Second Draft Chapter 23

The next few weeks passed quietly enough, although my days continued to get busier and busier. As always there was Cadets practice twice a day. Plus all the extra duties that went along with being a Cadet leader, mostly staying after to help clean up, and showing up early to help prepare. (Leadership is an amazing thing, isn’t it? If you ever want to get someone to do more work for nothing, just tell him he’s a leader and he’ll do it with a smile on his face.)

In the evenings Clio jealously demanded my time. And in the middle of the night, I would sometimes secretly attend meetings of the Central Student Committee. I wasn’t sure what I was doing to be honest. I was keeping secrets from Orion, but in the back of my mind I told myself that I was still keeping my options open, and that anytime I wanted to come clean I could go and tell everything to Orion and have him congratulate me for my brilliant undercover work.

And of course there was art guild, which was becoming more and more simply the Orpheus club. Instead of everyone working on their own projects like it was before, now everyone simply pretended to work on their own projects, and waited for Orpheus to dazzle them with whatever he was working on. I didn’t really understand any of Orpheus’s paintings, and I’m convinced half the art guild didn’t really understand them either, but it had become fashionable to praise whatever Orpheus produced. Orpheus could have spat on the canvas, and they would have all said it was a great work of art.

One day when everyone at art guild was admiring Orpheus as usual, Hermes took me aside. He filled up his coffee cup at the refreshment table, and then we sat down on a couple old chairs in the back. Hermes immediately put his feet up on the coffee table. “Congratulate me Jon,” he said. “I’m a genius.”

“Alright, you’re a genius,” I answered.

“Damn right!” Hermes took a drink from his coffee cup, and then looked at me expectantly. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m a genius?”

“If I have to.”

“Remember how I could never get Icarus to look at any of Orpheus’s paintings?” [Go back and make sure this is more explicit in the text]

“Vaguely.”

“I finally got him. I remember you told me once that Icarus likes to discover everything by himself. So I let him discover the paintings. I went out for coffee with him one night, and on our way to the Cave we just happened to walk through the University art department, and walked right passed a display of Orpheus’s art. I completely ignored it and pretended there was nothing there. Icarus stopped me and asked if I knew who the artist was who drew those paintings. I said it did look familiar, but I couldn’t remember right now who it was. At which point Icarus took a second look at the paintings, and then started talking about how wonderful they are and how he just absolutely had to meet the artist. And then I casually remarked that on second thought I think I do remember who the artist was, and that he usually comes to art guild.”

“Does this mean you’re finally going to get Icarus to come to art guild?” I asked.

“Alas, no, he didn’t go quite that far. But he was very interested in Orpheus’s paintings, so I gave him several copies to take home with him.”

“How did you get several copies?”

“Didn’t I tell you Jon? Orpheus always gives me his paintings at the end of art guild. He says everything he does for art guild is just fooling around, and none of it is his great work, so he doesn’t care what happens to it.

“His generosity knows no bounds.”

Hermes didn’t even seem to notice the sarcasm in my voice. “So do you think we’ll get Icarus to come to art guild now?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

Hermes took a sip from his cup. “No, I guess I wouldn’t count on it either. What about Orpheus’s sister? You said she was an artist, right?”

“No good,” I said. “She doesn’t do well in groups.”

“So you keep saying Jon. Are you sure you’re not just hiding all the pretty girls for yourself?”

I decided to answer this question by asking another question. “What is this obsession with getting everyone to come to Art Guild?”

“A man’s got to have some purpose in life Jon,” Hermes replied with a straight face. “Before I graduate, I want to create the best art guild possible. A collection of the University’s super stars. Then even after we graduate, we can continue trading ideas and helping each other out with projects.”

I leaned in towards Hermes. “You mean you realize a lot of these people are better than you, and you want to try and mooch off their success in the future?”

With anybody else, these might have been fighting words. But I had begun to realize Hermes actually enjoyed this kind of barbed humor. He took a long drink from his coffee cup while he tried to think of a come back, and then when he put the cup down he said, “Not all of us can be born into rich and famous families Jon.”

**************************************************

Later that same night I was sitting in my room, trying to get a little bit of homework done, when David and Icarus burst through the door.

Their sudden entrance startled me, and I practically jumped out of my seat as they came running in. My pen went flying from my hand and landed on the ground somewhere. I got up, slightly irritated, and started looking around the floor for my lost pen. “Damn it,” I said, “can’t you jackasses give me a little warning before you come running in here like that?”

I found my pen lying by the bed, and bent down to get it. When I looked up from the ground, I noticed the look on their faces for the first time. Both of their faces were flushed red. Their hair was matted down with sweat, and pasted to their foreheads. Both of them were breathing hard, and David’s hands were shaking. “What happened to you guys?” I asked.

“Jon you should have been there,” David said, grabbing me by the shoulders.

“What happened?” I repeated
.
“We can’t talk about it here,” Icarus insisted.

“Sure we can,” David said, “but we’ll need to close the window first.” As Icarus went over to close my window, David went over and made sure my door was shut and locked. Then he came over to me and in a hushed but excited tone whispered, “We got chased by the police.”

“I thought they were going to catch you Dave,” Icarus said.

“I thought they were going to catch me too.”

“What happened?” I asked for the third time, this time my voice more excited.

“Shh!” David made a half-hearted attempt to quiet me, but he was obviously more excited about his story then he was intent on keeping me quiet. “Icarus and I were passing out pamphlets,” he said. “We were down by Terra Street. Are you familiar with that area at all?” I shook my head no. “It’s kind of by the slums actually. A real poor area. They don’t even bother to keep the street lights maintained down there, so for the most part Icarus and I were wandering around in the dark. We were hanging leaflets on the doors of houses, and sticking them on street corners, anywhere we could.”

“You know the new pamphlets?” Icarus chimed in. “The ones Varro handed out at the last meeting?”

“I saw it briefly,” I said.

“Unfortunately we don’t have any with us right now,” David said. “We dropped them all when we had to run.”

“It’s okay. I got the just of them before.”

“Okay, anyway,” David continued, “there aren’t too many people out wandering the streets, because it’s so dark out, right? Occasionally we came across some homeless guy sleeping in the corner, and so we slip a flier under his arm, or some poor drunk is swaying through the streets and we gave him a flier too.”

“I can’t imagine the drunks are too interested in LJ’s politics,” I said.

“Always the negative one aren’t you Jonny,” Icarus said.

“Well maybe they’ll read it when they get sober,” David said. “Anyway, as we’re passing this stuff out, I guess we must have given one to a policeman somewhere along the line.”

“It was so dark out we couldn’t see his uniform,” Icarus explained.

“We should have been more careful, but Icarus is right. It was dark out. The policeman took the flier from us, but he couldn’t read it in the dark, so he kept it until he found a tavern that had enough light coming from the window to read by. Then he looked at the pamphlet, saw what it says, and he sprang into action.”

“Hey! You kids! Stop!” Icarus lowered his voice by an octave to do his impersonation of an angry policeman.

David took over the thread of the narrative again. “Yeah, he sounded just like that that. He just yelled it out from all the way done the street. If he was a little bit smarter, he would have waited until he caught up with us again and then tried to arrest us, but he was probably so angry he just yelled without thinking. And then, after we heard him yell, we could hear his footsteps running down the street towards us.”

“You should have been there Jon,” Icarus said.

“It was the last thing we expected,” David admitted. “What is a Policeman doing wandering around the slums at night? By himself? I was so surprised I didn’t even realize what was happening until Icarus took off running.”

Icarus looked slightly guilty. “Um, yeah sorry about that Dave. I didn’t mean to leave you there. I just panicked I guess.”

“No, you were right to run,” David answered. “If I was stupid enough to stand around, I deserved to be left behind. But you know how Icarus is when he runs, right Jon? Like he’s got wings attached to him or something.” [possibly 3rd time wing metaphor. Overkill?]

“When I start running, my legs just take over by themselves,” Icarus explained, still looking embarrassed.

“So Icarus just disappeared into the night, but by the time I realized what’s happening, the policeman was almost on top of me. And when I did take off running, he was right on my heels. I thought that maybe I could loose him in the darkness so I kept turning into every side street I could find, but I could still hear his footsteps right behind mine.”

David, who was getting caught up in the excitement of his own story, stopped to take a deep breath and said, “to be honest Jon, even when I felt sure he was going to catch me it was the greatest moment in my life. I’m not sure I can explain it.”

I understood exactly what he meant, but for some reason I felt myself getting irritated by his story. I’m not sure why. I thought maybe it was because he was making too big of a production out of it. “You don’t have to explain,” I said. “Just finish the story.”

“I really thought he had me Jon. He was in much better shape then I was, and my legs just wouldn’t move as fast as I wanted them too. But then the next thing I knew I found myself running towards the river. You know the one I’m talking about, the big one that cuts right through downtown.”

“The Mare,” said Icarus.

“Yeah, that’s it, the Mare. I must have turned into it without realizing it. I don’t know how I got there. I had no idea where I was going. I was just running down whatever street looked good to me and somehow I got to the river. I was running across the bridge, which was so old and rickety that in normal circumstances I wouldn’t even have set foot on it, and just as he is about to catch me I decided to jump off. I landed in the water with a huge splash, but once I resurfaced I just tread water quietly and tried not to make any sounds. He knew he’d never catch me in the river after dark, so he just stood on the bridge for a while trying to spot me. I swam upstream and then once I was sure I was far enough away from him I found a place I could crawl out of the river.”

“Well that explains the smell.”

“Yeah, very funny Jon. I changed my clothes before I came here.”

“The water must have been pretty cold this time of year,” Icarus observed.

“Trust me, that was the last thing on my mind. I didn’t even begin to feel cold until I was already out of the water and walking back to the University. And even then, I hardly had time to realize how cold I was. I kept looking over my shoulder and expecting the policeman to jump out at any minute.”

“That’s quite a story,” I admitted.

“Jon, you should have been there,” David said. “You would have loved it.”

I didn’t want to be angry with David, but something in his tone was making my blood feel warm in spite of myself. Maybe it was his patronizing tone, or the way both of them seemed so pleased with themselves. “I don’t need to play tag with the police,” I said. “I got all of that out of my system when I was fifteen.”

“What you did back then was just fooling around Jon,” David replied. “This is important.”

My blood flared up again. They were trying to use their silly cause as a way to assume the moral high ground against me. Everything I did was just foolishness, and everything they did was so noble and praiseworthy.

“You think you guys are changing anything by passing out pamphlets in the slums?” I asked. “Those people couldn’t care less about your politics. I bet most of them can’t even read. You’re just supplying them with free toilet paper.”

David and Icarus were obviously taken back by my outburst. They exchanged looks with each other, and then David said in a quiet voice, “Alright Jon, you’re a member of the Central Student Committee now too. What do you suggest we do?”

“If you’re going to take risks, then don’t take stupid risks. And if you’re going to take stupid risks, then don’t act like you’re some sort of hero afterwards.”

David puffed his chest up. “We’re willing to make sacrifices for the cause Jon.”

“Don’t you get it? You’ll all have plenty of opportunities to make sacrifices before this is all over. The Police already know about you. Orion’s trying to track you down. The best thing you could do is just lay low right for a while.”

“We can’t do that Jon,” Icarus answered. “People are dying in the war now.”

“He’s right Jon,” David said.

“But you’re no good to your cause in jail.”

“We’d be even worse to it if we gave up,” David said.

I reached out suddenly and grabbed David by the arm. “Just promise me one thing then. Don’t bring Helen with you on these little adventures.”

“Jon, we’ve been through this. She’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself.”

I dug my nails into his arm. “The meetings are one thing. But don’t bring her into the slums pamphleting. You saw yourself what could happen.”

“She can—.”

“Yes, but it’s your job to protect her. You’re her boyfriend. You shouldn’t want to put her in dangerous situations even if she can handle herself.”

“Ouch! Okay, okay Jon.” I realized I had been tightening my grip on David’s arm, and I let go. “Damn it, Jon, you drew blood,” David said, looking at where my nails had dug into his flesh.

“Consider that your first sacrifice for the cause then.”

“You’re just a laugh a minute tonight Jon.”

“A little blood never hurt anyone,” I added. “I’m almost always bleeding by the end of Cadets practice. Especially on the days when I have to spar with Orion.”

“I’m not afraid of blood,” David said defensively. “I don’t mind bleeding after a wrestling match, but I don’t usually expect it during a conversation.”

Icarus was already getting bored with this conversation. He yawned audibly, and then took a step forward and interjected, “Don’t forget about the meeting tomorrow night Jonny.”

“I’ll be there,” I answered.

David also took Icarus’s hint to wrap up the conversation. “I’ll see you later Jon,” he said as the two of them walked out the door.

Once they were gone, I put my head in my hands and wondered what I had gotten myself into.