8. The Eighth Night Before Christmas
The Eighth Night Before Christmas
Scene III
[Sebastian’s apartment.]
Viola walks through the front door, holding a wet paper. Sebastian lounges on his couch/her bed, flicking through dating apps.
Apparently, on the eighth day before Christmas, my brother also lost his mind. Oh, how folly runs in the family.
“What is this?” I ask, holding the rain-misted paper over him.
“Her-toon,” he answers, nodding towards his phone.
“It’s a dating app that scans your face and then assigns a cartoon character based on what it sees to be your avatar.
You can then swipe yes or no based on the character, but it’s still up to the ladies to initiate conversation.
” He holds up his phone to me. “I got Prince Eric. Is that good?”
I don’t deign to answer that.
Not that it matters. Sebastian keeps talking, “I bet you my dream girl got Tinkerbell or maybe Sleeping Beauty.”
He swipes away on Belle and also Jessica Rabbit.
I blink slowly, using the precious milliseconds of darkness to try to find inner peace with the fact that my twin is a moron. “You’re trying to find your dream girl on a cartoon app? Because that’s something you feel will work?”
He holds his phone to his heart. “I’d recognize her spirit anywhere.”
I exhale slowly out my nose. “Is that why you made these?”
I hold up the wet paper that I found on the telephone pole outside our apartment. It’s a flyer that has his face on it with the words: Looking for the love of your life? Underneath is a phone number, encouraging his lost love to call.
Sebastian shrugs. “I’ll try anything to track her down. If there’s even a chance that she sees this and calls, I have to try.”
I nod slowly, pretending like I’m mulling his idea over. “And did you really feel it necessary to put my number at the bottom?”
He looks at me like I’m the unreasonable one in this conversation. “I’m not about to put my own phone number.”
“Because you don’t want everyone calling you?”
He nods. “Exactly.”
“But giving them my number is fine?”
He pauses in his swiping to give me his full attention. Very considerate of him, really. “If you answer the phone, you can pretend it’s not my number—”
“It’s not.”
“—and they’ll go away.” He gestures with a finger on his good hand. “But if I answer, they could just keep calling and calling, hoping to get a chance with me.”
“But how will I know if it’s really her?”
Sebastian’s finger folds down as he mulls over my question. “We can figure that out later.”
I shake my head. This is classic Sebastian; he gets an idea into his head and just goes for it. Sometimes it works out, more often it doesn’t.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I go to put my phone on ‘do not disturb’. With pretending to be my brother, I feel as though I’ve hit my max capacity for shenanigans for the moment.
My finger hovers over the button. Right about now is the time when Mal usually texts me. He’ll explain that he loves me but was pushed away because I was too needy, or not giving enough, or he was stressed at work, or, or, or.
There’s always some justification for his actions, but never any talk of missing me.
For some reason, the memory of Duke and I on the couch flashes into my mind. I think about the way he shielded me from the Santa chaos around us. I shiver as I remember how he told me I have beautiful eyes.
I hit ‘do not disturb’. I know I don’t need to see whatever messages come in for Seb. And I’m guessing I probably don’t need to see whatever messages Mal inevitably decides to send.
When I look up, I think I see Sebastian smiling for a moment. The next second, it’s gone. He’s back to his usual pained expression of pining for his dream girl.
“Do you think this could be her?” he asks, showing me a message from a Rapunzel avatar.
“I think that’s probably a bot that’s about to ask for your social insurance number to see if you’re compatible.”
He laughs, but also tucks the phone away. He watches me while I set up my blankets on his couch to settle in for the night. His foot lightly kicks against mine. “Hey, I know you usually hunker down in your blankets to cry yourself to sleep or whatever—”
“I do not cry myself to sleep!”
“—But maybe you want to watch a movie with me instead?” He reaches down to help me tuck my sheet in, which is really just him mashing it into the crack of the couch. “I’ll even watch the new Louis St. Clair rom-com with you.”
“Fine,” I sigh. “Set it up while I make some popcorn.”
Of course, by the time I return, the TV screen is filled with the sight of robots fighting aliens.
“This is not a rom-com,” I mutter, settling into the couch beside him.
“Shhh!” Sebastian mutters. “They’re about to kiss.”
I laugh, earning me another shush. A moment later, I’m almost as absorbed by the movie as he is. I stay up later than I should, filling my bed with popcorn kernels that will most certainly stick to me during the night, but I don’t regret it.
Sometimes it’s fun to be a little more like Sebastian, to say ‘fuck it’ to the consequences and just go for what feels right.
It’s with that spirit that we immediately start watching the sequel after the first one finishes. How could we not when it turned out that the robots were the aliens all along?
Exit Sebastian, when Viola falls asleep much later during the big spacecraft chase scene. Her phone lies on the floor under the couch, completely forgotten.