor with his foot as she reached for it. It stopped right in front of the door. The landlord was coming down the hallway now, and it was make-or-break. He ripped Eleanor down the hallway, and shoved her into the bedroom. He had to get her out of here.
"Go out that window, do you hear me? I'm sick of all this. Either you care enough about me to hear my explanation or you don't. Your choice."
She frowned and went out the window without questioning his bizarre request. He followed her, and could only keep his mind on the fact that the landlord would stumble across the book as soon as he walked through the door and spill the money everywhere. He'd take every bit of it to make up for the missing rent, and his plan would be ruined.
He'd tell Eleanor the truth, but once they made it back to the apartment it'd all seem like a lie. Eleanor hated liars. She'd end the relationship. He figured he ought to enjoy the last few hours he'd have with her before she flew back home.
His optimism seemed a bit pointless now.
Paul and Eleanor walked out to the fringes of the city, and followed an old cobblestone road that led into the countryside. The hills were covered with yellow-green grass that was beginning to be filled with life again after the crippling cold of the winter. Everything was so spacious in comparison to the mess of an apartment that the two had just left behind. Eleanor began to be not quite as cross with Paul. She held his hand and laughed at him every once in a while. Paul supposed the fresh air and scenic landscape did a bit of good for her sour mood. At least something had gone right today.
"Alright," she said. "I like this spot. This is nice."
Paul took a blanket out of his picnic basket and unfurled it across the field of dandelions, the white bits of fluff flying away in every direction.
"Sandwich?" He asked.
"Why do you have a picnic basket packed anyhow?" She took the sandwich and looked between the two pieces of bread. She squinted. "Is that turkey, red peppers, Swiss cheese, and pesto on a....wheat bread?" How did you come up with that?"
"It's rye bread, Eleanor. Rye. The answers to those questions have to do with why all the junk in my house is far from...junk. Just eat that, and please don't interrupt me."
"Whatever." She delicately nibbled at the sandwich and Paul began his story.
"You'd been begging me for nearly a year to come live with you. Day after day. You just begged incessantly. You wanted me to be with you. I thought, 'Maybe I should do something about this.'
So, I began working. A lot. Working might be an understatement, actually. I began slaving to come up with enough money to get a plane ticket and have enough savings to perhaps start our life together off the right way. It's sensible. I suppose, though, the way I went about earning the money was not sensible at all."
Eleanor's eyes opened wide, and she began choking on her sandwich.
"God, Eleanor. I'm not a drug dealer, male prostitute, or hit man. Stop with your overactive imagination, would you?
Right then...where was I? Yeah, yeah, yeah...it wasn't sensible. I didn't want to wait to save up all this money. I wanted to do it as quickly as possible...so, I took on tons of jobs that I really had no background in whatsoever."
"Elaborate..."
"Fine," he huffed. "I became a short story writer for some literary journal in Glasgow, a guest artist at the art school, a lecturer at college, a chef, a musician, and...a welder."
Eleanor just smiled at him. She took his head in her hands, and affectionately smoothed his sideburns with her thumbs. She was radiantly happy. There wasn't a hint of apprehension on her face. The fact that she believed him so easily made the situation so much more difficult. It was going to be painful once she found out the money was all gone. Things would've been so beautiful if he hadn't hidden the stash in that damned book on beef cuts.
"You did all that for me?"
He nodded. "All that junk was things I had been saving and using so I could pull of all these jobs decently."
"The R.E.M. cassette?" She asked.
"No one at the coffee shop seemed to like my music," he frowned. "I found the old cassette at my mam's house, and studied it until I wrote lyrics nearly as good as theirs. We all know beautiful words are the way to a person's heart."
"Those odd paintbrushes?"
"You can't be a guest artist when you paint with those dinky plastic paintbrushes that come in watercolor sets, can you?"
Eleanor laughed so hard that she began to cry. She fell back onto the blanket and Paul laid down with her. "The note cards?"
"I spoke for a solid two hours to the University of Glasgow's alternative medicine class. Tea. It's a wondrous thing."
"The welding mask?"
"I helped a construction crew make the frame of some metal structure. God only knows if it's still standing today..."
"And let me guess, the book on cuts of meat helped you become a phenomenal chef that makes stellar picnic sandwiches. The money is all in the book," she said.
"Yes," he said. "It's all in the book, my love."
Irony was a devilish thing, he thought. He pulled out the bottle of wine that he and the cat were going to celebrate with, and poured the wine into two glasses. The sun was shining directly overhead, signifying that it was officially afternoon.
"You like your wine in the afternoon, remember?" He said.
"I remember quite well, Mr. Huntley."
They toasted their glasses to all of Paul's hard work and to the health of the people living in that cursed building he had welded together. Eleanor became the pleasant woman that she usually was, and Paul took over her past role as a scowling, bitter creature.
"What's the matter with you?" She asked disappointedly.
"Mmm, I just wanted to surprise you with all of this. I wanted to show up at your doorstep in New York, perhaps with flowers at hand, or maybe serenade you from your fire escape."
"Oh, don't be upset over that. I'll still welcome any romantic gestures. Just be happy that you somehow managed to have that many jobs, make that much money in such a short amount of time, and still manage to keep a place to live. I'm surprised your landlord didn't kick you out for that "inspiration" sitting all over the place. I don't think I could be with a homeless man...that's absolutely humiliating!"
She laughed and laughed, thinking that she was so funny, and Paul laughed right along.
Irony was a devilish thing. He felt sick.
"Let's have some more to drink," he suggested.
They drank until their teeth were black with wine, and until the sun lowered in the sky. They sat around discussing silly things, smoking cigarettes, singing folk songs, exchanging stories, and coming up with outrageous plans for the future. Paul suddenly didn't mind the impending doom that was about to strike him. He was happy just being with her and wasting away the hours doing nothing of immediate importance.
The sky began to swell with inky clouds, and the inky clouds released a humid rain that soaked them to the bone. Eleanor laughed and howled. Paul had to carry her back to the apartment, because she kept stumbling, falling over herself, and diving into mud puddles.
"I've never been drunk before, Paul," she slurred as they went up the stairs, approaching his apartment. Paul handled the alcohol far better than she did, so well that his mind still functioned properly and he was well aware of the situation that was about to play out. She was about to see that her boyfriend was essentially homeless now - and a liar, for that matter - and that was absolutely humiliating. She had said it herself.
The door omniously creaked open, and there it was. There was the scene that he had been dreading all day. The apartment was completely empty. Everything was white. Everything echoed. Eleanor's babbling amplified tenfold.
"If you think you're committing me to an insane asylum, you're absolutely incorrect." She poked a finger on the tip of his Roman nose. "Where are we anyhow? This place is bizarre."
"Hush, would you? You're going to annoy everyone in the whole complex."
He sat down on the floor and placed his chin on his knees. This was not the fresh new beginning he had been hoping for. That notion had been taken a bit too literally.
Paul's cat was lying at his feet. He concentrated intensely on petting on him, hoping that his purring could somehow drown out Eleanor's annoying howls.
"Where are we, Paul? My God, it's not that hard to answer!" She hiccuped loudly, and scared the cat off into the corner.
"You are so drunk. Absolutely wast- oh...my," he said. He looked where the cat had been lying, and there was the book on various cuts of meat. The cat had hidden it while the landlord came in. He quickly flipped the book open to the section on prime rib, and inside of it was 5,000 pounds. Every bit of the money he had made while posing to be a professional was safe. His blood rushed so quickly that he probably felt as lightheaded as Eleanor.
"Could we please go back to your apartment, Paul? This place is creeping me out! Honestly."
"Eleanor, we are in -," he began. And then it hit him. She was drunk. She was so mindblowingly drunk that she'd have no memory of this in the morning. She'd never put two and two together. She'd never realize that her boyfriend had been kicked out of his apartment. There'd be no humiliation for her, and no pain for him. It was like this little nightmare had never happened.
"How about we just go back to your apartment," he said. "Wouldn't you like that? I think that sounds brilliant."
"I don't really care," she mumbled. "I just know I'd like wine in the afternoon more often."
Wine in the afternoon. Now, that was something that Paul really owed their happiness to.
here are a few notes.
1) this is inspired by the franz ferdinand song "wine in the afternoon"
2) you can watch/listen to that here:
Click to view3) yes, the main character does have the real name of alex kapranos of franz ferdinand.
4) yeah, he kind of IS alex kapranos.
5) yeahhhh...the girl DOES have the same name as his girlfriend, but i adore the name eleanor anyway.
6) i haven't removed all the typos yet...so yeah.
7) it's long.
8) alright, here we go.
The sun shined through the dingy windows on a Tuesday morning. The rays were buttery and warm, cutting through the springtime chill that seeped through the apartment. The scene was all too beautiful, as long as you kept your eyes averted to the ceiling. Yes, that was quite beautiful and perfect.
With eyes averted, the picturesque setting became anything but picturesque. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but this was something that not even a garbage diver could relish. The kitchen floor was covered in remnants of the previous night's attempt at culinary exploration - some beef in wine sauce with a side of sautéed vegetables was splattered across cabinets, and running down table legs. A slinky, orange cat tracked through it all, sloshing its bristly tail though the mess behind him.
The living room was a living museum, with every piece of memorabilia from Paul Huntley's past three years of living stored away in boxes, random books, and under couch cushions. A receipt from the pharmacist - three pounds for a bottle of rubbing alcohol, twenty for a new inhaler. The evening of Friday, October 17, 2008, was spent enjoying carryout from an Indian restaurant. Curried chicken. Paul enjoyed that dish. A brochure to the Glasgow art school sat atop a newspaper clipping of a man who raised his own chickens.
Did anything really seem to connect in his apartment? No, unless randomosity could be classified as a connecting thread. It was just a mishmash of oddities and curiosities.
If you knew the man who was curled up in the bed, down the hallway, past the teetering stack of wooden crates, everything would begin to make a bit of sense.
He was an oddity, and most definitely a curiosity.
Paul sat up in his sea of pillows and unmatched blankets. His honey brown hair was ruffled by his pale, bony hand, and it fell into his peculiar shade of hazel eyes. He yawned, cracked his neck too many times to count, and then looked at the calendar opposite his wrought iron bed that featured pictures of picturesque views in Scotland. He frowned. The day was marked with a giant, definite red circle, and inside it, a small black "x".
Today was going to be a doozy. It was going to be much more than Paul could possibly handle. Today would be hopefully a new beginning. Hopefully. Paul liked to stay positive. It could possibly be a messy ending, but Paul didn't like to dote on that possibility.
Rent. It was April 23. Rent was due today for this apartment that had began to resemble a New York City tenement circa 1910. Rent was due for the past three months that he hadn't paid. The landlord had let him get away with far too much. But oh, no, not this time. This time, all the favors were going to end. His place was supposed to be spick-and-span, a model apartment, by ten o' clock am. Paul muttered out a few explicatives and laughed in spite of himself.
"I'll get to it, yeah?" He said, speaking to the food splattered cat that rubbed against his bird legs. The cat didn't seem to mind the mess, did he? No...not in the least. He traipsed over the mess like a wild animal. Cats were never supposed to be domesticated. This place was only natural.
Humans, though, were weird about messes and trivial things like paying rent. Paul knew he would definitely get kicked out of the apartment once the landlord made it upstairs. He'd definitely get thrown in jail. The trick here was to evade punishment. The window and the fire escape were the perfect tools to utilize while becoming a first-time convict.
The problem was, he wasn't quite ready for the big move. Things like this usually took time. He couldn't locate essential papers in the few minutes he had left before the landlord came beating at the door. He couldn't quite gather his clothing, or his writings, recordings, or drawings. Everything in the living museum was essential inspiration he couldn't quite part with. The piles of junk were the equivalent to a treasure trove in his mind. Both figuratively and literally.
Somewhere in the piles of...treasure...was the place he had been saving a hoard of money. Thousands of pounds. The payoff of months of working nine or so jobs at a time was laying somewhere in this room.
The realization that he had a miniature fortune to recover hit him only moments before a knock came at his door. He responded to the stimulus like some animal you'd see on a safari. A cheetah. Something cat like. His head snapped up and he grabbed the closest clothing he could get his hands on and slid the fabric over his spindly limbs. A too-short green T-shirt and blue and orange striped trousers were hardly attractive, but they did well enough. His escape would be pointless if he were apprehended for indecent exposure shortly after going down the fire escape.
The doorknob began rattling and he only gave himself seconds before the old man was standing in the doorway, shaking a knobby finger, threatening to call the police. He had no time to search for the money now. He could sneak right back through the window when the whole scene blew over.
"C'mon," he grunted at the cat, and swooped him up in his arm. Paul snatched a bottle of red wine off the kitchen table, and stuck a glass into his trouser pocket. "We're gonna celebrate this eventful day, aren't we?"
He talked to that cat far too often to be sane.
Paul haphazardly slid open the rattly window, cringed when his bare foot came in contact with the cold, metal grating, and then heard a voice.
"Is that...? No. It couldn't-," he warily laughed his hallucinating mind off.
"Paul!"
"God."
It was.
He awkwardly maneuvered himself back through the window frame, and moved down the hallway, attempting to not disturb a thing that could give away his presence.
"For God's sake, Paul!"
It was definitely not an angry landlord. It was definitely his angry girlfriend coming to visit. It was the first visit in months. The black "x" on the calendar signified rent being due. The screaming red circle signified Eleanor was flying in from America.
He cringed. He had completely forgotten to pick her up from the airport. If she saw the state the apartment was in, she was bound to snap. She would swiftly snap Paul's toothpick frame in two.
Eleanor was usually a gentle kind of woman. She was tall and pale, with long espresso colored hair. She turned into a not-so-gentle kind of woman when she felt neglected. When she felt pushed aside and unimportant. The fact that Paul wouldn't move from Scotland to live with her in New York City incited all of those touchy emotions. Paul forgot her at the airport. That certainly didn't help his case.
He pressed his eye to the peephole, and there she was, clad in a red jumper with a black paisley print, rocking back and forth on the heels of her motorcycle boots. She folded her arms tightly across her chest like she was trying to keep all her rage pent inside.
He'd have to something to keep her satisfied, and do it quickly before she got the notion to use her return ticket home prematurely.
Paul opened the door, slid out into the hallway and promptly closed the door behind him. He smiled at her as believably as possible. When he smiled, it accentuated his narrowly cut face and his angular cheekbones.
Eleanor scowled.
"Darling," he whispered as he buried his face into her shoulder. "How was your flight?"
"Decent. It was decent, Paul." She didn't soften her stance. "I'd really like to sit down and skip all this small talk. I've been standing around in these for the past three hours." She gestured down at her killer shoes.
"Ahhh...oh," he muttered. "I'm sorry, Eleanor. You've got no idea."
She reached for the tarnishing doorknob, but he swatted her hand away.
"Errrr...bottle of wine?" He elatedly raised the bottle in the air, trying to mask his panic.
She glared.
"Wine in the morning. It's spontaneous." He waggled his eyebrows, despite the fact they were hidden beneath his long fringe. "It's fun! That's us!"
"I like my wine in the afternoon," she sarcastically retorted as she shoved Paul's skinny frame out of the doorway. He braced himself for her initial shock.
She slowly walked into the living room, mouth ajar and fists clenched. Her eyes endlessly darted from one thing to another. Over all the books, empty carryout boxes, pamphlets, broken pencils, and ink stains.
"Paul Alexander Huntley," she said, her voice shrinking. "You mean to tell me that this is what you've been doing here in Glasgow?"
"Sweetheart," he pleaded. "I've been doing plenty."
"You've passed up all the time you could've been spending with me at my clean apartment to be here. In this dump."
"Well, yes," he hesitated. "And no." Cue nervous laughter.
"Oh my God, I'm leaving!"
She took off for the door, but Paul catapulted himself in front of her, using all his limbs to restrain her. She didn't understand how essential all this mess was to their happiness. He had to tell her, but not here. The landlord busting in would not be the best way to impress Eleanor. She'd surely be far past persuasion by that point.
"N-n-n-no...wait!" She kept shoving. "Eleanor, listen."
"What?" She demanded. "What is it? Go on!"
"This stuff is important. This stuff is going to seal our relationship! This stuff has been fulfilling all of your dreams," he said.
She kept staring at him, her toe tapping impatiently. That apparently wasn't good enough.
"Aw, don't walk away, Eleanor. Darling." He bolted after her again.
"Explain. Now. Stop calling me darling."
He couldn't just stand here and explain all that he had been doing for the past ten months and why he had suddenly developed pack rat tendencies. He didn't want it to happen like this. It was supposed to be a surprise. It would take at least an hour to properly plead his case, and he didn't have an hour. He glanced up at the clock and saw it was ten o' clock. Bad timing. This was bad timing. Someone was stomping up the stairs.
"Come with me. We'll go for a walk and I'll will explain everything," he said hastily. He grabbed her hand and drug her through the maze. "I'm sure you'd love a nice, romantic picnic." He grabbed a picnic basket off the table and kept on pulling her.
"I mean, how is this important? A R.E.M. cassette?" She threw it across the room. "Who listens to R.E.M.? Who listens to cassettes?"
"They've got good lyrics! C'mon, Eleanor. We can't keep this beautiful day waiting!"
The footsteps got closer.
"A welding mask?! A collection of sable hair paintbrushes? And all these notecards? Why do you have so many note cards blabbing on about the medicinal properties of tea? You don't even like tea." She threw those across the room too.
"I do so like tea, I'll have you know. Now let's go," he begged.
This was going to end badly.
"And this? A book on different kinds of cuts of meat? Really! Why?"
About that time, a light bulb went off in Paul's head. That's where the money was. He had cut a rectangular shape inside the pages of that book and stuck the money inside. If she picked that book up and saw tons of money float out, this relationship was as good as done. Then there was definitely no chance of reasoning with her. She'd whine and say that he had all this money and he could afford to help her rent a better apartment. You really don't love me, she'd accuse. You've just been planning to take all this money and move to away so I can never find you again.
She jumped to conclusions easily. Obviously.
Paul gently scooted the book across the floor with his foot as she reached for it. It stopped right in front of the door. The landlord was coming down the hallway now, and it was make-or-break. He ripped Eleanor down the hallway, and shoved her into the bedroom. He had to get her out of here.
"Go out that window, do you hear me? I'm sick of all this. Either you care enough about me to hear my explanation or you don't. Your choice."
She frowned and went out the window without questioning his bizarre request. He followed her, and could only keep his mind on the fact that the landlord would stumble across the book as soon as he walked through the door and spill the money everywhere. He'd take every bit of it to make up for the missing rent, and his plan would be ruined.
He'd tell Eleanor the truth, but once they made it back to the apartment it'd all seem like a lie. Eleanor hated liars. She'd end the relationship. He figured he ought to enjoy the last few hours he'd have with her before she flew back home.
His optimism seemed a bit pointless now.
Paul and Eleanor walked out to the fringes of the city, and followed an old cobblestone road that led into the countryside. The hills were covered with yellow-green grass that was beginning to be filled with life again after the crippling cold of the winter. Everything was so spacious in comparison to the mess of an apartment that the two had just left behind. Eleanor began to be not quite as cross with Paul. She held his hand and laughed at him every once in a while. Paul supposed the fresh air and scenic landscape did a bit of good for her sour mood. At least something had gone right today.
"Alright," she said. "I like this spot. This is nice."
Paul took a blanket out of his picnic basket and unfurled it across the field of dandelions, the white bits of fluff flying away in every direction.
"Sandwich?" He asked.
"Why do you have a picnic basket packed anyhow?" She took the sandwich and looked between the two pieces of bread. She squinted. "Is that turkey, red peppers, Swiss cheese, and pesto on a....wheat bread?" How did you come up with that?"
"It's rye bread, Eleanor. Rye. The answers to those questions have to do with why all the junk in my house is far from...junk. Just eat that, and please don't interrupt me."
"Whatever." She delicately nibbled at the sandwich and Paul began his story.
"You'd been begging me for nearly a year to come live with you. Day after day. You just begged incessantly. You wanted me to be with you. I thought, 'Maybe I should do something about this.'
So, I began working. A lot. Working might be an understatement, actually. I began slaving to come up with enough money to get a plane ticket and have enough savings to perhaps start our life together off the right way. It's sensible. I suppose, though, the way I went about earning the money was not sensible at all."
Eleanor's eyes opened wide, and she began choking on her sandwich.
"God, Eleanor. I'm not a drug dealer, male prostitute, or hit man. Stop with your overactive imagination, would you?
Right then...where was I? Yeah, yeah, yeah...it wasn't sensible. I didn't want to wait to save up all this money. I wanted to do it as quickly as possible...so, I took on tons of jobs that I really had no background in whatsoever."
"Elaborate..."
"Fine," he huffed. "I became a short story writer for some literary journal in Glasgow, a guest artist at the art school, a lecturer at college, a chef, a musician, and...a welder."
Eleanor just smiled at him. She took his head in her hands, and affectionately smoothed his sideburns with her thumbs. She was radiantly happy. There wasn't a hint of apprehension on her face. The fact that she believed him so easily made the situation so much more difficult. It was going to be painful once she found out the money was all gone. Things would've been so beautiful if he hadn't hidden the stash in that damned book on beef cuts.
"You did all that for me?"
He nodded. "All that junk was things I had been saving and using so I could pull of all these jobs decently."
"The R.E.M. cassette?" She asked.
"No one at the coffee shop seemed to like my music," he frowned. "I found the old cassette at my mam's house, and studied it until I wrote lyrics nearly as good as theirs. We all know beautiful words are the way to a person's heart."
"Those odd paintbrushes?"
"You can't be a guest artist when you paint with those dinky plastic paintbrushes that come in watercolor sets, can you?"
Eleanor laughed so hard that she began to cry. She fell back onto the blanket and Paul laid down with her. "The note cards?"
"I spoke for a solid two hours to the University of Glasgow's alternative medicine class. Tea. It's a wondrous thing."
"The welding mask?"
"I helped a construction crew make the frame of some metal structure. God only knows if it's still standing today..."
"And let me guess, the book on cuts of meat helped you become a phenomenal chef that makes stellar picnic sandwiches. The money is all in the book," she said.
"Yes," he said. "It's all in the book, my love."
Irony was a devilish thing, he thought. He pulled out the bottle of wine that he and the cat were going to celebrate with, and poured the wine into two glasses. The sun was shining directly overhead, signifying that it was officially afternoon.
"You like your wine in the afternoon, remember?" He said.
"I remember quite well, Mr. Huntley."
They toasted their glasses to all of Paul's hard work and to the health of the people living in that cursed building he had welded together. Eleanor became the pleasant woman that she usually was, and Paul took over her past role as a scowling, bitter creature.
"What's the matter with you?" She asked disappointedly.
"Mmm, I just wanted to surprise you with all of this. I wanted to show up at your doorstep in New York, perhaps with flowers at hand, or maybe serenade you from your fire escape."
"Oh, don't be upset over that. I'll still welcome any romantic gestures. Just be happy that you somehow managed to have that many jobs, make that much money in such a short amount of time, and still manage to keep a place to live. I'm surprised your landlord didn't kick you out for that "inspiration" sitting all over the place. I don't think I could be with a homeless man...that's absolutely humiliating!"
She laughed and laughed, thinking that she was so funny, and Paul laughed right along.
Irony was a devilish thing. He felt sick.
"Let's have some more to drink," he suggested.
They drank until their teeth were black with wine, and until the sun lowered in the sky. They sat around discussing silly things, smoking cigarettes, singing folk songs, exchanging stories, and coming up with outrageous plans for the future. Paul suddenly didn't mind the impending doom that was about to strike him. He was happy just being with her and wasting away the hours doing nothing of immediate importance.
The sky began to swell with inky clouds, and the inky clouds released a humid rain that soaked them to the bone. Eleanor laughed and howled. Paul had to carry her back to the apartment, because she kept stumbling, falling over herself, and diving into mud puddles.
"I've never been drunk before, Paul," she slurred as they went up the stairs, approaching his apartment. Paul handled the alcohol far better than she did, so well that his mind still functioned properly and he was well aware of the situation that was about to play out. She was about to see that her boyfriend was essentially homeless now - and a liar, for that matter - and that was absolutely humiliating. She had said it herself.
The door omniously creaked open, and there it was. There was the scene that he had been dreading all day. The apartment was completely empty. Everything was white. Everything echoed. Eleanor's babbling amplified tenfold.
"If you think you're committing me to an insane asylum, you're absolutely incorrect." She poked a finger on the tip of his Roman nose. "Where are we anyhow? This place is bizarre."
"Hush, would you? You're going to annoy everyone in the whole complex."
He sat down on the floor and placed his chin on his knees. This was not the fresh new beginning he had been hoping for. That notion had been taken a bit too literally.
Paul's cat was lying at his feet. He concentrated intensely on petting on him, hoping that his purring could somehow drown out Eleanor's annoying howls.
"Where are we, Paul? My God, it's not that hard to answer!" She hiccuped loudly, and scared the cat off into the corner.
"You are so drunk. Absolutely wast- oh...my," he said. He looked where the cat had been lying, and there was the book on various cuts of meat. The cat had hidden it while the landlord came in. He quickly flipped the book open to the section on prime rib, and inside of it was 5,000 pounds. Every bit of the money he had made while posing to be a professional was safe. His blood rushed so quickly that he probably felt as lightheaded as Eleanor.
"Could we please go back to your apartment, Paul? This place is creeping me out! Honestly."
"Eleanor, we are in -," he began. And then it hit him. She was drunk. She was so mindblowingly drunk that she'd have no memory of this in the morning. She'd never put two and two together. She'd never realize that her boyfriend had been kicked out of his apartment. There'd be no humiliation for her, and no pain for him. It was like this little nightmare had never happened.
"How about we just go back to your apartment," he said. "Wouldn't you like that? I think that sounds brilliant."
"I don't really care," she mumbled. "I just know I'd like wine in the afternoon more often."
Wine in the afternoon. Now, that was something that Paul really owed their happiness to.