ALBERTINE & GEORGEGrew up across the street from each other. Each was the black sheep in their family; introverted, introspective, unable, somehow, to exist wholly in the world of others; comfortable only in fantastic worlds of their own making, which each was able to share with the other but with no one else. Their one successful interaction with the material world of men was, predictably, the world of manufactured fantasy: first with comic books, with which both formed a life-long relationship, and later with fiction, working from fantasy to science fiction, to the canon of literature throughout the world and the ages.
Despite their shared great interest in reading, when the pair finished high school George had no interest whatsoever in continuing on to college, and Albertine went reluctantly, only to decide after her first year that that was enough. While Albertine and George had not communicated all that much during her college foray, as soon as she returned they immediately, and seemingly automatically, fell back into their previous relationship of basically spending all their free time hanging out together, reading and talking about ideas and such.
To this day, neither has been able to break out of the world of fantasy or to see through the printed page to the reality that lies behind it. As a result neither has been able to confront, let alone come to grips with, the nature of their relationship or their feelings for each other beyond their obvious need for one another. Nor has either managed to examine their own sexuality or that of the other, preferring instead to just let it slide in an elision of self-articulation. As a result of their complete failure to penetrate reality, both are virgins (aside, of course, from extensive fantasy-inspired masturbation).
The one thing they did-- and still do-- know is that they liked being together; that that was what made them both happy. Unable to even conceive of marriage as far as they themselves were concerned, they nonetheless managed to sublimate a marriage of sorts in the form of a business partnership that centered on their shared love of fiction and fantasy. After much agitated debate, they pooled their meager resources, and with the help of their families and a modest bank loan opened a clean well lit newsstand/bookstore, “8 1/2” (putatively named after its address; yet it was the address itself that led them to choose that particular location in the first place), which, over the course of years, managed first to create and then to maintain a healthy balance between their own interests and those of the community.
In their relations with the outside world, Albertine and George are nearly alike in their behaviors: they approach their work with great effort and a sense of duty; they approach others, at least at first, with a suppressed anxiety that may easily be taken for aloofness, again, at least at first. Over the years, however, the pair have managed to become more or less comfortable with the majority of their clientele, and they with them. Despite their evolution into a Fairvale institution, there remains an invisible barrier between themselves and the community that is intellectual as well as psychological in nature.
In their relations with each other, each has managed to evolve their own distinct character, without ever yet managing to break through to its core. Albertine has developed a critical reserve, employing a keen insight in the service of an often acerbic wit; she is as observant and knowledgeable of the problems in the world around her as she is oblivious to and ignorant of those within herself. George, on the other hand, developed an effusive nature, one that tended to view all aspects of his existence-- his relations with both the outer world and his inner self, as well as their conjunction-- as together forming a great comedy of being; a perspective that often leant an irony to his observations. Needless to say each frequently got on the others nerves; yet in so developing, each simultaneously shaped their self into the form of the other's lack, and so was the divergence of their characters kept in lock step with the strengthening of the bond between them.