“And I dear doctor, love that woman in there as if I’d never met her. She is that perfect for me. And I’ve done nothing but chase it away.”
“Try again,” said Jay Tenet.
In that room, before we all left, we decided to make a pact. It was Jay Tenet’s idea.
“Hey, why don’t we do this?”
“What’s that?” the doctor replied.
“Stop being so fucking hard on ourselves and become what we’re put here to be.”
“Amen,” I said and we left.
Naomi
While I was under there was a dream that I had. My mother was healthy in the middle of her life and I was with her walking on a dam. The one that they built on Lake Waco. We were gazing over the water and I couldn’t have been more than ten. It was spring and cool and behind us was a slope you had to climb to get on top. Someone had planted the slope with a million little flowers and as we watched they grew to maturity. Every flower on earth was there. My mother began to name each little bud and I repeated the names behind her. As I did I felt a relief. If this was death, and my own, was to repeat what I saw, and to know that they grew for me, then death I would have, so be it. My mother was healthy and the weather was perfect and before me the lake stretched eternally. Went on and on and on. My mom then said “Naomi, step back, a storm is coming, look over there. You’ll be lost and then I can’t find you.”
From the south a black cloud rolled over the lake and in its center was lightning and thunder, no wind or rain blew down or came towards us, but my mother knew what to expect.
“Watch this. I’ve seen it before.”
“Watch what?”
“What’s about to happen.”
Behind the storm the lake caught fire. You couldn’t feel any heat or weren’t threatened by the burn, it was simply part of the cycle. I let go my mother’s hand and walked to the edge and looked down at the flaming water.
“Still cool and mild up here.”
My mother didn’t respond.
“Mama, did you hear what I said?”
I turned around and my mother was gone. When I looked back the lake was calm again and there weren’t any signs of the storm. I gazed to the south, to the north and to the east and finally due west I saw her. The sun was setting, and my mother was walking into it and as she turned…my hospital room…the nurse there to tell me what had happened.
“Hey Naomi. Welcome back.”
“You’re not death. You’re a brunette.”
“I am not. You made it through.”
My head was pounding and my shoulder was bandaged. She told me the story as I listened. I didn’t hear a thing except this: “all are gone. You made it out.” Everything else was distortion.
“Out alive?”
She repeated herself. Wearily repeated those words.
I held a feeble smile as the men came in. Aeric kissed my forehead. Said “this is Jay Tenet.” He then told me what he had done. How he had saved me. My eyes filled with tears and Aeric took my ahnd in his. “It’s okay. You lived. That’s all that matters to me.”
It wasn’t all that mattered to me. The others were gone. They meant something to me. Everyone in this room with me had changed in just a few hours. The doctor had been fired for his drinking. Jay Tenet had killed again. Aeric Copeland was a study of what not to do, and they were all here because of me.
When the doctor’s cell phone rang he said “sorry, I have to take this.” He went out into the hall and there followed a crash with him damning God to the highest. He was being shushed and asked to calm down and he replied “fuck no I won’t! Don’t you fucking shush me like a child!” Soon after he called to confirm what he’d heard. Then his phone flew down the hallway. When he came back in what he was when he left was gone and wasn’t returning. Joy had vacated, replaced by woe, and in his face was the emptiness of pain. Sorrow takes the eyes and is heavy and thick and he need not say what he knew. I’d seen it. Mama was there. My mother had walked into the sun. My dream was potent and had actually happened.
“It’s okay. Doc, I know.”
“Naomi, I’m so fucking sorry. There was a reaction to the new medication. Her heart…”
“…just stopped beating.”
I finished the sentence for him. My mother was dead and gone.
Aeric
They all leave and now it’s just us. She tells me to go home, to get some rest, but there isn’t any home without her. I am with Naomi or not. And I have no interest in not. They have a chair in the room that stretches out to a bed. Before I know what’s happened I fall into a deep sleep and for the next nine hours don’t move. When I awaken it’s morning, the thunder booming with the lightning, and the sky is orange and black. A thing I’ve never seen before. Naomi is asleep, but on her stomach wide open is my own Book of Fuck. She’s read through her name, all my notes on the women, the when and why of the listings and the dates. I have no idea how she got it, but she has it and here we are. When I was snorting, thinking coke a solution, I must’ve written in the details of our evening. I honestly don’t remember a thing. When or where I described what we’d done. If I’d respectfully recorded the sex. Then again can you respectfully record anything in a goddamned Book of Fuck?
Naomi awakened and there I stood. I would beg and plead if I had to. Whatever was required I would do it.
“Hey, how are you feeling? You saw…”
“Yes Aeric, I read the whole thing.”
“That’s personal, but I guess you should know my past. What I’ve done. The scope of my damage.”
“If it’s so personal why’d you leave it at my house? Open to the very first page?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Then who did?”
“There’s no way for me to know that. Could be my father, who apparently wants me dead, though he wouldn’t waste his minions on that. Then again, I guess he might.”
“How do you view this thing? This Book of Fuck as you call it?”
“View it?”
“Yes, its reason.”
“It’s demeaning to the women. I know that. I did it because my father had one. It’s the sickest tradition you can think of.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the man you want to be. What little I know about the Copeland’s.”
“He isn’t. I don’t hate him for trying to kill me. Blow up my truck or whatever. The way he raised me is a slow suicide. Oftentimes parents don’t know that.”
“You really don’t hate him for that? Actually attempting murder?”
“Nope. I think, maybe, and this by itself is fucked up, that I deserve to be removed from the earth. Not as much as him, but I’d eventually get there and be the terrible motherfucker he is. I’m obviously working in that direction.”
“That won’t happen Aeric. That, you won’t do.”
“Okay, if you say so Naomi.”
“What is it then? Why hate him at all?”
“My mother. What he did to my mom. I think I’d rather be dead.”
“Agreed. I think the same.”
We paused. I sat down. She brought her bed from its resting position. The pain in her shoulder made her face wince a little, but then she smiled and looked my way.
“Have you eaten?”
“I have not. Do you want me to get us something?”
“No need. You won’t be staying.”
There it is. She said it clearly. Here it comes. Might I guess the words?
“Aeric Copeland. I love you. I probably always will.”
“Naomi Leighton. I love you. I can be what you want me to be. What I should have been.”
“Then you wouldn’t be yourself.”
“I seek to…”
“Seek?”
“Seek to improve.”
“You’re damaged. It’s all too deep. When I’m with you the world is secure. When you’re away from me…”
“…you can’t trust me.”
“Aeric, I trust the distance between us. Rig
ht now. From you to me. But when you step through that door, away from me, who are you?”
She’s right. I can’t answer that question. There’s a piece of me here, another chunk over there and those sections circle the globe. How do I bring them together? How am I, Aeric Copeland, to become a thing I’ve never known or seen?
“Naomi, I…”
“Enough has been said. I need you to leave me.”
“Leave you and not come back?”
“Yes, leave me alone. I have to bury my mother.”
“Your job? The Comfort?”
“I’m done. You have Tommi. Give her my position. She’ll do the job better than me.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes Aeric, you can.”
“Is it Mason?”
“Mason is safe. Mason is land without mountains. There is nothing to figure or climb. He’s exactly what he presents. I’ve never had to guess.”
“And I’m…”
“Aeric, you’re Mount Everest. I never know what I’ll get.”
I leaned over and kissed her there in the bed and her lips were balmed and sweet. Her breath of honeydew, the woman beautifully injured, and isn’t that the strangest mixture? Shot but still stunning, electrically perfect, though my imperfections were taking her wind. She could not breathe around me. Maybe that’s the definition of the two sides of love when you think what it is, really isn’t? You can’t fucking breathe either why. Whether choking to death because you won’t stay away or strangling them when you’re there…well, both of those are the cause of me. I have to leave her and never return.
“Hey Naomi, there was some good.”
“I’ll only remember that.”
“I…” then I walked through the door. Turned around and went back in.
“I can’t leave thinking of myself. Walk out the door saying that.”
She is sitting there crying, staring at my face, the light from the storm in her eyes.
I said “you” and then exited forever.
Epilogue
Christmas in Waco. 2019.
I did it and didn’t clean up the mess. Yes, they’re looking for me. Fuck him and his goddamned goons. When I left Naomi I shut The Comfort down for what I said was “environmental cleaning.” I had a meeting with the employees and told them it would close. Then I gave them their severance package. I had twelve in all on the payroll. Amongst them two million was divided. Separate from my father that’s what I was worth and I gave them every single penny. In cash and they didn’t say a word. They filed away from the property, only Tommi saying “thanks, I’ll give Naomi her share.” Seven days later The Comfort burnt. The wiring was always a problem. I made it worse by stripping them bare.
By using the contacts of Jay Tenet I eventually worked through the Copeland’s. He had a friend in the feds that actually had a hierarchy, a real chart with my father on top. An authentic criminal organization. They’d been after the bastard for years. In a month my mother was found. They raided her hotel in Paris. She was stuffed into a taxi where I was patiently waiting after certain “authorities” seized her. In the basement of the place they turned up the evidence that would link my father to his crimes. Handwritten ledgers, reams of damning paper, along with nine hundred kilos of cocaine, so pure to cut it and sell it on the streets seemed a sin beyond redemption. My father vanished the day they seized it. I do not know where he is. I hope to never see him again. Not in this world or the next.
There was family for my mother, ones she’d forgotten she had, in a pretty desolate place. In northern Michigan on Lake Superior. Jay Tenet found them for me. They took her in without a word being said. Were happy to have her back home. I told her that my father would be coming after me and where I was his people would look. Though aged and worn from being closed in her room with very little freedom for years, she said with the keenest of eyes “Aeric, there’s no him in you. I can’t see it. Not a shred.” I answered back “I hope there isn’t. I love you mama. I have to go. I’ll be gone, you understand…”
“For a while. I can read it in your face.”
I left my mother sitting there.
Now I’m watching Naomi and Mason through the window in the house where they will be married. He’s bought it but Naomi hasn’t moved in, though they did pick it out as a couple. There’s a FOR SALE in her yard near The Comfort. Well, where the comfort used to be. It’s remains have been scraped away. There is nothing there anymore. My clothes are in tatters and I’ve been riding the buses, back and forth across the nation. I make money when I can by doing construction and all I have to my name is my backpack. A few clothes and dirty dollars. This was planned. This is the end. Christmas night, 2019. I put it together a couple years’ back, the last time I spoke to Naomi. When I told her I loved her in the hospital. I’ve lost a hundred pounds since then. I don’t think Naomi would know me. They’re having a party in there and Naomi looks exceptional. She always did and the woman still does. I swear that girl doesn’t age. There’s a little boy zipping around and it must be the child of a neighbor. I step closer to the glass of the big bay window and two men by the bar can see me. They’re distracted watching women cross the room and they have no interest in my presence. Inside are the toys and the playthings of children, but in there plays only one child. And he’s the mirror image of his father. The man standing outside in the cold. I let that sink in and there is sadness there with the strangest edge of joy. The good in me has survived through Naomi. I am calm knowing he is mine.
I walk to Lake Waco taking most of the night. When I arrive the dawn is breaking. Cold, still and beautiful. Around freezing, maybe below that. Mason turned out alright. To carry that burden knowing inside her womb grows the infant she and I created. A piece of me forever in their lives. I take off my clothes and stand naked on the shore and the smoke from my body intrigues me. A human breathing and living alone. I step into the water until it gathers at my waist. I must be turning blue. The cold is numbing, but I admit I like it. My father would never allow this. It’s too common and human and senseless. Three things I’ve learned to enjoy. I swim out a quarter mile and it’s not as cold as it was standing on the shore. Smoke is rising from the water like it rose from my body and this is pleasant and undemanding. Whenever I go under I feel a lot better than if my head is above the water. I’m going to end this now. I’ll keep swimming I think, go out to the middle, before I decide what I’m going to do.
Getting tired in the center of the lake.
The sun is streaming and the beauty intoxicates me.
Naomi. Naomi. Naomi.
The Book of F*ck Page 9
