The Poet and The Soldier

Nine.

"Please. You are - were - her favourite poet."

It's this more than anything else which finally gives Isadora Heroux, one of the most renowned poets of the twenty-first century, pause. She turns to study the man sitting in her living room, noting the bags beneath his eyes, the trembling of his hands.

Connor Brown shifts under the scrutiny.

"I see," she eventually responds.

Connor waits. After a while, she inhales sharply before continuing. "While I understand the recent loss of your sister in Afghanistan, I cannot simply create a proper poetic eulogy out of nothing. And patriotic sentiment is so," she sniffs derisively, "uninspired."

Ding.

Sent: 3:36pm

How's it going?

-EG

"I understand," Connor pauses, waiting for Heroux to look up from her phone. She ignores him entirely. "I understand this isn't normal, but Anna, well, she is - was - really special."

Heroux doesn't even bother to look up. I'm trying Anna. Connor swallows.

"When - when we were younger, our dad, he wasn't always... well, I guess you could say he had a bit of a drinking problem. But Anna, she was-"

Ding.

Sent: 3:38pm

You do realise we need at

least a draft by Friday week

for the publicity meeting?

-EG

Heroux stands. "Leave," she waves distractedly, her stringy brown hair falling over her eyes as she taps out an irritated reply. Her fingers are long and slender and smudged with ink, and as she gesticulates her sleeve falls down, revealing an arm tattooed with an intricate pattern.

Sent: 3:39pm

ik, piss off im working

"She was always so strong!" Connor bursts out. "She was always the protector, she's the only reason I haven't grown up thinking all women are like my mother. She's probably the only reason I've not - I'm trying not to turn out... like dad."

Ding.

Sent: 3:41pm

I knew it. You haven't

written anything.

-EG

Heroux is still standing in the centre of her untidy living room, papers scattered everywhere and furniture overturned, with her arm raised in clear invitation to leave.

It's difficult to reconcile the woman in front of him with the image in his head, constructed from glimpses of pictures in the back of books and Anna's constant sighing and mooning when she'd discovered the then twenty-year-old-poet at age fifteen.

But the difference is more than that: her face is more drawn, her cheeks hollow, eyes sunken.

Sent: 3:42pm

theres nothing worth

writing

"I always knew she'd do something like join the army, or the police." Connor's voice sounds smaller now as he slumps back. "Protecting people."

He fixes his eyes on her extended arm, pointing him towards the exit. He can't bring himself to meet Heroux's gaze, but the silence stretches on into dangerously awkward territory and he can't help continuing.

"She joined when she was twenty. She was on her second tour of duty in Afghanistan, when she-you, you never think it'll happen. You fear, of course, but you never think that it'll actually happen, until it does."

In the quiet after his words, his examination of her exposed arm reveals the ridged scars concealed underneath the tattoos, and the faded, tell-tale marks that track up into her inner elbow. It is only once Heroux lowers her arm, shaking the sleeve back over her wrist that he drops his eyes, startled and ashamed.

It's not his business, and God knows he's done some awful things too. Things that Anna still managed to forgive him for. He owes her so much, and he can't even manage this for her.

One more time, one last ditch effort. "She really did love your poems. She always said-"

"Shut up," Heroux interrupts. "Don't say anything. I'm thinking."

Connor holds his breath.

She folds her arms over her tattered shirt, tracing shapes into the carpet with her bare foot as she frowns. Her phone is still in her hand.

"Okay," she finally says.

Connor exhales.

"No, shut up," she snaps. "I wasn't done. I'll take the commission, but I'll be doing it my way." She stalks forward, dressing gown flaring behind her as she steps up onto the sofa beside Connor and starts ripping off the papers pinned to the wall. They fall about him like oversized snowflakes, covered in scribbles and sketches.

Connor stays stock still, and waits.

"You will not tell me anything more about her," Heroux continues. "What she loved, what she hated, her passions, nothing. I will not interview anyone else about her. I will not read her military files. Absolutely nothing, do you understand?" She pauses her tearing to stare at him from under her raised arm. Connor nods hastily.

"What I will need, is all your photographs of her." She steps down with an armful of paper and dumps them on Connor. "Bring them over at ten o'clock tomorrow and put those in the bin on your way out."

With that, she turns, stepping on her coffee table on her way to the window overlooking the street. Recognising a dismissal, Connor Brown collects the papers into a pile, stands, and leaves.

Isadora listens to him thump down the stairs and watches him walk across the street, only then allowing herself a small smile.

Ding.

Sent: 3:50pm

Well, you're going to

have to do something.

Your book deadline is

coming up soon. We

need to prove you're still

alive.

-EG

Sent: 3:51pm

i have a project. now

piss off.

Sent: 3:52pm

Oh? A client?

-EG

Sent: 3:52pm

A challenge.