Bad People (29 page)

Then again, he was a teenager, very probably she wouldn’t believe him when he told her it was not his.

All this was racing through his mind as he agreed they should not fight now. They had never really had a fight, something that Connie had several times remarked on. He understood the value of this, and more importantly he understood the value of not acting in haste.

On the other hand, Connie wasn’t getting him much anyway. She didn’t seem to have that much money, she didn’t seem to be rising in the world, but stagnating. Her entrepreneurial spirit had disappeared, and all she seemed to care about was her useless pathetic son.

But these were issues for later. Now he had to act out or go. “Yes,” he repeated.

She looked shocked at him. That proved he was right to limit his response to a single word followed by silence. Let her hang. The one who talks next loses, he thought, smiling inwardly.

“All—all right,” she practically sputtered. Then she continued with an attempted renewed spirit. “Good, I’m glad you agree. I am genuinely sorry about your friend, you know.” She had lost, she must realize that. So now, to pull her back in just a bit, he nodded.

“I know,” he said. “This is not a good day.” If he decided to come back and continue the affair, he would need a way to get at the computer, but there was nothing for that now.

She nodded, looking a little teary. Now she knew she didn’t really want him to go. She had called him back once, merely to try and toss him out again, so she couldn’t repeat that action. Now he was leaving on his terms. He slapped his knees and stood up. She reached out to hug him and he returned the hug.

“You’ll call me tonight?” she said.

“I’ll let you know when I know more,” he said, keeping it vague. He had to organize again. That might go quickly or it might take some time. The poem, the story about a girlfriend dying in a car wreck, S/D’s computer. In fact, S/D in general.

Stephen-David, what a problem.

He got up and scanned the room searching for his jacket. She told him she had found it and put it in the closet. Now she got up and took it from there. She folded it carefully, lengthwise. She took his arm and then folded the coat over his arm. “Now it’s not cold or gray out,” she said, without turning to look out any of the windows.

She took his hand in both of hers, and he let her hold on to it for a minute.

“Don’t worry,” he told her.

She nodded.

As he left, he felt her gaze at his back but he made sure not to turn around and look, walking down the hallway, past the elevator, to the stairs. As it should be.

On the street he started to think about all of it harder. For one, his heart was beating heavily. He had almost reacted in front of her. She thinks so little of the poem.

He wished he had a copy of it so he could go over it again. While he had looked at it with her upstairs he had tried to recommit it to memory. If he had a piece of paper or a pen he could be writing it down now.

He walked to the bus stop.

He had not taken Ardiss’s car today because it was about out of gas, and he didn’t wanted it stranded somewhere, because he might need it later. He would have to have Ardiss come to his place to get it later and fill it up. Now he did wish he had driven over, because he most likely had a pen in there and then could have reconstructed the poem, sit in the car, and figure this out.

Instinctively he suspected the problem must exist, if not
entirely
in Connie’s imagination, then in the form of poetry itself.

The shape of poetry had failed him. The need to rhyme and break off into lines of words. Artificial. Abnormal.

He had had no training in these things, and now he realized that they were worse than useless. If only he had understood that beforehand. It made perfect sense, examined so, that Connie would take the poem for Stephen-David’s work. He was, like Ardiss, addicted to stupid things: music, and copycat silly clothes fashions, as opposed to true style like a suit and a white shirt. On a girl, on Ardiss, it wasn’t so bad, but a boy? Almost a man? Well, not quite. Stephen-David would never be quite a man.

Not that men were so great. Most of them only acted competent. Stephen-David would become, if nothing happened first to intervene, a little bitch like his father, or Barry or, as Luke had eventually discovered: Jay Porter, the comic-book collector. Crying bitch-boys all.

One thing to break a girl or a woman down, to make a female cry, to fuck them and make them love you, but a male: a male had no use, especially without money or status. Even the ones who had money and status didn’t often deserve those things.

It had become inconceivable to him that people like Connie and Barry had money and he didn’t.

The closer he got, the longer he stayed in this circle the more ordinary Connie’s world seemed. Boring people fretting over their boring problems. The death of Robb couldn’t have really changed them
that
much—or was Robb the only one who had carried the gene to success. If he had been that, as now seemed likely, then Barry had really fucked Luke over, and himself too.

Still, Luke chose not to give up. He needed to redouble his efforts with Connie. Clearly she was drawn to him. So many times she’d been on the verge of calling it off, but she liked the sex and the company. So far, he himself though, had gotten almost nothing from it.

He waited for the bus, which wasn’t coming, so he decided to walk awhile, an activity he hated even more than taking the bus, but he needed to work some things out. He had been backed into a corner by circumstances, and for the first time in a long time he felt like he didn’t really have a next move. He had no money, and no immediate source for any. He had expected to be investing now, in real estate and other things, but investments were hardly going because of the economy and he had no funds with which to invest anyhow. He had been certain that being with Connie would bring him into that world, but she was too distracted by other attachments. If he could separate her from Stephen-David then perhaps he could get things back on track. If she didn’t have the family attachment she might very well throw herself back into her work, and into a life with him. She instead had this notion that S/D needed her now more than ever after the death of Robb. The simplest solution would be for S/D to not exist. Anything that happened to S/D however would trouble Connie and would likely set his progress with her even farther out. Half a year ago he would have dealt with the kid directly, but he had grown, and knew that that was not the mature way to proceed. Killing, while it solved immediate problems, only cut off resources.

He had yet to find another resource like Jay Porter, for instance. He had no worshipper now but Ardiss. She would do anything for him, but she had so little to offer: a car, a low-paying job. She had less to offer than that in the way of skills. An Ardiss-shaped tool only worked on an Ardiss-shaped problem.

He stopped dead in his tracks when it hit him. He smiled, looking around the residential block as if to find some creature lurking in the trees to share his epiphany with.

A crow cawed high above, atop a telephone pole. He hated crows and they hated him.

His stopping had bothered the crow, which now cawed at him as he stood there looking up at it. He let it caw, because crows were fighters, and not worth the trouble. It wouldn’t do anything else he knew, but make noisy threats. They were fighters, but they were also, like any animal, essentially cowards who would run if they had a way to run, and only fight to protect their nest young, or for food, or only when there was no place at all for them to run.

These thoughts about the crow reinforced his nascent thought. He couldn’t go after Stephen-David any more than he could go after a crow’s nest and not expect to get pecked and clawed.

But he didn’t need to.

The answer had been staring him in the face. He had an Ardiss-shaped problem after all. He took out his cell and dialed a cab company. Worth the trouble because he wanted to get to her quickly and put his new plan in motion. He knew Ardiss was working today and she would pay the cab when he got to her.

In order to get the cab to come he had to give the dispatcher a street address. He read the number off the nearest building, which meant he had to wait right were he was until he came, standing under the perturbed crow.

While he waited, other crows gathered on the power lines, and rooftops. They got quite loud. He stood under the branch of an overlong tree to avoid getting shit on, but other than that he made no concession to their territorial grandstanding. Let them come, he thought, let every crow in the city come. There was nothing they could do against him.

The cab came, and took him to Ardiss’s work. She was happy to see him, but not so happy when he told her he needed the fare. She had to take money from the tip jar to pay it, because she didn’t have it. Fortunately the other girl was on break, so it wasn’t a problem. Still, she whined that the other girl might notice all the bills had disappeared from the jar while she was not there, in the space of just a few minutes. Luke waved his hand.

“She probably won’t notice. If she does, just play dumb. Say that a homeless person walked in, and you only turned your back for a second. That’s why the tip can is chained down, obviously. Homeless people.”

She made a face at that, but she didn’t object further. She took the money outside and paid the cab. He sat at the table he preferred; the table he had sat in and struck his original deal with Barry in, on what seemed like a long long ago day, though it was less than a year, around nine months in fact, the same time as gestating a baby. That was interesting, he thought, and not entirely insignificant, because suddenly he felt like his plans, whatever they were originally intended to be, were still coming into the world.

He felt excited again, things weren’t ending now, they were really only beginning.

Ardiss came back in and made him his favorite coffee. Or what he had, in the past, told her his favorite coffee was. In reality he had no favorite, but it was one of the most expensive things on the menu. With syrup, and cream and extra shots. And it was hard to make. He’d taken to seeing how fast she would make it for him and telling himself that he enjoyed that, but now he realized how small he had gotten in his thinking. His new plan had made him realize that, and he smiled. This is how much the Mind had broadened.

She came and brought his coffee drink placing it in front of him. The coffee house was empty again, as it often seemed to be this time of day—after the morning work rush, but before the non-working people started to flow in, and she sat down opposite him. He motioned her forward for a kiss.

“That was sweet of you,” she said after it. Then she pulled back and looked at him hard. As if she expected him to want something for it.

Heather, Ardiss’s roommate, happened to be the other girl on shift at the coffee shop. Luke saw her come back in from her break and pointedly not look at him, or maybe not look at Ardiss. At any rate, she went behind the counter, tied her apron on and pretended to be busy doing nothing.

Luke rolled his eyes conspiratorially at Ardiss. Ardiss shook her head and suppressed a smile. Luke decided if he had to ever put a name to the “ex-girlfriend” who had died in a car crash for the tale he’d spun Connie, he would say Heather for the hell of it.

He almost told Ardiss the whole anecdote, but that wouldn’t have been a good idea. Nevertheless, the thought of it made him smile—how close Ardiss had come to dying in his mind today, only to be saved by her hated roommate/co-worker taking her place there instead. Too complicated an idea to share, but it filled him with a kind of warmth he hadn’t had in awhile.

He reached across the table and clasped both of Ardiss’s hands in his. “I want to take you out tonight,” he told her. “Someplace nice and special. Down at the piers.”

She tilted her head. This made her even more skeptical than the spontaneous kiss. “Okay…” she said slowly.

“It’s about time we started spending more time together,” he said. The words came out before he stopped them and express himself less awkwardly:
time/time
, no good.

She kept looking at him, seeming almost afraid to speak now. One forelock loosened and dropped over her eye. She left it there, making her look to Luke like a girl in a manga. After a moment he reached over and pushed it back into place for her. “All right,” he said, “when you get off today…at five.”

“About five,” she said, “but what is it?”

“I can take you out if I want. It doesn’t have to be for any particular reason.”

“But it is though. Tell me.”

Now was not the time, and a mood would need to be set. If he told her now she would react strongly…and badly. Besides, he had things to set into motion first, and he needed to script it out.”

She pushed herself back from the table and folded her arms, like a child. “I won’t go, then,” she said in a pout that had to be half put on.

He was tempted to call the dinner off, and then she’d say what ever it was she would say, but that would not accomplish his goal, and he had deviated too far from his path already. “I am at a point where only you can help me, Ardiss.” Only her. He knew no one else.

“Oh my god,” she said, almost choking. “What is it? Whatever it is, tell me. Don’t make me wait.”