Chapter Text
"Eric… there's something I've been meaning to ask you."
Eric tilted his head towards Antigone, the blood-orange light of the sunset warming his cheeks as sand shifted under his fingers.
"Sure, Antigone. What is it?"
Her features fidgeted as she took a moment to gather herself. She was about as tan as a lamb's freshly shaved wool, but there was blood in her cheeks that hadn't been there when they'd met. It was incredible, in retrospect, how convinced Eric had been of the severely limited importance of the Funns. He couldn't have imagined, those early days in Piffling, how wholeheartedly he would place them at the center of his life, how eagerly he would intertwine with them, all growing like trees planted too close together.
She asked, "Do you still want to be in this relationship?"
The way the question opposed his train of thought caught Eric off-guard (something at which Antigone was relentlessly skilled). Antigone made heavy eye contact with him then, and Eric felt the full weight of the moment.
"Well, yes." He specified, "Not to sound too optimistic, but I do hope to spend the rest of my life with you."
"Right," said Antigone, unimpressed. "And you would say the same about Rudyard, I suppose."
The sentiment seemed to come from nowhere, and it left Eric bewildered.
"What?"
"Wouldn't you?" Antigone prodded, looking…
Eric couldn't quite place the expression. An unnerving lack of information.
"Yes," he answered. "But, you know, that's different."
"Is it?" Antigone pushed further, a pleading look on her face. "I'm asking, Eric. Do you see me differently to Rudyard? Or Georgie, or any of your friends? Your real friends?"
"What do you mean? Of course I do, I'm dating you. We had sex an hour ago."
Antigone's eye contact vanished, redirected to the glittering ocean. Eric's anxiety was spiking as it hadn't in months.
"You've had sex with half of Piffling. Which I don't mind," she amended before he could respond. "I'm just saying it's not much of a metric."
It caught up with Eric's body that Antigone was tearing him in half. As the shape of her thoughts took form in his head, it became clear what, exactly, she was accusing him of, and it echoed shapes he had successfully avoided since surviving puberty.
"It's not that any of this has been unpleasant," Antigone continued. "You've been letting me learn more about you, and I like that. I like spending time with you. You're good at… everything you do. I know my experience is limited, and maybe I just don't know what to expect, but… I can't help but think you've just put up more walls. Whenever I try to speak intimately with you, whenever I say that I love you, you pull away. You're more willing to be vulnerable in some ways, and we are closer, but I have to be honest, Eric, when I pictured myself in a relationship, this isn't how I imagined it would feel. Sometimes I get the sense that I know you less now than before."
He didn't love her enough. He couldn't do it right, and she'd noticed. His failures were so obvious that she had needed to sit him down and talk about it.
"We've spent enough time together now that I can tell the difference between you and… 'Eric Chapman.' I know which one is kissing me."
This was her first relationship. What if she thought she'd done something wrong? Antigone was perfect: skilled and beautiful and haunting and intelligent and passionate and honest, and Eric adored her.
"And of course I wouldn't presume, um… well, I don't want to… I know that your ability to maintain an erection isn't necessarily indicative of…"
What if she couldn't be around him anymore? He was the first person she'd had sex with. He'd taken that from her. How cruel could he be? What if he'd hurt her with everything he lacked and he lost her and it was his fault?
Eric noticed, then, that he was sobbing into Antigone's shoulder, arms clutching tight around her waist, his whole body shaking with heavy, ugly sounds as her long, thin fingers traced his spine.
"I'm sorry," he choked out, far too aware of the rudeness of his shuddering. "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to comfort me, I'm—"
"Hush," said Antigone, quiet, clearly not in the highest spirits herself, but kind nevertheless. "Breathe. Keep crying."
The command was so simple, he couldn't help but obey. He cried like he hadn't since his grandfather's funeral, when he realized they could never finish their lessons in birdsong. He cried for the comfort he could never quite provide Vivienne, for all the whirlwind lovers with whom he couldn't bring himself to keep in touch, for his Oxford girlfriend whose voice shook as she told him, I don't think you like me as much as I like you.
His beard was matted with snot and tears, and he felt that discomfort as he came slowly back into himself. He'd soaked Antigone, but she wasn't complaining, patiently waiting out his hyperventilation.
"In my opinion, for the record," she murmured, the soft sound like velvet against his heated skin, "it isn't too optimistic to presume you'll be staying forever. I don't think we could get rid of you for anything, and we're not going anywhere."
Were he more in control of himself, Eric would have laughed airily, doing his part to lighten the mood. Instead, all he could do was nod frantically into the thin fabric of her dress—and oh, god, he'd have to make her let him wash it himself, he knew how delicate it was getting, and still her favorite, her favorite as long as he'd known her and through her wardrobe's expansion, fitting her so perfectly. Eric's cells all thrummed with the joy of her presence.
"I love you," he said, among the most earnest sentences of his life. "I love you so much."
Antigone sighed.
"I know," she said, a gentle whisper that bit sharply.
She ran her nails through the curls of his hair, and he finally relaxed a little. She wasn't yelling or crying. She wouldn't make him leave.
"Is Georgie going to kill me?" he asked.
"I'm sure she'll let you survive," she answered. Then, quieter, "It's alright. You're alright."
The comfort made his breathing stutter, and then he was crying again. Damn.
"Good," said Antigone. "Let go. You're safe. Everything is fine."
*
"I am going to kill myself," Antigone announced to the vodka tonic her hostess had kindly provided her.
"What did you expect?" asked Vivienne before pausing to take her shot of vodka, having reached her medically-imposed limit on sugar for the day. She recovered, aided by the two shots already in her stomach, and continued, "Did you think he'd take you into his arms and say, 'O, Antigone, I've never loved anyone as I've loved you, let's get married and have bizarre sex for the rest of our lives?'"
Antigone, whose fantasy had actually involved multiple years' courtship followed by an elopement so as to guarantee her brother would have no influence over her wedding, hunched over her drink.
"I would have settled for being wrong," she answered.
"He's not a normal man," Vivienne said, quite cruelly, Antigone thought, but then, there was a reason she'd knocked on the woman's door. "He spent years begging me not to leave him, and he doesn't even like me all that much. If you just hadn't said anything—"
"That's not a life I want!" Antigone interrupted. "You think I'd let a man pretend to be in love with me until we're sharing a coffin?"
Vivienne shrugged, clearly not all that concerned about Antigone's torment, which was both annoying and provided her the grounding sense that maybe these things which felt overwhelmingly important shouldn't worry her so much.
"Who's pretending? He does love you, doesn't he? And he fucks you and takes you on dates and spends more time with you than anyone else. What's the difference? Why be alone?"
This stymied Antigone for a moment, a question she'd been struggling to answer satisfactorily. She chewed on her cheek as she thought.
"All of our perceptions of reality are hallucinations representative of some objective concrete form, the truth of which we can never be certain."
Vivienne looked as though someone had just shoved spoiled milk under her nose.
Antigone pressed onward, "I'd like for someone to be having the same hallucination as me. I want for us to have the same vision in our heads, and if Eric and I are just both pretending we share one… it's a waste of time. It doesn't help either of us to lie."
Once she'd given up on trying to discern what the hell Antigone had just said, Vivienne circumvented it with a quick, "I don't mean to state the obvious, but you are… whatever age you are."
"Forty-one last month," Antigone supplied, feeling warm in contemplation of how she'd spent that day, and then cold as she remembered that that probably wouldn't happen again.
"And you seem insistent on living in Piffling Vale. We may be a town now, but that doesn't mean your options have expanded."
"I suppose. Although…"
"Although?"
"Eric was quite literally the first person I met since school. I feel I may have, um. More options than I previously believed."
Vivienne, though not everyone would say so, was an intelligent woman. She heard Antigone's mildly self-flagellating statement, and she saw the blush on Antigone's cheeks. She could think of two meanings behind this: either Antigone had been blind to the eligible male population of Piffling and was now ready to do some legwork, maybe even go off-island, or Antigone, much like Vivienne back in the day, had… more options than she'd previously believed.
"Interesting," she said, refilling Antigone's vodka tonic. "Should I be telling Marlene to come over?"
Damningly, Antigone spluttered and stammered at the implication without needing a millisecond to process it.
*
Eric, despite Antigone's assurances otherwise, was fairly certain that his life was over.
It was clear, after all, that Antigone had been his one chance at love. Wasn't she? A deeply odd woman who could always see through him, who had a stomach of steel and eyes to match, who was the quickest learner he knew behind himself and Georgie, and only lagging there due to her interests being so niche and complex; wasn't that the only person who could feasibly stand him?
He cowered in his living room, sitting in a corner across from an unlit lamp, feeling unworthy of his own sofa.
Sure, Antigone might forgive him, because she was incredible and understood things Eric would never grasp. Antigone might allow him to continue his life on Piffling mostly unchanged, were it solely up to her. But Antigone Funn was related to Rudyard Funn, both of whom were family to Georgie Crusoe. If Eric was alive in a week, it would in all likelihood be because he was hiding out in Vatican City. Francis had died, he could probably go back…
But he didn't want to. Eric had finally found the sort of home he'd dreamt of as a child, and as a teen, and as an adult: a place with people who cared about him and people he cared about, a place where he could matter in a real way, in an honest way, a place that could keep his curious mind invested for—conceivably—ever.
If he lost his friends here, he would lose his home.
Surely, surely, his friends would no longer want to be his friends once they all knew what he'd done.
Maybe Antigone had only been nice to try to make him stop crying faster. Maybe at this very moment, she was holding a press conference on all his crimes. Maybe the moment he turned on a light, all of Piffling would be throwing fruit and trash and bottles at his windows, because he'd found and hurt a woman who could love him, an actual him, not the play he'd been performing since his mother had drilled him on show tunes so her friends could coo in envy over her precocious child who seemed to joke beyond his age while blinking naïvely when questioned on his own words—
A long time ago, Eric. That was a long time ago.
From the day they'd met, Antigone had refused to accept his lies to her and had disdained his lies to himself. She had seen him and liked him. Liked him more than the man he tried to be. More than he deserved. Then, a couple years in, she'd pulled away. He couldn't tell why or when precisely, though it seemed to happen around the time they'd done that terrible play; one day her gaze had burned at him, often more present than the woman herself, and then the next it… hadn't. Or if it did, she'd close her eyes, open them again, and that fire was gone. It had driven him crazy.
He hadn't realized that it must have been infatuation until he'd seen a glimmer of it between Antigone and Henry. Once the dots came together, the image felt obvious, and he felt like a fool. It had been difficult to do anything without some part of his brain whispering, Antigone saw you, and she wanted you, and you ruined it. How did you ruin it? How could you not even notice, just because she never said anything?
But she'd forgiven him, maybe, or remembered something about what she'd found charming in the first place, because she'd let him take her to the remnants of Chapman's café where he could make her a decaffeinated beverage to her taste. Then they'd kept doing that—quiet hours away from the innumerable eyes of Piffling, an occasional kiss on the cheek when he walked her home, a smile whenever he showed up to bother Rudyard—until she'd admitted that they were dating, that he was hers, and he'd wondered if he had ever liked any of the people he'd thought he liked, because he knew he hadn't liked any of them as much as he liked Antigone.
He'd thought he'd finally gotten it, this one aspect of normality that had eluded him no matter how he chased it.
But apparently not.
He'd ruined it, again, and he still didn't know what had happened, what it was that he'd failed at. Hadn't he been trying? Hadn't all of their evenings together dripped with romance? Candles and hand-written notes and flowers and poetry (not his own—Eric was many things, but not a poet, putting aside the few chapbooks he'd published). What else was there?
Eric shifted incidentally, and every joint in his body loudly reminded him that he hadn't moved in over an hour, and that he was no longer at an age where he could stay still for so long without consequence. He made a noise of deep aggrievement as he stretched himself flat on the floor and cracked all available joints. He couldn't shake the feeling that if his head came into view of the window, he'd be shot on sight. Better to writhe. It worked well enough for his friends. Or the people that had been his friends that morning.
Nevertheless, he was fairly sure no one was planning to break into his house and assassinate him. Or, if they were, it would probably be for the best if he appeared to be sleeping comfortably in bed so they would think they were catching him unawares, giving him the element of surprise.
Sleep, that night, was not an option.
He writhed to bed.
*
Georgie's phone vibrated with a new text, which she promptly read as Jennifer stirred sugar into their teas.
"She did it," Georgie announced, simplifying the four drunken paragraphs Antigone had sent.
"Thank God," said Jennifer, before kissing Georgie's temple and pressing the hot mug into her hand. "Don't worry, we'll get there soon."
"I'm not worried," Georgie poorly lied.
*
The business hours of Chapman's had shrunk considerably since narrowing its services, and even more once he had attempted and been convinced not to shut it down. If the Funns wanted him to filter their stream of clients down to a manageable level, he would do precisely that and no more. Rudyard's paycheck from the council for his archive work, a stipend funded entirely by Eric, had been steadily increasing without yet being met with a complaint; Eric didn't worry about the Funn's finances anymore (not that he had worried much, for most of the time he'd known them). He was happy to give them free time, he was happy to give them funerals. He was just happy. The happiest he'd ever been.
For the first time since that year's Easter disaster (caused entirely, of course, by Rudyard), Chapman's did not open at the appointed time. Eric managed the journey from bed to kitchen, but he just couldn't put his heart into the scrambled eggs, and from there the whole day was a guaranteed wash. He would have put a note on the door with some excuse, only, the thought of stepping outside had his heart pounding. Instead, he closed the curtains of every square-facing window he came across.
Those who had not lived on Piffling for the time preceding this tale may meet some confusion at Eric's aforementioned behavior. After all, Eric was the island's golden boy, their beloved panacea to any conceivable problem, and Antigone was the odd phantom who had spent her youth inside herself, her mortuary, or both.
Well, if Piffling's population had gradually warmed to Antigone as she gained confidence and some semblance of social skills, the ice could be considered thoroughly melted. Her audience remained niche, but nothing else would suit her, and she was admired for her bravery even by those repelled by her art.
The increased interest in local erotica had led to a book club/writing group that had, at first, been run out of Chapman's Book Nook. Once he downsized and it moved to whichever café occupied the cliff those days, Antigone had dropped in from time to time, though she kept herself literally to the margins. Her passion for the subject matter couldn't be contained forever, and before long, the club's regulars regarded her as an expert one would be a fool to ignore. The group eventually had enough stories to populate a modest zine, approved of by the counsel, printed by Eric, and contributed to heavily by Antigone.
What with providing Piffling pornography, the occasional community theater production, and lovingly embalmed family members, public opinion of Antigone had largely turned on its head. He had heard some less kind adherents reflect that it was a pity she was related to such an annoyance as Rudyard Funn. He'd chosen not to pass the comment along.
Eric was loved no less. He'd lost nothing but his perceived invulnerability. There were plus-sides to being regarded as human, but he did not find it a comfortable role.
"You worked too hard for too long, mate," Bill had assured him when Eric announced the simplification of Chapman's business model over a light ale. "No one could do all that forever."
Eric had efficiently switched topics, because he wanted to tell Bill that he could have, that he was Eric Chapman, a man of infinite energy and resources who could be slowed by no one and nothing! And he had learned that people didn't like it when he said such things.
His downsizing and gradual dismantling of his monster of a building was seen not as a benevolent decision for the sake of Piffling's small businesses (excluding the one), but as proof of weakness. Eric had become evidence that no one man can do everything, and though Eric knew he could, there was no argument to be made.
And so, were Eric asked to describe his and Antigone's images in the eyes of Piffling, he'd say she was a genius and he was a human. He was sure his status would suffer further with his latest fault revealed. If he wasn't the most successful person on the island, and he wasn't a good enough man for Antigone, what else could he be?
As he shut a thick velvet curtain on the first floor, Eric's eyes flicked by habit to Funn Funerals. It was always difficult to discern movement within, the one window into the foyer being coated in what seemed like centuries' worth of dust. Georgie would try to clean it once in a while, but that was a losing battle, and even Georgie knew when to give up. That aside, she and Jennifer were off-island. Their lengthy trip required periodic breaks for Georgie to check that her friends were surviving without her, but it would still be a while before she dropped by again. She kept swearing up and down that the trip would end one day, and Eric was inclined to believe her, but it was undeniably dragging on, and the Funns couldn't conceal their doubt.
Eric tore his gaze from the gloomy building and retreated to his draft table, planning the few funerals of the following week. He wondered if Antigone would ask Georgie to come home early, and how long he would have to live if she did.
He went about his day, and went about his day, and went about his day. Around noon, he heard Rudyard yelling at Petunia in the distance. He hardly moved until two o'clock, at which point he did the only thing he could think of to escape.
"Care for a drink?" he said down the phone to Henry.
"I haven't had lunch yet. You called just in time."
*
While Chapman's failed to open for business, Rudyard Funn was alone in the kitchen of his generational home, sitting on one of the only-somewhat-broken chairs he had snatched from the alley that had, at the time, housed the dumpster of Stanley Carmichael's antiques store. The chair had belonged to the Funns for many years, but Rudyard had been forced to sell it off not long after he'd sold the family tea set.
Times, Rudyard would never admit, were substantially worse pre-Chapman's Arrival than post-Chapman's Conquering (which neither of them had admitted was the final outcome; Rudyard's blood churned with a constant smug joy, but Chapman would never do anything he asked without proper motivation, and their routines looked so similar to previous years that no one would guess anything had changed).
Though Rudyard had once been inundated with mourners, back when he was the proprietor of Piffling's sole funeral home, he had been no less familiar with demands for refunds, not to mention Antigone's endless monologues about needing more supplies and better equipment and Maybe we could start keeping some of this money if their family members weren't half-decayed before I can start embalming them, Rudyard; every funeral home needs a proper refrigeration system, particularly if it's the only funeral home on an island filled with buffoons dying every day!
He'd done his best. And he'd gotten them through, after all. Here they were: very nearly respected and relatively active members of the community. Rudyard had learned what it felt like to step outside into the sun.
Rudyard sipped his hot water (they could afford coffee now, but he regarded it as a decadence to be rarely indulged), sat in the precise posture that would prevent the chair from wobbling, and stared across the empty table.
He'd gotten used to Antigone not being home for breakfast.
Alright—no, he hadn't really, it would never feel right and he hated every moment of every silent meal. The ones he knew she was sharing with Eric Chapman did have a special sort of sting, but he wasn't all that much more fond of the days she spent with her seemingly innumerable friends.
Rudyard had always known in the back of his mind: if everyone would stop gagging at or ignoring Antigone, they would realize how perfectly ordinary she was. She wanted all the things that they all wanted, and now that she'd learned to ask for them, she was getting them. She was more of an artist than anyone else on Piffling, and they were starting to see it.
Rudyard wondered if, soon, she wouldn't move out.
"Not that we wouldn't be perfectly fine without her," he told Madeleine, who was herself missing the crumbs of Antigone's habitual toast. "I could chain up Chapman in the mortuary and make him her replacement. That would teach her."
Madeleine protested that that wouldn't teach anyone anything. Rudyard scoffed and didn't respond, because he didn't have a real lesson to impart anyway.
"I should start holding her to business hours," he grumbled, his grip on the mug not far from cracking it.
As though summoned by the threat, Antigone stumbled through the front door which Rudyard had unlocked before the sun rose.
He shot up so quickly the chair toppled over, the noise startling a yelp from his throat as he tripped into the front room.
"Where have you been? You were out all night and I know Chapman's was empty."
(Rather, as readers may recall, he'd seen that the lights in Eric's private rooms never turned on.)
Antigone blinked, visibly frazzled and unhappy with Rudyard's volume level. He could tell when his sister was hungover.
"You do still work here, don't you?" he prodded at a higher-than-necessary decibel; only a fool ignored an advantage when one presented itself.
Antigone recoiled and rushed past him to the kitchen, gunning for the bread.
"That isn't the question you want to ask me," she hissed.
"You're right. One of many questions I don't want to ask you, but not among their number: where were you."
She grimaced at her breakfast-in-progress.
Just before he could demand the answer a fifth time, Antigone admitted, "Alright, alright! Why must you always be such a pain? I was with Vivienne."
Rudyard spotted the ambiguity.
"On her estate? Or—"
"Okay, yes, I was at the circus, you caught me—"
"You know those elephants have it out for me—"
"I am my own person, Rudyard, and I like the circus and everyone there likes me—"
"—just don't understand why you'd want to stay in the vicinity of that woman's whip, let alone spend time with jugglers—"
"—and anyway, you could just let me be for once in your life, it's not like I've dealt with ending a relationship before!"
After a beat and a half of silence, the toaster popped up, causing both Funns to jump.
"You—"
"Shut up," Antigone snapped, turning away to plate her toast.
"Ha! Finally came to your senses, eh? He must be a wreck. Ooh! Did he cry?"
"I said, shut up."
"I bet that means he did!" Rudyard sing-songed, dancing in place. "Did you tell him you've finally had enough of mediocre everymen who can't even run a funeral home properly? Did he beg you not to tell anyone that he's all gimmick and no substance?"
All gimmick and no substance, Antigone reflected, was almost exactly why she'd left him, though she wouldn't give Rudyard the satisfaction of saying so.
Instead, spreading her butter with some malice, she said, "He did cry, actually, and he is your friend. Don't be cruel."
That shut him up for a moment, as all he could think to say was to dispute being Chapman's friend, and he knew that he'd be wrong. He cleared his throat, righted the toppled chair, and sat back down to return to his water.
"Well…" he muttered, chastised. "What happened?"
Antigone stuffed toast into her mouth and sat across from him while she chewed, brow furrowed. Eventually, she swallowed and said, "Not much. I realized we were doing each other more harm than good."
"You gave up an avenue for harming Chapman for no reason?" Rudyard quipped.
Antigone rolled her eyes only briefly, too frustrated to enjoy it.
"I'm honestly worried. He said he was alright, but… you know him."
"Not so worried you wouldn't go gallivanting around with circus folk."
"Can't you take something seriously for once in your life?"
"I take almost everything seriously, Antigone, you know this. Forgive me if I have limited sympathy for your," his nose wrinkled and his hand waved, "rituals."
"Rituals?"
"What would you call them?"
Antigone couldn't be bothered to argue the point, which Rudyard counted as a win.
"He seemed afraid," she said, her concern blunt.
"And," Rudyard cleared his throat, picked up his mug and mumbled into it, "how are you… feeling."
Antigone blinked at him, both jarred from her train of thought and unused to the question.
"Relieved," she said, once the answer came. "Frustrated. I should have known I was wasting my time, but I wasted it anyway."
"Would you," Rudyard mumbled so quietly Antigone struggled to hear him, his eyes entirely hidden behind his greasy hair, "like to talk about it?"
Somewhere in the recesses of Antigone's mind, a stopwatch clicked. Forty-one years, one month, and three days: the time it took for her brother to invite her to discuss her emotions. In the metaphorical distance, a firework burst to commemorate the occasion.
"I talked about it quite a lot last night, to be honest." The best reward she could give him: absolution from the responsibility. "It wasn't a disaster. It didn't work. Back to square one. I got some experience, I suppose."
Rudyard snorted, still unable to squash his joy at Chapman having lost something.
"Bit callous," he pointed out, not disapprovingly. "You were seeing each other for months, and you're already chalking it up to experience? He must not have any redeeming qualities!"
(An idea announced, of course, with excitement.)
"We were seeing each other for a year, Rudyard."
"God, really? How could you stand him so long?"
"His being an incredibly kind and attentive lover! What do you want me to say?"
Rudyard clapped his hands over his ears, whining, "Not that!"
"He let me do whatever I wanted," Antigone shouted over Rudyard's chanted not-listening-not-listening-not-listening's "And I had decades of fantasies to get through! He takes pain like nothing and had any instrument I could think to try! And out of all that SEX we had," (the word screamed for Rudyard's benefit and eliciting a cry of pain,) "he came to orgasm maybe a quarter of the time? He said he didn't care, and I don't think he did, but I couldn't shake the feeling he was indulging me, and I wasn't sure whether or not I liked that, or if it was even something I was allowed to like or just a warning sign I was ignoring. I still don't really know. Oh for God's sake, stop that!"
Just taking hold of Rudyard's wrists and trying to pull them away failed, which meant a moment later found them wrestling on the warped and dusty floor.
"Stop acting like a child!"
"Neh neh NEH neh neh!"
For the next ten minutes or so, neither of them thought beyond inflicting as much pain as possible upon their sibling. It was a nice break from things.
*
Bottle of wine in hand and another in his bag, Eric knocked on Henry's door. When it opened, he couldn't get out a word before the doctor declared, "You want to talk about Antigone Funn."
"Ah," said Eric, only then realizing the awkwardness of his choice in drinking partner and mildly concerned that word had assuredly gotten around if Henry had processed it. "We don't have to. Really I just want to be drunk."
Henry sighed, "No no, come in," before retreating into his house. "Don't worry, I haven't spoken to anyone about it. Esther was stretching her wings and overheard Lady Templar and Ms. Bloom. Are you hungry? Esther's decided she doesn't like carrots anymore, so I have a spare bunch."
"I'm afraid I'm with Esther on this one," Eric politely declined, still haunted by the soft, rotten texture of that old carrot Rudyard had given him years previous. "So," he struggled not to sound desperate, "what were they saying?"
Esther squawked from her perch out of Eric's line of sight, "Nothing good!"
"Christ!" Eric couldn't help but yell, startling terribly.
"Nothing all that bad either," Henry assured him, misreading the source of his fright but correctly guessing the more relevant fear. "Apparently, Ms. Bloom was preoccupied with obtaining details about your genitalia and sexual perversions, while Lady Templar was more interested in relaying Miss Funn's drunken attempt at clownery."
"Wow." Eric took a moment to form the image of Antigone, painted all in white, attempting to stay atop a comically large ball while juggling syringes, scalpels, and bottles of embalming fluid. "I wish I could have seen that."
Henry led him to the kitchen as he responded, "I've never found gossip all that interesting myself. But to each their own, I suppose."
"Oh, no, I meant—"
"Corkscrew?"
Soon, they were seated at the kitchen table, each with a glass of wine filled up to the edge of propriety. Eric attempted to ask after Henry's health and happiness, but Henry cut him off with the incisive question, "What did you do wrong?"
Eric's heart rate doubled.
"Can that wait 'til the second bottle?"
Henry shrugged, and half a second later, they had reached the second bottle.
"Fuck," Eric remarked.
"So?"
Eric reminded himself that he wanted this, the blunt affect of his only friend besides the Funns who both liked him and saw through him. Henry's life had been made measurably worse by his arrival, and they'd been having regular dinners for years. Eric needed someone who wouldn't flatter, but whom he could reliably guess (or hope) wouldn't turn against him. He had been trying to convince himself as much the whole walk over.
He popped open the next bottle and began to pour.
"I led her on," he admitted, the words difficult to form. "And I couldn't admit it, let alone take responsibility. She waited a year for things to change, and I didn't even notice they needed changing."
"A year?" Henry echoed. "I must have dozed through it."
"She'd been thinking about it for ages, and it caught me so off-guard I couldn't even apologize properly."
"I'm sorry, I don't quite follow. How, exactly, did you lead her on?"
Eric took two large gulps of a particularly pungent red, a bottle with one of the highest levels of alcohol content in his cellar. This was the bit he had long struggled to explain. It was just something that happened to him, every time he did his best to love someone. They wanted intimacy, he wanted attention, and he'd learned how to imitate one for the other, but he was caught out whenever he stayed too long. When called upon to be genuine, he came up empty.
"I love Antigone," he began, trying to be clear. "She's extraordinary."
"She is," Henry confirmed, unimpressed.
"But I could never… do it right."
Henry asked, "'Do it?'"
Eric could hear the image in Henry's head and didn't care to confirm its arguable accuracy.
"Love her," he explained. "Love anyone. I don't understand what love is. I've been trying to piece it together long as I can remember, but I keep messing up."
"You don't understand what love is," Henry repeated, "except that you know you love Antigone Funn."
Eric, unsure what about that didn't make sense, said, "Yes."
Henry mulled, and Eric joined him. There weren't many words in Eric's thoughts, just the humid, suffocating fog that had been clouding him since that conversation on the beach. He wanted a cigarette, something he'd given up the day he'd set out for Piffling.
"What I'm hearing," spoke Henry, "is that what confuses you is acts of love, rather than the feeling."
Eric chewed on that.
*
Eric gently pulled the covers from Antigone's still sleeping form. Her skin was near-iridescent in the morning sun, the fly-aways of her pale hair moving like snakes, tasting the air. He knelt by her narrow hips and leaned down to kiss her stomach over the lacy, violet negligee he'd given her the night before. Kisses trailed up to her chest, her nose, both cheeks, and finally, her lips, just as her eyes cracked open.
"Good morning," she rasped.
"Happy birthday," he answered, and set about kissing her some more.
His mouth remained busy for the following hour, and then a little longer as he chewed the pancakes (spread with blackberry jam) he'd made while Antigone took a hot, lavender-scented bath.
"You know," she began after a sip of her mimosa, "you never told us when your birthday is. I don't even know how old you are."
He swallowed, half-answered, "Oh, I'm just about your age," and drained his glass before pouring himself another.
Antigone wasn't so easily put off.
"I won't go tell the whole island. I won't even tell Rudyard or Georgie if you don't want me to," she assured him. "But I haven't celebrated my birthday since I was thirteen, and that was just Rudyard finagling treats from Agatha Doyle. This has been… lovely. I'd like to do something for you."
"Please don't," said Eric, harsher and quicker than he'd intended.
Antigone noticed, of course, and her face formed the same expression as when he'd been honest about his thoughts on her latest play.
"Why not?" she prodded. "Do you assume I'd cock it up? You know what happened last week was Rudyard's fault, not mine."
"Of course," he rushed to say before he could burst into laughter at the conjured image of Rudyard, drenched in mud, attempting to outrun an outraged and very disoriented swan. "I'm sure you'd plan something great, I just…"
"Just what?"
He couldn't think of a kinder way to phrase it.
"Don't want you to?"
Eric watched as Antigone drew into herself.
"You do all these things for me," she mumbled, more sad than frustrated then and God that hurt worse, "but you never let me reciprocate. You say you love me all the time, but whenever I say I love you—"
He flinched. He couldn't help it.
"There!" she pointed, and he felt a searing spotlight swing onto him. "What is that?"
He didn't know how to explain the itchy, crawling sensation that caused such expressions of affection to make him want to flay his skin apart. This was why he hadn't had a long-term relationship (excluding Vivienne, for obvious reasons) since he'd had the busyness of studying at Oxford to fall back on as an excuse for constant distance.
He could play the perfect boyfriend without breaking a sweat; giving gifts and kisses and generosities of various natures came easily to him, and the gratitude he got in return felt like rejuvenating lotion on dry skin. Suffering similar gestures from his partner felt like improvizing his way through the win-state of a confidence game he hadn't meant to run on a victim he cared about, his discomfort multiplied by the knowledge that revealing his trick would drive away a dear friend.
Communicating his unhappiness would only spread it. Best to keep it contained where it could bother no one but himself.
"I'm sorry, Antigone. Today's supposed to be about you! We'll have to get you back soon or Rudyard will be pissed, but first, do you want—"
"Eric."
Her tone brooked no argument. Eric tightened his grip on his glass and tried to breathe.
She continued, "I don't understand why you put in all this effort if you don't actually want to be close to me."
Eric's lungs spasmed like they wanted to make him cry. That would be a ludicrous response, so he steeled himself, letting the familiar cool of compartmentalization comfort him.
He smiled, "We are close. You know me better than anyone."
"Do I?" she snapped.
Oh no, said his heart.
Eric, calm as Vivienne in the midst of a sugar crash, reached out and held the hand clenched around her fork.
"You do," he soothed, ineffectively.
Antigone stared down at their hands.
"Sometimes," she began, and his smile widened in defense, "I feel like you're trying to distract me. You'll read me poetry and surprise me with flowers and… do… things you're good at."
"Thank you," he couldn't help but interject, his tongue still tired and appreciative of the appreciation.
"No." She was looking him in the eye again, and his pristine compartments shivered. "What I'm saying is, I've watched you perform sleight of hand to everyone for years. I don't like it when you do it to me."
His stomach dropped.
"Antigone—"
She pulled her hand from his, and he chased after it, but she stood and removed herself from his reach.
"I'm going home," she decided. "Thank you, Eric, for a nice evening. And for breakfast."
She departed. Eric knew he'd see her in mere hours for Rudyard's meticulously planned dinner, but that felt a lifetime away. What if she called and told him to stay home, in his quiet and lonely rooms? Or, God—what if she had Rudyard call? The little menace had been waiting for something to go wrong since their first tentative date; his smug aura might actually fill the square and smother Eric to death.
No one called. Dinner was precisely as much of a disaster as Eric would have guessed the day previous, and no worse. Not so much as a meaningful look thrown his way. He went to bed that night convinced Antigone had chosen to forget the whole thing, and he slept like a baby, resolving to give her flowers in the morning, maybe with a poem tucked amongst the petals.
*
"No," Eric finally answered. "Acts of love were the easy part. I think what I really had trouble with was letting her love me."
"You understand love as it exists in your head, but when you compare it against another person's, it stops being theoretical and no longer feels natural."
"Oh," said Eric, the simplicity of Henry's response catching him off guard. "Maybe."
"Have you ever thought that might mean the thing you're referring to as 'love' would be described differently by someone else?"
Henry said it so easily, as though it was a perfectly natural conclusion. As though Eric could have possibly misunderstood such a ubiquitous concept for so long. Could he have?
"That's… Well… how would I know?"
"Did you ever discuss with Antigone what you two wanted? Did you both know what you were looking for?"
Eric tried to think. He had told Antigone quite little as far as expectations went, and she hadn't shared many of her own. They had stumbled into boundaries here and there. It had been so long since anyone had felt enough ownership over Eric to request he not sleep with other people that it had rather thrown him for a loop at the time, though not in offense. But they had avoided discussions of the future for nerves and lack of experience on both sides, and had in fact dodged most discussions of the present for similar reasons, with the addition of all the difficulties that came with competing for someone's attention against Rudyard Funn.
"Antigone wants something sweeping and epic," Eric half-answered, wanting to sound considerate. "I did my best to provide."
"You put on a show."
Eric shrugged.
"She responded well to that, until near the end."
"Did you ever think sweeping and epic might be what she likes to read? Something evocative, representative, and, perhaps, unrealistic? You've read those books, their romantic leads would be insufferable in real life."
"What?" Eric, who featured on the covers of a certain collection of romantic novels no one on Piffling had yet discovered, startled. "That's not true. They're an ideal."
"Ideals aren't human."
"You think Antigone wanted me to be human? No one wants that."
"But she stopped enjoying your grand romantic gestures."
"She was just—she was frustrated that I wasn't responding to her how she wanted."
"You felt comfortable with enacting romance but not reacting when it was directed at you. You're just the hero, not the protagonist."
Eric sits in his mother's lap, watching a film for which he is far too young.
"Now that," she whispers in his ear as they both admire the beautiful couple's tender embrace, "is a real man."
As Eric unwillingly reminisced, Henry went on, "Has this been a recurring issue for you?"
"Sorry?"
"Have others been driven off by your distaste for real intimacy, or was Antigone a special case?"
Eric bristled at the supposition that he was incapable of "real intimacy," but could say nothing.
"Ah. No, it's… I've always been like this."
"I see."
Henry refilled his glass with a heavy pour, studied it, then took a gulp.
"I see," Henry repeated.
"You see?" Eric prodded, hoping for a diagnosis, a cure.
"Yes."
Henry put down his glass, and his stare returned to Eric.
"You are an ass."
Eric recoiled. That was what he'd been waiting to hear since the previous day's calamity, but now that the words hung in the air, all Eric wanted was to figure out how to make him take it back.
"Now wait a moment—"
"If you were a poor partner, you were a poor partner. You're looking for excuses. You believe that you're perfect, so you hold yourself to standards that make you and everyone else miserable, and you're fortunate enough that you largely get away with it. This time you haven't, and now you are merely the good friend of Antigone Funn. What a tragic life you lead."
With a dedication and focus he hadn't been capable of until the new doctor's arrival afforded him the occasional night of sleep, Henry downed the rest of his glass mouthful by tart mouthful.
Eric swallowed, perhaps in sympathy.
"Am I?" he asked, allowing his pitiful self doubt to fully emerge. "Friends with Antigone?"
Henry rolled his eyes.
"Clearly," he snipped. "You aren't dead yet."
As though summoned, a series of heavy knocks fell upon the door.
"Eric!" came the voice of Georgina Crusoe, sending a shock of horror down his spine. "I know you're in there, mate, don't make me break this door down!"
Eric sent Henry a beseeching look.
"Well," said Henry, filling his glass with the last of the wine. "Sounds like you'd better go. I should get back to work soon anyway."
Eric had nothing to say (though he worried about Henry's drunken medical practices, it was hardly a recent issue). The time had come for his retribution.
He grabbed one of the empty bottles, unable to shake the urge to defend himself.
He steeled his stomach, opened the door, and—
Georgie leaned on the wall just beside the door, arms crossed casually over her chest, hands empty of gun, knife, or morning-star. Jennifer stood beside her.
"Hi, Eric," said Jennifer with a little wave.
"Hi?" he echoed, confused. Surely Georgie wouldn't murder him in front of Jennifer.
"Alright then. We're heading to yours," Georgie declared. "Come on."
*
On the walk, Jennifer kept up a steady, cheerful litany of the places and people from which they had just returned. Eric could hardly hear it over his bewilderment.
"We were planning to stay longer," she said of the last city on her list, "but…"
"Needs must," finished Georgie as she motioned Eric to unlock the door to Chapman's. "Jen, you good to meet up later?"
"Oh, uh," Eric's self-preservation instincts kicked back in and prompted him to ask, "could you stay?"
Jennifer's eyes darted between his and Georgie's. Clearly, they'd planned this beforehand.
Apologetically, Jennifer began, "I think I should probably…"
Georgie shrugged.
"Sure, she can stay. So, Eric, let's talk about your flaccid penis."
"So good to see you, Jennifer," Eric effused, patting her shoulder and turning her out towards the square. "We must catch up soon."
"Absolutely," said Jennifer, failing to conceal her amusement. "Later. Love you, Georgie."
"Love you, Jen," Georgie called in response before shutting the door and glaring at Eric.
"Um. Are we really discussing…"
"Among other things. Antigone doesn't want to ask. I do. I won't report everything back to her, just the embarrassing bits."
*
Jennifer breathed in the familiar, sunny Piffling afternoon. She loved her home. As much as she enjoyed every second of traveling with Georgie, soaking up the sights and sounds of the world, she was always happy to return to the island that had formed her.
So she took in the air, the distant chatter of the Piffling market, the smell of the owl sanctuary, and then headed to Funn Funerals.
"Hi!" she called, peaking her head through the front door as the bell chimed.
Rudyard, who'd been sitting at the front desk with his head pressed to the wood and his arms dangling at his sides, sat bolt upright (his forehead still pink). As she stepped inside, his eyes darted behind her, brow furrowing when the door shut.
"Just me," said Jennifer, saving him the question. "Georgie's otherwise occupied, but she'll be over soon."
"Oh," said Rudyard, clearly disappointed.
Jennifer didn't take it personally. To be frank, the fact that her girlfriend was such brilliant friends with well-known troublemaker Rudyard Funn bewildered her. Whether he'd caught on to her specific dislike of him or had merely assumed based on Piffling's general dislike of him, she expected nothing from Rudyard but surliness.
"Is Antigone around?" she asked, both following her and Georgie's plan and hoping her much-preferred twin would be available to chat.
Rudyard released a moan of grief comparable to a banshee's. With an almost impressive lack of grace, he flopped to the floor.
Jennifer guessed he was being dramatic, and therefore asked in her most facetious tone, "Christ, did she die?"
"She's out. With her friends. In the daytime, no less!"
"Er. And that's… bad?"
Rudyard made a variety of noises that Jennifer guessed amounted to an "obviously."
"Okay… well… do you know where I could find her?"
He didn't, but Piffling was a mile across. It didn't take her long to locate Antigone in the library (recently rejuvenated by its comprehensive erotica section), curled up with a time-worn but rarely read copy of Anna Karenina.
Jennifer wondered if she'd lied about those friends she was supposedly hanging out with, or if Rudyard had simply assumed.
With no subtle way to grab Antigone's attention, Jennifer tapped her on the shoulder with a gentle, "Heya."
Antigone about jumped out of her skin, but relaxed as soon as she recognized the intruder.
"Ah, Jennifer," she sighed, probably in relief that she wasn't being accosted by Piffling's latest serial killer. "Is Georgie…"
"Yep, you've got nothing to worry about. Am I interrupting a good bit?"
Antigone closed the book over her thumb.
"It's all good. But I'm just distracting myself, honestly. Fancied some quiet."
"Mind if I sit with you? I don't want to intrude."
"No, please. How have your travels been?"
Taking the invitation, Jennifer gushed for a while about the places they'd explored and the people they'd met. She put every ounce of her radio star self into distracting Antigone. It seemed to work as Antigone nodded along, asking questions in genuine curiosity.
"You should come with us sometime," Jennifer concluded, enthusiastic and encouraging. "You deserve to see more of the world than just Piffling."
Antigone shifted her gaze away, some of her old shyness emerging.
"I might," she said. "I really might, just… not immediately. There are things I need to do here first."
Jennifer beamed a comforting smile.
"Of course," she assured. "Whenever you'd like."
*
Georgie and Eric settled in his personal rooms, Georgie sprawled across his couch as he sat in his recliner like it was an electric chair.
As casually as one could say anything, Georgie began: "Antigone's worried you didn't like having sex with her."
"That isn't true!"
"Or that you agreed to things you didn't want, and lied about it."
"That's… complicated."
Georgie quirked an eyebrow. Eric sighed, and allowed himself some backstory.
"When I was younger, I had a lot of sex. Started earlier than I should have, probably. But it was a nice escape, a new skill set I picked up easily. People were always propositioning me, and I wanted to make them happy. I had fun more often than not."
"Okay…"
"I'm older now," he admitted. "I can't just uh… force… it, like I used to. Which isn't to say I wasn't enjoying myself, I just wasn't—"
"Aroused?"
"…Well."
"Listen, you don't have to explain to me that sex is about more than arousal. To hear Antigone tell the story though, she's a wicked and cruel sadist who willfully ignored your discomfort so she could get her rocks off. That's pretty hot in my book, but she's still beating herself up over it, so I'm guessing you two never had a real conversation on the subject. Even though you knew you were her first boyfriend, and her first time having sex."
Eric ducked his head.
"I didn't want her to worry about it. All that was important to me was her comfort in asking for things and exploring herself."
"Right. That's all well and good, but you've just given her a year's experience in being convincingly lied to. You think that's going to help her ask for things in the future? When her partners are begging her to torture them or whatever, and she's remembering how sometimes when people say they want something, they're lying?"
"But that isn't—"
Georgie raised a commanding hand.
"Take it up with her. Next question. Are you planning to leave Piffling?"
It isn't too optimistic to presume you'll be staying forever, Antigone had said that terrible evening.
"I've considered what I would do, if I left," he answered, avoiding his feelings on the matter. "Zoe could probably still get me a job. And, well, I have been putting off dealing with my parents' estate, I should probably go in person."
"Wait, did your parents die?"
"My mum. My dad's been gone for ages."
"So when did she pass?"
"Oh, a few months ago."
Georgie gaped at him.
"Mate," she said, a sentence in itself.
"What?"
"Are you okay? Have you talked to anyone about it?"
"No," he said with a laugh. "Why would I? It'd only be sad."
"Of course it'd be sad. Death is sad."
"Sometimes death just is. I don't really want to think about it. I'll have to go sort things out some time, I can just cope with it myself then."
Georgie buried her face in her hands and groaned.
Eric continued, "I know you're all getting tired of me. I don't…"
I don't want to leave. Please don't tell me to leave. Please forgive me for everything I've done, and even if none of you ever talk to me again, just please don't make me go.
"I don't want to overstay my welcome."
"Oh, like you were ever welcome."
They looked at each other with two blank stares. After a horrific thirty seconds, Georgie cracked a smile.
"This is your home, Eric. No one's gonna tell you to leave."
He knew, reasonably, that Piffling was his home, that he (presumably) remained a beloved member of the community, and that if anyone tried to make him leave, he assuredly had the resources to stay.
He had not been feeling very reasonable of late.
Eric didn't cry, because he'd cried enough over the last twenty-four hours, and the thought of Georgie seeing him in such a display was nauseating. Instead, he closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
Then, he said, "Thank you, Georgie."
"Alright, Eric, look. No one wants you to leave, especially not Antigone. Hell, not even me. You're the only person I can trust to look after them. I need you to understand that if you left, it would be selfish. And you can stop acting like I might kill you at any moment. I won't. No one's going to. Half the town is talking shit about you, sure. The other half is talking shit about Antigone. Everyone is happy to have the drama, and eventually it'll blow over. The world doesn't revolve around you. Even Rudyard has better things to worry about than your demise right now."
Hearing that felt sacrilegious.
"Really?"
Georgie rolled her eyes.
"Really. Look, you're our friend. And yes, you are lucky that we put up with you, and yes, you should be thankful, and, I swear to god, Eric, you have got to start trusting us."
He melted in his seat, relaxed and crumpled, relieved but more scared than he'd been in his life.
"I know," he said. "It's hard."
"I know," she answered. "You'll have to do it anyway."
She offered him a cup of tea and a moment alone while she brewed it. He did cry a little, then, but quietly (he hoped). He'd wiped his face clean before she returned, and they sipped together in a brief, precious silence.
The warmth improving his spirits some, Eric asked a question that had been on his mind: "How did you get here so quickly?"
"I didn't. We've been heading back here since like, a month ago."
"A… month?" he repeated, wondering if that meant what he thought it might.
"Yeah. It was the only way she'd do it, if she knew you'd have someone decent to talk to about it afterwards."
"Wait. You're here for me? So I have someone to talk to?"
"No, I'm here because Antigone needed to break up with you, and this was how she agreed to it. And also so you have someone to talk to. Dr. Edgware's a decent pick, but I'm guessing he wasn't all that compassionate?"
"Georgie, I…" He cleared his throat, took a breath. "You're a really good friend."
"Yeah," she smiled. "I know."
"I don't think things are going to go back to normal."
"Nope. And they're gonna keep changing on you, every time you think you've gotten used to them. Who knows, this time next year Rudyard could be touring as a one-man-band."
Eric laughed, if bittersweetly.
"Now that's a Funn project I'd love to bankroll."
"I'll leave it to you to tell him that."
"I'm… not sure I'll be ready to talk to either of them, for a bit. Not long, I just…"
She waited.
He finished, "I'm sad, Georgie. I wanted Antigone and I to work."
Having sat within arm's reach of him now that he wasn't so on edge, Georgie put a firm, grounding hand on his shoulder.
"This is how you will work, long term. What you've been doing the last year wasn't sustainable. If you want to figure out how to have friends that last, you have to actually try and do that. You never made a good Mr. Darcy."
*
Two weeks later, when Rudyard came down for breakfast, Antigone was already sitting with one mug of decaffeinated tea and another of coffee, her hands crossed atop the table.
He had hoped that her breaking things off with Chapman would have bought him time before Antigone's inevitable departure, but it seemed not. Maybe Chapman had been holding her back. Maybe where she would have simply moved across the square, now she would be moving off-island. She could go to the mainland and make a proper name for herself as a mortician. Or she could join Georgie and Jennifer on their next trip; he knew they kept trying to tempt her away.
"Before you say anything," he preempted, "remember I can still edit the will."
"Rudyard," she answered, "sit down."
"I just don't want you to make a decision you'll regret," he insisted, not sitting, "Particularly not in the wake of anything to do with Chapman—you'd hardly want to let him dictate your life, would you?"
Antigone peered at him with confusion.
"This has nothing to do with Chapman, now stop fidgeting and sit."
He sat, but not without grumbling, "I'm not fidgeting, you're fidgeting," which she was, but no more so than at her baseline.
"Rudyard," she began again. "There's a matter we need to discuss. I've been talking it over with Georgie, and she thinks it's ridiculous I haven't done this sooner."
"Yes, well, Georgie thinks all sorts of things, she's the one who keeps abandoning us, absolutely absurd, you really oughtn't put any stock in her advice—"
"I'm going to move into our parents' room."
That froze him.
Then he said, "No you're not."
Antigone huffed, "Rudyard—"
"Neither of us have been in there since they died."
"I know."
"For all we know, there isn't a room there anymore at all."
"There's still a room there, Rudyard."
"Well! Don't come crying to me if you open the door and fall and die in a horrible pit."
"They aren't going to come yell at us," she insisted, fully indulging in condescension. "They've decomposed by now."
"Don't say that!"
"They're skeletons, Rudyard! If they tried to stand up they would crumble to pieces!"
"Oh, like they're limited by the forces of nature!"
"YOU'RE!!" Antigone cut herself off with a full body growl/battle cry that sent Rudyard’s fight or flight response into overdrive. "Sometimes things change! It's often a good thing, if you can believe it!"
"Don't accuse me of resisting change. I've changed: I can accept change now!"
"Oh, you know what, it's actually fine. I've just thought of a solution for both of us. You won't have any opinion on what I do if I just kill you—"
In the blink of a mouse's eye (Madeleine was watching of course, but could hardly intervene in such riveting action), the chairs were toppled over—one irreconcilably broken—and Antigone was choking Rudyard, her perpetually cold hands pinning him to the floor, fingers damn near wrapping all the way around his scrawny excuse for a neck.
"You won't—kill me—" Rudyard rasped. "Madeleine would stop—doing our finances—in protest!"
Antigone hissed with the venom of an asp, "I can do math."
The door ding-ed open with a casual air and Georgie's voice calling, "Hey, guys, have you seen these fliers Herbert Cough is handing out? Apparently he's having a Gay Girls Riding Club night. I've never watched All About Eve, but maybe All About Alice would be fun."
"Georgie, you're distracting me, I'll lose my grip," Antigone complained.
Rudyard, chiming in with his own complaint, wheezed, "No—riding—during business—hours…"
Georgie looked up from her tastefully designed flier and found a familiar sight: the Funns at war.
"Right, what's this about? Antigone, loosen up, he's going purple."
She did, a bit, but only because Georgie requested it. Rudyard gasped in what breath he could manage.
"Georgie, thank God," he rushed to say while he still could. "You have to stop her! She's gone mad!"
"I've told him I'm going to move to our parents' old room," Antigone explained. "It's gone about as well as expected. So I've decided to murder him."
"Their ghosts could decide to haunt us! Listen to reason!"
Georgie nodded, finger tapping her cheek as she took in the situation.
"Okay… Alright… You've both got good points…"
"Georgie!" Antigone whined. "You're supposed to be on my side!"
"Yeah sure, and I am, but I wasn't thinking about ghosts before. Maybe we should get the reverend up there first, clear the place out."
"You're not helping!" both twins declared, which turned their attention back to each other and quickly lead to mutually vicious scratching and hissing.
Georgie had never thought of herself as a cat person, yet here she was. She decided to let them fight it out for a bit. Anyone with a shred of wisdom would figure it was best not to get between them. They were screaming again, and Georgie began to wonder if this might be a conflict of some actual importance.
The door flew open, its bell ringing with considerably more urgency than before, and in came a stream of yellow-gold sunlight along with its most constant companion.
"What's happening?" Eric asked the room with the gusto of an EMT attempting to take control of an emergency. Then, directed to Georgie, "Is everything okay? Is there anything I can—"
The realization seemed to hit him too late, his incorrigible need to insert himself into any situation of interest causing problems once again.
It was the first time he'd been in Funn Funerals since the break-up. In fact, one may be anxious to note, it was his first time interacting with the Funns at all. Georgie had thrice talked him down from eternal-loneliness-based panic attacks, but she'd otherwise given him space. He'd been getting most of his socializing from Bill and Tanya, having grown accustomed to dodging their unsubtle threesome invitations (if nothing else, he had concerns as their former mental health caretaker, but he also thought he might take a lengthy break from sex).
He looked to Georgie with some desperation, wondering how quickly he could leave, but only got so far as pronouncing, "Er—"
Georgie blew past it, explaining, "Antigone's moving to their parents' room."
Eric turned to the ongoing wrestling match. They hadn't seemed to note his entrance, locked in what could have been a fight to the death.
"So they're doing this?" he asked.
"You can keep the commentary to yourself, Chapman," Rudyard grunted, apparently having noticed him after all, wriggling in Antigone's icy grasp. "This hardly concerns you!"
"I mean, I don't want to be presumptuous," said Eric, pausing for the noise resulting from Rudyard's yank on a clump of Antigone's hair, "but Rudyard, you realize she could be moving much further away than down the hall from you? I mean, they just finished rebuilding Mrs. Scruple's old cottage on the cliffs."
The twins both had their teeth clamped down on each other's forearms, but Rudyard visibly froze.
Georgie encouragingly asked, "The one with all the rats in the walls?"
"Not anymore! I recommended a construction crew to the council, and they've done beautiful work. Even managed to salvage some of the flooring. Gorgeous."
As Eric prattled on, Rudyard contemplated: which was worse, opening the long shut door to the master bedroom, or Antigone moving to the Piffling cliffs? From the days when they'd shared what had become his room, entering their parents' off-limits space had never once ended well. The fear of inviting such consequences kept pulsing through him, but he had only moments ago believed her continued presence in their home was a lost cause. If he had a choice, was the fear worth it?
Antigone didn't detect his racing thoughts, too dedicated to gnawing her frustration into her brother's skin. But Eric and Georgie did, watching from the corners of their eyes as they discussed the ramifications of accumulated rat feces, letting Rudyard un-clamp, attempt to regain moisture in his mouth, and go limp in Antigone's grasp without comment.
Her fierce growls were interrupted by Rudyard's polite cough.
"Now look here," he muttered.
She paused.
"I suppose… if you must sleep somewhere other than the mortuary…"
Her teeth retreated, her punishing hold loosened.
"I suppose I would rather you—stay. Here."
A still silence reigned. Everyone waited for things to turn sour. A laugh, a belated insult, bloodshed. It all seemed more likely than Rudyard seeing and speaking reason. Affectionate reason, for that matter.
No retraction came. Antigone untangled and sat on the floor with her brother.
"Okay," she said. "Really?"
Georgie and Eric watched in undisguised fascination as Rudyard pulled his sister into a hug, which was the only one they had witnessed between the two, and indeed, the first at all in decades. It was stilted, stiff, and Antigone didn't hug back. Regardless, it brought a tear to Madeleine's observing eye.
Hardly audible, Rudyard mumbled, "Please."
As many as there were inside him, he couldn't bring himself to say another word.
No one spoke, unwilling to end the sacred scene. Rudyard trembled. Antigone laid a hand across his back.
Feeling like an intruder, Eric broke the quiet with a tentative, "I think I'd better…" as he backed towards the door.
Antigone's gaze struck him over Rudyard's shoulder, and he tried to keep his breathing steady.
"Eric," she stated. "We should talk soon."
He gulped.
"Oh?"
"Catch up, I mean. When you're ready."
A smile broke across his face, small, but real.
You're one of the most important people in the world, he thought.
"I'd like that," he replied. "Soon."
Muffled, Rudyard complained, "Is he still here?"
Eric laughed, "You're a very brave man, Rudyard."
"You're a… shut up," came the barely intelligible reply.