A Light Opera (Or Simply: Two People In Love) (Published in Concrete Magazine)
A Light Opera (Or Simply: Two People In Love) (Published in Concrete Magazine)
“Darling, I think it's time we paint that doorframe,” said Roman to his husband.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Leon murmured.
Roman, who was not really thinking about the doorframe, shifted in the bed, cozying up close to Leon’s ear and kissing the lobe, kissing his delicate pink helix.
“Should we paint it… blue,” Roman whispered, kissing the light crescent of cartilage. “Or maybe…red?”
This last word was spoken through a drawn-out, humid breath, and Roman finally moved from ear to neck, planting his lips along Leon’s nape.
“We’ll have to see,” Leon could not help but shudder, “But I think we ought to ask It first.”
A beat.
Roman sat up in their shared sheets, abandoning his fondling. He wrapped a hand around Leon’s lovely shoulders, pulling until his husband rolled over to face him. A honey-colored shaft of sunlight gently reminded Roman that he still found Leon as beautiful as the day they first met— the cliched, coffee-house collision, a mixup with cappuccinos, all years removed now. But Roman thought to himself that Leon still looked much like he had with scalding coffee staining his look of surprise.
“Oh, we don’t have to ask It for that, do we?” said Roman.
Leon, who was still sleepy, and considerably turned-on, smiled drowsily.
“It knows what would look best.”
Roman returned to kissing. These were not so heated. The kisses that Roman planted on Leon’s forehead were individually unspoken, what am I going to do with you’s.
“So you think I’ve got shit taste,” Roman joked, “You’re still upset about the bathroom?”
Roman was talking about their shared powder room which was presently painted a darling shade of lilac— very vogue in last year’s Decor. Leon had agreed on lilac at the time, on account of the fact that he was still starry-eyed, still with a full belly of honeymoon horderves.
“Of course not,” Leon whispered, kissing back, “But It really does know best.”
***
Later that morning, as Roman made two plates of breakfast, he found that he hadn’t managed to shake his feeling of unease. He knew it wasn’t good for husbands to keep secret peeves. In fact, during their vows, Roman had even promised, humorously, to always make it clear when Leon was driving him up the wall. Now, almost a year into marriage, Roman felt that this had been an easier thing to promise than to actually do. Tension was never Roman’s strong suit, and of course, Leon seemed so happy with It.
Roman still remembered the night Leon first showed him It. He'd laughed then, half at Leon’s adorable smile, half at the absurdity of talking to a cartoon. When Leon had introduced It, It was only a charming online character—a simple 2D rendering of a parakeet, flitting back and forth across the home computer, immured between pixel and glass, equipped with state of the art conversational responses. Roman hadn’t considered It worth worrying about, because Leon always had been a sucker for cute visuals. In fact, he had actually insisted on choosing the wedding photographer, and much to the photographer’s chagrin, Leon had elected for a totally different editor to color-grade.
Leon had not come to the table yet, so Roman ate alone, spearing cut fruits, and listening as his suggestion was fed to It.
“I think it should be painted charcoal gray,” Leon decided, now strolling into the kitchen.
“Oh?” said Roman, “Is that what It said this time?”
“Well yes, Sunny did suggest it, but I happen to agree as a matter of fact,” Leon was hurt.
“Sunny,” Roman chuckled, shaking his head, “If you’re absolutely sure, consider me convinced, my love. Charcoal grey will look beautiful.”
***
If Sunny hadn’t seemed so laughably innocent at the time, Roman thought he might have put a stop to it sooner. Truthfully, he knew he wouldn’t have had the heart to do it. Even if Sunny hadn’t looked just like an over-cute cartoon.
But the update of last week had given Sunny a body: The corporeal body of a live bird. Halfway between taxidermy and automation, Sunny could now fly around the room, held aloft by a barely-audible set of miniature rotors. Like its cartoon predecessor, the real-life Sunny had eyes half the size of its body, a comical toothy smile, and tie-dyed plumage that Roman suspected was in no way accurate to the way parakeets looked in the wild. It also had a perfectly ridiculous voice— sing-songy and effeminate, and if Roman was being totally honest, a little stereotypical.
To be fair, Leon’s excitement over what he called, “Our new pet” had been cute enough and Roman loved Leon. In happiness and in sorrow. With or without Sunny.
Roman had even given the thing the benefit of a doubt, occasionally attempting to ask Sunny about trivia or movie times, pretending not to mind the uncanny way the bird looked lifelessly through him. He almost grew used to the parrot’s voice too, eventually. At some point, it suddenly became not so abrasive when Leon got to chirping, and Sunny got to chirping back. Roman would listen over breakfast, as Leon explained that their car's oil needed changing, or that the best restaurant in their city was so-and-so. Sunny had said so.
It was around a week later when Roman first tried to draw some kind of line. When Leon suggested that Roman’s mother’s pie recipe was actually all wrong— that Sunny had told him that a lemon meringue only required four egg yolks and not five. Roman had tried to do it gently, like this morning. He had tried to kiss it tenderly away, explaining that his mother’s recipe had never once failed. But Leon had grown abruptly cold, insulted by the mere notion that Sunny could ever be wrong. This had been their marriage’s first real fight, and it had worried Roman. It wasn’t so much that Sunny itself was an issue. If anything, it was that lately Leon looked at Sunny the way he used to look at Roman.
These days, any and all suggestions from Sunny were better off taken. Best that the doorframe be painted charcoal gray, so long as it saved Roman from having to see that defensive scoff again— that stomach-turning eyeroll.
***
Leon had since left for work, and Roman was still thinking. He was thinking mostly about his anniversary gift— how the first anniversary gift is always the most important, or at least this was how it seemed to feel. Roman was thinking of the already reserved table at the coffeehouse where he and Leon had met. He was thinking also of the cute if hapless barista, Marie. Roman was one of her favorite regulars. She was sweet, attentive, and painfully straight, always involved with a rotating door of investment-bank finance-types. Marie had been all too happy to save the table, blissfully excited to play some small part in her first gay anniversary. Roman had specified the table next to the window, and prearranged the coinciding cappuccinos— the same cappuccinos which Roman had spilled on Leon and Leon had spilled on Roman respectively.
Roman paused now, and cast a sidelong glance at the door to Leon’s office. Somewhere in there, Sunny would be twittering and singing and coming up with all sorts of ridiculous opinions about charcoal gray doorframes. Roman could not lie to himself. Sunny was beginning to test his patience. Rather, Sunny was making him remarkably self-conscious. He had assumed that Leon would have jumped at the suggestion of a blue doorframe. Months ago, Leon had insisted that the curtains at their wedding reception be changed to blue in order to match Roman’s eyes. But this morning, charcoal gray was the only right answer. Leon said so because Sunny said so. Now, Roman wondered, after all his own agitation, whether or not he had become the inattentive one. Maybe this was the way marriages worked, always flexing and bending into new shapes— adding a child, subtracting a totaled car, accepting the original, digital, Sunny as a wedding gift from an overzealous aunt. Sunny, the program, had not even been on their registry, but you couldn’t blame Aunt Danielle because it was her first gay wedding.
Roman again looked toward the room where Sunny lived. A flash of surprise guilt rose up in him, and he felt suddenly and completely useless. Roman had once believed there was never going to be a day when he felt like this again. With Leon, life not only passed easily, but dread, like the dread Roman was feeling now, was impossible to imagine— ungraspable.
All at once, Roman got to wondering whether or not Leon talked with Sunny about him. Did they speak in private, avian therapist to working husband? Did Leon confer with Sunny, explaining how Roman had spent all day baking, and that there were still taxes to do, and that the car repairs would not be cheap. It would be impossible to know. Roman couldn’t just ask Sunny. He felt positive that by now Sunny’s allegiances were to Leon. Any attempt to pry information out of the techno-bird would just result in another fight. Roman couldn’t stand the thought of two fights in the first year of marriage.
***
It was late, and Leon had already gone to bed. Roman was standing in the lilac bathroom staring into a set of dormant, lifeless eyes. He had initially tried to tell himself it was only a matter of benign curiosity. But, if Roman was being completely honest there was also an unavoidable, ineluctably amoral impulse; a desperate need to understand what it was that Leon saw in the thing. He had inserted the proper batteries, read the instruction manual, and at the final step he had stopped. It was almost laughable, Roman shrouded in darkness, acting like he never had before, secretive, flinching at the slightest sound from the bedroom. It was definitely laughable that he was sitting on the toilet across from a powered-down, parakeet. This model was a gaudy mix of red, green, and purple feathers. It had the same cartoonish eyes.
“Hiya Roman!”
The bird perked up at the flick of a switch which was located between its scapulars. It rustled its feathers to life, jittering just like a bird would, and blinking those big plexiglass eyes. It also smiled which unsettled Roman at first.
“Shhh! Quiet down,” Roman hissed, “Leon’s sleeping in the other room.”
“Ah,” Sunny 2 whistled, quieting, “Sorryyyy.”
Sunny 2 drew out the apology into a long, musical, unnecessarily flamboyant note.
“What is this?” Roman muttered. He wondered honestly, what Leon could see in it.
“You’re worried because Leon’s been changing?” Sunny 2 offered, helpfully.
Roman took offense. Sunny 2 had no business assuming. Rather, had Sunny 2 assumed? Roman considered that perhaps each version of Sunny was actually interconnected— some complicated interlattice of synergistic synapses. Maybe this Sunny knew what Leon had been saying to the Sunny which lived in the home office.
“Why?” Roman asked, “What have you heard?”
Sunny 2 batted the big eyes coyly, and fluttered up to the bathroom mirror where it began to groom the feathers which had become unruffled in the packaging.
“Only that you didn’t get flowers the other day,” Sunny 2 replied, “For the Johnson’s baby shower.”
“That!” Roman exclaimed, quieting quickly, “But I did get flowers.”
“I believe Leon wanted white roses,” Sunny 2 offered.
“Yes, I know that’s what Leon wanted. He wanted it because you… because It… because he was told he should want white roses. They’re tacky anyway. For a baby shower?”
“They’re in season.”
Roman narrowed his eyes at Sunny 2 and thought about switching it off again. But it was true that this Sunny did know about Leon. Sunny 2 likely knew all about the snide jokes Leon had made at the baby shower, and how Roman had gotten such bad stomach cramps that they had to leave early.
“Alright so they were in season,” Roman snapped, “Will you help me. I mean to get my Leon back. I miss the old him.”
“Of course!” Sunny 2 replied cheerily, flying up and twirling in a flashing swirl of red and purple and green.
***
The next morning, Roman brought Leon breakfast in bed: an unusual break in routine. Not only this, but instead of the daily sunnyside egg and toast, Roman prepared avocado toast and sesame seeds.
Leon’s eyes gleamed.
“Oh honey! This is just what I’ve been craving!”
Though it felt wrong to do so, Roman washed the dishes feeling mightily happy with himself. Leon’s expression had melted into instant gratitude— the gratitude that Roman so desperately adored. Onto the grocery list, Roman added avocados. Then, a frisson of nerves clutched him, and quickly, making sure not to be heard, he ducked into the other room, where his Sunny sat hidden and smiling.
“Do you think he likes avocados on the harder or softer side?”
Sunny 2 thought for a moment and then said, “Softer. Yielding softer pressure, but not mushy.”
“Got it.”
For dinner, Roman served a quinoa salad, which he had never tried making before. Leon was overjoyed all over again. They drank the wine that Sunny 2 had told Roman to select— the wine that Leon had apparently been raving about. Apparently, Roman had not been listening well enough. Roman was not complaining. For the duration of the night Leon had been giving him little prurient looks from behind his stemware.
Roman later made it a point to ask Sunny 2 if Leon had any issues with this same stemware. They had picked it out in Manhattan ten to eleven months ago, but if, in the meantime, Leon had been told to dislike it, Roman felt that this was a change he could accept easily— so long as Leon kept giving him those looks.
The next day, a Saturday, Roman and Leon spent two hours painting the doorframe charcoal gray. They flicked specks of paint at one another, laughing like they had twelve to thirteen months ago. This was only ever interrupted by various interludes wherein Leon darted off to consult Sunny about a choice in brush or roller. Roman would then follow suit, ducking into the garage to ask what news Sunny 2 had to report— if he was doing anything that was even mildly irking Leon. This was the happiest day either of the two could remember sharing.
***
Two to three months passed, and Roman was in love again.
Their marriage had never been stronger, a result of conjoined counselors, each kept secret from the other— each Sunny doing the traitor’s job of betraying what the other was upset by, what one had said about the other's choice in footwear. In passing moments, Roman thought he could almost hear their old laughter echoing in the house. This left him certain that they really were quite happy. Then Sunny would chirp, and the echo would die and Roman would feel fleetingly less certain.
Soon they were more perfect for each other than ever before.
Leon had started wearing suits—charcoal grey suits which he had been told on good authority that Roman found to be very sexy. Roman, who normally hated suits, had been told that Leon was trying out a new style, and that when Roman wasn’t supportive enough Leon thought about divorcing him. So the two were happy with Leon’s suits, and his new neatly cropped haircut. Neither cared to doubt the Sunny’s, which stayed perfectly apart, and perfectly helpful.
“I love you, mon amor,” Roman would say to Leon. He had begun taking French, because Sunny 2 had said Leon was embarrassed by how unworldly they were.
Secretly, separately, the couple devised a surprise trip to France, helped along by the Sunny’s. The trip had not happened yet. It was still being hashed out between Roman’s Sunny and Leon’s. But the trip would happen because they loved each other.
Now there was new art on the walls of their house, and in two to three months, Roman and Leon would abruptly decide that their house didn’t need art at all. They donated their framed abstracts to the local thrift shop, recommended by Leon’s Sunny.
Breakfasts, and lunches, and dinners, became quiet affairs— professionally gravid. Topics of conversations waned away, neither partner wanting to upset the other. Instead, scripts were prearranged by Sunny, giving each spouse a number of acceptable topics that would not aggrieve the other. Even sex followed this trend, with planned-out choreography, planned-out moans, and nervous adherences to Sunny’s official playbook.
One morning the pair woke at the same time, opening their eyes and remembering what Sunny had suggested.
“Bonjour mon cherie,” Roman breathed in a voice that was low and unfamiliar.
“Hey hot stuff,” Leon replied, repeating a totally alien phrase.
The two sat for a moment, quietly waiting. Something had to happen. It was an agonizing silence that dragged on for what seemed like hours; a perfectly petrified state of grotesque anticipation.
Then, Roman kissed Leon’s forehead and said, “I love you.”
This had not been Sunny 2’s suggestion. It had slipped out, erroneously, wrongly. The mistake registered in Leon’s eyes, and he sat up in bed. Both men were panicked and Roman’s stomach cramps were already starting to develop again. Wordlessly the two concluded that this would be best hashed out between Sunny and Sunny 2, and retreated to the bathroom and kitchen for debrief.
At the very moment they were doing this, a table was being cleared— a reserved table in a sunny corner of a coffeehouse where two men had once met and fallen in love. Both men had long since forgotten about this important anniversary, likely because Sunny had not reminded them. Even now, it was growing harder and harder for them to remember anything about those early days. Now they only peered cautiously around the next corner, and only did so after Sunny had given an all-clear. And so, the men went on loving each other like this, not once remembering the two cappuccinos which, by now, had already grown quite cold.