All My Friends Are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman [7]
‘What’s wrong?’ Tom asked.
‘It’s the snow,’ she said. ‘I can’t organize the snowflakes.’
Tom wasn’t in love with her yet; he just had a crush on her, so he wondered why she’d want to do such a thing. But he got dressed and they went outside to look at the snow. Four inches had fallen. Everything was covered. The sidewalks weren’t cleared and people were walking through the snow, leaving trails behind them.
‘I tried to organize them but I couldn’t,’ she said. Her eyes were full moons. She seemed to have stopped blinking. Tom didn’t know what to do.
‘Just close your eyes,’ Tom told the Perfectionist.
‘But I still see them,’ the Perfectionist told Tom. She started shaking uncontrollably.
‘Why don’t we try this,’ Tom said.
He motioned to his car. He helped the Perfectionist into the passenger seat. He started the engine, turned on the heater and brushed off the snow. Tom drove out of the city, into the country and stopped his car in front of a field completely covered in undisturbed snow. No animals or people – nothing but the wind – had been across it. Tom helped the Perfectionist out of the car. They stood looking at the field of snow.
‘Can you organize these snowflakes?’ he asked her.
‘They already are,’ she said. It was at that exact moment that Tom fell in love with her.
Tom remembered standing there beside her, in front of that field covered with snow, and falling in love. The Anxiety Monster screamed again.
‘Do you love me?’ the Perfectionist repeated.
‘Yes,’ Tom said.
‘Then trust me. I’m going to have a bath.’
The Perfectionist got off the couch. She walked around her living room collecting objects: candles, a lighter, a portable tape deck. She carried these things into the bathroom. The bathroom door closed.
Tom heard her filling the bathtub. The tape deck played Motown. He sat on the couch with his legs pulled up to his chest as the Anxiety Monster’s fingers ripped splinters from the door. It started throwing its weight against the door. The hinges came away from the wall. The Monster slammed into the door again. The door-hinge screws were three-quarters out. Tom was overwhelmed. He fainted.
When he woke up, two hours later, the Perfectionist was playing solitaire. She looked over at him. She smiled. She looked back at the cards.
‘Feel better?’ she asked.
He did. There was no sign of the Anxiety Monster.
‘What happened?’ he asked her.
‘It left,’ she said. She moved a black nine onto a red ten.
‘It just left?’
‘There are two ways to get rid of an anxiety monster, my friend – you either have a bath or a nap.’
Tom watches an airplane take off. The Perfectionist has finally boarded. He remembers asking the Amphibian about all the monsters.
‘I don’t remember a single monster before I met you,’ he’d told the Amphibian. ‘Now they seem to be all over the place.’
‘You mean there wasn’t anything you were afraid of?’ the Amphibian had asked him.
‘Lots.’
‘What did they look like?’
It was a funny question.
‘They didn’t look like anything. They were ideas,’ Tom told him. ‘Like not being able to pay rent, or being lonely.’
‘That’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard,’ the Amphibian replied.
Tom picks up his carry-on luggage. He shows his I.D. and pass. He boards flight AC117 to Vancouver.
SIX
TAKE-OFF
Tom lowers his arms to his sides after safely stowing his carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment. He looks at the man in the aisle seat of Row 27.
‘Um,’ Tom says, pointing to the middle seat.
The man reluctantly angles his legs to the right. Tom squeezes past. He sits next to the Perfectionist, who has the window seat.
The Perfectionist studies two men in orange coveralls throwing luggage onto a conveyor belt. The conveyer belt carries luggage into the airplane. She doesn’t feel Tom put his hand over hers. Her arm begins jerking up and down like she’s being electrocuted. Tom pulls his hand away. The Perfectionist wishes her arm would stop doing that.
She keeps watching the men toss luggage. She is having one of those days