Everyone knows that writers aren't okay, have never been okay, and will never be okay, because that's just how their minds work to produce the beauty with which they are unfamiliar due to their extensive life in hell. They document their dreams with a film of nostalgia slid over the top, a bittersweet distortion to a land where anything is possible yet everything is dark in the subtlest of manners, and that's a writer's innate job, bestowed upon them by the gentle and generous hands of talent, and Lucien Carr is a writer like that.
I have seen his philosophical spiels that are meant to enlighten but rather run down a gloomier road, and that's part of being a writer. I know that. However, I have never seen him so blatantly in shambles, not like he was on the front steps of his apartment, a dwindling bottle of whiskey strapped in fingers that could barely hold it. That is not the Lucien Carr I know, and quite frankly, I'm terrified to know him and where he originated from, because I might already have inferred the answer, and it declares that Lucien has always stored these tendrils of dread in his heart that pumps with passion for both good and evil, and those tendrils of dread have only poked out occasionally, not manifested in the full form of a broken man sweating on the porch of a place that is supposed to protect him but couldn't restrain the ash of his soul as well as it needed to.
And really I have no one to talk to about this, because Lucien is both the victim and the perpetrator, and Jack doesn't give a shit about anything except for banking and the daily newspaper, and Edie has never trusted Lucien and will probably just exclaim that she was correct all along and that Lucien is a bad influence on me and that she knew it would come to this, but Edie Parker is my only hope in this situation, so I'll go to her, no matter how reluctant I am about it. My selfish anxiety isn't going to prohibit my will to receive help for my best friend.
Lucien is already at the library, which is rather surprising, considering he was chugging whiskey last night and could barely stand up straight and is most likely now in a wretched hangover that his manager will punish him vigorously for, but at least he's not here with his cunning ears to ask me why I'm sneaking out of the house so secretively and why I haven't told him about this, and eventually he would figure it out with his sharp perceptive skills, but he's thankfully at work and being granted a proper scolding from his manager, because in all honesty it's not professional to be drunk on the job. Edie, on the other hand, is in her home like always, which is a blessing for me, as I won't have to track her down throughout the winding city of Paterson, New Jersey just to inform her that my screw up of a friend has screwed up even more, so everything is set for my mission, and I can visit Jack and Edie's house safely.
The walk to Jack and Edie's cozy little cottage in the suburbs of Paterson is a strenuous one, despite the apparent niceness of their neighborhood, and it's not that the neighborhood isn't nice. It's just that there is a lot of weight on my shoulders, weight that I cannot handle, weight that I didn't know would be imposed upon me, weight that I cannot ignore no matter how hard I try, because this weight is indelible, but this weight is not mine. It belongs to Lucien Carr, whose troubles have manifested in more weight upon his friends while never scooping some of itself up to deposit to others, only multiplying at an alarming rate and spooking those who thought he was okay.
There's no denying that Lucien is an elusive person, and that was generally okay until now. I could deal with being surprised at six o'clock in the morning with a jolting shake of the limbs from a man hovering behind me as I drank the coffee then spilled by the action of my friend. I could deal with a lack of answers as to what the hell it was that he was doing, because it all added to the spontaneity and the wonder of his enchanting performance. I could deal with not understanding what was whirring in that amazing head of his, as no one ever could anyway, and that was an accepted fact. What I can't deal with, however, is Lucien's suppressed emotions that have finally tumbled free after years of sinking them in more and more trauma, corpulent from affliction and near the point of bursting, and it is my faith that Edie can help me cleanse him of those demons before it's too late, before I lose my only friend, before the shambles in which Lucien has been held turn to shambles themselves.
Eventually, throughout the strips of concrete and rocks and fallen leaves the color of blood spilled from trembling wrists, the color of rust rubbed in between unsuspecting and observant fingers, the color of sunflower petals in meadows where life is all right, where life is but a trip to the sources of beauty, where life is a lie in the eyes of pessimists but a reality in the eyes of optimists and a random occurrence in the eyes of realists, perhaps more of a premonition birthed from a slight case of cherophobia, and that's quite the opposite for me. I am convinced that this blight upon the world is only a fleeting phenomenon and will pass to resume happiness, or at least the only kind of happiness that writers are endowed, but with each and each second, a welt of apprehension absorbs any loyalty to the future and warps it towards nullification.
All I know is that I need to reach Jack and Edie's house sooner so that I can talk about why Lucien is winding up in odd places both in his mind and in his location, about how I can help him when he doesn't wish to be helped, about what the final steps are to ensure that he is okay, about what will transpire if those final steps aren't so profitable for all parties. The walk is a distanced one, on the contrary, but I am still able to extend my feet towards the house in a shorter period of time than I would've expected with all of this weight on my shoulders, weight placed upon me by the person about whom I will speak with Edie today.
I scale the front steps rapidly, as if two or three extra seconds mean anything to my friend's well being, and maybe they do. After all, two or three seconds can sentence someone to life or death, plunging into the murky depths of the water after a bridge throws you off, being upright in the kitchen at one moment and smashing your temple against the counter at the next moment, fingers suspended over a totalitarian switch whose controlling nature you willingly warrant just before you slip away from its power as a cause of its power, too many instances where death is so close yet so far, where two or three seconds are more significant than one would first suspect, where I am an anxious mess who likes to fabricate excuses for mundane situations.
As I knock on the door energetically, Edie allows those two or three seconds I just regained to make her way towards the aperture, then opening it with no clue as to who it is, which is a fool's move on her part but a move of someone who isn't as nervous as I am. "Allen, what are you doing here?" Edie asks, wrapping her cardigan around her thin waist as if it's cold, when I'm colder in the November air and have not once thought to bring a jacket, though that's because the gravity of the melancholic circumstances has been transmuted into heat to the point where the chill is irrelevant and can fly by undetected.
Guarding a tone that doesn't shake, which is a harrowing and arduous task for a person whose tone is almost always shaking, I deliver the response promptly. "I need to talk about Lucien."
I probably will do much more than that, like sob about how this isn't fair to anyone around my stumbling companion because no one deserves to be unsuspecting and then struck with an atomic bomb of emotions, about how I can't live without someone as influential as Lucien Carr is to me, about how I cannot simply return to an old life of monotony and artificial intellect for the pretentious scoundrels of the internet; like shatter one of Edie's prized vases just from the thought of losing the person who has given me a home after knowing me for only a few days, the person from whom I learned so much more than school or my parents or Jack and Edie ever taught me, the person who is sliding away as if he's the silk of his voice; like scream uncontrollably without saying a word, because that is how I can articulate my feelings the most accurately, and that is how I make certain that Edie is clueless about how much I am suffering at the hands of both myself and Lucien Carr.
"Why? Has something happened to him?" Edie waits there for a few moments, anticipating my reply, but she notices a lack of politeness that I, the person to whom Edie's classic politeness is directed, wouldn't even have noticed, and she invites me into her home, an abode that reeks of lilac and the decadent ignorance of the suburbs.
This will be a long chat.
Edie sits me down on her sofa, and instantly I am transported back to the old days of this home. I used to live in this place with people who cared about me and fed me and made sure I wasn't sleeping in the frozen rain every night. And now...now I have to struggle to keep a national treasure alive, because the roles have switched. I was accustomed to being almost pampered, and now it's my turn to sustain life. This time it's harder, and I am in need of advice from the person who would've been in my situation before I moved in with Lucien.
"Allen, you haven't responded yet," Edie says, eyeing me as she takes her own place across from me. The gravity of the circumstances doesn't allow for her to make herself comfortable in the chair. "I'm worried."
"You should be. Nothing makes sense anymore."
Edie stares at me. "Is he...is he dead?"
"No, no, he's not dead, but my concern is that he will be soon."
Edie shifts in her seat, unrolls a deep but shaky breath from her lungs, eyes panicked and searching for a solution. "Oh my lord."
"I just want you to know that, and if you have any ways to help, that would be greatly appreciated." My professional facade from that phrase strips away to reveal my actual opinion on the matter. Tears follow. "I don't want to lose him."
~~~~~
A/N: tfw edie has the chance to redeem herself but no
anthropomorphism: applying human qualities to non-humans (basically reverse furries)
~Dakotail