For Those Who Don't Believe in Love Songs

Chapter 20 - Fair is Foul

October 25, 1994

"You know what I like most about you, Mishi?" James asked over the noise of the cafeteria.

"No. What?" Camisha said.

"Yeah, man. You 'bout to hit on my girl?" Calvin joked.

"Like I'd stand a chance next to you," James said. The cafeteria had an energy he knew was projected. To the students waiting for the school hallways to open, it was, in truth, like any other day. To James, however, it was the only day. "What I like most about you, Mishi, is how friendly you are. I've seen you around the school with all kinds of people – people you've known forever, people you've just met... And you're just so dang friendly."

"Mmm-hm," Calvin agreed. "And she's got pretty eyes, and a pretty smile, and a nice round-

"Stop while you're ahead," James interrupted.

Camisha narrowed her eyes at Calvin but her smirk couldn't hide her smile from his flattery. "Anyway, thanks Jimmy. I try."

"I appreciate it," James said then held up a copy of Macbeth. "And I don't mean to be rude, but I've got an English quiz I have to finish reading for so I'll see you guys later. Cool?"

"That's cool," Camisha said.

"Aiight. Peace," Calvin said and they walked to a group of friends nearby.

James found a place against the wall then addressed the clock. Its obstinate hour hand sat one sixth of the way past seven. He'd long taken to personifying time – thinking of it, facetiously, as his nemesis, taunting him from all sides. 250 lives and I still elude your control, James! He buried his head in the book to keep other students from engaging him, but the clock pulled him back. The hour hand had advanced to one fifth of the way past seven. If he had held authority over time, the hour hand would move directly to 41 / 120ths past seven, or 7:20 and thirty seconds. But every morning she was to arrive, the stubborn hand moved as slowly as the last.

The fifteen years without her had been difficult because they always were. It helped to reframe the time as beneficial, in some way. Strength only through struggle... Union only through absence... Or so the rationalizations went.

This life had been fairly typical. He'd done his best to play the part. His father left. His mother stayed – physically, if not mentally. For variety's sake, he'd opted for wrestling instead of basketball, but otherwise, he'd stuck to the routine. The high school was in a relatively peaceable state. His watch had surrendered zero suicides or drunk driving deaths. Incidents of social persecution were infrequent. Morale was high. Everything was ready for her.

7:15.

From his vantage point just outside the closed hot lunch buffet, he had unobstructed views of the front entrance, her secondary stop against the wall next to the gymnasium, and Christian and Robbie seated at the near end of a line of lunch tables.

He still hadn't made up his mind about what to do with Robbie. The previous life was the first time he'd ever killed James. It was, however, the third time Robbie had found him in California. On the first attack, James sustained a treatable wound. On the second, he defended himself without a scratch. But the third, unfortunately, had caught him off guard.

After the first attack, James visited Robbie in prison. From the interview, James learned two key pieces of information. First, Robbie's motivation for the attack stemmed from the trap James had laid for him at the carnival. Second, he'd learned of James' location after reading the profile the local paper had run in the fall of 1996. The article wasn't a foolproof predictor, however. A didn't always lead to B. As of his last life, the newspaper had published the story a total of twenty five times making the probability that Robbie would read it in prison, then find him in Berkeley only three in twenty five, or twelve percent – not nearly high enough for James to obsess over.

More broadly, James had now sent Robbie to prison a total of sixty five times. Therefore, not taking the article into account, the likelihood that the basic choice to entrap Robbie would lead to an attack was only five percent. But this last end... Her face... So much fear... So much pain... Maybe James needed to consider an alternative.

Of course, these probabilities were quite imprecise with such pitifully low sample sizes. Nevertheless, James believed life was a series of compounding probabilities, and he tried to be as aware of them as possible.

7:19.

For example, there was a ninety six percent chance that Martha would walk through the front entrance in a little over a minute and a four percent chance that she had...

I breathe in and I am present.

I breathe out and I am nothing.

He stood up straight. She was going to walk through the door in her ridiculous winter coat with a slight dusting of snow on her hair and then everything would begin.

7:20.

His eyes shifted back and forth from the entrance to the clock.

Ten seconds...

A busload of students trickled in. His heart began to pound.

Twenty seconds...

A gap opened. She was almost there.

Thirty seconds...

More students...

Macbeth dropped to the floor. James felt dizzy. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then walked a straight line to the entrance. A few students called out to him, but soon they would be past.

Once outside, he stopped and looked down the walkway leading to the guest parking lot. Maybe?? But there was nothing. How could there be? Two hundred three October 25ths was a healthy sample size. This was known. Her arrival was at 7:20 and thirty seconds or never. She was dead – had been for months.

His center contracted. His will crashed. However hyperbolic, he felt his atoms yearn for chaos.

There was a single remedy. He mustered the strength to reach his car where a straight razor waited in the glove box.

Author's note:

(Last chapter's author's note) x 2 = Oh hell no!

Like totally 90's detail: I don't want to ever name my characters after a person in the real world.  But as I'm writing, I'll hear or read a name and think, 'That'd be a great name for so and so...'  Calvin was not inspired by Calvin and Hobbes (sorry), but Kelvin Mercer from Long Island rap group, De La Soul (1988 to present).  He was Kelvin for a while, but then I got worried people might think I named him after Kelvin the physicist and further confuse an already confusing mythology...  Anyways, not that anyone's reading these, but sorry for the lengthy explanation of an awfully insignificant detail when I could have just written 'Hey, remember De La Soul?  They were slammin!'