Chapter 1 can be viewed here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8349
I've nothing to say, really. Enjoy.
Chapter 2
Alistair Wintergreen was born in a small village near Paris, untouched by Germany’s war, in 1941, to a pseudo-heartless American soldier and a fearful German woman. For the first couple of years, Alistair saw his father when he went temporarily missing in action to visit every couple of weeks. They would spend hours sitting on the edge of the valley, not saying a word, just staring out across the emptiness fused with green and brown blurs that was the countryside. For this reason, Alistair’s mother let that military man name their son. He gave him his last name, Wintergreen, and the name Alistair because it meant Defender of Men, and that was what he wanted his son to be.
When the war ended in 1945, the soldier by the name of Wintergreen left Europe without a goodbye to his child or the mother of that child, leaving her to raise Alistair by herself.
Few people knew the story of that French boy with an American name like Zero did. It was universal to him. Every time there was a problem in Zero’s life, Al could relate it to something he had been through, either as a youth or a grown man. The comfort was not in the message Al was telling him, but the fact that pain exists in everyone’s life, not just his.
Zero couldn’t pay his rent – Alistair had his toe cut off in Sicily for not paying a debt to a mafia Don.
Zero had varicose veins in his left leg from extended periods of standing at work – Alistair was prone to having strokes and could die at any time.
The good thing about Alistair’s stories was that they were essentially the same problems as Zero had, but they were taken to the extreme, making Zero’s feel less overwhelming; until the day he had the stroke that killed him. After that day, Al’s problems accentuated Zero’s problems.
Zero was lonely – Alistair was dead.
Getting to the other side of town was a bitch of a journey, especially without a car. The choices were to stay home or take the bus. Then another bus. Then another.
Bus rides are like waiting rooms at the doctor’s surgery: no one says a word to the other people that sit with bowed heads and stories to tell, that they won’t tell because they’re embarrassing and no one asks because no one’s talking. Forced to sit next to a man that looked like a hobbit and smelled of old shoes, Zero tried not to look at anyone, smell anything or think about why he was on the cross-town antechamber.
The town outside the scratched windows was bathed in lackluster mid-morning sunlight that shone through light grey clouds, the perfect vista for someone not wanting to feel anything. All colour seemed to be diluted by the clouds above. Vivid oranges, reds and purples in shop windows appeared crippled and weak. People walked around the drab scene in circles, even if they didn’t know it, leaving one place then going to another, soon to return to where they started. It’s a large circle, going out the front door and through many doors after that during the day, but it’s a circle nonetheless when you step back into your home. The circle is such an unproductive shape.
Waiting-room-on-wheels number 584 pulled to a clumsy halt and exhaled, probably choking back a cough, to open the doors. The passengers changed, not changing anything, and Zero was left at the mid-town bus station to watch the 584 disappear in a cloud of pollution like a motorized magician.
It was a fifteen minute wait until the next bus he needed showed up, so until then he had to endure the smell of gasoline and the cold steel of a bus station seat. The complex was a large emptiness in the middle of the city, but you could never see the city from inside the station. Since it was massive and therefore had a massive roof, it was dark inside. Since it was dark inside the place was lit with the neon-white luminescence you can only get with halogen lights on the walls and ceiling. Since the glow was so unnatural, juxtaposed to the sunlight around the edges of the area, it was all that existed; natural light was imperceptible to the human eye in such a condition.
The cavernous station was, like the buses it serviced, covered in graffiti, making it feel like some urban art gallery that no one appreciated. On a pillar next to where Zero sat, someone had written in intricate, winding letters the words ‘God Bless Atheism.’ It took a minute to consider it, and after reaching a decision that God needed atheism to separate the faithful from anyone he might not want joining him, he realized that the artist behind the masterpiece was either very stupid or very wise. Probably the latter.
At least it’s good to see people putting thought into their defacement of public property.
Zero admired more works of illegal art that hung on the cement walls for the next couple of minutes, but the rest of them were just by sell-out artists trying to advertise themselves and the names they made up for themselves. Sooner than expected, but still exactly 10 minutes later, the 136 doctor’s foyer arrived to take Zero most of the way to his destination.
Every bus ride is the same. Destinations may change, the passengers may change, drivers and actual buses may change, but they’re still all the same. Sometimes you pray for a madman to have a bomb, or for a collision with a car, but that only happens in the movies. Like the day Zero was in a movie.
It was every bad movie ever made, with every budget cut and filming problem imaginable and the whole country was going to see it. It starred Zero as the insomniac and Alistair as your everyday wise man turned witness to a shooting.
“You know, Al, I’m getting kind of edgy about that man at the front,” he had said, what felt like all those years ago.
“Why?” Alistair turned from the window to look at the jittery man that sat in the seat two rows forward and across the aisle from them.
“Every time he leans forward his shirt lifts up a bit, and I can see the gun he has hidden in the back of his pants. Anyway, just look at him. He doesn’t look like the most mentally balanced person here.”
That was true. The man was not able to sit still, always looking around with erratic movements of his head, grabbing at the railing of the seat in front of him with trembling hands, putting his head in his hands, sitting up again, putting on leg up on the seat under him, taking it away. He definitely did not look like a balanced individual.
“He’s nothing to worry about,” said Alistair with a knowing, calm smile. “He’s going to rob a bank or a gas station, and judging by the fact that it’s broad daylight, his intelligence, or lack thereof, won’t take him very far.”
“You’re probably right, as usual.”
Nope. The one time Alistair had been wrong.
Of course, it only felt like a movie to the insomniac, since that’s what insomnia does to the mind – takes it out of the body to view things externally, like a movie. There was a camera, sure, but it was only a news report of a man that had gone crazy, hijacked a bus and tried to crash it, kamikaze style, into someone’s house. Luckily, Alistair remained calm in the situation and tried to be a hero. Standing over the unconscious bus driver that had been hit in the back of the head by an instrument Zero didn’t see and staring down the barrel of the gun that was trained upon him by the screaming nutcase, the 65 year-old man had broken the wrist of the psychopath with a lightning-quick grab and jerk motion and wrestled him from the wheel of the vehicle. He yelled at Zero to take the wheel while he constrained the unbalanced man, despite the fact that they both knew Zero could not drive a bus. More luck came in the fact that they were not on a busy street, and Zero could simply brake without any danger.
Zero marveled at Alistair’s adeptness and ability to diffuse a situation and asked him about where he learned to do such things.
“You continue to surprise me, you know that?” Zero said to him between interviews with the media.
“Oh yeah, why’s that?”
“Well for starters you just saved the lives of a busload of people. The way you did it is also quite a surprise.”
“I simply did what instinct told me to do.”
“You broke a man’s wrist with the movements of a martial arts expert! You stared a man with a gun square in the face and never even flinched! You can’t tell me that was just instinct!”
“I can and I do,” he said firmly as another reporter came up to interview him. He told them the exact same thing about listening to his instincts.
After the story had gone from the front pages of newspapers and television news programs, no one ever heard about it again. It was never discussed again between Zero and Alistair, either.
Just another part of the enigma that was Alistair Wintergreen.
By the time he arrived at the office of Pickering, Conklin and Waters, Zero felt like it was the last place on Earth he wanted to be.
He’s gone.
This isn’t the most helpful thing for it.
“Hi, I’m here to see Mr. Conklin,” Zero told the receptionist at the legal office when he walked up to her desk. “I got this letter in the mail about the reading of Alistair Wintergreen’s will.”
The receptionist was a young woman with a smile that went beyond polite and into medicated. “Right through there, sir,” she directed Zero down a hallway. “Third door on your left. Mr. Conklin will be with you shortly.”
“Thanks,” muttered Zero as he began drifting down the hallway.
Mr. Conklin’s office was decorated in rich mahogany with a leather couch and matching armchairs sitting around a coffee table on one side of the room, and his desk on the other. Some certificates and other proof that he could lie better than other people hung on the walls; how very impressive.
The fact that this place was so lavishly decorated in leather, mahogany and credentials was just adding to the enigma of Alistair Wintergreen. The man lived in an apartment that was in about the same price range as Zero’s, and it definitely did not appear that he had an abundance of money. However, it was peculiar that he always appeared to have money, despite the fact that he was unemployed. Still, it was hard to argue that he was totally destitute, since there Zero was, sitting in the office of a high-priced lawyer that was in the service of Alistair before, and after, he died. He was certainly not giving Zero a whole lot of nothing, either.
Ethan Conklin was a man of about 35 who graduated at some university Zero had never heard of, and went on to become one of the many lawyers the country didn’t really need. Wills weren’t really his thing – he generally gave legal advice to businesses that were in risk of going under – but he was the executive of Al’s estate nonetheless. He couldn’t have helped Al from going under, so Zero disliked him immediately in the same way he disliked himself. He had a robotically administered haircut and wore a business suit with a loud green tie that hung like a satin vine from his neck.
How I’d love to see him swing on that vine from the rafters.
After shaking hands to prove neither of them had a weapon – the original point of the handshake – they sat down on the black leather chairs on opposite sides of the coffee table.
“Mr. Wintergreen was a wealthy man, Mr. Black,” Conklin said, sounding like he was selling something.
That’s not my name.
“No he wasn’t, you’re confused with someone else,” Zero retorted flatly. Al had mysterious financial support. He wasn’t wealthy.
“I’m quite sure I know what I’m talking about, Mr. Black.”
That’s not my name.
“I knew Alistair before he died and he was indeed wealthy. How else could he afford our services?”
“I don’t know.” Still flat.
“He came to me some years ago and asked me to be the executor of his estate. I know he was prone to having strokes, so I figured that’s why he wanted to get things in order for when the inevitable happened. I know this is hard for you, but we have to get down to business.”
“Al was unemployed and lived in a second-rate apartment! How can you tell me that he was wealthy?”
“Well now it seems like you’re the one that’s confused with someone else. Now, down to business.”
“No!” If a series of emotions was placed into a blender and then thrown off a tall building to splatter on the sidewalk below, that’s what Zero felt. “This is complete BULLSHIT!”
“Mr. Black-”
That’s not my name!
“I don’t know why you didn’t know about Mr. Wintergreen’s wealth, but I can assure you he had money. What will it take for you to believe me?” Conklin beseeched.
You know it’s there. Bite the bullet.
“I want to hear what Al said in the will. If I knew the man, which it’s starting to sound like I don’t, he had at least a few words he wanted to leave behind.”
“You’re quite right,” Conklin admitted with a solemn smile. “Let’s see what he’s got here.” Conklin started sorting through some papers he had put on the table while Zero sat back in his chair, preparing for the assailment of a dead man’s words.
Even sitting at home, on his chair fit for the king of the homeless, the news wouldn’t sink in properly.
I didn’t know a thing about him.
The clock was still impaled on the table before him, silent now that it had been brutally murdered. There wasn’t uncertainty or indecision now; only sheer disillusion.
No defeats.
No rematches.
Only a whole lot of money, a new house and no idea of the reason behind it all.
Alistair Pierre Wintergreen, a sixty-five year-old, unemployed Frenchman, left Zero with $6 million and a mansion somewhere up in the hills.
He half expected Alistair to appear out of nowhere and shout “Surprise!” but Zero would’ve punched him in the face if he did.
Lying bastard.
Gender:
Points: 890
Reviews: 131