The Q

by Beth Brower

His loss had shattered the inside of Quincy, more so than she’d anticipated,

Spring was spare but not shy. It had welcomed in the sun and sent rare patches of flowers shooting up bravely in the throng of the city. Many of the trees in Rhysdon’s parks were also beginning to leaf out into a lacy cloud of green so cheery that even Quincy—who was accustomed to thinking about walking only as a means to an end or as a means to calm herself down before someone else came to an end—looked about her and came close to granting the walk some kind of virtue in itself.

“Only that I believe”—Arch lifted his shoulders, and the look on his face was so unguarded Quincy surprised herself by listening—“that each one of us has times when what we need most is someone who is willing to sit quietly by, waiting for us. Not interfering, just being.”

She kept thinking that a time like this required words—one million lines of type, laid out perfectly, with no ink stains, no backward letters—to say what should be said.

“I’ve often wondered if our greatest strengths are, in turn, our greatest weaknesses—which is what makes them so hard to temper.”

“Because the fall is when all good things are made manifest.” Arch waved his hand as if he were the beneficent spirit of the season. “The harvests are come on, rolling into the city, a message of bounty and abundance. The trees are turning, their color revealing their most beautiful intentions, kept to themselves all year long until now.” He paused, turned, and looked at Quincy with a directness she now understood to be tied to his strongest feelings. “I always feel I might be my best self in the fall; I wish to pen my best essays, listen to the purest music, taste the best fruit I can find.”

“It’s all the perfect verse turned crisp, Quincy,” Arch continued as he walked over and leaned against the rail on which Quincy sat, looking over the ocean. “It’s the press of the apple and the grape, strained through an imperfect language—albeit the poets strive for perfect expression—taken then to your presses of ink and set down for a world who will need to remember that the preamble to winter makes the cold bearable. A reminder that beauty still lingers. It’s Keats, Quincy!”

“Do not doubt we all have cracks, dear,” Lord Arch said as he stood. “Do not think that you are so shattered. You are a beautiful, capable creation, even when you sharpen the edges of the bottle yourself.”

The simplest solution, she thought as she and Arch met with endless guests, was to say little or nothing and to avoid breathing in extraordinary amounts of perfume, which Quincy was certain reduced one’s intelligence.

“I think people are the most worthwhile use of our time, which is why someone like Lady Childs will always have my admiration and encouragement. She has given her life to caring for others and, therefore, has really accomplished something.”

Two problems had arisen in her mind. First, she wanted to accuse Arch of not taking her as she was. But Quincy knew that he had taken her at her worst and still treated her decently. He had taken her as a mix of good days and difficult days and had managed to maintain his bizarre idea that she was worth having in his life. She could not accuse him of wanting perfection. He was far more accepting of her in reality than she was accepting of any imperfection or human flaw in the operations of The Q.

With terms like that, Quincy was not just frugal, she was a miser.

“I want you to tell me that, somehow, something can be unbroken.”