#rivi — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #rivi, aggregated by home.social.
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My Next Door Neighbor is a Vampire
“My next door neighbor is vampire,” Rivi tells me.
“Keeps late hours?” I ask.
“No,” Rivi says. “She’s an actual vampire.”
We are sitting on the front porch of the house Rivi shares with Boone and Tina. The sun is out today for what feels like the first time in weeks, which is a welcome change from the endless gray we’ve been caught up in as winter refuses to go away. If there’s such a thing as vampire weather, I doubt that today would be what I would classify it as.
“I know that I’m going to regret asking you this,” I say, “but how do you know she’s a vampire?”
“She told me,” Rivi says. “Duh.”
“Duh. Of course.”
She points across the street at a small green house that sits just alongside the river that flows through the center of town. “That’s her place there. Her name is Miette. She’s a hundred and fifty-six years old.”
“A hundred and fifty-six? She must look like a shriveled apple person.”
Rivi punches me in the arm. “She’s a vampire, dumbass. She looks young and hot.”
“Duh,” I say, rubbing my arm.
“Duh.”
“So how did you meet this vampire?” I ask.
“I was sitting out here night before last eating Skittles, and she was out digging in her garden.”
“Gardening at night. How very R.E.M. of her.”
“That’s what I said! So of course I had to go over and see what she was doing.”
“Very brave of you,” I say. “Going into the vampire’s lair to check out her vegetable garden.”
“I didn’t know she was a vampire then,” Rivi says. “I mean, that wouldn’t have stopped me going over, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I agree. I peer at the green house—the vampire house—and find
nothing unusual about it. It’s very well kept, and looks very inviting. Just what a vampire house would look like, I think. Lure you right in with all of its hominess and cuteness.“So I say hi and introduce myself. She says her name is Miette, and that she’s trying to get the rest of her garlic bulbs in the ground, even though it’s probably too late for them to come up this year.”
“Garlic,” I say. “In a vampire’s garden.”
“Hey, just because she’s a vampire doesn’t mean she doesn’t like garlic.”
“I don’t know, Rivi. I’m pretty sure all the vampire literature says that vamps hate garlic.”
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, Sebastian,” she says.
“It’s a hundred and fifty years of literature, but whatever. Go on.”
“So we get to talking, and pretty soon I’m helping her dig in the dirt, because you know me. Always helpful.”
“That is not the you that I am familiar with, but please continue.”
“She’s from Quebec originally, she says, but she moved to Maine about fifty years ago. Lived on the coast for a while, but felt it was a little too stereotypical being on a cliff overlooking the sea. Too goth, but not in a cool way. So she moved here in 2015, bought her house from an old couple looking to relocate to Florida, and the rest is vampire history.”
“About that,” I say. “How exactly did the whole vampire thing come up in the line of conversation? You didn’t cut your finger on a trowel and let her suck on it, did you?”
“There was no sucking of anything involved, thank you very much. You’re such a pig.”
“Vampires are known for sucking, Rivi,” I say. “Also, I am not a pig.”
“Oink oink,” she says. “Miette just brought it up in conversation. Said that I seemed cool and she figured that if I was going to be living across the street from a vampire, I probably should know what the deal is. So I don’t think she’s rude if she’s turning down invitations for brunch or afternoon dips in the kiddie pool in the yard.”
“She’d need a lot of SPF in her sunscreen.”
“It’s cool. I’m a night owl. I’m sure we’ll get a lot of hanging out time together once the sun goes down. About time I made a friend in this town anyway.”
“A friend who is a vampire.”
“Don’t be racist, Sebastian.”
“I am not being racist, Rivi. I just don’t believe in vampires.”
“Well they believe in you.”
“Do they.”
“Of course they do,” she says. “I told Miette all about you. She’s looking forward to having you for dinner.”
I lean back in my chair. “Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re making a joke or not.”
Rivi pats me on the knee. “It’s just a little nibble, Sebastian.”
“I’m not being nibbled on by your vampire Québécoise, Rivi.”
“Just a little nibble,” she says. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Wait, did she nibble on you?”
“None of your beeswax,” Rivi says. “But maybe. She didn’t break the skin, though, so she says I’m not going to turn into a vampire or anything.”
“Oh, good,” I say. “I was worried there a second.”
“You were?” she asks.
“Of course not. There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“Yes, there is.” She points across at the green house. “There’s one living right in there right now.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I say.
“Totally racist,” Rivi says, leaning back and folding her arms over her chest.
“It’s not racist to not believe in vampires.”
“That’s just what a racist would say.”
I look up at the vampire house (because now I’m going to be calling it that forever), and for just a second I think I see a curtain in a window on the top floor crack open, and then fall closed again. Because someone lives in that house, I think. And it’s not a vampire.“If anybody in this town has a friend who is a vampire,” I say, staring at the window, “it would have to be you.”
“S’what I said,” Rivi tells me. “You’ll see. You’ll meet her pretty soon.”
“Can’t wait. I can ask her all about her time in Canada. How she became a vampire. It’ll be a real interview. With. A. Vampire.”
Rivi punches me in the arm again. “Racist.”
“Shut it.”
About seven hours until sunset.
Guess I need to keep track of these things now.
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Zombie Chickens and Poultrygeists
Rivi and I are sitting on the porch at Boone and Tina’s new house, where they have given Rivi a temporary (or permanent, because who can really say) room in which to live. I have been over helping them to unpack, which has mainly consisted of carrying boxes up a flight or two of stairs, or down into the basement. I have been reminded just how much I hate moving, but I do it without complaint. I’m just happy to have my friends close by again.
“I haven’t seen any ghosts in the house yet,” Rivi says. “I’m very disappointed.”
“You will,” I assure her. “This house is almost as old as ours is. I promise you people have died in it.”
“They better have, or I’m moving back to California.”
I lean forward in my chair. “Listen, child, and I’ll tell you a Stephen King Country story that happened just yesterday at our house.”
“Is it scary?” she asks.
“Don’t know yet. Have to wait and see. Want to hear it or not?”
“Of course I do,” she says. “Spill.”
“So yesterday, as it’s starting to creep over into sunset, Hunter and I are sitting on the porch, because it’s forty-five degrees outside for a change, and we’re enjoying the warmth after weeks of sub-freezing temperatures. There’s still a foot of snow on the ground…”
“As I can see from where I sit,” Rivi interrupts.
“… and it’s super misty, because the warm air is bringing all that moisture up from the snow. It’s really pretty, and it’s really quiet, since we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Not like this nowhere,” she says.
“You live on a corner in a town, right on the street. It’s not the middle of nowhere. Shut up and let me tell the story.”
“Fine. Grump.”
“So we’re sitting on our porch, and Hunter looks out across the field and says, ‘Is that a chicken?’ I look where she’s looking, and sure enough, there’s a chicken walking across the snow, a fat, fluffy hen.
“‘Yep,’ I say. ‘That’s a chicken.’
“’Is it one of ours?’ she asks. The coop with our chickens is on the other side of the property, so it’s doubtful that one of them has come over here. It’s still too snowy for them to want to leave their run, and they hardly ever travel unless it’s in a group. The chicken we are looking at in the field is a breed called a Lavender Orpington, and until a month ago, we had two of them. One of them died back in early February, one of those mysterious chicken deaths which seem to just happen sometimes, where you have no idea what the cause is. As is our tradition with dead chickens, we put her into an open cardboard box and set her out deep in the trees on the property, returning her to nature. Circle of life, and all that.
“’I don’t think that’s ours,’ I say. ‘I’ll go to the coop and count ours, see if anyone is missing.’ I put on my boots and walk over to the coop, and it’s slushy and wet and slippery, so it takes a while to get there. I count the chickens, and then count them again to be sure: twelve chickens. The correct number. I slosh my way back to the other side of the house, and see that Hunter has lured the random chicken closer by leading her with a trail of chicken feed.
“’All our chickens are in the coop,’ I say.
“’I think…’ Hunter says. ‘I think this is our dead chicken.’”
“Shut up,” Rivi says now, peering at me.
“I’m not making this up,” I say. “Now that I can see this chicken up closer, it absolutely looks like our dead one. I know that chickens all look alike to people who don’t keep chickens, but you can definitely tell them apart when you see them every day. This chicken that is pecking at the feed by our porch is the same one that was dead, that I put in a box and carried out into the woods.”
Rivi punches me in the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday? I would have come right over!”
“It was getting dark,” I say. “There wasn’t time to mess around.”
“So what happened next?” she asks.
“I went back to the coop to get the chicken hospital. It’s an old dog crate that we use when we have to quarantine chickens for whatever reason. It’s too big to carry in all the ice and snow, so I just grabbed one end and dragged it across the property, while Hunter kept the zombie chicken occupied with food pellets. When I got close enough, we herded her up onto a snow pile, and then I grabbed her and we stuck her in the hospital.”
“Your dead chicken is now and alive and in the hospital,” Rivi says.
“And the hospital is in the mud room today, because we’re still working out where to keep her until we can reintroduce her to the flock.”
“Your dead chicken, who is now a zombie, is going to be put in with the rest of the alive, not-zombie chickens,” Rivi says.
“More or less,” I say. “I swear to you this chicken was dead when I put her in a box. And even if she was just in a coma or something, it’s been nearly a month. We’ve had negative temperatures, wind chills in the minus twenties, and anything that she could eat is under a foot or two of snow. I have no idea how this chicken survived.”
“And you’re going to put her into the coop with the normal alive chickens,” Rivi says. “This really is Stephen King Country.”
“Right? Do you see what you’re living in now?”
“This is the sexiest place I’ve ever lived,” she says. “Even if it is in the middle of nowhere.”
“You’re not going to be bored,” I assure her.
“I guess not.”
“Might be eaten by zombie chickens, though.”
“Show me a good time, Sebastian,” Rivi says. “Show me a good time.”
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Timothy Hutton Popsicles
What’s the temperature, Kenneth? Rivi texts me.
12 degrees right now, I text back. With a wind chill of -11.
Her typing indicator winks an ellipses at me for what feels like thirty seconds, then pauses, then goes again for another thirty. Finally, her message pops up on the screen: Fuck.
Still looking forward to moving? I ask.
I am going to die, she says.
You won’t die. You’ll just have to get a good jacket. And gloves. And a hat. And a scarf. And long underwear.
I’ll be dead and frozen in a block of ice like Encino Man.
Jesus, Rivi. That’s a deep cut.
It was either that or Iceman, but nobody really makes Timothy Hutton references anymore.
You’re a walking Wikipedia, I text.
It’s a living. Except nobody pays me to do it. So I guess that means it’s a hobby. Now I’m even more depressed. Thanks a lot, Sebastian.
It’s winter in the wood of Maine, I text. It gets cold here. You just bundle up when you go out and try to stay inside as much as possible.
I’m a California girl, Sebastian.
Who hates the sun. You’ll be fine. We won’t let you freeze to death.
Promise?
Scout’s honor, I text.
I don’t know if I’m ready for this.
You’re going to be here in about two weeks. You’re going to need to get ready pretty quickly.
There’s a long pause before her next message comes through. Am I making a mistake coming out there?
You’ll have to decide that on your own, Rivi. I love it here. Hunter loves it here. It’s the most peaceful place I’ve ever lived in. I think you’ll adjust, but if you’re going to change your mind, you need to do it really, really soon.
That’s not helpful, she texts. You’re supposed to tell me what to do.
I never tell you what to do, I text. You always do your own thing anyway, no matter what anybody else says.
Crap. I forgot. I am kind of like that, aren’t I?
Completely. But hey, cheer up: I just checked and the wind chill is only -10 right now.
Shorts and sandals weather, she texts.
Positively tropical.
I’m going to die, she texts again.
Maybe, I reply. But look on the bright side: at least you’ll leave a good looking corpse until the spring thaw.
It’s the little things, Sebastian.
It truly is, Rivi.
Goodbye, Sebastian.
Goodbye, Rivi.
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Perpetual Drama Machine
“The power’s out,” Rivi says, on the other end of the phone line. “My madness is beginning to set in.”
“Your madness set in years ago,” I say. “That ship has sailed, hit an iceberg, sunk, and was swallowed by a sea monster way before today.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she says. “I’m a delicate flower right now.”
“I apologize. Sincerely. With much sorriness. So much of it. Maybe you should call the electric company while your phone still has a charge, instead of wasting it talking to me.”
“You’re the one who lives in the woods, Sebastian,” Rivi says. “I thought you might have some tips or something to help me survive.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Out here, we have a generator, and a couple of cans of gas in the shed.”
“I don’t have a shed,” she says. “Or a generator.”
“Of course you don’t. Nobody in an apartment in San Francisco has a generator.”
“I barely have an apartment. It’s all in boxes, Sebastian. Boxes. This is worse than living in a Stalinist gulag.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” I say.
“It’s bad. So bad. So very, very bad.”
“I see you didn’t pack your drama up yet, at least.”
Rivi ptthbts. “I’m dying from lack of electricity and all you can do is pick on me.”
“You need to toughen up a little bit before you get here. You’re going to lose power where you guys are at the new place. There’s no escaping it. How long has your power been out right now?”
“Forever,” she groans. “Fifteen minutes, at least.”
“Fifteen.”
“At least.”
I sigh. “First storm we had after we moved here, it was a week before the power company hooked us back up again.”
“I. Will. Die.”
The house creaks around me, and I look out the window, watching the birch trees bending in the wind of the latest incoming storm. “You won’t die. Boone and Tina will have a generator.”
“Is it too late to change my mind about this whole moving thing?” Rivi asks.
“Well, did you give your landlord your notice on the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s too late. You’re stuck.”
She groans again. “When I’m dead, cremate me and keep my ashes in a box next to all the ones that have your dead cats in them.”
“I swear, you’re not going to die.”
“An ash party,” she says. “Put my hand in a little plaster mold and set it next to the kitty paw prints.”
“Rivi, hang up your phone and go for a walk. Go to the beach. Do something that doesn’t involve electricity.”
“I could sit here and cry,” she says. “Like a sad girl in the twelfth century.”
“Do you have the plague?” I ask. “Do you have cholera? No, you do not.”
“I might.”
“Rivi, you do not. Hang up the phone. Go look at the ocean. You might not see the Pacific for a while after you move. Might as well get your fill of it while you can.”
“They didn’t have the Pacific in the twelfth century,” she says. “More things to cry about.”
The house creaks again, and a swirl of fresh falling snow blows past the window. “Rivi, I have to go make sure the generator is gassed up. There’s a storm coming in.”
“No antibiotics, no electricity, no Pacific Ocean,” she says. “Just the plague and cholera and the Spanish Inquisition.”
“They didn’t have the Spanish Inquisition in the twelfth century either.”
“I shall go to the ocean and just keep walking out into it until the waves cover my head and I am consigned to the deep.”
“Rivi,” I say.
“Sebastian,” she replies.
“Please don’t forget to pack your drama before you move. It would be a shame for you to leave it behind.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “You know me. I can always make more.”
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New Year’s Resolutions
“I should have learned how to ice skate at some point,” Rivi says. “I’m sure I would have been a graceful gazelle on them.”
“Plenty of ice gazelles in Maine,” I say. “You have to watch out for them when you’re driving at night. Totally wreck your car if you hit one.”
We are standing out on the ice of a pond near the house where Hunter and I live, watching some people in the distance ice fishing. The pond is big, what I would have called a lake in the days before I moved here, when I didn’t know better. It’s been so cold for the past few weeks that the ice is thick enough that I’ve seen snowmobiles driving on it more than a few times, although I couldn’t ever see myself doing anything like that. Not growing up in a cold climate like this, I don’t care how thick the ice is. All I can think about is how cold the water beneath it is.
“I don’t know where Boone and Tina got off to,” I say. “They were out of the house before we got up this morning.”
“Doing secret things, probably,” Rivi says. She slides the toe of her shoe across the ice. “They’re all about secret things these days.”
“You mean like flying across the country for a visit here without telling us they were coming? You were in on that secret. Are you in on whatever secret they’re up to right now?”
“Sebastian,” she says. “Would I tell you if I were?”
I nod. “Oh, definitely. You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“I’ve known you for a thousand years, Rivi. Do I really have to answer that?”
“Harsh,” she says.
“But accurate.”
“Still harsh.” She turns around and starts penguin-walking across the ice in the direction of the shore. I walk beside her, ready to catch her if she slips. “Is giving you a clue the same as telling you what their secret is?”
“Probably,” I say.
“Even if it’s only a small clue?”
“Pretty sure it is.”
“What if I write it on a piece of paper, show it to you, and then eat it?”
“Still counts as telling secrets.”
“What if you lean down here and I whisper it into your ear?”
“Still telling,” I say.
“Well, crap,” Rivi says. “I guess I have to keep my trap shut then, don’t I?”
“If you’re trying to start a New Year’s resolution to not tell other people’s secrets, then probably.”
“I never said I wanted to do any resolutions, Sebastian.”
“Neither did I,” I say. “That way lies failure and madness.”
We step off the ice and move carefully up the embankment to where the car is parked, just off to the side of the road. There’s very little space for cars along the shore here. I have mountain goat genes, so I get up first, then help Rivi the rest of the slippery way.
“They’re looking at houses,” she blurts out, and then slaps her hand over her mouth in mock shock. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”
“Looking for houses? In Maine?”
She nods. “Just in the next town over. They found a really great old place that’s almost as big as yours.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. Everybody misses you guys, dummy. It’s not the same out there without you. Plus, the entire state is on fire every year, so there’s that.”
“This is insane. Why didn’t they say anything?”
“Because they wanted to surprise you, obviously.” Without warning, she gives me a hug, squeezing tight enough to make my spine crack. “It’s a big house, Sebastian. They have a room for me until I find a place.”
“So. You’re all moving to Maine, and nobody thought to tell me about it ahead of time?”
“Correct.”
“You’re all insane.”
“You moved first,” she points out. “You set the insanity bar high.”
“Well, shit,” I say.
She nods. “Don’t tell Boone or Tina I told you. It’s supposed to be a secret.”
“You are so terrible at secrets, Rivi.”
“I know.” She slides her sleeve up and looks at her wrist, where there is no watch, because she never wears one. “It better not be too late to start making some New Year’s resolutions, because oh my God, do I really, really need to start.”
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Black-Eyed Peas
“Happy New Year,” Viola says from the other end of the phone line. “I thought about calling you at midnight, but I figured you’d be asleep.”
“Midnight my time, or yours?” I ask. Viola is in San Francisco, on the other side of the country from me.
“Oh, mine, definitely.”
“Yeah, my ringer is definitely off at three in the morning.”
“I figured,” she says. “Thought that as long as I got you on the first day of the year, that was an acceptable alternative.”
“Well, I appreciate the call either way,” I say.
“It’s the least I could do, since I didn’t come out with the three amigos to visit in person. Have a little too much going on out here right now to break away.”
Somewhere in the depths of my house, I can hear Rivi shrieking about something, like a five year old full of too much Halloween candy. I grab my jacket by the back door, slip it on, and step out onto the side porch to escape the noise.
“Was that Rivi?” Viola asks.
“You could hear her? She’s like a force of nature. She and Boone were playing a board game, so she’s either winning or losing, I have no idea. The noise result is the same.”
“It’s my first New Year’s without her in a while. You guys missed last year, now Rivi and Boone and Tina. All my best people are out of town, Sebastian.”
“Well, you could have been part of the surprise visit here, too. What are you busy with that’s so important?”
“I’ll tell you when it’s over,” she says. “Got a lot of irons in the fire.”
“Must be important, if you’re using a cliché like that.”
“I don’t want to jinx anything. Consider me superstitious.”
“Hope you aren’t calling me from under a ladder or anything,” I say.
“Next to a broken mirror. While a black cat is lighting three cigarettes with one match.”
“You’re a mystery, Viola.”
“Wrapped in an enigma. Also bacon.”
“I do love bacon.”
“I know,” she says. “Happy New Year, Sebastian.”
“Happy New Year, Viola.”
“I’m running,” she says. “Tell Rivi to answer her phone, will you? She’s irritating.”
“I can do that,” I say. “As soon as she stops screaming so she can hear me.”
“Miss you guys. Talk later.” She disconnects the call.
From inside the house, I can hear Rivi continuing to either win or lose her game. Out here on the porch, it’s cold but peaceful, and so I choose to sit for a while and enjoy the first day of the new year. Later, we will all have some of Hunter’s special black-eyed peas and ham, and enjoy our being together.
There are worse ways than this to start a new year.
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The Donner Party
“What do you do around here for fun?” Rivi asks.
“Sitting on the porch in Adirondacks during a snowstorm isn’t your idea of fun?” I say.
“I mean, it’s nice,” she says, “but it’s not really exciting.”
“You don’t move here for excitement,” Tina says. “You move here for the quiet.”
“And the coyotes,” Hunter adds.
“And the stars,” Boone says. “I noticed that last night.”
I nod. “Yeah, you haven’t seen a night sky until you live where there are no streetlights. You should have been here during some of the auroras. That was some pretty impressive nature, I have to say.”
Rivi kicks her shoe through an inch of snow on the porch. “Sure, nature is great and all, but what do you do when you don’t want to look at it anymore?”
I take a sip from my coffee. “Well, we go to the library.”
“Boring,” she says.
“We like to go to the swap shop at the dump,” Hunter says. “Get a lot of free dishes and furniture.”
“They’re only open two days a week,” I say. “So you can’t go today.”
Rivi groans and slides lower in her chair. “Lame. So lame.”
“We can do a puzzle or something,” I say.
“Or make some bread,” Hunter offers.
“You’re killing me, Smalls,” Rivi says. “Even if we had anywhere to go, we can’t. Look at all that snow. We’d never make it.”
I set my cup on the small table between Hunter and me. “It’s two inches, Rivi. We aren’t the Donner Party up in here.”
“White death,” she says. “Winter murder.”
“I think it’s kind of nice,” Tina says. She is wearing one of Hunter’s coats and a pair of her gloves, because none of our friends brought or own any clothing that is appropriate for a winter that’s not in San Francisco.
“I could get used to this.”
“Sure, if you want to be bored.” Rivi slouches even lower, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.
“You wouldn’t be bored here,” I say. “You’d just have to figure out new ways to keep yourself occupied. Or, you know, learn to drive and get a license.”
“I would never,” Rivi says. “Cars are bad for the planet, you know.”
“Obviously,” I say. “But that never stopped you for asking for rides when you wanted to go somewhere.”
“Don’t bog me down with details, Sebastian.”
“I was going to go into town and have a look around,” Boone says. “You can come with me, Rivi.”
“I’ll come,” says Tina. “I’m not house happy like some of us, but I’d like to get the lay of the land.”
“I’m still on the clock,” Hunter says. She works remotely, which is helpful out here in the woods. “Have to sit this one out.”
“I’ll stay with you,” I say to her. “You guys go on out. Need directions?”
“Nah,” Boone says. “I’ll GPS it.”
“Well, ignore the first turn it tells you to make out of the driveway,” I say. “It says it’s a shorter trip if you go left, but the GPS lies.”
“It’ll take you twice as much time,” Hunter says, “and it’s two miles of dirt and potholes the entire way. No matter what it says, take a right out of here and you’ll be much happier.”
“That’s what the guide said to the Donner Party,” Rivi mumbles.
“We’ll bring snacks,” Tina says. “Just in case.”
“Good idea,” Rivi says. “Boone’s too stringy to provide much nutrition, and I’m not going to eat you, Tina. Girl code.”
“Girl code,” Tina says, nodding.
“Us against the patriarchy,” Hunter says.
“I’m staying out of this,” I say. “I know which side of my bread is buttered here.”
“Mmm…” Rivi hums. “Boone with butter. That might make him better to gnosh.”
“A road trip is starting to sound like a bad idea,” Boone says.
Rivi scoots up in her chair and punches him in the arm. “Too late to back out now, tasty boy. Get your keys and let’s get moving.”
“You started it,” Tina says. “No backing out now.”
“That’s what the girlfriends in the Donner Party said,” Boone points out. “And look what happened to them.”
“All I know is they didn’t get eaten first,” Rivi says. She stands up and heads down the stairs off the porch.
“I’ll meet you in the car, trail mix man.”
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” Boone asks Tina.
“Don’t you always regret car rides with Rivi?” she says.
“Good luck,” I tell them. “Don’t let Rivi start gnawing on you before you get there. Once she starts, she won’t stop until she hits bone.”
“Just like the Donner Party,” Boone says.
“Yup,” I say. “Just like the Donner Party.”
Onward ho.
-
A Feral Princess
I am supposed to not know that Rivi, Boone, and Tina are coming to pay us a visit in our house in the woods, and so when I open the front door to them after they knock and the dog barks the arrival of someone at the porch, I make sure that I am wearing my most authentic surprised face.
“That’s a bullshit look if I ever saw one,” Rivi says. “Somebody told you we were coming.”
“Shut up and hug me,” I say, wrapping her in an embrace.
“It’s still bullshit,” she says. “It was Tina, wasn’t it? Boone is too afraid of me to go behind my back.”
“I’m not copping to anything,” Tina says. She pushes Rivi out of the way and hugs me. “I’m glad to see you, Bastian. Where’s your lovely wife?”
“In a Zoom meeting in her office. She’ll pop out once that’s over.”
Boone steps into the hallway and gives me a quick man-hug. “I’m completely afraid of Rivi,” he says. “She’s gotten worse since you’ve been gone.”
Rivi elbows him in the stomach. “Shut your filthy lying mouth. I am an angel and shining beam of sunlight, so don’t make me have to cut you.”
“A delicate princess,” I say. “So say we all.”
“Damn right,” she says. “Much too much of a princess for that dirt road coming in here. What the hell is that about?”
“Don’t blame me. If I’d have officially known you were coming, I could have told you to ignore the GPS and which way to actually drive in. The GPS lies.”
Rivi throws a glare at Tina. “If you had officially known, obviously.”
“Give us a tour?” Tina says, ignoring Rivi’s look. “Or you want to wait for Hunter to get out of her meeting?”
“May as well wait. She wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to show off the stately manor. Follow me though and I’ll point out the bathroom and the living room. We don’t have to stand in the hallway like barbarians.”
“I’m a feral princess,” Rivi says, “but I wouldn’t mind sitting on something that isn’t an airline seat for a while. Or the backseat of that rental car. Your road is bumpier than the turbulence over the midwest.”
“Should have told me you were coming,” I say, leading them deeper into the house. “Could have saved you some butt bruises if I’d have known.”
Rivi growls. Feral princess, after all.
We walk through the house and settle onto the pair of sofas in the living room. Boone and Tina sit together and immediately hold hands, which is nice to see. It was a long time with them in the Before Times when they were trying so hard to just be friends, for whatever reasons people do things like that. If anything good came from the pandemic, it was that it drew them closer together instead of driving them apart.
“This is the part where I’m supposed to ask how your flight was,” I say.
“Nightmarish,” Rivi says. “Screaming babies. Filthy toilets. Monsters on the wing of the plane.”
“I didn’t see any monster,” Tina says. “No matter how many times you made me look.”
“It was a smart monster. It always waited until you went back to your book before it looked in the window at me.”
“That’s why I didn’t want to give her the window seat,” Boone says. “You know how she gets on planes.”
“I am familiar,” I say. “Last time I flew with her, I had to put three packages of Double Stuff Oreos in my carry-on so she could have something to snack on that wasn’t airplane food.”
“I didn’t want to get hungry,” Rivi says, crossing her arms.
“It was a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Rivi. It was an hour in the air.”
“We could have crashed,” she says. “You would have been glad I had cookies if it was a choice between eating them to survive or eating you.”
“We would have crashed in Fresno, not the Andes.”
“Pays to plan ahead, Sebastian.”
“Says the queen of spontaneity,” I say, poking her in the leg with my finger.
She slaps at my hand. “Feral princess of planning. Make a note of it before I put you in the dungeon. You do have a dungeon here, don’t you? I figure all old farmhouses have them. Somewhere to keep all the inbred relatives that got a little too inbred back in the olden times.”
“We have a basement, if that counts.”
“I’ll make it work,” she says. “I’m a feral princess of improvisation.”
“See what I mean?” Boone says. “This is what we have to put up with, now that you’re gone. She’s gone up to eleven.”
“I agree,” Rivi says. “Ten was never high enough to encapsulate the totality of my hotness. Eleven might not even be able to hold it, honestly. Might have to go up to fifteen, to allow for a margin of safety.” She pauses and looks at me, her head tilted at a slight angle. “Sebastian, why are you looking at me like that? Are you having a stroke?”
“I’m not having a stroke,” I say. “I’m just happy to see you. To see all of you. I’ve missed you freaks. It feels really good to have you here.”
“Same,” Boone says.
“It’s been weird without you,” Tina says. “The dynamic has been completely thrown off.”
“I’ve had to pick up your slack,” Rivi says. “It’s a lot of work. It’s very exhausting being you when you’re not actually around.”
Tina leans in toward me and stage-whispers, “We’re about to have Rivi put in a home. She’s gone full Sunset Boulevard since you’ve been gone.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Rivi says, “but I should probably be insulted, right?”
“Possibly,” Tina says. To me, she says, “We’ll talk later, when Rivi’s asleep. Figure out your share of the expenses. She doesn’t need top care. Some gruel and a hosing down every week or so should do it.”
“You’re going in the basement dungeon, too,” Rivi says. “Boone is the only one not on my feral princess list.”
“I always knew I was the favorite,” Boone says.
“Only until you do something stupid,” Rivi says. “Shouldn’t take very long, really.”
“You’re talking about the man I love,” Tina interrupts.
“Thank you,” Boone says.
“He’ll be in the dungeon in about an hour,” Tina continues.
If there are words that can convey just how pleased I am to be seeing these people in my home, I don’t know what they are. The smile on my face hasn’t gone away since they walked in.
“He’s having another stroke,” Rivi says, looking at me. “Fetch my feral doctor. He’ll have to bring the leeches. Unless you have some in the fridge, Sebastian? You do live in the woods, after all.”
“It’s good to see you guys,” I say. “Like, really good.”
“You say that now,” Rivi says. “Wait until the leeches are done sucking and see what you think.” She leans in close to my face and puckers her lips, making a wet ssssssstttthp sound.
Some things never change.