"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz"
-- excerpt of "Howl", Ginsberg
He watched them wash her off the street, indifferent men in impersonal white rubber suits stained red in the pattern of wild blossoms. He watched them collect the empty body in a black, zip-up plastic bag and set her unceremoniously in to the back of a nondescript van to be carted off by a faceless, nameless driver who is more concerned with lotto tickets than he was with the dead woman on her way to the morgue. He watched the last of her pour like spilled paint into the sewer. He watched. He watched, and he cried, sitting on the side walk like a drunken invalid.
Rick hated the men taking Lila away, professionally unemotional and detached from what they were doing. It was an irrational hate, but it was an irrational day, and Lila had been a beautiful and irrational friend.
It was easy to hate them for doing their job.
Rick hated Lila. He hated that he would never see her smile when she thought no one was looking. He hated that she was gone on a swan dive exit, painted on the black street in streaks of bright, wild red. He hated that she hurt so much, that she couldn't take a world too dark and bleak for her bright light. Hated that she was ? gone.
It was an uncomfortable hate and it made him feel guilty.
But most of all, above all things, Rick hated himself. What a stupid and useless old man. Another friend lost, another corpse to grow cold, yet more hearts broken when he could have, should have, done something to stop it. More dead. A new name for his list of failures. More blood on his wizard's hands.
It was the truest hate of all.
Time passed, marked by all the cigarettes in the pack he'd brought to Lila in payment of a bet she won. Rick drifted into a semblance of sanity. His throat hurt from all the smoke and his shirt collar was wet from all the crying. It was like waking from a fever dream, where hot brained phantasms floated around the periphery of memory. Nimble fingers failed to fetch another smoke from the emptied pack, leaving the detective to grumble pathetically at himself. He patted himself down for his own pack and remembered Quinn had taken it from him.
He couldn't catch a break.
Nothing to smoke. A mess. Half crazy. Rick decided he was much too sober for all of this, and Lila would probably have liquor on the roof. He stood, brushed his sweats off, and straightened his t-shirt. Training clothes. It was a small benefit that he wouldn't be dressing like this in the future. No more sharp mouth comments about being a dork from Lila. Small benefit. It was something at least.
The front door to the building was held open with a brick. Not that it mattered; the lock was broken. Rick made his way inside and navigated the dirty hallways to the back staircase, skipping the elevator out of a healthy fear for his life. Even if complicated machines didn't have a tendency to fail when they were around him, the building was so out of code that it was a death trap without his help. Take the fire escape he passed on the third floor, for example; someone was using it to grow marijuana.
Getting to the roof meant getting into the service room and taking the ladder up. Lila preferred climbing up the side, but Rick didn't share her devil may care attitude. Even if the fall didn't kill him, Quinn would. Rick left the stairwell and slipped through the maze of the top floor, almost entirely abandoned out of the criminal fear of police arriving to investigate Lila's death. One apartment was open and it's contents left strewn across the hallway by a long gone opportunistic scavenger, leaving Rick to pick his way through the minefield with careful steps.
Hopefully, someone found something they needed. He'd hate to think someone went through all that work for nothing.
The roof top was, likewise, abandoned, but that was nothing new. No one had ever come up here in all the time they had been training. Wizardly greens adjusted to the darkness of night and took in the empty expanse. The air was growing cool and a breeze made his wet cheeks sting. On a ledge, there was a book. Rick went to investigate.
But no liquor. ?Dammit, Lila. Can't even leave me to get drunk.?
Rick picked up the book and slowly flipped through it, delicately
leafing page to page. Lila's Journal. He went for the last entry with a tremble of hands.
?Charity's dead. I'm gonna die too.? The follow pages were torn out and missing. If Lila had more to say, it was gone now. The book was an ill-fit in his sweats pocket, but it worked. He would read the rest later.
A step up brought him to the same perch Lila must have used before she jumped, giving him her last view. He looked down at the street and tried to imagine what it must have looked like when she left the building and gave herself to cruel gravity. He tried to feel the pull of her depression, tugging her off the roof. He tried to see the ground rushing up at him, promising release.
All he could see was Quinn. And Mary. And Crispin. And Ellen. And Ben. And Bob.
Yeah, even Bob.
Rick dug the journal out and wrote a small letter, tearing it out and leaving it on the roof.
?Lila,
I'm sorry I wasn't here for you. It doesn't mean much now that you're gone, but I'm sorry. I pray you're not in pain, anymore. I hope you found peace.
If you haven't, you know where to find me.
Be seeing you,
Rick?
Rick stepped away from the ledge and went home. Went to family. Went to live.
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz"
-- excerpt of "Howl", Ginsberg
He watched them wash her off the street, indifferent men in impersonal white rubber suits stained red in the pattern of wild blossoms. He watched them collect the empty body in a black, zip-up plastic bag and set her unceremoniously in to the back of a nondescript van to be carted off by a faceless, nameless driver who is more concerned with lotto tickets than he was with the dead woman on her way to the morgue. He watched the last of her pour like spilled paint into the sewer. He watched. He watched, and he cried, sitting on the side walk like a drunken invalid.
Rick hated the men taking Lila away, professionally unemotional and detached from what they were doing. It was an irrational hate, but it was an irrational day, and Lila had been a beautiful and irrational friend.
It was easy to hate them for doing their job.
Rick hated Lila. He hated that he would never see her smile when she thought no one was looking. He hated that she was gone on a swan dive exit, painted on the black street in streaks of bright, wild red. He hated that she hurt so much, that she couldn't take a world too dark and bleak for her bright light. Hated that she was ? gone.
It was an uncomfortable hate and it made him feel guilty.
But most of all, above all things, Rick hated himself. What a stupid and useless old man. Another friend lost, another corpse to grow cold, yet more hearts broken when he could have, should have, done something to stop it. More dead. A new name for his list of failures. More blood on his wizard's hands.
It was the truest hate of all.
Time passed, marked by all the cigarettes in the pack he'd brought to Lila in payment of a bet she won. Rick drifted into a semblance of sanity. His throat hurt from all the smoke and his shirt collar was wet from all the crying. It was like waking from a fever dream, where hot brained phantasms floated around the periphery of memory. Nimble fingers failed to fetch another smoke from the emptied pack, leaving the detective to grumble pathetically at himself. He patted himself down for his own pack and remembered Quinn had taken it from him.
He couldn't catch a break.
Nothing to smoke. A mess. Half crazy. Rick decided he was much too sober for all of this, and Lila would probably have liquor on the roof. He stood, brushed his sweats off, and straightened his t-shirt. Training clothes. It was a small benefit that he wouldn't be dressing like this in the future. No more sharp mouth comments about being a dork from Lila. Small benefit. It was something at least.
The front door to the building was held open with a brick. Not that it mattered; the lock was broken. Rick made his way inside and navigated the dirty hallways to the back staircase, skipping the elevator out of a healthy fear for his life. Even if complicated machines didn't have a tendency to fail when they were around him, the building was so out of code that it was a death trap without his help. Take the fire escape he passed on the third floor, for example; someone was using it to grow marijuana.
Getting to the roof meant getting into the service room and taking the ladder up. Lila preferred climbing up the side, but Rick didn't share her devil may care attitude. Even if the fall didn't kill him, Quinn would. Rick left the stairwell and slipped through the maze of the top floor, almost entirely abandoned out of the criminal fear of police arriving to investigate Lila's death. One apartment was open and it's contents left strewn across the hallway by a long gone opportunistic scavenger, leaving Rick to pick his way through the minefield with careful steps.
Hopefully, someone found something they needed. He'd hate to think someone went through all that work for nothing.
The roof top was, likewise, abandoned, but that was nothing new. No one had ever come up here in all the time they had been training. Wizardly greens adjusted to the darkness of night and took in the empty expanse. The air was growing cool and a breeze made his wet cheeks sting. On a ledge, there was a book. Rick went to investigate.
But no liquor. ?Dammit, Lila. Can't even leave me to get drunk.?
Rick picked up the book and slowly flipped through it, delicately
leafing page to page. Lila's Journal. He went for the last entry with a tremble of hands.
?Charity's dead. I'm gonna die too.? The follow pages were torn out and missing. If Lila had more to say, it was gone now. The book was an ill-fit in his sweats pocket, but it worked. He would read the rest later.
A step up brought him to the same perch Lila must have used before she jumped, giving him her last view. He looked down at the street and tried to imagine what it must have looked like when she left the building and gave herself to cruel gravity. He tried to feel the pull of her depression, tugging her off the roof. He tried to see the ground rushing up at him, promising release.
All he could see was Quinn. And Mary. And Crispin. And Ellen. And Ben. And Bob.
Yeah, even Bob.
Rick dug the journal out and wrote a small letter, tearing it out and leaving it on the roof.
?Lila,
I'm sorry I wasn't here for you. It doesn't mean much now that you're gone, but I'm sorry. I pray you're not in pain, anymore. I hope you found peace.
If you haven't, you know where to find me.
Be seeing you,
Rick?
Rick stepped away from the ledge and went home. Went to family. Went to live.