Breaking Temper (cont)
(Part One)
:::
"You're Robert Fischer?"
Instinctively, Fischer came to attention, like a raw recruit in a war movie. That was the kind of effect Mal had on people. Arthur would have been more amused, if the whole thing didn't have an air of a Mexican stand-off. Us against them. Him, really. The Vigils against one puny, lone freshman.
"Yes," Fischer managed to get out. He swallowed. It was so quiet in that room Arthur thought he could hear the boy's saliva move down his throat.
"Relax, chéri. Have a seat," Mal breathed, making her way towards the center of the room, where they had laid out a box of chocolates over a table runner patterned with the Trinity High crest. Fischer's chair had been specially procured. It was much lower than the table, and the chocolates, strategically positioned under the single light bulb, rose before Fischer like a sacrificial altar. High dramatics, all arranged a la Mal.
"Would you like a chocolate?" she asked as she ran her fingers over the chocolate box's gilt interior. When Fischer shook his head, she shrugged, selected a chocolate, popped it in her mouth, and proclaimed, "Delicious!" while her mouth was still full. Behind Arthur, someone giggled. Mal had her back to Fischer, and only The Vigils saw the stern look she gave them. The giggle died away immediately.
"And at only five dollars a box," resumed Mal, turning now to Fischer. "Not that you would know anything about the price, would you, Robert?" Fischer only shrugged. Arthur wondered if it was still bravado carrying him, or if he didn't trust himself to speak and not give away the faint tremble all of them saw in Fischer's knees. He suspected the latter.
"How many boxes have you sold?"
"None."
"None?" Mal's voice opened with amazement at the word, like the petals of a flower unfurling. She was starting to warm up to it now, Arthur could tell. He leaned against the wall, both resigned and, against his better nature, enjoying himself. Mal at her best could rival Saito for owning a room. He could sense this would be one of her better performances.
"Hey, Porter," Mal called out, selecting another chocolate, her eyes never leaving Fischer, "how many boxes have you sold?"
"Twenty-one."
"Twenty-one?" She said the words as if she'd never heard of the number before. "Hey, Porter," fake, breathy flattery now, a parody of a junior reporter on his first beat, or a groupie, entranced, in the presence of her favorite rock star, "you must be one of those eager beaver freshmen, huh?"
"I'm a senior."
"You mean to tell me you're a big shot senior and you still have enough school spirit to get out there and sell all those chocolates? C'est magnifique!" exclaimed Mal.
One could write whole essays, Arthur thought, about the mockery in her voice. The layers of it, how it seemed to be lies folded back in on themselves, until they were almost truth. The way she sounded like she was mocking herself, and Fischer, and herself for mocking Fischer. But mostly, the steel that lay buried underneath, sharpening itself on the folded layers of mockery.
Mal popped the second chocolate in her mouth, chewed, swallowed. When it was gone, she asked, "Anyone else here sell chocolates?"
A chorus of numbers greeted her, as if The Vigils were calling bids at a weird auction. Arthur himself called out, "Twenty-eight!" even though he had only sold nineteen of his fifty. Eames, he noted, said nothing. Amidst the cacophony, Mal selected another chocolate, and offered it to Fischer, who shook his head again. Instead of eating it, Mal replaced it in the box. Then, she held up her hand for silence, which they all gave her, dutifully.
"You see? Selling chocolates, it's the thing to do at Trinity. But you, Robert Fischer, a freshman, a new student who should be filled with the spirit of Trinity High, you haven't sold one?"
"That's right." Fischer's voice was small, a wrong-end-of-the-telescope kind of voice.
"Care to tell me why?"
Fischer visibly pondered the question, for a full silent minute, before settling on, "It's personal."
It was a bad answer, when it came to Mal, and Arthur winced hearing it. He knew instinctively that to Mal, something so defensive was liable to get ripped to shreds. And she didn't disappoint. "Personal?" she purred. Her voice was so friendly, conversational. A 'no secrets here' kind of voice, inviting confidence. "Well, I shouldn't like to pry," she said, licking her fingers, "But let me hazard a guess, Fischer Junior."
She paced the room until she was standing behind Fischer's chair. With both her hands pressing down against the back of the chair, she bent down until she could rest her cheek against his. He couldn't see the way her eyes danced between Vigil members, laughing even if her mouth wasn't, but they could, of course. Someone -- Tony Nguyen, Arthur thought, a cocky freshman who liked to tag along with Arthur and Eames' rescue missions -- whistled low and admiringly, and Mal delighted even in that, her eyes searching out Arthur's in the half-dark as if to say, isn't this wonderful? It was, he agreed; she was playing her part flawlessly so far. But when Arthur glanced at Eames, the expression on Eames' face threw him momentarily out of her performance. Eames was grinding his jaw, almost spasmodically, and Arthur missed the beginning of Mal's monologue while he tried in vain to get Eames to look at him and tell him what was wrong.
"--something to do with your father," Mal was saying. "Maybe your mother died recently, and you're feeling a little unmoored. Set to drift, little Fischer, with no one to help you through your grief. And your father, let me guess, is the head of Fischer-Morrow?" She stroked a finger against the cheek she wasn't pressed again. Fischer closed his eyes, trying to draw away, but only ended up opening the line of his neck. "It's a big company, Fischer Junior. Were you aware they sold chocolates too? Yes? Of course you did, you know everything your father does. You've always been trying to get him to notice you. That's all you ever wanted, isn't it, Robert?"
Mal paused, letting her words echo in the silence. It was so quiet Arthur could hear someone's stomach growl, intimately, and he shifted uncomfortably.
"How did I do? Right on the mark? Or just close enough?"
Like some blonde bombshell from a noir film, Mal poured herself onto Fischer's lap, her arm hooked around his neck. She leaned up towards his face, batting her eyelashes. This was the Mal that drove boys crazy at parties, the one who'd grind up against you only to disappear at the last minute. Arthur hated, and was most afraid of, and most often looked for this one. It was low-back, bright red dress of her personalities. She only put it on when she wanted attention, and when she did, it always worked.
"You can tell us, Robert," she insisted. "Think of this as group therapy. We're all here to help."
Again, the swallowing. Again, Arthur imagined he could hear the muscles moving the saliva down Fischer's throat. It seemed to go on forever before Fischer finally said, "No."
"No, what? No, friends, I don't want your help? No, Mal, you're wrong about the chocolates?" Her voice, though still quiet and seductive, was starting to lose its flirting edge. Arthur sensed the air shifting. She was done playing. It was time to swoop in, to put her teeth on his skin and press down.
"Both," said Fischer nervously. "I don't want your help. And it's not related to my dad. I'm not selling the chocolates because I just don't want to."
"You don't want to?" Mal asked, incredulous. Fischer nodded. A beat passed while Mal surveyed his expression, that fake sincerity still plastered on her face. "Hey Eames," she called out, getting up off of Fischer's lap in one smooth motion.
Eames startled. He was standing so close to Arthur, their arms almost touching, that Arthur could actually feel him jump. "Right," Eames answered, glancing wildly at Arthur, and Arthur could only raise his shoulder a little. He didn't know either. Fischer, too, had a look as if Mal had physically stung him. Mal herself was radiant, standing beside the partially depleted box of chocolates, her hip resting against the table.
"Do you want to come to school every day, Eames?" she asked.
"No."
"What about football practice? Are you always up for it? Always ready to put in 110%?" She made a passable imitation of the Coach's growl in the last few words. The intonation was laughable coming from Mal. Under any other circumstance, it might have lightened the proceedings, but here, it seemed to only make the tension worse.
"Hell, no."
"But you do it anyway, don't you?"
"Hell, yes." Laughter greeted the answer. Relief flooded Arthur, and he allowed himself to share a small smile with Eames. But a quick look from Mal wiped the amusement from Arthur's face. She was dead serious, her lips tight and thin, eyes flashing. She had something on her face that looked like a smile, used all the same muscles as one, but Arthur knew it was only the carcass of her earlier performance. She had tossed the red dress aside, and stood unadorned and deadly before them.
"See, chéri?" Mal made her way back to Fischer, still seated in his chair. She put her hand on her chin, and again, he jerked away, without any success. She gazed down at him, unmoved. "Everyone," she said, with a solemnity that, oddly, was more real than any other emotion she had shown so far, "has to do things in this world they don't want to."
Then she straightened up and sighed, as if she was overwhelmed with a great inexpressible sadness. "Okay, Fischer," she said, finality ringing in every word. "Enough playing around. You've disobeyed The Vigils. That calls for punishment. Although The Vigils don't believe in violence, we have found it necessary to devise a punishment code of sorts. But we're letting you off easy, Robert. Consider it our gift, for your personal situation. We're just asking you to take the chocolates tomorrow, and sell them."
Here it comes, Arthur thought. The end of Fischer, the end of this godforsaken chocolate sale. Fischer would say yes, of course. No one said no to Mal, for long
But Fischer seemed distracted. He had succeeded in freeing his chin from her grasp and had taken to gazing at the crowd in the shadows now, searching for something. Mal, confused, turned to look too, but for once, she couldn't see anything of worth in the crowd. They had all missed a beat somewhere, she and Arthur and everyone else, and now the whole room was waiting for Fischer to speak, to tell them what it was.
"Eames," Fischer suddenly called out. "Eames, are you really here? Are you really a part of this?"
Unease rippled across the room. Arthur turned towards Eames instinctively, holding his breath. Fischer continued, oblivious to the staggering silence, "Eames, you don't really mean this, do you? Why are you here with these guys?"
Eames made a funny lurch forward, hunkering down, rounding his massive shoulders. Arthur saw him as if he was on the field-- he'd been thrown an interception, it was his turn to run the ball all the way to the goal. On the one side, Mal. On the other side, Fischer, coming in for the tackle. For god's sake, Arthur thought frantically at him, don't say anything, and, as if Arthur had gotten through, Eames relaxed again, grinding his jaw and clenching his fist, but nonetheless content to leave the questions unanswered.
But Fischer wasn't done, apparently. His voice sounded much stronger than it had earlier, shaking under Mal's questions. He seemed to be trying to shame Eames enough to come forward. Smoking him out, driving him into a corner. "Why did you tell me it was okay to do my own thing, then?" Fischer demanded, his eyes darting from one side of the room to another, looking for Eames. "Why did you tell me it was okay? Didn't you tell me I needed to be my own man? Were you just saying it to make fun of me?"
"Fischer," Mal snapped. Actually snapped, her fingers in front of his face. "Let's not have any crap. Did you hear what I said? About the chocolates?"
"Eames, talk to me--" Fischer called out again, but this time Cobb interjected, bringing his gavel down on the table. The loud crack was, on the best of days, startling in the stuffy room. In the current confusion, the violence of it exploded like someone snapping a bone or smashing open concrete. Everyone fell silent again.
"That's enough," Cobb said. "This meeting is dismissed." He looked straight at Fischer, avoiding the murderous looks Mal was throwing his way to not interfere. "Fischer, get the hell out of here."
For a minute, though, no one moved. Fischer had his own reasons for being confused, but The Vigils, Arthur included, were frozen with indecision. Since Cobb's presidency and Mal's reign as Architect, she had been the one to dismiss every meeting, big or small, called for a commission or merely perfunctory. She had run the meetings her way, not anyone else's, and to have Cobb step in, as if he were coming to Mal's rescue, shook the room like an invisible blow.
A thought swept through Arthur's mind then: this might ruin the chocolate sale. And fast on the heels of that one, a more terrifying possibility: this might be the end of The Vigils. After all this time, not some ordinance from the administration, not Mal fucking up, not even the student body revolting. Just one terrified freshman. One fifteen year old boy, ready to shit his pants as she sat in his lap. But for the first time, Cobb was openly defying Mal. For the first time, something hadn't gone completely Mal's way-- had, in fact, slipped wildly from her control.
And despite all the confusion, the disbelief, Arthur was sure of one thing: Robert Maurice Fischer Jr. was never going to sell the chocolates. Arthur didn't have Mal's gift, the Marx Brothers ability to build the house next door. But he knew that expression he saw on Fischer's face, as he had called Eames' name, as he had stood before Mal, trembling and still saying, "No." It was the same look on Mal's face that day in the auditorium, the same look on Saito's as he had lectured them from behind the podium. It was the face of someone determined to have their way and would stop at nothing to get it.
"Mal," Arthur called out, suddenly scared. "Mal, we need to talk --"
But he was alone in the meeting room, had been, for some time, with the naked light bulb, and Cobb's gavel, and a few crumpled bits of trash from someone's pocket lying on the floor. The Vigils members had left as soon as they could get. Mal had left too, probably with Eames, to have some choice words with him about Fischer. After that, Arthur imagined, she would go to her locker, gather her things, go home, and sit in the dark of her room, as she told him she did sometimes, to dream up her next moves. I can see much more clearly when I'm alone, she had told him before. I can almost play out the whole world, when I'm just by myself. And perhaps that was true. Perhaps Mal could already read every one of Fischer's moves. Perhaps she had, in her mind, a perfectly realized miniature of Fischer, something she could manipulate like a toy.
Or perhaps she had nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing. Perhaps, for once, the one building the house was Fischer, and not Mal, and that house would build them all up, or tear them all down.
:::
It was close to ten o'clock when Arthur's mother handed him the phone, her eyebrow raised. "Someone named Eames on the other end," she said, and Arthur nodded as he took the receiver. He waited until she had left the room and he could hear her joining his father downstairs in the living room before he spoke.
"What's wrong?" His voice came out a kind of strangled croak, and he cleared it before saying, "You've never called me at home before."
"I didn't know what to say to him," said Eames, without preamble. His voice was hollow on the other end, almost robotic, and Arthur took his glasses off, laid them beside his history textbook, rubbing his eyes and trying to clear his head. "I found him after the meeting and we walked home together but didn't say anything the whole way back."
"He was just shocked."
"He hates me."
It was probably true, and Arthur had no adequate response. Out of nervous habit, he began to flip his pencil over his thumb, over and over again. But even that didn't help, and eventually he was forced to ask, "You didn't tell Fischer you were in the Vigils?"
"It's not a thing you advertise to normal people, if you weren't aware," Eames snapped back.
"Look, you asshole--" retorted Arthur, suddenly furious, but before he could say anything else, Eames went back to being docile, abject.
"Sorry. Forget I said that. I-- I'm just in a mood."
That much was obvious. Arthur wished that he had paid more attention during their health and wellness classes, during that peer counseling unit. All he remembered was the constant reminder, "make I-statements." Fat lot of good that would do him or Eames now. Why had Eames even called him? He was the one who always said Arthur didn't know how to read people, didn't know how to relate. Arthur cradled the phone against his shoulder, feeling useless.
When Eames spoke next, it was an I-statement after all. Not the kind they covered in wellness class, though. "I've been thinking," Eames began, trying to sound nonchalant. "I've decided I'm quitting football."
"What?" Arthur blurted out, shocked. "Why?"
"I might even leave Trinity. It's a personal thing," Eames said, with only the barest hint of mockery.
"Eames, calm down," Arthur said, frantically moving the phone to his other ear. He began to pace the room. There wasn't much space, just from his desk to the wall, then to the side of his bed, but he made the rounds mechanically anyway, trying to keep himself under control. "The idea is ridiculous. Just listen to what you're saying."
"I am. It was something I've been thinking for a while."
"What, during heart-to-hearts with Fischer Junior?" Arthur demanded. "While the two of you painted your toenails and talked about your feelings?"
The anger had crept back into Arthur's voice. Eames ignored it, and that made Arthur seethe even more. "There's something they do to you here, Arthur. Something about The Vigils." He could hear Eames take a breath, could just hear the soft sound of Eames running his hand through his hair. "It's not right."
"You voluntarily joined. You wanted to be one of The Vigils. One of us."
"I'm regretting it now," said Eames. It was heavy enough that Arthur stopped pacing, sat down on his bed, his head bowed. "I don't want to be at a school where a goddamned crappy chocolate sale can break you. There's something wrong about that, Arthur. It's rotten."
"Fischer brought it on himself," Arthur insisted. "The rest of us are doing it fine. If he'd just be like everyone else and sell the chocolates--"
"He was crying like a baby, Arthur. You didn't see him. We didn't say anything to each other as we walked home because he was crying so hard he could barely breathe. I thought he was going to trigger his asthma and die."
It was easier to hear the words, to hear Eames, troubled and loaded with concern and almost lashing out in desperation, when they couldn't see each other. This wasn't really about The Vigils, Arthur realized. Or rather, it wasn't about Arthur, about what he wanted from Eames, or what Eames wanted from The Vigils. It wasn't about the chocolate sale, or what they did to the student body, or even football. Eames needed him in that moment, because of Fischer. That was Eames' great realization. Jealousy, hot and ugly, coiled in his stomach. His mouth went dry, and he was selfishly glad Eames didn't seem to respond.
After a long while, Eames said, "He's not going to sell the chocolates."
"I know," Arthur said, trying for soothing. But the words came out rough, almost insincere. "Don't worry about it. It'll be okay."
"It's not going to be okay, Arthur. I sold out Robert Fischer. Fuck." The word was said in a rush, like Eames was trying to swallow it and vomit it out at the same time. "I was his friend."
"It'll be okay," Arthur repeated lamely, knowing it was no solace to Eames. But there was nothing left to say, nothing he could say. They didn't even have pleasantries to tide them over, no other course of mutual friendship to hide behind. He had failed Eames too. He was failing now at being a friend. It wasn't a betrayal, but it was disappointing all the same, to know that he had nothing to offer Eames but a few minutes of oppressive silence over a telephone line.
Eames hung up without even a goodbye. Instead of turning the phone off, Arthur sat there listening to the dull drone of the dial tone. Before long, it became the busy, incessant blats that warned him a phone sharing his line was off the hook. Arthur listened for as long as he could bear it. Eventually, he too hung up, staring at the phone as it lay motionless on his table, next to his textbook.
When he could no longer bear that either, he threw the phone against his door. It didn't break.
:::
"We've arrived at a moment of truth, boys," Mal began.
A sophomore, Hartnett (first name Ella, Arthur filled in automatically), called from the back, "And girls!" Like they were in a church, and Mal was the preacher, and they were calling out their amens. Mal let it and the resulting laughter pass, her lips curved in a benevolent smile. She was playing the den mother this afternoon, her gestures expansive and generous. It was a less dangerous mood than when she was seductive, but like all things Mal, the sweeter it tasted, the more cautious you had to be.
She turned to Yusuf, who looked truly happy for the first time in two months. "Well, Yusuf? As they used to say, what's the damage?"
"It's all over," Yusuf announced, slapping a sheet of paper with two neat rows of numbers down in front of Cobb, who stared at it uncomprehendingly. "The sale. Finished. Done with."
And thank god, Arthur thought, exhaling with relief. He was exhausted. His grades had tanked dramatically, and if it had gone on for much longer, he'd be in real academic trouble. The Vigils had been busy like never before for the last few days, rounding up the student body, sending cars loaded with kids and chocolates to various sections of towns. They descended on neighborhoods like armies, banging on doors, ringing doorbells. Like encyclopedia salesmen with a military bent and an obsessive sweet tooth. Last week, just when it seemed impossible one of the guys had managed to get permission to solicit at a local Ford factories. Arthur had been one of the four students who circulated the place. They sold three hundred boxes in a couple of hours.
Fischer, of course, didn't sell any. But it didn't matter, in the end. No one defied The Vigils.
Eames had been all but a ghost during the final push. Arthur, out of guilt, had tried to keep Eames' share of the chocolates unsold, but in the end some of the freshmen Vigil members had ferreted out his share and sold those too. He hadn't shown up to most of the meetings, much less visited Arthur after his shift. Arthur had almost decided Eames had already transferred out of Trinity. But he was here now, standing on the other side of the room, studying his nails as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world, and it was taking all of Arthur's self-control not to grab Cobb's gavel and throw it at Eames' head.
"The returns are amazing. We've never gotten ninety-eight percent returns this early. Every box sold, except for, well. We sold exactly nineteen thousand, nine hundred fifty boxes. Right on the nose. The students," and here, Yusuf glanced slyly around the room, his grin spreading, "have really gone out of their way this time."
"They worked hard," Mal agreed.
Yusuf nodded. "The school rallied behind the sale this year. I'm proud of Trinity High."
It was Mal who broke first, laughing. She moved to one side, revealing a nondescript cardboard box on the table behind her. When she reached in, she pulled out a purple and gold box they all recognized now. After she was sure Yusuf saw and recognized it, she replaced the chocolates, taped the cardboard flaps closed again, and sat down on the table, gazing up at Yusuf with a smile on her face. "You're a very smart man," she said. Yusuf looked apprehensive, which, to Arthur, showed more than anything that he was a very smart guy after all, and Mal laughed again. "I look forward to working with you next year, Yusuf."
"I won't be student body president next year," Yusuf reminded her. "Thankfully."
"Oh, I'm sure we'll find other ways to collaborate," said Mal, opaque and noncommittal as always, and Yusuf, his eyebrow raised, merely nodded.
They waited until Yusuf left before letting out a collective whoop. Even Cobb, who generally only oscillated between stony-faced constipation and confusion, got out of his seat and high-fived some of the senior Vigil members. To Arthur, in that moment they almost seemed like a sports team, for crying out loud, like they had won a right to go to the nationals of chocolate sales. But when the clamoring died down, they all turned their attention back to Mal, who had picked up Yusuf's sheet of numbers and was studying them thoughtfully.
"Arthur," she called out. "Do we need to check his figures?"
The briefest flick of resentment raced through Arthur's body. Couldn't Mal just let it go for once? Did she have to hound them-- Arthur, especially-- every minute? She could have told them all, "good job". Or, "thanks for your hard work." She herself hadn't done anything for the sale, just directed. And now, when it was all over, do we need to check the figures. No hint of a laugh for him. No pat on the head, no compliments.
But habit kicked in, and Arthur pulled out his notebook, flipping to the last few pages where he had kept The Vigils' own record of the chocolate sale. "From what Yusuf said, it sounds about right. One of the teams, Nash's, I think, still has to divvy up the money they made among the slackers in the junior class. That's what the missing two percent is."
Mal nodded, satisfied. She was playing with the tape on the lip of the box, lazily peeling it off and reapplying it. Arthur wanted to know what the remaining fifty boxes were for, but he had a feeling they were the real reason why Mal had called this meeting, and why she had forced Eames to show up. She wouldn't have wasted all this time and effort just to rub their success in Eames' face. Much less to celebrate their first real show of power.
"What now, Mal?" Cobb asked, putting words to the thought on everyone's minds. If he had no other use as a president, Arthur thought ironically, he was good for moments like this. Fools rush on, and so forth, as Mal liked to say. She always called Cobb one for asking the obvious.
Mal tossed her hair, then combed it back behind her ears, smiling almost sanctimoniously at Cobb. "Didn't I tell you, Dom? Didn't I say that everyone was pushing panic buttons for nothing?"
Cobb was silent, and Arthur didn't blame him. Mal herself had been frantic two weeks back, when it seemed like despite all their effort, the chocolate sale would never reach the total. She'd spent an hour ranting at Arthur about post-was art, which was really an hour spent worrying about what would happen if they failed. But of course Cobb didn't know about that. He was silent now like a scolded child, giving Mal the upper hand in their relationship, once again. Mal, back on top, and Cobb, one of the many peons below who could not fathom how she worked. Poor Cobb, Arthur mused. Poor ignorant, maligned Cobb, who would always think of Mal as an unstoppable force, inhuman, a teenage Napoleon-meets-Joan-of-Arc. He'd probably be traumatized by Mal for the rest of his life. He'd go through life thinking all women should be like Mal, always five steps ahead, beautiful and quick and crueler for it.
"We're having a special assembly ," Mal announced, "to report on the chocolate sale. I've already made the arrangements with the school. We're having it on the athletic field."
"Why the athletic field?" Cobb, the eternal straight man. "Why not the school?"
"Because this assembly is strictly for the student body, Dom. The administration won't be involved. But everybody else will be there. And so will Robert Fischer. And there, Dom, we will have a raffle sale. A raffle sale like no other in Trinity's history." A beat. "In any school's history."
A strange hush fell over the room. Arthur found himself holding his breath again. Mal, as always, beautiful in action.
"You might ask, 'Mal, how will it be different?'"
She waited. Arthur knew that she hadn't meant for it to be a rhetorical question. She was actually waiting for Cobb to ask. But Cobb only sat there, waiting. So Arthur dutifully parroted, "Mal, how will it be different?"
The smile she threw him was electric. Without warning, she had transitioned to that most dangerous of all personalities again. Arthur felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. No one else in the room seemed to sense anything was wrong, and Arthur wondered if he wasn't being paranoid. But that smile, those eyes. She wasn't Mal, his friend, in this moment. She was Mal, the Architect; Mal, the architect of the house no one but her could see.
"I'm so charmed you asked, Arthur," she said, opening the cardboard box once again. This time she withdraw a thick roll of raffle tickets, the ubiquitous dusty red kind. She began to tear off the tickets, one at a time, and passed them around the room. Everyone took a ticket, even Eames, who quickly tucked it into his pocket, like it would bite him if he held onto it for too long.
"The prize will, obviously, be the remaining boxes of chocolate. Fischer's chocolate." The emphasis was unmistakable. "The tickets will be a dollar each. And on them, each student will write their name, the name of a combatant, and a blow."
In an instant, Mal had turned the air of the room from inquisitive to deadly. Combatant? Blow? Arthur had no idea what she was talking about, but he was filled with apprehension all the same.
"You see, Arthur," Mal said, articulating each word carefully, "we promised Fischer punishment if he didn't obey The Vigils. We promised him nonviolence, too, but only if we could. You know what they say. Spare the rod, spoil the child. And we can't have that, can we?"
She looked around the room, her eyes sparkling with triumph and malice. She had returned to the table now, under the light of the single bulb. God, but who had planned this room? Whoever it was surely had a mind like Mal's, one for simple, blunt dramatics. The light was a halo in her hair. She was like an avenging angel, descended from some hell of a heaven.
"So we will have a boxing match. But not just any kind of boxing match," Mal warned, putting one finger up, as if one of them had actually raised an objection. "It'll be one for the student body. They will direct the fight. Every student who comes will get a chance to be involved. After all, we're really there to celebrate the nobleness of spirit that made the chocolate sale a success."
A pause. Mal seemed to be expecting a laugh, or a snicker, or any kind of reaction from them. Getting none, she shrugged, and continued. "As for the boxing match itself, in one corner will be Robert Fischer, freshman, barely one hundred and forty-five pounds. And in the other corner, one of us. Someone to stand in for The Vigils."
Arthur let out his breath then, shaking his head with grudging admiration. When he looked back at her, she was staring straight at him, a smile curling at one side of her mouth. She knew that he alone could almost see it. This was the house she had been building all along, Arthur realized. This was where it was all leading up to. He could almost see that house now. It wasn't Fischer's house after all. It was, from top to bottom, Mal's own creation.
But Mal wasn't done yet. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "There's only one person I could possibly pick. Who else but Eames?"
All eyes turned towards Eames, who was still studying his nails. He seemed removed from the scene, a mere placeholder, a doll in the shape of a man. The time for him to say something in response came and passed, and, with the unity of an audience watching a tennis rally, everyone in the room returned to watching Mal, solemn and grave in the center of the room.
"But when it comes to the final battle, who do you want on your side?" Another pause. This time, Arthur knew, the question was rhetorical. "The ace, of course. The one true champion of your cause. And Eames, I'm afraid, is no longer such a champion, are you, Eames?"
Silence. Mal gazed at Eames in something close to pity, and Arthur began to gnaw apprehensively at his thumbnail. He was missing something. She had one more card up her sleeve, and he had no idea at all what it was.
"Perhaps he never was," Mal finished, as if she was pronouncing a death sentence on Eames. Cut it out, Mal, Arthur wanted to shout. This wasn't some Greek play. But that was wrong. It was, to Mal, a kind of Greek tragedy. And she had drafted them into it, without them realizing. They were her Greek chorus, and she, the ultimate deus ex machina.
"No, I won't make Eames fight a battle he doesn't believe in. There's someone else more suited to the task. Someone who has been loyal all this time. Someone who will actually enjoy it."
It was going to be Cobb, Arthur guessed. Who better? Cobb was the president, the second best Vigil symbol after Mal. He was a varsity boxer too, and even though the Trinity program was tiny, he was actually a very mean, efficient fighter. Arthur had seen him, just once before, when Mal had dragged him to a match, just so they would know what they were dealing with. Nothing flashy, but Cobb had a way of beating down his opponents until they just collapsed and let him have the win. It'd be brutal, of course, and over in a few seconds, raffle or no. But Cobb would enjoy being used, and Mal would watch it all with her eyes half-lidded, soaking in the meaningless violence, the cruelty.
"Chéri?"
He didn't register her at first. He was still gazing at Cobb, waiting. But then Mal's voice as she asked, "Are you listening?", seemed closer. She was advancing, moving out of the light, was moving towards Arthur. He tore his gaze away from Cobb, shocked, and that seemed to please Mal, who continued, "I give you the honors, Arthur. You've been such a constant, supportive force. It's only fitting that you represent us.”
She smiled, bright, and sweet, guileless as a saint giving her blessing, as she came to him and kissed him on the cheek. Today she smelled of lilacs, and Arthur thought numbly, as he had before, fleurs du mal. She had also pressed another sheet of paper into his hand. It wasn't Yusuf's report, but an announcement of a commission, the same kind they would tape in the lockers of the student body. Childish, and slightly sinister because of it, with mismatched letters cut from a magazine. Like a ransom note. rAFfLE SALE, it said. CouRTeSY of THE vIgilS.
"After all,” she whispered, so that only he could hear, “no one defies The Vigils."
Running his thumb over the raised bumps of the letters, Arthur could almost smell the rubber cement holding the letters to the paper. Most times, he had been the one to make the notices, and he wondered, vaguely, who had been tasked to make this one. The shock of Mal's announcement was like a blanket, muffling the noise of the other Vigil members around him, calming his own thoughts until they were sluggish. He felt adrift from his body, disconnected, like he was watching a movie with himself as a star, and later he could talk it over with Mal, both of them mere spectators hashing out the plot of a badly made drama. He could ask her then, how long had that Mal been planning this? Who had told her about Eames' defecting? And what should that Arthur, the one on the screen, have done? Should he have tried to say no? Or was it inevitable that it would come to this?
Her interest in you may lie dormant, but it would always kill you in the end. Who had told him that about Mal? It was not until the shock faded that Arthur remembered and the full irony hit him. By then, the only person around who could laugh with him was himself.
:::
He'd been alone just long enough to light up when he heard the stairway door open and slam shut again. "I thought you gave up smoking last year," said the voice behind him.
"Specificity, Eames," Arthur replied, not turning around. "I merely stopped. I didn't give up anything."
But he had given up smoking, last year, and he resented Eames in a small, petty way for remembering. Granted, he was in a small, petty mood already. He'd begged the cigarette off one of the senior Vigil members, and the guy had acquiesced, handing it to Arthur like a man passing off a death row inmate's final meal. Arthur had taken it and fled. He didn't know how to respond to that look of pity, the look that asked what he had done to deserve this. He didn't know what he had done. He hadn't done anything.
His lungs still remembered how to handle the burn. The cigarette still seemed so natural between his fingers. Arthur blew the smoke straight into Eames' face as Eames joined him by the fence surrounding the parameter of the roof, and Eames grimaced.
"Stop it," said Eames, leaning back to avoid the cloud of smoke. "That stuff will kill you, you know."
"What do you care? You're not my keeper." He exhaled again, tasting the smoke on his words as he bit out, "Go baby Fischer some more."
Eames drew back, hurt. Arthur pretended not to notice. The pettiness, he realized now, was part of something larger, a seething anger directed everywhere, at Mal and Fischer and the school, but most of all, at Eames. And it was a familiar anger, the anger of first semester, the one that raged against Eames for having it easy, for being wanted, and chosen, and skating effortlessly through the stages of life that Arthur had to claw through. Life was a ladder, Mal liked to say, and Arthur knew that was true. He was on a lower rung than Eames. When people like Eames had a shit, people like Arthur, down below, had to clean it up.
"You know The Vigils make all the freshmen inductees do a commission before they let them join?" When Eames didn't reply, Arthur sneered. "No, of course you don't. You were recruited. They didn't make you do anything."
"Arthur--" Eames began, his tone pleading, but Arthur cut him off.
"There was a teacher who was at this school our freshmen year, Mr. Charles. You remember him?" He waited for Eames to nod, then continued, "He taught American literature and composition. I was in his English class. I spent two whole weeks repeating his questions back to him when he called on me in class. That was my commission. Sounds simple, right?"
He took in another shaky drag of his cigarette, this time courteously turning away from Eames to exhale. "The problem was, after my commission was over, it became a kind of joke to just repeat his questions back to him. It spread around the school. Everyone in all his classes started doing it. They even started doing it to him in the hallways, during passing periods, when he said hello. He was a nice guy. He didn't know anything about The Vigils or commissions or anything. It was just his second year in the school. It really messed him up. He left the school after that year. They say he joined a religious order and was never the same."
A long, long silence followed. For a moment, Arthur was worried Eames had already left and he’d spent the last few minutes talking to himself. Then, Eames asked, “Why are you telling me this?"
Arthur didn't know. He hadn’t planned on saying any of it, really. He'd meant to be nice to Eames, if Eames went to look for him after the meeting. He'd made a little bet with himself, and lost, in the end. But the words spilled forth like vomit, andArthur couldn’t control himself.
"After I became Point Man, you know what Mal told me?" He glanced over at Eames, who said nothing, his lips pressed together. "Mine was the first commission she ever thought up. She was the one who gave the idea to Miles. She'd given him a breakdown of all the factors. Picking me, because I was quiet and inoffensive in class. Picking something subtle, something likely to catch on. Picking a target that was overly sensitive, that was Mr. Charles. 'Its success was directly responsible for making her Architect.' Those were Miles' exact words."
"That's sick."
Suddenly, Arthur was so angry he was close to tears, and he put out the cigarette, stamping hard enough to send vibrations up his leg as he tried to keep crying at bay. "What do you know about sick, Eames? What do you know about anything?"
"Arthur, look at me." Arthur didn't, and Eames make a frustrated noise, a sound halfway between a sigh and Arthur's name. He put his hands on Arthur's shoulders and spun him around. "Think about what Mal is making you do. She's going to let the two of you beat the shit out of each other. And for what? For fifty boxes of chocolates? For two hundred and fifty dollars? At wholesale, it's probably far less. It's not worth it, Arthur. Don't let Mal make you do this."
"Let Mal make me do this? What about you, Eames?" Arthur snapped, jabbing his finger into Eames chest. He tried pulling away, but Eames' hands were vice-like on his shoulders. In his mind, he saw Fischer trying to draw away from Mal's touch, and he shivered. Eames looked down at him with concern, and the anger flooded back. He slammed the heel of his palm against Eames, but Eames didn't flinch. "It's supposed to be you out there! You're supposed to be the one fighting Fischer. I'm just out there because you--"
"This is just what Mal wants," Eames interrupted, shaking Arthur. "She likes to put the needle in people, to see where they flinch and when they'll develop the good sense to stop letting her fucking prick them. She doesn't care what happens to you, Arthur. She's a bitch--"
The first swing went wild. Arthur had never punched someone in the face before, and he missed Eames' nose by a mile, landing instead somewhere below Eames' eye. The shock of it was enough, though, and Eames immediately let Arthur go. But it wasn't enough for Arthur. He swung again, this time more accurately, and Eames held up his hand just in time to catch it. But it left his stomach open, and Arthur meanly aimed at Eames' side. His fist sank in, forcing all the breath out of Eames', and Eames was thrown against the fence, coughing.
"You motherfucker--" Eames spat out. Arthur tried to land another, but despite being out of breath, Eames was ready, and he ducked it cleanly. His balance thrown off, Arthur almost turned straight into Eames' fist, which was aimed, properly, for the bridge of Arthur's nose. It wasn't hard enough to break anything, but it knocked the glasses off of Arthur's face.
The pain was delayed, and when it came, blossomed across Arthur's whole face, blinding him more effectively than the loss of his glasses. The pain had squeezed out the tears he had managed to hold back earlier. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Arthur, hey," Eames was saying, but nearsighted, crying, angry, Arthur lashed out, hitting at Eames blindly. Most of his shots missed. Once or twice, he managed to strike the side of his hand against Eames' forearms. Eames was all arms and elbows, and at first, Arthur couldn't tell if they were still fighting, or if Eames was merely trying to get Arthur to stop hitting him. "Would you just-- fucking-- Arthur, stop--" shouted Eames, and in the confusion Arthur tried to knee Eames in the stomach, just to get away, to find his glasses and run for the door, get off the roof, run all the way home if he had to, but Eames slapped both palms against Arthur's face and kissed him.
It was not a good kiss. It was so bad, in fact, that it took Arthur a long while to realize he was being kissed at all. Eames had come at him hard and close-lipped, more a head butt than any gesture of affection. He bore down on Arthur like he was trying to squeeze him into obedience. Neither of them opened their mouths. When the shock of it passed, Arthur was out of breath, and he shoved at Eames, this time succeeding in pushing him away. Eames took a step forward, determined, his jaw set, and Arthur, panicked, ducked and put his foot out, barreling forward, shoving Eames to the ground.
They ended up with Arthur straddled on Eames chest, both of them breathing hard. Eames lifted his hands, seemed to contemplate shoving Arthur off or flipping them or something, but then just gave up, lying down docilely. The fight had drained out of Arthur too. He stared down at Eames, who was drawing in deep breaths, trying to slow down his panting. It was late in the afternoon, and the light was fading into pinks and purples. Arthur couldn't tell if those were bruises forming on Eames' face, or if it was just the sunset. Eames' tie, always loose, lay over one shoulder, a tangled red knot that, to Arthur’s nearsighted gaze, looked like Eames had bled onto the roof.
"Are you done hitting me?" panted Eames. He was staring up at Arthur with an odd expression, one Arthur had never seen before. Or maybe it was because Arthur couldn't see as clearly without his glasses. He felt strangely naked. He wanted to cover Eames' eyes until he could find his glasses. It was a stupid thought.
"I'm done," he told Eames. "I'm still angry with you though."
He wanted to ask Eames about the kiss, but he didn't have the words for it. Eames, meanwhile, had put a hand on Arthur's thigh, softly, as if asking for permission that Arthur didn't know how to give. When he didn't shake Eames off, Eames pressed down, the heat of it comforting as it bled through Arthur's slacks. His own hands were still on Eames' shoulders, keeping Eames down, even though both of them were done struggling.
"It's not me you're supposed to be angry at," Eames said.
"Shut up," Arthur grumbled as he rolled off of Eames.
He found his glasses, bent but not broken, lying next to the fence. Tucking them into his pocket, he sat for a minute, cross-legged, watching the sunset with blurry concentration. Then he lay down, gingerly, on one side, his back to Eames. The cement ground of the rooftop was cold, but they lay like that for a long while, not touching. The sun was done setting, and it was almost dark.
“Hey,” Eames whispered. Arthur made a soft noise of assent. Behind him, he could hear Eames prop himself up on one elbow. "Let's get out of here," Eames whispered. Arthur felt laughter bubble up in his throat, and he almost asked, are you asking me to elope with you? when Eames continued, "I already applied for a transfer to Monument next year. Come with me. Don't give anything more to this shitty school, Arthur."
A great sadness swept over Arthur. He felt like the lone survivor of a shipwreck, floating on a piece of driftwood, trying in vain to reach a distant shore. No one would find him even if he did reach that shore. He would be alone forever. As he thought of turning and reaching for Eames, just to reassure himself that Eames was really there, he felt Eames' arms envelop him, holding him to Eames' body. Surprised, he almost turned around, but he knew, instinctively, that if they looked each other in the face, the contact would end.
Tell me again I don't have to do this, he thought desperately. Ask me to leave Trinity with you. But Eames stayed silent, merely holding Arthur to him, not hard enough to count as an embrace, though it was close, and that, Arthur thought, was only fitting. His life was full of things that were close to what he wanted, and he had gotten used to being satisfied with almost, not quite, on the verge of. He had no right to expect more of Eames, when settling was all Arthur ever asked for.
art by shiroi_ten
:::
They held the raffle on a Friday night. Mal told the administration it was a celebratory pep rally. After all, they had sold all the chocolates. They had met the quota. Even Robert Fischer's fifty boxes were sold. Who paid for them, Arthur never asked.
Like all of Mal's plans, the raffle was a success. The entire student body seemed to be there in the stadium, trading money for tickets and calling out ideas as to what to write down. In that discussion, Arthur discovered an unexpected parity between him and Fischer, a shared lack of appeal that would not have existed between Fischer and Eames, who after all was one of the stars of the football team. Not for the first time, Arthur marveled at Mal's propensity for seeing all sides. Though no one wanted to side with Fischer, Arthur was also, as Trinity figures went, relatively unknown. Did they want to see a freshman reserve player beat up on an inoffensive nerd? But then again, who wanted their name attached to The Vigils' Point Man getting his nose bashed in by the school pariah? These were, to the crowd, monumental decisions, maybe even the more important decisions of their high school life so far.
Arthur watched it all from the makeshift boxing ring in the center of the football field. Under Cobb's direction, The Vigils had resurrected some old boxing ring from the bowels of the bleachers and restored it to its former use. He stood inside it now, leaning against the ropes. Mal was outside the ring, but stood outside his corner. At some point, too, Cobb had wandered over, he and Mal had struck up a philosophical debate about human nature. "Dom," Mal was saying, resting her well-formed hands on the rope, "people are two things: greedy and cruel. Just look at the setup here. The greed part -- a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred, plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part -- watching two guys hit each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. We're all bastards, Dom. We might as well accept it."
Cobb disagreed, pedantically, and they were deep into the conversation when Fischer finally showed up, dressed in ill-fitting sweatpants and a t-shirt that looked several pay grades too high for his surroundings.
"You came," said Mal, pleasantly, sounding for all the world like Fischer was an old family friend, and they were having a Sunday afternoon barbecue in the backyard.
Fischer nodded. As if noticing Arthur there for the first time, he nodded at Arthur too. Arthur nodded back. He wondered, painfully, if Eames had arrived with Fischer. If Eames were out there, right now, in the crowd, watching them both.
Cobb, immediately uncomfortable, left without a word. Fischer and Mal followed his process through the restless student crowds on the bleachers. When they could no longer pick him out in the mass of blue sweaters and khaki slacks, Fischer turned back to Mal. "You didn't tell me about the raffle sale," he said simply.
"I thought Eames would tell you," said Mal, affecting surprise.
"He did," Fischer said. A pause. They stared at each other, appraisingly. Arthur tried to leave them to it, but Mal put a hand on his back and pressed. She wanted him to hear whatever it was that they had to say to each other. It was just a light touch, but it seemed to paralyze Arthur to the waist down. He stayed. To the end, he thought bitterly, Mal would have everything go her way.
"Why did you want me here, Mal?" Fischer asked.
It was breathtaking to Arthur that Fischer said it with such confidence. He was talking back to Mal, alone as he was. No one was in his corner now, not even Eames, but he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t even blink.
"C'est simple," Mal said, her voice sibilant. "Revenge. Here's a way to get even with everyone, Robert. With us. With the school. With your father."
As he watched Fischer try to weigh Mal's words, Arthur almost felt sorry for the kid. Or rather, he did feel sorry for Fischer, but the feeling was too mixed up with his own predicament, with his own anger. Mal's voice was so full of trust you could almost swim in it. The sad thing was, it was false to the last drop. Letting Fischer beat Arthur into a bloody pulp, or vica versa, had nothing to do with revenge. That much, at least, seemed obvious to Arthur. But what were they here for then? What did Fischer hope to get out of it? Was it a show of loyalty for Arthur, and a way to hit back something, someone, for Fischer? Arthur didn't know. Eames would have probably told him--
But even the thought of Eames was unbearable to Arthur now. They hadn't spoken since the rooftop incident. Once or twice he had seen Eames walking with Fischer, to football practice or to class. After the news of the raffle sale, and of Eames' quitting the football team, the pair became untouchable at Trinity. Crowded hallways parted for them. It hurt to see Fischer now, so close, so solid. To know that he wasn't just a ghost, not just the embodiment of everything that had gone wrong with Arthur's life. He was a real person too.
Arthur was grateful when Fischer went to his corner of the ring, probably to get a drink of water, or to psyche himself up for the match. They watched him go, Mal with her hand on Arthur's back. Her touch, for the first time in the course of their friendship, repulsed Arthur horribly. He wanted to tear it away, to scrub at that spot until he couldn't feel it anymore. But he stood there, frozen, feeling the heat from Mal's palm soak through his shirt, all the way into his skin.
"Life is sad sometimes," Mal murmured.
"Life is shit," Arthur replied, with a vehemence that shocked even him.
Mal simply nodded, refusing to let Arthur shake her out of her fake dreaminess. Then, without warning, she faded into the darkness, leaving Arthur and Fischer utterly and completely alone with each other.
:::
(Part Three)
:::
"You're Robert Fischer?"
Instinctively, Fischer came to attention, like a raw recruit in a war movie. That was the kind of effect Mal had on people. Arthur would have been more amused, if the whole thing didn't have an air of a Mexican stand-off. Us against them. Him, really. The Vigils against one puny, lone freshman.
"Yes," Fischer managed to get out. He swallowed. It was so quiet in that room Arthur thought he could hear the boy's saliva move down his throat.
"Relax, chéri. Have a seat," Mal breathed, making her way towards the center of the room, where they had laid out a box of chocolates over a table runner patterned with the Trinity High crest. Fischer's chair had been specially procured. It was much lower than the table, and the chocolates, strategically positioned under the single light bulb, rose before Fischer like a sacrificial altar. High dramatics, all arranged a la Mal.
"Would you like a chocolate?" she asked as she ran her fingers over the chocolate box's gilt interior. When Fischer shook his head, she shrugged, selected a chocolate, popped it in her mouth, and proclaimed, "Delicious!" while her mouth was still full. Behind Arthur, someone giggled. Mal had her back to Fischer, and only The Vigils saw the stern look she gave them. The giggle died away immediately.
"And at only five dollars a box," resumed Mal, turning now to Fischer. "Not that you would know anything about the price, would you, Robert?" Fischer only shrugged. Arthur wondered if it was still bravado carrying him, or if he didn't trust himself to speak and not give away the faint tremble all of them saw in Fischer's knees. He suspected the latter.
"How many boxes have you sold?"
"None."
"None?" Mal's voice opened with amazement at the word, like the petals of a flower unfurling. She was starting to warm up to it now, Arthur could tell. He leaned against the wall, both resigned and, against his better nature, enjoying himself. Mal at her best could rival Saito for owning a room. He could sense this would be one of her better performances.
"Hey, Porter," Mal called out, selecting another chocolate, her eyes never leaving Fischer, "how many boxes have you sold?"
"Twenty-one."
"Twenty-one?" She said the words as if she'd never heard of the number before. "Hey, Porter," fake, breathy flattery now, a parody of a junior reporter on his first beat, or a groupie, entranced, in the presence of her favorite rock star, "you must be one of those eager beaver freshmen, huh?"
"I'm a senior."
"You mean to tell me you're a big shot senior and you still have enough school spirit to get out there and sell all those chocolates? C'est magnifique!" exclaimed Mal.
One could write whole essays, Arthur thought, about the mockery in her voice. The layers of it, how it seemed to be lies folded back in on themselves, until they were almost truth. The way she sounded like she was mocking herself, and Fischer, and herself for mocking Fischer. But mostly, the steel that lay buried underneath, sharpening itself on the folded layers of mockery.
Mal popped the second chocolate in her mouth, chewed, swallowed. When it was gone, she asked, "Anyone else here sell chocolates?"
A chorus of numbers greeted her, as if The Vigils were calling bids at a weird auction. Arthur himself called out, "Twenty-eight!" even though he had only sold nineteen of his fifty. Eames, he noted, said nothing. Amidst the cacophony, Mal selected another chocolate, and offered it to Fischer, who shook his head again. Instead of eating it, Mal replaced it in the box. Then, she held up her hand for silence, which they all gave her, dutifully.
"You see? Selling chocolates, it's the thing to do at Trinity. But you, Robert Fischer, a freshman, a new student who should be filled with the spirit of Trinity High, you haven't sold one?"
"That's right." Fischer's voice was small, a wrong-end-of-the-telescope kind of voice.
"Care to tell me why?"
Fischer visibly pondered the question, for a full silent minute, before settling on, "It's personal."
It was a bad answer, when it came to Mal, and Arthur winced hearing it. He knew instinctively that to Mal, something so defensive was liable to get ripped to shreds. And she didn't disappoint. "Personal?" she purred. Her voice was so friendly, conversational. A 'no secrets here' kind of voice, inviting confidence. "Well, I shouldn't like to pry," she said, licking her fingers, "But let me hazard a guess, Fischer Junior."
She paced the room until she was standing behind Fischer's chair. With both her hands pressing down against the back of the chair, she bent down until she could rest her cheek against his. He couldn't see the way her eyes danced between Vigil members, laughing even if her mouth wasn't, but they could, of course. Someone -- Tony Nguyen, Arthur thought, a cocky freshman who liked to tag along with Arthur and Eames' rescue missions -- whistled low and admiringly, and Mal delighted even in that, her eyes searching out Arthur's in the half-dark as if to say, isn't this wonderful? It was, he agreed; she was playing her part flawlessly so far. But when Arthur glanced at Eames, the expression on Eames' face threw him momentarily out of her performance. Eames was grinding his jaw, almost spasmodically, and Arthur missed the beginning of Mal's monologue while he tried in vain to get Eames to look at him and tell him what was wrong.
"--something to do with your father," Mal was saying. "Maybe your mother died recently, and you're feeling a little unmoored. Set to drift, little Fischer, with no one to help you through your grief. And your father, let me guess, is the head of Fischer-Morrow?" She stroked a finger against the cheek she wasn't pressed again. Fischer closed his eyes, trying to draw away, but only ended up opening the line of his neck. "It's a big company, Fischer Junior. Were you aware they sold chocolates too? Yes? Of course you did, you know everything your father does. You've always been trying to get him to notice you. That's all you ever wanted, isn't it, Robert?"
Mal paused, letting her words echo in the silence. It was so quiet Arthur could hear someone's stomach growl, intimately, and he shifted uncomfortably.
"How did I do? Right on the mark? Or just close enough?"
Like some blonde bombshell from a noir film, Mal poured herself onto Fischer's lap, her arm hooked around his neck. She leaned up towards his face, batting her eyelashes. This was the Mal that drove boys crazy at parties, the one who'd grind up against you only to disappear at the last minute. Arthur hated, and was most afraid of, and most often looked for this one. It was low-back, bright red dress of her personalities. She only put it on when she wanted attention, and when she did, it always worked.
"You can tell us, Robert," she insisted. "Think of this as group therapy. We're all here to help."
Again, the swallowing. Again, Arthur imagined he could hear the muscles moving the saliva down Fischer's throat. It seemed to go on forever before Fischer finally said, "No."
"No, what? No, friends, I don't want your help? No, Mal, you're wrong about the chocolates?" Her voice, though still quiet and seductive, was starting to lose its flirting edge. Arthur sensed the air shifting. She was done playing. It was time to swoop in, to put her teeth on his skin and press down.
"Both," said Fischer nervously. "I don't want your help. And it's not related to my dad. I'm not selling the chocolates because I just don't want to."
"You don't want to?" Mal asked, incredulous. Fischer nodded. A beat passed while Mal surveyed his expression, that fake sincerity still plastered on her face. "Hey Eames," she called out, getting up off of Fischer's lap in one smooth motion.
Eames startled. He was standing so close to Arthur, their arms almost touching, that Arthur could actually feel him jump. "Right," Eames answered, glancing wildly at Arthur, and Arthur could only raise his shoulder a little. He didn't know either. Fischer, too, had a look as if Mal had physically stung him. Mal herself was radiant, standing beside the partially depleted box of chocolates, her hip resting against the table.
"Do you want to come to school every day, Eames?" she asked.
"No."
"What about football practice? Are you always up for it? Always ready to put in 110%?" She made a passable imitation of the Coach's growl in the last few words. The intonation was laughable coming from Mal. Under any other circumstance, it might have lightened the proceedings, but here, it seemed to only make the tension worse.
"Hell, no."
"But you do it anyway, don't you?"
"Hell, yes." Laughter greeted the answer. Relief flooded Arthur, and he allowed himself to share a small smile with Eames. But a quick look from Mal wiped the amusement from Arthur's face. She was dead serious, her lips tight and thin, eyes flashing. She had something on her face that looked like a smile, used all the same muscles as one, but Arthur knew it was only the carcass of her earlier performance. She had tossed the red dress aside, and stood unadorned and deadly before them.
"See, chéri?" Mal made her way back to Fischer, still seated in his chair. She put her hand on her chin, and again, he jerked away, without any success. She gazed down at him, unmoved. "Everyone," she said, with a solemnity that, oddly, was more real than any other emotion she had shown so far, "has to do things in this world they don't want to."
Then she straightened up and sighed, as if she was overwhelmed with a great inexpressible sadness. "Okay, Fischer," she said, finality ringing in every word. "Enough playing around. You've disobeyed The Vigils. That calls for punishment. Although The Vigils don't believe in violence, we have found it necessary to devise a punishment code of sorts. But we're letting you off easy, Robert. Consider it our gift, for your personal situation. We're just asking you to take the chocolates tomorrow, and sell them."
Here it comes, Arthur thought. The end of Fischer, the end of this godforsaken chocolate sale. Fischer would say yes, of course. No one said no to Mal, for long
But Fischer seemed distracted. He had succeeded in freeing his chin from her grasp and had taken to gazing at the crowd in the shadows now, searching for something. Mal, confused, turned to look too, but for once, she couldn't see anything of worth in the crowd. They had all missed a beat somewhere, she and Arthur and everyone else, and now the whole room was waiting for Fischer to speak, to tell them what it was.
"Eames," Fischer suddenly called out. "Eames, are you really here? Are you really a part of this?"
Unease rippled across the room. Arthur turned towards Eames instinctively, holding his breath. Fischer continued, oblivious to the staggering silence, "Eames, you don't really mean this, do you? Why are you here with these guys?"
Eames made a funny lurch forward, hunkering down, rounding his massive shoulders. Arthur saw him as if he was on the field-- he'd been thrown an interception, it was his turn to run the ball all the way to the goal. On the one side, Mal. On the other side, Fischer, coming in for the tackle. For god's sake, Arthur thought frantically at him, don't say anything, and, as if Arthur had gotten through, Eames relaxed again, grinding his jaw and clenching his fist, but nonetheless content to leave the questions unanswered.
But Fischer wasn't done, apparently. His voice sounded much stronger than it had earlier, shaking under Mal's questions. He seemed to be trying to shame Eames enough to come forward. Smoking him out, driving him into a corner. "Why did you tell me it was okay to do my own thing, then?" Fischer demanded, his eyes darting from one side of the room to another, looking for Eames. "Why did you tell me it was okay? Didn't you tell me I needed to be my own man? Were you just saying it to make fun of me?"
"Fischer," Mal snapped. Actually snapped, her fingers in front of his face. "Let's not have any crap. Did you hear what I said? About the chocolates?"
"Eames, talk to me--" Fischer called out again, but this time Cobb interjected, bringing his gavel down on the table. The loud crack was, on the best of days, startling in the stuffy room. In the current confusion, the violence of it exploded like someone snapping a bone or smashing open concrete. Everyone fell silent again.
"That's enough," Cobb said. "This meeting is dismissed." He looked straight at Fischer, avoiding the murderous looks Mal was throwing his way to not interfere. "Fischer, get the hell out of here."
For a minute, though, no one moved. Fischer had his own reasons for being confused, but The Vigils, Arthur included, were frozen with indecision. Since Cobb's presidency and Mal's reign as Architect, she had been the one to dismiss every meeting, big or small, called for a commission or merely perfunctory. She had run the meetings her way, not anyone else's, and to have Cobb step in, as if he were coming to Mal's rescue, shook the room like an invisible blow.
A thought swept through Arthur's mind then: this might ruin the chocolate sale. And fast on the heels of that one, a more terrifying possibility: this might be the end of The Vigils. After all this time, not some ordinance from the administration, not Mal fucking up, not even the student body revolting. Just one terrified freshman. One fifteen year old boy, ready to shit his pants as she sat in his lap. But for the first time, Cobb was openly defying Mal. For the first time, something hadn't gone completely Mal's way-- had, in fact, slipped wildly from her control.
And despite all the confusion, the disbelief, Arthur was sure of one thing: Robert Maurice Fischer Jr. was never going to sell the chocolates. Arthur didn't have Mal's gift, the Marx Brothers ability to build the house next door. But he knew that expression he saw on Fischer's face, as he had called Eames' name, as he had stood before Mal, trembling and still saying, "No." It was the same look on Mal's face that day in the auditorium, the same look on Saito's as he had lectured them from behind the podium. It was the face of someone determined to have their way and would stop at nothing to get it.
"Mal," Arthur called out, suddenly scared. "Mal, we need to talk --"
But he was alone in the meeting room, had been, for some time, with the naked light bulb, and Cobb's gavel, and a few crumpled bits of trash from someone's pocket lying on the floor. The Vigils members had left as soon as they could get. Mal had left too, probably with Eames, to have some choice words with him about Fischer. After that, Arthur imagined, she would go to her locker, gather her things, go home, and sit in the dark of her room, as she told him she did sometimes, to dream up her next moves. I can see much more clearly when I'm alone, she had told him before. I can almost play out the whole world, when I'm just by myself. And perhaps that was true. Perhaps Mal could already read every one of Fischer's moves. Perhaps she had, in her mind, a perfectly realized miniature of Fischer, something she could manipulate like a toy.
Or perhaps she had nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing. Perhaps, for once, the one building the house was Fischer, and not Mal, and that house would build them all up, or tear them all down.
:::
It was close to ten o'clock when Arthur's mother handed him the phone, her eyebrow raised. "Someone named Eames on the other end," she said, and Arthur nodded as he took the receiver. He waited until she had left the room and he could hear her joining his father downstairs in the living room before he spoke.
"What's wrong?" His voice came out a kind of strangled croak, and he cleared it before saying, "You've never called me at home before."
"I didn't know what to say to him," said Eames, without preamble. His voice was hollow on the other end, almost robotic, and Arthur took his glasses off, laid them beside his history textbook, rubbing his eyes and trying to clear his head. "I found him after the meeting and we walked home together but didn't say anything the whole way back."
"He was just shocked."
"He hates me."
It was probably true, and Arthur had no adequate response. Out of nervous habit, he began to flip his pencil over his thumb, over and over again. But even that didn't help, and eventually he was forced to ask, "You didn't tell Fischer you were in the Vigils?"
"It's not a thing you advertise to normal people, if you weren't aware," Eames snapped back.
"Look, you asshole--" retorted Arthur, suddenly furious, but before he could say anything else, Eames went back to being docile, abject.
"Sorry. Forget I said that. I-- I'm just in a mood."
That much was obvious. Arthur wished that he had paid more attention during their health and wellness classes, during that peer counseling unit. All he remembered was the constant reminder, "make I-statements." Fat lot of good that would do him or Eames now. Why had Eames even called him? He was the one who always said Arthur didn't know how to read people, didn't know how to relate. Arthur cradled the phone against his shoulder, feeling useless.
When Eames spoke next, it was an I-statement after all. Not the kind they covered in wellness class, though. "I've been thinking," Eames began, trying to sound nonchalant. "I've decided I'm quitting football."
"What?" Arthur blurted out, shocked. "Why?"
"I might even leave Trinity. It's a personal thing," Eames said, with only the barest hint of mockery.
"Eames, calm down," Arthur said, frantically moving the phone to his other ear. He began to pace the room. There wasn't much space, just from his desk to the wall, then to the side of his bed, but he made the rounds mechanically anyway, trying to keep himself under control. "The idea is ridiculous. Just listen to what you're saying."
"I am. It was something I've been thinking for a while."
"What, during heart-to-hearts with Fischer Junior?" Arthur demanded. "While the two of you painted your toenails and talked about your feelings?"
The anger had crept back into Arthur's voice. Eames ignored it, and that made Arthur seethe even more. "There's something they do to you here, Arthur. Something about The Vigils." He could hear Eames take a breath, could just hear the soft sound of Eames running his hand through his hair. "It's not right."
"You voluntarily joined. You wanted to be one of The Vigils. One of us."
"I'm regretting it now," said Eames. It was heavy enough that Arthur stopped pacing, sat down on his bed, his head bowed. "I don't want to be at a school where a goddamned crappy chocolate sale can break you. There's something wrong about that, Arthur. It's rotten."
"Fischer brought it on himself," Arthur insisted. "The rest of us are doing it fine. If he'd just be like everyone else and sell the chocolates--"
"He was crying like a baby, Arthur. You didn't see him. We didn't say anything to each other as we walked home because he was crying so hard he could barely breathe. I thought he was going to trigger his asthma and die."
It was easier to hear the words, to hear Eames, troubled and loaded with concern and almost lashing out in desperation, when they couldn't see each other. This wasn't really about The Vigils, Arthur realized. Or rather, it wasn't about Arthur, about what he wanted from Eames, or what Eames wanted from The Vigils. It wasn't about the chocolate sale, or what they did to the student body, or even football. Eames needed him in that moment, because of Fischer. That was Eames' great realization. Jealousy, hot and ugly, coiled in his stomach. His mouth went dry, and he was selfishly glad Eames didn't seem to respond.
After a long while, Eames said, "He's not going to sell the chocolates."
"I know," Arthur said, trying for soothing. But the words came out rough, almost insincere. "Don't worry about it. It'll be okay."
"It's not going to be okay, Arthur. I sold out Robert Fischer. Fuck." The word was said in a rush, like Eames was trying to swallow it and vomit it out at the same time. "I was his friend."
"It'll be okay," Arthur repeated lamely, knowing it was no solace to Eames. But there was nothing left to say, nothing he could say. They didn't even have pleasantries to tide them over, no other course of mutual friendship to hide behind. He had failed Eames too. He was failing now at being a friend. It wasn't a betrayal, but it was disappointing all the same, to know that he had nothing to offer Eames but a few minutes of oppressive silence over a telephone line.
Eames hung up without even a goodbye. Instead of turning the phone off, Arthur sat there listening to the dull drone of the dial tone. Before long, it became the busy, incessant blats that warned him a phone sharing his line was off the hook. Arthur listened for as long as he could bear it. Eventually, he too hung up, staring at the phone as it lay motionless on his table, next to his textbook.
When he could no longer bear that either, he threw the phone against his door. It didn't break.
:::
"We've arrived at a moment of truth, boys," Mal began.
A sophomore, Hartnett (first name Ella, Arthur filled in automatically), called from the back, "And girls!" Like they were in a church, and Mal was the preacher, and they were calling out their amens. Mal let it and the resulting laughter pass, her lips curved in a benevolent smile. She was playing the den mother this afternoon, her gestures expansive and generous. It was a less dangerous mood than when she was seductive, but like all things Mal, the sweeter it tasted, the more cautious you had to be.
She turned to Yusuf, who looked truly happy for the first time in two months. "Well, Yusuf? As they used to say, what's the damage?"
"It's all over," Yusuf announced, slapping a sheet of paper with two neat rows of numbers down in front of Cobb, who stared at it uncomprehendingly. "The sale. Finished. Done with."
And thank god, Arthur thought, exhaling with relief. He was exhausted. His grades had tanked dramatically, and if it had gone on for much longer, he'd be in real academic trouble. The Vigils had been busy like never before for the last few days, rounding up the student body, sending cars loaded with kids and chocolates to various sections of towns. They descended on neighborhoods like armies, banging on doors, ringing doorbells. Like encyclopedia salesmen with a military bent and an obsessive sweet tooth. Last week, just when it seemed impossible one of the guys had managed to get permission to solicit at a local Ford factories. Arthur had been one of the four students who circulated the place. They sold three hundred boxes in a couple of hours.
Fischer, of course, didn't sell any. But it didn't matter, in the end. No one defied The Vigils.
Eames had been all but a ghost during the final push. Arthur, out of guilt, had tried to keep Eames' share of the chocolates unsold, but in the end some of the freshmen Vigil members had ferreted out his share and sold those too. He hadn't shown up to most of the meetings, much less visited Arthur after his shift. Arthur had almost decided Eames had already transferred out of Trinity. But he was here now, standing on the other side of the room, studying his nails as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world, and it was taking all of Arthur's self-control not to grab Cobb's gavel and throw it at Eames' head.
"The returns are amazing. We've never gotten ninety-eight percent returns this early. Every box sold, except for, well. We sold exactly nineteen thousand, nine hundred fifty boxes. Right on the nose. The students," and here, Yusuf glanced slyly around the room, his grin spreading, "have really gone out of their way this time."
"They worked hard," Mal agreed.
Yusuf nodded. "The school rallied behind the sale this year. I'm proud of Trinity High."
It was Mal who broke first, laughing. She moved to one side, revealing a nondescript cardboard box on the table behind her. When she reached in, she pulled out a purple and gold box they all recognized now. After she was sure Yusuf saw and recognized it, she replaced the chocolates, taped the cardboard flaps closed again, and sat down on the table, gazing up at Yusuf with a smile on her face. "You're a very smart man," she said. Yusuf looked apprehensive, which, to Arthur, showed more than anything that he was a very smart guy after all, and Mal laughed again. "I look forward to working with you next year, Yusuf."
"I won't be student body president next year," Yusuf reminded her. "Thankfully."
"Oh, I'm sure we'll find other ways to collaborate," said Mal, opaque and noncommittal as always, and Yusuf, his eyebrow raised, merely nodded.
They waited until Yusuf left before letting out a collective whoop. Even Cobb, who generally only oscillated between stony-faced constipation and confusion, got out of his seat and high-fived some of the senior Vigil members. To Arthur, in that moment they almost seemed like a sports team, for crying out loud, like they had won a right to go to the nationals of chocolate sales. But when the clamoring died down, they all turned their attention back to Mal, who had picked up Yusuf's sheet of numbers and was studying them thoughtfully.
"Arthur," she called out. "Do we need to check his figures?"
The briefest flick of resentment raced through Arthur's body. Couldn't Mal just let it go for once? Did she have to hound them-- Arthur, especially-- every minute? She could have told them all, "good job". Or, "thanks for your hard work." She herself hadn't done anything for the sale, just directed. And now, when it was all over, do we need to check the figures. No hint of a laugh for him. No pat on the head, no compliments.
But habit kicked in, and Arthur pulled out his notebook, flipping to the last few pages where he had kept The Vigils' own record of the chocolate sale. "From what Yusuf said, it sounds about right. One of the teams, Nash's, I think, still has to divvy up the money they made among the slackers in the junior class. That's what the missing two percent is."
Mal nodded, satisfied. She was playing with the tape on the lip of the box, lazily peeling it off and reapplying it. Arthur wanted to know what the remaining fifty boxes were for, but he had a feeling they were the real reason why Mal had called this meeting, and why she had forced Eames to show up. She wouldn't have wasted all this time and effort just to rub their success in Eames' face. Much less to celebrate their first real show of power.
"What now, Mal?" Cobb asked, putting words to the thought on everyone's minds. If he had no other use as a president, Arthur thought ironically, he was good for moments like this. Fools rush on, and so forth, as Mal liked to say. She always called Cobb one for asking the obvious.
Mal tossed her hair, then combed it back behind her ears, smiling almost sanctimoniously at Cobb. "Didn't I tell you, Dom? Didn't I say that everyone was pushing panic buttons for nothing?"
Cobb was silent, and Arthur didn't blame him. Mal herself had been frantic two weeks back, when it seemed like despite all their effort, the chocolate sale would never reach the total. She'd spent an hour ranting at Arthur about post-was art, which was really an hour spent worrying about what would happen if they failed. But of course Cobb didn't know about that. He was silent now like a scolded child, giving Mal the upper hand in their relationship, once again. Mal, back on top, and Cobb, one of the many peons below who could not fathom how she worked. Poor Cobb, Arthur mused. Poor ignorant, maligned Cobb, who would always think of Mal as an unstoppable force, inhuman, a teenage Napoleon-meets-Joan-of-Arc. He'd probably be traumatized by Mal for the rest of his life. He'd go through life thinking all women should be like Mal, always five steps ahead, beautiful and quick and crueler for it.
"We're having a special assembly ," Mal announced, "to report on the chocolate sale. I've already made the arrangements with the school. We're having it on the athletic field."
"Why the athletic field?" Cobb, the eternal straight man. "Why not the school?"
"Because this assembly is strictly for the student body, Dom. The administration won't be involved. But everybody else will be there. And so will Robert Fischer. And there, Dom, we will have a raffle sale. A raffle sale like no other in Trinity's history." A beat. "In any school's history."
A strange hush fell over the room. Arthur found himself holding his breath again. Mal, as always, beautiful in action.
"You might ask, 'Mal, how will it be different?'"
She waited. Arthur knew that she hadn't meant for it to be a rhetorical question. She was actually waiting for Cobb to ask. But Cobb only sat there, waiting. So Arthur dutifully parroted, "Mal, how will it be different?"
The smile she threw him was electric. Without warning, she had transitioned to that most dangerous of all personalities again. Arthur felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. No one else in the room seemed to sense anything was wrong, and Arthur wondered if he wasn't being paranoid. But that smile, those eyes. She wasn't Mal, his friend, in this moment. She was Mal, the Architect; Mal, the architect of the house no one but her could see.
"I'm so charmed you asked, Arthur," she said, opening the cardboard box once again. This time she withdraw a thick roll of raffle tickets, the ubiquitous dusty red kind. She began to tear off the tickets, one at a time, and passed them around the room. Everyone took a ticket, even Eames, who quickly tucked it into his pocket, like it would bite him if he held onto it for too long.
"The prize will, obviously, be the remaining boxes of chocolate. Fischer's chocolate." The emphasis was unmistakable. "The tickets will be a dollar each. And on them, each student will write their name, the name of a combatant, and a blow."
In an instant, Mal had turned the air of the room from inquisitive to deadly. Combatant? Blow? Arthur had no idea what she was talking about, but he was filled with apprehension all the same.
"You see, Arthur," Mal said, articulating each word carefully, "we promised Fischer punishment if he didn't obey The Vigils. We promised him nonviolence, too, but only if we could. You know what they say. Spare the rod, spoil the child. And we can't have that, can we?"
She looked around the room, her eyes sparkling with triumph and malice. She had returned to the table now, under the light of the single bulb. God, but who had planned this room? Whoever it was surely had a mind like Mal's, one for simple, blunt dramatics. The light was a halo in her hair. She was like an avenging angel, descended from some hell of a heaven.
"So we will have a boxing match. But not just any kind of boxing match," Mal warned, putting one finger up, as if one of them had actually raised an objection. "It'll be one for the student body. They will direct the fight. Every student who comes will get a chance to be involved. After all, we're really there to celebrate the nobleness of spirit that made the chocolate sale a success."
A pause. Mal seemed to be expecting a laugh, or a snicker, or any kind of reaction from them. Getting none, she shrugged, and continued. "As for the boxing match itself, in one corner will be Robert Fischer, freshman, barely one hundred and forty-five pounds. And in the other corner, one of us. Someone to stand in for The Vigils."
Arthur let out his breath then, shaking his head with grudging admiration. When he looked back at her, she was staring straight at him, a smile curling at one side of her mouth. She knew that he alone could almost see it. This was the house she had been building all along, Arthur realized. This was where it was all leading up to. He could almost see that house now. It wasn't Fischer's house after all. It was, from top to bottom, Mal's own creation.
But Mal wasn't done yet. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "There's only one person I could possibly pick. Who else but Eames?"
All eyes turned towards Eames, who was still studying his nails. He seemed removed from the scene, a mere placeholder, a doll in the shape of a man. The time for him to say something in response came and passed, and, with the unity of an audience watching a tennis rally, everyone in the room returned to watching Mal, solemn and grave in the center of the room.
"But when it comes to the final battle, who do you want on your side?" Another pause. This time, Arthur knew, the question was rhetorical. "The ace, of course. The one true champion of your cause. And Eames, I'm afraid, is no longer such a champion, are you, Eames?"
Silence. Mal gazed at Eames in something close to pity, and Arthur began to gnaw apprehensively at his thumbnail. He was missing something. She had one more card up her sleeve, and he had no idea at all what it was.
"Perhaps he never was," Mal finished, as if she was pronouncing a death sentence on Eames. Cut it out, Mal, Arthur wanted to shout. This wasn't some Greek play. But that was wrong. It was, to Mal, a kind of Greek tragedy. And she had drafted them into it, without them realizing. They were her Greek chorus, and she, the ultimate deus ex machina.
"No, I won't make Eames fight a battle he doesn't believe in. There's someone else more suited to the task. Someone who has been loyal all this time. Someone who will actually enjoy it."
It was going to be Cobb, Arthur guessed. Who better? Cobb was the president, the second best Vigil symbol after Mal. He was a varsity boxer too, and even though the Trinity program was tiny, he was actually a very mean, efficient fighter. Arthur had seen him, just once before, when Mal had dragged him to a match, just so they would know what they were dealing with. Nothing flashy, but Cobb had a way of beating down his opponents until they just collapsed and let him have the win. It'd be brutal, of course, and over in a few seconds, raffle or no. But Cobb would enjoy being used, and Mal would watch it all with her eyes half-lidded, soaking in the meaningless violence, the cruelty.
"Chéri?"
He didn't register her at first. He was still gazing at Cobb, waiting. But then Mal's voice as she asked, "Are you listening?", seemed closer. She was advancing, moving out of the light, was moving towards Arthur. He tore his gaze away from Cobb, shocked, and that seemed to please Mal, who continued, "I give you the honors, Arthur. You've been such a constant, supportive force. It's only fitting that you represent us.”
She smiled, bright, and sweet, guileless as a saint giving her blessing, as she came to him and kissed him on the cheek. Today she smelled of lilacs, and Arthur thought numbly, as he had before, fleurs du mal. She had also pressed another sheet of paper into his hand. It wasn't Yusuf's report, but an announcement of a commission, the same kind they would tape in the lockers of the student body. Childish, and slightly sinister because of it, with mismatched letters cut from a magazine. Like a ransom note. rAFfLE SALE, it said. CouRTeSY of THE vIgilS.
"After all,” she whispered, so that only he could hear, “no one defies The Vigils."
Running his thumb over the raised bumps of the letters, Arthur could almost smell the rubber cement holding the letters to the paper. Most times, he had been the one to make the notices, and he wondered, vaguely, who had been tasked to make this one. The shock of Mal's announcement was like a blanket, muffling the noise of the other Vigil members around him, calming his own thoughts until they were sluggish. He felt adrift from his body, disconnected, like he was watching a movie with himself as a star, and later he could talk it over with Mal, both of them mere spectators hashing out the plot of a badly made drama. He could ask her then, how long had that Mal been planning this? Who had told her about Eames' defecting? And what should that Arthur, the one on the screen, have done? Should he have tried to say no? Or was it inevitable that it would come to this?
Her interest in you may lie dormant, but it would always kill you in the end. Who had told him that about Mal? It was not until the shock faded that Arthur remembered and the full irony hit him. By then, the only person around who could laugh with him was himself.
:::
He'd been alone just long enough to light up when he heard the stairway door open and slam shut again. "I thought you gave up smoking last year," said the voice behind him.
"Specificity, Eames," Arthur replied, not turning around. "I merely stopped. I didn't give up anything."
But he had given up smoking, last year, and he resented Eames in a small, petty way for remembering. Granted, he was in a small, petty mood already. He'd begged the cigarette off one of the senior Vigil members, and the guy had acquiesced, handing it to Arthur like a man passing off a death row inmate's final meal. Arthur had taken it and fled. He didn't know how to respond to that look of pity, the look that asked what he had done to deserve this. He didn't know what he had done. He hadn't done anything.
His lungs still remembered how to handle the burn. The cigarette still seemed so natural between his fingers. Arthur blew the smoke straight into Eames' face as Eames joined him by the fence surrounding the parameter of the roof, and Eames grimaced.
"Stop it," said Eames, leaning back to avoid the cloud of smoke. "That stuff will kill you, you know."
"What do you care? You're not my keeper." He exhaled again, tasting the smoke on his words as he bit out, "Go baby Fischer some more."
Eames drew back, hurt. Arthur pretended not to notice. The pettiness, he realized now, was part of something larger, a seething anger directed everywhere, at Mal and Fischer and the school, but most of all, at Eames. And it was a familiar anger, the anger of first semester, the one that raged against Eames for having it easy, for being wanted, and chosen, and skating effortlessly through the stages of life that Arthur had to claw through. Life was a ladder, Mal liked to say, and Arthur knew that was true. He was on a lower rung than Eames. When people like Eames had a shit, people like Arthur, down below, had to clean it up.
"You know The Vigils make all the freshmen inductees do a commission before they let them join?" When Eames didn't reply, Arthur sneered. "No, of course you don't. You were recruited. They didn't make you do anything."
"Arthur--" Eames began, his tone pleading, but Arthur cut him off.
"There was a teacher who was at this school our freshmen year, Mr. Charles. You remember him?" He waited for Eames to nod, then continued, "He taught American literature and composition. I was in his English class. I spent two whole weeks repeating his questions back to him when he called on me in class. That was my commission. Sounds simple, right?"
He took in another shaky drag of his cigarette, this time courteously turning away from Eames to exhale. "The problem was, after my commission was over, it became a kind of joke to just repeat his questions back to him. It spread around the school. Everyone in all his classes started doing it. They even started doing it to him in the hallways, during passing periods, when he said hello. He was a nice guy. He didn't know anything about The Vigils or commissions or anything. It was just his second year in the school. It really messed him up. He left the school after that year. They say he joined a religious order and was never the same."
A long, long silence followed. For a moment, Arthur was worried Eames had already left and he’d spent the last few minutes talking to himself. Then, Eames asked, “Why are you telling me this?"
Arthur didn't know. He hadn’t planned on saying any of it, really. He'd meant to be nice to Eames, if Eames went to look for him after the meeting. He'd made a little bet with himself, and lost, in the end. But the words spilled forth like vomit, andArthur couldn’t control himself.
"After I became Point Man, you know what Mal told me?" He glanced over at Eames, who said nothing, his lips pressed together. "Mine was the first commission she ever thought up. She was the one who gave the idea to Miles. She'd given him a breakdown of all the factors. Picking me, because I was quiet and inoffensive in class. Picking something subtle, something likely to catch on. Picking a target that was overly sensitive, that was Mr. Charles. 'Its success was directly responsible for making her Architect.' Those were Miles' exact words."
"That's sick."
Suddenly, Arthur was so angry he was close to tears, and he put out the cigarette, stamping hard enough to send vibrations up his leg as he tried to keep crying at bay. "What do you know about sick, Eames? What do you know about anything?"
"Arthur, look at me." Arthur didn't, and Eames make a frustrated noise, a sound halfway between a sigh and Arthur's name. He put his hands on Arthur's shoulders and spun him around. "Think about what Mal is making you do. She's going to let the two of you beat the shit out of each other. And for what? For fifty boxes of chocolates? For two hundred and fifty dollars? At wholesale, it's probably far less. It's not worth it, Arthur. Don't let Mal make you do this."
"Let Mal make me do this? What about you, Eames?" Arthur snapped, jabbing his finger into Eames chest. He tried pulling away, but Eames' hands were vice-like on his shoulders. In his mind, he saw Fischer trying to draw away from Mal's touch, and he shivered. Eames looked down at him with concern, and the anger flooded back. He slammed the heel of his palm against Eames, but Eames didn't flinch. "It's supposed to be you out there! You're supposed to be the one fighting Fischer. I'm just out there because you--"
"This is just what Mal wants," Eames interrupted, shaking Arthur. "She likes to put the needle in people, to see where they flinch and when they'll develop the good sense to stop letting her fucking prick them. She doesn't care what happens to you, Arthur. She's a bitch--"
The first swing went wild. Arthur had never punched someone in the face before, and he missed Eames' nose by a mile, landing instead somewhere below Eames' eye. The shock of it was enough, though, and Eames immediately let Arthur go. But it wasn't enough for Arthur. He swung again, this time more accurately, and Eames held up his hand just in time to catch it. But it left his stomach open, and Arthur meanly aimed at Eames' side. His fist sank in, forcing all the breath out of Eames', and Eames was thrown against the fence, coughing.
"You motherfucker--" Eames spat out. Arthur tried to land another, but despite being out of breath, Eames was ready, and he ducked it cleanly. His balance thrown off, Arthur almost turned straight into Eames' fist, which was aimed, properly, for the bridge of Arthur's nose. It wasn't hard enough to break anything, but it knocked the glasses off of Arthur's face.
The pain was delayed, and when it came, blossomed across Arthur's whole face, blinding him more effectively than the loss of his glasses. The pain had squeezed out the tears he had managed to hold back earlier. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Arthur, hey," Eames was saying, but nearsighted, crying, angry, Arthur lashed out, hitting at Eames blindly. Most of his shots missed. Once or twice, he managed to strike the side of his hand against Eames' forearms. Eames was all arms and elbows, and at first, Arthur couldn't tell if they were still fighting, or if Eames was merely trying to get Arthur to stop hitting him. "Would you just-- fucking-- Arthur, stop--" shouted Eames, and in the confusion Arthur tried to knee Eames in the stomach, just to get away, to find his glasses and run for the door, get off the roof, run all the way home if he had to, but Eames slapped both palms against Arthur's face and kissed him.
It was not a good kiss. It was so bad, in fact, that it took Arthur a long while to realize he was being kissed at all. Eames had come at him hard and close-lipped, more a head butt than any gesture of affection. He bore down on Arthur like he was trying to squeeze him into obedience. Neither of them opened their mouths. When the shock of it passed, Arthur was out of breath, and he shoved at Eames, this time succeeding in pushing him away. Eames took a step forward, determined, his jaw set, and Arthur, panicked, ducked and put his foot out, barreling forward, shoving Eames to the ground.
They ended up with Arthur straddled on Eames chest, both of them breathing hard. Eames lifted his hands, seemed to contemplate shoving Arthur off or flipping them or something, but then just gave up, lying down docilely. The fight had drained out of Arthur too. He stared down at Eames, who was drawing in deep breaths, trying to slow down his panting. It was late in the afternoon, and the light was fading into pinks and purples. Arthur couldn't tell if those were bruises forming on Eames' face, or if it was just the sunset. Eames' tie, always loose, lay over one shoulder, a tangled red knot that, to Arthur’s nearsighted gaze, looked like Eames had bled onto the roof.
"Are you done hitting me?" panted Eames. He was staring up at Arthur with an odd expression, one Arthur had never seen before. Or maybe it was because Arthur couldn't see as clearly without his glasses. He felt strangely naked. He wanted to cover Eames' eyes until he could find his glasses. It was a stupid thought.
"I'm done," he told Eames. "I'm still angry with you though."
He wanted to ask Eames about the kiss, but he didn't have the words for it. Eames, meanwhile, had put a hand on Arthur's thigh, softly, as if asking for permission that Arthur didn't know how to give. When he didn't shake Eames off, Eames pressed down, the heat of it comforting as it bled through Arthur's slacks. His own hands were still on Eames' shoulders, keeping Eames down, even though both of them were done struggling.
"It's not me you're supposed to be angry at," Eames said.
"Shut up," Arthur grumbled as he rolled off of Eames.
He found his glasses, bent but not broken, lying next to the fence. Tucking them into his pocket, he sat for a minute, cross-legged, watching the sunset with blurry concentration. Then he lay down, gingerly, on one side, his back to Eames. The cement ground of the rooftop was cold, but they lay like that for a long while, not touching. The sun was done setting, and it was almost dark.
“Hey,” Eames whispered. Arthur made a soft noise of assent. Behind him, he could hear Eames prop himself up on one elbow. "Let's get out of here," Eames whispered. Arthur felt laughter bubble up in his throat, and he almost asked, are you asking me to elope with you? when Eames continued, "I already applied for a transfer to Monument next year. Come with me. Don't give anything more to this shitty school, Arthur."
A great sadness swept over Arthur. He felt like the lone survivor of a shipwreck, floating on a piece of driftwood, trying in vain to reach a distant shore. No one would find him even if he did reach that shore. He would be alone forever. As he thought of turning and reaching for Eames, just to reassure himself that Eames was really there, he felt Eames' arms envelop him, holding him to Eames' body. Surprised, he almost turned around, but he knew, instinctively, that if they looked each other in the face, the contact would end.
Tell me again I don't have to do this, he thought desperately. Ask me to leave Trinity with you. But Eames stayed silent, merely holding Arthur to him, not hard enough to count as an embrace, though it was close, and that, Arthur thought, was only fitting. His life was full of things that were close to what he wanted, and he had gotten used to being satisfied with almost, not quite, on the verge of. He had no right to expect more of Eames, when settling was all Arthur ever asked for.
art by shiroi_ten
:::
They held the raffle on a Friday night. Mal told the administration it was a celebratory pep rally. After all, they had sold all the chocolates. They had met the quota. Even Robert Fischer's fifty boxes were sold. Who paid for them, Arthur never asked.
Like all of Mal's plans, the raffle was a success. The entire student body seemed to be there in the stadium, trading money for tickets and calling out ideas as to what to write down. In that discussion, Arthur discovered an unexpected parity between him and Fischer, a shared lack of appeal that would not have existed between Fischer and Eames, who after all was one of the stars of the football team. Not for the first time, Arthur marveled at Mal's propensity for seeing all sides. Though no one wanted to side with Fischer, Arthur was also, as Trinity figures went, relatively unknown. Did they want to see a freshman reserve player beat up on an inoffensive nerd? But then again, who wanted their name attached to The Vigils' Point Man getting his nose bashed in by the school pariah? These were, to the crowd, monumental decisions, maybe even the more important decisions of their high school life so far.
Arthur watched it all from the makeshift boxing ring in the center of the football field. Under Cobb's direction, The Vigils had resurrected some old boxing ring from the bowels of the bleachers and restored it to its former use. He stood inside it now, leaning against the ropes. Mal was outside the ring, but stood outside his corner. At some point, too, Cobb had wandered over, he and Mal had struck up a philosophical debate about human nature. "Dom," Mal was saying, resting her well-formed hands on the rope, "people are two things: greedy and cruel. Just look at the setup here. The greed part -- a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred, plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part -- watching two guys hit each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. We're all bastards, Dom. We might as well accept it."
Cobb disagreed, pedantically, and they were deep into the conversation when Fischer finally showed up, dressed in ill-fitting sweatpants and a t-shirt that looked several pay grades too high for his surroundings.
"You came," said Mal, pleasantly, sounding for all the world like Fischer was an old family friend, and they were having a Sunday afternoon barbecue in the backyard.
Fischer nodded. As if noticing Arthur there for the first time, he nodded at Arthur too. Arthur nodded back. He wondered, painfully, if Eames had arrived with Fischer. If Eames were out there, right now, in the crowd, watching them both.
Cobb, immediately uncomfortable, left without a word. Fischer and Mal followed his process through the restless student crowds on the bleachers. When they could no longer pick him out in the mass of blue sweaters and khaki slacks, Fischer turned back to Mal. "You didn't tell me about the raffle sale," he said simply.
"I thought Eames would tell you," said Mal, affecting surprise.
"He did," Fischer said. A pause. They stared at each other, appraisingly. Arthur tried to leave them to it, but Mal put a hand on his back and pressed. She wanted him to hear whatever it was that they had to say to each other. It was just a light touch, but it seemed to paralyze Arthur to the waist down. He stayed. To the end, he thought bitterly, Mal would have everything go her way.
"Why did you want me here, Mal?" Fischer asked.
It was breathtaking to Arthur that Fischer said it with such confidence. He was talking back to Mal, alone as he was. No one was in his corner now, not even Eames, but he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t even blink.
"C'est simple," Mal said, her voice sibilant. "Revenge. Here's a way to get even with everyone, Robert. With us. With the school. With your father."
As he watched Fischer try to weigh Mal's words, Arthur almost felt sorry for the kid. Or rather, he did feel sorry for Fischer, but the feeling was too mixed up with his own predicament, with his own anger. Mal's voice was so full of trust you could almost swim in it. The sad thing was, it was false to the last drop. Letting Fischer beat Arthur into a bloody pulp, or vica versa, had nothing to do with revenge. That much, at least, seemed obvious to Arthur. But what were they here for then? What did Fischer hope to get out of it? Was it a show of loyalty for Arthur, and a way to hit back something, someone, for Fischer? Arthur didn't know. Eames would have probably told him--
But even the thought of Eames was unbearable to Arthur now. They hadn't spoken since the rooftop incident. Once or twice he had seen Eames walking with Fischer, to football practice or to class. After the news of the raffle sale, and of Eames' quitting the football team, the pair became untouchable at Trinity. Crowded hallways parted for them. It hurt to see Fischer now, so close, so solid. To know that he wasn't just a ghost, not just the embodiment of everything that had gone wrong with Arthur's life. He was a real person too.
Arthur was grateful when Fischer went to his corner of the ring, probably to get a drink of water, or to psyche himself up for the match. They watched him go, Mal with her hand on Arthur's back. Her touch, for the first time in the course of their friendship, repulsed Arthur horribly. He wanted to tear it away, to scrub at that spot until he couldn't feel it anymore. But he stood there, frozen, feeling the heat from Mal's palm soak through his shirt, all the way into his skin.
"Life is sad sometimes," Mal murmured.
"Life is shit," Arthur replied, with a vehemence that shocked even him.
Mal simply nodded, refusing to let Arthur shake her out of her fake dreaminess. Then, without warning, she faded into the darkness, leaving Arthur and Fischer utterly and completely alone with each other.
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(Part Three)