Friday

  Terence was a prescient cat. He was deaf in one of his ears, from which protruded elegant curved strings of hair, and he was blind in one eye, adding to his roughened lion appearance but he was, as a matter of fact, an omnipresent creature of the universe. Once he completed his early evening grooming and fed only from the freshest pellets inside his bowl, drank gracefully with the pointy tip of his tongue, he threw his tail up high and walked to the couch near one of the two living room windows. Adjusting three or four times to find the perfect spot, he eventually rolled himself into a bun between two huge pillows, deeming the vantage ideal for what was to come. For everything that was to come.

  He was glad that it was coming. Not that he cared that much about anything as a cat, and yet he couldn’t disagree with the fact that Eugenie White, who liked to called herself Mom but was really his assigned lifelong servant, was lagging. The main criticism Terence had to express towards Eugenie was that she was a lady one year short of forty years old and that she was living the existence of a grandmother. She had become such a recluse, not that she was unpleasant to other humans, no, far from that, but she had declined so many social plans in the last four years that she was providing no entertainment to the house whatsoever anymore. No one called with gossip, no one came over anymore.

  And Terence liked drama. He enjoyed scratching his claws along the cork patches Eugenie had rolled around the legs of the dining room table, he wasn’t against chasing a bouncy ball or even the evil red laser and knocking over some potted plants occasionally, and he could really lose himself watching the street below their apartment on the second floor any time of the day, especially when the birds gathered on the balcony, but he missed when she had people over, especially men. Then, drama was guaranteed, five stars. He had particularly been fond of the last man who had shared Eugenie’s life for a short period of five months, and the thought made him close his eyes and relish a little bit. Fighting, crying, lots of passive aggressiveness and sarcasm, all the things he cherished.

  Now, she had pretty much turned into a nun, but that was about to change.

  On this Friday night, he knew she was exhausted after a long week teaching those insufferable teenagers at her job, and he was concerned she was not at all in the best shape to accept the explosive episode coming into her days, but he had to trust that everything was happening for a reason. Terence was a big-time believer in dharma, I mean, how could you not be, when you were a house cat that ate for free and never felt too cold or too hot, and received the services of a human every moment they were home? He trusted, warmly.

  When it came to crisis, there was little comparable to what was announcing itself as the storm clouds had formed above the city center and the first drops of rain had begun to fall cozily against the glass of the two high door openings of the living room. Soon, the thunder came, quaking inside the old walls of their building, and the little drops of rain transformed into a curtain of violent pouring, deafening, accompanied by strident gushes of wind blowing the autumn leaves horizontally along the boulevard, whistling like an alarm. Good, Terence thought, satisfied by the exposition scene, while Eugenie sat next to him and scratched his chin lovingly, whispered some intelligible nonsense into his non-functioning ear and placed a plate of chicken nuggets and a glass of white wine on the coffee table next to the couch. All that cacophony outside, the unhinged elements of the storm, would drown the commotion to come.

  He thought about the boy. Well, he wasn’t as much of a boy as when he and Terence had first met, some five years before, but he felt like a boy to Terence in comparison with Eugenie, who was a lady of mature age with the habits of a senior. What a strange human, the cat had observed. He didn’t buzz the door or walked like other humans. Instead, he bounced around and ignored gravity, and he had showed up so many times on the balcony, which was a very strange conduct that Terence had never seen another person adopt without a ladder and a heavy firefighting gear, but that had been greatly entertaining.

  He had indulged the boy, back then, resisted the urge to play hard to get, and hung out some hours at the window with the boy. His name was Barry, Terence knew. Sometimes, he came wearing some usual human clothes but, some other days, he had visited in some sort of Halloween costume, the top half of his face covered by a mask that had huge ant’s eyes. It was confusing but, again, entertaining, and Terence had learned to look forward to the boy’s next visits. It would have been ideal that he had brought some treats with him but, seeing that he only showed up when Eugenie was absent, he had not dared coming inside the flat and therefore, had not needed any offerings to appease the real master of the house, always coming empty-handed but always with a smile, some gentle knocks on the window, always playing with his hands and some very cool blue iridescent lightening strikes that he could, for some mysterious reason, produce out of his fingertips.

  And now the boy was coming, Barry was coming. Not just with the blue, this time, but with some red. Some deep flashy red. He was bringing all the colors. Terence watched the rain pour and the wind tear the avenue with some empty trash bins and whirls of papers, he watched the Fall season trees get stripped off their leaves into the perspective of winter by the violence, and he felt the excitement fill up his heart. Fortunate, he thought, that the weather was so savage, especially the water part. It would make Barry’s journey to Eugenie White pretty much unnoticed, mixing into the fresh sky water the dark smears or hand prints he would have left on the décor as he slowly wobbled and limped, letting dissolve the puddles that would have formed under his body when he paused to catch his breath against a trash bin.

  “Who wants a chicken nugget?” Eugenie asked Terence as she took a bite while nicely sliding the laptop on the coffee table and starting to browse for a nice Friday night watch. She chewed on her nugget and her eyes hungrily scanned the screen, and Terence knew she was searching for something, anything, that involved a lady detective coming back to her hometown to solve a murder that would stir up some old secrets and bring her together with a forgotten lover from her youth. The algorithm would give her just that, but Terence would have had a hard time hiding his amusement if he had not been a cat.

  Those nuggets would go cold, and the show would never be watched, not a minute of it. She would not even get the chance to sip on her wine. He felt slightly bad for her; she had put on her favorite sweatpants after a long rejuvenating shower, the trousers that were so soft with the fleece inside, a wrinkled tee shirt and her weekend jumper, and she was so ready for a well-deserved moment of unwinding. But no, he saw, all this was for the best. Eugenie needed a reset. He couldn’t be sure how things would unfold, though, and this troubled him a little bit. How would she react to what was about to pulverize her daily life? The anticipation for delightful drama took over and Terence sank his little head deeper in the middle of his shoulder, resting his chin on his chest. Delightful, truly.

  Detached from Eugenie’s enthusiasm being absorbed by the task of queuing her episodes, he waited, looking at the window through the slits of his half closed eyed. One minute later, Barry emerged on the balcony, seemingly out of nowhere. Even for Terence, who knew anything and everything and the past and the future, and how all things would end, his appearance made a certain effect.

  Struggling to get back on his feet after crashing between the potted plants of the terrace –fracas that had been muffled by the storm, playing the scene in an old silent movie—, Barry pulled himself up against the window and leaned forward. He was coiffed with an oversize hood, his hands rolled inside the long sleeves to dissimulate the blood on his fingers, and he looked literally flattened by the rain. Hunched forward, one hand holding his stomach, and the other resting on the two layered glass. He looked like a dark dark shadow. If he was so impressive to Terence the Cat, then, how terrifying would he be to Eugenie White?

  The last seconds of a peaceful but hermit-like existence were dispersing in Eugenie’s timeline. Two, one. Zero. Barry knocked forcefully on the window.

  *

  He had to give it to her, seeing how much true crime she absorbed daily as podcasts or television, and having lived as a woman alone since her divorce, it was granted that Eugenie White would simply freak the fuck out. Anyone, Terence saw, would lose their shit as their sense of home shelter and security became breached on an ordinary Friday night from a spot that seemed impregnable. The two windows of the living room, as did the one in the bedroom at the back of the apartment, possessed some rolled-down metallic shutters, but Eugenie never thought of using them, as it was quite unlikely that anyone would be able to threaten her home through a place other than her front door.

  Therefore, the result of the knock was immediate and unsurprising. Eugenie’s glass of wine, which she had been holding up in her hand, went flying on the side and crashed against the wall under the clock, shattering in a million pieces. Terence knew he’d have to be careful with the debris that would soon populate this place, as this was only the beginning and he had some very delicate paw cushions to preserve. Everything became fast paced, so he opened his eyes wide and tucked his tail under his front paws, like one sits in a movie theater with a bucket of popcorn ready for a great time.

  Eugenie lifted her head at the window in pure terror and, for a brief instant, she wondered. She wondered what it was, but this brief instant was short lived, as the black hooded shadow present on her balcony was undeniably there. Terence watched Barry take the measure of the fright he had just inflicted to her and quickly pull down the hood from his sweater to show his face, with on it the na?ve hope that its familiarity would smooth things out. Sadly, Eugenie was too busy to see it, busy shrieking and literally rolling backwards in an inverted somersault from her couch so as to put a barrier between her and the sudden menace. Terence watched her hand stick out from her hiding spot and grab the cell phone she had left on the dining room table earlier.

  Barry knocked again and mouthed the words “Ms White?” His face was drenched, white as the face of a ghost, glistening from the rain and he looked like he had been squashed by a giant’s shoe. He and Terence made quick eye contact and the cat softly lowered his lids, expressing a gratitude that Barry couldn’t have comprehended.

  You’ll be alright, Terence sent him a thought, in the end. I mean i think. Barry knocked again and Eugenie peaked from behind the L angle of the sofa, then she launched herself towards the coffee table to seize the small knife that she had used on her first half of a chicken nugget and she was on her way back to retreating when she froze. At last, she saw Barry’s face. She slumped on the arm of the couch with eyes eating her entire face, electrified by the sight.

  “I’m not going to hurt you!” Barry explained from behind the window but, through the hubbub of the rain and hurls of the wind, it was impossible to hear. Terence was just very gifted at reading lips, it had always been a talent of his, especially in the English language, opposed to the Swedish gibberish that Eugenie was producing on her phone with her aunt and uncle. He hated Scandinavian tongues, goofy and cutting unpredictably in the middle of dialogue.

  Eyes back on Eugenie, he watched her get up from behind the couch armed with her knife and cell phone and this time, an expression of shock that had rarely seen a precedent on her face. She inhaled sharply as if she was going to shout but held her breath halfway there and then gurgled: “Barry?” Terence would have bet for a high pitch but this, this was low, a growl, a visceral sound.

  It was, after all, the last word she would utter from her current dimension, about to shift into another. Her old life was over. “Ba-RRY?” It was also the first word o the rest of her life.

  Although still drowning in the rain shower, water cascading from his forehead, shoulders, chin, the boy smiled at her timidly, nodding encouragingly, half smiled, half grimaced in anguish. Terence could tell he was struggling to hold himself straight and that his strength was diminishing. But something clicked in Eugenie at this very second and she was jolted up very straight and tightly as if anger and repulsion were batteries an invisible puppet-master hand had introduced inside her back. She became absolutely unhinged.

  Fury conquered her eyes and reshaped her face into a twisted mask and she brandished the knife towards her unwanted guest, she started roaring, “NO, NO, THIS IS NOT OKAY, THIS IS NOT OKAY WHAT THE FUCK” and she took two steps in the direction of Barry, agitated the little phone in the air, “I AM GOING TO CALL THE POLICE YOU HEAR ME BARRY THIS IS NOT OKAY THIS IS NOT OKAY”

  Barry comprehended the presence of the phone and what was at stake and it became his turn to panic right away, jolted upwards, and he raised his sleeved hand in rendition, the other one still pushed against his stomach, “no no no please” he shook his head in pleading “I’m sorry Ms White I can explain I can expl—”

  “EXPLAIN WHY YOU ARE ON MY BALCONY YOU MOTHERFUCKER THIS IS NOT OKAY” Eugenie’s rage at the current event occurring in her life and specifically the main actor of it, a former student of Geography that she had been happy to see vanish from her days, had disintegrated her fear and apprehension at once and she ran to the window, shoved the phone in her pants’ pocket, drop the knife, drop the knife, Terence thought, which she did. She landed her hand on the knob and shouted, “YOU ARE RECORDING ME RIGHT NOW THIS IS ONE OF YOUR STUPID PRANKS OH MY GOD THIS IS NOT OKAY WHAT THE FUCK”

  “No no nononono not a prank not a prank” Terence saw that perhaps, the boy had come ill prepared, to say the least, and had not anticipated the ample protest he was receiving from Eugenie, as he seemed to ponder things and attempt to adjust. Perhaps, as well, he was not aware of how little she desired to cross paths with him again, out of the entire crowd of her students present and past, and how not she wished to see him appear at her place of residence. Some misunderstandings and gaps in background information were to be expected.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “THIS IS NOT OKAY YOU HEAR ME THIS IS THE LAST DROP BARRY THIS IS NOT—” Eugenie opened the window with such an aggressive motion that Barry was caught by surprise and, in his predicament, lost his footing; unable to fight anything that was happening, he dropped in a tumble against Eugenie, who continued yelling, “HELP HELP HELPPPPP” but the storm was still booming, one lightning bolt after the other followed by great explosions between the dark clouds, and the drums of the rain against everything that was in its path cancelled all the other noises.

  “I’m sorry I’m sorry” Barry’s fall pinned Eugenie under him. Terence was loving this. There was already more action happening right now in those few first minutes than in the whole previous year.

  “GET OFF ME GET OFF ME GET THE FUCK OF MEE” she flapped her arms and legs and managed to un-tuck herself from him, rolled on top of him and slapped him in the chest. Yikes, Terence thought. “YOU YOU LITTLE SHIT, YOU LITTLE SHIT” and Barry choked on his breath and fell on one elbow, showing her the palm of his hand in another gesture of peace. The red color of the blood on the hand caught Eugenie’s eye, shining on his fingers, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BLOOD IS THAT—” then she registered the presence of the same color on her own jumper and recoiled violently, a gazelle realizing she leaped into the path of a lion, until she hit the half of the window that was still shut in her back, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BLOOD IS THAT KETCHUP IS THAT—”

  “Ms White!” Barry spoke to her, trying to catch a breath, desperate to sneak in some normal dialogue, “it’s real blood it’s my blood I’m sorry I’m hurt I’m sorry I didn’t know where to—”

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BARRY MASQUEVERT WHAT THE—”

  “I’m sorry” he whimpered, lost altitude on his shaky elbow, “Ms White I’m sorry I didn’t want to freak you out I’m… I have been shot by a gun and I’m really hurt I don’t have anywhere else to go”

  Eugenie was breathless and exhausted by her own screaming. She squinted at him and lowered her tone, baffled and pissed off, “what the fuck are you talking about Barry by a gun that’s impossible that’s imposs— BARRY OPEN YOUR EYES” She saw his face go blank and his arm dissolve under his weight and, just before his head hit the floor, she slid back to him, grabbed him by the arms and, quite brutally, sat him up against the armchair behind him, “BARRY WAKE UP WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON DRUGS ARE YOU—”

  “It’s not a prank I promise Ms White” he squealed in pain, his eyelids batting like the wings of a butterfly, “I was shot like a rabbit and I fell from a building and then I was hit by a car and—”

  “Swheeti-hie—”

  “I’m going to pass out”

  “What NO BARRY OPEN YOUR EYES OPEN YOUR EYES TELL ME WHAT IS HAPPENING”

  “I have been shot I’m sorry that I came to your balcony I didn’t think—”

  “What are you saying Barry” she wailed more, still holding him up as far as possible from her, “BARRY TELL ME THE TRUTH”

  “I tried to help someone and they shot me”

  Eugenie finally looked down at his huge and baggy sweater of a dark brown shade and Terence heard a faint gasp escape her lips. She and Barry locked eyes in a much-appreciated silent pause for three very long seconds, during which she seemed to come to the start of an understanding. She opened her mouth very wide again and took a big gulp of air, but no sound came out. She repeated the motion with more air but hesitated once more “Oh my god then why—” she closed her eyes again, achingly, “why the fuck are you” she said, articulating the words very clearly, “here and not— BARRY OPEN YOUR EYES”

  He winced in agony and wriggled to free himself from her grip, unsuccessfully, as her fingers were digging into the shredded skin of his bloody left arm, “I’m sorry I’m really trying it really h—”

  “WHY ARE YOU HERE AND NOT IN A HOSPITAL” she realized she was yelling again, “why the fuck did you come here IF YOU HAVE BEEN SH—”

  “I can’t go to a hospital Ms White”

  “WHY THE FUCK NOT”

  “Nooo please it’s too dangerous they’ll be looking for me”

  “Dangerous?” her voice broke, from horror and confusion, as in Eugenie’s world, hospitals were nice places especially when it came to people wanting to be cured of their illnesses.

  “They will find me there they—”

  “WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY I mean who are they”

  “Some” Barry hesitated, “Russians”

  “Barry”

  “Sorry sorry sorry I d d don’t know why I said that. They are … robots”

  “BARRY YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR MIND” she let go off him with an expression of decision on her face, something grumpy that testified of her level of fedup-ness, got up on her feet and produced her little cell phone from her pocket, wiped her sweaty brow, “let me call an ambulance, don’t worry it will—”

  “Nooo” spread on the floor after being dropped like a bag of potatoes, Barry pushed himself up on his elbows and raised one hand towards her, “no please no don’t do that”

  She mirrored his motion by pointing an angry teacher index finger back at him while she swiped on her phone screen with the other hand, “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH BARRY SHUT THE FUCK UP NOW AND I WILL GO WITH YOU I WILL—”

  “Nooo”

  9, she dialed.

  “Nooo please, not that, not that” Barry folded his knees and rolled on his side, raised himself enough to get back on his feet, legs warming up, little strands and twists of blue from the force of the bolt he was gathering, which would soon be propelling him upwards again. His eyes were glued to Eugenie and to her hand and to the cell phone, in consternation and disappointment.

  Then, she dialed the number 1 and prepared to repeat the push. At the peak of enjoyment, Terence watched Barry shake his head, heard in his mind’s ear, “oh my god not that, not that” The boy closed his eyes and Terence waited. He had witnessed the phenomenon before, the bolt, and it was not something he particularly disliked.

  Everything dissolved in the cat’s universe as when one was going to sleep, the world of sounds around sucked in like they would have been absorbed underwater, and all turned blue, a cold sparkly blue, for what he knew would feel like the half of one second but which, for Barry, would open a bubble of stolen time allowing him to just, Terence thought, just… act faster. That was pretty much it.

  The power filled up the room and reverberated into the walls, ejecting all the frames nailed on the walls in the air even as far as the entrance corridor, followed by a terrible crash that was Barry colliding into the bookshelves on the left of the couch and smashing them into pieces. Although Terence had not closed his eyes, it felt like it when the half of the bolting second passed, and time resumed its normal course.

  *

  From sharing the last half of his life with her every day, Terence knew that Eugenie was near her breaking point. She was not able to just spend her anger into a vacuum with no results and endlessly, especially with Barry in front of her meaning no antagonism to her at the moment, and she had been screaming and kicking for too long now. So presently, as the destruction of the inside of her home progressed, she would surely move on to begging. And begging. Probably denying. She would cry, there wasn’t a doubt about that.

  A car alarm rang in the distance, from the street, and they all looked at the window as a reflex even in the middle of their current preoccupations. Eugenie, still facing the armchair where she had left Barry rumpled on the floor while attempting to dial emergency services. Terence, from the couch and glancing beyond the plate of chicken nuggets. And Barry, too, sitting on his butt in the middle of the wreck of the former bookshelves, his legs covered with books and various other debris from decorations that Eugenie had placed between the books. A volume of the Castles of the Loire rested half opened on his knees, as if he was ready to read it.

  They all turned their heads slightly and followed the blaring sound through the window which remained opened on to the balcony, realizing that the storm was slowly passing. A cozy plicploc was dropping from the potted plants to the frame and the wooden planks, and the wind was now gentle.

  Terence and Barry waited for Eugenie to follow the new developments of her life, both of them with a reasonable amount of patience at the ready simply because they both were quite familiar with her from their different angles. Predictably, she spent an extensive amount of time staring at the hand which had been holding her cell phone a second earlier and which was now empty and, after that was done, she feebly spun around on her trembling legs and gasped at the sight of the mountain of damages into which Barry was partially buried. She looked at her empty hand again and at his face, going back and forth. He granted her a minute, nodding tolerantly, his head resting against the wall behind him. There had been a voluminous shelf furniture instead of a bare wall before, but now, there was no more.

  Eugenie’s cheeks were becoming very red and her eyes humid. She was frowning and sniffling.

  “I’m sorry” Barry said finally, and his words, although spoken low, startled her.

  “JEsus”

  He got spooked too, “it’s okay, it’s okay” and wearily, he retrieved both his hands from under the rubble and the morsels of broken wood, pushing one resolutely against his abdomen and revealing, in the other hand, the cell phone with the screen still open and ready to dial the last digit. He let it slide dramatically from between his fingers and sink into the mess, “I’m sorry” he repeated, this time more firmly.

  Terence prepared himself for that new act. He knew that the boy didn’t have a choice now, and must regain some control. His face was dead white, caves dug under his eyes, some water dripping from his chin and on the sides of his eyebrows, his chest shakily rising up and down. The fingers of his hand clutching his stomach, sticky with blood, stirred with some newer, fresher redder blood. He was soaked from the storm and smelled like a wet dog.

  “My phone” Eugenie said blankly. One tear fell from her eye, in such an ejected manner that it missed her cheek entirely.

  Barry closed his eyes, reopened them, then started speaking with urgency, “Ms White, I’m sorry—”

  “My phone” Eugenie insisted

  “I took it from your hand before you could dial the police”

  “I wasn’t going to dial the police”

  “An ambulance or w wwhatever you were doing. Listen I I I don’t have much time, I’m going to pass out soon, listen” he said in front of her mortified expression, “I don’t have time, Ms White, I cannot let you ask for out out outside help” He tensed under a punch of pain from the middle of his body. “I took your phone from y y yyyour hand and crashed into your furniture, I’m sorry, it’s difficult to bolt inside such a small space”

  “B… Bolt” Eugenie took one step forward in his direction.

  “I’m a mutant”

  “Noo, no no no” Here we were. The begging, the refusing. Terence had been right.

  “Listen, please” Barry sighed, “I am a mutant from the Team of vigilantes out there, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen th—”

  “Hoobes Team”

  “It’s Hobbes”

  Terence watched Eugenie glance around at her walls, “my… picture frames”

  “They all pretty much exploded from the walls because of the speed bubble I created, now if—”

  “Bolt?”

  “Yes, I’m the Bolt, my power is that I can run at supersonic speed. If you’re coming closer to get your phone back, Ms White” he continued talking, even-tempered, “I’m warning you that it’s n nnot going to work, I will bolt again” Terence saw some shiny new tears accumulate into some fat beads at the corners of Eugenie’s eyes. She blinked and let them fall heavily. “Listen I can’t—” Barry seemed to think about his anecdote for a small instant, swallowed hard, “I went to a pl place of contact earlier, and there, I found myself alone, and all those… robots, they started firing at me like, twenty of them, something like that”

  “Your team” Eugenie wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve, which had the result to smear more blood on her face, “where is your Team?”

  “They have vanished” Barry explained, “disappeared, I don’t… I don’t I don’t know where they are”

  “No no no” Eugenie shook her head then leaned in the position of a frog in front of him, hands joined in a prayer.

  “There’s nothing I can do about it” Barry went on and, with great difficulty, launched his free hand towards her in a request of appeasement, but she didn’t reception it. She just stared at it, at his sticky fingers, and then back at his face, dismayed.

  “Robots” she asked.

  “I don’t know those… I don’t know much about those robots. They are n n not Russian, they are from s sspace. They are all ass ass assholes they, shot me in the arm but” he smiled bravely “but it’s okay I don’t th th think it’s I don’t know I’m fine”

  “For fuck’s sake” Eugenie pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, sniffled loudly, “in the… no no no please no why w—”

  Barry’s own eyelids were batting very fast like the wings of a little fruit bat, “they shot me in the stomach, I… it’s… I’m really scared, Ms White” his voice crackled and he cleared his throat, winced in pain, “I c c ccan’t go to a doctor or a pharmacist or even a vet. I can’t go to a dentist or an optician. They will k k kkill everyone in that place to get to me, I cannot do that, you must understand”

  “No no noooo” Eugenie was openly crying now, and she hunched forward and crouched against Barry while still shaking her head, grabbed him by the shoulders, “nooo, this isn’t real, this is a nightmare, this can’t be real” She threw her desperation directly at his face, directly at the source, hoping, against all odds, that the boy would suddenly announce that it was indeed all a joke.

  “I know it’s a lot to t t take in but you’re going to have to, I’m so sorry, I don’t have a choice, I will… lose consciousness soon, listen” he took a deep breath in and continued, “listen I don’t feel good, I’m feeling weird, I… jumped from a building and landed in the back of a truck and then I I went into a restaurant, hid there in the bathroom, tried to find a… solution, but i i if you could just—” he shrunk on his butt but then had an amused little smile, “could just stop squeezing me and scratching me with your fingernails like this please it really hurts it really h h hurts my arm”

  “No no noooo” Eugenie squealed and flew her hands in the air as if she had touched a burning candle, finding them empty and, uncertain of what to do with them, she started juggling some invisible bowling pins, “Barry this is not okay, this is not okay, I can’t, I can’t, I don’t even underst—”

  “Listen please. You do understand. I know you have medical training”

  The words made her melt down “what did you say” She shivered.

  “I know you are a nurse, I know this, listen—”

  “Noo, no, NO” She almost landed her hands on the sides of his arms again but refrained herself.

  “I don’t have time to explain how much I know and why but I know this— Stop shaking your head” he encouraged her by nodding his own. Terence thought, What I know that I know is small. What I know that I don’t know is big. What I don’t know that I don’t know is infinite. “I know” Barry swallowed what seemed to be some dry pieces of paper, “that you are a nurse”

  “You listen” she almost chuckled “I am a high… school… teacher”

  “You are also a nurse, Ms White, there is no point d d dddenying it. I figured a nurse can fix me”

  She choked this time, opening her eyes as big as a gymnast’s hoops in utter shock, “fix you” she panted “I am a teacher, you know that since you were my st—”

  “You are also a nurse”

  “I was a nurse a million years ago Barry and they kicked me out because I wasn’t good enough” Terence watched closely. Barry and Eugenie’s faces were now very near, as if the recovered calm from the street outside had led the overall cacophony and the volume of their interaction to decrease into whispers and secrets. “Do you hear the words coming out of my mouth you stupid empty coconut, you fucking loo—”

  “I don’t… cc c care” he said in a grimace, “I I don’t care. I’m going to pass out now, okay? No ph ph phh—” he closed his eyes to catch his breath and focus, then reopened them and planted them into hers, “no phone okay? please, I trust you Ms White, I— Stop sh sh shaking your head”

  “No no nooo” she implored hopelessly, seized his shoulders again, “don’t sleep please Barry don’t sleep”

  “I trust you”

  “I can’t Barry I can’t I can’t”

  He kept nodding, the breath at his lips whistling like a basket of snakes, “I trust you, okay?” Then he closed his eyes and he was out.