Re: quicklog: atticus/matt
Easy for you to say. Get one of the ghosts to make themselves useful. Been trying to control them since I was five. Have any pointers for me? Everyone says control the haunts. No one has any bright ideas for how. Control the ghosts Atticus. Control the ghosts Atticus. [Was more candor than Atticus was usually prone to. Blame the whiskey. Blame days and days of whiskey. Would need a new bottle soon. Wondered if the doctor-vet would deliver whiskey. Thought maybe not.
Clarification. Atticus wasn't drunk. Buzzed. Perpetually and continually buzzed. Getting drunk meant he couldn't read. Needed to read. Buzzed, it was. Read the Kerouac fine. Didn't slur or catch on the words. Had a good reading voice. Was the thing he always enjoyed most about teaching. Leaning back against a desk and reading to an enraptured audience. Could do without the snoring kids, but loved it otherwise. Flipped some pages.] “She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing.” Not an invalid. Ghosts don't do ashtrays. Or windows. [Atticus just lit the cigarette while Matt took his vitals. The bruises and bite marks were faded. Only thing wrong with Atticus was the smoke he fanned across Matt's cheek when he exhaled, the smell of booze on his skin, and the smokers cough that stuck deep in his lungs.]
Matt. [Deliberate echo.]
More than one Owen in the world. Could still use the name if you wanted to. [Logic. Atticus didn't actually care for logic. Atticus didn't usually notice he'd noticed things, either. Deliberate blindness made life easier, and Atticus liked an easy life. Yearned for an easy life. Not if it could be helped. But he was buzzed. OK, was closer to drunk than buzzed. He saw the scar at Matt's collarbone, and he pressed thick fingers to it.] PJ's been staying. [He exhaled thick smoke, not caring where it went. Invaded Matt's space. Owen. Matt. Still wasn't sure which name fit.] Probably at work now. You and her?