Nanowrimo 12

WOOOO so I just finished my novel. So pumped right now I could probably eat a live cactus. But I won't. So here's a celebratory post! I'll post twice today because why not. So yeah. Enjoy!

-CD

Chapter 7

The apartment feels a lot warmer with Froid gone. I wish that could be a positive thing.

In contrast to the draft that Froid cast on me, I have Callahan snoring and snorting in a puddle of sweat. I think it’s disgusting, but it makes me feel that much less bad about killing him off.

Callahan is just a waste of writing at this point. I can’t gain any more from him, seeing that I’ve gotten some dominion over Froid, as well as the even bigger prize. I could just send Callahan back on his way home, assuring him that he’s no longer needed, but his exposure to the two of them is a liability. The more time he spends around them, the less I’m able to control him. I don’t know why, but I blame my brother for it.

And so now I must kill Callahan Grossherz in a way that ties in well with the narrative and minimize the damage to the progress I’ve made with my other two characters.

He awakes with a start as if he knows what I’m thinking about, but he has nothing to fear. I won’t kill him off now. He may be suspicious, but he and I will be going and visiting Froid and Samuel a lot. We’ll have to occupy the same space then, and I know if one day I randomly appear without Callahan that Froid, and Samuel to a lesser extent, will be suspicious.

“Callahan, I’m thinking of going over to the hospital today. You should come too.”

“Do you know if her parents or yours will be coming at all?”

I chuckle. Our parents don’t care. To them they have two genius sons that are geniuses in such different ways. They probably assume Samuel just planned this whole thing out because he can. Froid’s contacted the hospital yesterday after getting called, but only to make sure that she was alive and that this experience was romantic enough to instill a desire to do poetry again. When they found out the Coldridge’s were with her they immediately bequeathed the responsibility of their daughter to me. I wish I could kill them off too, but I’ve never met them. I wouldn’t even know how to.

The two of us get ready slowly as if we have nothing to do today. Callahan may not, but I certainly do. I have to salvage Froid and Samuel, plan how to kill Callahan off, and do it all convincingly. It’s hard though now because I can’t see Callahan at all. He’s as blank as Froid and Samuel except for those crucial moments when they act human.

On our way to the hospital Callahan decides to be obnoxious. He fidgets with everything: the temperature control, the door lock, the window roller. It gravitates towards me eventually as he starts looking for radio stations. He doesn’t even give them a chance. He keeps passing over and over them.

“Callahan, anything you have in mind that you want to listen to?”

Callahan doesn’t answer, too engrossed in fulfilling something beyond my comprehension. But not beyond my annoyance.

“Can you please stop playing with the radio? Let’s just keep it here, on NPR.”

Callahan sits back for a little, but within a minute starts moving the dial around aimlessly.

I go blindly into his mind.

Callahan, why the hell are you doing this? Just to irritate him? What cause?

The faux monologue should at least jar him, make him hesitate, confuse him. But he carries on as if he heard nothing.

He could easily suppress a thought. He can’t suppress so easily a command.

“Callahan stops playing with the dial. As suddenly as he starts he assumes a placid position with his arms folded in his lap.”

Except that doesn’t happen. He keeps going. We arrive at the hospital.

Froid is about the same: hostile towards Callahan and submissive towards me. She relaxes every time Callahan leaves the room, as if he’s the perfect example of a missed opportunity.

This time Callahan has left to use the bathroom. He’s been doing that a lot. I think he just wants the excuse to not look at Froid. Froid smiles at me weakly, but it’s as vibrant a smile as I’ve seen from her.

“Are you feeling better?” I ask her.

“With you around, yes.”

I pat her shoulder. “Want me to get you any food? I know the menu selection here is nothing special, but I think you can make do.”

“I want to leave here, now. With you,” she says immediately. She hardly let me finish. “I want to leave all this behind. Leave Callahan and… Samuel here. Poetry, my parents. Let everyone think I’m dead or crazy. Except you. You can keep a secret can’t you?”

As soon as she finishes Callahan enters the room again with a bag of Cheetos. He deposits the orange film over his fingertips and lips, and the smell wafts over towards us. Froid’s mood drastically changes and she holds him responsible again. With enough animosity to probably just kill him by herself, she backs him into the corner towards the door. Her anger is so strong that I can look a bit into her mind. I can feel the tension in her muscles. I can almost even read her explicit thoughts.
            You. Die. If you’re so much about living why don’t I just kill you myself?

I break the silence. “I’m going to go check on Samuel. Callahan, why don’t you stay here with Froid?”

I will write Froid an entire novel if I come back to a dead Callahan.

Samuel is asleep, as I left him. He looks so awkward when he’s sleeping and always has. However, he seems to subconsciously relax when I enter the room with a knock. He still doesn’t wake, but his face smoothes out. He stops moving around.

“I’m here, Samuel.” I whisper.

I swear that I see him smile in his sleep.

When I arrive back to Froid’s room Callahan is gone. I ask Froid where he went and she shrugs her shoulders. I check around the room just to make sure she really didn’t kill him and toss his body somewhere.

When the room is satisfyingly clear I focus my attention again on Froid. She smiles at me like she was meant to.

The moment is truncated when Samuel suddenly appears in the room.

“RUN!” he yells at her and grabs her hand. She grabs mine as well and we’re suddenly sprinting down the halls, bumping into nurses and patients, a three-person strand of chaos.

The entrance is guarded, but in my abrupt confusion I wish them away. The way is clear and we all end up outside, looking at each other.

“What’s the meaning of this, Samuel?” I ask my brother.

He looks at me blankly before he grabs Froid’s arm.

“Leave us for today.” And then they walk back inside.

Chapter 8

The lobby of the hospital was still empty when Samuel and Froid reentered. The two of them made their way across the hospital before leaving through a door on the other side.

Callahan was waiting for them, as planned.

“Took you long enough.”

Samuel scoffed at him. “Let us see you be an actor for once, Athlete.”

“Guys, as much as I love watching you two get on each other’s nerves, we have a story to write!” Froid interjected as the two cut each other into shreds in their minds.

“Seriously,” she punctuated. Samuel broke focus and almost collapsed to the ground. “Let’s leave before Luke figures out what we’re doing!”

“We need not worry about that,” replied Samuel. “His hubris has blinded him enough to no longer see us. This is the effect of feeding him.”

The three walked together along the street, Samuel and Froid still sheathed in hospital gowns. They looked conspicuous enough. If Luke had any desire to find them, all he would have to do would be to look for two enamored poets connected through their hands and lilting along the sidewalk like bed sheets. Callahan’s lumbering figure was also obvious.

By the time they arrived to Samuel’s hotel it was late in the afternoon. None of them had money for cab fare, a tedious snare in their otherwise seamless planning. Callahan was the most exhausted of the three, much to the surprise of everyone.

“Can you guys please enlighten me on this plan?” he begged between breaths. “Other than sneaking out with you guys at the hospital, I have no idea what’s going on.”

Samuel looked at Callahan with strong intent. Froid at first did not know what he was doing, but once Callahan reciprocated with a stronger retort, she saw there was nothing to fear.

“We must write,” Samuel said.

Callahan was still confused. “How is this supposed to…”

“If we write, we’re challenging Luke as the narrator. Once we gain narration of the story, all this can be behind us.”

“Seriously, Samuel,” Callahan began.

“Seriously,” Samuel echoed with a wrinkled brow and nose.

Callahan rolled his eyes and resumed. “You should have just murdered your brother in your sleep or something. Could have saved us a hell of a lot of problems.”

“It does not matter to me what my brother does until it affects my poetry, Athlete,” snapped Samuel.

“Yeah, so then why are you helping us?”

“Do you care?”

“How do we know that you’re not working with him?”

As soon as Callahan said that, its ridiculousness registered in his mind. If there were anyone who would be helping Luke, conscious or not, it would be him.

The spat diffused, and Froid brought in some paper.

“I think we’re going to need more paper,” she faltered.

“As long as our handwritings are not first-grade, we shall be fine.”

Callahan knew the insult was for him, but he let it pass.

“How… do we start?” Callahan asked. “And like… who writes?”

“We all write,” replied Froid. “There are some ground rules, though. Just to keep the narrative consistent. Samuel and I started the list. We can add more as we progress.”

“First: no adverbs ending in –ly.”

“WHAT?!”

“Athlete, that is my one stipulation.”

Callahan groaned.

“Callahan, Luke uses a lot of adverbs in his narrative. We’re going to have to forgo their use.”

Callahan conceded.

“Second,” Samuel began again. “No contractions.”

“This is sure sounding a lot like your style, Coldridge,” observed Callahan.

“Contrast.”

“Finally,” said Froid.

“We will use verse.”

“Hell no, Coldridge!”

“Blank verse.”

“You know how damn hard that’s going to be?”

“Contrast.”

“Coldridge, we don’t have time!”

“Samuel, I’m going to have to agree with Callahan on this one. I don’t think we have time for putting it in verse like that. Even if-”

“We cannot argue. If our emotions are high my brother may find us.”

The three of them looked at each other for a long while.

“And we will do blank verse.”

“NO!”

“Callahan, please lower your-”

“Athlete.”

“How dare you!”

“Adverb.”

            Froid gasped. Samuel had not called someone an adverb is a long time. The last time he called someone one was to her.

“You guys came up with the first two without me. Why can’t I have my own?”

“Very well. Samuel, can we just let him have his way with this one?”

Samuel was the least cooperative person on the planet. He would rather betray them to Luke than compromise.

But then he thought about his poetry. And he thought about Froid.

At last Samuel relented. “But Athlete, bear in mind. I am not doing this for your sake.”

The three began to write. They took turns, with Froid and Samuel writing about their first meeting in Seattle at the Suzzallo Reading Room, meeting again in secret, and their executed plan of getting rid of Luke. Samuel added the Christmas story from when Luke vowed to hate his younger brother. Froid wrote her short first encounter with Samuel. And then together they wrote about when Callahan met Froid.

“Writing,” she replied, still not looking at him but rather arbitrarily organizing a stack of papers in her folder.

Callahan laughed. Small talk did not get him into this college. “Oh, but of course! I love Coldridge’s poetry so much. It’s so… free. I did my senior project in English on ?y(not)ou! Such a great book. I’m so happy he publishes his poetry. I hear he’s a real introvert. But I guess that’s okay, because he’s one of the greatest poets who’s ever lived! I guess he can do whatever he wants, as long as he keeps writing like that. He’s like another e.e. cummings, no, wait, better than e.e. cummings!”

He did not know that Froid had not been listening to anything he had said after “oh.” Samuel had entered the room.

Samuel did not look at her at all while he crossed their sight. His mind was writing a poem. He tapped his leather briefcase with his fingers, coming up with a polyrhythm for a meter, percussing sharper when he broke his rhythm with misplaced orthography, a parenthetical. Everything was at his command. He made his own language through the perversion of another. Word order perversion. Grammatical category perversion. Orthography perversion. A few called it sacrilegious. Everyone else called it genius.

As he passed Froid he stopped and gently tapped her four times on the left shoulder. Tum tum ta-tum. That meant “coffee at-three”.

Callahan did not know this. He didn’t even know that Froid was completely ignoring him. To him the mere vision of Froid’s profile, eyes fixated on something in the distance, her angular features in the foreground, was lovely enough. Silence was lovely enough.

Callahan learned many things that class period. He learned that Froid’s name was Froid when the professor called on her. He learned that Froid wrote minimalistic poetry. He learned that Froid had a nervous twitch whenever Samuel would tap his briefcase as if she were expected to know the meaning of every iteration that came from his relentless percussion.

“So, do you wanna grab a bite to-”

Froid got up and walked over towards Samuel, and the two made their way out of the room together, Samuel grabbing Froid’s needle-like fingers and toting her along.

 Thus, Callahan learned that Froid was dating Samuel.

“That looks good,” Froid said as Callahan wrote the final sentence. He did not like this back-story. He wrote his own observations with Froid and Samuel supplying details that he did not know at the time. The effect was omniscient enough.

            Callahan’s fingers began to hurt. He complained about them at length over his bowl of steamed bok choy. Samuel had ordered them all bowls on his own volition, and while Froid accepted her meal with minimal gratitude, Callahan had done nothing but balk. At one point he smeared some of his bok choy over a passage of a poem of Samuel’s, and Samuel was tempted to seek retribution again for Callahan’s assaults.

            “My fingers feel like this bok choy, Coldridge!”

            “Athlete, you flatter my strength.”

            Callahan growled at him. Froid got to work on the Thanksgiving where the two of them met her parents.

            Mallory Froid enjoyed emulating the rug in the living room. She even made her husband match her outfit, so that they could sit on the sofa and “tie the room together.” It was their one source of pride. Even Caracolle could bring something of more value to fruition.

           

            “Callahan, please let me write this alone. You weren’t there.”

            “Sorry. Just want to give Caracolle a little credit…”

            “Please. She doesn’t need any.”           

            “Nor do you, Athlete.”

            “Shut up! I just want a balanced portrayal of Caracolle.”

            “She’s not even central to this story! Just let me do what I do.”

            “But then there’s gonna be some inconsistency.”

            “Callahan, what do you think Luke’s opinion was of Caracolle? Do you think he was gushing over her vapidity? He wasn’t. I’m amazed that you have such a high opinion of her given how he probably described her to you.”

            “Fine, Froid. Whatever. Just don’t write about Caracolle at all in this scene.”

            “I’ll try not to. She might appear, though.”

            “And you do not, Athlete.”

            “And now I have to document this conversation, Callahan.”

            “Sorry.”

            “No, you’re not.”

            Mallory had an incumbent camera that was used for documenting the holiday parties in all of its grandeur or lack thereof. Froid hated pictures, and this was perhaps why. Every guest who walked through the door was condemned to a candid to be forever preserved in a scrapbook of the day. This was why Froid insisted that she and Samuel arrive late. The fewer pictures of the two of them, the better.

            Minutes before dinner was served Froid and Samuel entered. While their exposure to the camera was minimized, the debt was compensated for when they did appear. Scores of photos were taken in rapid succession, not for the sake of preservation of memory but just for quantity of Samuel to be forever under the coffee table in the living room.

            Samuel and Froid staggered over to the table, blinded with annoyance and a little by the camera. Samuel was not fond of eating, nor was he fond of pictures, nor was he fond of those who seemed to live for nothing except to gush about him.

            He pondered Froid’s parents that way. The moment he arrived they ceased all conversation that was irrelevant to him.

            “Mr. Coldridge, please tell us! Have you been writing any more for publication?” Mallory began. She did not wait for his reply. “Ham and I just love all the volumes you’ve done of y(not)ou. Just so beautiful. You have such a unique pride of being an artist. They should publish your work everywhere, make it mandatory to read! If everyone read it there would be so many more artists in the world, and they’d all work to make our society so much more civilized!”

            They had misinterpreted Samuel’s poetry in the most tragic way possible.

            This conversation continued in this route for the rest of the meal. Samuel did not even speak. Froid documented the conversation in her mind, sensing it would be useful in the future for reminding herself why she hated her parents so much. The rest of the guests at the dinner table were either enamored by Samuel’s mere presence or bored because they did not know who he was. Caracolle disappeared somewhere through dinner, and Froid wished she had done the same thing.

            After gratuitous untraditional Thanksgiving fare, of which Samuel only ate the kelp because it looked like bok choy, Mallory and Hamline proceeded with their attempts to woo Samuel. They were too pretentious to realize that by their own grave misunderstanding they had lost him in spectacular fashion. The first thing they started out with was a discussion of poets.           

            “Now, who do you like the most of the postmodern poets, Mr. Coldridge?” asked Hamline. “I’ve read everywhere that you’ve been compared to e.e. cummings, and boy, you could’ve taught him a lesson or two with structure. Wow, Cummings was the best, wasn’t he?”

            Samuel hated e.e. cummings.

            “Or, or maybe,” mused Mallory, “You like someone more structured like Tennyson? Or Wordsworth? I read a very fascinating article the other day by a Rhodes scholar who’s a huge fan of your work, and he made a very convincing argument that you wrote your poem ‘wetrock’ as a reactionary piece to ‘The Daffodils.’ Is that true? Oh, you don’t have to answer that right away, it might just spoil the fun of analysis!”

            Samuel knew which Rhodes scholar wrote the article. It was Quentin Hoakes, Quentin the publisher. He hated Quentin Hoakes. He also hated British poets.

            “Can I ask, Mr. Coldridge, if it’s okay to-”

            “Samuel,” Samuel said. It was the first time he had spoken.

            “Oh, of course! We can drop the silly titles, can’t we Mallory?”

            “Certainly, for your sake!”

            Samuel hated these people.

            “Anyway, Samuel,” Hamline giggled at calling him by his given name for whatever reason, “Which poet… inspired you to do… poetry? Was there a muse? Was there not a muse? You don’t have to answer us if it’s personal.”

            “Gray’s Anatomy. And Robert Frost.”

            The two were shocked. “Gray’s Anatomy as in… the medical book thing? That’s so… different. But more power to you to find poetry even in the most unpoetic of places!”

            They had nothing good to say about Robert Frost. Loving Frostian verse was too mainstream for them. Having such a hackneyed idol for a poet like Samuel was inexcusable in their eyes. Samuel of course did not care. To his relief it ended that topic of conversation.

            Froid tried to sneak Samuel into her room. Neither of them could leave without inciting hundreds of useless pictures and the pathetic blubbering of her parents as they begged them not to go before kumquat pie. She was not quite sure what they would do there, but it would involve sitting in silence or reading Froid’s much-abused copy of North of Boston.

            “Oh, where are you two running off to now? Come back please, I don’t want any grandchildren yet!” called Mallory. They were spotted going up the stairs. Before they even had the chance to make their way back down Mallory sprinted over to them.

            “Samuel, you haven’t seen our collection of Froidian poetry, haven’t you?” She laughed at her own pun. It was funny for the adults. Froid found it insulting.

            “Have I choice?” Samuel whispered to Froid.

            Froid tugged him along behind her mother. “If we behave, maybe they’ll let us go before dessert,” she whispered back.

            “Ah, here is Ambrosia’s very first poem!” She beamed at the shadowbox. The poem was faded and illegible to begin with. It now looked like a blank piece of paper. Mallory would even think that to be some sort of art.

            “Isn’t it beautiful, Samuel? What genius she had even as a small child!”

            Froid hated that poem. It was not even supposed to be a poem. She had practiced spelling random words while finger painting.

            “And here we have a poem that Ambrosia wrote in middle school. Such a dark time for all of us, isn’t it?”

            Samuel recognized this poem. It was untitled but the first lines were “find out/ why light seeps/ and sleeps.” Froid had submitted it during their workshop. Samuel did not realize it was that old. Froid gave him a sheepish look when he gave her a subtle facial confrontation.

            “I was lazy that week,” she admitted. Samuel smiled at her. That class was as big a waste of time for him as it was for her.

            “And this one, ooh, this one is my personal favorite!” Mallory ushered them over to another poem that was put up a few weeks ago. It was called “perfect still.” Samuel recognized that one the most. That one was also submitted for workshop. He knew that poem the best out of all of them.

            “I shall write for that poem.”

            “But Samuel, I have it all set up!”
            “It is important for me.”

            “But I’m the one that wrote it!”

            “I must write it. I will write about the poetry class too.”

            Froid was too tired of writing to argue with Samuel. She tossed her hands in the air and sat down. Samuel sat down next to her.

            “Aren’t you going to write it now?”

            “Later.”

            “Why?”

            “You shall see.”

            “What are we going to do with all of this narrative?”

            “Put it at the beginning.”

            And then, in the middle of Luke’s narratives, Samuel put the story of when he saw Froid at the poetry reading.