Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

When he left the Grove and went to the halfway house, the people who inspired him were no longer with him. It affected his work. He found he couldn’t get the shapes right, or the shading, and the details in the faces disappeared. The characters just didn’t want to be there. After six months of trying, he gave up. The memories had faded, just as the people who told them have faded from his life.

He has his books, but books aren’t the same. Those people who came and went over the years, he would tell them his story too, and those people are what made the Grove a home. You can’t tell your story to a book.

He remembers everything about Cooper Riley from when Cooper used to come out here with his questions. Part of him felt jealous in the beginning, because Cooper was stealing the stories that were meant for him, but of course that was stupid, and he came to realize that in the end. Cooper would come out here once a week over the final year the Grove remained open, and he would interview a handful of patients, all of them committed for taking lives. Adrian found the process fascinating, and he couldn’t wait to read the book when it came out, and he hoped it would have pictures too. When the Grove shut down, Adrian looked for but was never able to find a copy. Nobody at the book stores had ever heard of it. That meant Cooper wasn’t done writing it.

Last week he looked Cooper Riley up. He was a professor at the University of Canterbury who taught psychology to some students and criminology to others. Adrian began to follow him. He began to think-if he couldn’t be friends anymore with the men who had told him those stories, men who had moved on, he could have the man who had recorded them, the man who was the keeper of those stories as well as a storyteller.

Only Cooper was so much more.

Because a few nights ago he learned Cooper was part of the story. Following him, Adrian watched as Cooper hurt the woman behind the café. Cooper dropped her into the trunk of his car and drove away.

Adrian followed.

When it was all over, Adrian drove back to the parking lot. He wanted the woman’s car. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to own it. He wanted to collect it. Even more, he wanted to collect Cooper. He had been using a car that belonged to one of the Twins. He left it several blocks away and walked back to the café. He was lucky-the keys to the woman’s car were laying on the ground. What started as an idea was now a must have. He would bring Cooper back to Grover Hills. He would store him in the Scream Room, and over time Cooper would grow to trust him, to befriend him, and tell him story after story.

He knew keeping Cooper would be a lot of work. He had his savings, and he was still receiving a sickness benefit. The government was giving him money and he didn’t have to work for it, all he had to do was tell the doctor he had to go and visit every six months that he was taking his pills even if he wasn’t. He knew once in the Scream Room the professor would get bored, and the way to combat that was to bring home a victim. So from the café he had driven his new car into town and parked near the corner where the woman had rejected him months earlier, back when Christmas lights had decorated the city. It had been the week before Christmas and he had known for months what he wanted, and what he wanted to do was spend some money and be with the woman from the street corner who reminded him of the girl who changed his life. He had seen her many times over the previous year, each time she looked more like Katie than the last, until finally he was convinced that it was her. He should have known it wasn’t-after all, Katie would have been his age, and this girl on the corner was no more than twenty. The memory of it still makes him feel bad, almost embarrassed to tell the truth. He had approached her and asked how much it cost to be with her, and she had given him a varying range of prices for things he didn’t understand.

They had walked to an alley less than twenty seconds away. She had looked him over and then asked for the money first and he had paid it. Then she had undone the front of his pants. He had never been with a woman before and didn’t know what to do, but she seemed to know plenty.

“Don’t be shy,” she had said, but he was shy and his heart had been banging like a drum, so nervous he was that by the time he felt sick it was too late to warn her, his mouth had opened and a stream of vomit hit her in the middle of the chest.

“Ah, shit, you goddamn freak,” she screamed, jumping away from him.

“I’m sorry, Katie.”

She looked up from where she was wiping the vomit off with her hand and flicking it into the ground. “What did you just say?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“You called me Katie.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“How much money do you have on you?”

“None.”

She stepped forward and poked him in the chest. He was afraid of her. “How much?”

“I. . I don’t know,” he said. He had already given her sixty dollars. He pulled out his wallet and she snatched it from him. She took out all the cash that was in it and threw the wallet back.

“This is to cover the dry cleaning,” she said, “and don’t let me ever see you again.”

But he had seen her again, sometimes a few nights in a row, but he had never approached her.

Not until this week. She didn’t recognize him. She seemed softer for lack of a better word, and he suspected she was high. Plus he had a car-and last time he didn’t. She climbed into the car willingly and he Tasered her when they drove into an alley half a block away. He probably could have just held the rag over her face, but this way there was no struggle. It was the same Taser he would use on Cooper and she collapsed into the same kind of heap, only she was supported by the passenger seat.

The Taser came from the Twins, and so did the extra cartridges, a dozen of them in total, meaning he can shoot twelve people, or less people more than once. He also found the chemical they used to use on him sometimes. They would soak it into a rag and hold it over his face and he’d fall asleep. He would have collected the Twins and listened to their stories if he hadn’t hated them so much. He considered putting the woman in one of the padded rooms and decided to rope her to one of the beds instead. The bedrooms got more air and he figured were more comfortable. He used rope and glue and she stayed asleep the entire time.

After that he went back out. Driving was amazing. Having a car was changing his life. He drove to the hospital. He waited outside. He followed his second mother home. He needed her help to look after all the people he was collecting. She called him a freak just like the street girl had, only this time she didn’t have any orderlies to back her up. He lashed out at her. She told him she would call the police and he would go to jail and that jail was far worse than anything she had ever done to him. So he lashed out again and, when he was finished with the lashing, he tied her to the bed, went out, and bought a container of petrol.

He slept in her house most of the night on the couch, waking up at five o’clock in the morning to load his car with all the food he could find. He took some of her dresses for the girls he would bring home for Cooper, said goodbye to his mother, and set her on fire.

It meant he was going to have to do everything by himself. He could handle that. After all, the last three years in the halfway house proved he was capable, and look at what he’s learned in that time-he’s learned how to drive, how to cook, how to clean up after himself, how to go into town and buy groceries and clothes. He’s been back at the Grove for a week now, and each morning he has sat on the wooden deck out front in the sun, sometimes for only a few minutes, other times for the entire day. This morning was a little different because of the rain, but it’s cleared up now pretty good. He drinks his orange juice and he thinks about Cooper and how, last night, the two men bonded over the killing of the woman. Violence is. . is sit-u-ation-al, that’s what all the books say. That’s what makes criminals model prisoners in jail-there are no women to rape and murder in there. He knew when the situation changed, so would Cooper’s attitude. He’s read that somewhere.