Part 4

It’s easy enough to find the door to other-Nico’s reality; the more he and Nico-Nico play, the more frequently it slides down the hallway towards my door. Nico-Nico told me this. I find the fishing line and follow it, taking a left into a door-less doorway, giving the standee a once-over:

DOOR 54
THE ICE PALACE
YEAR: N/A
GRAVITY: ~0.9
IMMEDIATE DANGERS: SHARP ROCKS, PERIODIC COLD, UNINHABITED?

The instant I step through, I feel a little light and jump around a bit, quiet and happy. The world around me looks like my house, if my house was carved into the cavernous underbelly of a mountain. The third floor landing was a little outcropping walled off by limestone. There are stalactites overhead, clear and crystalline, but also glowing and splayed like chandeliers. I notice the cold next and my first instinct is to go back and grab my winter coat, but instead I follow the fishing line down the crude, cavernous doppelganger of my staircase. It winds around to what should be the first floor and that’s when I hear them, so I get quiet. There’s four of them sitting around a perfectly blue pool of water. Three are perfectly identical, on their backs with hands set lazily atop their chests. I watch the rise and fall of their breathing, the way they make a competition out of who can breathe out the darkest, thickest fog. The last one is a girl-ish Nico, dark-eyed and clip-nosed as ever, but with meager, implied breasts underneath her coat. She’s seated on one of the rocks, looking into the pool.

"You have to go back sometime," one of the Nicos says. At this point, I abandon all hope of telling the difference. All I can tell is that he’s talking to the girl-Nico. They all are.

"I can’t even find my way back anymore," she says. "Even if I wanted."

"Me either," one of the boys says, sitting up with a rakish posture. He eyes the pool and then the girl. "It’s not such a bad life now, thanks to kiddo here," the rake says and claps his hand down on another boy-Nico’s shoulder. My Nico.

My Nico and girl-Nico share a quick glance, wavering and hard to read, and I crawl into the corner for a better look, hiding myself behind a thick stalagmite—which, strangely enough, don’t glow.

"Whatever; I go where I want and right now I want to be away from you dorks," rake-Nico says, lighting a cigarette with a quick match strike. I didn’t even see him get the cigarette, but he moves pretty quick despite the gravity. He shuffles towards the stairs and I know that that’s harder with the gravity like it is, so he’s just doing that to look more nonchalant because, really, you can’t be a badass if you’re hopping around like it’s the moon. The difference in weight here isn’t quite that big, but it is noticeable. I chalk rake-Nico up to being a douchebag and a runaway.

The other not-my-Nico winks and follows the rake up the stairs, and as he passes I notice the spool of fishing line clipped to his belt.

And slowly, very slowly, I realize what’s going on.

My Nico stands up and walks over to the girl, slides a hand under her shirt and keeps it on her waist, then moves it up slowly until he’s cupping one of her tiny breasts. She breathes in little, laughing breaths that send frost puffs into the air. I sit, soundless and hidden, as she undoes his belt.

If I was Espie, I might scream out and stop this and cause an embarrassing scene, but I feel too guilty here, too much like a voyeur. This is how cameramen must feel when they shoot reality shows. I close my eyes and turn my back, try not to hear the sounds or think the thoughts that the sounds prompt. In my head, I almost want to coach him. That means go. That means stop. This one means that you can go a little further, but you always have to listen; it’s like an engine, champ.