Stories. Make your bed; Lie in it.

I love thee not; therefore pursue me not.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Sc. 1

Thinking about beds again. Still. Perhaps because, as I sleep so poorly, I experience for much of any given night the bed as a bed. Perhaps because remembering stories has brought back someone I hadn't looked at closely for a ton of time. Perhaps because in a letter a friend talked about important people, past and present.
So, a tiny story about an unmade bed and a friend.
And the necessary backstory.
Because I want us to understand him.

I watch the western sky, the sun is sinking.
The geese are flying south, it sets me thinking.
I did not miss you much, I did not suffer,
What did not kill me just made me tougher.
Sting

Rick was a debater and, lacking a harsher, brighter, sharper term, I'll call him my friend. Debaters are, in my experience, pushy, bossy people who never for a moment question whether they might be wrong or mistaken, regardless of which side of a question they argue, and Rick was born debating. I was not a debater but at the time this tiny story takes place I was on the speech team, in fact, I had a speech and debate scholarship, because of Rick. Because he bossed and pushed me onto the team, dragged me (I'm not exaggerating here, pulled and pushed and manhandled me) into Dr. Parnell's office (I love you still, Dr. Parnell) where, after recomposing himself (our journey had left us both a bit...mussed), he informed the good doctor that I desired to try for the team and would now recite a poem.
A tense, slightly surreal moment followed.
Dr. Parnell was very surprised and very polite (and a good, good person, not at all bossy or pushy and consequently hurting for talent on his team. The next year Richard Wheeler would be the coach and he would be marvelous and wonderful and bossy and pushy and have a big, successful team and I love him still, too). He put down his pen, turned a bit from his desk, steepled his fingers, smiled encouragingly and gave me his full attention. Like this was all very normal.
While I do admire a man who awards me his undivided focus, at that moment I was busy with my own focus, my internal counsel divided as to whether I should murder Rick while I was clearly not in my right mind and said murder would, by any competent jury, be excused as a crime of passion in self defense or wait till later, when though it would be a cold-blooded crime, premeditated, it would lack witnesses. A counsel divided just stands there.

It was a weird moment, tense, as I have said, and it stretched out kind of too far because I was not only angry, I had not asked for this and I was scared. Really scared to say a stupid poem for this slender, mild academic who was now looking kindly, carefully, away from the awkward, seething, mute stranger at his side and glancing politely but questioningly over at his star debater. Something? Anything? Since Rick just stood, his back against the door, arms folded, mouth closed, ostentatiously calming his breathing, giving me silent glare for silent glare, Dr. Parnell turned back to me to wait with calm hands and only slightly raised eyebrows, clearly communicating that he was a gifted teacher who lived to help young people reach their full potential, however oddly they went at it, and that he was there for me.
Whenever.

I found I couldn't hate Rick more than I wanted to like Dr, Parnell, that I couldn't scratch Rick's eyes out or burst into tears or faint on this lovely man so I just caved, collapsed, crumbled, and said the damn poem.

For that small, small act of succumbing I received in exchange all the surprised applause, admiring, sincere praise and monetary rewards a freshman girl could desire. As, I suppose, Rick had known I would. Well, probably not, on reflection, all the monetary rewards a freshman girl could desire; not all of those, no, but more than than I had seen coming in the brief, fierce struggle down the quiet hall of the old administration building to Dr. Parnell's office. Rick had not mentioned scholarships, but as Dr. Parnell happily questioned me, discovering I had been a Sterling Scholar in English, reflecting that I knew my way around spoken English, even in verse form and that there was certainly money in that, Rick gave me one firm nod. Yes. As it should be. And off they went, Rick and the doctor praising my recitation to the skies and commending each other for discovering me and plotting my imminent addition to the team, while I got to be simultaneously livid (discovery?!? hey, you guys know I'm still here, right? what am I suddenly, an object?) and secretly, terribly, pleased (hey! they like me! they really like me! and I've just become an...an..object! coool). This was precisely the way things always turned out with Rick. Huge rewards in return for what any sane person would describe as small, unimportant losses. Like being forced to audition.
It was horrible.

Horrible and every time a huge defeat, but the defeats never made any difference except for differences like this one, for example; thanks to Rick's machinations I suddenly had a full scholarship handed to me, which was HUGE since we were poor at home and it would never, in a zillion years, have occurred to me to try for one myself. I would not have thought I merited any such thing. Never would have crossed my mind. When I say it made no difference I mean it made no difference to Rick. I so, so, didn't want him to shove me onto a better place (again!), to force me into being (once more) infinitely better off, because. Because. Because I felt a deep moral obligation to resist. Afraid that if he succeeded he would think he ruled the world and, hellfire and damnation, I was not going to be a part of any world Rick ruled. Trouble was, he did rule the world, and he knew he ruled it. He would be just the same, to me, the very same, the day after he had smoothed my way at school (perhaps, perhaps, even made it possible for me to continue) as he had been the day before and would be two weeks hence. Had I triumphed in my little rebellion, preventing him giving me that desperately needed help, he then would have been, with me, the selfsame Rick of the day before. He would notice neither my gratitude nor my vexation. Monarchs do not require, thanks anyway, appreciation for improving the lives of their subjects, it's what they were born to do, but neither do they ask approval or permission for their plans. They execute; you benefit. Had I thwarted his intervention on my behalf, he, as king of the world, would have been well within his acknowledged rights to have committed me forthwith to a lunatic asylum. Not a voice would have been raised in my defense. Not one. Not, of course, that Rick would ever have told, mentioned in any way either that he helped me or that I resisted. Had I pushed him away hard enough, unbreakably stony and silently unyielding in Dr. Parnell's office, Rick would have just looked at me, then held the door open for me as we left, made pleasant conversation or not as he walked me to my dorm and disappeared from my life for a month. Or shown up the next day sitting with his feet on my grandmother's quilt, his homework spread all over my bed, ignoring me at close range. Or brought me lunch and left it on my desk. Or asked me to the Winter Ball. Or brought a truly hot date to hang out in my living room. Or none of these. Just as he would if he succeeded.

I see myself never writing fiction. Harder than I can do to wrestle someone I knew onto a (virtual) page and bind him there with words. How impossible to build a man from the ground, flesh him out to the full. Of course, I could simplify. Yes, that must be what sometimes happens. I've read those books.

Rick was not simple. One evening after a fracas (never one to back down, me) with the football-playing boyfriend of my (former) cheerleader roommate I stumbled out to the big common room, too angry even to see tables and chairs. I have a bad temper and though I'm better now, at this point in my life I believe I had several bad tempers warring even with each other. Sat with my back to the room, face to the bricks, melting, dissolving, consumed. Rick was suddenly crouching beside me, remote, curious. Asking what was wrong with me. How did he do that? Materialize like that? And how did he choose his moments? I was unable to give complete responses but could indicate I'd had a set to. Rick stood and considered me from that altitude then held out his hand. "Come on, there's someone you need to meet." Sorry, Rick, not this time, oh, so not in the mood. I didn't deign to look at him or his hand. He calmly used it to haul me up and begin dragging me. I became compliant quickly; it was embarrassing when he did that. He took me across the dark campus, humming Primary songs, and knocked at an office door (yep, we've seen this before). A small, homely, sandy haired man answered, delighted to see Rick. Rick said, "She needs to talk," and closed the door with me on the inside. The man sat down smiling, as if all this were perfectly commonplace. Perhaps it was, certainly judging from my experience Rick may have spent much of his sophomore year dragging struggling freshman girls into the offices of wonderful teachers and counselors.
This man was one, a wonderful teacher and counselor, and a father and a bishop and after he asked me what was on my mind I talked to him for two hours. It was already late when I started. I have no idea how he led any sort of life, helping people willy-nilly that way, but he saved my life, that night and many times after that night. When I finally opened the door to leave, all cried out and floating on the peace that bishop had poured into me, Rick was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, staring into the distance, waiting. He got up without a word and walked me a very little of the way home. I ran the rest alone, always terrified in the dark.

He was not nice to me. He made fun of me, cruelly. I walked into my bedroom from the bathroom, dressing for a dance in a borrowed formal, and he was just there, sitting at my desk. He looked up from his book, ignoring my spluttering and shock to look me over, asked if I would marry him, and went back to his reading. I said something hard and empty and scathing. It didn't matter. It never mattered what I said. The thing about Rick was that nothing made a dent. I know, I kicked and kicked. If you fail to leave a mark you vanish without a trace.

"I'm singing at church," he said. "Come." I went with Jane who was a year older than me and had been Rick's friend since the year before and loved him. I loved Jane. He came in, saw us, nodded, sat with other girls. Stood up to sing with boys I didn't know, making them look like children though they had returned from their missions and he had yet to go. Stood with his hand in his pocket, calm, offhand, waiting like nothing. And when they sang, he sang the solos. I guess the shock showed on my face, and he saw it. Royalty does not smirk when it is acting royally but the thing they do that is smirking is what he did. "He can sing," I said to Jane. "He can sing." She smiled at me with too-bright eyes, the special, happy sadness of a wonderful girl best friends with a man who will not love her. "Silly," she said kindly to me, "of course he can sing. How else do you think he played Danny last year?" He did? He acts? Too? I hadn't known. He had played the lead in Grease and quarrelled fiercely, continuously, with the director; the blond girl who played Sandy had been his girlfriend and wasn't anymore. I don't think he spoke to her that year. He stood in the church, singing like a miracle, like a dream. Left without talking to us.

Now you know a little about this friend. Only you don't know how silly he was, sillier than anyone could possibly be while looking for all the world like America's ambassador to France. You know how Edward-the-Vampire can get people to do things by smiling at them and leaning forward while he talks? Rick could do that for reals and he was every bit as dangerous. I don't know how to write about him smart and funny, clever and kind, making everyone in the room (especially, but not exclusively, the girls) feel like they were special and known. I can't write that stuff, I don't know how. Would I say, we all went on a hayride and Rick was there on the wagon and no one minded that he isn't in our ward and he was just so much fun! So dear! Made us laugh all evening! Even the Priesthood brethren! Helped everyone down from the wagon and complimented everyone and sat with his arm around everyone and brought them treats! What a guy! And he looks so mature for his age! There, now can you see it? I made that up, but it would be something like that. Arm around everyone. Just don't try to be the girl sitting next to him. Just don't try.

Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?
Or rather do I not in plainest truth
Tell you I do not nor I cannot love you?
Midsummer, Act II, Sc.1

He did look older than the rest of us. I marked my eighteenth birthday during the months I knew Rick. He was nineteen and not on a mission, but should have been, he told me. Should have been gone. I made him show me his driver's licence. One of the few times he really smiled at me. About me. I thought it was the moustache that made him look so much older till a day I came trudging home from class to find him reading on the (former) cheerleader roommate's bed. (You don't get plot like this at BYU.) He kept his head down while I worked through the roll of irritation and exasperation (privacy, locked doors, personal space, why bother, where is my chocolate?). Our customary ritual of greeting. Then he looked up slowly and I didn't know him because the moustache was gone and because he looked oddly...real. Exposed. Wary? Hurtable. Still immeasurably older than me, immeasurably distant, the beautiful Governor Royal of the Eastern Seaboard, beloved for his flawless management of all matters from weather to birthday presents yet pained in his glorious soul that while his books of poems were critically acclaimed, the populous had not embraced them and poetry is so edifying for a populous. Ah well, he would only be pained in secret, only show a sliver of it here, on my roommate's bed.
"You shaved," I said. "I did," he answered. "I like this better," I said and that was brave and a gift. "It'll grow back," he said.

"I don't have a partner so you're debating with me. I entered us."
Snow was hosting a speech meet and I was there to say my poem and help Dr. Parnell. That's all I was there for.
"I don't have a partner so you're debating with me. I entered us. Here's our number."

Flabbergasted is such a luscious word. Say it to yourself with concentration and lots of breath support. Webster tells me it's 18th century slang, probably from flabby and aghast. Those words were me. Fabulous. The stuff of fable. I'd never seen, never seen, a debate round. "Oh, sweetie," he said, hands tight and supportive on both my arms, "it doesn't matter what you say because I'll be speaking second. And anyway, it's too late. What are you worried about?" looking at me carefully, "You look terrific. And I'll buy you lunch."
Lunch. Hmm.
"What's the resolution?" I ask carefully.
"Mmm?" He's flipping through note cards. "Ask Gary."
Gary is Dr. Parnell, who tells me I am a lifesaver and administers emergency aid. And tells me the room number. Rick is waiting at the table in the front of the room, impatient. I say, "You didn't tell me the room number." "Hurry," he says, "you're the first speaker, remember? I know I told you that."

After, I wait to stop shaking and for Rick to talk to me. Something? Anything? He's shaking hands with the other team, who come shake hands with my shaking hands and are very nice, and now he's talking to the judges who he knows, who smile at me, and now he's gathering stuff. Nothing.
"Was it alright?" I ask.
"It was fine. Why?" He's being an idiot.
"Did I do alright?"
"You were great. We didn't forfeit the round." (That kills a team score.) "And I told you, it didn't matter what you said." He is finishing, looking at me, impassive and also curious. "You speak really well. Your thought processes are very strange. Lunch?"
Yes.

But his wallet is in his jeans pocket in his room and he has to help with tabulation but we can still get lunch if I will run and get his money. Run means run, lunch is only an hour. I excel at running in heels (after all these years science has shown how good it is for us, sprinting on our toes). And I'm hungry and he owes me.

This is the story I set out to tell, not Rick ruling the world or the speech meet or our lunch or the rest of the day or how he left school after finals or how he would call me, sometimes, looking for Jane. Just the story of me getting his wallet.

I had forgotten about his room and it set me back a bit. He and his roommate were conducting an experiment, determining what would happen if no one ever hung up clothing again. Lesser people have toyed with this same project in an unscientific and haphazard way (a badly conducted version is going on not twenty feet from where I now sit typing); these two proposed a rigorous application of the scientific method. Question, hypothesis, careful documentation. They took pictures, posted a notebook for ease in recording observations. The pile of clothing completely filled the space between the unmade beds and spilled up onto them. (Not making beds was part of this, too. Of course.) You could open the door but that was it. I mentioned, I think, how silly Rick could be, well, he had told me the jeans were on the floor between the beds but there was no longer a floor. Time was wasting and I worked fast, grabbing with my right hand and, as everything in the pile proved not to be jeans with a wallet in them, chucking stuff onto the bed at my left. I'd gone about a third of the way into the pile and was actually reaching into the back pocket of a pair of jeans for what I was fairly sure was my lunch ticket when I became aware of the most awful creeping horror. The clothing I had been piling onto the unmade bed was moving. Slowly, shifting, without apparent direction. And it started breathing, moaning a little, now moving more and moving faster. I was clawing my way through the door (with the wallet) when a gym shoe flashed out from under the crawly, tumbling mass and I saw all. Rick's roommate, indistinguishable amidst his own experiment's apparatus, had been napping in the petri dish and I had buried him under a mountain of scientific evidence.

Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,
For I am sick when I do look on thee.
Midsummer, Act II, Sc.1

That's my little story. That's it. That's what I thought of for years, if I thought of Rick at all. The lost wallet and the haunted bed. Till I tried to put it down here, just a funny storylet, and discovered I had to explain, justify, reveal, something, anything, lest anyone assume from what I said that not hanging up his clothes summed up this person I have renamed Rick so that I could write about him without his permission. In writing we rule the world; I work without his assent, I protest to myself that I needn't justify my memories. Sometimes, trying to show you how I saw him and burdened by only the memories I have, some secret, some faded, I spun little scenes that never were, but that were as really him as anything that ever happened. He made me take all those out, stay scrupulously truthful. I felt him laughing at me for using words I cannot spell, guesses so bad spell check runs amok in a hundred false directions. He always mocked my odd vocabulary; "That would be a word you've never heard spoken, right?" and corrected the pronunciation. He scared me into caution. He really was funny. Making me take a history class held in the late afternoon he promised, "It doesn't matter which half you sleep through, the other half will be amazing." The gift of that professor was so great I was a history major for two whole terms. And I held back, here, the unbelievable stories, how he took me to a formal and spent the whole time talking to other girls, dancing with them and me sort of alongside, then the elaborate, fantastical compliments he paid me when I threw a fit about it, apparently expecting me to believe the story he spun, that the depth and danger of my charms left him no alternative. And how he turned away again. And how I carried those compliments for weeks, for a year. Stuff of fables. But I wanted to tell the truth. I wanted what I said to matter.

What is the force that binds the stars?
I wore this mask to hide my scars.
What is the power that pulls the tides?
I never could find a place to hide.
What moves the earth around the sun?
What could I do but run and run and run?
Afraid to love, afraid to fail,
A mast without a sail.
The moon's a fingernail and slowly sinking,
Another day goes by and now I'm thinking,
That this indifference was my invention
When everything I did sought your attention.
You were my compass star, you were my measure,
You were a pirate's map, a buried treasure.
If this was all correct, the last thing I'd expect,
The prosecution rests, it's time that I confessed,
I must have loved you.

Ghost Story
Sting