Chapter 44: Cowardice

The next four hours were unpleasant, drawn out, and frustrating to the extreme. James got a sense of large wheels turning in backrooms as power brokers cut deals and negotiated the DRC’s future. Jessica was on her phone almost continuously, either placing calls, texting, or being placed on hold. Sometimes she’d disappear into meetings or take off down the hallway without a word, desperate to catch someone before they left the building or for otherwise inscrutable reasons.

Serenity and James were seated in an empty conference room, the lighting harsh, everything gleaming, the sound proofed walls giving the air a weird, echoey feeling. She sipped on a cup of coffee. “They must have spent who knows how many billions of dollars on this building, and the coffee still sucks.”

James grunted.

Serenity stretched and looked through the glass wall at the office people doing office things. “Never thought I’d end up in a room like this. Now I’ve grown so fancy I’m criticizing the coffee. Look what the good life’s done to me.”

James met her gaze briefly to acknowledge her words then looked away.

Serenity sighed. “You really trust her, don’t you.”

James met her gaze again. “I do, yeah.”

“Why?”

There were a host of contextual statements that went unsaid with that question. You’ve known her for less than a week. She’s from the normal world, not like us. She’s just an executive assistant, how do you know she can pull this off?

James processed these unspoken thoughts, reading them in Serenity’s dark gaze, then reached out and put his weathered hand over her own. For a long time he didn’t speak, and then she sighed, turned her hand around, and intertwined her fingers with his own.

“Fine. I trust her, too. But what if she can’t do what she thinks she can?”

“Her promises were pretty conditional.”

“I’m not saying she’s not honest, I’m saying she’s going up against the CIA and military officers that have Hackworth running scared. Aren’t we being a little unrealistic expecting her to deliver?”

“Yeah, maybe.” James sighed. “But what choice do we have? I can’t speak their language, and the sight of me offends folks like Iverness. If anybody can work a miracle it’s Jessica.”

“Jessica.” Serenity frowned, pulled her hand free and took up her coffee. “Funny how this war is being fought on the streets and in these fucking backrooms. What happens here might be just as important as the decisions we make inside a hive. Isn’t that wild?”

“Sounds about right to me.”

Serenity tapped her fingers on the table, stood, hugged herself and stared out the glass wall at the assistants and secretaries and office managers. “You want to know what really scares me?”

“What?”

“That I’m standing here thinking about how good it would be to drink down a slug of just about anything and do a line at Herman’s. It’s like a fucking siren call, and its hooks have been in me for longer than I can remember. I’m standing here right now feeling that pull, and the old me would have found a way to get out and down to Herm’s and forget all this shit. I’d have a good time for a couple of days, wake up in my apartment, maybe alone, probably not, and all this, all this shit…” She waved her hand. “Would be gone.”

James sat back and watched her profile. How delicate she seemed, poised like a bird on a branch about to take flight.

“And yet I’m not making for the door.” She bit her lip then shook her head in frustration. “And you know, in the beginning? I thought it was this Bonnie and Clyde shit we’ve got going that was holding me here, but if I’m to be completely honest - which is part of the problem, by the way - then that’s not it. I’ve ruined good things before, done it carelessly, laughing, pouring the gasoline on the fire myself. You and me? What we got going, whatever this is? It’s good, but it wouldn’t have been enough to keep me here.”

James pursed his lips, kept listening.

She held his gaze then looked away. “No, it’s the fucking Arete. It’s like I’ve been living in a dark room all my life, banging my shins against the corner of the bed and stumbling around, with a rough sense of where things are and why I always turn left here or how to get to the bathroom without tripping. I was surviving, you know, but not quite knowing why I did what I did, or even needing to know.”

“Yeah,” said James softly.

“But now?” She sprung around to glare at him. “Now I’ve been sober for days while the worst shit in my life is going down. No coke, nothing, and I’ve got memories that would make me scream if I had a chance to really process them. Who the fuck are we becoming, James? This isn’t me. Not the me I knew I loved and pitied as the world’s most lovable fuck-up. The cutie who couldn’t, you know? That girl’s gone. Her broken instincts are all fixed, and when I feel that urge to run, I just take a deep breath and keep on keeping on.”

The silence between them grew. Serenity took the chair beside him and grabbed hold of his hand again. “What if we’re dying here, James? Who we were? The real us? What if that Serenity and James are fading away, Arete point by Arete point, and being replaced by these… I don’t know, noble, brave, fake versions? Isn’t that a kind of death? One of a thousand cuts? Shouldn’t we be worried about who we’re becoming?”

The wild fear in her eyes demanded an answer. He put his hand over hers and allowed her words to sink home.

“I know what you’re saying.” He considered. “And I think you’re right. I think that James and Serenity are dying.”

She sat up straight in alarm, went to reply, but he cut through.

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“But I’m OK with that James passing away. Was he the real me? Am I no longer ‘James’? Fuck if I know, Serenity, but I don’t feel much grief. A little sadness, but I recognize that trap. Sadness can become a poison, a comfort. The pain that tore me apart after my wife and girls died… I used to think it was the worst thing that could happen to someone. But somewhere along the years that followed it also became a justification. I think I was martyring myself to that pain. It became… I don’t know, like an altar on which I could tear out my heart, day after boring, gray, desperate day. That pain…” He paused fumbling with the old emotions, knowing, knowing it was the Arete that even let him consider what he was going to say. “That pain became my best friend. My truest companion. No matter what happened, it stuck with me, allowed me to feel righteous in my misery, and it vindicated my every worst impulse.”

Again he paused. It felt like slowly working up huge blocks of wood from his lungs or hauling rusted hulks from a marsh with a crane. Objects so big and settled that their removal was a form of violence.

“You know, all these past years, I thought of Laney and the girls like they were photographs. Frozen in time, like birthday shots, laughing around the cake, but not moving, not breathing, not alive. I used to tell myself that it was because it was too painful to do more, but now I realize the truth. If I let them breathe again, if I thought of them as real people, I knew I’d feel… shame. That they’d gaze out of me from the past and I’d see love in their eyes, sure, but also… pity. And disappointment.”

James’s eyes flooded with tears and his skin prickled, the physical reaction so sudden and strong it shocked him. He tried to swallow but his throat felt all clogged up.

“Hey,” said Serenity quietly, squeezing his hand. “I’m here, it’s OK.”

He forced a smile for her sake. How easy it would be to leave it at that. But no. He wanted to finish this. It was an infected wound that needed to be lanced and drained, or it would poison him forever.

“So I kept them frozen, I used them to feel good about my pain, about being a bum. And over the last few years I didn’t even think about them all that much. And that’s the James that you met. A man who wasn’t living, wasn’t doing anything but killing time till something ended it all for me. Who hid behind the greatest tragedy of his life.” He curled his fists tightly, his whole-body shivering, and forced the last words out through gritted teeth, his whole body shivering.

“I was a coward.”

“Oh James,” said Serenity, moving forward to hug him.

He hung his head, but he didn’t cry. There was too much mud and gunk and sediment and trash in those old channels for him to feel anything so pure as true release. But his whole frame hitched as his heart spasmed, and he made strangled noises of pain, his jaw clenched against the emotion. A deep crack opened in his leathery heart, revealing tender, vulnerable flesh.

The pain was sharp. Yet he was fully present. Watching himself, aware of how he’d never, not once, ever allowed himself to think these thoughts. Tuned out family the moment they’d said something similar, friends, anyone and everything, and then forced himself to forget that he’d ever heard them.

Shoulders hunched, head lowered, he allowed the spasms of pain to wrack him, and felt a profound gratitude for Serenity’s arms around him, her brow against his shoulder. It took all his Arete-gifted strength to lean into her, just a little, and by doing so tell her he not only appreciated her being there but needed her.

Finally he gasped and sat up, wiping the tears from his weathered face. “Fuck.”

Serenity curled his hair back behind his ear. “That was some deep shit, hon. Take your time.”

“Fuck,” he said again, and wiped his other cheek. “Never thought… never allowed… yeah.” He inhaled deeply, tried to meet her eyes, almost pulled it off. “Anyways. Sorry about the detour. What I was trying to tell you is that you think those old versions of us might be dying? Well, to that bum sitting in a doorway, half-drunk, trying to figure out what he’s going to do with the rest of his day and not really caring, to that guy I say: good fucking riddance. I think…” And again he felt a shiver pass through him. “I think that if Laney could see me now, maybe for the first time since she died she’d actually feel proud of me.”

His throat knotted up again, and this time he did meet Serenity’s gaze. Held it, and now it was her turn to tear up.

She laughed shakily and stood up. “Oh shit, what the fuck’s happening to us? This is like the best fucking therapy I’ve ever had, and it’s happening in a fucking NYCEM board room for free.”

“Arete,” said James, sitting back. “That room you’ve stumbled through all your life? It’s turning on the lights.”

“And revealing what a fucking mess I’ve been.” She hugged herself tightly and bowed her head. “Fine. Let that Serenity die. I’ll see who I become. Who we become.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “And you know what? That gives me peace, a sense of… acceptance. With all of this. The DRC, the CIA, the military. If Jessica pulls it off, great. If she doesn’t, we’ll just keep on keeping on. I won’t give up, but I won’t let them get to me, either. All I can do is my very best. If I have to, I’ll die for… for everyone, I guess. But I’m my own man, at last. I feel like I’ve rediscovered myself, and nobody, not nobody, can take that away from me.”

“Shit, James, you’re giving me goosebumps.” Serenity rubbed her upper arms. “When did you turn into… I don’t know, like a Mad Max Gandhi?”

He stared at her. “Mad Max Gandhi?”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Fine, probably won’t trend on TikTok, but you know what I mean.”

“I’m just me. James. Just a man.” He placed his hands flat on the table and stared at them. “But I guess that’s enough. I’ll use what I got, and it’ll have to be enough.”

“It’s enough for me,” said Serenity, and stepped over to hug him again.

For a while they remained thus, and then the boardroom door opened, and they pulled apart to see Jessica standing there, hair disheveled, eyes gleaming behind her glasses.

“Come with me,” she said. “It’s show time.”

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