I said, “Anytime, acegirl, day or night. Nobody has to know.”
She worried that if she called, it’d put me in an awkward place. But I said if we do our jobs right, then with God’s help that won’t happen. Well, I didn’t think she’d call, but she did! Lots of times. Always after Honey/Baby went to sleep.
It was just chitchat. Anyone could tell acegirl was lonely, so I just said whatever popped into my head. Stuff from Bible Study, gossip from choir, things Baby/Honey said. Name a book, you’ll hear her open up. Baby loves books, so I talked a lot about him: Thomas Hardy, critical theory, speculative realism. I could feel her wanting to say something back to him. I just knew if they met, their thoughts would build on each other till they left the galaxy & the atom in the dust. 2 of a kind, my sweet genius & my co-conspirator. One night she murmured that she understood that I love him, she said his name. Kenji. Next thing I know I’m bawling about bumper cars.
So she & I were bound by the ribbons of our secrets. One time I took too long in the shower, Martin answered my phone. I didn’t know he’d done it till the next day when she told me. He said, “Good evening, who is this?” in his preacher voice & frightened her, poor sight. Well, mercy, she couldn’t say her name! She was too shocked to think of anything, it’d been ages since she’d spoken on the phone to anyone but me. She blurted out “Pauline” & said she was my long-lost sistren. That was a lie, but when she told me I couldn’t stop laughing. Mostly out of relief.
As time went on, she grew a burdened look. It got restless & haunted. Soon I could tell she was wearing herself out trying to be brave. Then one night…
Well, she always hated spending money. I hope it’s cuz she was saving. In the end I couldn’t let her pay me, I said, “Sweetie, I should be paying you.” But anyway, one day I gave her a sistrenly lecture on paying her rent in advance, & she got upset. She said nobody deserves to take anything from you before you’re ready to give it.
I was never sure she really wanted what we were trying to do, I mean wanted it with her whole heart & soul. That night I got less sure. But she wouldn’t let me stop & soon we couldn’t stop. TCD had forgotten her. Her birth certificate, school records, credit cards, phone bills, online orders, all the news stories we could find about the airplane, etc, etc (who knew an ordinary person took up all those bytes!), all of it dissolved in the shadows. Then the theft. She got angry. It was time.
I never got to see her in the sun. When I think back to the night she came to say goodbye, I feel like something in her was already sort of thin, sort of withdrawn like the moon on a foggy night. We hugged, I straightened her sweater. She reminded me to erase the time we’d spent together from the BHS security system’s video archive (I didn’t need reminding, she was just “sistering” me). Then she reminded me to forget her, never look for her. We started getting teary. We couldn’t make a scene so I put her on the bus.
She made mistakes, got in too deep. People used her. When “someone” stole from her too, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She almost told me about it, but instead we FOCUSED. She turned her anger into energy.
As for the “stolen goods” (sigh!), I’d prefer to think she was too focused to keep copies. I’ve thought about this a lot: she faked the W-2 so flags would go up when she filed it, the American government would start asking about Clocktower, but by that time she’d be long gone. Tip the first domino, get out of the way, let revenge take its course while she got on with starting over. That must’ve been her plan.
But she got scared, got tired. Realized how small she was or something. She gave up on the idea of filing it, that’s what I think.
She recycled it instead, drafting something on the W-2’s back, & she meant (she must have meant) to THROW IT AWAY but Mrs T got to it first. She got scared that Mrs T would show it to Erik. If that happened, he & Char could figure out what she had planned.
That’s the best I can come up with. It’s mostly holes, innit. From the looks of things, acegirl printed mockups for all her “assignments” & then made a girt big pile of the things under her bush mattress! So I guess she wasn’t focused after all! Sigh! Girl, come on! Why keep the flippin things? To send to somebody? To torture herself? I don’t get it. It makes everything we did…
Well, Honey was being cynical, missing the point, she got out, that’s what matters. Just bad luck that Mrs T was Mrs T & she stole what she stole & Kenji…
So maybe Martin’s right. We’ll never understand, everything is meaningless.
We didn’t wake up again till night. I got Kenji some water & a little juice. I put my head on his chest & Baby stroked my arm. He’s got a special way of doing it. I don’t think he knows it’s special, but to feel him do it now, just like he’s always done it, after clawing his way back from the edge of death just cuz I asked him to, it flooded me with love & hope.
I asked if he felt well enough to talk a little. If we do it now, like this, we’ll be safe, I thought. “It’s about Aetna Simmons.”
Kenji didn’t say nothing, just stroked my arm. I started thinking maybe he really had forgotten, & it made me panicky again, wondering how sick he really was. I looked at his face.
He hadn’t forgotten.
“I in’t Aetna Simmons, Baby. I just said it cuz…Well, lately I’m not sure why I said it.”
He still didn’t say nothing. My Kenji stared into some darkness that I couldn’t see, looking like he’d woken up on the Sea Venture. He stroked my arm the whole time.
Finally he looked at me. My Love’s exhausted eyes looking trapped in that darkness.
“To rescue her. That’s why,” he said.
“How do you know that, Baby?”
“Cuz you’re you.” Kenji moved so our faces brushed each other, & he whispered, “So, I mean, you didn’t write any…anything?”
“No, my Love. I didn’t write any suicide notes.”
His breath stumbled over my forehead. He kissed me there & then just hugged me. Hugged me like in desperate relief, sort of.
Should’ve left it at that, maybe. K was prbly at capacity just with that. He didn’t ask what rescue meant, didn’t ask nothing.
But it was up to me to cut the last blade down, the sharpest & the fastest.
“I wrote something else,” I said.
My book was in the nightstand on my side. Normally I wouldn’t put it there, normally it lived in my Porte-Documents Jour. My book is big & fat. It’s got handmade pages from on top of a bridge that goes over some pretty Italian waterway with curly boats on it. Beautiful leather cover, black cuz it’s from K. It’s got 2 red ribbons attached inside as bookmarks.
When Kenji saw it, something scaly rose out of the black pools of bad dreams. His hand went to his stomach, he looked like all he wanted was to go unconscious. & then (timing, acegirl, gotta work on it) I thought of my own words from just a little bit ago. Words that K wrote down & thought about even though I said them to put him on the wrong track: “The books are black cuz they can’t be read.”
I think K & I put it together at the same time. We stared at each other & my book.
“…ribbons that start out red but change color, wriggling & flowing like the tentacles around the jaws of the sea-dragon, the very sea-dragon who attacked the diver cuz she stole the magic antidote for the agony of grief…”
Over & over with terror & blood.
“Mercy, Baby, what’s this mean?”
“I don’t know.” He said it twice. He breathed thru nausea, his eyes shut. He said, “I bought that for you, didn’t I?”
“20 yrs ago. Writing in it ever since. On & off, you know. Sometimes I stick stuff in. Like look at this, Baby.”
Emails from Baby @harvard.edu stuck in beside emails from me. So I could pretend we were saying with our voices:
“‘Loquats are out. Found a serious sweet fat one with 4 seeds in it down on the Railway Trail i
n Somerset.’ I tried to draw the loquat, see? ‘Estimated actual size.’ Then I remembered I didn’t have no scanner or camera-phone to send it. I wrote, ‘I miss you.’”
“Nabi.” Poor Baby. He shook his head like, Don’t.
So ya girl keeps on going! I felt like I was chasing a seagull with a butterfly net.
“Stuff I should’ve said to you but ended up keeping in, a lot of it’s in my book. So’s Aetna Simmons. (Deep breath, acegirl!) I want you to know. I think it’s important. Kenji, Aetna Simmons didn’t die. I’m the only one who knows.”
His eyes opened. He said thickly, my poor Kenji, “You what?”
That “Sea Venture” look hit me like a giant bee sting, but too late to turn back: I put my book in Kenji’s hands.
Nobody else has been allowed to touch my book since the last time Kenji did. All those years ago. We held it up together with a pillow’s help. The red bookmarks (I always thought they were so classy!) hung back over the spine.
Kenji asked me to read for him, my words in my own voice, straight out of my body woven together with his, so each time I took a breath, Kenji couldn’t help but feel it. I couldn’t help but feel how what I did & said touched him, whether he tensed or stopped breathing. I handled turning pages, flipping past the stuff that wasn’t hers (Martin, hymns, Iesha, Kenji, Kenji…) unless I couldn’t help it (always Kenji), & sometimes Kenji asked me to turn back. “Go back to the part where you taught yourself Python/Java/broke into whatever/built them a new website so stuff looked like it was normal but really you were in the shadows changing everything…” Another time he looked at me. I worried cuz of what his eyes were doing, but Kenji said, “You learned all this by yourself.” I almost burst into tears cuz my Love was proud of me & too confused & beat up to show it except with pain. He said, “Go back to the part where we were talking hard drive shredders & you sang.” So I did. Kenji said, “Read it for me.” So I did. Partway thru, Kenji said, “Nabi,” & I said, “Look at what you do to me,” & then it took an hour to calm each other down. Those were the easy parts.
Aetna’s Instagram & stuff, Aetna & Jude the Obscure, those parts made Kenji sick. He said, “Take this (the book), take it,” & threw up in the trash bin. I figured that’s why he lost his temper. He groaned, “Who are you?”
“I’m me, Baby. I’m here. Just breathe.”
“Then who’s that? (Mercy, he meant in my book!) That took years, a _____ lifetime! To cultivate a mindset that could _____ erase somebody while she’s sitting there in front of you!”
“I didn’t just erase her.”
“No. No, you deleted ‘Aetna Simmons’ from the world. You replaced her with something. A bunch of memories of what never happened. Memories of some made-up somebody who’d done all that daredevil _____ that Aetna never did. & you stuck a name on that, that construction, & you stuck her body on it. A body that the rest of us idiots think is dead. That’s what you did.”
& Kenji retched, he had gritted teeth & a gloss of sweat when he lay down, but as I wiped his face I couldn’t help myself, I whispered, “Should’ve known you’d understand, should’ve known you’d see exactly. Somebody had to help her, right, Baby?” Inside I thought: At last somebody knows besides me! Finally someone to help me bear the weight of her secret! Not just anybody either, the only one who understands both me & her. I put my book aside, I felt dizzy with relief, I wanted to flop out in Kenji’s arms, let Kenji carry all of me.
But Kenji said, “Help her?! She was raw material for you, that’s all. So you could change yourself into this—this unnecessary, narcissistic, _____ incredible metamorphosis—into something mighty & elite & terrible.”
I was halfway between the nightstand and flopping out. I stopped in the middle, squished between horrified-insulted, horrified-ashamed, & just plain shocked. Kenji lay on his back with his hand over his eyes.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said.
“Yeah it was. You wrote it. All that _____ about creation, making something into something else, the Art Of Vanishing. Like you think you’re some kind of god. & all that time, Nabi, you—you wouldn’t let me—Aetna was my inspiration, my opportunity, my vengeance, and Nabi you willfully destroyed… You told me not to give up, but you only meant it as long as you thought I’d never succeed. When I started to think I’d actually get somewhere, for once in my life achieve what I set out to do, you let me think I was crazy. Just to cover your own _____. Or maybe CAM put you up to it. Did they? Or you came up with it yourself, right? So you’d always have a reason to go back to him?”
“Baby, you’re not making sense. It was never about you.”
“I could’ve helped you. I understood her. I would’ve understood.”
Never crossed my mind, but it’s true. Kenji would’ve noticed stuff in her that wasn’t just face value, stuff I never thought of. & as soon as she said no questions, I guarantee my Baby would’ve let her have it with the questions.
“Instead you let me think I had nothing,” said Kenji.
I wish he’d screamed it. Seriously. He didn’t have it in him. Everything just drooled out of him. Yeah, some of it was crazy, but it all made sense, I mean from Baby’s point of view. It’s just I never bothered thinking thru that point of view.
Me. Kenji’s acegirl & his love.
If it was anybody else, it would’ve floored me long before today, that’s for true. I would’ve told the shameless so-&-so to sit in a church & read the part about Judas & ask themselves some questions. I snatched Kenji’s hands. His eyes were the scary kind of tired. I said, “Forgive me. Please, my Love.”
It was like he had to dredge his voice out of the sand. “Do you know what I had to do? What I had to promise Char so she won’t hunt you down?”
“It’s in my mind every second, all the time, what you did. Don’t worry about that woman, Baby. I’ll make everything right, I promise.”
“I made a deal. If I don’t keep it, she’ll find us. She’ll know that you’re my reason for not keeping it. She’ll infer that you’re neck-deep in this. She’ll use her suspicions to disgrace Martin & pressure BRMS to make him betray you. Maybe he won’t crack, but I know Char. She’ll crack something.”
“You don’t know her, thank you very much, & she do not know you.”
“If she figures out what you’ve done, she’ll ruin us. & Martin. & Aetna.”
“Well, she won’t figure it out. She may think she’s all that, but I’m here to tell you she don’t know nothing about handling herself digitally. Listen, Baby, you won’t have to. OK? I promise when you’re better, I’ll figure something out. You just don’t worry about nothing. You just—just love me, Kenji. Love me & don’t let go.”
“But this is what I meant, you don’t trust me. You trusted Aetna, a total stranger. What you did, Nabi, that’s computer crime. That’s what you did for her. That’s why she pretended to give a _____ about you. Anyone who looked for her, the most they’d ever find is you. For her, that was your only purpose, & you knew it. You knew that _____ spineless _____ planned to hang you out to take the heat. She used you and you let her. & I—& Nabi, I—I stuck your neck out. When you tried to tell me, I couldn’t stop, I wouldn’t stop.”
“Only cuz I didn’t really tell you anything. We were hardheaded about not talking to each other, but that’s cuz we love each other!”
“We think so, but what is that? What are we but a couple of impostors?” (!!)
His eyes sort of hollowed out. I got scared he might turn his face away from me, I couldn’t handle it if Kenji did that now, I tugged his hands like a lost little kid.
“You don’t think we can get better? Kenji, come on, give us a chance.”
He couldn’t answer. He lay like a dead tree washed out to sea & washed back up.
He hated all of us for a sec. Me, her, himself. But he didn’t take his hands away.
Maybe he understood i
t wasn’t all my fault: Baby knows I’m a silly goose & a hacker, but that’s a far cry from what she did, & it’s not my fault she didn’t tell me what was going on. Or maybe he was just tired of fighting dragons.
Or the truth was something else. Kenji turned my hands over & looked at them.
They’re bare now. They go naked. Their emptiness gave me a shudder, but I hid it. Kenji looked at my eyes, didn’t say nothing.
He let me hold him. We kissed, we took our time. He laid his head on my breast.
Watching Kenji sleep. I want to stay awake in case he dreams. Or doesn’t dream but wakes up thinking about a future as a man without a voice, trapped in the minds of dead people. When he opens his eyes, I want to be the 1st thing he sees.
I also made him a promise. It’s time to wrack my brain to figure out how to keep it. Once he was deep asleep I made myself some espresso.
My Love needs to know that what I say really means something.
Mercy, 3 days? 5 days gone? This acegirl don’t even know. I’m had to start sneaking to get a moment with my book! Haven’t even had time to miss it (sorry book!). I’m so busy I in’t answered none of Wayn’s texts (poor child hasn’t phoned, so hopefully she’s OK?).
It started right after I showed Kenji my book. I’d planned to stay up all night, but! So much for espresso. I have this hazy memory of my book & pen going away. I woke up in some nice arms, Kenji mumbled, “Go back to sleep,” & he did too. Later I got up for Tylenol, he mumbled, “When’s the last time you ate, Nabi?” I got an orange too. My Love was having quite a bit of pain, but he said, “You in’t getting enough rest. Think I don’t know, innit. Come on & lie down.” Stuff like this went straight to my achy little heart. It’s all Kenji wants to talk about. Even though poor sight’s still throwing up (they say it can go on for weeks!!). The difference is in his eyes.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 43
