Faster on My Own: Chapter 15
< Previous Chapter | First Chapter
While his comrades fidgeted and eyed the door, Ashwin plucked at an errant thread on Steven’s couch and thought about faith. The faith they all placed in each other, when any one of them could sell the rest out at any time; the faith he held that a better world was being born at that very moment, struggle though it might be. For years, Steven had held a similar degree of faith: his behavior was always undisciplined, but his heart was in the right place. Seeing him on TV, spouting the very same hatred that drove Steven into countless bar fights, shook that faith. But what were they doing, waiting in his apartment, if not demonstrating what faith remained?
He didn’t know that Caroline shared this motive. Unlike everyone else in the nervy reverie facing the door, she wandered through the open-concept apartment. Her hands found the pockets of the jackets hanging by the door, fingers brushed the stainless fridge, the expensive kitchen knives. Such was her right. Every revolutionary group, every action, held a coalition of interests. No matter how well-aligned their politics were, everything came together in a few shades of just-close-enough. All of them wanted Steven to stop what he was doing and agreed that confronting him would best achieve that.
Whether they all wanted Steven to rejoin the collective, Ashwin couldn’t say. Some of them felt the wound of betrayal very deeply. Ashwin knew this too well, he bore that wound, but so many more inflicted by the cruel world that capitalism built, and knew that having Steven in the fold gave him the best chance to heal those wounds, blunt those weapons that opened them. Others never liked Steven. All Caroline offered was that she now had a girlfriend with a bigger dick than Steven’s, and wasn’t going to get back together with him. A conversation to be had if their intervention was successful, which Ashwin had assured everyone would be the case. Sometimes being a leader meant pretending to have confidence, to pull harder on the rope and lighten everyone’s load.
A key rattled in the deadbolt and all of his comrades sat bolt-upright. Light from the hallway flooded over all of them in the living room, missing only Caroline who lurked in the kitchen, bright red hair a dim beacon in the shadow. Ashwin knew him by silhouette, and everyone knew by expectation: Steven was here. A few of them raised their hands in self-defense. Too many times, Steven had entered a disagreement swinging. This time, he set a bag of groceries down on the floor, and flipped the lights on. A sneer marked repulsion on his face. “Get out.”
“Let’s talk, Steven. Caroline told me about what you’re trying to achieve here. With all this.” Ashwin waved a hand at the luxury that, all too recently, Steven would have dismissed as vulgar, disgusting. “Your heart’s in the right place.”
“I’m calling the police.” Steven tapped at his pristine iPhone, a far cry from the battered brick he used to carry around so no one could track him by GPS.
“I don’t believe you.” Another comrade leapt forward and smacked the phone out of his hand. Steven’s practiced right hand wound back, and Ashwin stepped between them. “Let’s continue this conversation on the balcony.”
“About what? Get the fuck out of my apartment.” Steven was swiveling around, sizing up everyone in the apartment. Maybe Steven would find himself again in a brawl, the passion of violence which so moved him in the past re-orienting him after so long lost in the woods. But the risk was too high, too likely that it ends with Steven injured and unconvinced, dead, or all of them in jail. If Ashwin let Steven and everyone else continue to yell, they had no hope of accomplishing their goal. He had to intervene.
“Carry him out to the balcony. We’ll talk there.” None of this was how Ashwin wanted it to go, but it hadn’t yet gone as badly as he worried it would. The winds of possibility swirled around them as always, chance and accident driving their sails toward land. After a few seconds of struggling against four muscular arms, Steven came along though he said, “When the police get here they’re going to shoot you. They’ve been waiting for an excuse. It’s gonna make their day.” He only stopped as they passed in front of the kitchen, and he stared at Caroline. He said her name, voice muffled by surprise and possibly some wounded pride. Caroline spat on the floor, and didn’t follow them to the balcony. That was better. Ashwin and Steven could work this out on their own.
Cold wind buffeted both of them on the balcony. There was no neighboring balcony for Steven to escape to, and the doors were locked behind them. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the glass doors to the living room and glared at Ashwin. “Fine. What do you want? Gonna toss me over the balcony with your big strong arms, end the Steven problem forever?”
“I would never. Also, my rotator cuff injury.” Ashwin hoped alluding to an injury he sustained at an action with Steven, after which Steven dragged him to safety and got him as fixed up as he could, might revive some of the camaraderie between them. The Steven in front of him was barely recognizable as the one he knew for so long. The ratty black hoodie subbed out for an off-white dress shirt. The unkempt beard was gone and revealed a cleft chin; two black circles behind his ear replaced the A and the hammer and sickle that he’d gotten poked in years before he and Ashwin met. Nor had Steven ever gazed at Ashwin with the kind of contempt he saw on that balcony. How fast could a person work through the progression of the ship of Theseus? “Come back. Caroline told me about your plan, and I promise it’s not going to work.”
Steven braced himself on the balcony railing and stared out into the distance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a bad liar. That’s one problem.”
“Fuck you.”
“Another problem, Steven. A bigger one. This isn’t how revolutions happen. I know it’s a grind. Believe me, I know it. Come back.” Steven stepped forward slowly and Ashwin opened his arms for a hug. There would be many challenges ahead, but Ashwin had faith they would get through them.
The balcony rail punched his back when Steven shoved a forearm into Ashwin’s chest and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. There was nothing but air between Ashwin’s rustling hair and the pavement several stories below, and the railing creaked as Steven pushed Ashwin harder. “I’m done with you. All of you.”
“Even Caroline?” Steven jabbed his forearm harder into Ashwin’s neck, and Ashwin couldn’t talk for all the coughing. Maybe this was how it ended, the two of them falling over a shoddy railing, only a second left for animosity, regret, love before Steven’s miserable plan ended in a pile on the ground. The pressure on his neck vanished. While he fell to his knees and clutched his throat, the two muscular comrades who had been waiting by the door wrestled Steven back inside.
Ashwin tried to talk, but he just coughed more and rasped a few syllables that no one took any notice of. He stood up, breath still burning in his chest, and tried again. “Stop. Let him go.”
“But he’s going to call the cops.” Ashwin couldn’t tell which of them said it. It didn’t matter.
“No, no he won’t. He knows what cops do. If he’s really fighting for the revolution, even in this stupid way, he’d never call them on us. We’re the people he needs to overthrow the state.” With that, Steven walked unmolested back into his living room, and picked up his phone from the coffee table. He tapped at the screen. He wouldn’t do it. He’d hesitate just for a second. They were his comrades.
“Hello, police?”
“Run.” Ashwin shouted. Caroline charged from the kitchen and a knife glittered in her hand. Death was another end, one which Ashwin didn’t want. Because he thought there was a better future, where all of them would come through happy and victorious. Because he lacked the will to cover his hand in his comrade’s blood. Steven yelled something into the phone, Caroline screamed over him, and everyone else tumbled out of the door and into the hallway like a landslide finding the ground at last. Some took the elevator, others took the stairs. Thumping footsteps and shouts to move, to hurry, echoed down the staircase. Ashwin tried to account for everyone, but they were split; tops of heads flitted into vision further down the staircase and more came behind him, but where was Caroline?
Shattered glass decorated his footsteps as he ran out of the lobby. One of them must’ve taken a shot at the glass door on the way out, and Ashwin ran through the spot where it dangled incomplete. Police cars were already there. Responsive, as always, to the wealthy. Some of them must have gotten away before the police arrived. That was Ashwin’s only hope. He was captured, and when he looked up, Steven’s shrunken gaze met his right before the police closed in and shoved him to the ground.