5. Make It the Same

John Sid knows too well the thoughts that come at two in the morning.

The shadows of drunken pedestrians strode across his ceiling. Their banter was graciously muffled, yet distracting all the same. He wrestled with his pillow trying to drown out their thrumming voices, but nothing yielded.

            However, there was no doubt in John Linnell’s mind that Flansburgh slept dreamlessly in the next room.

            (well make it the same)

            A car horn began to whoop outside and the caws of laughter began to die away quick and recklessly.

He watched his fingernails scritch at the surface of the cast on his wrist. John Sid shifted so that his afflicted arm was flooded in the streetlamp light. He eyed it curiously. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever broken a bone in his body before, but somehow he was surprised that he had yet to participate in its lore of autographs. His cast was inkless; free from even John Flansburgh’s elaborate flow of aesthetics.

            John Sid threw back the blanket, hung down the legs, and shied away from the cold air. Stepping tenderly over the wood floor, he made his way to the dresser, listening guiltily for any shifts of snoring in the next room. John gently pushed a dismantled swivel chair out of the way and pulled the drawer from its sheath smoothly. He sifted through its scatter-brained contents as noiselessly as he could. Finding it, he uncapped the pen and daringly licked the felt tip. It tasted bland and a bit like cider. He shook his head.

            Thinking while darting over the invitingly possible estates, he at last chose the palest place on the inside of his wrist, and scrawled sentimentally, almost cryptically—

 

“Could you spare me a Monday?”

 

John held it out in front of him, debating whether or not he should wake Flansburgh up to show him. Was he still asleep with that damn car alarm still going off outside? It had just changed its tempo from a blaring oom-pah to a crazy bleetbleetbleet.

His ears ringing, John Sid crept into his bed, sprawling out over the jagging springs again. He sighed a few times, closed his eyes, opened them, closed them again. He couldn’t stop thinking about sleep and how far it was being scooted away. His room staged the only true window in the entire apartment; no wonder Flansy could snore so undisturbed in the next room. John Sid ran a trembling hand of restlessness over his face and coiled a wisp of hair through his short, usually nimble fingers.

The car horn boomed on, every once in a while mingling with the tastes of a vibrating bass from a passing hot rod.

It wasn’t often that Linnell couldn’t sleep, but he was starting to feel the pangs of desperation. He had to go job searching tomorrow. He had to help Flansburgh move s**t tomorrow. He had to wake up—period—tomorrow, so he could go throughout the day and sleep it off again. It was a meticulous cycle and John Linnell didn’t trust his own mind enough to think that he could deal with it.

Not pausing to think, John Sid Linnell grabbed his pillow and thinning blanket, and quietly moved out of the room. The door creaked with his otherwise stealthy entrance and he winced. But Flansburgh did not stir.

John Linnell stared subconsciously at the one empty spot on the floor.

No. No, it was much too close…

With a snorting cough, Flansburgh rolled over onto his stomach, his arm now dangling off the couch and over that one empty spot.

John Sid miserably looked around. The alarm was considerably deafened in here, but it only made him feel worse. It would’ve been perfect if only he had a place to sleep.

(make it the same)

Make it the same?

(like it was the first night)

The “aha” flood of the familiar melody came back to him and made his fingers arch with the memory of their dance. How had he distanced himself from that old mundane fame and suddenly arrived to this? An ex-messenger boy who finds himself afraid to room with a guitarless guitar player that he met in junior high. Perilously indifferent now, John Sid laid out his blanket and pillow onto floor underneath the couch. He slipped below the covers, his face accidentally brushing Flansburgh’s hand. He froze, the skin of his cheek prickling at the unfamiliar texture of someone else.

John Linnell pulled his blanket over his head and exhaled. Was that the feeling of exhilaration or exhaustion, he wasn’t sure. He closed his eyes, reeling in the peace; only distantly hearing the now furious honking coming from some unlucky individual’s disturbed car, when the hand nudged his face again. Did Flansburgh know he was there? Was he messing with him?

John uncovered the blanket from his eyes, as if playing peek-a-boo with Flansy’s hand, but it hung there limp, lifeless, an apathetic vehicle for the music its owner made.

John stared at his own hand. Did it know what it could do? What could be created or shattered? He flexed his hand, making the doubled-joints creak. Without caring much about consequence, he reached out his hand to touch the other John’s. There was a crack of electricity and John Sid quickly pulled away.

Had he ever touched another man’s hand before?

John Linnell tilted his head to check the novelty clock on the wall, a slant of light illuminating the hour hand, but hiding the minutes. It read “2ish.” And God did he know what thoughts found themselves at two in the morning. That had to be the explanation.

            John flung back the covers once again and stood up with the pillow in the crook of his arm. He didn’t want to wake up feeling the consequences of sleeping below a newly awoken Flansburgh. The accidental foot in the face and the emotional ridicule were not worth the five possible hours of sleep he would receive while warping his back on a solid wood floor.

            He drifted back to his room, stepping over stacks of notebooks and prodigal half-emptied, half-forgotten cans of Coca-Cola. Dimly concentrating on the stale taste of the marker stilling lingering in his mouth, John closed the bedroom door behind him and slipped beneath the sheet, finally feeling comfortable in his bed. At the same time as he pulled the comforter to his chin, the car alarm stopped its cooing and reset itself with a last, solitary ping.

            A resonating silence.

            (paranoia is just astute awarenesssss)

Linnell itched to write that down, but he knew if he got up that he’d never be able to lie back down again.