City of Fools

I woke up in Alex’s bed, a familiar feeling, though with an unfamiliar empty space beside me. I squinted until my eyes adjusted and located the only source of light in the dark room; a digital clock informing me that I had awoken at the ridiculous time of 5:52am.
I heard movement in the next room and dragged myself out of bed, expecting to find Alex having one of his moments. Instead I found an unfamiliar face; a lanky, awkward guy with ridiculous gravity-defying hair skulking around.
“Hey?” I croaked, sceptical.
He turned around, giving me a once-over before prancing toward me, offering a hand and a goofy, half-asleep smile.
“You’re Tay?”
I relaxed slightly, shaking his hand. “Yeah,” I cleared my throat awkwardly. “And you’re..?”
“Jack.”
“Oh! Right.”
My mind reversed to the first time I’d been in Alex’s apartment, the pictures on the walls. The same face, though older, slightly stubbled and with bigger, unevenly highlighted hair.
“Alex told me about you. Room-mate, best friend, so on…”
The goofy smile returned.
“Yeah, I've been staying with family across town for a while. I wasn’t due back for a few more days but I got one of Alex’s weird phone calls, so I caught the next train.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up enough to actually take in what he was saying.
“… Weird phone calls?”
He messed with his hair with one hand as he leaned against the kitchen counter. “Yeah, uh, I think he’s been drinking.”
I frowned, thinking back to last night. We had watched Disney movies all night then retired to bed at eleven.
“But we went to bed, like, seven hours ago. He was asleep before I was.”
“Alex drinks in the morning.”
I raised an eyebrow at him, crossing my arms as I leaned against the wall; an indication for him to continue.
“He doesn’t appreciate hangovers so he drinks in the morning, so whatever he’s doing or going through is gone pretty early on in the day and he can, ahem, get on with his life. He thinks practically towards the very impractical situations he creates for himself.”
My expression remained blank. Jack shrugged and started moving around the kitchen again. “Surely this is not the weirdest of Alex’s traits you have come across.” He mumbled, his head inside a cupboard. It was at this moment that I noticed the kitchen was a complete bomb site, bottles- mostly full, sealed ones, in all fairness- everywhere, the cupboards flung wide open, their contents spewed across the marble counters and wooden floors.
“Shouldn't we go find him?” I questioned.
“Exactly what I’m doing,” He sighed, throwing a tequila bottle behind him, seemingly unfazed as it smashed into hundreds of pieces, its contents dripping down the wall.
“He leaves clues. Stupid little puzzles. Stupid, stupid little puzzles. He’s like, find whatever fits. What does that even mean?”

“Yeah, well,” He messed with his hair nervously, shifting in his seat. “I don’t usually get like this. I don’t usually meet people that fit.”
My mask cracked as I broke out into a smile. “People that fit?”
Alex noted my expression and visibly relaxed, scooting closer to me.
“It’s a puzzle,” His eyes shone with excitement. “This whole thing. Life. It’s just a puzzle. You gotta find the right pieces.”

He took my hand and intertwined our fingers.
“You see? There’s the puzzle. Perfect fit.”
“That’s a pretty easy puzzle.”
“Yeah… For now.”

“Um, excuse me for a sec,”
I spun on my heel back into the bedroom, rummaging beneath the bedclothes until I found a piece of paper under the sheets.
Find me.
Find me? Really? What did you think I was trying to do, Alex? Did you…
An idea struck through my mind the way it might in a cartoon; a giant metaphorical light bulb looming over my head as I strode back through the kitchen and into the living room, tearing through the pile of DVDs from the night before until I found the one I wanted. And, as I’d hoped, in my attempt to get inside Alex’s strange, marvellous little head, a note tumbled out of the Finding Nemo box.
Knew you’d find me.
Sunflower Lounge.
I ran back through the apartment, disregarding my bedraggled state as I threw on one of Alex’s coats and a pair of boots.
“Hey, Tay? I just found a note at the back of the wine rack that says ‘stop looking’. I think-”
“Got it!” I waved the note at him as I ran past, headed straight for the door.

The Sunflower Lounge was a bar on a street corner in the centre of the city, the kind that was new enough to be a popular hang-out but old enough to be deserted at night... or morning, I guess.
I walked in, suddenly aware of how much of a mess I looked as the bartender nodded at me. I reciprocated before scanning the room; finding the face I was looking for. He was seated in a booth near the back of the bar, head down, sliding a half-empty glass of beer back and forth between his hands.
“Alright stranger,” I slipped into the opposite side of the booth, leaning across to catch his attention. He barely acknowledged I was there.
“What are you doing here?” I questioned him warily.
“I am self-medicating.” He replied confidently, without wavering or even looking up.
“Hey,” I kept my voice low; unaware of what state he may be in. I’d never seen him drunk before, after all.
I lifted his chin with my index finger, his eyes finding mine. He smiled slightly, shaking his head.
“You know,” He began, tracing the rim of the glass with his finger. “Nemo is Latin for ‘nobody’. Finding nobody. You know what that means? When Marlin’s wife and kids died, they all died. He was all alone. All alone.” He paused, looking back up at me with wide eyes. “Nemo wasn’t real. He was nobody. His dad made him up to cope. He was all alone.”
It amazed me that despite his intoxicated state, disregarding the slur in his voice, he spoke with such clarity and intent.
“Does it remind you of anything?” He blinked at me, his brown eyes less welcoming then usual. He was distant.
“Alex,” I whispered. “I think we should go home.”
He shook his head in quick, sharp movements, similar to how a toddler mid-tantrum might do. It was almost disturbing; the realisation that he really was just a little boy that got lost along the road to growing up.
“Your mother was your Nemo,” He continued, ignoring my words, if he’d even heard them at all.
“You got a way to cope. You got a way out. Temporary, but you got one. You got a Nemo, Tay.”
His eyes met mine, watery, unsure.
“Why didn’t I get one?”
His hands started to shake, and I could barely process what was happening before he had climbed up to stand on his seat, throwing his beer glass across the room. The smash was inaudible beneath the earth-shattering, piercing scream that followed.
“Why didn’t I get one? Why didn’t I get a Nemo?!” He screamed, gripping his hair and pulling. It was as though all the strings holding him together had snapped, leaving him broken and out of control, without a lifeboat to hold on to.
“Alex,” I tried my best to keep my voice calm as I stepped up onto the table to be above him. His eyes were now squeezed closed, as though he was trying to eject from his own body. I disentangled his hands from his angry grip and pulled them into my own. “We’re gonna go home.”
He nodded slowly, his face scrunched up, and allowed me to lead him down from the booth and out toward the door.
The bartender stood back, stunned. I glanced at him before leading a hysterical Alex out of the room, offering an apologetic look and receiving a nod in return. This man had just wreaked havoc in his bar and he had understood- there needed to be more people like him in the world. I did my best to keep it together as I took Alex home, painfully aware of the fact that my heart was held in the unstable, shaking hands of this undeniably broken man.

Not without struggle, I eventually got Alex home. He was now much less hysterical, but still angry. The apartment had been cleaned and reconstructed, and Jack had left without a trace- or so I’d thought, until I found a note under my pillow: You got this.
After over an hour of trying, it seemed nothing I could do or say would calm him down. He’d thrown the sofa cushions across the room, emptied out the TV cabinet and generally caused mayhem. He was shouting, his words slurred together, a combination I couldn’t decode.
Finally, I gave up, cutting through his continuous babble of rage.
“Why did you ask me to find you? So you could scream, and shout, and drag out your unhappiness until we were both suspended over a pit of your impending misery? Is that it?”
For a few seemingly infinite seconds, he was struck back, staring at me wide-eyed. Unfortunately, he was not fazed.
“I thought you could fix it,” He retaliated. “I need you to fix it!”
I shook my head, sighing, now worked up, tired of not being told straight what he wanted from me.
“I don’t know how to fix it. I can’t lend you my mind. If I could, if that would make you happy, though I cant at all imagine why it would, I’d do it. But I can’t.”
“That’s not it any more!” His voice grew louder as he paced the room, tears of frustration gathering in his eyes. “I just don’t know how to do this. I’m going to do it wrong like I do with everything else and you’re going to leave just like everyone else and I just don’t, I just don’t want you to leave.”
I paused; what was he talking about?
“You don’t know how to do what?”
The air felt heavy as I watched him rack his brain for words and exhale deeply before he shouted again.
“This. I don’t know how to do this right, Tay. I don’t know how to not let you down, because I’ve never done this before. I’ve never felt like this before, and I don’t know how to love you right. I’m in love with you, Tay. I’m so fucking in love with you, sometimes it hurts. And I don’t know how to do it, and I want to fix you but I’m so fucked up myself, and I just know I’m going to ruin it. I love you, Tay. I really fucking do.”
No words could possibly have described how I felt at that moment. The butterflies in my stomach all instantly took flight, lifted in this sudden glorious state of euphoria.
“I… You… You’ve never said that before.” My voice was barely a whisper, a mask to the somewhat irrational parade of joy occurring inside me.
“…Yeah,” He smiled slowly, calm now. He approached me and placed his hands on my waist. “And I meant it,” He breathed.

When there was nothing left to do but to fall into him and return those pretty little words, it hit me that despite the absurdity of our situation, the young and irreparably broken are still entitled to these significant little moments of beauty.