Marlena watched Frederick cut a syrup-sopped corner of his waffle with the side of a plastic fork, ineffective even after perforating it with the tines twice.
She forced a plastic knife into his hand, which helped so fractionally over his fork method that she was embarrassed for them both.
He resorted to tearing the corner off with his fingers, then sucking them clean of the lightly maple-flavored high fructose corn syrup. Was he an animal? Had he never learned a single manner?
He hadn't bothered asking her what fare she wanted, trying to order two of an overgenerous combination plate. She corrected that she would prefer pancakes, which made for more sanitary eating. She was nearly done when he had barely begun to dig in.
Ordinarily, she would have put on the pretense of daintiness but did not have the patience or need with him. She was not interested in wooing or impressing him.
"I don't see how you can be so calm," she said, prodding her fork at a congealing sausage.
"Is there a reason to be other than calm?"
"Someone trashed your room!"
He pointed the fork her way. Yes, she had turned it over, but she had broken nothing. A stranger causing him financial damage should override what she had done in a frenzy. Or, if not override, at least minimize.
"Fine. Someone left a threatening note on the trash pile in the few minutes I was berating you." She reconsidered her word choice after it escaped her mouth. Berating did make her seem irrational. She clung to the notion that she was reasonable enough in an unreasonable situation.
"You didn't, right?" he asked, waffle half-masticated in his mouth.
"Didn't what?"
"Leave that note."
She sputtered in confusion. "Why would I steal my book and leave a ransom note?"
"Two things. One, it is only a ransom note once someone asks for ransom. It is just a weirdly aggressive piece of laminated paper. All they've asked is to meet you tonight sans the cops. I cannot blame them for the desire, having spent a night with you, though significant points are deducted in the execution. To the second point, I don't know why you would do it. That's why I asked."
"Speculate."
"Pardon?"
"Speculate why I would have done something like this."
He sat rigidly, knowing a trap when he heard one. "I would rather not."
"I'm asking."
"I would also rather you didn't ask."
"That does not mean I am not."
He clenched his teeth as though his turn in the conversation pained him -- and it may have. "Pure speculation and in no way a reflection on you, correct?"
"You are telling a hypothetical story using the facts before you, including a protagonist who bears details that are reminiscent of me but are not wholly accurate as you have a needle prick of actual information about me."
"Okay then," he said, though with visible reservations, unable to meet her eyes any longer. "You enjoyed last night. I don't think that is idle speculation, so there is no need to correct it yet. This is the cornerstone of my case, and my ego cannot take the splash damage. You enjoyed last night and wanted more interactions between us, not just the traditional one-night stand followed by a walk of shame. Instead of coming down to the quad and finding me -- maybe giving me a kiss just so on the brow while you are at it -- you opted to destroy my room so we would have something to do together so we could bond. Histrionic, but there is a warped throughline between orgasm and disorganizing. Quite the story to tell to our grandkids. After you had done this, you felt it wasn't a sufficient activity and created that note so we would have to spend the rest of the day together playing Nancy Drew." He tried to look at her, but the incredulity knitting her brow dissuaded him. "Before you reply, remember we agreed this is a hypothetical. I am in no way saying you did any of that. Because you didn't, right?"
"I did not," said Marlena, but she was not offended by this. It wasn't the worst story she had heard and cast her in a cunning, if unhinged, light.
"The brow kiss?"
"I gave you a blowjob," she said.
"Public brow kiss is more intimate than oral sex. Everyone knows that."
She crawled around the pile and kissed him on the brow, intending it to be Why are you being such an absolute infant about a kiss I would give to my grandmother? She did consider oral more intimate than a few minutes of missionary. With her mouth, she told labyrinthine stories and confessed love. She urinated from her genitals, which cramped monthly to expel uterine lining; it was hardly worth putting on a pedestal, even if it could get her off.
After she had bestowed the kiss, she pushed herself back. Their eyes met. She burned, cheeks flushed until she wrinkled her nose as if about to sneeze. Frederick might have had a point vis-a-vis the intimacy of forehead kisses. She still imagined he would pick a blowjob if she offered him one of those instead.
"It has to be public," he said, smirking. Was this smile from what Marlena had intended or what she had done? "Otherwise, it doesn't count. You need to make it an announcement of fondness."
"We kissed at the bar! And that kiss I just gave you counted for something."
"It did," he said, leaning forward to kiss her.
She scooted to her styrofoam clamshell of food, though she had eaten as much as she ever would.
Minutes later, no further kisses, and his edge of the pile only lightly sorted, he excused himself. Frederick did not give an excuse but told Marlena that he was excusing himself.
She waited a few minutes in case this was a tactful visit to one of the bathrooms on the floor, but he did not return.
Fortified by fats and carbs, she set to get his room back into shape. Having created the chaos, she remembered enough about what went where.
What was intimacy? How could it feel kissing his brow might be -- even if he partially disqualified it for its privacy -- but she could not ascribe that to the night prior? She consulted the equation she had developed many affairs ago: her orgasms over his. It was not always the metric that overwhelmed her decision to remain in a relationship (No, she reminded herself, affair. Flighty college girls had relationships, boyfriends, dates. Authors had affairs). No one had gotten a solid one, let alone overwhelmed her with an improper fraction. Some could not be calculated since you couldn't divide by zero. She could not justify mathematical impossibility in her bed (or theirs) and did not continue those another night. Most were around one over five. Frederick had been one-half -- or, without reducing, almost three over almost six. They had not slept enough, but she did not regret it.
She appointed to dislodge his clothes from the pile. They served as the bedrock and made the mountain collapse into molehills when extracted.
She folded his shirt and pants so he could see by opening the drawer which he had, a vast improvement over his former method of random strata. She grouped them by color, black on the left through the gradations of ROYGBIV until ending at white. She knew most of the bands on them and found none of the slogans or art on the others too disreputable.
She likewise folded his briefs, at first as mechanically as she had the rest of his clothing, then with an awareness of the domestic familiarity. Holding his underwear in her hands, bending them into thirds and then halves, was intimate. It was clothing, but it was not clothing only. She felt she had no right to do this, though she retained the obligation. Folding a man's underwear was work for someone who loved him one way or another or was being paid to maintain that distance.
His underwear smelled like detergent and trees -- he had cedar spheres the size of quarters in the bottoms of his drawers -- but there was an association that made her queasy. The whole room smelled of him, but these smelled like him.
He returned after an hour, all smiles and apologies for staying out so long. He was startled the second he looked at Marlena employing the vacuum to remove the last cornflakes from the carpet.
"Wow, you can really clean."
She turned off the vacuum with a withering look. "Not 'Wow, Marlena, thank you for cleaning and organizing my room while I was gadding about somewhere. It looks better than it did before. You are sure a peach'?"
He put something on his dresser. "Wow, Marlena, thank you for cleaning and organizing the disaster you made of my room because you are a crazy person with super-lovely eyes. It does look better than it did before, and you are a peach who also has a sexy AF butt. I was not gadding about."
"No?"
"No. I took the note to the print shop and computer labs. This wasn't done there."
She looked through the air at the significance of this. Why would that matter? She decided it was better to ask than seem imperious by waiting for him to explain.
"Someone has their own printer and, apparently, laminator and did this with the quickness. There were, what, maybe six or seven minutes between you leaving my room and us returning? Plus, they had to pick the lock--"
"I may have left the door unlocked," she said. "I cannot swear I didn't."
He unlocked the door from the inside, stepped outside, and tried the knob without success.
Keys rattled, and he entered again. "So, they picked the lock."
"Maybe something was stuck in the door?"
He laughed. "I don't think you need to make excuses for the kidnapper. This is a caper. They picked the lock."
"Kidnap?"
He tried for a forehead kiss, but she was now wise to their power and stepped away.
"That novel is your baby, isn't it?" Frederick asked, recovering.
"Kidnapping, but not ransom?"
"And breaking and entering. We cannot forget that," Frederick said, vibrating with excitement. "The game is afoot!"
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.