Chronicles of Emil, call sign Haberdasher
A short story
This is the fourth entry in my series writing one short story a week. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a like or a comment. You might even want to share it with a friend!
What a splendid occasion it had been when my friend Dayton led me up the stairs of his San Francisco apartment to reveal that all his closest friends were present, gathered around the living room, eating baby carrots with hummus, and playing a video game in which two of them shot each other with sniper rifles. I had had no idea his friends would be there. I had anticipated that the evening would be an intimate reunion of former lab partners (Dayton and myself). And yet here were five new wonderful (albeit poorly dressed) friends, whom Dayton pointed out to me one by one: Matt and Kai Kai and Sanjay and Schuster and Dan. Sanjay and Dan were the two playing the game at the moment, Sanjay on the top half of the screen and Dan on the bottom. It was quickly apparent that Dan was quite unskilled. Shot after shot he fired, shooting from the hip or quickly peeking through the scope of his rifle to barely take aim and fire, and yet all the bullets of his fifty caliber weapon zipped right past his intended target and buried themselves in a puff of sand. Sanjay, on the other hand, appeared to be toying with his prey, climbing up nearby buildings and jumping off of them, turning 360 degrees in the air before landing, firing, and, having missed this trick shot, soon climbing up a different building to try again. It was clear that Sanjay could do this as long as he pleased, for Dan was not going to hit him anytime soon. It was only a matter of time before Sanjay would finally land his trick shot, not only winning the game but also proving his skill to the other players present, one of which was likely to play him next. The others found this spectacle quite entertaining and snickered viscously at Dan’s lack of skill. Dan, meanwhile, found none of this funny, and his face danced with frustration as he frantically pressed buttons on his controller. When Sanjay finally jumped off a building one last time, turning 360 degrees in the air before burying a bullet in Dan’s head, the latter slumped back into the couch, his face dropping the way a man’s does when he has met the fate he knew was coming. The others laughed mockingly at him, perhaps to deflect attention away from the victorious Sanjay, who quietly set his controller on the coffee table and folded his hands.
“Guys this is Emil,” Dayton said.
They all mumbled greetings of some sort or another before quickly turning their attention back to the game. “Who’s next?” Matt said, taking the controller from Dan’s lap and holding it up.
“I think Kai Kai’s next,” said Schuster.
“I went two games ago,” said Kai Kai, “It’s your turn.”
“I’ve already had like five turns, it’s your turn now.”
“You wanna play, Dayton?” asked Kai Kai, taking the controller from Dan and holding it up to Dayton.
“Not if it’s against Sanjay I don’t,” said Dayton.
It was clear that although these gentleman laughed at Dan’s inability versus Sanjay, all of them knew that they would be in the exact same position if faced with the same opponent. How funny these men were, so afraid to be beaten and mocked in a video game!
I raised my hand and announced, “I would like to play this game.”
The room got quiet as all six of them looked at me, the new challenger. “You don’t have to raise your hand,” Dayton said, gently pulling my arm down by the shoulder. “Maybe you can watch another round before you jump right into it.”
“No Dayton, let’s give him a chance.” It was Matt who spoke. “The man’s eager, let’s give him a go.”
“Against Sanjay?” Dayton asked.
“It’s trial by fire,” Matt said. “Let’s give him a go. We’ll be nice.”
Dayton looked at me the way one looks at an old friend who is making a questionable decision. “Alright,” he said. “Give it a go.”
I took off my peacoat and set it upon a hook by the door, placing my cap atop it. As I sat down in an armchair provided to me, I unbuttoned the cuffs of my shirt and carefully rolled the sleeves up to my elbows. Matt bestowed the controller to me and said, “Good luck, buddy.” I thanked him and turned my attention to the screen, where the game was counting down to start.
I spawned in a grassy field resembling the Eurasian steppe. Nearby were some buildings with walls of sheet metal, some sort of military or research facilities. I used one of the joysticks to move towards these buildings and the other to control where I looked. When I reached one of the buildings, I tried pressing several different buttons to make my avatar climb it. Soon, I found the right one and, having pressed all of the buttons in the process, knew what every other button did as well.
I was walking along the roof when suddenly there was the sound of a sniper and my avatar fell dead. There was a “kill cam” that replayed the incident from Sanjay’s point of view. I set the controller down and sighed, disappointed with myself.
“The game’s still on,” Dayton told me. “It’s the first to 10 kills.”
“Oh, what wonderful news!” I picked up the controller and was back in the game, on the prowl for Sanjay.
I was in another part of the map, in a dirt lot surrounded by two story sheet metal buildings. I used a ladder to climb to the top of these buildings and soon had a good view of the grassy steppe. I could see movement on the plain. Looking through the scope of my rifle, I could see that Sanjay was repeatedly squatting on my dead avatar’s face, which had fallen to the ground. I stopped looking through my scope, lowered my weapon to the hip, and shot in the general direction of Sanjay. It was a headshot.
The boys erupted at the shot and all eagerly watched the kill cam. “That’s a good shot, Emil,” Dayton said, patting me on the shoulder.
Sanjay clearly felt his honor challenged and quickly returned to the game, on the prowl for none other than me. I maintained my position on the two story building, as it was the high ground of the map. Scanning my surroundings, I saw movement again. It was Sanjay. He climbed a small building and jumped off it with his characteristic 360 degree turn. The shot missed and I fired back from the hip. It was another headshot.
The boys erupted again, this time with double the volume. Sanjay skipped through the replay so he could return to the game again. He was quite serious indeed as he searched for me on the map. I saw him below me again, this time running through a path bordered by small bushes. I calculated when he would come out of the bushes to the small clearing and, taking a page out of his own playbook, jumped off the building, turned 360 degrees, and fired at just the spot he would emerge. It was a direct hit.
The noise from the boys was such that I thought we would get a noise complaint. Several of them took hold of my shoulders and shook me as if they were my comrades and I was some battle hero. “Have you played this game before?” Dayton asked.
“Never!” I said, smiling up at him. Then I heard a shot in the game that nearly missed me. I turned and fired, slaying Sanjay.
The apartment turned into a regular zoo as the boys shouted my praises and mocked my poor victim. Meanwhile, Sanjay kept shouting over their noise, “This is a hussle. You’ve played this before. Who is this guy, Dayton?”
Dayton either did not think I would hear or did not care if I did as he said, “I don’t know. He was just my lab partner in college. I didn’t know he was a pro gamer.”
“I’m no pro,” I said as I climbed the ladder of the two story building. A shot punctured the metal to my right. I hopped off, turning in the air, and fatally shot Sanjay. “I just like to have a little bit of fun!”
Crock and Zhongguo were pinned behind a small rock. A sniper fired at them from a nearby tower. If I could just get inside the tower I could get to the top instantly, thanks to a vertical zipline that could transport me in a flash. It was getting to the building that was the challenge, for the sniper’s squadmates had high ground on the hills between me and there— and I had nothing but a short range submachine gun. To add to that, the battle ring was closing, and it was only a matter of time before my two squadmates were absorbed in its lethal embrace.
I used my special to launch a zipline, which I rode to propel myself towards the top of the nearest hill. My three enemies all took advantage of this to fire at me along this straight path but, as soon as my shield was low, I dropped off the line and slid over the hill, turning as I did so to bury an entire clip into the first enemy, who dropped to the ground. I finished him off and looted his fully charged shield, which I was only wearing for a moment before the second enemy fired until it broke. I threw a grenade in his direction and used another zipline to launch myself to the bottom of his hill, where I came behind him and soon had him dead as well.
“The ring!” Crock said, “Cover us.” He and Zhongguo fled their rock under heavy sniper fire. I empty a clip of suppressive fire towards the top of the tower which did barely any damage to our enemy.
“Third party on our right,” Zhongguo said. “That’s the last squad.”
Three new enemies came out of the woodwork and took advantage of my comrades stranded on the open grass. I propelled myself to the base of the tower while the sniper was distracted with finishing off Crock and Zhongguo. Then as soon as I was halfway up the zipline to the top my enemy appeared with his sniper pointed directly at me.
“I’m down,” Crock said.
“I’m low,” Zhongguo said.
I dropped from the line, tossed a grenade, and dodged the sniper’s shot, hopping back on the line as soon as it missed me. The grenade exploded just before I emerged and eliminated my enemy with my submachine gun.
I looted the sniper from his dead body and quickly sighted a member of the third squad, who dropped dead as I pulled the trigger. Zhongguo died just then and I quickly sighted his murderer in my scope, who dropped the next moment. There were two people left standing: myself and the last member of the third squad. He was below the hill where I’d eliminated my second enemy. I tossed my tactical towards this hill, which, when it landed, allowed me to see his position by way of a red silhouette. He was running along the base of the hill, about to emerge to my view. I calculated his speed and hopped off the tower, turning 360 degrees in the air before firing from the hip, dropping my enemy to the ground.
“YOU ARE THE CHAMPION!” flashed on the screen.
Confetti exploded over the auditorium.
Seventy five hundred people erupted into applause.
I set my controller down, took off my headset, and exited the stage into the greenroom. As soon as I was there, I stripped off my dry fit uniform and dug into my backpack for my button down. There was much commotion outside. Dayton entered the greenroom just as I had finished the last button on my shirt. “Emil, what’s going on? Get out there! The people want to see their champion.”
“Well they certainly don’t want to see him in a dry fit t-shirt and gym shorts!” I said, stripping to my underwear and searching my backpack for slacks.
A girl entered the doorway just behind Dayton. It was one of the streamers he’d been flirting with.
“I’m terribly sorry, miss!” I said, frantically pulling my slacks on. “I had no idea a woman was coming. I swear it.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Dayton said. “Just get your pants on and get out there.”
“Just let me fix my tie first.”
“You don’t need a tie!” He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to the door. I writhed in his arms to grab my coat on the rack. “Would you just stop? Get out here.”
Yet I successfully grabbed my coat and, as I entered the stage to a roaring audience, threw it on myself and adjusted my cuffs. I waved to the thousands of kind faces cheering me on.
Crock and Zhongguo waited for me by the podium with open arms. I embraced them and we all celebrated with a bit of jumping before taking our place at the top. Meanwhile there was a woman announcing us to the crowd. “And that’s Haberdasher there, dressed impeccably as always, joining his teammates at the top of the podium. This is a real cinderella story, you guys. Haberdasher had been totally unknown to the e-sports world just one year ago— unknown to the gaming world at all— and yet here he is leading his team to victory. Guys, what do you have to say?”
She held the mic up to me and my team. Crock and Zhongguo looked at me to speak. I leaned down to the mic and, having no words to say, said the first thing that came to my mind. “I think this game is a lot of fun!”
The crowd erupted with redoubled applause.
I was pouring myself a paper cup of apple juice when I was suddenly accosted by the shoulders. It was Dayton. “Emil, what happened?” He said. “I thought you were gonna get me on the list.”
“Dayton!” I said. “It’s wonderful to see you. How’d you get in?”
“Zhongguo saw me by the entrance and let me through. What happened to getting me on the list?”
I wiped up the spilled apple juice with a napkin. “I told you. The tournament only wanted teams and press at this event.”
“Everybody lets their friends in. You could have just said I was press.”
“I would never lie, Dayton, you know that.”
“Sometimes it’s okay to lie to help out a friend,” he said. He grabbed a bottle of Prosecco off the table and filled a cup for himself. “You understand that, right?”
“I don’t know if I understand that.”
“You have to understand this. If you want friends, you have to be willing to lie on their behalf. Does that make sense?”
What he said sounded wrong to me but, I had to admit, Dayton knew a lot more about having friends than I did. “I suppose I understand.”
“Good,” he said. He sipped his Prosecco and scanned the garden room. “You seen Fey anywhere?”
I looked around at the small groups of people huddled together, mingling in the low light. “I saw her outside a while back. I don’t know if she’s still there.”
“Come on, let’s go out there.”
“I’ve nothing to say to Fey. You can go yourself.”
He already had his hand around my back and was leading me outside. “Do you understand this? You’re my in. I’m nothing here without you.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a lovely individual.”
“Lovely doesn’t matter. I have no clout. Except for you.”
The patio was lit by an LED that morphed through every color of the rainbow. A DJ played soft electronic music. People were chatting. A girl laughed and we saw that it was Fey, talking to Triple B, the squad that placed second.
“This is perfect,” Dayton said.
“Ah, Haberdasher,” said Beets as we approached. He was a pale skinny man in his thirties and generally recognized as the best player on his team. “That was quite the finale you pulled on us there.”
“You’re too kind,” I said.
“Your movement is incredible,” said his teammate Baidu. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Dayton interrupted. “Yeah I bet you didn’t like that 360 no scope to finish you off, huh?”
Baidu looked at him. “That was quite a shot, yeah.”
Dayton glanced at Fey before continuing to talk to Baidu. “You know I was actually the one who taught him that 360 shot. This was just 10 months ago. He came over to my place, hadn’t played a game in his life—”
“Dayton,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt but was it not Sanjay who taught me the 360?”
“Well Sanjay was the one who first showed it to you. But you remember, don’t you, after everyone left that day? You stayed behind and I coached you on how to perfect that shot, one on one?”
“Hm,” I said. “I don’t remember that at all. Wasn’t there some girl who came over and I had to go—”
“No no no, that was another time. The first time. Remember? I coached you on how to perfect that shot.”
I felt I must have been going crazy. I could not remember that happening at all. But Dayton looked at me with the most serious eyes I’d ever seen. Then it quickly became apparent that he knew very well he had never coached me on that shot and only wanted me to pretend for him. I recalled that I was his “in” for this group and how much that meant to him.
“Oh yes, that’s right. I was confused. Dayton here taught me everything I know.”
There was an awkward pause in the conversation. Fey giggled quietly.
“I’m gonna go get more Prosecco,” Dayton said. “Fey, do you want anything?”
“No thank you,” she said. “I have my vodka.”
“That cup is filled with vodka?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You’re crazy. That’s why I like you. I’ll be right back.”
Dayton left for more Prosecco. When he’d gone, Fey said quietly, “I’m not crazy.”
Triple B then began talking about an event that was supposed to take place in Seoul next year. They insisted I should compete for it. “They’re only taking two squads from the States,” Beets said. “You could easily make it though. The stadium seats sixty thousand people.”
“Seoul’s quite a long ways from home,” I said. “I’d have to check with my work to get the time off.”
“You mean you’re not gaming full-time?”
“Well it’s more of a hobby, really.”
“You’re crazy,” Fey said, smiling up at me.
“Is that crazy? Well then, I suppose I’m crazy.”
“I love the way you dress, by the way.”
“Thank you, Fey. They don’t call me haberdasher for nothing. I enjoy your attire as well. There’s something… medieval about it.”
“I am a fairy, you know. That’s what Fey means.”
“You’re a fairy? I didn’t know fairies existed.”
“They do. I’m one of them. You see this necklace?” She held a necklace up from her chest, which had a big spherical stone in its center. “This is Carnelian. It harnesses endurance and passion. I channeled its energy to you during the match.”
“Ah, so I have you to thank for my luck.”
“It doesn’t give you luck. That would be Iron Pyrite. But I do have Pyrite. It’s in my hotel room. Do you want to see it?”
“I’d love to see it. But I guess it would be rude if we were to leave our friends from Triple B here.” I turned to where Beets, Baidu, Bao Yao were but somehow they had surreptitiously moved away from Fey and me to mingle with others. “Well, I guess they have other business to attend to.”
As soon as we entered her room she pulled me against the wall and pressed her soft lips to mine. I had been caught completely unawares but, when she hooked her knee around my waist, I forgot about everything in my life that was not her, and her feminine body, and her skin as smooth as satin. I lost myself in her passionate embrace and I’m even ashamed to say I felt a quite bestial energy overcome me. I tore off my coat to better feel her form against mine and it was not long before she pulled me towards her bed, where I leaned back as she lay on top of me.
There was a digital beep and the sound of a something unlocking. The door opened, flooding the room with light from the hallway. Dayton entered.
Fey scrambled to her feet. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
I propped myself onto my elbows, still getting my wits about me. Dayton walked to the center of the room. He was not looking at Fey or myself. It was quite strange. It was as if he had entered a room and forgotten why he’d come.
“You need to get out right now,” Fey said. “How did you get in here?”
I stood then and took a step toward Dayton. He looked up at me and seemed to just then recognize who I was. “Emil! How are you doing? It’s been quite a party tonight. I seemed to have lost track of Fey.”
“He has a keycard,” Fey said to me. She checked her wallet. “He must have taken it from my wallet. I had two keys in here. He took one.”
I saw that indeed Dayton was holding a keycard in his hand.
“Dayton,” I said. “May I see what you have in your hand?”
He looked at it confusedly. I smelled alcohol on him. “This was hers… I was supposed to… Somebody ran off with her.”
He looked at me. I couldn’t understand how much of the situation he understood. He looked as though he might turn violent at any moment— or yet again, he might not.
“Let me take that,” I said. He subtly pulled it away from me. “Come on,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulder. “Let’s take you to your room.” He let go of the card then and I handed it to Fey. Then I started leading him out, grabbing my coat off the ground as I did.
“You’ll come back, right?” Fey said. “You won’t leave me here alone?”
I smiled and nodded at her to convey that I would but I didn’t want to say it aloud with Dayton present. She nodded back at me adorably.
Dayton and I exited to the hallway and, after the door closed behind us, I shook him by the shoulders. “My heavens, my friend! What a wonderful world this e-sports scene is!”
My tailor was taking my measurements in the living room for a new waistcoat. The door buzzed and I stepped off the stool to answer it. “Hello, who is it?” I said into the mic.
“It’s Dayton.”
“Ah. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know. Can I come in?”
“Hm,” I said. I paused to think. “Maybe it’s best if I come down there and we can grab some coffee. Give me five minutes. I’m just with my tailor right now.”
“I can wait.”
“Very good.”
I explained the situation to my tailor and said we could take measurements for my shoes another day. I stepped on the stool for him to finish with my waistcoat measurements.
“Baby!” Fey called from upstairs.
“Yes honey?”
“Who was it?”
“Just an old friend of mine.”
“It’s him isn’t it?”
I wanted so badly to lie but I’d very well learned that that was not the way to go about things with her. “They say he’s in recovery now. It should be fine!”
“Come up here.”
“One second!”
My tailor took one last measurement of my right flank and nodded for me to step down. I tipped him with a twenty and then went up the stairs to the bedroom. Fey was buried in a mountain of expensive stuffed animals that had recently invaded the apartment in hoards thanks to her. It was a new way for her to distinguish herself from other streamers since her crystal collection had seemed to fall flat. Her viewership had slowly gone down.
I sat on the foot of the bed.
“Don’t talk to him,” She’s said. “He’s not good for you.”
“We’re getting coffee. We’ll be in a public place. He can’t hurt me.”
“He’ll poison your mind. Those kinds of people do that. First it’s coffee and then suddenly you’re giving him money.”
“He’s in recovery! I’ve got a good head on my shoulders. I won’t let him trick me.”
“You let people walk over you all the time. I hate seeing it.”
“My generosity is never ‘letting people walk over me.’ Sometimes it’s excessive but it’s not as much of a problem as you say.”
“You think Seoul wasn’t a problem? You bought everyone two rounds of drinks. They were drinking champagne. I can understand one round but not two.”
“Maybe I got carried away, that’s fair. But I’d won quite a good deal of money and I don’t think that made much of a dent in it.”
“You’re helpless.”
“When you say these things, honey, it hurts my feelings. Why can’t you choose nicer words?”
“You wanna talk nice? You’re not nice to me. You wanna run off with that creepy stalker. You wanna have coffee with him.”
“I feel that I’m quite nice to you. I’ve invited you into my new home, I’ve given you access to my credit cards—”
“And you never stop hanging that over my head. That’s how nice you are.”
“I only bring it up because—”
“Why don’t you just go? Go get coffee with that creep.”
I saw there was nothing to say to her so I rose and made for the door. “He’s not a creep,” I said. “He’s an old friend.”
“You don’t have any friends.”
That one hurt, in part because it was true. Even calling Dayton a friend was a stretch. We’d only been lab partners in college. Just one semester. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. There was something about me where I couldn’t seem to make regular old friends. Not teammates, not colleagues. Friends.
I went downstairs and met Dayton on the street.
“How lovely to see you, my friend,” I said to him, shaking his hand.
“Good to see you as well.”
“This way there’s the best cafe.”
While we walked and stood in line for coffee we talked about all that the last year had brought for us. I was no longer at the biotech startup I’d worked for and he was no longer at his. My lifestyle had accelerated to the fast-pace of a professional gamer and I’d been on more planes in the last year than I’d been on my entire life to that point. His lifestyle had slowed way, way down, to focus on self-care and recovery. I asked him how that way, recovery. He took a moment to think before responding. “Some days, it’s horrible. Other days, it’s liberating.”
“Well that sounds good.”
We were at the front of the line, then, and I ordered my cortado and paid for Dayton’s drink as well, despite his protests. Then we sat on a bench by a skinny park where children were playing. It was a sunny autumn day and you could see the bay.
Dayton got serious. He put his elbows on his knees and would not look me in the face as he began to explain that one of the parts of the program is to make amends with those he had harmed. He said he had already apologized to his family and friends for events he did not need to get into right now and yet, after all those apologies, he still felt as though he was missing something. He came to realize that that missing something was making amends with me.
“I know we were not very close,” he said (which came as somewhat as a surprise to me, for at one point he seemed my closest friend in the world), “But the way I behaved towards you and the hurtful things I said during the whole… Fey situation— that kind of behavior speaks to the exact nature of my wrongs. And with that in mind, I’ve prepared a letter of apology I’d like to read to you, if you don’t mind listening.”
“Of course I would love to listen,” I said.
He half-smiled at me. “Thank you,” he said— and I could tell he was truly grateful.
The content of his letter was the recent history of our friendship from his point of view— and it described the events in ways I had not even considered before. He confessed that he had been “using” me for his own benefit in a way that was not fair to me. He described himself as a leech, taking advantage of my fame to make himself “pseudo-famous,” or “famous by association,” so to speak. When my relationship with Fey gained momentum, he said he had sought to undermine the relationship by sowing doubt in my mind. More importantly, he had done this not because he thought it was in my best interest but because he was envious of me and wanted Fey for himself. He said he had come to realize over the past few months that this behavior was a result of his character defects. He was greedy for fame and profit and women and he valued that over the well-being of the people in his life. He said he was now more aware of these defects and was working on a daily practice to manage those defects. “If you can find it in your heart to forgive me for my faults, I would be grateful. If you cannot, I understand and hope that this letter at least helps you have a clearer understanding of the situation. Sincerely, Dayton.”
“What a beautiful letter!” I said.
He laughed. “Thank you.”
“You’re very articulate, you know. That was truly a pleasure to listen to. And on such a beautiful day! On a nice park bench. Thank you for reading that to me.”
“Well, you’re welcome. So then… do you forgive me?”
“Of course I forgive you! To be perfectly honest I had not even considered you had wronged me in those ways, although I suppose it makes sense in hindsight.”
“Oh good. Well, it helps me to come to terms with things.”
I grabbed his shoulder and shook it amiably. “That’s very good to hear, Dayton, very good!”
“Ah, what a relief.”
“You’ve got something off your chest that had been weighing down on you for a while. That’s splendid! Shall we go for a walk?”
“A walk sounds lovely.”
We strolled for a long time up and down the long, steep hills of Pacific Heights, stopping on the way for some of best croissants in the city. I got to talking about the recent tournaments in which I had competed in Texas, Seattle, and Sydney. I event made quite a fool of myself pantomiming the final play of the championship match in Seattle, in which I had squeezed behind the thin cover of a supply crate and popped up just three times to empty exactly three clips into the last three enemies. We got as far as the Marina Green, where you could clearly see the Golden Gate with all its glory in the daylight. Dayton’s apartment was nearby so he said he might as well be getting home.
“Very well, then! I can walk you to your apartment.”
“Okay then.”
We strolled along the water, where it was quite windy. Far off in the Pacific, I could see the fog was approaching.
“How are things with Fey, then?”
“They’re quite well, yes.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
I could tell there was something else on his mind.
“She’s living with you, right?”
“She is, yes.”
He wanted to say something but held himself back.
“And you love her?”
No one had asked me that question except for Fey herself. “Yes I… I love her.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry, but can I ask you one question, which I promise I am asking with all the best intentions?”
“You may.”
“Do you believe that? Do you really, truly believe that you love her from the deepest part of your heart?”
I sighed. “She is a very complicated woman and love is a very… hard thing to practice.”
“Complicated how so?”
“Well she’s someone who enjoys a quite expensive lifestyle. I’m more than willing to help her with that but…”
“But what?”
“Sometimes she is more than happy to accept my financial assistance and yet other times it’s as if she resents me for helping her. I cannot understand it.”
“Maybe she feels guilty for taking your money.”
“Perhaps that’s so. Although I don’t understand what there is to feel guilty about. I have plenty to share.”
We reached his apartment. We gave each other a big hug, the way old friends do, and said our farewells. Before I could walk away, he said one last thing.
“Emil, I have to say something and I just want you to know that I really don’t think it is my character defects speaking. I think Fey is taking advantage of you. It takes a leech to spot a leech. I understand I might not fully understand the relationship but that is just how it appears to me from my point of view. I just hope you can take that as something from one friend to another. Or you can ignore it.”
I put my hands in my pockets and looked at the ground, considering what he had said. Then I looked up at him. “Well, Dayton, thank you for that. I appreciate your point of view. From one friend to another.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll see you soon, then.”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
He went up to his apartment and I began the long walk home.
It has always been incredible to me how quickly the fog rolls into San Francisco. One moment, it is nothing but a whisper of white out in the Pacific. The next, it swallows you and the city entirely and it seems to have no end. It swallowed me that day as I walked home and it brought with it a chill I was not prepared for with my light coat. I was shivering as I mounted the steep hills back to Pacific Heights. I should have called a car but I was not thinking straight after what Dayton had said to me. Was there something about life that others could see and I could not? The blank fog seemed to tell me yes. There was much of the world and of people that I could not see, obscured as it was by a thick wall of mist.
I ascended the stairs to my apartment. In the dark hallway leading to the door I nearly fell on my face after tripping on a package. I collected myself and saw that the ground was littered with them. They were all for Fey. I stepped around them and keyed the door open. I could hear that Fey was streaming upstairs in the bedroom. I sat on the couch and waited for her stream to end, preparing myself for what I knew would be a very long and difficult conversation.