About Our Friend
an excerpt

Alex was NOT looking forward to meeting with Kain in the library at all. As far as Alex was concerned, he was already pretty low on the food chain at Century; why spend time with someone whose status was even lower? He wasn’t one of those types who enjoyed looking at the dying orphans to make himself feel better about his shabby old house: it would just make him rather depressed, really.

And so, as he walked through the halls, towards Century’s library, he tried to think of a million ways that he could get out of having to go over the paper with Kain. He could say he was sick… Or, he could say he’d rather just fail the damned paper. Or, he could go home and do the paper on his own. But silently he checked off each of these options and decided that they were wholly unacceptable: for instance, he didn’t want to fail the class, he needed to graduate eventually. And he didn’t have a single idea what he needed to write the paper about. And if he feigned sickness, well… He knew that Kain would realize that it was due to Alex trying to avoid him. And, as rage-filled as Alex was, he would feel horrible doing that to someone. He’d had it done enough times to him, he wasn’t about to become that kind of person.

It appeared, then, that he was stuck. He pushed the heavy library doors open and found himself staring at the drab orange-carpeted room full of books. He sighed, then began to look around for Kain. He found him – sitting at a desk, by himself of course, silently flipping through a book. As he approached, he saw that the book was about UNIX. Alex wasn’t entirely sure what UNIX was, but, from the pictures on the cover, figured it had something to do with computers.

“Hey,” he whispered, not wanting to get thrown out of the library the second he got in there. The librarians were not particularly fond of Alex and his friends – they would usually start OUT by reading books, but then begin discussing some incredibly inappropriate topic and get louder and louder until they had earned themselves a few detentions. Alex and Toby, not surprisingly, were the prime culprits in this regard. Kain moved his book down slightly, saw Alex, and nodded silently. Alex sat down next to him and stared at the UNIX book for a moment as Kain marked his place and turned to Alex. Suddenly uncomfortable at sitting next to Kain, Alex quickly switched his seat to the one across from him, and he looked at him again, waiting for him to speak.

Neglecting any sort of a greeting, Kain simply said, “So, Death of a Salesman.” He fished around on the ground and came up with a small yellowed book. “The paper is on whether or not the play is a tragedy.”

“Yeah,” Alex replied.

“Did you read the book?” Kain inquired.

“Yeah,” Alex said, “There’s the guy, Willy Loman, and he loses his job and his mind and then he kills himself.”

“Right. But is it a tragedy?”

“Yeah, I mean, the main character dies at the end…” Kain sighed, looking at him with a bored look on his face.

“That doesn’t make it a tragedy. Remember what Aristotle said.”

“I think I wasn’t here that day.” Kain looked at him again, with a similar look of boredom to the one before. Alex started to get annoyed with him.

“Aristotle said that a tragic hero has to influence the community at large, and also he has to have fallen due to some tragic flaw in his personality.”

“Well, Loman did fall to a tragic flaw… I mean… uh… he fell because he was so intent on living the American Dream, right?” Alex started to pick up steam. “He refused to believe that he wouldn’t be rewarded if everyone found him to be ‘well-liked’… That’s why he’s convinced that Biff is going to be successful and not Bernard, but look at Bernard, he has lots of money and Biff is totally useless, I mean… So isn’t that Loman’s tragic flaw?”

“True, but what about the first part?” Kain said. The amazement showed in his face: he had thought that this whole endeavor was going to be like pulling teeth; he had been of the opinion that Alex was dumber than dirt. Perhaps he would have to reevaluate that assumption.

“Well, I mean… maybe… his death doesn’t affect the community at large, but his insanity affects his family, right? And they’re a community. So, maybe the tragedy isn’t in his death. The tragedy is in his insanity! No, wait, his tragedy is his tragic flaw, it’s all the same thing. The tragedy is his relentless hope in the American dream!”

Kain looked flabbergasted.

“Now, if you can write all that down,” he said, jaw-dropping.

“Why do you look so amazed?” Alex asked him.

“Well, you’re smarter than I thought.”

“What, you think I’m some kind of dumbass?” Alex asked in an offended voice.

“Well, you’re barely ever here, all I ever hear you talk about is sex, you never do your work and you’re loud and brash and obnoxious,” Kain told him. However, instead of inflecting with his voice as if he wanted to insult Alex, he said it in the same tone of voice as if he were relating the weather.

“Well,” Alex replied, taken aback, “I do read, I am smart, but I just don’t have the motivation to do a lot of these assignments. And, you know, I could be looking just as amazed at you. Until today, I don’t think I’ve ever heard your voice in conversation.”

“Well, I don’t like to talk,” Kain replied, blushing slightly. Alex shrugged.

“I think I have enough down to do this paper tonight. What are you doing after this?”

“Uh, going home?” Kain said.

“How about not going home? I was going to stop by the video store. Want to come?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“C’mon,” Alex urged.

“Okay, I guess so. What are you going to get?”