Rhombus [h.s]

9

9

Murdock lived in an attic studio apartment just by the university block, where there was this horizontal glass panel facing the sky that made the studio look like an observatory and did this neat trick of making the room look wider than it actually was. The floors were cluttered with books (there were library ones too), shoes, clothing, pillows, empty bottles and plastic cups.

Murdock told me his apartment was by way of being a meeting place for him and his friends and that he did his best to keep the place neat, but too many people came in all hours of the day and night to lounge around and talk and sleep, so the place was always a mess. I told him that he should just hire a housekeeper and he, being a bawdy guy, said that that idea was "right, because it'd give me limitless pleasure". I had to stop myself from throwing up. 

Garfunkel proceeded immediately to help himself to cognac. Woody and Murdock were fooling around with the mp3 stereo system and got it working, so they put on a live song from a Metallica concert. Garfunkel was still drinking cognac with one hand while he began pulling books out of the case and turning the pages with his wet fingers. Murdock was now looking for something down his bed and Woody was sitting cross-legged on the floor watching him.

He then pulled out a large storage box, opened it, and shuffled through a stack of notebooks.

"Howler, come here." He said and I stepped over the books and kneeled in front of the box. There were at least two hundred notebooks inside, all of various shapes and colors. Some had locks and some had worn spines. "These are my journals."

"Not entirely." Woody said.

"Well, eighty percent's mine." He picked one up and handed it to me. "That's Allen's journal. Open it."

"Who's Allen?" I asked. I opened the notebook and turned the brown pages. It was filled with words and poems and chicken scratch illustrations, some of them were colored and some were left uncolored, as if rushed. The colored ones reminded me of The Little Prince's. Each entry ended with a monogram of A and P. 

"A character I made up." Murdock said. "He's like my clean counterpart. The person I would've been if I didn't rely on...junk to keep me sane. He's not detrimental and he never cusses. He's like the good ol' Christian boy in the neighborhood, you know? But he's very smart and poetic."

"This is really nice," I said, smiling. "You're incredible."

"Yeah?" He gave me a significant look and grinned.

"Yeah." I said, handing the notebook back to him. "It's not easy to make something like that."

"Show her the journal that we worked on during freshman year." Woody said.

"Alright," Murdock said and gestured at the brown leather notebook on top of the stack. "Okay, Howler. This is one tenth of the gargantuan reason why you're here, in my house, and why I'm showing you the Rhombus's most controversial files. Here," he handed the notebook to me.

I slowly took it from his hand and examined the cover. It looked old and extremely important. Heck, holding it made me feel like an important person.

"Um...what's it about?" I asked. I could feel the three of them looking at me.

"Open it." Murdock said.

I looked up at him. "Are you sure?"

"We trust you enough, so why not?"

"I'm not really..."

"Howler, you're part of the Rhombus. You deserve to know. Just open it."

"Okay." I said. But still felt undeserving.