During the next five days, Antwone Deveaux worked steadily on completing the last chapter of his book. He worked ten to fourteen hours a day and he slept four to six hours. It was a drastic boot-campy writing routine but it was needed to avoid slacking on the job. His sleep cycle was still a little perturbed by it but it wasn’t as distressing as it had been a couple weeks ago. Sleeping was no longer a hurdle even though he didn’t particularly look forward to it. But he still enjoyed going on walks when the sun went down; however these were shorter walks than the ones he was used to having.
Also, his diet suffered a tad from his long writing hours and his heavy drinking and daisy-chain smoking. But that, too, was needed to keep himself going and remain in his creative zone. He allowed nothing to come between him and his work. The work was all that mattered. And he had traded eating at the restaurant where Liv waited to eat in the hotel restaurant. It was a rotten tradeoff but at least it saved time. Also he didn’t want to run into Liv. He dreaded the confrontation. There were many of her missed calls on his cell phone as it were. Ava had left him many voicemails too. But that was a different affair.
The day he finally finished the book, he took a long and deep breath and smiled to himself. Once again, he had done it. He had triumphed over this exhausting undertaking that was the writing of a novel. And the satisfaction he drew from it was maybe the one thing in the whole world which gave him the most pleasure. Plus he did think highly of this latest literary output because he intimately knew that this book was as good as – if not better than – Knight of Rain. He called Ava to share the news. As the first champion of his work, she was beyond thrilled. She asked him when he was flying back to New York and he told her. She didn’t discuss anything about where things were at with Hank and he didn’t ask either, even though he wanted to. But she did ask for news about Mary and wanted to know if he had gotten any chance to see her since the dinner. This naturally put a little daub on his joy.
After speaking with Ava, Antwone squared up the typewritten papers of his manuscript, product of his hard labor, and left them neatly heaped on the writing desk. The manuscript, the first draft, was about four hundred pages. As usual, he would let it sit for a few days before tackling the editing part of it. Later, Antwone took an overdue long shower and went to eat out.
When, two hours later, Antwone got back to the hotel, the reception clerk on duty told him someone had been waiting for him in his room. A woman… She had identified herself as his sister. And she apparently had insisted on waiting in his room and had threatened to make a hell of a ruckus if she was denied access.
Antwone rode the elevator to his room, wondering what it was Mary had come for. In his head, he began going through ways to apologize to her for his inappropriate behavior. He was actually glad she had come; he had to find a way to make things right between them.
But it wasn’t Mary whom he found in his room. It was Liv. And she was sitting upon the edge of his bed and going through parts of his manuscript. There were at least four dozen papers scattered over the bedspread.
“What are you doing here?” Antwone asked, concealing his daze.
“Waiting for you.”
Her eyes were wet. There was a dismal expression on her ghastly face which let on that she had probably been under great emotional turmoil lately.
“I called you,” she said. “At least a hundred times.”
“I know. Sorry I didn’t call back. I was busy.”
“Writing this?”
She held up the pages, about twenty that she was currently reading in a disgusted manner. Her grip was so taut that it was wrinkling up the pages beneath it.
Antwone slowly moved toward her.
“Why don’t we go outside?” he said.
“You used me for your story,” she whispered, standing up. She looked very nervous, like she could just go mad any minute. He had never seen her like that.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your main female character,” she said. “Her background story bears more than just a passing resemblance to my life…”
“Liv… It is not like that.”
She read aloud a passage from the papers she was holding in her nervous, pale hands.
“It wasn't as though life had dealt her the wrong cards or fudged her destiny numbers from the moment of her birth. The poor choices she had made for herself had also greatly contributed to her current emotional unraveling. It was the funniest thing. Because, when looked upon, her eyes seemed to always gleam with her inspiring positivity, despite the years of physical abuse and heavy drug use. But those eyes, those depthless eyes out of which streamed her disarming gaze, were no accurate indicator of the real mess she still was inside, by default or by choice. For all her talent, she could easily fool the whole world of her new shining persona. But she knew she could not fool herself.”
Liv looked up from the page to Antwone. She said, “What the hell is this?”
“Will you please not raise your voice?”
“All the stuff I shared with you,” she said in the same raised tone. “I opened up to you. I trusted you. I told you things I have never told another soul and you… God! You were just pumping me for information.”
“I’m a writer, Liv. I hear things from people. And if they’re interesting, I table them for future use. It’s my methodology; it’s the way I work.”
“So that’s what I was,” Liv said, “all along, all this time, just another source, another point of interest in your research, a real-life angle in the arch of your fictional character?”
“I was going to tell you about it.”
“When?
“Come on now,” Antwone said. “Don’t be like that.”
“You walked out on me the other night as if I was some dirty slut in heat who was making a pass at you,” she said. “And you’ve been screening my phone calls since. So exactly when were you going to tell me that you were using me for your fucking book?”
Antwone said nothing.
“WHEN?” Liv shouted hysterically.
Antwone got all riled up about it. Was she going to start any hysterics in the room right now?
“Don’t you get it?” he said, in turn, with vivid emotion. “I collect snippets of other people’s lives for my stories because I don’t have a life, all right? Not one that is as interesting as yours or anybody else’s out there who’s gone through the same kind of crazy stuff you’ve gone through. What do you want me to tell you? You want an apology? I’m a writer. Writing stories is all I have. And making those stories real, not only for me but for other people, is all I care about. So I do whatever I have to do to achieve that, all right? Even if it means putting up with someone I would never, ever, not in a million years, strike up a friendship with.”
Liv glared at Antwone and stifled the flow of tears which was already moisturizing her eyeballs. A flush of anger suddenly rose in her cheek.
“That’s bullshit!” she said.
Antwone sighed loudly. His jawbone was suddenly hurting.
“I’m sorry,” he said wearily. “I–– That wasn’t me talking. I was just upset.”
“You’re a hypocrite.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I see that now.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you’re hiding,” Liv said, shaking the pages of his manuscript to his face. “I saw the way you were when we were together. There are things you don’t say about yourself because you’re afraid to get exposed. And just like you used me, you use your precious characters to cover up your own defects. You talk about not having a life? But do you even have what it takes to put yourself out there and live?”
“Listen––”
“—Can you stop being a coward, huh? Can you stop hiding? Can you?”
Calmly, Antwone looked Liv in the eye and, with a domineering voice, he said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Liv’s tantrum immediately graduated then into vindictive fury. Without hesitation
, she raced over onto the balcony and threw away the load of pages she was holding.
A goad of dismay instantaneously shot through Antwone’s spine. His heart sank as he saw the precious pages, about a score of them, freefall through the air like white little carpets. He cussed through his teeth and ran to the balcony just as Liv was hurrying back through the balcony sliding door and back into the room. Gawking uncomprehendingly, Antwone leaned over the railing. Because of the thickening night encasing the city, the white pages were now barely visible with eyesight. They looked like floating, dead, white butterflies.
Still shocked by Liv’s unparalleled act of madness, Antwone heard only too late the room door getting rush opened and banged shut. It was Liv. She had run out.
“Liv––wait!”
Antwone raced to the door, threw it open and whisked after her, down the corridor.
“Liv!”
Even though he was gaining on her, he was a long way from catching up with her. Head down, Liv was hurling down the long, wide and illuminated corridor, toward the elevator door.
“Liv––please, wait!”
As he got closer, Antwone threw his hand and it fell on her arm and closed around it. Liv did an about-face and he saw her eyes. They were now wretched by fear. Maybe she thought he was going to hurt her, so she desperately tried to pry her arm free. But with a forceful pull, Antwone brought her to him, his other arm circled around her shoulders and he kissed her…
He kissed her until her body went from being stiff to being loose all over and finally still. And when her hands came up around his face, Antwone knew she was kissing him back. Afterward she rested her head on his shoulder and he put his hand on her hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Please forget about everything I said. Please, forgive me… I never want to hurt you again… Never.”
For a minute or so, Antwone kept repeating that he was sorry. And Liv remained quiet with her head on his shoulder.
Nobody came out onto the corridor from the elevator or from one of the rooms spaced out along the floor. Nobody disturbed that moment which was theirs and which seemed to exist outside of time and space. It simply went on and on...
With the help of two hotel employees, it took a while for Antwone to recover from the pavement all the pages from his manuscript which had fallen out of the sky. The recovery gambit had slowed down the traffic a little bit. Liv was waiting in the hotel lobby, she seemed tired. She probably hadn’t slept much lately. She didn’t express any particular emotion when she saw Antwone come back with the salvaged papers.
“Did you get them all?” she asked.
Antwone nodded; she lowered her eyes. They stayed quiet for a moment like two strangers.
“I’ve got to put those back,” Antwone said, the papers going from his left hand to his right hand.
“Okay.”
“You want to do something afterward?” he asked Liv. “Go somewhere or maybe take a walk?”
“Sure,” she said. Her eyes were still down. A little bit of color was returning to her face. But she still looked as sad as a bird with no wings.
“Hey, chin up,” Antwone said, touching her chin. And she forced a smile from her lips.
“Sure,” she said, looking up. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Alright wait here. I’ll just be a minute.”
She nodded. Antwone went to the elevator; the door jerked open. Before he walked in, he looked back at Liv. She looked sadder than ever. He felt sorry. Sorry for everything because to see her like that was making him sad too.
In his room, he put the discarded papers on the writing table with the original pile of the manuscript papers. He also got the papers which were strewn out about the bed and put them with the rest.
Outside, the night seemed to have grown thicker. There was no sound of wind, except for the desultory sound of traffic. Antwone grabbed his coat and pulled it around him. It wasn’t cold out, but he liked that coat and he hadn’t put it on for some time. He wondered whether he and Liv should walk aimlessly or head to a specific location. He figured that it was best if they just went with the flow and decided where to go on the spot. He also realized that he was out of cigarettes. He would buy some along the way. Maybe he could buy something for Liv as well, a gift or something. She had been a good friend. He didn’t see her as a lover yet, but the idea didn’t seem as strange as it had been the first time they had kissed. Now she was in pretty bad shape. And it was all because of him. So naturally, he hoped getting in a good walk would be of some remedy to that. He was going to try to get her to cheer up again before his flight back to New York. It was probably wise to bring it up during their walk tonight…
As he moved over to the room door, Antwone was happy that he would no longer have to think about his book. It had sucked up a lot of his time and energy and, in many ways, it felt good and refreshing not to think about it anymore. In fact, it felt really good not to be writing… And it felt particularly good to go on an evening walk with a dear friend.
To Antwone’s surprise, however, Liv was nowhere to be seen in the lobby where he had left her. He asked the reception clerk if he had seen her. The clerk told him she had just upped and left a moment before. Antwone quickly went out into the street to look for her. She wasn’t among the throngs of hasty pedestrians streaming across the sidewalk. He went back inside the lobby and anxiously asked the clerk whether Liv had left a note for him.
“No sir,” the clerk said. “She didn’t leave any note behind.”
Looking out to the busy street again, Antwone sighed. Liv was gone…
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