The Metaphysicist (Kill Your Darlings) | Featured

you used to call me on my hell phone

Yep, she's angry with me, which should have been expected. To anyone else, her voice would project surprise and confusion, but I know her better than that, and know that she rarely gets visibly angry, rather stores her anger in other emotions. Edie Parker is a person sensitive to abrupt vagaries mixed into her life without a warning beforehand, and I've known this for a while, but I was praying foolishly that she would not scold me for being this spontaneous when that's so unlike me. Spontaneity looks fantastic on Lucien but not so much on my own body, and that's okay, because I can watch him in the limelight from afar without risking my unsuitable nature, but I enacted a careless mistake in not explaining my plans to Edie and therefore ignored a sole step in the art of coasting on my whims, and that's why spontaneity is unfitting for me.

And now I'm fucked, but Edie isn't going to hang up when she is devoid of an explanation as to why I abandoned her and Jack when I never even leave the house, and I'd hate to lie to her, but the truth is so damn infuriating to someone like her, a pragmatic woman who needs to know everything about her charges, and I never really view that as controlling, just mindful of circumstances that could easily convert to unfortunate as quickly as they could convert to pleasant, so there's nothing to stop me from complying from a moral standpoint, and I might as well just extract the truth from myself to help her out, as she's done so much for me since college.

This still doesn't solve my issue of being anxious out of my mind, with a screw twisting the corner of my lips as a natural reflex to a phobia, but I shove the words out anyway; it's the least I can do. "Um, I moved in with a guy."

A sigh wobbles through the speaker, replacing the relief I thought was next with disappointment in choices that I am allowed to make as an adult. "Is it that Lucien Carr character?"

I'm sure Lucien would appreciate being labeled as a character, being a writer and all, but I'm not sure he would be grateful that Edie is referring to him in such a harsh tone, as if he's done something apart from offering me a mundane invitation which I could've refused, but I didn't, and then I neglected to tell Edie of the plan, so really it's my fault instead of his.

"Um..." I hesitate for a moment, because on one hand, I don't want her to think poorly of Lucien because he ensnared me in his beauty and caused this mishap, but on the other hand, I want to share that beauty with her and Jack when they meet him like they requested when I first encountered him in the library on the hunt for a book about the horrors of rhyme and meter and won the attention of a brilliant man, but I already concluded that I must tell the truth, so with my voice as brittle as the cascading leaves waving their crumbling fingers by the window, I answer, "Yeah, it's that Lucien Carr character."

Fueled even more by the knowledge of the mysterious man's identity whom she claims must've worked some magic on me to steal my presence from her, her voice glides into the highest level of motherly discouragement ever before witnessed by humankind, and she injects it into her words as well, which really doesn't aid my security. "Why didn't you tell us about this, Allen?"

I really have nothing to say for myself, as I've already repented in my mind, but Edie doesn't understand that I've endured enough by my own guilty hands, so she requires something more than that, and I give the best that I can. "Life was moving too quickly, I guess."

"Well it wasn't moving so quickly that it stopped you from packing up your possessions, so while you were at the house, why didn't you contemplate dropping off a note on the kitchen counter or something?"

Defeated by the muffling of a logic that I cannot clearly explain to the woman who requires it the most, I confess, "I'm sorry, Edie."

"Who are you talking to?" Lucien interjects, and my neck expeditiously swivels around to glimpse his figure, partially damp from the shower with the rest of it shrouded in sky blue boy shorts and a white t-shirt whose only accent is "carpe diem" scripted in block letters across his chest, a phrase that is dooming me in this precise moment.

"Allen?" Edie calls, the speaker mitigated by its position in the folds of my clothing and offering me a chance to pretend as though I can't hear the woman who only wants to help me but the woman who is admittedly unnecessary in this situation that I just want to retreat from.

I don't answer either of my friends, and Lucien knows that I never will, so he instead strides over to me and arrests the phone from my fragile hands, resuming the conversation that I could never finish because I'm too weak to fabricate a plausible reason as to why I vanished from the basement all of the sudden and have already moved in with someone.

"Hello, ma'am," Lucien acknowledges, chipper and adorably boyish in the smile that lacquers his freshly shaven face. He waits for a few moments to collect Edie's response, then answering, "Yes, this is Lucien Carr, and yes, everything is fine. We're just having a dandy homosexual time over here, so there's no need to worry, is there, Allen?"

"No, everything is fine!" I shout, caught off guard, and Lucien grins, focusing back on my fretful companion who still has no idea where the hell I am, and he utters a quick goodbye before hanging up.

I'm free from the anxiety of replying to Edie's impossible questions, so I discharge a shuddering breath, Lucien studying me as he flashes his apprehension in the slightest of manners, but he deems that countenance ugly upon his body who is always magnificent, even if he can't decrypt it himself, and moves on from the subject.

"Nice woman," Lucien comments, padding through the kitchen for a cup of coffee to speed up my process of settling down after that harrowing adventure, which is very generous of him, but I'm not certain that I can digest any liquid at the current moment, though it's not like I can deny such an altruistic act, so I'll only allow the coffee to run lukewarm across the track of climate and hope that Lucien doesn't notice my disfavor towards it.

After last night's incident, I realized even more than before that there will be a lot of that in our relationship, for I do not wish to harm Lucien with the brutal truth of my spirit, and although he is a strong man, much stronger than I am or could ever be, even the strong people crumble eventually. They know crumbling all too well, and that is why they have become strong enough to fortify themselves against it, but no one is indestructible, especially not the obvious wreck of a writer who Lucien portrays to the point where his pretentiousness is no longer a veneer. He thinks his pretentiousness is justified because he's a writer. He may be correct, though, because the public adores falsified sophistication, and that's exactly what he's loaded with, but I'm now recognizing that this is him in his entirety, and he's more fucked up than I had thought, so that's why he seems especially strong; he's been crumbling for a while now, and maybe I'm not the one who needs saving. I'm not the one who needs coffee to recovery; it's him. I'm not the one who should be admiring his spontaneity; he is spontaneous to increase his risk of death.

And really...who can blame a writer for that?  

~~~~~

A/N: I've noticed that I go on these tangents at the ends of my chapters in all of my works why do I do this

hylozoism: the theory that some or all material objects possess life

~Darkota