Monday, November 18 1963, 12:48 pm
I decided that today I wouldn't stress like I did yesterday. That I wouldn't spend my morning with the knot in my stomach I kept all afternoon yesterday, waiting for Klaus to finally go on a fruitless tour of the Katz hardware store. I've also decided to relax about the fact that my work is doomed to failure. No one is bound to do the impossible: so there's no reason for me to get ulcerated about it.
I allowed myself a break. I took my huge mug of coffee out onto the store's stoop, on the only step of which I'm currently sitting in the sun. The florist across the street still doesn't greet me, but I don't care. Mr Davies, an Englishman who lives around the corner, passes by with his dog and waves to me. I literally saved his calculating machine ten days ago. A rather complex German Brunsviga type. And what I didn't tell him was that - by connecting it by energy to all the repaired TV sets - I managed to reprogram the jammed channels in one go.
For a moment, I turn my eyes to the window of the Katzes' shop, where the small sign currently indicates the lunchtime closure. They take a lot of time for a brunch they started at 11 am. Am I - without admitting it - waiting for them to come back? I dismiss the idea and look up at the Dallas autumn sky, clear of any clouds. And just then, I see Brian and David coming around the corner, as if my fleeting thought had conjured them up.
Brian walks ahead, his hands in his pockets and his cigarette to his lips. He's got a closed expression, as usual, but also paradoxically satisfied. David walks behind him, a Coke in his hand, with an indescribable look that I can only qualify as stunned, or dazed. Like some kind of discreet state of shock, which one could easily overlook. Mr Davies doesn't notice, as he wishes them a good day before crossing the street. Brian takes out his bunch of keys and reopens the door of his store, turning the sign back to 'open'.
"I'm staying outside to finish my Coke," David tells him, and I know it's because he's seen me. I take a large swig of coffee. Brian shrugs silently, pulls the outside displays out of the store - including the broom rack - then disappears inside as the glass door closes.
"Hey," I say to David. "It's been a few days."
His eyes are a little unfocused, and he suddenly seems to snap out, and come and sit next to me on the narrow step. I shift, making room for him. Even at seventeen, he's already wider than Klaus, which I find both amusing and sad, today. And he twirls his Coke between his young fingers.
"I thought you'd stopped coming out on the balcony at lunchtime."
I let my eyes wander to the sidewalk.
"A friend of mine is back in town."
He nods as if he understands perfectly, and I ask him, with a frown that I hope he won't notice:
"How did it go at Stadler's? I heard there was trouble."
I'm talking about last night's riot, of course, but it's not the association of ideas that seems to come to him first, because he lets out a deep sigh.
"I didn't want to do that. Brian's the one who told me to punch that queer."
I wasn't expecting that. I really wasn't. For a moment, my stomach feels like it's filling up with ice water, even though I'm drinking hot coffee. Almost startled, I turn my head towards him, even though he's far too close for me to see his whole face.
"What?"
I don't even pretend not to understand. The question passed my lips on its own, like I couldn't hold it back. And David closes his eyes for a moment, his lids tight as if trying to find out if what had just happened was real.
"Some weird guy took Brian's seat when he went to take a leak. He'd already come to the store yesterday."
David is always speaking to me with complete honesty. About his feelings, about Brian, about his vision of the world. What he admits to himself, anyway. I know he stayed outside precisely to talk to me about this. But this time I'm certainly shaking more than I should.
"It wasn't very smart to take Brian's seat," I whisper almost to myself, and to be honest, David isn't really listening to me.
"He told me all sorts of things about the army, about the possibility of me enlisting, about what... might be happening in Southeast Asia in the next few years..."
He stretches out his oversized legs on the sidewalk.
"Probably an anti-militarist who preached against the war. The enlistment office is three doors down from Stadler's."
My eyes squint a little painfully.
"Is that your saying, or is it Brian's?"
He holds his breath for a moment, then lets it go. He'ss aware I know him well, by now.
"It's Brian's."
And before I'm tempted to hold back, I ask him:
"And what do ~you~ think?"
As a customer enters the hardware store and Brian's voice of greeting is heard in the background, he looks up at the sky in his turn - for quite a while - but I give him all the time he needs to talk.
"That my enlistment is not a question that can still be doubted".
"I was talking about the guy".
At my words, I see David's fingers tighten on the glass of his Coke bottle. He hadn't expected me to ask that, and he flinches in a way that might have made me smile if I hadn't been so sad now. Now that I can distinctly percieve the energy inside people, I can sense clearly the attraction that - he - will choose to ignore. And I clarify right away, to avoid any confusion that would disturb him even more:
"Do you think he was really a peacenik?"
"Oh," he sighs with relief. "I don't know about that."
Eventually, he brings the straw to his lips and drinks the entire contents in one gulp.
"I suppose peaceniks don't say they love you."
My shoulders slump, and my hands fall somewhat strengthlessly onto my knees.
"Holy fuck, did he say that?"
And David shakes his head.
"Several times. I know, it doesn't make any sense."
"Did he say anything else?"
Suddenly, I'm very worried that Klaus has already used the 'last resort argument' he and I had talked about the other day. I'm still of the opinion that people shouldn't be told how they're supposed to die. But now that there is no longer a balcony between David and I, I don't know if I'd be able to keep from telling him either.
"No. Well, maybe. He tried to say a lot of things, but Brian was yelling at me to hit him."
I guess that's how it ended, and I relax my shoulders, which had gradually tensed as he spoke. I'm not sure what to say or think. I'm afraid this was all a very, very bad idea in the end. The store door reopens as the customer steps out and lets in two others. And we can hear Brian ranting once more:
"DAVE!"
He balks, and I watch David stand, while Brian's muffled voice mutters from inside the store:
"I paid you for this Coke to celebrate this big day, not to give you an opportunity to dawdle."
But David isn't dawdling, he's half trembling, and so am I. I can't imagine - or rather, I can - what Klaus must be feeling, if he really confessed to him like that, then got hit in the face. Besides possibly having his jaw broken, because I can pretty well picture the force of one of David's punches. I'll try to call Klaus. Despite my resolutions, I have reasons to believe he'll have a hard time coping. I think of the Scorpion, the Frog, I decide not to sacrifice my own life this time. But a phone call would still be allowed and healthy, wouldn't it?
"I'll... I'll see you tomorrow at lunch," I stammer. "I have to give you back 'In Foreign Lands', I finished reading it..."
"This time, I'm the one who can't".
David lets out a very long sigh, smiling at me as best he can. And taking his empty Coke with him, he utters a sentence that I'm sure I won't understand until later:
"I need to get a medical clearance certificate".
06:36 pm
"Finally, did Roy Patterson come by to pick up his TV set?"
Settled on the upstairs sofa with Lloyd, I sigh, both at ease and in dismay that we're unable to talk about something other than work. I've tried to call Klaus this afternoon: at Allison's and at the Mansion, where the line still seems to be cut. In vain, and perhaps it's better that way. On the table, the steaming bag of tamales is awaiting, and the smell is delicious. Roy Patterson. A poor, isolated weirdo, as this Dallas neighborhood counts a few.
"He came. With his wheelbarrow".
I hoped with all my heart that the welds would hold, despite the bumps along the way. Plus, he doesn't live very close. And Lloyd laughs softly.
"When I was a kid, I thought he was some kind of bogeyman."
I shake my head.
"He's mostly a very lonely guy. He doesn't even make eye contact."
Sometimes I see in him what Viktor could have become, and I wonder where he is right now. Often, my heart sinks when I think of others. Finding Allison has given me hope, these days. And I find myself thinking about it more and more. Sometimes I have the impression I can sense them close by, like tiny golden glimmers. Maybe it's silly.
"Reminds me of that old man in Santiago de Querétaro," I say softly.
"The one who wanted to buy the hair of all the 'Destiny's Children? He came back three times..."
Of our entire Mexican journey, this is certainly one of the most scarry memories.
"I wonder what he would have done with it."
"Maybe he'd have re-insulated his house. Or a whole village, because that was a lot of hair..."
We laugh for a moment, then Lloyd asks, intertwining his fingers with mine:
"Would you like to come with me on Friday?"
Like everyone else in this town, I know what he's talking about. Kennedy's visit has been on everyone's mind for weeks. But unlike Lloyd and the people of Dallas, I know what's going to happen, and the way he implicitly offers to take me to a presidential assassination as a date slowly wipes the smile off my face.
"I don't think..."
"We could have ice cream afterwards."
No, I don't think he'll want to 'have ice cream, afterwards', neither the next day, nor maybe for a while. But I don't want to tell him. The 'Snippets of Destiny' have already got enough people confused. I squeeze his fingers, I hesitate, but I just say:
"I'm not going on the Grassy Knoll, Lloyd."
A silence hovers fleetingly over the bag of tamales.
"Why? Are you going to see Klaus again?"
"No."
That's the truth, I have no trouble telling him straight, but I can tell he doubts it. For the past few days, the energy hasn't been flowing between Lloyd and me like it used to, and that's not a metaphor. Despite a few laughs and a bag of food to go. This particular breakdown is one I don't know how to fix. So I just hug him, kiss him, and sadly stir the only threads that still link us, primary and deep, almost reflexive. The ones that skin contact still arouses in us. I think he's as sad as I am as he responds, but it doesn't matter right now. And it doesn't matter either that the tamales will be cold.
*BAM BAM BAM*
The first volley of knocks on the store's glass door isn't enough to make us stop. The closure sign is self-explanatory anyway. Unfortunately, the knocks start again, this time slower and more disjointed, as if the hand carrying them were incapable of giving them a steady frequency.
*BAM BAM... BAM... BAM*
I pull my face away from Lloyd's and my eyebrows pinch, because I know already. I know who's at the door. And so does he. In the brief moment that passes during which I can't look at him, I feel a dull, primal form of anger rising in him. Now I remember why I've always been so tired of exclusive relationships. But for the first time, I'm sad, very sad about it. And I'm even scared, as I see Lloyd stand up. I stammer:
*BAM... BAM...*
"What are you going to do?"
He turns dark eyes toward me as he rebuttons his shirt, and I can feel his nerves laced with contrary impulses.
"This place is still my house."
"Lloyd, he's probably not in any shape to-"
"Who cares what shape he's in?"
It only takes a few strides for him to reach the staircase leading down to the workshop, and my blood runs fast too, as it pulses at my temples on the sofa.
"Lloyd !"
*Crack !*
Even before he gets halfway down the stairs, I'm already standing down the staircase, looking up at him, my face as somber as his.
"Let me deal with him."
"I've seen enough of what happens when you deal with him, Rin."
Lloyd doesn't move any further, and doesn't look at me. His eyes are on the glass of the store door, where I can tell Klaus is pathetically slumped. I glance briefly over my shoulder, only to catch a glimpse of his 'Hello' hand sliding listlessly down the windowpane. I know he's been drinking. And probably a lot.
"What does he look like now, our rubbish prophet?"
And he resumes walking down the stairs, shoving me aside as if I'd been made of straw.
"Lloyd, you don't know anything about what's happening to him."
About what's happening to him now, or in his whole life. He has actually never been aware of anything, just as all the other 'Children', which shows that even close communal living, initiatory journey, communion through music and group sex are no guarantee of getting to know each other. He doesn't listen to me. He walks through the workshop and opens the door with a bang, sending Klaus tumbling to the floor in a near coma.
"Floyd... pumpkin..." he stammers as he tries to sit up straight on the doormat, preventing the door from closing.
"...so about Rin... it was you..."
He's not going to finish his sentence. He looks at me, there by the stairs, with eyes I'd rather immediately forget. Because they understand about Lloyd and me. Because they're recounting to me in a heartbeat everything David's already told me at lunch, and because they're desperate for help, unaware of what they're about to get instead. Lloyd doesn't even comment on his first-name mistake, he just pulls him back to his feet.
"So this is what you spend all the dough you took from us on? You stink of gin, Holy Wanderer..."
Klaus staggers against the other doorjamb, to which he clings as if for dear life, and mutters:
"Yes. And - trust me, buddy - Justin Timberlake was wrong. You can't really 'Drink Anyone Away'.
"Get out. And take your damn songs quotes with you".
I frown as Klaus realizes he's about to get his ass kicked, and I walk in their direction, until Lloyd stops me from going any further. As if being in his own shop gave him the right to deal with the situation on his own. As if he also had some kind of rightful ownership over me.
"I told you I'd deal with it," I say in a tone that's certainly more dry than I'd have liked. "You don't make decisions for me."
And Klaus allows himself to joke, as he always does when he's drunk:
"Rin... is a free and impetuous mustang, man. Anyone who tried to ride her against her will got hoofed in the nuts."
"Shut up, Klaus."
I don't intend to be soft on either of them. Tonight, as the life I've painstakingly built here is literally crumbling through my fingers, I need everything but anyone's comments on what I am or am not. And Lloyd looks at me with an annoyance that's only the mirror of his genuine disappointment, which breaks my heart as much as the way Klaus seeks help from me.
"We said we'd spend this evening just the two of us," he says bitterly. "And precisely to avoid... 'that'".
With an explicit but disparaging gesture, he refers to Klaus from head to toe, whose head only stands upright because the wood of the doorjamb supports it.
"~That~ is incomparably the person who matters the most to me, Lloyd," I tell him abruptly, as once again my blood pulses at my temples and all the way down my throat. I feel his whole being tense up at this word. Clearly, he's understood that Klaus's place on the scale of my relationships is immovable. I stare at him, and add:
"If you can't accept that, then we're certainly not going anywhere.
This is not something that can be negotiated, and it never will be. There are no more Scorpions, no more Frogs, just facts. I thought that what Lloyd had witnessed of us during our travels would have been enough to make him accept this reality. Obviously, I was wrong, but perhaps my fault was in not being clear with him about it from the start.
"Not anywhere," he repeats, turning to me. "Not anywhere indeed."
And Klaus looks at me over Lloyd's shoulder.
"What complications have you gotten yourself into, Rin-rin?".
He takes a long, alcoholic breath, and holds out the word 'Goodbye' to me, as if offering to take me away with him, away from this mess. Just the way we've kept each other out of trouble, so many times in thirteen years. And he adds:
"You too, you went chasing waterfalls when you could have stuck to the rivers you were used to..."
Suddenly, Lloyd turns around and grabs him by the collar of his striped shirt, lifting him at arm's length as if he's going to throw him out or maybe hit him. My eyes widen, I feel the energy humming in my head, in my chest, and all the way to the TV sets all around us in the workshop.
*Crack!*
A single - precise - jump through space brings me between the two of them, and I push Lloyd back into the store at the same time Klaus tumbles backwards, outside onto the sidewalk. With all the strength I can muster in my arms.
"Stop it, both of you, goddammit!"
I look at one, then the other, something burning in my eyes, as fiery as my heart is empty and broken. In spite of myself, the energy is now sizzling, right down to the smallest resistor and capacitor in the store. In the dozens of cathode ray tubes, printed circuit boards and complex electronics that gradually seem to become one, bound together by my grief and anger in an upheaval of golden energy particles. It's as if Merelec had become a single machine, almost shaking the fabric of matter around us.
Klaus is afraid through his drunkenness, and so am I: we both know why. Because we've both seen what emotional pain did to Viktor in the past. I don't want to. But my fear only fuels it, that dull rumbling of the matter-energy couple around us, in a way that would surely have made even Five freak out. Lloyd is terrified, and I'm so sad, but there's more.
"About that too, you both are just alike..." he huffs, stepping back.
My fists clench, and so do my teeth, as the workshop seems to load up, again and again, as if it were becoming a huge electromagnetic coil, at the heart of the universe's machinery. I know what Lloyd is going to say, having heard it so often at school, Junior High, High School, and a few times afterwards. He'd tried to ignore that feeling, but it was certainly brooding in the background. And now that his grief is bursting out like mine, I'm guessing he's going to say it without a filter. An unfortunate word like we all have when we're pissed, but one that will seal our end. My eyes are in his, like a warning, and it's with a terrible fear of me that he finally utters, at the crossroads of our lives:
"...what the two of you are... isn't natural".
He barely has time to finish his sentence, when a wave of energy crackles through my watch, the component boxes next to me, the soldering iron, the TV sets, the telephone. Through the network of electric wires, in the bulbs of street lamps and car headlights, in the neighbor's apartment across the street...
A gigantic electromagnetic wave rises, as if the whole block, the whole neighborhood, perhaps far beyond, were one network connected to my sadness. A brief wave of golden energy dust that insinuates itself into everything, as short as the cry of rage that comes to me. The whole TV sets I'd been trying to fix for days implode in a chain reaction, while Lloyd locks his head in his arms and Klaus drags himself backwards further along the sidewalk, as if about to run away.
I stare at one, then the other.
*Crack!
The energy burst suddenly subsides into the ordinary light of the street lamps. Back into silence.
And I'm gone.
Notes:
You may have felt it coming for a few chapters, and it's perhaps even sadder to see this breaking point reached. I don't think there's anyone at fault in this story, I don't think there's any reaction to blame. There are only people, with their flaws.
We leave them all, including Dave, in a state of deep turmoil.
Any comment will make my day