Astrid

Astrid loves her man, and does it as best she can. Fred, for all his absent-minded tendencies, is endlessly endearing to her. She adores him all the same. Especially when he’s clowning around—describing a passing cloud, a crooked streetlamp, or the exact way toast lands on the floor—in the most comically eloquent ways known to the known universe. Sometimes she thinks of it as Fred, Again: the same endless curiosity, the same delightful missteps, the same stubborn insistence on seeing wonder in everything. She smiles quietly at the thought; he would be the first to misinterpret the reference anyway.

He had finally found her, decades after death. She’d been patiently waiting, counting internments like sheep when trying to fall asleep. His glowing eyes met hers in the moonlight, and she smiled with a quiet creak. She knew he would eventually find her—he had died first and wandered, lost, unable to make his way back—but she trusted in their eternal love to guide him. As he entered the cemetery, he tripped over several graves, which, for a ghost, she found absurdly impressive.

Most nights, they wander aimlessly through town. They startle the living without meaning to, casting shadows through windows, making quiet houses creak in confusion. Fred flails at a garden gnome as though it owes him rent, while Astrid treads carefully behind, quietly amused. Step by step, she walks beside him. She knows the way—back to their resting place—but she lets him fumble. Her heart, long rotted though it may be, always lets Fred lead the way.

Sometimes Fred becomes fascinated by the tiniest things: a puddle that catches the moonlight becomes “a reflective existential riddle in miniature,” a lamppost transforms into a “solemn sentinel of forgotten alleyways.” Astrid listens, delighted by his endless curiosity, finding wonder in even the smallest things through him.

They pass the old cafe where, long ago, Fred insisted gravy and toast be arranged according to the Fibonacci sequence. Astrid thinks about it fondly. Now the cafe is gone, replaced by a florist. Fred kneels to inspect a bouquet as if it holds the secrets of the cosmos. Astrid can only shake her head and smile.

Fred fumbles at the sidewalk signs, misreading them every time. “Ah,” he says with perfect deadpan, “a street called Desperation. Again.” Astrid snorts silently. She smiles quietly, finding everything interesting because it comes from him.

Sometimes they pause. The living never see them, but Astrid feels their quiet company: a cat perched on a fence, a lone dog howling, a porch light flickering. Fred, oblivious, whispers theories about why the dog is “an unacknowledged philosopher of the suburbs.” Astrid humors him, because he delights in the world, and if he can find humor even here, then perhaps there is some reason to keep wandering.

And so they drift: step by step, night by night. Astrid with her rotted heart, Fred with his endless curiosity, both perfectly mismatched and yet perfectly together. Some things never change. Some things—thankfully—shouldn’t.