Amelie had asked Iris for a superfluous task to help busy Claire, so Iris had given her one that held little relevance to this case; the existence or not of Leonard Hoffman. They had gone around town for the day, visiting every ophthalmologist's office they could and questioning them on his existence; some did not know him and those who claimed to could not recall a direct address of his, and their description of him always differed.
Still, Amelie had been allowing Claire to question, and this had put her in a better mood than usual. She always praised Claire even for the most simple of tasks, for she feared that if she was not coddled then she would decay.
"Alright, Claire. I'm going to keep an eye out for Revenants."
Amelie walked over to the glass officefront and watched as people passed by, checking for any unnatural reflex that might have betrayed a host. She felt anxious, much as she had on this trip, and sharpened Delinquent's blades below the pane. In the distance she saw a park and a homeless man sleeping upon a bench, and she felt pity for his unhygienic frame. She thought perhaps of the myriad of systemic causes for him, and felt vaguely charitable.
A few teenage boys came up to him and tapped him awake. They seemed to be berating him, and even after he awoke he was not really responding. He turned over, and one of the boys grabbed his face to turn him back to their ire. A woman passed by them gathered, and looked back at the boys, rolled her eyes and moved on. A few teen girls were walking together and discussed whether they should pass by the boys, but chose a different path so that they might avoid them. Further away, a man preached to a group gathered, though his eyesight seemed weary.
And there Amelie felt morally superior to them all, even as she had not acted; she was still much too focused on the argument Claire was having behind her, and she turned to face her.
"God damnit, Leonard Hoffman, Leonard Hoffman, Leonard Hoffman! Fuck! Do you not understand what I'm asking you, rocks for brains?"
Amelie intervened. "What's the issue?"
"I'm telling your friend here that we aren't at liberty to divulge client information." said the receptionist, a little frightened.
"Divulge this, bitch." Claire's arm glowed blue and Amelie immediately held Delinquent's pole against her.
"Claire, stop it."
"Why? She's hiding something, this little contact lens selling bitch. I don't know what type of blackmail Leonard Hoffman has on all of you, but shit'll out eventually."
Amelie looked to Claire's eyes, and she realized that Claire was genuinely frustrated over this. She had no intention of hurting this civilian: she knew that. But she had gotten obsessed enough with succeeding at this task that part of herself would rot if she failed. Having never been quite so obsessed, Amelie could not understand; there would be time plenty for accomplishment in her life.
In a way Claire lived in the ever-present now, and she could not distinguish what she should be obsessed over (like goddamn New Zealand) and what she did not need to be. It was why she was so bizarre to deal with; everything became of equal rank in her eyes, and this overload of senses was likely one of the reasons she had turned to alcohol to dull her reality in the first place.
"All of you are covering up for him. All of you."
"Claire, we need to go." Amelie pressed her back.
"No, no."
"Yes, please remove your friend from our premises. She reeks of alcohol."
Amelie shoved Claire away, expecting her to truly lash out now. But she did not: she merely laughed, then went off with Amelie, who was ashamed of how her mentor acted. Outside she said to Claire: "I never want to see you act like that again. God, Claire, you've been improving and then you just ruin someone's day, just because..."
"If I got results you would've overlooked that."
"No, I wouldn't. We don't live in an ends-directed world."
Claire tried to argue some more, but Amelie heard none of it. The whole affair disturbed Amelie, for Claire seemed to be genuinely trying to help; however little she cared about the investigation itself she had tried to put herself deeper into this task. But it was not her mentor's attitude that disturbed Amelie, but what it meant about deeper existence: whether a cipher could ever be more than a cipher, if a great could ever be less than what they were to be.
She worried this meant luck played more a role in her own success at a student than conscious action.
She looked over to Claire, who was still grumbling. She could not really separate Amelie giving her advice from the idea that Amelie disliked her, which was obviously true to some extent. Yet in an addict like Claire, the judgment and berating of others became subsumed under many dissimilar patterns: sympathy had become not an extension of understanding but an expression of disdain.
This was no surprise, as she had never really been intelligent in matters of complexity. She did not respond to it with the urge to destroy like others, but instead preservation of her embedded patterns. A typical day for Claire, sans drinking, had gone like this: Amelie was doing well; she should tell her she was proud of her or something like that. Amelie had done another contract; that was probably good. Amelie wasn't here when she came home, so she was probably dead or on investigation.
But on this contract she had become disorganized from that; the entire time she had felt a tension that her muscles could not release.
She thought back to when Amelie had sat her down to discuss all of this, and her addiction. She had felt a dim sense of duty to at least attempt recovery, so Amelie would think she was a good mentor. Maybe she would thank Claire when she was president? But Claire was not a good mentor and she knew this, really, so she disliked when Amelie would pretend that she was, for she believed that the more her protege spent around her the more she risked infection by an irrevocable self Claire had traditionally felt denied to her.
Sometimes she believed that by repeating duty enough she could breathe meaning into it, lest she alone be left to deal with an empty universe otherwise. These duties then were life for Claire; an attempt to grasp identity. Otherwise, the only bit of Claire's life that made her feel such was when she would go to the bar early, and there was coincidental community there; it was often arranged in the same way, so she would see the same people and feel lonely when she was not with them; there she was not continually judged and continually pardoned.