Power Trio

Thekla flips the lights on. “Welcome to the casa del goblina.”

She leads Evan into her cozy two-bedroom and underhand tosses her keys into the frog-shaped clay bowl on the coffee table. It’s one of about a dozen of Dalma’s pieces allowed in the living room. Thekla hangs her guitar, still in the bag, on its appointed gargoyle-head hook. Her jacket she deposits into the life-sized upturned hands of Uva Nayar, goblin goddess of the dead, whose PVC statue sits serenely by the front door.

“I love the decor. Who made all these wind chime things?” Evan explores the living room appreciatively, his gaze freezing on the huge flatscreen taking up the near wall. “Jeez, Thekla. I didn’t know they made TVs that big.”

“Oh. Yeah. My little birthday present from Sion.” Thekla’s nose wrinkles. “Back when he was trying to be our friend but wasn’t sure how, he used to drop this sort of stuff on us. Kinda the rich kid version of a cat bringing you a dead bird. We domesticated him eventually.”

“It must have been hell to fit it through the door.”

“It sure as shit was. But now Dalma and I get to see every pore on Columbo’s nose. Dalma being my beloved creepy roommate and the one who made the wind chime things. Though I’d suggest not calling them that if you want to get along.”

“What should I call them?”

“Evocations.” Thekla mimics a pair of scare quotes.

The elevated subway rattles past like soft thunder, chiming the ceramic Evocations.

“Bathroom’s at the end of that little hall to the left, right is the coat closet where we’ll stick your belongings for now.” Thekla points. “Here, let me take your ohhhh this is heavier than it looks.” She teeters a bit with Evan’s massive bag.

“Let me.” Evan apologetically takes it back off her and bustles it over to the closet. He was hauling that around the city, huh? Skinny Evan’s stronger than he looks.

“I let Dalma know you were coming through. I think she’s home.” Thekla knocks on Dalma’s door, rapping her knuckles on the posterized sac of Drusko’s MoFA installation, Coqs. “Dalma! Yo! The round-ear’s here.”

The door cracks and the living room’s light floods the interior gloom. Dalma’s windows are all papered over with collage and crowded with hanging charms. Her roommate’s amber eyes gaze from the dark, lidded by severe, silky-black bangs.

“Beloved confederate,” Dalma says, in sibilant Goblin. “Do you not fear that this pink worm wriggling so into our cave/home harbors the insidious ignorance of his callous kin?”

“Such unease dwells/tunnels within me, beloved confederate,” Thekla says. “Yet must charity prevail, entrapping as it may our prudence as the cray wanders into the Implement for the Catching of Bottom-Dwelling Fish. Confederate Kell insists.”

“My distemper abates. And yet, confederate: look to his feet/dewclaws.”

“Alack! I did forget.”

“‘Sup,” Dalma says to Evan, in English. “Shoes on the rack, please.”

“Of course. My bad.” Evan pulls his sneakers off, and somehow they don’t disintegrate the rest of the way in his hands. At least his socks are clean enough, despite the holes in both heels.

Goblins are nearsighted, but their noses are powerful. Thekla’s in favor of the trade-off—they don’t make glasses for your nostrils—but the olfactory tapestry of the city can present a challenge. Thekla has a few masks in her tote, with sweet hibiscus scent packs in them, but unless she runs into something REALLY foul, she pushes through without them.

She had been half-convinced that, removed from the enveloping scents of the city and the restaurant, Evan would stink, especially once his shoes were off. But he doesn’t. Whatever product he showered with this morning has a cheap chemical whiff about it, and the smells of perspiration and the stuffy studio still cling to him from their audition earlier in the day. But for someone who’s been literally carrying his clothes on his back, he’s taken pains to stay clean. She even catches a bit of lemon oil. For his bass, maybe?

Mostly he just smells male. Which isn’t so bad.

“Does the human begrudge an early wake-up?” Dalma says. “I’m not quiet in the mornings.”

“I am a-OK with anything,” Evan says. “You guys are already being so generous. Just pretend I’m not here.”

“Understood,” Dalma says. “Thekla, please inform your imaginary friend he is welcome to eat one piece of fruit from the kitchen during his stay on our couch today, except for the pears, which were a gift on the occasion of a gallery opening, and that when he pees in our bathroom, he has to sit down.”

“Will do, Dalma,” Thekla says.

“His pelvis is so high up. I don’t want backsplash.”

“Thank you, Dalma,” Thekla says. Dalma gives her a nod and closes her door again. The lock engages with a click.

“She seems…” Evan hunts for a word. “Cool.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about Dalma,” Thekla says. “She’s harmless, honestly. She does art installations.”

“That explains the penis poster on the door.”

“When it’s an artistic penis, it’s called a phallus poster.”

Evan chuckles, puts his hands in his pockets. A silence lays across the living room.

“Right.” Thekla snaps her fingers. “Let’s get you that phone, and then I gotta go to work. I’ll be out until around 7 or 8, so if you head out into the city and need to get back in, you can meet me at the shop.”

“I’ll stay out of your hair,” Evan says. “Finding ways to pass unsupervised time in New Laytham is a bit of a specialty.”

Thekla tries to remember where she put that old phone. She keeps a couple shamefully unsorted containers of electronic bullshit and orphaned cords in her closet. It might be knocking around in there.

“Hey, by the way, Thekla,” Evan says.

“I know that I’m not exactly…” Evan takes a deep breath, runs a hand through his messy chestnut hair. “You had a different idea, and I wasn’t supposed to be part of it. And you seem like the kind of person who trusts their ideas. If that song you taught me today was any indication, you have every reason to. But I want you to know that whatever it takes to get you to trust me, I will do it.” He’s found anything to look at but her face all day, but now that she’s holding his gaze, it cuts right into her. He has hunter’s eyes, pale and seeking, set in high cheekbones, so incongruous with the quiet, meek human she’s been dealing with. “You’re taking a chance on me, and you’re letting me into something really, really important to you. I don’t…” His babble of words hitches, and his boreal blues drop back to the floor. The spell breaks. “This is why I’m a support player,” he smiles sheepishly. Those dimples again. “I can’t come up with words for shit.”

“That’s okay,” Thekla murmurs, unsure of what else to say.

“I can’t come up with any way to tell you what this means to me. But I’ll show it. I’ll put in the work. And if there’s anything I can do—”

“That’s okay,” Thekla repeats. “Honest, it is. I just need… time, I guess. To get with the program.”

He nods, a resolute set returning to his jaw.

When his shoulders aren’t slouched, he reminds her absurdly of one of those sled dogs that used to deliver medicine to sick kids. Thekla throws him a bone. “You brought something real to the band today, Evan. And maybe you weren’t my idea, but you’re part of the plan now. So keep bringing it, and we’re square.”

She excuses herself to find her old phone, and to get some space from those eyes.