- C -

Of Course We Have No Reason to Argue

         So?
         So?
         Where were you? Any of you?
         Where the hell were any of you?
         Watching television? Reading a book? Sleeping maybe, as if it were possible? Staring at your girlfriend and thinking about not sleeping? None of those at all? Puttering about your lives, like you were just indulging in some wasted, fractured hobby. Like you had nothing better to do.
         How many of you saw but didn't see? Knew but didn't know?
         Who was it a surprise to?
         That's what I want to know.
         Who?

I'd Punch Through the Sky if it Would Give Me Something to Hold Onto

         Pacing around his home did no good. He did it anyway. Twisting himself up with worrying, answer-less questions did even less good. So he did even more of it.
         The article was laid out on his coffee table, a black and white eulogy, all objectiveness and factuality. He hadn't read it. Just the title. He knew what it said. On the way home the radio had vomited the news into his car and it had told him everything he needed to know.
         Two people.
         A train.
         Dear God.
         What more did you need? How much gore did you really want to deal with?
         Tristian wanted to sit down but he knew that if he did all he would want to do would be to stand up again. His brain kept racing, trying to remember this Don, Donald, whatever the hell people called him. Jina called him Don but Tristian could only remember him as Donald. Tristian had probably been the only person who called by his full first name. One of his quirks. Probably a defense against people thinking about calling him Trist. So Donald it was. Not even sure which he preferred. Funny how things just slip right out of your head after a few years. High school was supposed to be the four most important years of your life but in the end all they turned out to be were increasingly blurred memories of good luck and festered awkwardness, gradually spreading into nothing more than misted rain, blending into the rest of your life.
         How did he feel about this? Tristian wasn't sure. On the one hand he hadn't known Don that well, his initial gut reaction was a combination of oh no and getting stuck by some of Jina's more emotional response. Alone, a dry rationality reasserted itself and he found himself feeling terrible, but not upset, down but not depressed. That was understandable, he felt. It had been someone he had known, even in passing, someone his own age, now departed. Their numbers one less. Life gets first blood. Of course. Cross the first face off the giant class picture.
         It really hadn't hit him yet. Too soon? Maybe. Or maybe it was because all the articles and all the grim bearers of bad news and all the squawking radios couldn't really convey the reality that someone was dead. To the living the idea of being dead was so anathema that the concept was immediately rejected in all permutations. Nothing could really prepare him for the reality that a person he had known, had talked to, made fun of or been made fun of by, was no longer walking the Earth. At least not in corporeal form, depending on your beliefs. And Tristian had seen enough to leave plenty of room inside himself for different beliefs. Still death was a constant, a confusing variable that always turned up in the worst places, at the worst times.
         And so he had gone and summoned the deathless man to come bear witness.
         Getting in touch with Brown hadn't been easy. Even now he wasn't sure he had managed it. Short of going there himself, the best he had were messengers that might wind up telling him everything. He had tried to give them just the core of the message: get down here as soon as you can but he could tell they knew everything. Just a second's glance at his twisted ganglia revealed his entire world to them.
         But he had to trust them. He did trust them. If their eyes could pierce that deeply into his mind then they knew this was important. And they would bring the message and get him and bring him back and from there Tristian had no idea what he was going to do. Break the news to Brown, he supposed. Jina would have been a better choice but she wasn't here and he was and he wasn't about to drag Brown away to make Jina relive the event again, making the man wait to hear news he could have received right when he stepped off the train. It wouldn't be right. Or fair. It just wouldn't be.
         Pacing was tiring him. No it wasn't. But he needed some kind of excuse to sit down before he wore a hole in his own floor. Times like this he wished that he could immerse himself in television and zone out and let the world slide right past. With his luck the death would be all over the news. Deaths, he reminded himself. Two people. God. What the hell happened? What the hell were they thinking?
         About to sit down, a trebly ringing in the back of his ears made him stop. Oh. Here we go. A fraction of a second later there was a quickening in the air and a thump from upstairs, followed by a muffled shout. Oh. He's here.
         Taking the stairs as fast as he could, Tristian raced to the second floor of his home. Right outside the bathroom door he stopped, peering into the shaded darkness. Inside there was a slippery rustling and a bent groan.
         "A-all . . . I said . . ."
         The voice was familiar. No aliens here today, sir. No need for that there sword. Smiling a little at the sardonic edge to the tone, he stepped partially into the bathroom and flicked on the light switch.
         ". . . was drop me someplace . . . clean . . . ah!" Brown cried out in surprise as the light flooded the room, covering his face with one arm as he tried to gain purchase and posture in the bathtub. Flat on his back he scrambled against the smooth sides, eventually managing to sit up. Blinking rapidly, he glanced up at Tristian. He was still in his uniform, all faded blues and blacks and a bar on his shoulder that gave him an authority even the President only dreamed about. Tristian would probably have to give him something else to wear, though he was sure the uniform would make Brown a hit with the ladies. So he heard.
         Tristian waited patiently for Brown's vision to clear. Once it did, the other man draped one arm over the bathtub, sitting like he was in a low slung racecar, and grinned up at Tristian, saying, "I suppose you'd like an explanation for this."
         "If you got here the way I think you got here, one really isn't needed," he replied, putting out a hand to help lift Brown out of the bathtub.
         "Point taken," Brown noted, brushing invisible dust off his uniform. "I thought it was the one that was normally serious, but he was either disguising his voice or pretending or . . ." he threw his hands up in mock surrender. "I don't know. I can't figure them out, I swear to God they keep swapping personalities on a weekly basis, just to make themselves even more unpredictable."
         Together they left the bathroom and began to head down the stairs back to the living room. As they went, Tristian said, "I used to try and keep track, but I don't even bother anymore."
         "Probably a good way to stay sane," Brown responded, laughing a little.
         As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Tristian stopped and turned to Brown, saying, "You got my message then?" Already his heart was racing. God he didn't want to do this. He wished someone else were here. But there was only him.
         "Yeah, yeah, I did," Brown replied, running a hand through his hair on the back of his head. "I got the feeling it was urgent, so I left right away." He peered closely at Tristian. "Everything's okay, right? With you, with everyone?" Jina's name remained unspoken but heavily implied. Funny, both of them had women to fixate on, though Brown's was simply friendly protectiveness infused with wisps of past romance.
         Tristian took a deep breath and was tempted to ask Brown to sit down. Like he couldn't handle it. Like he didn't risk ordering men to their deaths every day. Then he realized he would just be telegraphing and stretching out the bad news. And of course the still open newspaper with its lurid Embrace of Death! headline tucked neatly into the front page was sitting on his table. Didn't want him to see that either.
         Which was when Tristian realized he was just procrastinating the inevitable, perhaps hoping somehow Brown would read his mind or deduce it from his nervous mannerisms and spare him the task.
         Except that wasn't going to happen.
         And so Tristian did the intelligent thing and got on with it.
         "Ah . . . well, no, everyone is fine," Tristian began, "but I'm afraid . . ." and just as his nervousness hit a finely wrought pitch he realized how very intently Brown was paying attention to him which of course just made it worse, "that Donald, ah, Don Wintersfield, he's, well . . . he's dead." Almost awkwardly, like the words were square pegs jammed into his round hole of a mouth, he added, "I'm sorry."
         The effect on Brown was immediate. Like a ripple the words struck him and first confusion and then disbelief ran like waves of migrating animals over his face right as the realization actually sunk in. It wasn't pleasant to watch. It never was in a friend.
         "Don?" Brown whispered, blinking very slowly. "Tristian, are you serious, I mean, Don . . . oh geez," he stopped talking, tried to collect himself, succeeded partway, valiantly attempted to continue. "Dead, I can't . . . was he sick? Or an accident or . . ." he leaned back against the wall, his face tensing as he pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose, like he was trying to pluck out a burgeoning migraine. "Jesus," he muttered, abruptly stopping what could have become a mad flow of useless words. Without looking up, he said tersely, "Tristian, what happened?"
         Then Tristian realized that everything else had been an unpleasant prelude to what he would have to say now. His mouth went dry and his pulse quickened again. "He, uh, Joe he apparently, he apparently stepped in front of a train. Him and some girl." He was trying to get the words out fast, as fast as his suddenly stunted speech could manage, trying to make the hit and run for his dear life.
         "How do you know this?" Brown asked almost accusingly, like Tristian had invited him here simply to taunt him with false reports of terrible events. Tristian didn't blame him, if their positions were switched he'd be doing his best to deny any and all pertinent reality set out before him.
         Yet he knew that if their positions were switched, Brown would do his best to convince him of the truth, and to make him see it. It's what he had to do.
         "I was at Jina's when she found out . . . Brian told her," Tristian said levelly, calmly. The voice of factual demise. Spitting out rumors of death and making it come true. You're all going to die. That's true enough, isn't it? "And . . . it's in the papers, I saw the article."
         "Let me see it," Brown demanded, already spotting it sitting on his table even as Tristian began to lead him to it. Stalking over to the paper, Brown nearly snatched it off the table, flipping it like he was trying to refold it, like you could fold something up small enough that it would disappear forever. His eyes immediately focused on the article, moving about in tiny motions, stabbing his vision at every word, trying to pierce it and prove it wrong and ultimately trying to take it in and figure out what the hell it all meant.
         "Jesus," he said again, after a second, looking up from his reading, nearly throwing the newspaper down onto the table. There was strained melancholy in his voice that bent Tristian's heart just to hear it.
         "Are you all right?" Tristian asked, standing far enough back to avoid being perhaps rightly struck by Brown for asking such a stupid question. Of course he wasn't all right. That much was clear. But he had to ask. It was just the way things were done.
         "They don't give a name in here," Brown noted, ignoring the question, or perhaps answering it anyway. He stabbed a finger down at the ink stained paper, like he was trying to smear it all away. "They don't say. Maybe Brian was wrong."
         "The, ah, the radio, on the way home I heard," Tristian said, hating himself even more for going to such great lengths to confirm the news. The man delivering the telegrams to the soldiers' mothers, telling them it was time to mark their windows, inform the world. Someone has to do it. Nobody wants to, but it may be the most important duty in the world. "They said his name, they finally identified the body."
         "Ah," was all Brown said, crouching down on the balls of his feet and resting his forearms on the table, conveniently covering the article. Ducking his head, he said, "His sister. It had to be Jackie, she was friends with Brian's sister." Nobody needs a telephone in these close knit times. All you need are each other. It's why we communicate so clearly. "That's how you would have found out. It makes sense." God damn sense, his unspoken words screamed. Already Brown was fitting pieces together, rationalizing it all out, his mind working to put the picture together, even when he wanted to slash the portrait to ribbons.
         Standing up with a barely hidden sigh, Brown murmured, "God, this is just great," as he ran a hand through his hair. "How did Jina take it? She knew him just as well as I did."
         "As well as can be expected," Tristian admitted. "When I left her she was getting ready to call some other people and tell them."
         "Was Lena home?"
         "No, but she was going to be home soon."
         "And you still came all the way back here to get me? I'm touched," Brown said with gentle mocking. Tristian let him have the joke, not that he found it all that funny. But people always reacted in strange ways. He remembered the party, when Lena was hurt and how he had acted afterwards. Not his finest moment. You never know which way you're going to jump when the boom comes down.
         "What can I say?" Tristian replied neutrally.
         "I'm only kidding, Tristian. Really, thanks, though, for letting me know. I appreciate it," Brown apologized, but he sounded distant, like his mind was spiralling elsewhere. "I'll have to stop over Jina's later, or call her or something or . . ." he stopped again, then added quietly, "God, so much to think about." To Tristian he asked, "Do you know when he's being laid out? Or is it too soon to know?"
         "I haven't heard anything yet, but I'd imagine within the next day or so," Tristian answered. It was easier to think of such logistical abstracts, to wrap your head around such mundane details as wakes and funerals and burials than to possibly even start to confront the idea that someone was dead. Events weren't people. Events weren't emotional in of themselves, it was the people there, the things those people did and said and sobbed that scraped at you and affected you in the ways they did. And sometimes those ways weren't all that much fun.
         "Yeah, that's what I thought," Brown said, groaning as he arched his back and stretched. "Oh God . . . I'm going to have to stick around for a few days then, it seems . . ." he snapped his posture back, staring right at Tristian, a small smile twitching at the edge of his face. "Got room on your couch?"
         "Sure, no problem," Tristian told him. A sudden thought occurred to him, one of those that reminded him of how oddly unique his life had become. "Does the General know you're over here?" He deliberately didn't add in this dimension in an effort to make the sentence not sound weirder than it already did.
         "Oh geez, no I don't think he does, I left so fast . . ." Brown realized. So many details. "I'd better let him know too, I guess, if he doesn't already . . ."
         Suddenly the phone rang.
         "Probably Jina," Tristian ventured as he crossed the living room and went into the kitchen. The ring sounded so foreign to him, but that was no doubt because people rarely called him. He was surprised not to feel the slick griminess of dust under his palm when he grabbed the receiver.
         "Hello?" he said.
         There was a brief pause and a sound like air whistling through a long tunnel. "Tell the Commander we explained everything . . ." Tristian started at the sound of the clipped, vaguely accented voice on the other end of the line. He knew that voice.
         "Who is this?" he asked anyway, narrowing his eyes as if he could arrange the invisible telephonic signals into a readable face.
         "Oh, Tristian, don't be coy. Who else would call you?" the voice said, sounding both amused and irritated at the same time. In the background he heard another muffled voice. After a brief pause the speaker continued, "In any event, I really didn't call to talk to you. Put the Commander on, please. Someone needs to speak with him."
         "Who is it?" Brown inquired as he came into the kitchen.
         Without a word he handed the phone over to Brown, who looked at him quizzically.
         "It's for you," was all he said before going back into the living room.
         Tiredly, he sat on his couch, leaning back and resting his head against the cushion. Distantly he could hear Brown talking in a low voice with whoever was on the phone. He couldn't make out any words but then he wasn't really trying.
         After a few minutes he heard Brown hang up the phone, followed shortly after by the soft tapping of his footsteps as he reentered the living room. His blurred shadow passed into Tristian's peripheral vision and the couch shuddered a little as he lowered himself onto it.
         "I didn't know they could do that," Brown told him, sounding vaguely puzzled.
         "Neither did I," Tristian answered, not even looking at him. "But I'm not really surprised, all told."
         "Nice of them, though. Saved me a lot of trouble."
         "Everything's okay, then?"
         "Yeah, yeah, it's all squared away. Everything there is just fine." Even only half listening, Tristian was alert enough to detect the cutting distinction. But he didn't say anything.
         Suddenly the couch quivered a little again and he heard Brown give a small snort. "You know," he said offhandedly, "I hope they didn't call you collect."
         Tristian gave a polite smile at first, followed by a brief chuckle, punctuating Brown's already more rolling laughter.
         He had to say something, even as he felt it bubble within him. "That's the price I pay for a listed number."
         That caused Brown to just laugh harder and before Tristian knew it the comment had infected him as well and he found himself nearly doubled over, laughing as hard as he could, almost unable to breathe, feeling tears welling up in his eyes, not sure what he found so funny, what had touched off the army of dominos in the two of them but not wanting to resist it either, just letting it go, just letting it happen as best he could.
         "Ha . . . just imagine . . ." Brown stammered out, "what the bill would said . . . you'd have . . . hah! long distance . . ."
         "Right . . . right and . . . and you'd have . . . extra-dimensional . . ."
         Together their laughter joined almost in harmony, and when it fell inevitably silent, the room seemed very quiet indeed.
         Brown gasped quietly, trying to catch his breath. "Ah, God . . . ah," one last chuckle expelled itself from his frame, "oh geez, I needed that. That felt good, didn't it?"
         "Yes. Yes, it did."