Mid Draft: Somewhere After Chapter 37

[In 2001, I gave up on this story.  But in 2004, after having not worked on it for a few years, I got the idea to start fooling around with it again.  I this scene, which takes place somewhere after chapter 37.  There were one or two more scenes I probably would have written before this, so it's not exactly after chapter 37, but somewhere after.
Not so long after writing this, I would decide that the I needed to completely re-write the story, and so this is the last thing I wrote that fits in the chronology of the first draft.  But it also is true to the vision of the second draft, so I think it would work in both of them.  Although in neither drafts did I do the work of building up all the pieces that would lead to this scene, so in both cases it is set a few chapters down from where I left off.]

“…They’ve hacked the arms off of all the crosses. Now they’re just poles standing straight up. You know the chapel in the center of campus with the big cross on top? Rosa personally climbed to the top and with Varro cut off the arms. The chapel itself is being converted into a student residence.” I shrugged. David seemed upset at my failure to get more excited. “Well what’s the matter Jon? You’re the one who always hated chapel.”

I looked out the window to avoid the question. The truth was I didn’t know. David was right. By all appearances this would seem to be something I should be excited about. I drew in a breath as if I was going to say something, but then remained silent and let the air back out. “Well?” David pressed.

“I don’t know man,” I said at last. “I hated the fact that I had to go to chapel. I never cared that other people went. If I were in charge of this revolution, I’d say no one has to go to chapel who doesn’t want to. But anyone who wants to can just keep on going just like they used to. That’s what I would do.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Icarus replied. Icarus could be incredibly stupid, and yet in his own way he was sometimes smarter than David.

David continued to press. “But Jon, why would anyone want to go to chapel?”

“I don’t know. That’s not really the point.”

David talked over me. “You know how it is. Everyday the same thing. They’re always talking about the evils of sex, as if that was the only thing in this world that mattered. You remember that.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” I answered dryly, just wishing he would leave it alone.

“And it was lies. The whole thing was all lies. And now you’re sticking up for them.”

“I’m not sticking up for them,” I replied irritated.

“You sound like you’re sticking up for them,” David said, but I hardly heard him. He continued speaking, but his voice was beginning to sound like he was underwater. He was waving his hands around, but his motions seemed like a blur. I didn’t realize I still felt so strongly, but I did. The old wound seemed opened up again. I had suddenly realized what he was really saying. He and Helen were now sleeping together.

David was so caught up in his own rhetoric that he didn’t even notice me. Icarus noticed I was distressed. “Hey man, you alright?” he asked, breaking into David’s monologue.

“Yeah, I’m alright. I’m just sick of this. Every time we meet we talk about the revolution. We haven’t had a normal conversation in months.”

“This is important Jon,” David said.

“Everything’s important,” I shot back. “I don’t want to hear your half-cocked theories on chapel or sex or any of it anymore. I’m through. I mean it this time. If you talk to me about the revolution again, I’ll hit you.”

David stared at me in disbelief. “But sure you, of all people, know they were wrong about sex.”

“Would you just shut up? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Easy Jonny,” Icarus said quietly. Icarus had silently removed himself to the corner of the room, which he now leaned against as if it were a chair. His arms were folded across his chest, and he was looking at me with that passive look of his. He had also managed to very subtly get out of the way of David and me.

“Jon, you’re sleeping with Clio, aren’t you?” David had his hand out and was enumerating this point on his first finger, as if this were only the first step in a larger case against me. He had assumed the air of a court prosecutor, and my personal life was suddenly on trial. I was furious he was bringing this up. And yet, what use was there in denying it? And so I spit out a bitter, “yes”.

With his left hand, David unfolded the second finger on his right hand to mark his second point. “And you’re sleeping with Emma, aren’t you?”

I was so shocked to hear this, I never even thought to try and hide my surprise by keeping a straight face. My jaw dropped slightly. I stared at David. He stared back at me with confidence. There was a bit of a smile on his face, as though he enjoyed catching me like this.

I turned over to look at Icarus. He still had the same calm, disinterested look on his face, but there was no surprise or wonder in his eyes. He knew. They both knew. They weren’t simply fishing with this information. Somehow, both of them knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was sleeping with Emma.

I began to feel like a caged animal now. David seemed to be coming at me from all sides. I squirmed in my chair. I didn’t even care how they had found out, I was so upset. “Yes,” I answered angrily at last.

David’s third finger came out, but now it was not so much a point as a conclusion. “Then why are you so upset that Helen and I are sleeping together?”

“Because he’s still in love with her,” Icarus answered calmly from the corner.

This answer threw David’s rhythm off. “What?” The thought had never occurred to him. After all this time it had never occurred to him. He looked over at Icarus, expecting more. But Icarus was done speaking, and simply shifted his weight in a restless way against the wall.

David seemed at a loss for what to say. He had just been enjoying his rhetorical triumph in proving me a hypocrite, but now he sputtered and couldn’t find any words. He looked at me for a response, but there was nothing I could say and my silence condemned me.

“So it’s true,” David said at last. “After all these years you are still in love with her. You never accepted the fact that she likes me instead of you.” I had the weird sensation that this conversation was not really happening, but that I was only imagining it. “Is that why you’ve been against the movement this whole time? Has all that just been a way of getting back at me?” Now that was just ridiculous, but I doubted anything I could say now would make a difference in what David was thinking, so I just stayed silent, and he seemed to take my silence as proof. “So all this time that’s what all this has been about? That’s what it’s always been about?” My hands, which were hanging at my sides, were slowly clenching and unclenching in and out of fists. I squirmed nervously in my seat. David didn’t seem to notice. “Well what do you want Jon? Do you want Helen as well so you can sleep with all three of them?”

I sprang out of the chair and hit him. It wasn’t a very clean hit. It was more of a wild swing. I guess I wasn’t thinking very clearly. Also I had hit him as I was leaping up, so my fist struck his jaw at an upward angle. His head jerked backwards, and the rest of his body seemed to follow it. It looked like the fall against the hard wood floor had been more painful than my hit, and yet the only bruise visible was a red mark on his left jaw, where I had hit him with my right hand.

Icarus ran out of the corner. David, although somewhat dazed, still managed to hold out a hand to stay Icarus. Icarus simply returned to his place in the corner and leaned back watching us calmly as if nothing had happened.

My adrenaline was pumping and I was breathing heavily even though the sum total of my physical exertion had been one swing and the effort of standing up.

David rubbed the bruise on his cheek. He was waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. If I had something to say, I wouldn’t have hit him. I looked over at Icarus to see if he would interject anything to save me, but Icarus seemed as disinterested as ever. One minute he had been running forward, but now he was back in his corner as if he were some bored deity observing us pathetic mortals.

“Don’t talk to me about the revolution,” I said at last. “Don’t talk to me about chapel, or sex, or Rosa, or how much money my father has, or any of it. We’ve both played this little game for long enough, and now it’s over. Do you understand that?” David was still on the ground, but now resting himself on his elbows. There was a small bead of blood at the corner of his mouth that he was dabbing at with a handkerchief. “I won’t go to your Revolutionary councils, or your Young Clodian meetings, and you don’t come by my room anymore. I don’t ever want to see either of you again.” I waited for a moment to see if either of them had anything to say in response, but the room was quiet and all I could hear was the sound of my own heavy breathing. Hearing nothing, I turned and walked out as quickly as I could. And that was the last time I ever saw either of them.

Actually that’s not completely true. I met David again on two different occasions. But both of those are such horrible memories, I prefer not to think about it.