Bad People (28 page)

poole wihtin me dark of MIND

He paused there. He enjoying seeing “mind” there, but felt unsure if she was ready to understand such a concept. He backspaced over the four letters. Save that concept for another time. If he couldn’t say that, then he had to find a different way best to convey his power. He typed in the word
power
as a place saver.

Come back to it. Keep going:

The Mind was a power that had been his since time began.

The beginning power
.
My mind was like a tower of power at the beginning of time
. Too wordy, didn’t sound poetic but it sounded true, because the Mind was first and the Mind was above all things, was him. Above all things like a tower, he supposed the Mind was telling him, and he knew that
power
was no mistake that the mind had shown him the perfect word: the Mind showed him to rhyme
power
/
tower
:

poole wihtin me dark of power

I was at the begining a tower

Still not quite right. He was still a tower, but more than just himself as a tower. The tower was a thing, and he was also a thing, both wholly the tower of Mind and wholly himself: not
a
tower, but
tower
, itself. From the beginning:

I was the begining tower

He flipped the first two words to make it more poetic sounding:

was I the begining tower
.

He scanned over what he had so far:

forget me I return to the hole

renonce me I return to the hole

poole wihtin me dark of power

was I the begining tower

It looked good, almost right, a strong beautiful rectangle of words. He weighed whether she would understand what he meant when he called himself the tower.

He now realized there would be a series of poems. She liked to read, at least the condo had plenty of books, and she’d mentioned having many more in storage. Now that he knew he had writing poetry in his arsenal he could return to the form and build on his initial concepts later. He added the word “at” into the fourth line so that it now read:

was I at the begining tower

A simpler concept, not as mind-blowing. He would bring her along in later poems: enough to ready her for the concepts to come. This poem would tell her he was present
at
the beginning, but not the whole truth that he
was
the beginning too. The lines both revealed and hid him. This was going better than he had imagined, but it felt not quite complete yet. He had his past, but what about the future. Something about his future, his destiny, and a hint that she could be a part of it. How to dangle that…

and I will return to my future home

He read that back and then transposed the second and third words of the line:
and will I
was more poetic than
and I will
.

He read it again. A promise, but he needed to also keep the doubt there.
Alone
. That was the perfect word to end the line, and rhyme with
home
.

He could not quite decide what he wanted to say there. He typed out
and leave you alone
hastily. He looked at it:

and will I return to my future home

and leave you alone
.

It sounded mysterious. Like it might mean more than one thing.

forget me I return to the hole

renonce me I return to the hole

poole wihtin me dark of power

was I at the begining tower

and will I return to my future home

and leave you alone

He read it over, sub-vocalizing. Perfect.

Perfect and greater than the sum of its individual lines.

He thought about a title, decided it didn’t need one, and ran the spell check.

Good that he did. He’d made a couple misspellings. Though he read a lot, and was highly intelligent, his personal spellings often contradicted the average ones. He knew that Connie’s familiarity with conventional spelling required he use those for now, rather than his correct internal ones.

Luke took one last look at his work and closed the computer, leaving the document open so that it would be the first thing she saw. She would probably call him right away when she saw, it, but he didn’t want to wait in case she didn’t look into her computer for awhile, so he decided to leave his jacket behind so that he could loop back around once Stephen-David had gone to school. Then he could see her reaction first-hand.

He knew that in addition to her more important interests in business, she also was drawn to artsy things. His poem could only thrill her as he had never shown this side before.

He went to the kitchen and planted his garment there.

Jacketless, he slipped into the night, exhilarated.

Chapter 31: Connie

“How! Where!” Connie said. Luke was standing outside her door. Having just told her that his ex had been killed.

“A car accident,” he said.

“When?”

“Last night, or early this morning. I just got the call.”

“Luke, I don’t know what to say… Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m distracted. Certainly you should be concerned with Stephen-David. It doesn’t mean there is something wrong with the poem. You must be misreading it.”

“Maybe I am,” she said absently. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I think you should delete it. You certainly can’t talk to him about it, how will you explain looking onto his computer.”

“What? No. I meant is there anything I can do for you. Or your friend? A car accident? Was she driving?”

“I don’t know all the details. A single car accident. She hit a tree or something. She wasn’t drinking.”

She hadn’t asked that, but she assumed he was just pouring out whatever he had learned on the phone.

“Do you need to be anywhere,” she asked. “Can I drive you? Or is there anyone we should call.”

“I don’t think so.”

She reached out and hugged him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, which made no sense, but she understood that, understood the confusion and shock and overload that short-circuited the mind after news like this. “Sit down,” she told him.

“I should go,” he said. But he did sit down, and slumped backward, then stared absently at Stephen-David’s laptop. “Can I have another look at that poem,” he said.

She shouldn’t have done it, but she leaned over, opened it again and turned the screen toward him. He scanned the lines without changing his posture.

“You really think it’s that bad,” he asked.

“The poem? It’s pretty dark.”

“It shows talent though. And depth.”

“I didn’t look at it that way. I mean here— “ She sat on the coffee table and pulled the notebook toward here. “This part:
renounce me I return to the hole
. That’s disturbing. What kind of a hole? That sounds like going to a dark place. Or am I being oversensitive? It is just ordinary teenager angst?”

Suddenly she was conscious of her and Luke’s age difference, more conscious of it than she usually let herself be in the couple months they’d been together. Now she had stooped to asking her much-younger boyfriend to explain “kids today” to her.

“Never mind,” she said, shutting it.

“I don’t think it means that,” said Luke. “I don’t think it means hole like in the ground; I think in means whole as in ‘the whole world.’”

She thought about opening the laptop again and showing him the line, but didn’t. “He spells a lot better than that,” Connie said. “No. It wouldn’t be that.”

Luke was silent for a moment, just staring into space. He probably didn’t know what to do with himself at all, poor thing. He probably hadn’t experienced a death before. She should be helping him right now, not burdening him with her own problems.

“Never mind, really,” she said again. “It’s nothing. It isn’t important. Do you have to see anyone or make some calls?”

He shook his head, but since she’d asked him more than one question she didn’t know what he meant by it. “But it
is
important. If it’s important to
you
.”

It took her a minute to realize he was still talking about Stephen-David’s poem, and another moment to decide what to do about it, if anything.

The best thing to do was to each of them attend their own houses; they were not, in that sense, really a couple. They were not partners. She had no partner now, and did not expect one, did not even want one perhaps. She could not think of a way to say that to him. Things were good between them merely the way they were, no other way was needed. She did not want him closer, but she did not want him further away either. She wanted the companionship, the sex—the
company
, she guessed you could call it, and she struggled for a way to say that that would not rock the boat. She wanted this separate and it was important to her that this thing between them stay not important. If he were closer to her age, she might have been able to say something like that to him, but then again, if he were closer to her own age their thing would not have the same quality of frivolousness and escape that drew her in right now.

These days, this month, that was all she wanted. She only wanted this thing if it was going to continue to be easy and pointless, and how was she going to say that? She put her head down. She was a bad person: shallow and selfish and a coward and she deserved the contempt and the cruelty of the world’s opinion of her.. That was all.

“You have things to do…” she said, ignoring Luke’s last statement about what was “important” to her. She didn’t want words like “important” coming out of his mouth. Right now, she wanted him gone until she wanted him there again, gone until the accident of his friend was behind him, gone until this thing with Stephen-David’s poem was behind her, gone until they could be fun again.

He eyed the laptop.

“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s like you want to get at it. Why?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Connie.”

“You’re making me feel defensive.”

“You have nothing to be defensive about.”

“That’s my point…” I can’t have a fight now, she thought. And why was everything coming out so twisted, and why was she sounding so half-assed to herself? “I’m hating this,” she told him. “I feel like you’re judging me about my son, and I have to tell you…that doesn’t make me feel comfortable.”

“You’re the one who sees the problem with the poem,” he said, waving his hand at the closed notebook. “I think it’s fine. I think you are not reading it right. You are putting your own spin on it. It has layers you haven’t even thought about. You decided there is something wrong with it. You just decided. For all you know he didn’t even write it. It could be from a book, or somewhere else. It could be for a project. I don’t think you should even mention it to him. He should never know that you read it, that you were on his computer. He won’t trust you otherwise.”

“That’s enough.” She was about at the limit of what she could bear, fatal car accident or no. “Right now,” she said, searching carefully for her words, “right now, we want to be very careful. Right now, we need to separate for a while before either of us says anything we can’t take back. That’s the thing to do Luke, and I hope you agree.” She felt like his breathing was choking her air with emotion.

“Yes,” she heard him say.

Chapter 32: Luke

“Yes,” Luke said.

Luke needed to leave and decide what to do. He needed to get out, and breathe deeply. He was not angry, that was not something he allowed, but his patience was tested. The lie he had made up on the spot, that Ardiss or someone had been killed in a car accident, covered his chagrin and disappointment that she mistook his poem for something of Stephen-David’s. Her reaction to it has been so confused and disappointing he didn’t known what to do, hence the fabrication. But fabrications, stories, however convenient could spin out of control, have a life of their own.

Now he was thinking already of the support lies he would have to tell; the details he would have to give, all for his momentary lapse.

And besides, there was the poem itself. Connie had caught him, involuntarily glancing at the laptop. He had to get in there and delete the thing, and also prevent Connie from bringing it up to her son.