Hoping that some of the old magic from the laptop would still be in effect. But nothing seemed to change. The doctors told him the same thing, whenever he asked. No change. He was thinking about Ohio every day now. If she dies, Sam thought. I'll go back if she dies. he had a degree, after all. He could teach high school English, or something. When he arrived at home Paula was there, standing by the front door.
"I lost my key." She said.
He spilled to her, of course. Leaving out only the part about how Lena came to be, and the laptop. He told Paula everything else that had happened since the fight they had had, after watching that movie, and she nodded along, at one point holding his hand carefully, at another point simply sipping herbal tea out of her mug. That was one of the other surprises, finding out that she still had the tea and the mug at his place. For a minute it was almost like she had never left.
"You've been through a lot, Sam." She said, when he exhausted.
"No, I mean..." He trailed off. "I guess so."
"I saw you on the news." Paula blurted.
"What."
"I was at work. And someone had the news on, in the back, and then I was like, oh my God, that's Sam....so I guess I had to come. I mean, I should have called first, but after the way everything went...I really didn’t want to call. So I figured, I'd just show up, and see how it went."
"Well, thanks." Sam said. "I've been pretty much sitting here by myself."
"That's kind of what I figured."
"Yeah."
"I mean, when we were together, my friends were my friends, and they were our friends."
"Yeah."
"But you only had Jesse. I mean, you had me, we were together, but you just seemed kind of closed off, you know?"
"Are you seeing anybody?" Sam asked.
"Are we going to make it like this?" Paula said. "That whole awkward thing."
"No. I mean, we don’t have to. It doesn’t matter."
"I was dating somebody for a little while. It was more like....we were both hanging out? And we were just sort of hanging out together, with benefits."
"I see."
Lena poked him in the chest. "Apparently, you have a fiancée."
"Fiancée?"
"That's what the news said."
"It’s not exactly like that."
"What is it like?"
"She's my girlfriend."
"And they said that..."
"It was a thing...I have this lawyer....and he said that, saying that or whatever, about her, would make things easier, given her situation."
"Wow."
"Yeah."
"How did you guys meet?"
"We just...sort of ran into each other."
"Where do you go to just run into people?"
"I don’t know. I really don’t remember."
"What's she like?"
"She's nice. I mean....you ever have someone, who's just so into you, that they'll do whatever you say? Like, they'll do anything you want them to, just literally change their entire personality, if you wanted? That's what she's like."
"Sounds pretty intense."
"I guess so. But I feel I have this...this responsibility to her. I don’t know."
Paula put the mug down on the table and looked at Sam. "I don’t know what I should say."
"What do you mean?"
"I feel...okay, this is hard."
"Go ahead."
"I don’t want to be mean."
"So don’t be mean."
"But that's the thing." Paula said. "You take everything so hard, Sam. That night? When you ditched me at the movie? Nobody was trying to...to tell you anything wrong, or whatever. And you ended up getting all pissed off anyway and leaving."
"Your saying I have a chip on my shoulder."
"Oh God." Paula rolled her eyes. "I don’t want to do this with you again. Like go to this negative place. There's really no need for it."
"I agree. But that is what you’re saying, right?"
"I don’t know. What do you think?"
"You’re probably right. I'm sorry, by the way. For storming off like that, that night."
"Well, thank you for saying that."
"I'm leaving for Portland."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Paula nodded. "Really soon. Like in a couple of days."
"What happened?"
"Things aren’t...I mean; they just aren’t going anywhere here. Like I thought I wanted to do something creative, and work in the industry, but I really don’t know now."
"I've thought about leaving too." Sam said.
"To be honest, I was kind of thinking you already were gone."
"Really?"
"That's kind of the reason I never came around." Paula said. "I just figured you would have packed up and moved on one day."
"Back to Ohio."
"Or to New York, or something. You can really write anywhere, can’t you?"
"I guess I would." Sam said. "I mean, I guess I can write anywhere. And I will move. After Lena gets better. If she gets better."
"I hope she does."
"Thanks."
"Look." Paula took a deep breath. "I'm just going to come out and say what I wasn’t going to."
"Okay."
"What you were talking about." Lena said. "Being in a relationship, or whatever, with someone that will do whatever you want...I have had something like that once. And it turned bad."
Sam said nothing.
"The guy I was with." Paula said, "He would do whatever I wanted. And I just...it wasn’t enough. So he kept on trying. And in the end it got out that he resented trying at all, that I was doing something to him, by not appreciating it. Only I didn’t ask for any of it. So, it was like you said, I felt responsible."
"Was that why you broke up?"
"No. He left. In the end he got really bitter, and just left. The thing I got out of it, is, when someone does that for you, it hurts both people. You can’t function that way. Not if you’re a regular human being."
But Lena isn’t a regular human being, Sam thought. She's my creation.
Paula gave Sam a hug. "I'm sorry I said all that." She said.
"It’s okay." Sam said, "Maybe I needed to hear it."
"I'm bad at this." Paula said.
"Bad at what?"
"Being friends with an ex. I always, like, in the past, I've always believed in a sort of scorched earth thing. Burning every bridge after I cross it."
"I guess I'm the same way." Sam said.
"I never even got my stuff out of here." Paula said. "And okay, yeah, I didn’t have a lot of stuff...”
"You had the tea. And that mug."
"And I loved that mug. I really did."
"It’s yours now."
"Thank you for not being stupid."
"How could I be stupid?"
"You could have thrown it all away, or something."
As Paula was driving away, Sam's cell phone rang. When he answered the lawyer's voice told him. "Sam, buddy? You’re getting the laptop back."
It was hurry up and wait all over again at the police station. The lawyer made some comments at the front desk, and showed some paperwork. Minutes seemed to crawl by. Sam worried about the entire thing. What if the cops took everything apart? What if they gave him the laptop back, but kept the hard drive? There were other, worse possibilities at foot. What if Jesse simply erased the entire document, before going on his rampage? Or what if the cops erased the entire thing, zeroed it out to factory settings for some reason? He noticed his leg was twitching involuntarily, and willed it to stop. Everything would be fine. The documents would still be there, and when he retrieved them, he could fix everything. Or at the very least, he could fix Lena. When the cop came out from the back of the station and dropped off the computer, Sam was ecstatic.
He held it in his lap carefully all the way back as the lawyer drove him home. It was wrapped in a clear plastic bag with a red EVIDENCE sticker taped to the front. The lawyer was babbling about s
ome sort of "further legal action" and same was nodding along in time with his voice, but not paying the slightest attention. When he put the computer back in its usual place, on the kitchen table, there was a moment of brief panic when he pressed the power button and nothing happened, until he realized the laptop was simply out of power. He plugged it back in, and crossed his fingers, waiting. When the blue Windows screen loaded up, telling him Welcome, Sam! he threw his arms up and cheered, as if the home team had just made a game-winning touchdown in overtime.
There were icons missing on the desktop. Not a lot, but a bit torrent client Sam used frequently was gone, and a video game. Sam wondered if it was possible that Homeland Security would charge him later for internet piracy. Still, he clicked on the MS Word icon and waited for it to load up. It did, and scrolled through, the Lena document was still there. Sam felt a wide grin extending across his face. He opened the document and read
She was pretty in a real way. Not as gorgeous as a supermodel, with defects painted over in Photoshop, but like the girl next door of playboy's past. And her body was equally appealing, with curves or thinness exactly where they belonged. She had the sort of brown hair with highlights that came from the sun and not a cosmetics bottle, and when she laughed you knew you were in the presence of something real.
He scrolled through the pages quickly, finally getting to the end, and typing
Lena healed from her wounds and made a full recovery
He quickly added
Lena woke up out of her coma today, on her way to a full recovery
Just in case the previous statement would not suffice. For a minute he sat at the computer, twitching nervously. He got out his phone and waited for the hospital to call. After five minutes of this, the waiting made him unbearably nervous. He got up to drive there. Before he left he noticed for the first time in weeks just how dark it was in the condo. He threw the blinds open on the patio, letting the sunlight bask across the carpet. Outside it was a normal day at the beach. People were walking by in swimsuits, some with children, and Sam realized it did not bother him in the slightest. For a moment he thought of throwing open the glass door, and letting in the sea air, but at the last second he stopped. he didn’t want to get himself too worked up. He would go to the hospital, and if everything went well, then he would think about the beach.
It wasn’t visiting hours for the ICU when Sam arrived at the hospital, but doctor Niels let him in anyway. The man was smiling broadly. Sam had never seen Niels smiling before. His teeth were large and eggshell yellow, and Sam got the distinct impression they were false. "Good news!" Niels said.
"Let’s hear it."
"Ms. Lena has regained cognitive functions." Niels said. "And is responding to stimuli."
"That sounds good."
"In plain English, it means she's awake." Niels was still smiling. 'We've removed the breathing assistance as well. It’s a fairly remarkable recovery. Would you like to see her?"
Sam said yes, and they walked the short distance to Lena's room in the ICU. Her eyes were bruised and she was skinnier than the last time Sam had been there, but there was no tube down her throat. Her chest rose and fell as she drew breath on her own. Sam walked in, and the nurse said. "Lena, honey? There's someone here to see you?" At that moment Lena's eyes fluttered open, and despite them being bloodshot, Sam thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful.
"Hi, honey." Sam offered.
"Hrts." Lena whispered.
"What’s wrong?"
"Wtr." Lena scratched again. "Thrt hrts."
"You've had a tube down there!" The nurse said, more than a little too cheery. "Down your throat! Of course it’s going to hurt!" The nurse came over with a white Styrofoam cup that seemed to be mostly filled with ice chips. Lena drank a little from it and coughed.
"Hi." Sam tried again.
Lena looked at him sideways. For a moment Sam thought that he saw outright hostility in her expression, but then he rationalized to himself that it was probably only pain. She nodded at him a little, and then her lips clamped down on the straw the nurse had inserted in the water cup. When she was done Lena said, "I have to pee."
"You have a catheter." The nurse said. "A tube? Going down there? So whenever you feel like you need to pee, honey, you just go right ahead and do it."
Lena tried to move her head up, and the nurse told her, "No, just go ahead and lie back. Don’t get up just yet."
"I'm glad you’re okay." Sam said.
This time there was no mistaking the look on her face. Pure anger, scrunched up and visible. "I'm not okay." Lena said, and then she turned her head away from him. The nurse must have seen it as well, for she put a hand on Sam's shoulder and said, "Sweetheart, why don’t you come back tomorrow? Maybe she'll want some company then." Sam agreed, and left the hospital with distinctly conflicted emotions. On the one hand, Lena was alive, and conscious. On the other, something was wrong, that he couldn’t put quite put his finger on. Still, when he went back to the condo, he did what he told himself he was going to do. Sam put on a pair of board shorts and flip flops, and went out to the beach.
Time passed as it was prone to do when not carefully watched. A makeshift memorial had sprouted up on the pier, full of flowers and pictures of the victims. The city had been undergoing serious talk to simply tear the pier down, and relocate it further down the beach in one direction or another, with all the attractions remaining. This was undergoing much dissent and debate among the community, most of it being focused on the historical value of the pier, and the hefty sticker price of such a task. As one talking head pointed out astutely, after the disaster of hurricane Katrina, no one tore down the Super Dome. As a temporary measure a security guard was assigned to the front entrance of the pier, and anyone that wanted to pass through had to walk through an ugly grey-and-beige metal detector. Sam doubted very much that the rent-a-cops and their detector would have stopped Jesse from doing what he wanted to do, or for that matter, anyone else with a similar idea. But he realized that people needed to feel secure in any way they can, even if it was all based on lies. For his part, on the one occasion he went back to the pier, he simply stopped in front of the memorial, and went no further.
He was still under contract to write, and so he wrote. Sam had put together a very rough version of a possible book about Jesse and the pier shooting. His heart wasn’t in it at all, but the agent had provided a lawyer, and this was one of the terms he had agreed to. The publishing company had also agreed to put some money toward Lena's medical bills, since a person created out of thin air didn’t usually have insurance, or even Medicare.
Sam received a mild shock when Tobin from the writing group e-mailed him a jpeg one day under the subject heading Re:what do you think?!? Inside was an actor dressed up as a superhero, which was no big deal really, except this one happened to dressed as the black terror. It was obviously a teaser poster, with a small font in capital letters at the bottom telling him 4-7-15 TERROR REIGNS. Sam hunted down Tobin's number on his phone, and called him up. "Did you get it?" Tobin asked.
"I got it." Sam said. "Is it really happening?"
"Yeah! I think so."
"It doesn’t look bad."
"No. I mean, it doesn’t, at all. The thing about it is, the costume is the strongest thing about this property. It’s one of those things that, even though you really don’t know this character, you feel like you know him. You get what I'm saying?"
"Yeah." Sam said. "I don’t like the tagline."
"I agree. The tagline is shit."
"It sounds like some kind of nine-eleven things. Like it’s something in really poor taste."
"Marketing comes up with this kind of stuff. They don’t ask the writers."
"What are they going to call it? Like, the title."
"I think the studio is just going with the Black Terror!"
"Really?"
"Last time I heard, it’s going to be a hyphenated job. Something like, the Black Terror: birth of a
hero, was thrown out there."
"Okay."
"Like they definitely want the word hero in it, to offset the negative connotations of the rest of the title. I mean, its title by committee for this thing."
"Whose going to direct."
"This one guy. Some Doofus, Brett Ratner-esque type of guy."
"Oh."
"I mean, this thing isn’t going to be good. There's almost no chance in hell that's going to happen. It’s not going to be one of those rare birds, those tent poles that everyone likes and still get good reviews. I mean, Dark Knight won a fucking Oscar, and that's not going to happen here. All it has to do is make money. Open up number one for one weekend, comes in a close second a weekend or two after that, and everyone’s happy. More importantly, the guys at the studio are happy, and that means more work for us in the long run."
"Well, that's good." Sam said. "I hope you get more work, Tobin. I really do."
There was an awkward pause on the phone as Tobin cleared his throat. "Look dude." He said. "I would be amiss if I didn’t point out, my, ah, condolences."
"Okay." Sam said. "Thanks."
"I saw you on the news." Tobin said. "That looked like some heavy shit."
"It was." Sam said. "But I'm alright."
"And your, ah, girlfriend."
"She's there."
"The hospital."
"Yeah. Some positive signs. She's awake, I mean."
Tobin trailed on for some time, hovering just halfway between an apology and voyeurism, and Sam got off the phone the first chance he could. There had been a few such phone calls like this, since the pier. People wanted to say they were sorry, but what they really wanted to know was, what was it like? To come so close to death? To stare a killer in the face, and know the end was coming? It didn’t bother Sam too much; after all, such thought would drive up book sales. It would have bothered him a lot more if Lena were not recovering.
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