The house is empty when I stumble into it with new ambitions, Edie and Jack gone somewhere to rekindle the old flame that I've witnessed burn out solely from the limited experiences of sneaking out of the house to do some "research" at the library, and I suppose I'm glad for them, because their absence leaves me alone to pack my bag to later pour out in my new home of Lucien's lonely apartment.
On one hand, I wish they were here so that I could brag about how I made so much of a friend that he's practically begging for me to move in with him after only a few days of knowing him, but on the other hand, I'd rather be free of their questions pounding my brain who doesn't have any answers for them, because I honestly don't know what the hell I'm doing myself, but humans enjoy impulsivity because it feels nice in the moment, and even if I will crumble by the time I come to my senses, right now it seems like a pretty amazing idea, and Lucien is rushing me too expeditiously for an effective protest.
Lucien, while whirring his hands in strange movements to propose that I should move faster, is simultaneously imbibing his surroundings, the old fashioned layout of it all, with the creaking wicker chairs and light blue fabrics clawing at the walls and at the windows to embrace portions of the sunlight to protect the house from it, and I must admit that it is a very beautiful space that Edie has constructed through hours of shopping and an exhausted Jack by her side, but Lucien doesn't utter a single word about it, though he's nevertheless impressed by it in the slightest of fashions and without speech, as the rest of his cognition is being consumed by ordering me to hurry the hell up or else Edie will crash our party and ask why there's a strange man in their house planning the ostensible kidnapping of her roommate.
Part of me is devouring as much time as I can just to annoy the frantic Lucien Carr who won't stop chattering about how Edie won't like him and how Jack will probably beat him up for whatever deranged reason saturated by the common paranoia of a writer deluded enough to draft ballads of tragedy as Lucien most definitely does, and he may see through my plan, now or down the road, but if he hasn't acted upon it, then my antics can't be that disastrous, and I can continue to harvest the time I need to pack my entire life into one bag.
But Lucien loves to play people with the psychological secrets he's earned from his writing and his research to write something better than before, as a writer is never content with what words they are offered, so I might as well snag the opportunity to play him, too. I can pretend, just as he pretended to be interested in me, though that may simply be my writer's paranoia.
"I apologize for taking so long, Lucien. It's not like I have to move my whole life to an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar man."
I'm not so concerned with whether Lucien is a serial killer or not, considering I first worried if he would think that about me, but he's not the one moving into my dingy basement, rather the one defacing and criticizing it, so I can claim higher advantages to guilt trip him into imitating meticulous steps to ensure that I feel safe in his apartment, because it's obvious that beneath that layer of sarcasm and phlegmaticness he actually cares a lot, and from that generosity, I can play him like he played me, and I opt for the sardonic route of latent fear.
"What, are you packing a hotline to the police, too?" Lucien tosses a stray superhero t-shirt to the side, attempting to organize something to speed up the process. "And you live in a fucking basement of all places. What do you have to pack? The nonexistent remnant of your soul?"
Affecting much more than a tousle of his hair with my grand slap to his head, I bark, "Haha, very funny."
"But it's true," he mutters, hands bolted to his hips as he spins around with them still attached. He is then attracted to a meager object on my only dresser, whose contents are limited yet depended on, and he shuffles over to inspect it.
The object is nothing special to an outsider as Lucien is, merely a cat blown from fire and glass by a fastidious worker, but he's anyway intrigued by its shape, by its labyrinthine coat carved with the phobia of damage throughout the entire manufacturing process, its eyes as daring as my companion's, and I observe that with Lucien's feline features, it sort of resembles him in other ways as well, but I don't explain that, because apparently comparing people to animals is rude, despite animals being creatures so elegant and convoluted and wonderful, much gentler than humans could ever be.
To him, it's a tenuous curio only preserved because glass is the enemy of a garbage can or because someone upstairs would be devastated at its removal from the basement, yet he's somehow fascinated with every meager aspect of it, and I don't understand why.
"What's so exceptional about that?" I inquire, paused between the frames of loading a bundle of socks into my bag.
Lucien pivots around, puckered and youthful, surprised that I caught him in the act of examining my glass cat. "Oh, nothing special to me. You, however..." The cat levitates in his genial touch, insides exposed by the knife of light goring its fragile body as Lucien searches for a more...intricate approach to it, and I'm beginning to question whether or not it actually does mean something to him, or whether he's intrigued by it and hopes to find meaning. He eventually returns the object to its prior location on the dusty dresser, humming faintly. "It's something special to you, though."
Yes, it is something special to me, something that I've cherished for years and years. It was given to me by the owner of an antique store that was going out of business, and that owner was my best friend during my childhood. When my parents were being insolent jerks, he was there with a story about his various travels around the world, where I prayed to visit but haven't yet, even in adulthood, because Paterson, New Jersey makes a pushover of us all. When I felt unsafe in my own mind, he pointed to a notebook that could safely guard my words for when I ache to hug my literary darlings and my literary demons again and accept them all for what they signify to who I am as a person. When he was struggling, not me, he still contemplated my journeys, my accomplishments, my downfalls, and when he was drifting rapidly towards homelessness, he relinquished one of his only possessions to me so that I could remember him — a cat, agile for bouncing through their issues, secretive for selecting what is fallacy and what is crucial, keen for recognizing where I can profit off of my misery as each writer does, everything that he wanted me to be but couldn't teach me because his financial stability was declining towards a place devoid of solvency, and though I couldn't help him, he helped me, and I've kept the cat ever since.
But I don't know Lucien, and I'm not sure if I ever will. He isn't entitled to my secrets, to my past, even if he assumes that he is just because he can dig it out of me through psychology.
I shrug, waving away from it. "Yeah, it's been on my dresser for years, throughout different houses and financial situations, all of that adult crap."
Lucien is immune to transparency and seeks something more. "And it's special because it's a reminder of change to you, of the shifting tides creased by the moon whose geological nuances you love to drink in at night as that same change buzzes past you, and you grow. You grow into a young man, into a writer, into a linguist, a logophile who bleeds that idolatry onto parchment as the visionary scraps for your readers. That is you, and that object, however plain it may seem to others, is part of you, so it is special."
Deflecting his thorough (and incredibly veritable) analysis of something as imperative as my life, I joke, "Can I keep any secrets?"
Lucien winks, swaying on his limber feet yet never stumbling. "Secrets are not secrets if they can be decrypted."
Because if they are decrypted, one doesn't care enough about keeping them hidden. I know how this maxim operates, and I know that Lucien knows how this maxim operates, and he's quite the proponent of broadcasting how much he comprehends, so of course he'd tell me that he comprehends this.
I'm once again defeated by the unnatural inference skills of my companion, so I digress. "Pack the cat please."
Now quiet after realizing the gravity of what he said, Lucien handles the cat cautiously all the way into my luggage, which is still only half full with the pettiness of the items I store in my basement, and he erects a fire pit of fabric around the glass object, where the cat is returned to the flame that built it, though Lucien is still hushed. Lucien Carr, who is a man of no regrets, is for some reason brooding about what he said to me, cognizant of the first recognizable mistake in his life, and he's somehow nervous, too. His hands rope around each other, twisting and compacting and spaghettifying, though not enough, because his skin is still intact, and there's no use for that extra blood when all that's in him is remorse.
"I-I'm sorry, Allen, for being so insensitive." Lucien's words are like glue, velcroed to the walls of his throat and refusing to unlatch, but he's endeavoring to remove them, because he cares enough to amend his mistakes. "Your personal information is not mine to deduce, and I apologize."
I know how difficult this was for Lucien to expel from a mouth who only shouts about what he could do, not what he has done, a mouth who grips the glamor of suicide in a branch of smoke and nicotine, a mouth who narrates stories so riveting that they seem almost fictitious, but not a mouth who tells someone they're sorry, and to do so is a trial unmatched by the common man.
I nod, focus trained on my bag with a staleness in my muscles, inert and thoughtful. "Thank you, Lucien."
~~~~~
A/N: finally, some character progression
epistemology: the study of knowing
~Dicknoodle