The Devoted (15 page)

“Maybe, inside of me, that’s the part that wanted to get the phone.”

“You can’t do this. You can’t talk like that.”

My words come in starts on account of my crying: “Jed told me before that you guys had sex, and then I thought I was real angry, but then I wasn’t angry because I thought that I cared. I cared about you, baby.”

The door’s not far behind me. Close enough to send over some warmth. It opens, He sees this, He hears this...His heart will snap.

She’s yet to meet my gaze. Her lips tremble. They’d tremble more, harder, if she met it.

Then, as if the ceiling weren’t enough, I bring the whole house down on her: “I can’t leave here unless you come with me.”

Her eyes draw closed, let liquid slip.

“You can’t put that on me.” Whispering.

“Yes, I can. If he can put stuff on you then I can, also.”

Just like Jed said to me. Leader on me. Jed on me. Me on her. The human race.

When her eyes come open, they look at me, hard. I see red veins and get a click of shock.

“I feel like I don’t know who you are.”

Makes two of us. Me not knowing me, nor her.

Good thing you don’t have to know someone to love them.

“But I feel...like...” she says, and I hope-so-deep it’s something good, “if I stop seeing you, my heart will break.”

Hope answered.

Her hands in mine. Palms clammy yet perfect. We melt.

Last Day –
3:13PM: UNSCHEDULED REVOLT

We’re in the bathroom, now, together.

She hands me my phone and I want to hold her.

It’s like the moment when you first get naked with someone, me showing her the bathroom. Yes, I know, she’s seen it before, but never with me and my aims and my phone.

Sharing with her a new side.

Even as, through the window, I see the sun losing some strength.

I lock the door, turn on the sink, and do the other thing...

Only this time when I do it, I know exactly what I want to say.

Jed answers: “Matthew.”

Statement-not-question.

“Just you, Jed,” I say to him, my body relaxing for this moment alone. “No other people, do you understand?”

Jolie, I see, is rocking from side to side. Makes my body crunch up all over again.

“I do understand,” he tells me, and right now I like him. Hopefully not just because he’s taking orders.

“I can’t have you lying to me. We don’t want to see all of you right now.”

“I know.”

I look at Jolie. Then have to look away, no choice.

“We have dinner at five,” I tell him. “We’re gonna spend some time talking, and then the thing happens right at six.”

“I’m walking out the door right now,” Jed says. “You tell me where to go and I’ll go there.”

“You’re not,” I say, weak enough to disappear, “too far from here. You can be here for sure by five-thirty.”

“Five-thirty, good. Just point the way.”

I wake up, come back. Full force: heart and nerves. Jolie seems to flash with greater color. “We’ll find a way to get outside, and you meet us at the end of the driveway. I’ll grab anybody who wants to come. Do not - approach - the house.”

“Okay, right, got it, I won’t. The driveway.”

“You have a van, you said?”

“A van, I do, yes.”

I eye her again. Say, “Hang on a second.”

Jed: “Go ‘head.”

I put the phone against the wet cloth covering my chest.

“You can do this, right?” I ask her. “You can do this with me?”

There’s no pause. Her head’s made to nod. I put the phone back to my ear and say, “Jed, we’re still near Santa Barbara. We’ve gone to Summerland.”

Edgar Pike’s Journal

June, 2010

Some gushes are more urgent than other gushes. The urge to make love is stronger than the urge to write. It blocks out the sky. It’s all I need. That’s my only remaining gush. If they stopped needing leadership, I wouldn’t even speak anymore. It’d be love and hum. Bodies plus hum.

Yet I do have knowledge that I’m weak. Because the real philosopher would take the hum and not the gush. In other words, the real philosopher would find a way to discard the body.

Last Day –
3:18PM

We exit the bathroom expecting a breath, but we clench up upon seeing Theodore.

As though it’s his room. That’s how settled he looks on the mattress.

He gets up when he sees us, though, and I ask him (phone: right pocket) what he’s doing here.

He points at the bathroom: “What were
you
doing in
there
?”

No, no, no. I’m not having this. I step toward him, making his heels touch the mattress.

“You just come in on your own?”

“I heard you talking...”

Jolie behind me. I can’t see her, but I know her well enough to know her arms are crossed.

“Talking about what?” I ask. “What are you saying, Theodore?”

He looks me up and down, his neck rhythm sloppy.

Then: “What’s in your pocket?” he wants to know.

My hand goes into it, forms a shell around the phone.

“You knock before you come in here.”

Jolie says, “Matthew.”

And Theodore goes, “That was never a rule. I came in earlier, remem--?”

“Well, now it’s a rule. You hear me? Now it’s a rule.”

Edgar Pike’s Journal

July, 2010

The legal system encompasses everything I find loathsome. Language used in service of constriction. Gray areas and mud all over the place. You get down to it, the laws don’t matter. It’s what the prosecutors decide.

Last Day –
3:19PM

“Are you hiding something?” Theodore asks, displaying bemusement by way of his eyes alone. “Why are you being so aggressive?”

Nuh-uh. We don’t go down here. Not on account of this fuck. “Am I really being aggressive?” I ask. “Or are you just a paranoid schizophrenic?”

Right then, I expect that he will grab me.

Only right then, as it happens, we’re all grabbed by a shriek.

From downstairs.

Edgar Pike’s Journal

September, 2009

This just occurred to me! I haven’t thought about it in 20 years!

It was New Year’s Eve. I lived up north, in Frisco, then (does anybody still use that word?). I was alone for the evening. Couldn’t get a date, which meant my legs -- especially my upper legs -- were burning hard and hot. I wanted to put myself in someone.

I was credible then, even though I was young. I sold suits. (For me, it’s always been sales -- even now.) I got up at the same time every morning. I called my mother and we’d have laughs.

But in 1989, ringing in 1990, I was walking down the street with my hands in my pockets when I saw a group of youngsters (college) walking toward me, laughing. Pretty girls and nice, upright boys. I grabbed one of the boys and screamed and threw him down on the sidewalk and yelled, “YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

I did this! I don’t know why. I don’t even think he was scared! They were laughing after, as they walked away, like it was a cool thing to happen.

I never did anything like that afterward.

Last Day –
3:20PM

Within moments, it’s me, Jolie, and Theodore by the upstairs railing overlooking the foyer.

The foyer, right now, looks like a stage, which is fitting since Beth is in it, walking around, tears in her eyes, hands sometimes in her hair, breaking every item she can find.

Given what The Leader did before we came, finding anything at all is a tall order. Regardless, she plucks a mirror from the wall and shatters it on the floor, endangering the eyes of Cathleen, who’s a foot behind her, trying her best to stop this.

Also, there’s this vase that The Leader’s always liked, positioned on the floor beside the stairs. Beth picks it up above her head and smashes it against the floor.

The Leader’s in sight, and in shock – not far from Cathleen.

And what Beth is doing isn’t nearly as compelling as what she’s yelling:

“I’m just asking you for this one thing. For this
one fucking thing
!”

Phrases come to mind here, among them “out of control” and “holy fucking shit!”

“Sweetheart,” Cathleen says, reaching out a hand that doesn’t dare to touch Beth, “you’re going to have to calm down, so we can--”

“Get the hell away from me. Okay? This doesn’t concern you.”

So The Leader, whom it most assuredly concerns, says, “Beth....”

He, too, reaches in Beth’s direction. She swipes His touch away like it’s an insect.

Doing my best Calmest Man In The World impression, I ask them what’s going on.

Cathleen looks up at us, seeming embarrassed, as though somehow this could possibly be her fault.

“She wants to call her mother,” Cathleen explains.

My hand chokes the phone in my pocket.

The Leader tracks Beth out of the foyer. We hear a wood chair rattle across the floor. After a moment, they return.

“Beth,” He says, “please. Come back to me now.”

She turns back His way and shrieks her lungs out. These aren’t soap opera actress shrieks; they actually resonate: “It’s a goddamn minute. I’ve given you three fucking years of my life, and you can’t just give me a
minute
?!”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow it,” He says. “I’ve expressed this to you already, and I’ll continue expressing it to you.”

“I won’t say anything to her about where we are!” Beth’s face defines redness. “I swear it.”

“I’m not concerned about that,” He goes.

“Then What Are You Concerned About?” The whole house, shuddering.

“Beth. The rules were clearly communicated to you when you got here, and you accepted them.”

“I don’t give a shit about the rules! Isn’t that why we left the world out there? Because of the rules?”

“Let me tell you something about the rules out there. They’re meant to disempower us, to keep us down, to tear away at all that is good and pure about each and every single one of us. And I--”

“How is that different from you not letting me speak to my mom? Tell me.”

She lacks Jed’s finesse, but she has a point.

The Leader just looks at her, no answer forming.

And I’ve got problems here. I’m voting against Beth. ‘Cause if He tries to come upstairs and get a phone--

“Please,” she says, gathering up some specks of calmness. “It’s a phone call.”

The Leader keeps on looking at her. If I’m not mistaken, that is love on His face. Or at least some affection for a being whom He likes banging.

Jolie steals a glance at me; I steal one back.

Both of us thinking:
phone.

“Only for a minute,” He says.

Beth leaps toward Him with a speed that implies violence. Only her leap concludes with an impassioned hug.

Now Theodore’s eyeing me anew. Clowns to the left of me, jokers--

The Leader ends their hug. Eyes the steps. Starts to walk.

As I do, too. Toward the steps from the other direction.

“Wait here,” He says, causing my belly to sizzle. “I’ll get a phone for you.”

Stepping downward, I look at Him: “What’s going on?”

On His way up, He pauses. I think that I may have to end this here. Push Him down the steps when He gets closer. Murder. Not at all something I feel prepared for, but possibly a walk in the park compared to being caught.

“I’m allowing Beth a phone call,” He explains, the epitome of officiousness. “Is that okay with you?”

Rather than re-explain His own rules to Him, rather than make a basic point about fairness, rather than warn Him that if He allows one call He may have to allow eight, I say, “Sure.”

His eyes darken.

“I mean, of course,” I say. “Just -- don’t trouble yourself coming up. I’ll get one for you, Master.”

He’s conducting a study of my face. It goes on a bit longer than one might expect.

“Do you know where I keep the phones?” He asks.

I blink. Once, twice, stop myself before the third. Each time my lids come down, I’m in hell.

“Uh. No,” I say.