Faster on My Own: Chapter 3
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Whenever Caroline woke up for her job at the coffee shop, she only rustled Steven halfway out of sleep. Smears of color surrounded him and the part of his brain tasked with assigning meaning was still encumbered by dreams, so they became boats, fires, wind, threats, joy, demands, clouds, his father, his father’s death, and sleep itself enclosing him and beckoning him back within. But every time it happened, no matter what he decided was happening, he felt adrift, as if he’d been caught in Caroline’s gravity all along, and now he floated in space alone. When he woke up fully, two hours later, loneliness still stung his heart even though he couldn’t remember the wound.
Last night’s beers left a foul aftertaste in his mouth and adding toothpaste made it worse. They’d ordered the large pizza last night to avoid leftovers, and now the fridge was empty except for two more beers. One was normal, the other some kind of chocolate pumpkin stout. Neither was helpful, but only one irritated Steven with its pointless decadence. Why did Caroline like that trash? Instead of scouring the rest of the apartment for solutions, he pulled on the same black hoodie from yesterday– it would reek of tear gas for a few days, so he’d wring every drop of street cred he could from it– and headed for the coffee shop down the street.
A chill in the air lent an edge to the bright blue sky. In the summer, that same blue felt like warmth itself bearing down on everyone, but in autumn it was a distant smile which proclaimed friendliness while cold fingers wormed up Steven’s pants and shirt, desperate for skin. Glimmers of sunlight bounced off of distant skyscrapers. Every single one of them promised a plan for total energy efficiency, and even if every single one of them put in a roof garden, the hot and choking air of the future would fill them eventually. That was the promise of green capitalism: feel good now and be surprised later. Steven respected the climate change deniers more. They lied about science, but every objection they raised was so implausible it amounted to a kind of honesty. Money now for blood in the future. More money, more blood. Basic compounding interest.
Steven turned the corner to his favorite coffee shop and found an argument impeding him. A man in a navy suit and one in a dirty military green jacket were shouting at each other, but a bus idling next to them drowned out all the sound, and provided them an audience until Steven got there to fill the role. He approached them slowly as the bus pulled away and their conversation became audible.
“-fucking psycho. Let go of me.” The man in the suit jerked backwards, but got no further away. The other guy– his grimy beard and the cardboard beneath his feet indicated homelessness– wrapped the suit guy’s tie around his fist and held it in a taut line.
“You gonna fix it? Make it right?” Steven wanted so badly to see the tie pulled to the ground, the suit guy’s skull cracking down next to it, but the homeless man had other ideas. He just brought the suit closer, and closer, and yelled louder and splashed spittle all over the suit guy’s face. Where did his courage come from? If everyone had a tenth of his willingness to fight the class above them, the revolution would have long since kicked off. The scene didn’t offer many clues to Steven. A garbage bag full of clothing against the wall, a few shards of glass, an empty pack of cigarettes, a light brown stain on the cardboard, not much else. A white dog with brown speckles with eyes like the ocean watched the struggle with interest, but no agitation. Not his fight.
Steven hoped the conversation would illuminate him, but the two men were doing little more than barking at each other when the tie finally ripped off of the suit guy’s collar; with classic businessman’s instincts, he seized the opportunity to run away and ducked into a bank before the homeless man could follow him. The homeless man flicked the tie onto the cardboard, and kicked aside the shards of glass. Only once he’d completed this little ritual and sat back down did Steven approach him. “Hey, what happened there?”
“Guy broke my bottle.” While the homeless man didn’t bother to look at Steven, the dog made eye contact. All of a sudden Steven knew that he could learn a great amount from this man, this dog, but they were unwilling to teach him. Steven handed over a ten dollar bill, wished both of them well, and ducked into the coffee shop.
On his way back home, revitalized by the bitter coffee, he considered what he’d just seen. Sure, the guy in the suit wasn’t a cop, but he had the implicit power of the police on his side. They existed for the exact purpose of protecting guys like him. Yet the homeless guy had gotten in his face, and was ready to fight as hard as he had to, even without any obvious gain. People everywhere had so much more they could win than he did in that situation, and yet they demurred. Why?
Once he emptied his cup, he tossed it at the mouth of a trash can, but it rimmed out and fell to the ground. The crumpled paper sat jagged among sparse blades of grass that poked out of the concrete. Pain shot through his back as he bent over to pick it up. So he left it. None of the people around him were willing to fight for a better world, so he’d leave it a worse one. Later that night, he broke a random window. The next one, he keyed someone’s car, leaving long, curving scratches that wound together like a work of art. At first it just felt like letting frustration out on the world, but the more he did it, the more it started to make sense: the worse people’s lives got, the less they had to lose. Everything he did to narrow the gap between their day-to-day enjoyment and the miserable life of a revolutionary warrior would push them further to a breaking point.
After his epiphany, he stopped the random chaos. Even if he broke every window he came across, it wouldn’t be enough. He needed to think bigger. One night, he went home and found another letter from his mom. As usual, he tucked the check away, and this time crumpled the letter up without reading it. He didn’t need to know what his mom was saying. Nothing was more important than finding and talking with Ashwin. Despite the man’s odious personality, Steven didn’t know anyone else willing to think on the same strategic level as him.
In Ashwin’s smoke-stained apartment– every cigarette looked like a virginia slim between his substantial fingers– Ashwin looked to the window uneasily. Steven had told him everything: the conflict between the two men, his epiphany and his big plan. To reconnect with his family, to burrow in and wield their malign influence to ruin the world and bring the revolution burning forth. It wouldn’t take much to get them on board. Ben was evil incarnate, an executive whose interest in power aligned directly with its capacity to administer cruelty, while his father just followed the trail of money with relentless hunger, to massive rewards for stockholders of Vita-Tech. The family conglomerate. Setting their ambitions higher would cost millions of people enough to set them toward war.
But when he finished, Ashwin didn’t jump from his seat in excitement, didn’t exclaim Steven’s brilliance, didn’t break into a paean about the inevitable victory of the revolution. Instead, he shared that pained look with his reflection and with the thousands of lights outside the glass. When he finally spoke, he said, “You shouldn’t do it. If you want blood on your hands, there are easier ways to get it.”
Rather than sit amongst the smoke-weakened plants and eat the surely-mediocre pasta which bubbled on the stove, Steven left. Don’t trust someone who only looks inward to have any vision. Especially not when his entire goal seemed to be marginalizing Steven. He burst into his apartment, and babbled the entire plan to Caroline before she could even greet him. He didn’t need pleasantries, he needed her assurance that Ashwin had underestimated his brilliance.
Caroline, like Ashwin, stayed silent after hearing the plan. But instead of gazing out the window and imagining she could see all the people in the world through it, she flexed her fingers against each other, worked a thumb around in its joint, did anything with them that would keep her gaze from Steven.
“Well? I’m sure you’re worrying about what this means for us.”
“No. I know what it means for us.” Once Caroline finished cracking all of her knuckles, each one like the sound of a crab leg breaking in half, she gestured toward the door. Her hand dangled half-limp in the air. “Go. Do it.”
“I thought we could at least have a night or two to say goodbye, I mean I’m not ready to leave right at this exact moment.” Her hand still hung there. It was a bluff. Knowing she couldn’t convince him to stay with any argument, she was emotionally manipulating him. “I’ll stay one night. Let’s talk about this.”
“Leave.” When she finally faced him, her eyes weren’t sad at all. Dead of any emotionality, Steven found himself appraised in their reflection.
“What about all of our stuff? At least give me a little money for my half. And then I’ll be gone.”
“I bought all of it. My name is on the lease. Take your shit and go.”
“But-” She didn’t waver at all, and without another word Steven gathered his clothing into a black backpack with a few pins on it. He’d have to throw those away before he got on the bus. A little enamel molotov cocktail, an A to match his neck tattoo, an ACAB, none of them could go on this journey with them, but he’d rather they see a landfill then stay here to be gathered by Caroline’s cruel hand. With all his clothes and his laptop with several dead pixels on the screen packed away, he stopped by the fridge to take the three remaining beers. “I bought these,” he said, waving one of the green Gennessee cans at Caroline’s stone face. “You’re gonna regret this, you know. The revolution is going to happen. And when we’re living in fucking paradise, you’re gonna wish that you could still talk to me. To thank me. But that’s not happening. We’re done.”
“Yeah. We’re done. Go be done.” She waved to the door. After so many happy nights in this apartment, she was shooing him away like vermin. Countless mornings in each other’s arms, laughing at the jokes they told in little whispers beneath the clatter of the train. He could count on her support, even when crashing his wave against Ashwin’s stoic cliffside in meeting after meeting. And yet, at the moment where he had greatness at his fingertips, she abandoned him. Was it all a ruse to set him up and feel the rush of power as she pulled the rug out from under him? No, he knew her. Choppy waters hid beneath those cold eyes. There must be some way he could bring them out.
“I should’ve just fucked you once and called it a day. What a waste.” No water trickled forth. She waved him out again like an impatient crossing guard. The most he could manage was to crack one of the beers, chug half of it, and whip it and some foam across the room. Caroline didn’t even flinch.
As he slammed the door shut, he imagined all the power in the world coursing through his muscles as thigh and hip and arm formed a perfect chain of motion to shatter the door to splinters and the building into a collection of fatal wounds and rubble. But reality held and his fury echoed off the walls on its way toward silence.
Steven leaned against a wall in the apartment building’s lobby while wind ruffled the hair of everyone outside the door and drops of rain threatened a deluge. Where to next? He could ask to stay at Ashwin’s, but a full night would give him too much time to convince Steven that his plan was faulty. Text messages went unanswered and the rain fulfilled its promise. Passers-by ran until the streets emptied out. After a few hours of watching the puddles grow, Steven knew what his choices were: camp out in the lobby, pay for a hotel room, or grab a bus ticket and throw his life into the plan immediately. Staying would humiliate him if Caroline saw him. Which she would. A hotel room would stretch his bank account past breaking. What kind of life was this? A phone full of friends, members of a collective who were supposed to function as a single unit, and nowhere to stay. It was a life based on lies of mutuality made by pretenders to a fashionable radicalism that they peeled off along with their black jeans the second their front doors closed. Better to chance the rain, the bus, the tight grip of his father’s soft hands. When Steven left, the lobby door locked and would never unlock for him again.