Chapter Seven
Tobias
It was no use. I tried everything I could think of, but I just couldn’t seem to get Addie out of my mind.
It really wasn’t good, falling for a contestant like I clearly was. Not good for the show, anyway. It was difficult to tell what impact it might have on us as individuals in the world, when everything else was stripped away.
I tried to imagine a world free of complications. It was a wonderful place. Free of pain, but still interesting enough and with sufficient new experiences to make life worth living.
Challenges could make life fun, but there was a world of difference between challenge and outright obstruction, especially the kind of obstruction with no logical or even functional basis behind it. The sort that exist just because someone who thinks they have to power to do so say that the obstruction exists, and everyone just takes their word for it. There might be consequences, but that was hardly the same thing as reason.
“Deep in thought?” Clementine asked as I got into the backseat.
“You could say that, Clem.”
“I got you a treat while you were up there.”
“I thought all the stores were closed.”
“Never said I got it at a store,” she said, with a wink.
Sure enough, there on the seat beside me was a brown paper bag. There was something hard and square in it.
“No, it’s not porn, I know about your philosophies,” Clementine assured.
I picked up the bag careful and slid out the contents. It was the French first edition of The Plague by Albert Camus. I honestly could have cried.
“Thought it was on theme.”
“It is. It very much is,” I agreed, fighting the urge to hug her.
Not only might it change our relationship, social distancing was in effect and we couldn’t take the risk. The window was even up between the front and back, which it almost never was. The car hadn’t come with that feature. I’d had it added later, wanting the features of a limousine without the ostentation.
“Thank you,” I added, remembering that I hadn’t actually said it.
I had only given Addie part of the story about Clementine. I didn’t want to shock her or confirm any prejudices she might have. The fact was, Clem was gay, and from a part of the nation not known for their tolerance for the different, to put it very mildly.
Clem had hidden who she was as long for as she could, but as soon as the hormones kicked in that was it. She had to be careful, but she started dating girls. Sadly, the girl she loved most was the daughter of a fire and brimstone minister who honestly believe that his god had put a ban on apples because of the genesis story and that holding hands was fornication because it was a form of physical affection.
He found out about Clementine and his daughter and thought the Devil had gotten into both of them in the most literal sense. He had a ‘cleansing ‘ceremony for his daughter. One that nearly killed her by drowning, and some of his followers, most of them almost as mad as he was, hanged Clem from a tree behind the church.
Except they didn’t do the rope right, being complete bloody idiots, and just left her hanging in the most literal sense. Something else they didn’t know was that Clementine carried no less than three knives on her person at any one time. The found two but left the one in her boot.
She was a mess when we met. She had hitchhiked all the way to New York from Virginia, not having a lot of chances for showers. I had been advertising for a driver at the time. The last one quit on account of my ‘crazy-ass schedule.’ Clem just seem to be happy to have something to do. The fact that the job came with an apartment and a hefty salary didn’t hurt either.
I wasn’t a hero or even really a ‘good guy’ in the moral crusader sense. I always leaned more toward the chaos view of the universe. The one that has the bollocks to outright contradict Big Daddy Einstein and point out that much of the time God does, in fact, play dice with the universe. It’s a knowledge that different people take in different ways. My particular take was that humanity already had enough going against us, so why be terrible to each other? As such, I really couldn’t stand to see people getting kicked for no good reason.
The solace of great literature, sweet as it was, lasted only so long and much too soon I was back to pondering more moral concerns. Like the money the studio would lose if the show tanked, either because it can’t be made interesting enough under the new constrains or Addie and I both lost interest in the very premise, giving in to our obvious, if allegedly ‘forbidden,’ attraction to each other.