Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

“I’m going to Alice’s,” I said.

My mother frowned and headed for the back door. “I hope you’re just going to make sure she has her radio plugged in.” She went down the stairs to the yard.

The back of my head was still sore, though the swelling had gone down, and because grand ambition has constantly to contend with the minor distractions of a private cause, I began to wonder whether Russell might be able to help me recover my ring. The question was, if I had only a finite amount of unspent capital with the man, how should I spend his interest, his willingness to help? I reached out to stroke the lily as my mother had but stopped short, not wanting to damage it. The delicate flower stared up at me, its mouth open wide, its yellow tongue sticking out.

Alice had adopted a house near Green Lake — a beautiful abandoned Craftsman on the north side — but would often come over the hill to stay where she’d been raised, a cottage that sat on a small rise held intact by a cracked and bulging retainer wall. As a child, even before I knew who lived there, I used to stand on the lawn and repeatedly jump on that wall, trying to break its back. It hadn’t made sense to me that something seemingly so close to failing would resist my encouragement.

“Alice!” I called, standing on the porch.

“Blake? I’m in the kitchen.”

The living room was empty except for an Eames lounger she’d found two blocks away and asked me to move. In the kitchen, Alice was naked except for sunglasses. She stood at the sink washing carrots. The water sputtered a bit — the pressure had been irregular for months now — and she looked upset. I sat in the Eames as she stacked the clean orange roots in a dish drainer.

“How are you?” she asked.

I considered the possibility that she’d heard about my encounter with Echo, but then realized she’d been there the night Fred had returned. It seemed like a long time ago.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Fred got what he came for, you know? I’m not worried about it.”

“Huh. You seemed worried about it the other morning.”

“Well, the event was metonymic.”

“Fuck off.”

Alice poured a glass of water, then walked out the back door, sat in a beach chair facing away from the house, and lit a cigarette. Alice had the kind of native confidence I envied, but it could present at strange times, emphasizing her youth and making her a little hard to take seriously. I stood in the doorway, looking down at her from behind. Her lithe body looked like a fallen sapling, the smoke from her Old Gold the first hint of fire.

“Do you know the guy they call the Editor?”

Alice brushed a bug off her nipple. “Drug dealer,” she said.

“Well, yes. Do you know anything else about him?”

“Big dick.”

She could have been serious, for all I knew. She took what she wanted. A crow lighted on the tall white fence with a quick snap of its wings and looked down at us, cawed.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “He’s just brusque, is all.”

Alice blew a stream of smoke. “Did you know crows have neighborhoods like humans? They have districts and leaders in each district and get together for, like, monthly powwows where they bring something from each district to share with the group. Like, one from Chinatown brings a wonton, and one from, I don’t know, the University District brings a nug of weed.”

A car drove down a street north of us, then a door slammed, scaring the crow. “You’ve really fucked Russell?”

“Who’s Russell?”

The crow cawed again, the sound of a strangled dog, and flew off.

“Go forth, young crow,” said Alice, “and bring tidings to your flock!”

“What do you think the Ballard crow would bring to the powwow?”

Alice was silent for a moment. The skin of her stomach was beading up with sweat, and her tiny blond hairs glistened in the sun. “Boredom?”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Who was that bitch who dropped you off yesterday morning?”

“Bitch? What are you talking about? That’s Russell’s d — Russell’s partner. Russell is the Editor. She dropped me off after a meeting I had with him.”

Alice sat up and turned toward me. “Dropped you off? Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“I’m probably forgetting innumerable things at any given moment,” I said. “Can you cut the rhetoric?”

“Dropped you off and kissed you . You left out the kiss, asshole.”

“Oh! Yeah, that. It’s nothing, Alice, seriously. She’s from New York, she kisses. It’s just standard over there.”

“Huh. Well, last time I checked, we weren’t in New York.”

A child! I was fucking a child! I was embarrassed for her, but I was also simply embarrassed. Alice turned back around and lit another cigarette, and I rushed to her from behind, smacked the cigarette from her hand, and pulled the back of the lawn chair so it kissed the grass below it.

“Last time I checked,” I said, “you had no right to be jealous.”

Alice looked into my face with complete acquiescence, her naked body limp. I leaned forward and gave her a quick, sibling peck on the forehead and then lay down on the grass beside her chair. The cigarette had landed a few feet away, and its ribboned smoke made the cloudless sky appear even emptier. We lay like this until the cigarette had burned itself out. I felt dumb for having come — the sex I’d expected was suddenly the last thing I wanted, and now there was awkwardness between us, the same tension that grew whenever I outstayed my welcome. The fact was, we were essentially dissimilar. We connected carnally and not otherwise. She wasn’t able, I felt, to properly understand my reasons for being here, and she’d made it quite clear from the beginning that she didn’t want to discuss hers. What else was there to discuss? What else could anyone have in common? What we had was circumstantial, convenient, and like anything built on tacit agreement, fragile, which meant that I wanted to fuck with it. I found myself needing to punish Alice for my own insecurity.

“How do you deal,” I said, “with the solitude? I mean, I’m not exactly social, but I have my mother. I can’t imagine being here on my own.”

She let out an exasperated sigh.

“Especially at your age.”

Happily, I’d hit a nerve. Alice glared down over the side of her blue plastic lawn chair like the frothy crest of a wave.

“Uh, being away from people is the only way I can keep from slitting my wrists. I’m perfectly fucking happy here. I mean, look around! It’s like fucking nirvana!”

I listened for the squeak of plastic as she lay back down, which took some time. I’d expected her to tell me to leave but understood now that she wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of a direct command. She wanted me to slink away like a bashful dog, and I would, most likely. I would, soon. But I wanted to end the exchange on a different note to distract me from everything unspoken. Tucked within my statement about needing other people was an admission that I needed Alice. Likewise, her statement — if I could take it at face value — described me as an exception. And though her tone had been sardonic, I sensed the seriousness behind her words. The seriousness and the spite.

In the distance another crow called out, and I imagined it standing in a circle of other crows. Each bird had an object before them: a chopstick, a bud, a candy bar wrapper. Mine had a ring.

“Do you really think that’s true?” I said, sitting up. “About the crows?”

Alice picked up an old magazine and draped it over her face. “Does it matter?”

My mother and I read in the living room under the meager wattage of a government-issued energy-saving bulb. I still felt terrible, empty and alone — the way I usually felt after leaving Alice. We’d gone inside to lie down on her parents’ bed after a while, and she’d curled up to me, holding me like I’d just saved her from drowning. It was hot, and I wanted to peel her sweaty body from me like a wet rag, but I let her stay, my guilt forbidding me to move, until she relaxed her grip, asleep.