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February 9, 2018
“You gave him—” Melanie chokes the rest of her sentence into her fist.
Martin just squirms down further in his plastic fold-out chair, in the center of all the Institute employees squashed into the conference room, and stares directly at their boss.
Their boss, who has donned an honest-to-God sailor captain’s hat and is brandishing a book entitled 365 Daily Affirmations for Healing and Positive Thinking.
Peter Lukas smiles across the crowd. “Welcome, all employees of The Magnus Institute, to the first reading of a daily affirmation to begin our workday.” He waves the orange-and-pink-and-purple cover around the conference room for dramatic effect.
No one applauds. Rosie, politely, yawns.
“What does he mean, ‘the first day’?” Melanie hisses at Martin.
Peter Lukas does not lose any bounce in his step. He cracks open the book, flipping through the front pages. “I have Martin Blackwood to thank for this gift. An early Valentine’s Day present for the boss. To the rest of you: it’s not too late, and I also take World’s #1 Boss mugs!”
Martin slides down further in his chair as all members of Artefact Storage glower at him. He is the reason they are all stuck here, eight in the goddamn morning on a Friday.
“Please,” Martin mumbles into his palm—to Peter Lukas or the Eye, whichever one will kill him first. “Please just read the daily affirmation and let us go. Melanie, this is the last straw, I am finding a way to quit this job.”
Peter Lukas clears his throat and starts to read. “February 9th,” he begins.
“Why did you even give Peter that in the first place?” Melanie murmurs.
Martin glumly beholds his boss as an aura of fog sweeps around him, preparing to Daily Affirm the crowd. No one else can see the Lonely surrounding them? Not even the Manuscripts and Rare Books division? This is fine. “I lost a bet.”
“February 9th!” Peter Lukas repeats. “A Daily Affirmation for the soul. Wonderful! ‘What you think…you become. What you feel…you attract. And what you imagine…you create!’”
The collected employees hold their breath. Melanie even leans in, hanging onto the end of the affirmation. Martin stops blinking.
This is it.
This is over.
They can all go back to their jobs in this temple to the Eye, maybe relax and record some statements, and not think about how this place was crawling with the Flesh, like, two months ago.
Peter Lukas snaps the Daily Affirmations book shut. “Oooh, what a good one for today! This reminds me of the value of self-affirmation. Did I ever tell you about my first Valentine’s Day at the Institute?”
Melanie presses two fingers against the bridge of her nose. “I hope somebody finishes a ritual and kills us all. I will let literally any Entity do it. The Dark can come take me. It’s fine.”
“He can’t be continuing this,” Martin whispers, almost to himself. “It has to be over. He read the affirmation. He has to let us go!”
Fog sweeps across the room. Peter Lukas smiles, lost in memory. “It was Valentine’s—”
February 14, 2004
“Huh,” Elias tells him, his hair sticking up in so many directions and his skin whiter than the tablecloth Peter had thrown a rosé over last night, “you’re not supposed to be here.”
Fifteen minutes before this, Peter Lukas wakes up on a sofa in the basement of the Magnus Institute, completely hungover. His captain’s hat lies on the floor, squashed by a muddy boot print, and there’s—sniff—chardonnay on his suit jacket.
He reaches around the dark room, flipping a light switch to reveal the smallest break room he’s had the displeasure of visiting. The room (which consists of this sofa and a microwave on a table) smells of mothballs and the Spiral.
Peter picks up his hat, dusts off the boot print, and sticks it back on his head, standing up—very, very slowly—and reaching for the Lonely. The Lonely, repelled by his chardonnay-soaked shirt, does not answer.
“Fine,” Peter grumbles. “I’ll find my way home myself.”
As he stumbles up the stairs from the Archives to the rest of the (civilized) Institute, the crumpled invitation falls out of his pocket. Last night, Peter attended a very normal Valentine’s Eve fundraiser for benefactors of the Magnus Institute to wine and dine. (And wine, and wine, and throw wine at—Peter isn’t thinking about that.)
By the time Peter realizes he’s walked up too many stairs, he’s on the top floor and staring at the door to the office of Elias Bouchard.
And really, there’s nowhere else to go but in.
Elias slowly peels himself off of his desk, on which he (has not) been sleeping. His stapler has left a huge red mark in the center of his forehead, and Jonah Magnus’s grey eyes are bloodshot.
“Uh,” the several-hundred-year-old conduit of the Beholding groans, “hmm. You’re not supposed to be here.”
Peter invites himself into the room and sits down in the guest chair. “Rough night?” he guesses.
“You were there,” Elias says, leaning back and starting to button his collared shirt again, matching the wrong buttons as he does. His shirt is also stained in chardonnay. Interesting.
Peter will try to keep this as civil as he can. “James, as a benefactor of your Institute—”
“I’m not James anymore.” The effect of Elias saying this is somewhat undercut by the fact that he’s squashed his face onto his desk again. “You know this.”
“Fine. Elias, as a benefactor of your Institute, we can’t keep—” finding the lone backgammon desk in the main entry hall after the professional guests had gone home at eleven o’clock, betting something grand and extravagant on a game of backgammon, losing said game of backgammon, being cheated from winning the rematch of backgammon, upending a paté from the buffet line in retaliation, throwing pinot noir and missing, throwing chardonnay and hitting— “interacting like this.”
“I’m not the one bound by my god to stay three meters apart from all people at all times. Your aversion to me seems like your problem.” Elias shrugs on his vest over his failure of a buttoned shirt.
“I meant, if Gertrude knew you acted in a manner unbecoming of a head of the Institute, she’d raise enough fuss with the board to kick you out. I don’t want you to have to find a new home for those eyes quite yet.”
“And why ever not? Do you have plans for this home for my eyes?” Elias works a dark silk tie back around his throat.
When Peter’s brain catches up with Elias’s words, they both pause for a moment.
Elias scowls and clarifies. “You wouldn’t dare use me for the Lonely’s ritual.”
“Don’t test me,” Peter says. “Who says I wouldn’t just depose you? I can find where you keep the rest of your body.”
“Oh, you and Gertrude, I’m sure.” Elias eases his coat jacket on, and looks every picture of the stark, imposing head of the Magnus Institute, six seconds away from upchucking into the garbage bin.
“Let’s make one thing clear, Elias Bouchard,” Peter says. “At no point will I gamble with you again. At no point will you rig the backgammon table using dice from Salesa. At no point will I hand over half my fortune to you because you’ve rigged the backgammon table. And at no point will our mutual understanding deviate from being a cool, calculated, professional partnership.”
“Because…” Elias prods, and Peter can see the familiar flash of James Wright in his eyes.
“Because I hate you,” Peter Lukas says. “And nothing you do will stand in the way of me giving the world to the Lonely.”
“And nothing you do will prevent me from sacrificing the world to the Beholding,” counters Elias. “May the best man win.”
February 10, 2018
“‘May the best man win’? What the absolute hell does that mean?” Georgie hiccups, clearing her throat.
Martin shrugs. He can feel red patches forming on his cheeks and neck, bright neon signs telling the world that His Liver Has Been Overextended this Saturday evening. “And that wasn’t even—wasn’t even the end of Peter’s story,” he says. “Because he’s a shit storyteller. I swear, statement givers off the street have more coherent narratives! He kept pausing before mentioning Elias, like he couldn’t remember what his name was! Melanie, you tell her about the rest.”
Melanie considers. She’s stone-cold sober. After the Stranger’s ritual and Tim died and Jon—well, after the Stranger’s ritual, the thing that kept Melanie icy cool and on edge and good at taking down rituals also made her liver able to consume any amount of alcohol without flinching. “Lukas ended the, and I would like to remind you, one-and-a-half-hour morning meeting with a winding description of the biting wind chill on his way back to his ship. For someone in service of the Lonely, he sure likes talking to people about it.”
“But only in large groups,” Martin counters. “And only, apparently, when I’m at fault for starting the conversation. Fuck me, right?”
The Admiral crawls out from under the couch and stretches over Martin’s lap and suddenly, he doesn’t feel so bad about earning the personal ire of several hundred people. “Good kitty,” he tells it as he runs his fingers through the Admiral’s fluffy hair.
Georgie refills her wine glass. She and Melanie share the sofa, and as the night (well, late afternoon) has evolved, she’s migrating more of her limbs onto Melanie’s side of the sofa and onto Melanie herself.
Melanie, who Martin remembers vividly as the one Archives employee who pulled a fucking gun on the raw meat scuttling into the Institute at Christmas without breaking a sweat, leans back onto Georgie’s shoulder.
“We can’t let that happen again,” Melanie says, muffled by Georgie’s hair. “We will never stop another ritual if we have to spend multiple hours listening to Peter Lukas bore everyone to death every day.”
Martin takes a sip of his rum-and-lime. There’s a stray cat hair in there, and the Admiral does not look reticent enough for the crime of shedding into his glass. “There are three hundred and sixty-five affirmations. I bought him a book with three hundred and sixty-five affirmations that all sound like they’re copied from a Pinterest board. He’s going to find a story about each one, isn’t he?”
“This isn’t all your fault,” Georgie says.
“This is all his fault,” Melanie tells her.
“Hey, get fucked,” Martin says.
“Well, okay,” Georgie says. “Maybe it initially was Martin’s fault. But we can change the narrative. Hmm. What would I do if I fucked something up at my job?”
“Don’t you record a podcast by yourself in your bedroom closet?” Martin finishes his drink. Tomorrow is going to be quite the hangover. “How do you fuck that up?”
Melanie turns to her. She starts ticking off her fingers. “I know a couple. Like when your RSS feed fucked up and published seventeen copies of one episode? Or—hey, I know. That one time you thirst-tweeted Ryan Bergara.”
Georgie is now practically sitting on Melanie’s lap. “Don’t remind me,” she says, fighting a smile. “I briefly trended in the UK for that one, and lost Casper Mattresses as a sponsor. But Martin, do not worry: it all worked out in the end!”
Martin frowns. “What did Ryan Bergara do?”
“Oh, nothing. I doubt he even noticed. But Hello Fresh saw it and contacted me about sponsorship, and the rest of the internet forgot about it pretty quickly. Also, I’m literally incapable of feeling fear, so it didn’t daunt me. Anyways—”
“Wait, you’re incapable of feeling fear?”
“Anyways. If we get Peter Lukas to stop reading daily affirmations, everyone will forget about this pretty soon.”
“That’s the problem,” Martin groans. “There’s an entire year of them in the book. And if he’s only reading them on the weekdays, that’s more than a year—”
“Check the official Magnus group chat,” Melanie interrupts. “He recorded a voicemail for today. No attached story, but still. It will only take one calendar year, because he’s going to do this every day.”
“I’m fucked.”
“Okay—okay,” Georgie says suddenly. “What if we stole the book of daily affirmations?”
“He keeps it in his office, yeah?” Melanie nudges Martin with her toe. “You can just go sneak in and get it on Monday.”
“Well—”
“He’s usually not in his office, right? He’s just,” Georgie waves her hand around, wine sloshing yet miraculously staying inside her glass, “fucking around in the Lonely.”
“That’s true,” Martin says. He’s very drunk and it’s hard to strategize, but Georgie does make a good point. “However. I can’t just walk into his office while he’s not there. Rosie’s right outside his door, and she schedules all of his appointments.”
Melanie and Georgie both nod together, and their hands are laced together by Georgie’s side. Martin feels a rush of warmth to his heart—Melanie and Georgie here, together, and he is…alone. Jon is unresponsive in a hospital bed, and Martin is here. Feeling like he’s missing a piece of his life that he will never be able to replace, but still here.
“You’ll have to have a reason to go into his office,” Melanie says.
“I don’t—we don’t know each other,” Martin says. “He sometimes asks me how to update his iPhone, but he comes into the Archives to do that. Usually pops into existence right behind me at my desk.”
Georgie breaks out into a huge grin. “Oh, I’ve got an idea.”
“What?” Melanie says, squeezing her hand.
“What?” Martin says, dreading what the next couple of words are going to be.
Georgie holds out her hands placatingly. “Hear me out.”
“No,” Martin says. “I will not.”
“Valentine’s Day is on Wednesday.”
“That’s not a good start!” Martin says. “That is not a good start to your idea!”
“Rosie will probably let you into the office when Peter isn’t there if you are delivering a surprise gift to him. A Valentine’s Day gift.”
“Georgie, I’m not buying Peter Lukas a Valentine’s Day gift.”
“Why not? It would work. And—and, added bonus is that Rosie will tell half a dozen people in the cafeteria at lunch, who will tell another half dozen, et cetera, until the entire Institute regards you not as the person who made their lives miserable that one morning, only as the person who gave a Valentine’s Day present to your boss!”
She tips her wine glass at him and finishes it in one swallow, like she’s cracked the code.
“Yes.” Martin grinds his teeth. “You see. Therein lies the problem.”
Melanie, thankfully sober, pieces together an actual plan. “What if you delivered a present on behalf of someone else? Then you’d just be hapless Martin who plays the romantic messenger for his boss.”
“I can negotiate the ‘hapless’ label, but that seems less of a terrible thing to be known for,” Martin agrees. “But…who the fuck would send Peter Lukas something for Valentine’s Day?”
Georgie gets another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad smile on her face.
“No. You wouldn’t,” Martin says, standing up and preparing to bolt out the front door.
“No. You wouldn’t,” Melanie says, as if in awe of her girlfriend.
“I see you two already know where I’m going with this. What if—what fucking if—we sent Captain Peter Lukas flowers from his well-known enemy, a man who cannot deliver them himself on account of that he is in prison, someone Peter Lukas described to both of you as the man he hates, our old boss, Elias Bou—”
February 12, 2018
“So,” the florist asks gently, bundling up the large bouquet, “are these flowers for you two?”
Martin still has to be physically dragged into the flower shop by Melanie, and mournfully looks back at the street as it disappears from view. Georgie follows, unperturbed by this display of regret, wrapping a lovely sunflower scarf she had purchased at the charity shop next door around her girlfriend’s neck.
“No,” Martin is hissing at Melanie under his breath. “No, I think I’m literally about to die.”
“Martin, if you would rather we bought the pink Ferrero Rocher spread on sale at Wilko—”
“Right. Okay. Flowers. Let’s do this.”
But there are really, truly, too many different flowers to choose.
“I like the violets,” Georgie says. “They smell great.”
“They’re twenty pounds a bouquet. The Archives don’t pay me this much. Does…does Hello Fresh pay you that much?”
Georgie is still rubbing her eyes, shooing the last of her hangover away. It’s been a full forty-eight hours since the Late Afternoon Soiree and she and Martin are still slightly queasy. (Must have been the Admiral’s hair that all ended up in the Captain Morgan.) Melanie, of course, is as blasé as ever.
“Alright then,” Georgie says, adjusting her heart-shaped sunglasses. “Get the white roses.”
Martin squints at the selection of flowers. “Why not red roses?”
“I’m glad you agree,” Melanie says, selecting a handful of red roses. “See? This plan is going to be fine.” She turns to high-five Georgie, and laces their fingers together.
Martin takes the L and the flowers. “Can’t believe I’m invested in bad plan. Maybe I’ll take a white rose, too. It could…balance out the colors?”
“I’m colorblind,” Georgie says, handing him a white rose, “but that sounds like a plan, champ.”
Martin takes another minute to look over the dwindling supplies of the florist shop two days before Valentine’s. He considers, picks a couple more flowers that create symmetry in the bouquet—and, sweet Jesus, he doesn’t have to justify this to himself.
“These do smell extremely good,” he tells Georgie. She has turned away from him and is deciding between a bundle of marigolds or buttercups from Melanie. “Ah-ha. I see. This whole plan was to get me to drive you to the shops so you can buy your own Valentine’s Day presents!”
“You’re the only one with a car,” Melanie says in lieu of an apology.
Georgie takes the marigolds. “Even though it’s a camper van with broken windows.”
Martin takes his time to pick one more flower—one more, very special flower, not to be wasted on Peter Lukas, and leaves them to buy gifts for each other as he queues. For a second, he almost feels normal, in line with other customers purchasing a gift for their significant other, celebrating the joy of finding someone and loving them.
Martin is here, sans significant other, preparing to steal something he gave to his boss in order to cut down on work meetings.
Yeah, that checks out.
When he presents his bouquet to the florist, the woman smiles at his choice. “Lovely selection,” she tells him. “And these are the ones on sale!”
Georgie elbows him and says, “Frugal and a catch. Who could do better?”
“That’s wonderful to hear!” The florist rings his bouquet up and produces a blank card to tie around the stems. “So, are these flowers for you two?”
“Um.” Martin’s tongue sticks in his throat. How is he supposed to tell the florist that he and Georgie Barker, the famous podcast host with a cult following, are not dating?
Melanie waves her marigolds at the florist. “Oh, I’m with the lady.”
“I see!” The florist asks, “So, who should I address these flowers to?”
Martin can't seem to get the words out. This was, unequivocally, a bad idea.
Georgie gives Martin one last, wicked smile. “Write: To Peter Lukas. From Elias Bouchard.”
This was a really, terribly awful, extremely bad idea, and it’s definitely going to end with Martin’s death.
February 13, 2018
Just put the flowers in Peter’s office. Just put the flowers in Peter’s office. Just put the flowers in Peter’s office; it’s not that hard; just walk by Rosie and put them in Peter’s office.
Martin snaps some of the stems of the comically enormous bouquet as he walks up to Rosie’s desk. He stares too long at her desk before she catches his eye: she has a couple of cards decorated in glitter on display, and two wilting balloons floating at the ceiling above her. Next to the jar of mints for visitors, there are a handful of peonies in a glass of water.
Ah. Rosie has so many suitors, all of which are so thoughtful as to give her presents for tomorrow’s holiday. Martin, of course, has been given no gifts, and the one he is about to deliver is, well…
Rosie smiles wide at him. “What’s the occasion, Marto? The boss isn’t in right now.”
Okay, there’s no way Martin’s going to be jealous of Rosie, not when she’s pushing the jar of mints at him encouragingly. She deserves her suitors. “Just, ah—” He ruffles his bouquet. “Just delivering these.”
“Oooh, good luck on your Valentine’s aspirations! I wish you the best. Take a mint.”
It’s around the moment that Martin gratefully accepts a mint that Rosie realizes to whom, exactly, Martin has Valentine’s aspirations.
Martin’s mouth is dry again and his throat feels weak. Oh God, this is the worst case scenario. Rosie thinks Martin is crushing on their boss.
Just tell her they’re not from him.
“Um—” Rosie says.
Just tell her they’re not from him.
“Er—” Martin croaks out, another rose stem snapping in his grip.
He can’t do it. He can’t tell her they’re not from him.
Rosie recovers from the shock admirably. “Good…hey, good luck with that! I hope he says yes.”
Martin pops a mint in his mouth to avoid the red spots flushing up his neck. “Um. Mm-hmm. Definitely. So—so I need to go—” He points at Peter Lukas’s door.
“All yours!” Rosie gives him two large thumbs-ups, and somehow, this makes Martin feel worse.
This is for a purpose, he tells himself. This is to save all Magnus Institute employees from suffering under daily affirmations for the foreseeable future.
He’s come too far to give up now.
Martin enters his boss’s office and immediately comes face-to-face with a giant painted portrait of Elias Bouchard on the far wall, leering at him. The back of his neck prickles.
“Oh, stop fucking staring at me,” Martin tells it. “This is justified. This is justified!”
The portrait, as usual, says nothing, but as Martin turns around the room, its eyes are still on him. Creepy.
Without of a glass of water to stick the flowers in, he places the bouquet on its side on Peter’s desk. Whenever Peter gets tired of chillaxing in the Lonely, he can discover this and react to however one does when he’s been catfished. By then, Martin will be long gone with the book.
Speaking of the book, Martin catches a flash of orange and pink and purple, the gaudiest cover imaginable, on the shelf next to twenty-seven encyclopedias and tax ledgers from the 1950s.
He does not see the spider scuttling away under the bookshelf.
He moves without thinking: grabbing the 365 Daily Affirmations for Healing and Positive Thinking and shoving it into his inner vest pocket next to the one violet he purchased, the flower he’s saving for later.
Success.
He will figure out a plan to dispose of the book later, but for now, he just has to leave the office.
The icy portrait of Elias still glares at him, and the eyes seem to have moved. They now stare down at the book with the full weight of the grey pupils.
Martin flips the portrait of Elias Bouchard off. “Stop—stop being such a creepy fucking painting! Or a creepy fucking office! This is just—” He brandishes the book. “It’s just a stupid book, right? Go back to being normal.”
As he goes to tuck it back into his pocket, the book cover falls open.
Martin’s mouth falls open with it. “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking with me.”
On the inner cover is inscribed, in a dark red script (it’s not blood, it’s not blood, it cannot be blood): From the Library of Jurgen Leitner.
Alright, change of plans. Martin is figuring out the plan to dispose the book now, and it will involve taking it immediately to the Cult of the Lightless Flame and burning it to a crisp.
February 14, 2018.
Elias Bouchard has sorted his paperwork into the respective piles when the deputy inspector opens the door to the visitation room.
If Elias hadn’t glanced through every eye on Peter’s journey here, from Rosie to the taxi driver to the deputy inspector herself, he might be surprised by this visit.
Peter Lukas removes his captain’s hat as he sits in the chair across the glass from Elias.
Elias slowly picks up the phone on his side of the glass and waits for Peter to do the same.
“You know,” Peter begins, “I read an affirmation last week about self-actualization. Which one of our gods do you think actualized this—this interaction?”
Elias’s eyes ache. ”Neither,” he replies, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If I had to wager a guess, I would say the Mother of Spiders. But of course, I wouldn’t wager a guess. I already have one wager outstanding with you, and I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my win.”
“You wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize your win? That’s a new excuse, given that you—” Peter shakes the bunch of wilted flowers in emphasis.
The pain spreads further through Elias’s head. This is not the Eye’s doing; the pain is simply caused by having to occupy the same space as this man for more than a passing second. Infuriating. “Like I said. This is the Mother of Spiders’ doing.”
Peter sits back on his cold prison chair. “The Web bought me a bouquet, from you, and placed it in my office? Elias, are you implying that Miss Cane brought these flowers in through the front doors and up several levels and left them in a guarded room?”
“Peter, if you truly walked in here today under the impression that I had sent those to you for—for this holiday, then I won’t even dignify you by updating you on this official Institute business.” Elias gestures to the neat stack of paperwork, which is duplicated and signed in triplicate.
“Of course you didn’t. But if it wasn’t part of your ploy, it wouldn’t have happened. What’s the paperwork?”
Elias has ensnared him now: time to tighten the hook and reel in the line. “Just this: you need to work harder on upholding your end of our gamble, Peter. With your current course of action, not one of my employees will be tempted toward your god. Luckily for you, I’m leveling the playing field. Giving you a way out of this frankly embarrassing blunder, with your meetings and your team-building.”
He lifts one copy of the documents, flips through the pages. Eyes Peter idly.
Peter crushes a rose in his hand and sorts through the leaves. “Paperwork, Elias. Then I will get back to stealing your temple to the Eye out from under you.”
“Oh—one last thing,” Elias says, poised to slide the documents through the slot. “I need to hear you say it again.”
“Say it again?” Peter frowns.
“What you told me when we created our gamble. I want to hear those words again.”
“Ah.” Peter’s expression clears up. “Who knew: Jonah Magnus, a sentimentalist. Sure; I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Elias Bouchard, it’s lonelier with you than without you.”
Satisfaction hums through Elias, and he slides the documents to Peter.
Peter takes them, flips through them. Pauses. “What are these?”
Elias grins from ear to ear, savoring the look on Peter’s face and the dying flowers on the table. “Why, Peter, they’re divorce papers.”
February 15, 2018.
“And then—” Martin is chuckling to himself. “Jude actually answers the number I dialed, told me if I called her again Manuela’s in the area and would be happy to kill me, and hung up. Because she was my only supernatural contact outside the Institute—do not ask how I got her number—I thought I was going to have to keep a Leitner in my flat!”
He looks back at the hospital bed, and Jon doesn’t move, doesn’t even seem to breathe. He lays there, under the thin covers, as pale and still as he was when Martin rushed into the emergency ward in August.
Martin reaches down and squeezes Jon’s hand.
“But,” Martin says, “I did get a text from an unknown number half an hour later telling me to drop the book off at an address in Surrey. Google Maps says it’s the site of an industrial furnace, too, so the Leitner of Daily Affirmations is now on its way, never to terrorize us again.”
The silence of the room is only broken by the slow beeps of the heart monitor.
Martin clasps Jon’s hand again. “Not sure what the point of that book was, to be honest: something to do with remembering the past? Or planning for the future? Or annoying your employees until a few of them prepare for revenge on Valentine’s Day? I wonder if there’s any chance Leitner collected normal books as well as Fear ones. Maybe he just wanted to read himself some daily affirmations.”
Is it just in Martin’s head, or does Jon exhale more forcefully than that? Did he, unconscious, register Martin’s attempt at comedy?
“Oh, almost forgot! I know I'm a day late, but.” Martin reaches into his inner vest pocket for the last surprise he was keeping: one violet, crumpled in the journeys he’s taken, but still a brilliant deep purple.
He places the violet on the side table, on top of the IV lines resting there.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Jon.”
As Martin leaves the room, checking one last time to ensure he’s left nothing out of place, he brushes past a man in the hospital lobby.
If Martin had looked back, he would have seen this man walk into Jon’s room and close the door.
February 15, 2018.
(Later.)
Jon wakes up.
In the bleariness of returning to life, he smells the strangest thing: among the antiseptic of the hospital, there is a flower.
He opens his eyes, and his dreams and Oliver’s speech melt away from his consciousness. There is still one memory that hangs, poignant, in his mind.
Jon croaks, throat dry, “Martin? You gave a Leitner to the Desolation?”