“You could say that I’m in a bad spot right now,” Balthazar said.
“Okay,” Cotton said. “You’re in a bad spot right now. It sucks, doesn’t it?”
“More than you could imagine,” Balthazar said.
“I wouldn’t be that sure,” Cotton said. “I’m the one who killed a man, with my own hands. Believe me, I still haven’t gotten over it. Some people, they think they could, and they could fight in a trial still denying it, because denial is the only resource they have left. Well, it doesn’t matter what lawyers say, what a jury says, what the judge says, what witnesses say, what those interested in the victim might say. It doesn’t matter if no one ever finds out. It matters because you know, and you can’t kid yourself into believing you aren’t a murderer. Some people do it all the time. They kill insects, and it’s easy because they don’t identify with insects. They kill animals, because we eat animals and they figure someone has to do it, and it’s easy because they don’t identify with those particular animals. They might even have pets. They might even have hunting dogs, helping them kill other animals. But everyone knows people, everyone identifies with people. Maybe it’s easier when you have a psychological problem, because you stop identifying, but you still look exactly like the person you kill. It will haunt you the rest of your life. Killers are made. Every killer’s torment is not the victim but what made them a killer. At least that’s the only comfort they have.
“So go ahead and tell me that I don’t understand your pain. If a killer can’t identify with pain, they can’t identify with anything. They don’t identify with life. This is considering after they’ve killed, of course. It’s no small surprise that a lot of killers end up taking their own lives, because they now understand what pain is, better than anyone else. They understand that it takes something away from you, something that can never be replaced.”
“I’m not talking about your troubles, Cotton,” Balthazar said. “With all due respect, I have nothing. I have nothing, and that has nothing to do with your problems. I'm dead. Everything I hold dear is dead.”
“Not everything,” Cotton said. “Don’t you see? You’ve lost everything but yourself. It hurts, it hurts bad, but you can still feel it. You haven’t lost everything. You haven’t lost yourself.”
“I wish it were easy,” Balthazar said, “to find whatever delusion you’ve come into. You’ve lost it, that’s what you’ve done. You couldn’t deal with becoming a killer, like you were just describing. I don’t know what you’ve lost, but whatever it is, you need it back. You don’t know what the real world is anymore.”
“Stop lashing out,” Cotton said. “You can’t find yourself if you look to everything else for blame. You’ve made progress. Don’t quit now.”
“You just don’t understand!” Balthazar said. “I can’t quit now. I have nothing left to lose! I’m already gone!”
“You’re not,” Cotton said. “Don’t you see? You can’t give up. Didn’t you tell yourself you would never truly lose everything if you still had possession of yourself? What happened to all of those resources you prided yourself on? What happened to the self-made man who happened to have most of what he had given to him? What happened to the man who thought he could recover all of it on his own?”
“He died,” Balthazar said. “His wife died. His future died.”
“You let him die,” Cotton said, “and you’re surely dead.”
“I am dead!” Balthazar said. “I can’t lose anything more than my own life!”
“Yet you’re still here,” Cotton said.
“Well, I wish I could explain that, but I can’t,” Balthazar said.
“So you’re just going to quit,” Cotton said. “That’s not the Balthazar I know. Not the Balthazar you know.”
“That world out there doesn’t want me,” Balthazar said. “I can’t do anything. I’m powerless.”
“We’re all powerless, Balthazar,” Cotton said. “We’re all powerless, but some of us compensate. That’s how anything gets done, both the good and the bad. You’ve lived your whole life that way. Why change that now?”
“Because a crisis told me that I was wrong,” Balthazar said.
“You told yourself that,” Cotton said. “Every moment of your life is a crisis, yet you surmount it every time.”
“Well, I’m dead,” Balthazar said.
“You certainly think you are,” Cotton said. “But whoever told you that you needed your own body to live?”
“You’re insane,” Balthazar said.
“Maybe I am,” Cotton said. “There’s something to life, that we think we can label it even when we don’t really understand it. If it’s deadly, we call it bad. If it’s not, but it makes us different, we still call it bad. Because different is bad. Different is the unknown. We have always feared the unknown, simply because we don’t know it. But once we do, we don’t fear it anymore, at least not in the same way. You don’t recognize what you have right now as life, or even as Balthazar Romero, anymore? That’s just fine. Give yourself a new name, if it makes you happy. You’re no longer who you once thought you were. Make it obvious. It’s what you like best, right?”
“You’re not even trying to be rational anymore,” Balthazar said, “are you? Do you want me to think you‘re insane?”
“If it makes you more comfortable, sure,” Cotton said. “Barry? Ishtar? Mr. Eko? Pick a name, any name.”
“You’re really sick,” Balthazar said.
“Yet you have no place to go,” Cotton said. “The truth sucks, doesn’t it? You won’t pick a new name because you don’t like pseudonyms, do you? You don’t like things pretending to be something else? You don’t understand the concept. You want honesty, honesty you can never accept within yourself. You reject it because you reject yourself. I’ve been telling you this the whole time. You must accept yourself. You don’t accept reality because it’s too painful. I’m not the one who’s lost, Balthazar. I never have been. I’ve found my peace. That’s what lost things crave. They don’t even need to return to their familiar entrapments to find it. Don’t you understand? But I must caution you: do not assume that once you find your peace that you will have it forever. You will have to fight to preserve it. Life doesn’t have to be about survival, but survival is what defines life. We complicate it because that’s the only thing we know how to do. What you need to learn is how ease the complications you bring upon yourself. I can show you the way, if you’ll let me.”
Ashlee, or what was left of her, was in his arms. He sat on the floor in the house on Culver St, abandoned now for all intents and purposes. She had, remarkably, a glow about her, in death, the glow that should have accompanied her greatest desire, the one she seemed to have practiced for her whole life, the one that had been so attractive from the start. She had been full of life, but that life had been tainted. She had been forced to live with an unrelievable burden, and her unending labor was a life Balthazar had not allowed her to escape. He had had plans, but plans had not been good enough. Those plans would never be realized, and they were not the only dream to be snuffed out.
“She told me that she was involved already,” Balthazar said. “I didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to accept it. I knew it was true, but…but I thought I was immune. I was a fool.”
“Even wise men do foolish things,” Cotton said.
“Well it doesn’t matter,” Balthazar said. “It doesn’t matter what wise men do. There are no wise men, are there? Only fools who think they’re wise, and find out too late that they were wrong. Too late for what? I don’t even know anymore.”
“Too late to do anything about it,” Cotton said, “because they thought they were immune. And because they were not truly wise. There’s no such thing as wisdom. Only experience. Some people have a better accounting of their experience than others.”
“Some people have experienced too much,” Balthazar said.
“There’s no such thing as too much experience,” Cotton said. “Some people are just…overwhelmed. They don’t know what to do with what they’ve learned. That’s why most people spend their lives trying to find a purpose. They need an outlet. And that’s why some people die miserable old deaths, because they’ve abandoned their purpose, because they don’t think they need it anymore.”
“You came very close to living out the rest of your life that way,” Balthazar said. “Didn’t you? You gave up after you became a murderer. You couldn’t forgive yourself.”
“I found a way to,” Cotton said.
“But you still abandoned yourself,” Balthazar said, “your calling. You gave up on the Eidolon.”
“I’m not the Eidolon,” Cotton said. “I’m Cotton Colinaude. The Eidolon was a mask I wore.”
“A mask you needed,” Balthazar said. “Isn’t that you were trying to tell me? That people need masks? It doesn’t change who they are; it helps them to see who they really are. There is no identity but the one you allow yourself.”
“Balthazar, Balthazar, Balthazar,” Cotton said. “Don’t ever again tell me that you don’t understand.”
“No,” Balthazar said. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready to accept. There’s a difference. And so much left to accomplish.”
“There’s too much out there,” Cotton said.
“Then we’ll take it a piece at a time,” Balthazar said. “That’s all anyone can do. Don’t become a pessimist on me now.”
“I’m a realist,” Cotton said.
“You’re whatever you think you are,” Balthazar said. “Isn’t that right? Well, I say forget about that. We can’t let that worry us. There’s still things to accomplish. We’ve wasted enough time.”
They left Culver St. behind once more, perhaps never to return. Ashlee was brought to a quiet place and laid to rest. No marker was left behind. None was needed. Her memory did not need it, and neither did Balthazar. He might not have found peace yet, but he was beginning to understand that peace was not possible. It was an illusion, rather, that some preferred to hide behind, because they’d rather believe that they had nothing left to do, and that was far from the truth. There was always something left to accomplish, even after death, even after everything seemed to have been lost. There was a war brewing, and that made the next courses of action clear enough. There were scores to settle, and the need to decide what the means would be, so that the outcome would be softer than the war had intended.
To accomplish this, Balthazar would need the closest approximation he could get to true wisdom, in the forms that were still available to him. He needed to return to the subway, for one last brush with the divine, to get started. He needed reassurance.
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