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But at some point his feelings about the drive had changed. Maybe it was when Mr. Biadala had asked Karl if Vivian was going to Phil’s wedding, and Karl had stared blankly at the man, wondering how he could have asked such a simple question to which the answer was obvious. Maybe it was seeing the guilty amusement on Vivian’s face when she’d opened the door to him, using her body to shield his mother and her friends playing blackjack in the kitchen. Maybe it hadn’t been one of those moments, but a culmination of them all that made him realize Vivian was as much a part of him as Healthy Food, Archer Heights and his own family were. More special, even, because he’d been born a Milek in Archer Heights, but he had chosen Vivian, and she had chosen him.
Now the drive to his old neighborhood was a pleasure. He liked to see the small changes in Vivian’s body during the day and wished they shared a bed at night so he could explore those changes in more detail. To see the curve of her pink lower lip over her sharp chin. To have her be completely unimpressed by the seriousness of his life and make him laugh as only someone who loves you can.
Karl finished his losing game of H-O-R-S-E with Xìnyùn and put the parrot back into his cage, draping the cover over the bird. He wiped down the counters and headed off to his bathroom to brush his teeth. When he climbed into bed the sheets were cold and smelled of whatever flowers his dryer sheets were scented with. Not of jasmine, as they did after Vivian was here. Instead of the heady fragrance only his wife had, it was the generic smell of millions of sheets in millions of homes across the United States. If he wasn’t capable of giving Vivian what she needed, this was how his sheets would smell for the rest of his life.
His hand hesitated over the lamp switch, knowing he should turn it off and also knowing he wouldn’t sleep tonight, light or no light. And so he lay in his bed, blinking to calm the bright light of the lamp in his eyes. On another not-so-distant night that felt like eons ago, he’d jokingly handed Vivian books to help her sleep. Karl rolled over onto his side and faced the spine of the Melville book, still unfinished. He picked it up, opened to his bookmark and began “Billy Budd” where he had left off.
It was a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers did not close.
Melville’s language, even so cluttered and impenetrable to a modern reader, could not hide the great wrong the British Navy was about to commit upon the person of Billy Budd. Though he was innocent of murder in the barest sense of the word, Billy Budd was guilty as a point of fact, and so he was about to hang.
And since he felt that innocence was even a better thing than religion wherewith to go to Judgment, he reluctantly withdrew.
Karl had read “Billy Budd” in law school, when the chaplain’s opinions of the condemned Budd hadn’t felt so personal. At the time, he’d felt the story was cut-and-dried. Billy Budd had killed someone; there was no arguing that fact. The Articles of War said the punishment was death. Ergo, Billy Budd must hang. Age must have added some gray back into Karl’s life because he finally saw the tragedy in Billy Budd’s story.
He closed the book and bounced it off his chest as Vivian’s words echoed through his head. Do you still judge me for nearly cheating Middle Kingdom and getting fired?
Shades of gray notwithstanding, the situations weren’t the same. Billy Budd had been wrongly accused of mutiny and, when too overcome by his stuttering to defend himself, had pushed his accuser, who hit his head and died. Vivian had nearly cheated her employer out of money to help her wastrel father. Billy Budd had been sentenced to hang. Vivian had been fired.
Not the same at all.
And yet—both were innocent of the crimes they were being accused of. Billy Budd had not been guilty of mutinous assembly, and the death of his accuser was debatable as murder. Vivian hadn’t actually cheated. She’d thought about it, but the law didn’t judge a person’s thoughts to determine guilt or innocence. Actions were key, and Vivian’s biggest problem had been the inconclusive video evidence.
They had both been punished according to the rules of their employers. In both cases the justice was “by the book.” And in both cases the justice felt like a waste.
