by Eve Morton
“I’ve gotta move my car.”
Their time inside had made it seem like the world itself was frozen and nothing outside would change, but now Cosmin was acutely in tune to every last item out of place. The clothing he wore was warm but far too casual, and he fished around for his jeans in order to have the extra layer of warmth and sturdy fabric as he excavated his sedan.
Eric followed him downstairs. “I can grab some more salt from my parents’ place. Maybe see if they have something that will melt the door handles faster? My mother has a hair dryer.”
Cosmin nodded, telling Eric these were all good ideas without meeting his gaze. They dressed in another layer of clothing in relative silence; Cosmin wore his boots, while Eric found a pair of George’s old work shoes and another pair of gloves with rubber on the fingers for dexterity.
Everything seemed a size too big on Eric, but the thought was fleeting as he began to hammer against the handles of his car. He needed to wait until Eric returned with the dryers before he could even crack the surface and retrieve the ice scraper from the back seat. In addition to the salt, and the dryers, Eric also had another ice scraper that he began to use along the back of Cosmin’s car. He’d carried everything over in a knapsack, and Cosmin grinned as he spotted more cigars and whiskey along the top.
“I see you’re a veritable survivalist now,” he joked. His extended effort on the car made it come out far more seriously than he intended.
It was a moment before Eric grinned. “You know, for tomorrow, if we’re still stuck. Though we should probably take advantage of those warming centres they’ve been setting up.”
“Warming centres?”
“I read about them on my phone when the news came in for a hot second.” Eric explained that local community centres and libraries were opening their doors to families who had no heat. Some places served hot chocolate, handed out blankets and mitts, while most were merely gathering places for as many people as possible to stay warm until the hydro was fixed. When another set of greens sparks showered down during his explanation, the idea of a warming centre tomorrow seemed like a fantastic idea.
“Hard to tell what time it is now,” Cosmin said. Between another shower of sparks, this time more blue than green, Cosmin spotted the telltale sliver of sunlight in the eastern horizon. The dawning made the trees stripped of their branches now seem like frost giants rather than old men. Proud, rather than hunched. “But it is pretty much morning. Let me move the car and then we can check that out.”
“Sure.”
The car was mostly cleared away of the ice now, and whatever lingered in the crevices Cosmin figured would soon be melted away as he started the car. It took a couple tries, the engine frigid, but it eventually turned over. Cosmin closed the driver’s side door just as Eric got in the passenger seat.
“Should we really both be here?” Eric asked after a second. “I mean, if the car spins out, one of us should call for help.”
Eric’s cautiousness seemed overstated, and Cosmin quickly read between the lines: car crashes appeared to run in his own family, and come in twos. Eric left the car without another word and stood on the porch as Cosmin backed up. The car slipped and slid on the ice, but he made sure not to give it too much gas. He wasn’t even going to attempt leaving after the wheels seemed to jam. He just needed to get it away from the tree in case it fell.
After moving it a foot in ten minutes, Cosmin gave up. It would have to do. He turned off the car and steadied himself against the frame as he got out, only to feel the pull of the vehicle against his palm. It was rolling down the rest of the driveway, even over the salt, the weight of the vehicle and layers of ice too much.
Cosmin let go and watched with incredulity as the car rolled one inch after another. Eric lunged from the porch, as if he could run after it, but soon gave up in a fit of curse words. They both winced as it left the driveway and kept veering towards the centre of the suburb. Since the neighbourhood was mostly residential, and everyone in the area had their own cars parked in their driveways, there was nothing else on the road close by, which meant that—other than a few trees at the edges of lawns—there was nothing that the vehicle could hit. When it finally came to a rolled stop, it was in the centre of the suburb’s circle of houses; it touched nothing, it had hit nothing, and it seemed stable. Whenever a plough or salt truck would come by—if it would come this far into the neighbourhood—there might be problems, but for now, the car was just stopped in the middle of the road, in medias res.
“Well,” Eric said. “That was kind of lucky.”
Cosmin let out a booming laugh. He’d been trying so hard to predict the tree limbs, the damage to the house, the neighbour’s property and his own liability, he didn’t even consider that the entire outside world was a frozen-over nightmare landscape. Eric soon added to his laughter.
The wind picked up in the next moment and cut them both to their core, leaving them silent. The trees rattled in the gust, and with the thick branches coated in ice, it sounded like bones rubbing together. It was morning, but still too early for most people to be up and outside—even to the warming centres.
“We should...” Eric’s voice stopped as a tree at his parents’ house took a fall.
Not a tree, no. Cosmin realized he was looking at the basketball net in the front yard surrounded by trees take a nosedive into the icy cement. The metal pole and frozen-over basket netting landed with a sickening crack.
Eric raised his hands to his forehead, mouth ajar, but waited another moment before he let out a breath. Nothing else had fallen. “Another lucky strike. We should buy lottery tickets.”
Cosmin laughed again. “Maybe I should do the show about luck! Another name for blind hope.”
They walked over to Eric’s house gingerly to be sure nothing was damaged. The basketball net had been corroding for years, Eric said, and was more there out of habit than actual use. It really was lucky it fell down now, since his parents weren’t home and their Audi would have been parked directly in that spot. Icy branches stripped from trees also littered his parents’ yard, but there were far more evergreens and bushes completely frozen over.
Eric assessed the house for surface damage and lingered on the front window on the second floor. It was the window that, no doubt, led to Eric’s childhood bedroom, the one where he’d watched Cosmin make out with Maurice. Cosmin glanced from the window to the spot where his car was in the garage. Full view. The perfect sight.
“Just how much did you spy on me as a teenager?” Cosmin asked. His voice was playful, but Eric’s cheeks were soon beet red.
“I... I didn’t. It’s just—”
“Shh. I was teasing.” Cosmin held Eric’s hand, and relief flooded him when he squeezed back.
“Well, if you’re going to tease me about this then you may as well help me live out my ultimate boyhood fantasy.” When Cosmin did nothing but raise a brow, Eric hurriedly continued. “After we get to a warming station, we should get what we need, and then head back to my teenage bedroom. It, too, is also now a guest room, but it’ll do.”
“I think that can be arranged.”
When Eric kissed him, they both had to hold on to the other’s jacket lapels tightly in order to not slip on the ice. If Cosmin relaxed too much, he feared he’d drag them both to the middle of the enclave like he had his car.
But then again, what was so bad about that? It really had been lucky. Blind hope. And maybe that type of blindness wasn’t ignorance, but something to strive for—something, perhaps, to even do a show about.
When their kiss ended, a quiet calm descended over both of them. The morning, if not for the near state of emergency that was going on, was peaceful. Wonderful.
“I think I know the theme of my last show.”
“Oh?” Eric asked. “You’ll actually do luck?”
“Yes and no. I still want to talk about adopti
on, but I think you were onto something when you said that luck was a large factor in those cases because so many things can go wrong. Orphanages, especially the one I came from, were notorious because they didn’t actually bond with the infant. And that lack of attachment can follow a child for the rest of its life—but that same lack of attachment can happen in birth parents, too. A child, even if it is wanted and intended, can start to feel like an accident, a strange confluence of forces. Luck, in a way.
“And so,” Cosmin said, gesturing wildly. Even in spite of the ice, and his audience of one, he knew he was onto something so much bigger than himself, and so he had to act as if he needed to address the entire world from a bell tower. “Searching for that origin—especially in adoption stories—can be about sorting out that pathway of luck, tracing it all the way back to the first forking path, and hoping that by finding the birth parents, the true nature of the world is revealed. But there is no real luck. There is blind hope. Take my car—”
Cosmin gestured to his car, still in place in the middle of the enclave, safe, but also unpredictable. “So many things could happen, but they didn’t. I could trace over the decision and think that in some way, I had control, but I never did. The same goes for me, for Suzanne. I went searching for the beginning of our time as Tesslers to see...well, to see if there was a pathway, an option, where we all could have lived happily if not together.”
The reality of his own search weighed on him; it made his heart beat faster and his knees go weak. Once again, his body’s weakness was how he knew he was onto something. The truth kicked out his knees. “But I will not find those papers. I will not find that miraculous past and therefore illuminate that possible future. So I have to throw it out; I have to move on. And this is where luck comes in: that car, my life, Suzanne’s life—it’s all dumb chance. It’s an odds game. And sometimes we lost so much. Complete snake eyes. But sometimes we won, too. And to say that the pain matters more than the winning, well, that’s just dumb.”
Cosmin took the photo of Suzanne out of the front pocket of his jacket. He’d kept it with him for well over twenty-four hours now. He felt like he was talking to her, justifying and lecturing to her, but he wasn’t. Not really, not anymore. He was talking about her, because he’d never stop that, but he was speaking to Eric. He met his eyes. His face was open, his nod encouraging.
“I think luck is a story we tell ourselves after the fact about the event,” Cosmin went on. “It’s not the theme of my final show. But the theme can be stories, that particular kind of story, where you have to wait until the ending occurs before you finally understand what it all means. So I’ll still talk about Lily, about Suzanne. But I’ll also talk about my father, too, since he’s just as much a part of my family. He was the half I had left after we’d all lost so much. I get it now. I really do. And it’s so much better than just reading the journals.”
Cosmin could still feel the paper of the journals in his hands and the heavy weight on his heart they prompted; he could still hear Suzanne’s laugh, and the sound of her name on his lips, but it was gone. It was meaningful, his own very important story, but he had to move on. “I’m going to throw out those journals when all of this is done. I know that more than ever now. I don’t want to hoard. I don’t want to fill a room with sadness. Will you help me, though? Will you come with me when I throw them out?”
“Of course,” Eric said. It was the first thing he’d said in Cosmin’s chatter. His voice was eager, alert, as if relieved he was finally able to help. “I will help with whatever you need. I promise.”
“Good. Thank you, Eric. Will you come on the show, too?”
This time Eric seemed genuinely taken aback. “As an audience?”
“As a contributor. I’d want you on the show with me.”
“I wouldn’t know what to say. What would you want me to say?”
“I’m, you know, I’m not sure.” Cosmin’s breath caught in his throat. Wind came by at that exact moment, so he could play it off as a chill, but saying the words aloud—asking the question, like before—made him realize he was vulnerable. He wanted Eric to come on the show to talk about the luck of them meeting again; the luck of them finding one another at a bar and then at the house; the luck of the city; of acting; of desire; of a future together, one that still seemed far more like a novel Eric would narrate, rather than a life they could embody.
“Perhaps your friend,” Cosmin said. “The one you told me you met at Starbucks?”
“Dillon. Like Matt Dillon.”
“Yes,” Cosmin said. “That whole story seems filled with meanings written after a particular ending has passed. Or perhaps you can talk about Trina, your show. Whatever you want. Just think about it.”
“I guess, yeah, I’ll think. The last one is on the 31st, right?”
“Yes, yes. I’ll be there for six hours, so there’s lots of time.”
Cosmin gave the address of the building and instructions on how to prepare if he decided he wanted to do this. He still kept it open-ended, casual, rather than sealing it with the same kind of emotion he’d harnessed in order to deliver his theme itself. He was underselling it, but he couldn’t reach the same depths of feeling anymore, now having felt the bottom of his own vulnerability. He was drained. He was tired. He was hungry—and so was Eric.
“I’m starving,” Eric said after a couple moments had passed. “You want to see if my parents have some more food to raid, and then check out a warming centre?”
The sun was higher in the sky now. Activity hummed around them, as a dog from next door came out with an owner whose face had a passing familiarity from his youth. The neighbourhood was waking up. Cosmin felt as if his time had run out.
“That sounds fantastic,” he said, extending an arm. “After you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eric knew he couldn’t put if off anymore. Morning bled into afternoon as he and Cosmin left the neighbourhood on foot and headed towards the warming station in the public library’s community room. In addition to the hot chocolate and delightful small talk from elderly librarians with cherubic faces, the centre also had a device charging station hooked up to a generator so citizens could charge their phones and call family. When someone recognized Cosmin, and they started to talk about something more in-depth than the weather, Eric took it as his moment to attend to his phone for longer than five minutes, and finally listen to what he was dubbing The Message, and The Message II: The Remessaging.
Both were from the lawyer, and both felt like a horror movie villain coming back to life.
When the missed call icon had come on during one of the bouts of power in the early morning, Eric had been thrilled—only until he realized it wasn’t from his mother or sisters or even Cameron. The fact that the estate lawyer was now leaving him messages, and not just harassing him with calls, sent chills up his spine if he thought of it longer than three seconds. He was pretty sure he’d done nothing wrong and that nothing terrible had happened to anyone he loved. Right?
Most of his neurosis was surely a leftover aftershock of his divorce proceedings, maybe even some perverted form of guilt for living a double life for so long. He’d talked to everyone who mattered in the past twenty-four hours, and that had been when the lawyer had resorted to phone messages, so Eric was sure everything was fine. Just fine.
But he still needed to check it.
Eric’s phone hummed to life in the power station. In the flickering Wi-Fi of the library, another cascade of Facebook alerts and emails mingled with the phone messages that still left him feeling shaky on his feet. Dillon and Valerie had both added him to Facebook. His mother sent him a new Christmas plan since no planes were coming near Toronto Pearson for the next little while. But Eric finally peeled back all the distractions and listened to them.
He was relieved when Cosmin came by with a paper cup filled with hot chocolate for Eric five minutes later. He’d
listened to both messages twice now, still unsure of what exactly they were.
“You okay?” Cosmin asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Or a robot.”
“What now?”
Eric shook his head. “I’m sorry. This just doesn’t make sense. Listen?”
Cosmin nodded as Eric handed off his phone. He listened with his brows furrowed, his mouth pursed. Eric knew exactly when he’d reached the point in the second message that threw him the most.
“You have an inheritance?” Cosmin repeated, and then extended the phone back to Eric. “Your parents are okay, correct?”
“Yeah, yeah. Apparently they’re not even going through Toronto anymore for Christmas, but everyone in my family is alive and accounted for.”
“So Christopher Ren isn’t someone you know? Yet he’s bequeathed you his legacy?”
“That’s the thing. I know that name. I’ve sat here for five minutes trying to put a face to it, and all I can come up with is this kid we let on the set of the TV show years ago.”
“The robot show? Really?”
“I know! It’s strange, right? Crime Bot was a small show, with a limited audience and shelf life, but we did have a kid come on set and take a tour. A Make-A-Wish scenario, you know? He had...” Eric paused, trying to remember. “Cystic fibrosis? Something degenerative over time. It was getting bad, hence the oxygen tank and mask he carried around, and so whoever was sponsoring this Make-A-Wish thing brought him to us when he expressed an interest in the show. We—me and the co-star, the guy I liked—showed him around, talking and impressing him with things. We’d already gotten the news that we were cancelled, though, so everyone was kind of down.”
“And now he’s dead?”
“Yeah, apparently.” Eric grabbed his phone and listened to the messages once again. Christopher Ren’s lawyer was looking for Eric Ashley Campbell, also known as Ash Erikson, because he had some matters to discuss in terms of Mr. Ren’s final estate. The second message was more forceful, detailing specifically that they would need to talk as soon as possible to deal with the inheritance forthcoming.
