The Main Character

MC was still in her apartment mulling things over. Alastair had left so she was alone now with her thoughts. She had been standing at the window that faced the fire escape for almost an hour. She had stood there to smoke a cigarette, but she never lit it. She just held it between her fingers, occasionally pulling it to her parted lips before immediately returning her arm to its slacked dangling position over the window’s edge. It seemed to her like her whole universe was simultaneously falling apart and fitting into one painstakingly elaborate master plan. She thought of all the things that had happened in her life to get her to where she was now. All the little coincidences of the universe that led her to be friends with Quinn, meet his family, be invited into their house, when that was exactly where she had to go. She would have never known where Stewart Colmes lived if it hadn’t been for Quinn. And it wouldn’t matter to her if she hadn’t had so many friends kill themselves. She survived, she had all the information, she had access, and even a pseudo-assistant to help her bring everything to a conclusion. She stood at the window contemplating how neatly it had all come together. There was nothing she could do but follow the narrative that was set out before her. Life never seemed this neat before. It seemed like a trap set by the universe, or a plot of a poorly written book.

She decided to fuck it up.

MC only just remembered to put on shoes before she left her apartment to go to Simon’s pub. She wanted to do something reckless. She just wanted to do something that made her feel like she still had free will.

The walk to Simon’s was long enough to make her realize she did not actually have the energy to do something stupid. She had lost her momentum somewhere along the way. The craziest thing she could imagine doing tonight was to take home a stranger, and even that seemed exhausting and unappealing. What she really wanted to do was to curl up on Quinn’s couch with him, open a few beers, order a pizza, and have one of their long chats. They used to talk about anything and everything. They’d talk for hours. Now MC felt like that would never happen again. Even the memory seemed miles away now that the thought had occurred to MC that there was a chance that Quinn knew what his uncle had been up to. Quinn could have even helped him. At least she was confident that Quinn was not the mastermind, but even still. How could she trust him? Even if Quinn hadn’t known about the whole thing, he definitely would not be happy with MC for exposing his uncle as the culprit. He would see it as a personal attack on his family. Because it kind of was.

All of these thoughts and more ran circles in her head while she stood at the bar, crashing into one another and creating a general mess of things. MC had been standing at the bar, drinkless, for longer than she had realized when she finally broke free of her troublesome thoughts and decided that if she wasn’t going to get clarity tonight the second-best thing would be to have company. Maybe she would stay at Simon’s for a while. She could strike up a conversation with a stranger. MC had always enjoyed meeting new people, maybe it would cheer her up. She finally ordered a drink and pulled up a stool next to a woman with a serious and moon-shaped face that showcased and exceptionally thin nose. The woman looked at her from over her shoulder with an anxious look. She was waiting for MC to say something to her, but she didn’t. MC was already confused by her before they had even begun speaking. In the milliseconds between sitting down and looking over at the woman next to her, she realized they had met before, but she could not figure out when or where.

Further exploration of this line of thinking was cut short when the moon-faced woman broke the silence, seemingly surprising them both. “The tap water is free. May want to consider it over the sparkling. Doesn’t really make any sense to spend money on something you could get free.” She had glanced at MC’s gin and tonic and mistaken it for sparkling water.

“I know,” MC turned her upper body to make eye contact with the stranger. She didn’t feel the need to correct her. “What are you drinking?” She inhaled as if she was going to bring up that they had met before, but changed her mind. The mystery woman sensed her uneasiness but made no attempt to address it. She just continued with the conversation.

“Oh, I’ve got a pineapple daiquiri.” She smiled to herself. “Virgin. It’s basically a smoothie. My husband gave up drinking so I’ve cut back a lot too. I don’t think I’ve had a real drink in close to a year now. It’s helped me lose a good amount of weight.” The nameless woman was not fat by any means, but she was larger than MC. “I used to be quite large actually,” she exhaled thoughtfully. Nodding at MC’s drink she continued, “but I suppose a gin and tonic is better than a daiquiri.”

“Yeah,” MC examined the glass in her hand dreamily before realizing what the woman had said. She turned to meet her eyes. Now MC was really confused.

“Sorry, it took me a bit but I recognized you from your last show,” the nameless lady continued, “I was there. And then I figured you were probably having a gin and tonic rather than a water. I am sorry about your friend.”

The woman was lying. She was the one MC had bumped into the night Rémy died. That wasn’t as accidental as it seemed. After MC had missed the note she had managed to get onto her cocktail napkins, she had tried (and failed) a more aggressive way to speak with her about what she had seen that night at the gallery. In fact, this woman had been waiting for the opportunity to talk to MC about Rémy for quite a while.

MC, though unaware of any of this or what was to come, could feel herself being pulled back into that unpreventable narrative she was trying to escape from. “Did you know him?”

“Rémy?” The woman started to weave her web of lies to extract what she wanted from MC. “Well he used to come here a lot, with you mostly. But when he would come alone I’d strike up a conversation with him. Well, not really a conversation, more we would take turns monologuing.” She smiled as she spoke, staring into the bottom of her nearly empty glass. She hadn’t known Rémy at all, but she knew Karen. “He talked about you a lot, you know?” Now she was just trying to gain MC’s trust. She knew a lot more about this situation than she was going to let on until she had reason to believe that MC would take her seriously.

MC couldn’t bring herself to look back at the mysterious daiquiri drinker. She was torn between a want to hear her go on and wishing she would stop talking entirely. She thought it would be best to say nothing and let the woman decide. The woman continued. “He was really fond of you.” She looked at MC’s face and realized she had struck a chord. “As a friend, of course,” she corrected herself. She was a lawyer, used to telling fibs. She knew how to tell a believable lie.

“Yeah, we were good friends back in the day…” MC said in a joking tone to make it seem disingenuous. To make it hurt less when the words came out. “Well anyway,” MC finished her drink in a long swig, “I’ll let you go.” She got up to walk away in a desperate attempt to escape the conversation, but while she was waving down the bartender to scan her wrist in payment for the drink the woman grabbed her elbow.

“Wait. I think you and I need to have a chat. I’ve got something to say to you” She was losing control of the situation.

MC’s confusion was apparent by the way her eyes widened and her shoulders came forward. That was not at all what she had expect this woman to say. Generally, strangers you meet in bars just want to talk to you about their life problems or try and convince you to go home with them. But this vaguely familiar woman sounded like she wanted to yell at her.

“What is it that you think I need to hear about?” That was the most comprehensive thing she could muster to say. She was frozen.

Without any hesitation, she leaned close to MC’s ear. She put one hand on the back of MC’s chair, where her red wool coat lay, and whispered, “I know Karen’s death was not a suicide.”

The woman’s name was Rebecca Pillard. She was a lawyer in Sector 6. She was Karen’s roommate. Recently, Rebecca had been making a name for herself in the judicial community by taking on some highly controversial ‘freedom of information’ cases. She was representing a number of clients who claimed they were tricked out of living full and happy lives because of the information they were deprived of and which most everyone else had access to. Each of her clients were valid in their complaints, but none won their cases. In an additionally and slightly ironic twist, no one knew about Mrs. Pillard’s outstanding, however unsuccessful, work on these cases since the courts had deemed them CONFIDENTIAL. Despite this repetitive and predictable outcome, Rebecca kept fighting. She had just lost her fifth case. The verdicts were the same for each one. The clients were found GUILTY and were all ‘excused’. Being excused was essentially a banishment. Anyone who did not want to live by the rules of the metropolis was not forced to, but they also weren’t allowed to live in the metropolis anymore.

Because of her work and stance on the issue of human rights and freedom of information, Rebecca was being followed and threatened with violence if she did not stop what she was doing. She was of course scared but would not give up fighting. She had decided however, to move out of the home she shared with her husband in Sector 3 and into a small flat in Sector 6. It was safer for him that way. However, the change had been very difficult for Rebecca. She had to cut almost all communication with her family and friends in order to ensure their safety and instead move to a sector that was so completely unlike her own.

Sector 3 was a community of people who were exceptionally compassionate. Generally, this compassion only extended as far as the boarders of their own sector, but they were all genuinely caring people. Many joked that their compassion would cross sector boarders if the people of Sector 3 had the physical ability to walk that far. People of Sector 3 were known to carry around a lot of extra weight. Rebecca had to slim down to allude the people following her. Trick everyone into thinking she belonged in Sector 6.

Simon’s was not only clear across the metropolis from her sector, but it was also across the river that divided Sector 7 from everything else. This river was the most significant hurdle for information to pass over. That was why she had come there. And that was also why she had been followed. Not just this time, but on her previous ventures to Simon’s as well. Rebecca was not going to divulge all of this to MC now, in public, and she was not going to admit who she was.

“I have to be honest. I came here to talk to you. I heard about your friend Karen, and when I saw you here after what happened with Rémy, I thought you might need someone to talk to.” Rebecca knew this was an especially unbelievable lie. “I just, am a big fan of your work.” Before she said it, that last part had at first seemed like a reasonable addendum that conveyed genuine concern for MC, but now she realized it made her sound more like a stalker.

MC was getting to be very concerned. She also had no idea how or why this woman knew so much about her and her friends. One thing did make sense now though. No one goes to Simon’s for daiquiris. Rebecca was there for her. MC did not want to make any assumptions about what this woman wanted so she made up her mind to stay vague and play dumb.

“What’s been going on?” MC’s over-exaggerated hand gestures gave her away.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Rebecca was pulling MC closer to whisper in her ear. “Your friend’s death was not what it seemed.”

That was all MC had to hear. It was all too much. Although she wanted to know what this woman was talking about and to possibly get more help or information to really bring this whole conspiracy together, she couldn’t handle the absurdity of the situation. Her face formed and condescending smirk. Eyebrows raised, eyelids relaxed, and mouth turned slightly upward at one side. She sighed, “Alright, well this is me leaving.” She stood up, pulled her coat from the back of her chair, and tried to make her way toward the door faster than Rebecca could stop her.

She had left her apartment to escape all this complicated theoretical doomsday talk about government assassinations and that. When she backed away from Rebecca she shook her head in disbelief, but Rebecca made no movements of contest. MC just wanted to avoid everything. She just wanted a moment to not feel like the world was evil and plotting against the people who lived in it. She bolted. Just in time too.