Lost Cause
I. Dilemma
Yanakis had a phrase at the tip of his tongue, a glowing metaphor, a sensitive literary allusion that would win his frigid audience over � for who would not be petrified of a presentation of new ideas to a group of intellectuals, trained to point out the least flaw in an amateur production? It was only made amateur by the fact that Yanakis himself had no background in this field, except for a passing grade in a previous class and a flitting familiarity with the subject matter from his light reading. The words �significantly� and �implies,� and briefly, �defiant of all previous logical assumptions,� seemed to remind him of what he was about to say, but the fragmentary mood of his audience, and yes, of his own intellect, quickly dispersed what should have been a quick recollection, as if the sudden upsurge of adrenaline within him had been replaced by a depressive serotonergic satiation.
Katherine made no attempt to rescue Yanakis from his gradual fall into what was a pit of his own making. He had shoveled out the hole and then quietly covered it with leaves himself; indeed, she had unwillingly helped him do so after he had admitted, last night, that this work of genius � the culmination of an entire year of careful research and thought � could be summarized in the three word phrase, �I don�t know.� It was not that he was irresponsible; nay, for his mantra was not that of laziness, it was one of exploration, of laying down roads of blood, sweat and tears toward some higher plane of creativity and liberalizing thought.
He would sit down at his desk to start a paper � in this case, on the �absolute necessity of morality; that is, a discourse on the applicability of ethics and moral institutions of the universal within culturally disparate and unique relativist systems� to which he had to apply verse and chorus to for half of the grade for his philosophy and practical theory class � and, in preparation for a night of inspired writing, look at the beauteous representations of the physical, which, in his strangely skewed world meant not eroticism in its rough-hewn modern sense, but in a Turner-esque suggestive interpretation. For him, the 3 hour meander in the various online galleries of the National Institute or MoMA was not wasted time, for his perfectly defendable thesis that an enjoyment of art, and thus the abstract emotional aspect of the being, was all included in this �absolute necessity of things.� To which Katherine would roll her eyes and unhappily face the fact that this man had no stomach for the practical theory which he should have been addressing, and neither did he get the fact that any class assigned to write on the �absolute necessity of morality� could not be much more than a sham. She imagined some professor digging for tenure and higher credentials without having to waste precious energy on a course for undergraduates that actually mattered.
�Morality is��
In front of his mirror several hours earlier, attempt number five had solidified what he thought of as the crucial part to his presentation; but the fact of the matter was that he felt himself incapable of delivering the lines he had prescribed, for he had a rather startling habit of spitting out words like a Howitzer followed by rapid overheating, thus blowing out the feeble plenary structures he had composed within his own mental framework of the talk. But there he was: standing tall, and if not proud, he was self-composed, and at ease. Nervousness had disappeared, to be replaced with an apparent fecklessness, a fact that only an unsmiling Katherine had noticed, from her vantage point in the back of the room. It was go time.
�Morality is a potent structure utilized as a corrective force within the boundaries of human behavior, as the apparent establishment of a good and bad is a necessary evil within a system of rule that, in order to rise above the rest, must lay down both physical and economic well-being for its subjects.�
Yanakis paused for just a second, to rate the reactions that his first sentence had precipitated in the faces around the room. So far, so good, as they had the semblance of the beginnings of a smile, however far away and improbable the actual response; as for the negative, there was only the tense and unblinking pose set upon him by Katherine. No matter her semblance of ill will, he was astonished to find that she had come in the first place. He had figured the vigorous impasse to which they had arrived at the previous night to be extendable to a lack of support on his big day, but fortunately her own inner sense of moral bearing � though she hated to admit it � still existed, and she could not put aside her feelings as a friend, of sorts. He continued.
�Thus, it can be said that morality is an absolute necessity for those who wish to maintain power. For he himself will not have to live by such a strong code, but it is grist for his publicity mill, that he can separate the forces of good and evil, with a great justification for the acceptance of this �good�. Here, morality � though it is debatable as a universalist system, as in, for example, whether killing is good or bad � is used as a relative, and a required relative at that.�
His words were like flint: the fire spread quickly, and the hubbub threatened to overtake his strong, but not overtly powerful voice.
�Yes, Professor Simmons,� he shouted, toward the ruddy man who had first struggled out a comment. Professor Simmons was already reddening, as if under a scorching sun, even as the cooling units in the building tended toward overkill..
�Mr. Geropoulos, the philosophical greats have designated the existence of a fundamental human morality as a functional system in which to rate our current actions against those of others. There is no use for a political theory in a discussion of absolute morality.�
�Yes, it is so that absolute morality may not require the existence of social politics for it to exist. But that is if one exists in a vacuum, with the one other person whom one would compare himself to. So, with our existence on an intensely social plane, with varied social structures and many physical representations of order and uniformity, and not any old limitless and ungovernable jungle of the past, it is highly useless to discuss the philosophy of absolute structures � absolute theoretical structures. As rulers do exist, and as their established justice system supports a basic universal morality or utilizes as its basis some basic morality, or if you may, customs, which have some bearing upon their construction of a social power figuration, then our own adopted sense of ethical well being comes from their sense. Does this follow?�
A voice interrupted: �I would venture to say that this has already been established, albeit indirectly. What is your��
�I am merely establishing the political basis for this exploration. My real emphasis, however, is guilt. Morality says that good is good, and bad is bad, and one must aim towards the good rather than the bad. A sense of guilt disposes the person with the bad to realign him or herself towards the good. However, guilt as part and parcel of morality must therefore have this political aspect, so where can the line be drawn from an individual sense of guilt to a collective sense of guilt, or a social constructivist transference? In a catastrophe to which we can have varying degrees of responsibility, how can this system of morality decide to what degree I am guilty, and to what degree we are guilty? And how do we dispose of this problem?�
One by one, the many faces in the crowd seemed to lose their reservations as they began to fully comprehend the implications that his thesis had on the rest of the presentation � and only Katherine was left, the only one to deal with its implication on the rest of her life.
II. St. Elsewhere
And there he was, grinning at a spot beyond the wall, already moving on and thinking of the fundamental impossibilities of designing a place more beautiful than the spot where the water meets the sky, past the fishing boats on the sea beyond his cottage back in Greece.
Yanakis � born Yanakis Conxenopoulos to a wealthy Greek merchant whose family had sold, variously, arms, foodstuffs and industrial equipment to the Turkish and the Eastern Europeans � had not sought out his newly adopted life in the United States. For, 8 months before he had had to flee Greece, his family had a little run in with fierce Cypriots, looking to find themselves a little homeland, carved out of the fierecely disputed boundaries that sliced apart the little island. It wasn�t because the Conxenopoulos family had just stumbled upon a little dispute; they had almost gone out of their way to raise a ruckus. Under pressure from the Greek government to stop supplying these homegrown terrorists with new weapons, Yanakis� father had rescinded the arms shipment that was being flown to these Greek citizens � who were, by no mere chance, vicious Cypriot nationalists, as well. But this was not the straw that broke the camel�s back. The scion had then declared he would never send out a shipment again to these rebels, and was, in fact, doing this by request of the Greek government. Which tied them, inexorably, to the flames. So, with a little good thinking a little too late, father sent his family off: his wife, to scout for new lodgings in Italy so as to avoid the possible deaths that some few had wished upon them; his young daughter to a strict boarding school in Switzerland; and his oldest son, Yanakis, to university. In America. To learn, and then continue in, those slash and burn mercantile tactics that had made the family so wealthy. They lived in bloodthirsty times; they themselves were no less vicious than the rest.
In doing so, he had not asked his son, or, for that matter, the rest of his family. His daughter attempted to run away from the Swiss boarding school, and three days later, was brought back by a Swiss family who had picked up a cold and bedraggled girl who had walked and then hitchhiked her way through the Alps until she realized that there was nowhere to go. His wife had went to Italy, but being thoroughly disgruntled with her husband and his recklessness, she had quickly picked up some handsome young Italian fellow who did not mind investing her money for her. In himself, and their randy overnight stays at fancy Venetian palazzos and their Michelangelo-decorated Florentine counterparts. Yanakis, however, had been a little upset � but his jauntiness quickly got the better of him, and before he knew it, he was kissing goodbye to his family in the departures lounge, leaving on a plane to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Happy smiles. He kept that picture on his windowsill, along with the picture he took with the pilot, to remind him that he had come here to go where life led him. But it did not only signify his arrival; it also told of a departure, and of a day when he would someday return.
III. Humiliation
Unfinished
IV. Capture and Release
Katherine, having just finished Corelli�s Mandolin � and thinking the movie vastly inferior � could only expect a ruddy and good-natured, but hardy, Greek specimen. There was something in her that wanted to disbelieve that her quintessential example of the tempestuous Greek could also have something of the barbaric and ruthless about him, but the very circumstance by which he arrived cut short any of her less sociable ideas.. That day, in late September, after he had run-ins with a roommate both unpleasant and violent, student services had offered to have him moved, but he had refused, saying he could handle it � but the roommate had no intention of letting him stay. It was only the forceful intervention of a pestered graduate assistant that persuaded the lighthearted Greek to either have the roommate removed or remove himself to some other lodgings, as it would definitely be better for floor harmony: which, until that point, there had been none of. Being confused, he had agreed to move out, as he did not like to cause trouble, but had nowhere to go. Whereupon the graduate assistant took it upon himself to offer up an idea, involving an unfilled contract and a rapist, which, in the current situation, would have fixed all their problems in one tidy knot. They had not counted on Katherine.
She had answered the door in her usual brusque manner, which some would say, was designed to grab attention to her. The stance would suggest some sort of sexuality � her palms laying flat on the door jambs, her chest jutting out while her limbs splayed themselves, in hardened friezes, upon the remaining uncovered areas of the doorway. But she had not said anything, which made it all the more upsetting.
�I am Yanakis. Howdy-do, ma�am.�
There it went, his hands � one flying to the back of his head and hovering in mid air, and the other one grasping the invisible Stetson lining in the front. He adjusted the empty rims and then put out his hand firmly, to be shaken.
�I�ma take the empty room.�
She had not budged an inch, neither her hands nor the rest of her, dealing a double blow to the confused foreigner. Fortunately, he knew what he wanted, and he knew what had to be done, and so, he pushed his hand into what he could of her stone-set fingers and shook it, the heat from his transferring to the coldness of hers, and as the ice cracked over her chilly form, the beginnings of a smile formed on her face.
�Katherine Engels. Nice to meet you.�
The warmth had not reached her vocal cords, as it still seemed as if she were talking into a brutal wind on a Russian steppe in the middle of January. But it was there, nonetheless, an invitation to come in, and make his presence felt. And possibly, make it worth her time to have met this new boy.
Just as he had finished reliving that memory, her face came back into view. She was appreciably angry, but it got him all the more aroused thinking about it � he drifted back into imagination, remembering the day after he had moved in. Downstairs lived Kyle Ozu, a drunken Japanese guy whose main academic interest lay somewhere between the psychoanalytic study of art as representation of mental disease and just having mental disease: more often than not, his quasi-drunken, logically error-ridden and totally alienating proclamations and principles brought the house to a roaring melee of epic proportions, whose eventual cause no one dared remember for the trouble it had caused. This time, however, it was not that any of the guys was offended, but Katherine � already smarting from the �i-needed-to-borrow-your-bathroom-and-mess-it-all-up-because-there-was-a-huge-line-downstairs-as-a-result-of-the-massive-party� episode from the previous night � had decided that enough was enough; that his ghoulish smiles and alcohol-reddened cheeks belonged somewhere other than his face; and that referring Magritte�s The Lovers � which, in his usual explanation, was evident of some sort of artistic Freudian slip, to do with sexual tensions and Oedipal aspirations and a phobia of making a relationship clear � to his girlfriend (who wouldn�t do it at just any time, but only when she wanted it) was too bad a thing to let go of.
First, it was the interruption of Kyle�s digression with her trademark guttural exclamations: a quick sputter; a furious stutter, followed by a stammer for exclamatory phrases pending comprehension; and finally, the climactic portion of the event, a substantial torrent of angry words let out loud and clear for all to hear. The moment was beautiful; her hair, proud guardians whipping around like wheat sheaves to her sunny fields, the lights glinting on and off and everywhere like a disco ball with heart and soul and desperation in her fervor. Yanakis� presence on the well-worn futon in the corner seemed to make no difference once her feral energies had been awakened; as the dying sun passed the window, the dust motes swirled and stuck to her nose like snow on a wintry evening, and even as he was thinking this, she was off to her running start, for she had caught up a plate and a mug � illustrated with a heart, as it was somebody�s Valentine�s Day gift � but it was no more, the shards collapsing into red piles of dust on the wall opposite. He was in glorious love with a cardboard cutout, with a phantom of whom he knows not laughing, nor quietness or cleverness or drunkenness, or any of those moments that make up a lifetime of memory and sadness; which, wrapped in silk and cotton, and velvet to the touch, was as real to him as a crackling flower, all character in its once-exotic luster, but dead and withdrawn and lonely in its return to the neverland from whence it came.
And just as quickly, Yanakis had fallen out of love. For her anger, righteous and deserved in a few instances, could also be unfair and unjustified. Passion, deadly passion: which to him, was anathema, for his paucity in action belied a usual paucity in emotion, and one imagined that he would not be able to comprehend any disturbance bringing him from the comfortable lodgings of inactivity to the biting whirlwinds of bitterness and spite. But yet, for all his inaction and unresponsiveness, there would be always something for her to gnaw at, something which she could not let go of.
Yanakis remembered their first fight, how unforgiving Katherine had been and how he had lain still during the latter half of the proceedings, only stonehearted in his need to get away from the unpleasantries. It was probably because he never had had to deal with tense situations � his overprotective mother had released him from those responsibilities, and his father had forced his retreat away from confrontation with the enemy unto the benign protection of American soil. It hadn�t helped him much.
The fight began thus, with a futile presentation of arguments on both sides: the fundamental inequality of philosophy to her own academic love, modern economic history. As a patron to the realist school, Katherine tended to shy away from the abstract and needed some great compatibility between cause and effect; she would tend to precede her statements concerning his ideas on philosophy with the words, �though it�s still cool and all,� with the intent of describing the veracity present in the grand effects that consumerism and functional movements could have on the economic person of such and such a country, and how his philosophy was mere empty words that could not affect the common man, except to remind him a) how little that he knew and b) how well-off people could waste their time remonstrating on things that did not matter when one had hungry mouths at home. It was detail and meaning that historical analysis represented; at once, a elaborate but clear representation of the rapid complexities present in the psyche of the individual, the state and the corporation that could not be had in philosophy, which she then appended with the words, �it�s so boring anyway.�
Perhaps what had angered him most at the time were her comments regarding the moral and ethical portion of philosophical study: �It�s so circular� I mean, what kind of people have to spend reams of paper debating the existence of, and the justification of morality? And ethics? First, they argue cultural relativism, and then universalism, and then they go to the justifiability of applying the Western economic model to the universal � which should be acceptable being in a Western country and all, but when the shit hits the fan, there�s this whole flurry over what�s good, and what�s suddenly not good any more just because it�s not working out. I mean, damn. Why do you fight over the definition and physical semblance and meaning�and whatever mumbo-jumbo it�s part of.. of so-called human institutions? What�s there is there. I really can�t accept anything else. If you have to think so hard about it, I don�t see that it really has relevance to anyone, or anything. It�s just a waste of time.�
Aside from her lack of argument � demonstrating a fundamental deficit in knowledge of what philosophy actually was � she seemed to be against establishment of a moral sense, any cultural sensitivity and the negotiable effects of human behavior on any subject, even supposedly decided matters. Worst of all, she didn�t appear to be sensitive at all, to him, or to anything he aspired to do. Even so, Yanakis would return her severity with wit and brevity � the whole of which was not very favorably responded to in the general scheme of their association. They had never quite resolved the fight; the next day, she had walked into his room like nothing had happened, even though they both knew quite well what she had done after she had left his room in angry tears. A quick retreat, heavy, leaden steps into her room where she would turn on her television and drift off into a distorted and nightmarish sleep, filled with visions of her angrily poetic imagination. I am misunderstood, and as such, I suffer � her brain, frothing and boiling over, would venture forth from the cyclically calm paralysis of sleep into her overactive dreamland � and through the wall, he could hear her, moaning and wailing her lonely song into the distance of night. And it all disappeared, as if nothing had happened. He could not imagine what he had done to make her the way she was.
Even as she continued her tirade on what he should be doing with his paper � and not only that, but his life � Katherine noticed that Yanakis was just not responding, not in a normal way; it was his way of keeping her out, this closing up like a clam and clutching tightly to his secrets like priceless pearls, too precious for her to see. She could not understand why he did not say something, why � after he would attempt a shaky defense � he would suddenly quiet down and let the color in his eyes turn grey, as if he was staring beyond his capabilities into some parallel existence. She knew he was there: somewhere she could not go, and take haphazardly from whatever was replenishing his soul. He was brutal, this boy, but in spite of his resilience towards her attack and his non-responsiveness, she needed him more than she could possibly tell him. Not sexually, however; a moral vow made to a former love and confessor had magically restrained her wanton desires, and replaced with something she found more satisfying � the intellectual domination; the hunt, and capture, of some wild beast, whose remains she could pin to the trophy wall in her mind before moving on. There was a spot for Yanakis Conxenopoulos, currently empty.
V. Secret
As a child in what was an otherwise very white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family, Katherine was something different. Not quite a rebel, though she ran away from her family regularly, every Sunday, and into the cool confines of the local cathedral, where, for a few minutes, she would pray at the foot of the Virgin to intercede on her behalf for whatever she desired and needed. Then, as if suddenly absolved from whatever sins she was masking at the moment, a smile would break out on her otherwise unhappy face as she rejoined her parents in the nearby Methodist church. Her dad, a quiet insurance broker that loved his football and beer, could never quite figure out what had happened to Katherine; his other two daughters had turned out fine � they had their teenage troubles, got married early or fooled around or got caught drinking and partying � but not so his little one. Not Katherine. She sat, stonefaced, amidst her dolls, and played and talked with them with a seriousness that was unfathomable: it was as if she was dealing not with the frivolity of dressing up or house, but with issues of life and death. That she should do so, and never whisper a word about it, scared her parents more than it was wise for her to know.
This form of play served as the only evidence of her secret double self, that never manifested itself when she was outside, frolicking on the swings, alone, or sitting around the kitchen table having dinner, without saying anything � in actuality, she required an intense need for control. Her Catholicism rooted her in a historical tradition of power and dealing with power that was only revealed to her after her 8th birthday, on which she had received a book about the Middle Ages from her grandparents. Fascinated at what seemed to be a wonderful example of social control � fear through salvation, or purgatory � she read voraciously, gradually empowering her dolls with functions beyond any capacity they would possibly have in some more normal household. When she whispered the words �you have been excommunicated,� the world would never see that particular Barbie ever again. It was several weeks before the horrendous melted thing was retrieved from the gas furnace, and only after a putrid odor from the heating ducts had filled the air one cold afternoon. But sometimes, on dark days when her father took out the paddle and her mother held her hand out, it would be there. For behind those walls, she would turn her television on, pull the covers up, and begin the long, sad journey: her plaintive cries extending far out into the distance and reappearing when she could not hold it in any longer. For she never lost, never. And Yanakis would never win.
Not Completed
VI. Fury
But there he was, the night before this otherwise benign presentation of the paper to the faculty of the philosophy department and to his colleagues in this class, with nothing but a glazed look in his eyes. No grunts of satisfaction, just �beautiful,� in his soft mutter, �it�s so beautiful.� A portrait of a girl � but no ordinary girl � sitting for one of the realist school of painters, who had decided that manifestations of horrible disease (in this case, a devastating case of smallpox) and degrading poverty in oil paints on horsehair brush were what would pass for his contribution to the artistic cache of the British nation. Somewhere at this point in time, some intensely Protestant New England preacher in the outskirts of Boston-town would be publicly burning printed copies of the painting along with the witches who owned the blasphemous works, as would the devout Anglicans who could do naught but ban and destroy the artist�s name within their own country � and all Yanakis could say was �beautiful.� A compliment, no doubt, made more digestible in his lilting Greek accent, softened by his general lack in energy when speaking to himself.
Randomly passing by his room in the darkness of night, Katherine stopped by his door for a couple minutes before realizing that she had caught him in some personal moment; but she had intruded, her presence was already being sensed, its alien presence being reacted to by a semi-scarlet billow puffing into Yanakis� pale cheeks. Light steps, for she was, by some heavenly design, also light of figure � and surrounded, as it were, by the callous and unfeeling jocks in the house that she could not help but be simultaneously repelled and attracted to. By some odd design, the Greek had arrived in lieu of her next door neighbor-to-be, who had been accused of rape at a neighboring college and been expelled, pending an appeal. The two of them were two strangers, cast adrift in a sea of unwashed skin and drying beer and sticky cups, made only bearable by the availability of a bathroom only used by the two of them on the top floor. Thus, it stayed somewhat clean and to the specifications of the clean-Nazi Katherine. Yanakis, when she complained, would only mumble �yes, ma�am� and fix his invisible cowboy hat in his imitation of a Texas Ranger � his first introduction to American culture had been the bad shows playing on late night satellite TV.
She stood there, in the middle of his dependably neat room, picking at her nails, as if she was sitting in her own room and had not really interrupted anything but her own boredom. The silence was broken by the squeak of Yanakis� chair rotating to face her. She wanted to stammer out some sort of apology, but she could not, fearing something more than her knowledge that she did not know what he was feeling, and she had prided herself on usually knowing. She was an intellectual predator, in her own mind, and her arguments were filled with an Amazon-like energy in her defense of her historical implacability, or when she was attacking, almost Napoleon-like, the plethora of feeble minds that she saw as fettered by unremarkable capitalist arguments that supported and spouted moral relativities and religious mumbo-jumbo. Though she herself was a fierce, practicing Catholic.
Yanakis held a quiet smile on his face for a minute before he started speaking.
�I am working. On the beautiful. I see the polarity of beauty � for what we label beauty must have a counterpart for it to be beautiful. There must be an ugly. Yet, we don�t see beautiful as always being beautiful. There is a point where beautiful is sometimes ugly, and this is by differing moments, angles of view, sometimes even the filtering of another�s perspective over ours. Look at her � she is smiling, and I find her smile so beautiful, even though, when we approach the areas under her neck� we only see ugliness, and rashes, and eventually, a pathetic death. By an absolute necessity there is a beauty within the ugly, or beside the ugly, but always there. A comparison that exists in infinite rearrangements, like a mathematical construction.�
Suddenly, she felt ashamed. There was a lot that she had wanted to say to him at some point, considering that his early pronounced extremely impractical views would get him in some serious trouble later down the road and that his primary concern should not be with classes and work that would seem to only a high concentration of the inane. But there was this. He was glorifying some aspect that she would have preferably left covered, at any other moment. But for now, her assumption of some sort of erotic resolution happening here in this room had left her stunned with her error and personal proclivity for the inane amidst his magnanimity. She was about to leave the room when a thought occurred to her.
�Yanakis � that�s wonderful. Yet, I�m sure it�s been thought of before? Come on, what�s wrong with you? You�re supposed to elaborate on the new. Give me something I haven�t heard of before, and make me believe! Make me believe.�
For a moment, Yanakis was silent, formulating his response to her sudden revulsion to his effort � that, as of yet, had produced no words for his paper. He was merely expounding on his thesis, much too late. But those who leave to last the things that matter most are not necessarily commenting on the unimportance of their work; they could also be emphasizing the care that they must take in approaching the subject. Their handling of the situation could also be a testament to their own abilities, in grace under pressure, or persuasive tactics that could lead a professor to delay the inevitable for a while. None of this was really running through Yanakis� head, for he never thought such things. As an already relaxed young man trying to devise a philosophy of his own, he had somehow managed to pervert the sense of goal orientation which his parents had sought hard to instill within him, and decided to pursue the abstract; time had no place in his construction of the universe.
�Katherine, it is the philosopher�s responsibility � and not only his, but the artist�s, the businessman�s, the scientist�s � to pursue something which he or she feels the world should either know, as a new fact would, or understand better, like I am trying to pursue. Take the matter of the Cold War, or the Greek Revolution, or the battle at Troy in your history classes. How often are these topics expounded on? and papers, papers, papers! All written to debate some key issue with evidence that is cycling back and forth, used for different purposes but ultimately being the same thing. Sometimes, there are different conclusions. Or the same conclusions, using different evidence. I say it is fine that I think of nothing new. If I can make more people believe me and understand what I am trying to say � where those who have come before me on this topic have failed � I will have made a difference, no?�
�Yanakis. You�re doing this for what, a grade? As I understand it� no, look at the assignment � �a new argument for the absolute necessity of things which are intrinsic to the fabric of a society and to a people� please do not include specific examples of folkways or other culture-sensitive items.� It says new, Yanakis. We already understand the need for ugly with beautiful, good with bad. We need to work on this. What are you going to do?�
�I don�t know.�
All her anger at his indecision and bullheadedness and irresponsibility flared all at once, and she opened her mouth to say something, but it seemed that he was already lost in thought, as if he had dismissed her before she could finish talking. It was infuriating, an insult to her intellect and to her practicality which she felt, in all honesty, that he should be taking on. Already, she was taking responsibility for his life, and he was making no move to stop her; possibly because life was like that, to him. �She must be here for some reason,� he was possibly musing to himself, �and if she wants to help, let her help.� It was even more irritating to her that he could possibly be so calm when she, in her own turn, would have been mad with panic.
VII. A Breath
Yanakis could not take it any longer. It was time for a cigarette break: it was his only vice, and it calmed him. Sometimes he regretted it, for Katherine would tolerate alcohol but never cigarettes. She would appear, an unsmiling shadow at the top of the stairs, and sometimes, with the melancholy look on her face, he would imagine being in love with her then. He would conjure up a desperation in himself, taking his mourning, his listlessness away, and making it a motivation to move, to do something, to get tense � but no, it�s too far away, and he has no energy. But there it is, for a second. His alterego, one with a unbearable lightness of step, a nervous quietness and an unsettling ardor too much for his mind to hang on to; one who could not breathe ever since he had first stepped into this house under her watchful and jealous eyes, who seemed to be guarding the inner sanctum of her soul just as she would her life. One who could see love as a thousand burning fires, whose exquisite agony rested in the touch of her hands on his, once in a while, when they are watching late night TV; whose zenith reaches higher and higher after every step closer to that last of all possible experiences; whose tikka masala and goat cheese salad would remain firmly entrenched as the starting line for nights of warmth and constancy out under the cold, cold moon. But this other, non-existent self was lost to him � lies, and half-truths, and emptiness - as the biting wind wiped his mind clean into nothingness, like the cigarette smoke, drifting away from his lips into space.
Looking up at his window, Yanakis was able to see her. She stood there with a wild-eyed expression on her face, unable to comprehend why he would just walk away from her when no one else did, not like her mother, leaving her at that truck stop because of the terrible things she had said about Daddy, and not like Daddy himself, who had shot himself one day while watching the Superbowl. His blood and brains had spattered the wall, and that solitary streak of drying blood on the family portrait traced the mark of shame down Katherine�s face, spoiling the memories forever and ever. And then, in an instance, she was gone, so he could not see her red-rimmed eyes, her legs bringing her quickly into the darkness of her room and into the bathroom where she crossed herself furiously before throwing up, her retching breaking the silence of the house into unrecoverable pieces.
By the time he came back, Katharine was presentable again, with nothing more than a faint grotesqueness in her smile to belie her momentary discomfiture. She was silent, an unusual trait which he could not accept based on past experience. He moved closer to her, just touching her shoulder as he murmured to her softly.
�Katherine? I am sorry.�
This time, it was she would turn away from this conversation. Her shoulders still tingled from where his breath had connected with her skin, and she felt compelled to step aside, her head dropping down to a position betraying some hurt feeling she was experiencing; his hand moved to comfort her, perhaps encircle her in a hug, but she was angry again and pushed his hands back forcefully.
�What will you do now?,� she asked in forbidding tones. �You don�t need anyone, do you, Yanakis. No one. That�s why you�re a dreamer, and always alone. You dream of beauty, of perfection; you dream of emotion but no passion. You wish that I could lose all feeling and become someone else, someone� who didn�t care. If you don�t need anyone, tell me now. And spare me from having any��
The moon reflected an eerie miasma of light through the window, its light illuminating one eye on Yanakis� face. In it, he was scowling, suddenly breathing hard, and a deep red color filled his cheeks. Katherine was suddenly afraid; he looked so fragile in this new expression she saw on his face. She was afraid for him, and for her � and it was all she could do not to run away.
To be completed...