So Much Pretty (24 page)

I listened and typed while he talked, then I poured another shot. The stuff was vile, and it didn’t matter. “Is it common for the medical examiner to not show up?”

“Around here? It actually is,” Cutting said. “He has another job.”

“Yeah, you said that. Where?”

“He’s a large-animal vet in Elmville.”

“Can I have your notes?”

“They’re at the hospital. I don’t have copies or I’d give them to you,” he said. And I thought he sounded pretty sincere, but maybe I was drunk. I nodded again. I needed a glass of water and to finish my stories. All the research, all the work, down to one fucking useless day. And if I wasn’t out fucking Mr. Uniform last night, I would have had twelve more hours to find her, and if I had, she would be alive. She was dead for an hour before they came, just an hour. And now there was one thing left to write.

“Do you get off work at any point today?” Cutting asked. “I’d like to make you dinner.”

“Do you have an appetite?”

“It helps to have somebody to cook for.” His chin dipped as he looked at me shyly through his eyelashes. “You know, it’s a good idea to eat if you’re going to drink or work.”

“I’ve heard that somewhere. I have to put the paper to bed. But I guess I can do that in the next couple of hours. Most of this week’s stories have been written for months, anyway.”

“It’s not a big deal. You can come over whenever you get done. I just—It’s not a big deal if you don’t want to. I feel kind of weird about . . . I just know what days like this are like.”

I looked at him and read his expression, the awkwardness of it all. But I didn’t feel what he felt. I was an observer. I was okay as long as I was watching and writing. And I would not trade that for “feeling” with him today. Thinking that his “feelings” about this could be anything like mine.

Then before I could sell him short, he said it. “For me, Stacy, what days like this are like for me. Not for you.”

EVIDENCE
P47912

4/16/09 9:40
A.M
.

Sgt. Anthony Giles

Political Movements in 20th-Century Europe:

Boredom Is Counter-revolutionary. What Started the

Paris Revolt of 1968
?

Sophomore Global History

Alice Piper

Period 2

10/17/08

The student worker uprisings of the late 1960s in Paris were significantly different from the American student movement of the same era because their philosophical foundation began in art, not politics. The group at the forefront of this movement was called the Situationist International (SI). Founded by artist and revolutionary Guy Debord.

The SI combined Marxist Theory (which criticized Capitalism) with Surrealist art in order to “construct situations” that would change an oppressive system and way of thinking. (In other words, they believed in personal freedom and autonomy over constructed cultures. And the right of people to destroy not just the systems but the boring everyday aesthetics that oppressed them.)

Because of this, their attack was not directed toward a specific political entity but “everyday life” in the 50s and 60s. They proposed “a radical front” that could create a union of play, freedom, and critical thinking to take on authoritarian forces that were controlling people through boredom and oppression.

In 1967 Debord published
Society of the Spectacle
, where he argued that advanced capitalist life reduced life to an “immense accumulation of spectacles.”

“All that once was directly lived,” he states, “has become mere appearance.”

Debord argued that society had become an “advertising, media, mass-marketing complex,” a superficial giant that depleted people’s everyday lives of meaning. (16)

In the “society of the spectacle,” Debord argued, knowledge is not used to question or analyze but is used as a mask. While this might seem a purely political philosophy, Debord believed the SI needed to complete the work started by the Dadaist and Surrealist art movements, bringing action at last to art movements based in dreams and desires of all people.

While the SI became popular for their playfulness and pranks (such as dressing like monks on Easter Sunday and declaring the death of God at Notre Dame Cathedral), their real influence was seen during the student and worker uprisings of May 1968, the largest general strike in the history of the world. More than 11 million workers and students shut down the city of Paris and brought common people into the streets to fight the government for two straight weeks. (53) This strike was the beginning of people all over the world seeing technological and authoritarian rule as morally wrong (not just because it exploited people but because it went against people’s most personal desires—it bored them and was ugly) and anti-authoritarian movements gained strength and popular support.

Members of the Situationist International graffitied streets and buildings with phrases that became defining slogans and battle cries for protesters, among them:

“I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires,”

“Be realistic, demand the impossible,”

“Live without dead time,”

“Boredom is counter-revolutionary,”

“Beneath the paving stones, the beach,”

And my personal favorite: “Run, comrade, the old world is behind you.”

Constant

APRIL 10, 2009

“H
ELLO
?”

“Hey!”

“Loudclaire!”

“No,” she said, “this is Alice.”

Constant was shocked. In the space of a month, her voice had changed.

“Kropotkin? Oh. My. God. You sound exactly like Claire.”

“I know, everyone says that.”

“How’s it going?”

“Good.”

“Your dad around?”

“He’s out with Claire, picking edamame for dinner.” She sounded bored and pissed off, another unexpected change.

“Nice. I wish I was eating there tonight. You have enough soybeans to go around?”

“More than enough. They’re totally delicious, but I am starting to get sick of them.”

Constant laughed. “How’s school?”

“I hate tenth grade. My parenthetical existence is dead in the water.”

“English teacher cracking down on you?”

“I hate that class. It’s my worst class. I wish there was a way to write everything like an equation. She says my essay style is too chatty. And no more parentheses because they look immature. Why do they think it’s some kind of one-way street where I just present stuff to them? Why don’t I tell them exactly what I want to learn and then they teach me? I don’t know crap about literature,
and I have to ask questions as I go, otherwise it’s a waste of time. All the stuff I loved to read has been ruined. Plus, for half the questions I ask, they say this really isn’t for English class, or this isn’t a philosophy class, or some other excuse. I’m not even trying to write good papers anymore because I get A’s for whatever I hand in. Everything is all divided up. How long does it take you to figure out that every single story is the same because there’s something wrong with the assignments? Why would anyone want to hunt for the ‘universal theme’ in something? It’s like working on a million different problems that all come out with the same answer.”

“It’s weird you don’t like that class. You’ve always been into reading.”

“Yeah, well, not anymore. Math and chemistry make sense, right? Because the symbols are actual symbols—they stand for real things—they’re not made-up characters that are supposed to represent ideas or a moral or some shit.”

Con laughed. “Oh my God, you sound exactly like your mother, not just your voice. This is actually weird. Is this Claire?”

Alice groaned and then laughed. He was happy to make her laugh, happy to make her feel better. It had been a rough week there, and he wanted to get her something special. “What do you want for your birthday?”

“A robot to attend school for me.”

“Probably can’t find one. What do you really want?”

“One hundred and eighty dollars.”

He laughed again. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Wow! Kropotkin. Times have changed! You must be growing up. I don’t think you’ve ever asked for money.”

“I haven’t.”

“What are you going to buy?”

“Meat,” she said, and they laughed.

Flynn

HAEDEN, NY, APRIL 3, 2009

T
OM CUTTING’S APARTMENT
did not have maps pinned to the walls or beer bottles piled in one bay of the sink. It was neat. It smelled good. It had a view of the firehouse across the street. No one lived upstairs, and the nearest neighbor was a mobile-home park three quarters of a mile down the road. He seemed too social to be living in such a remote place.

“Free rent,” he told me, grinning as he read my expression. “I made pasta. You’ll like it—it’s tomatoes and olives and olive oil and garlic and other stuff. I bet you didn’t eat at all today. This Mediterranean shit is good for you. This is what I eat when—well, whatever, this is what I pretty much always eat.”

He opened the refrigerator and got out two Labatts, handed me one. “About last night, Stacy. I don’t usually do things like that, and this morning makes me really never want to do things like that ever again. I’m just uh . . . ah, fuck, I don’t know. That was just—”

“It’s okay.” I was exhausted and wired and a little drunk. After filing and going home and staring at the water running in the sink for half an hour, I had driven to Cutting’s house, hoping it would be loud or there would be music playing or he would be very drunk and we would just fuck again. To erase it somehow. Otherwise, I knew I would talk about it, start reviewing the case.

“I really like you,” he said.

I had finished my beer already and put the bottle in the sink.

“Oh, here—let me,” he said. “The recycling’s in the closet.” He put the bottle away and then tested the pasta, strained it, poured it into a big bowl, and tossed it with the tomatoes. Set
the bowl on the table and got out two forks. Pulled out another beer for me. “How did the paper come out?”

“Good,” I told him. “You’ll get it tomorrow.”

“We’re not going to talk about this while we eat, okay? It’s a stupid thing to do. I’m sorry I brought that up, okay? Forget work.”

I nodded and raised my bottle toward him. “Good call. Back in Cleveland, we always talked about what we were writing over dinner. It got boring.”

“Stories like this one?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes. I had a friend whose favorite happy-hour topics were crime scenes and his Hearst Fellowship.” I laughed, but Cutting didn’t, so I started eating. The pasta was delicious, and I realized that it was the first time someone had cooked a meal for me in four years. It made me feel lonely and grateful. Happy I had met him.

“So when can we get the autopsy report?” I asked.

He put his fork down and raised his eyebrows pointedly.

“Oh, right.” I laughed, wiped my mouth.

“I’m sorry. We can stop eating and talk about stuff, if you want, and I’ll reheat this for us later. I just can’t do both.”

What he said annoyed me. I felt like things were unfinished, like I didn’t have enough information yet, and I was not about to give in to the feeling that this dinner marked the end of something or was a cause to grieve together. He was the closest thing to a colleague I had, and I needed one right now. Needed someone to think with.

“You know, I spent most of today on the phone with the Bureau of Crime Statistics,” I told him. “I looked up the names of all the women who were murdered this year—and the subcategory of all the women who were murdered by their boyfriends or husbands or guys they’d dated.”

“Y’see, now, this is what I’m talking about. This is
not
good.” He stood and picked up the bowl and carried it to the counter. “We’re not going to eat while we talk about this.”

My fork was still in midair over the table. “Anyway,” I went on, “if you wanted to make a memorial for those women who died in that kind of violence throughout history—which no one does, of course—but if you did you would be carving names at roughly the same rate the crimes are being committed. If you wanted a historical monument—you know, one that had casualties, beatings, rapes, disfigurations—you’d need something like the Great Wall of China.”

He stretched saran wrap over the pasta and put it in the refrigerator, which was immaculate. “There have been people I have not been able to save,” he said simply. And then I felt that thing in my chest like I did when I first met him and we talked about our jobs.

“Let’s sit on the porch until we’re hungry again,” he said.

I said, “I’m hungry now,” but I wasn’t. I was drunk and exhausted and fighting a feeling that even Tom, the man who’d relaxed me so skillfully last night, and brought me flowers, and fed me, could have killed Wendy, could be thinking of things to do that might hurt me. I saw him for a moment as simply his size and weight and speed. The kind of nearly conscious assessments that arise, that become, at times of evening and in certain places, autonomic. And then I followed him out and sat beside him on an old couch covered with a wool blanket in front of a low weather-beaten coffee table.

I said, “This is a bad day for a date, Tom Cutting.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s a good day for me to be with somebody like you and for you to be with somebody like me.” He looked steadily into my eyes, and I thought about how maintaining eye contact was part of his job—he was trained to do it. Thought of how many eyes he must have looked into with his own hazel eyes. How many expressions of pain or fear he had taken in, he had worked to allay. That same sense radiated from his body as well, a kind of steady, calm coordination, a readiness. This was what he had brought to me beside the river the day before. I wanted very
badly right then for my feelings about him to be real. To have him as my friend. To be as angry as I was and not be alone.

We stretched out and put our feet up and looked at the parking lot and the fields in the distance beyond the fire department.