Of course I already knew I wasn’t normal, I’d been hiding away my sister’s undies and such and wearing them to bed… they made me feel better , I don’t know. Who knows why children do things, especially gender dysphoric children living in the back of beyond with no access to anything really, not even the most basic of healthcare.
Theide
I wasn’t satisfied with the story I posted yesterday so I’ve rewritten it as something very different. Maybe the beginning of a series, who knows?
Some of the first bit is the same so don’t let that fool you… and enough is changed to make it worth reading the whole thing.
All rights reserved, etc…
Note to Readers
In this story I use music as an adjunct to the story, meant to be listened to while reading the relevant passage. I hope you enjoy it and if not I hope it doesn't detract from the story for you.
Well I suppose there’s a lot of thought to organize here, so I’ll just have to start where it seems most logical. Somewhere very early on… I have no idea when the reasons for which will become clear later… In any case, I, like so may of my kind, was in no doubt as to who I was and even a few of years later with access to the web all it did was make increasingly clear to me that I was not at all normal. Of course I already knew I wasn’t normal, I’d been hiding away my sister’s undies and such and wearing them to bed… they made me feel better , I don’t know. Who knows why children do things, especially gender dysphoric children living in the back of beyond with no access to anything really, not even the most basic of healthcare.
Our Parents had to make sure we were vaccinated for us to get into schools there was at least some sort of interaction with the medical establishment and either my sister or my own birth are… well... I think indeterminate would be likely the right word.
There was one thing I vaguely remember, slipping because I was swinging on the washer and dryer on the little alleyway to the kitchen… Being on overconfident 5 year old I managed to put 2 teeth through my lip so needed a couple of stitches. No big deal, especially in a place where beating your kids around is not just accepted but expected.
You’ll have to excuse the lack of detail here, my memory is kinda swiss cheese like that guy from Quantum Leap. Everything before that day I was 8 years old is as though it is locked behind a veil.
So really, I guess you could say that, minus the whole dying and experiencing the totality of the multiverse doesn’t really count for much, It wasn’t much of a big deal. So what, I’d skidded down the highway on my forehead and I’d had the derailleur impaling my calf…
I survived it, my parents even took the stitches out themselves after 2 days and as far as I was aware I healed normally… Except for the dreams.
I was swirling down through an endless vortex, other creatures are falling endlessly and they are all roaring or making whatever noise they can and nothing seems to make sense except it spins eventually into a beautiful ribbon of souls, intertwined and suddenly I realize that in front of my I have the greatest musical instrument ever… The very universe!
And then, gasping and sweating and stuck to my sheets I awake. Not the superwoman of my dreams, just a 15 year old kid who didn’t’ understand anything about how other people thought. Outcast didn’t even begin to describe me. Even the school pariahs wouldn’t talk to me… the only people that treated me civilly were my instructors and even they had issues…
I could tell they would hold their temper when demanding I “Show my Work”. I could never understand why I had to write the bloody equation 30 times when All I really needed was to write it twice, once as the question, and once as the solution.. I tried to compromise a bit but it didn’t work and next thing I knew I was not only kicked out of algebra but forbidden from any other maths(Or even redoing algebra). Pompous old fart insisted I cheated even when I did the work right in front of him.
It wasn’t just that tough, it was that the parents had already excluded me from the “Gifted and Talented” track(Which basically went to very high end schools, usually with a full ride).
It seemed that every way I went I would be stymied, so I went for computer science. Thank the goddess, we had an awesome teacher who would make us work so hard… he drilled us endlessly on security and all sorts of things…. To this day, I revere the memory of Dr Harper. Even he could only do so much and fate took us to another place where I tried so hard to fit in and rediscovered my marsh roots and even took Marine Biology and… Tried to make out with another girl for the first time. I liked her and thought she was so beautiful but the simple fact that I didn’t and couldn’t ever look anything like her ruined anything… I spent yet another of many nights crying myself to sleep. After that I realized that I had to actually become the person I was supposed to be. I didn’t know if I wanted boys or girls but I knew damn well that I was a girl!
By this time I had totally screwed up school by just not going anymore. We’d moved, my computer science courses were a 20 year old language on graph paper. The marine biology was the only thing that interested me and that was a substitute course… I started cutting school to go to the library because I could at least learn something there…
Anyway, this didn’t last very long, I was brought in, threatened me with expulsion to which I replied “Yes Please”.
In any event, I got expelled… but then to my surprise my parents chose to enroll me in a state run reform school… Basically juvenile prison. My parents wouldn’t come get me but said I could come if I had a ride so I lied and hitchhiked.
I don’t know where things broke down really, was it being friends with the girls when I was supposed to be a boy and chasing them or was it the dark hangover of my parents insistence on their religion even in that horror chamber?
In any case, I ran away for spring Break… Managed to get a ride from a very nice man who at the end of the ride said “I know what you are… but I don’t care. People here won’t care either! Have fun Girl! And so for 3 or maybe 4 days I had fun in the sun at Daytona…. I came back with a bikini tan, no way to hide it… I would not have come back had Traveler’s Aid not offered food and a bus ticket… an of course the first thing my parents did was send me back to prison. No private showers of course(Which meant I was basically In terror of being raped the whole time). I knew I had to get out because now everyone knew who I was….
So I engineered a fake assault on a dorm counselor(I never even touched her). It was my 3rd strike and got me expelled….
Not an easy thing, getting expelled from a state run reform school..
A couple months later, my parents gave me an ultimatum.
“Conform to our ways and follow our religion or leave. We will be back in 3 days.” And with that they left for a religious convention..
Needless to say, Being who I am in and of itself precludes following their ways… so on the last day before they were due back, I set out, hitchhiking out of town. It was July 3rd… I mark it every year by shooting off a gross of bottle rockets. My own personal independence day. That day I joined the underground of a major city…. I got the drugs needed to make my physical self at least somewhat resemble who I was… I never once whored myself…. Not that I look down on those that do its just that I am… erm… violently reactive… Trust me, if I could have done it I would have…. I was so hungry…
I discovered that somehow I could sing and it was a sound people would like, kind of a smoky alto. I didn’t have anything of my own so I did covers and a couple of other street kids caught on and we formed a little girl band… And because a lot of our covers were from one band that struck us all so much… we named ourselves “ The Wrecks”
We were standing there on a street corner one day, about to launch into the next tune…
And I see a familiar figure limp past, looking lost in his own world… And looking as miserable as any man I’ve ever seen and I signal the girls, even though its freezing and we’re all played out…
We launch into a Pretty Reckless tune that I just think sort of fits and I hope will do
Something…. Anything… I don’t know, just make things better if its possible at all…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsLvrBwPrA0
Lay my head, under the water
Lay my head, under the sea
Excuse me sir, am I your daughter?
Won't you take me back, take me back and see?
There's not a time, for being younger
And all my friends, are enemies
And if I cried unto my mother
No she wasn't there, she wasn't there for me
Don't let the water drag you down (Don't let the water drag you down)
Don't let the water drag you down
Broken lines, across my mirror
Show my face, all red and bruised
And though I screamed and I screamed, well, no one came running
No I wasn't saved, I wasn't safe from you
Don't let the water drag you down (Don't let the water drag you down)
Don't let the water drag you down
Don't let me drown, don't let me drown in the waves, oh
I could be found, I could be what you had saved
Saved, saved, saved
[Musical Break]
Lay my head, under the water
Aloud I pray, for calmer seas
And when I wake from this dream, with chains all around me
No, I've never been, I've never been free
No, I've never been, I've never been free
No, I've never been, I've never been free
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsLvrBwPrA0
The man had been transfixed, the music flowing through his soul like a drink of icewater to a man in the desert.
The song ended and the man shook himself out of his stupor. The weariness that had seemed to lay on him like a ton of lead came back over him and with a wistful look, he began to turn away.
I can’t let this happen… I have to say something, to do something… and before I know it I have stepped over to him and touched his shoulder.
“Dad?”
He froze and looked at me with a kind of pleading look in his eyes…
“I’m sorry kid, I’m not your dad. I had a daughter that would have been your age about now but… I haven’t heard from her for 3 years and I’ve never been any sort of father anyway… she is better off without me. I really hope you do find your dad and he’s a better one than I have been.” He began to turn again, looking if possible even more dejected.
“Dad… George MacCloud… Yes I know your name because I am your daughter. I know you named me Clifford and you beat the shit out of me until I learned how to defend myself. I know who you are and I know even more who I am, at least now that I’m actually able to be myself. Its kind of fucked up really, but thanks for being such a bastard… you hardened me and you’re the only reason I’m still alive.”
By this point, he was standing there stunned with this look on his face that I will never be able to describe. He opened his mouth and then closed it… Then did it again…. I could tell how absolutely dumbfounded he was but what I didn’t expect was for him to break down in wracking sobs.
I did the only thing I could and hugged him, let him cry until he managed, with a clearly enormous effort, to pull himself together.
“I don’t know what to call you… your mother and I had a name picked out for if you’d been a girl but we used the wrong one it looks like… Surely you don’t go by Cliff anymore…?”
“We don’t really use names on the streets dad… Mainly I’m just what a friend called me once when he was drunk out of his mind and I liked it… He called me Broken Wings, after the song… I thought it fit and for a long time I tried to get people to call me Broken. Cause I was, am, you know, broken…”
I sort of ran out of steam at that point and just had no way to express how I felt when Florinda pipes up.
“We call her Wings cause she’s an angel. So many of us are alive and not whoring or sleeping in the rough cause she taught us how to survive and defend ourselves. We watched her learn to respect herself and it made a difference for us, made us realize that if somebody who is as scarred as she is” she shot a glare at him that could have fried an egg at 20 paces “And yes we’ve seen the physical scars and a few of us who are close to her have seen some of the emotional scars. I’m amazed she survived long enough to get out… and I know it was a close thing, that’s another set of scars from when she tried to kill herself the night you caught her in her dress…”
She trailed off, her strong Alabama drawl receding as her certainty did. Clarice dropped into the gap in the conversation with her clipped Midwestern twang.
“Look Mr MacCloud…. We aren’t trying to beat up on you. Believe it or not, your daughter forgave you long ago and moved on. Flory and I know that better than most cause we’ve all cried on each other a lot… But she was always the one who was there for us, for anyone…. We’re sisters, yeah, but in a lot of ways she’s the older sister/mother figure. Its rather difficult to explain. Not the point anyway. You daughter just reached out to you and I swear if you hurt her again you won’t survive it.”
Theo sauntered casually closer and rumbled “Damn straight you won’t. I know you can kick my ass old man but you can’t outrun a bullet”
I could tell things had to be defuse and quickly.
“Theophilus Maurice Winters, you lay off that right now. And give the man some space! Reece and Flory, I know you’re trying to be helpful but its kinda not working. Guys I’m gonna take my dad for a cup of coffee if he wants to go. No Theo, you can’t come and protect me. Stay here and sing bass backup for the girls, we still have a fundraising deadline to meet. We’ll be at Martha Lou’s.”
I started walking and after a moment of hesitation he followed… muttering to himself. I could just barely hear “How the hell can she walk in those things?”
They entered the tiny diner, making the bell over the door ring and selected an empty booth. In a moment a short wiry woman with steel gray hair in a short pixie do bustled up and dropped water and coffee on the table. “Special for 2?”
“Yep”
She wandered off, seemingly randomly picking her way among tables and picking up dishes, glasses, chatting with the patrons amiably.
They sat silently while he watched her pour seemingly endless amounts of sugar into the strong black coffee. Once she had sipped and pronounced her approval with a sigh, settling back in to the booth, she looked at her father with his unreadable gaze.
“What?”
“Its just… you do that exactly like your mother did. I never could understand how she could drink it that way but then I like my Navy coffee.”
“What do you mean like she did?”
“Angel your mom died a couple of days ago…” He trailed off and seemed to visibly shrink.
I just stared in shock and disbelief. My mind couldn’t quite wrap around what he’d just said so I just opened my mouth and let the stupid fall out.
“Angel?”
“Yeah its what we should have named you. From what your friends said its appropriate.”
“Okay, thanks for that I guess…”
Silence falls between us for a few more moments until our meal arrives… white gravy with big chunks of sausage over freshly baked biscuits.
We ate in silence for a while longer.
“How did she die?”
“Car accident… Head on with an 18 wheeler on the freeway”
“That sucks….”
He lets that lie there for a moment.
“Sucks? I mean at least she had no pain….” The look on his face in one of bottomless loss but somehow I can’t help adding a little fuel on the fire.
“Yeah I know, That’s the part that sucks… some part of me has dreamed of her suffering like she made me suffer. It has kinda kept me warm at night sometimes… Nursing that hatred.”
“Why do you hate her, she defended you from me?”
I meet his eyes… flat grey orbs that seemed so… lost.
“Oh don’t feel special, I hated you just as much if not more.”
“Hated? You make it sound like you don’t feel hate for us anymore…”
“I used to dad… but I had to learn to let go of that because it was destroying me. At some point the pain became a source of inspiration and I express it in my singing…”
“I know, I heard…”
He stared at me for a long moment.
“Its uncanny. There’s no doubt you are her daughter. You look just like she did at your age… Well except I don’t think she would ever have gone for the purple hair or the green glittery nails… “
We both snerk a bit at that one. If you’d looked up “Frumpy” in the dictionary it would have had a picture of her.
I can’t get up the nerve to ask what I really want to so I go around the subject.
“So am I invited to the Memorial Service?”
“Please? I can’t find your sister or I’d ask her. I want to, to try… just to try that’s all”
“I can call her. I think she’ll want to come too. It is time for some healing in this family and I hope you feel the same.”
“Thank you .” This last is barely audible.
After firming up times I knew I had to go face my sister. No way was I going to take my father for that one. We agreed to meet later that night, he still lived in the same place.
The evening with my father was so bizarre… its like somehow he was trying to be the father he should always have been. He kept looking at me and shaking his head. I finally had enough and headed off to meet with the gang at our current doss.
We had lucked out and found an usused warehouse that still had functioning utilities, except for electricity. We used military surplus tents to make a clean livable space that was as close to a home as any of us had had for many years. With air mattresses and other camp style furniture it was actually quite comfortable.
Theo had even rigged up a gas powered tankless water heater so we had hot showers… although privacy was limited. He had also managed to “Acquire” some solar panels and an old home power blade, one of the original Tesla models. We had electricity enough for lights and computers and it was pretty tekked out really. We might have been street people but more than a few of us were fairly “Unknown” in the grey hat world.
My mouth watered hard when I came through the kitchen tent flap and the smells hit me. Tofu in peanut sauce, oxtail in red wine and spices… some Indian vegetarian stuff I never have learned the name of but it is delicious. I’m not picky about what I eat but some folks have allergies and others have beliefs… a fair amount of the food was actually Halal or Kosher. Well It wasn’t blessed by a Rabbi or Imam but otherwise it qualified…
Melinda sees me and waddles over, drying her hands on her apron before she gives me a huge hug. For some reason I’m crying and holding onto her and shaking and I realize she’s stroking my hair and softly speaking…
“Angel? Its ok hun. Its ok. Momma’s got you, you’re ok hun…”
Finally I think I’m cried out. “Angel? Oh crap they told everybody didn’t they?”
“Hun we always knew you were an angel, having the name you should have had doesn’t change that. We all owe you so much for what we have here. Your problem is that you only see where you’re broken. “
She shoves a bowl of the tofu into my hands.
“Now go, eat, and you better eat every bite, no giving it away!” She glares at me. “Yes I know you do it and I know you need to eat more child, you’re so skinny a good wind would blow you away!” She softens and kisses my cheek. “Now go eat, then sleep and later we’ll talk about getting you kitted for the memorial, ok?
I don’t even remember eating and I awoke in the same clothes from the day before. I checked my phone… almost 1300! A mad scramble ensued. A careful shower(trust me, hair like mine is hard to achieve, maintaining it for at least a couple days was a definite bonus). Then purple skinny jeans that I’d sewn a green glitter dragon all down both legs. Voilently pink camouflage canvas wedge shoeties that sort of looked like converse but with a 3” wedge. Some dangly earrings that have a peace symbol and some other symbols on em in a sort of pewter. Mama nature and hormones had been pretty good to me so I really had to wear a bra but with today’s top that meant a racerback, so I picked one that enhanced things a little. I finished off the look with a purple lace halter and a light sort of flowey sweater, the same tone of purple as the jeans and top. Various bangles and gadgets went on and into hidden pockets.
All in all, I’d achieved the look I was after… antisocial neo-punker best left alone. It served me pretty well.
I deliberately slipped out without saying goodbye to Melinda. She knew where I was going today and knew that I needed to be left alone but she would have tried to feed me and the very last thing I think I could tolerate right now is food.
Down the familiar streets, my feet carrying me more quickly than I really wanted them to. A door loomed in my vision and I realized I’d managed to walk the whole way while in my fugue-state. This was going to be hard in a different way. I had kept tabs on my sister, knew she was happily married to a guy who seemed to be perfect for her and they had a beautiful son who was apparently very bright.
Despite this, I had not spoken with her for the same amount of time I’d not talked to my parents. I was glad she had gotten out and made a good life for herself but I didn’t figure she’d deal with having a transsexual sister very well. Call it fear of rejection because that is what it was.
Enough dithering, time to grasp the nettle… I pushed the button, hearing some tune I vaguely recognized and then the door opened and there she was. Pale blonde, grey eyes, about 5’7” to my 6’(well 6'3" in those shoes), dressed like Mrs Middle Class. For a moment she looked at me without any recognition, then I saw it hit her. She just stood there for a moment, looking me up and down slowly, noting every detail… I caught the double take when her eyes slid past my boobs and then back up and then the quick eye flick at my crotch. I was basically never not tucked anymore and therefore looked just as I should have.
She winced at the shoes, then grinned at me. “Well I’ll give you this sis, you don’t do anything by half measures! Come inside! What do I call you? What do you want to drink?”
She stopped talking with a bemused look on her face. “Oh My God! I’ve seen you before! You’re downtown busking with those other girls and that huge guy. Where did that voice come from? I’ve never heard you sing before you left home. I barely heard you talk.”
“Now I remember… Broken Wings, like from the song, but everyone just calls you Wings because you’re some kind of street angel or something… I never would have imagined my little sis could be so… I don’t even know a word but if you do half of what they say you’re a saint!”
I shrug and just try to deflect attention from myself “I don’t really do anything, I just sing and help people find what they need, that’s all. Besides, I doubt very much any religion would canonize a transsexual .” Well so much for deflecting attention from myself….
Next thing I know my sis pokes me in my left boob, hard! That really hurt and I screeched a bit, then poked her right back. She screeched to and then had the grace to look embarrassed. “I wanted to know if they were real… sorry that hurt. But how? When? And the boob fairy has been pretty generous, huh?”
“Hormones, over the last 3 years and yeah I’ve been lucky but to be honest I am wearing a pushup… and before you ask I have not had any surgery, not that I don’t want to but it is pretty expensive… and no I wouldn’t accept your help even if you could afford it and I know you can’t.”
I figured I’d get right to the point. “I ran into Dad yesterday, we talked… Mom died and he wants us both to come to her memorial service. I think we should go.”
“How’d she die?”
“Head on with an 18 wheeler”
“Shit. Some part of me wishes she had suffered…”
“Don’t feel bad, I feel the same way and said as much to dad yesterday.”
We sat and talked, reliving some of the hell that had been our childhood, getting to know each other again and in a lot of ways, for the first time. More than a few tears were shed and I was seriously glad of waterproof mascara, otherwise I’d have looked a raccoon.
The memorial was 2 days away so we both talked a little about what we’d wear… There was even a moment where we giggled about wearing munchkin outfits and singing “Ding Dong, the Witch is dead!”
It seems a little cruel but then so was our mother. She had to go pick her husband up from work and offered me a ride into town after I refused the offer to stay overnight. I accepted but had her drop me a good half mile from our doss.
I just went quietly to my tent, wanting some time alone to think. I didn’t even turn the light on, just stripped off and slid into bed… to be encircled by huge, muscular arms. Theo nuzzled at the back of my neck and kissed me gently making shivers run down my spine. He didn’t try to talk and I was grateful for that. I’m just focusing on the feelings he is giving me when he suddenly grazes a nipple with his rough fingers and I gasp as it sends a jolt straight down to my toes and then I’m turning around and desperately kissing him while he caresses me and I’m just on fire with desire.
That, dear reader, is all you need to know about that night.
2 days later I am in a black lace dress, diaphanous and flowing, I even wear a hat with a black net half veil. Sensible black pumps with a low wedge and Onyx earrings, choker and bracelet. I’ve exchanged the green glittery nails for black glitter and my hair is pinned up under my hat. Black lipstick completes the look.
Theo is simply resplendent in his Navy Dress Blues. He has worn the realistic looking prosthetic on his left leg so his gait looks less comfortable than normal. I had been doubtful about him going with me but he put his, erm, foot… down. It is a warm day and I know he’s going to be dreadfully hot in that uniform but its what he says is appropriate.
I’ve never seen him in uniform before but I know he has many ribbons and decorations Today there are only his lieutenant’s bars and flashes and a Purple Heart. I wonder why but I know better than to ask.
Its so strange that I was raised(If you can call it that) by a SEAL and the guy I’m in love with was also a SEAL. Clearly there are some daddy issues going on with that but I’m not gonna overanalyze happiness.
The service is held in their church(That’s not what they call it). I was nervous, knowing people would figure out who I was when Theo and I sat up front with my dad and sister and her husband. After a good hour of religious doublespeak, the thing is ended and it is time for family to go scatter her ashes in her garden per her request.
Throughout, we have all been stonefaced, unwilling to share our feelings. First there is a little period where we are expected to mingle. I dread this having seen the subtle gestures and looks so I know everyone knows who I am. Sure enough I see a familiar face making a beeline for me and I subconsciously try to hide behind Theo.
I expect some unpleasantness and possibly even nastiness but I guess that just shows sometimes expectations can be wrong. I find my self pulled into a tight hug.
“Um, Darcy?”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t breathe hun…”
She lets me go and stands back to look me over. “Wow, I always knew there was a girl hiding under there but you are simply stunning! I’ve heard you sing downtown and you have the voice of an angel. If I’d known that was you I would have said something long before.”
“Its ok, if you had I’d likely have run in terror. It took a lot to get me to even approach anyone from my old life… I only ran into Dad a few days ago. I hadn’t even gotten in contact with Michelle.”
“Well obviously I can’t call you Clifford, so what is your name?”
“Well funny thing about that… turns out my parents would have named me Angel.”
We share a laugh about that one and then she surprises me again. She turns to address Theo.
“So Theo, how is the dress leg working for you?”
“Darcy I think its your dad’s best work yet, really amazing and I can walk almost normally!” He has a big smile on his face.
“Oh that wasn’t Dad. You were my graduation project!”
“Well you get an A+ from me young lady and its nice to be able to thank the artist!”
“Wait wait wait… You’re here for some reason and you’re obviously not with Michelle so” She points at us “You two are a couple?”
Theo pulls me into a hug and then to my embarrassment kisses me soundly.
After a little more mingling, mainly talking with Darcy, the small procession slowly follows a police escort to my parents home. The first thing dad does is head for the bar and pour himself a stiff bourbon, then 4 more and one of dark rum, handing us each one and leaving the rum on the bar for the moment.
He speaks, his voice barely under control. “I think we all need to get a little drunk before we do this thing.” He takes a deep sip, obviously savoring the burn. We all follow suit in silence. Once we have each emptied our glasses, he refills them and asks me to carry the urn while he picks up the untouched rum. Theo salutes the urn sharply as I carry it.
We file out into the garden. It is a clear sunny day with almost no breeze. It seems wrong somehow, like it should be raining. Still without a word, my father walks to her prized roses.
At this point we are all openly crying. He seems to fight with his voice for a moment before he begins. “My love, you have left but for a time to rest in the sure and certain hope of resurrection, for Jehovah is merciful and just, even to people who have done such evil as ourselves.” He falls silent and slowly pours the glass of rum onto the bushes.
He turns to me. “Angel, I know neither of us deserve it but can you please sing something? It seems right somehow.”
The perfect songs pops into my mind. I take another belt of bourbon and begin with an old Paul Simon song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgndG3ZXUz4
“When you're weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes, I'll dry them all (all)
I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you (ooo)
I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Sail on silver girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine
Oh, if you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind”
I have to take a moment as I am sobbing so hard I can barely breathe. I finally get myself together and start the final song, the only possible song that could be sung.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5e6IN_YbwM
“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.”
At this point I’ve completely lost it and am soaking the front of Theo’s uniform as he simply holds me. When I can finally look at the others I see my father on his knees, tears streaming down his face and all the heartbreak in the world pouring out of him. Disengaging from Theo, I kneel with him and pull him into a hug. A moment later Michelle joins us.
We stay that way for a long time until dad finally breaks the silence. “Girls, its time.” Theo hands my father the urn and salutes, holding the salute stiffly. He unseals it and pours some of the ashes out, then hands it to Michelle who does the same and hands it to me. I slowly pour out the remainder of our mother, his wife.
A healing has begun, a death has brought a splintered family back together. They all know it and somehow it helps the grief begin to turn to something else.
Music used is from “The Pretty Reckless” and Simon and Garfunkel(performed by Zsa Zsa Padilla) as well as John Newton(Performed by Judy Collins).
After our ceremony in the garden we were all emotionally drained. Dad went back into the house and brought out the half empty bottle of bourbon and an unopened one as well. We sat together on the shaded benches under arbors which in springtime would bloom with various flowers and in summer would smell of honeysuckle. Just now nothing was in season to bloom so there was only greenery but it was enough to lend an almost cathedral like atmosphere to the scene.
Michelle and I quietly decided Dad would not be alone tonight. Apparently our husbands had decided the same and had fallen into their own conversation with him. I caught a few things that decided distinctly military and figured since Michelle’s husband had served in the Air Force as a Para rescue or something like that they probably had a bit to talk about.
About that time I decide I really need a bathroom as a matter of some urgency and wouldn’t mind getting out of the dress either. It was beautiful but as evening approached what had been a warm day was rapidly chilling down and something a bit more substantial was going to be needed. As I came out of the downstairs bathroom feeling considerable relief, I hear a flush from upstairs and soon my sister’s footsteps going down the hallway to her old room. She stops for a moment, leaving the door open and I can hear her continue to my old room. I hear the handle turn and the door open and then a sharp inhalation and a quiet “Holy Shit!”
“Angel! Get up here!”
I run upstairs as quickly as I can and I see Michelle standing in front of the door to my old room. Hers is open and I can tell nothing has changed.
“What? How bad is it?”
She gives me this look I can’t really read and just says “You have to see it for yourself…” She opens the door and steps out of the way and I am stunned. I can’t manage to speak as I take it in. The bunk bed with its dull colors had been replaced by a simple yet beautiful canopy bed, like the one my sister had when she was younger but queen sized. It was covered with a quilt that held my attention for what seemed like ages.
Right in the center was a patch of pink satin, cut into the shape of a heart on a white square background of cotton. Other squares held embroidered scenes but one in particular held my attention, a scene of parents, obviously my own, but beside them stood two daughters, one obviously taller…
I can’t manage to look at that one for too long and my attention turns to the bed itself. As I look closer I notice the unmistakable signs of my father’s workmanship. I had thought I was cried out until I realize my vision is wavering and I feel my sister hug me gently from behind.
I just stare, transfixed. “He… She… They… I…”
She chuckles into my ear. “Yeah, that’s about how I reacted. Look around!”
I finally tear my eyes away from the bed and look around the room. The walls have been painted an eggshell white with floral borders hand painted at the top… violets I think. There is an antiqued looking vanity that looks wide enough for 3 with a huge mirror, bright lights around it. The floor is a blonde hardwood which I know is wood Dad had logged off the place. The area rug on which the bed rests is one I remember admiring in my grandmother’s bedroom.
I can’t even find any words… I just shake my head. Leaving the door open, I go out front and get the case Theo and I had packed. Michelle follows me, bringing a case she had apparently packed for herself and Beau. We both went to our rooms, changed out of our funeral dresses and I did my best to spike my hair back up a bit. Since I’ve got the black nails I decide I need to spike it up a bit and go for a set of black leggings with chinese dragons in red and orange chasing each other all over them and a pair of relatively tame(For me) Castana wedges in what looks like neon green python skin. Just for contrast I go with a fairly tame black and white jungle print peasant blouse and a light cardigan. I keep the jewelry the same, simple black and silver.
Michelle and I meet again out in the hallway and I watch her reaction to what I’m wearing. She looks, looks again and just shrugs.
“You know, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who could dress like that and still look incredibly sexy and dangerous and… just beautiful. Just… wow…”
She has gone for classic black jeans and a Tshirt with Skechers and a light jacket.
“Well ya know… you dress Middle America… That doesn’t exactly work for me so I had to find my own thing. At some point so many things clash with each other it overwhelms the eye and people just don’t see me… You on the other hand are just who you are, a beautiful woman who has never allowed herself to really cut loose. It fits you.”
“Wow, I never thought of it that way. Come on, lets go get our men out of their formals and into something comfortable. Oh and there’s more bourbon in the car and a couple of cases of Coors out in the chiller in the car. I’ll get Beau to bring those in once he’s changed. I can’t believe they both wore full dress blues today… and I noticed they only wore rank and their purple hearts. I wonder if that means something?”
“I have no idea. The closest I ever came to the military has been meeting the vets who live in the rough. They… don’t talk much. I try to do what I can but Theo seems to be the only one who can really get through to them.”
By this time we’re stepping out of the backdoor and into the garden again. The sun is just on the horizon and the sky is blood red, shading to deep purple. The men are still deep in conversation and I can hear them getting serious for a moment before they all three sit up, raise filled glasses and hold them up. Theo sees me and motions Michelle and I over.
He takes a moment to pour us both a glass and hands it to us. It seems like a very solemn moment as I watch my Dad raise his glass, the others raising and clinking as we join in.
He says in the carefully precise speech of someone who is beginning to get seriously drunk “Absent Companions” which Theo and Beau repeat. I suddenly realize what is going on and nudge Michelle so we echo only slightly behind them. Then they all pour a little from their glass onto the ground before draining them. Michelle and I do the same.
“And now” my dad intones “Lets follow your ladies example and get comfortable, shall we gentlemen?”
I catch Theo’s eyes with mine and motion to Dad. He gives me a “Don’t worry” look and makes his way upstairs to change. I know he has already had enough to get 2 normal men so drunk they can’t walk but all 3 of the men seem to be cut from sterner cloth than that as you can barley even tell. Theo still isn’t comfortable with his dress leg so he is a bit unstable on the stairs but he makes it just fine.
“Last door on the right babe!” I yell up to him and can tell from his footsteps that he has stopped in the doorway for just a moment. He continues and in just a few moments I hear him hitting the bathroom on the way down. I can tell from the sound he has changed to the articulated leg that he finds so much more comfortable. I give him a kiss and another glass and motion him toward the garden.
I know he has questions but he’s not alone in that. I go back upstairs and knock gently on my parent…. Well I guess now, my Dad’s… room.
“You decent Dad?”
“Decent enough, come on in.”
I open the door and walk in. He is sitting on his bed in his skivvies. I never have quite understood why he wears those strange things… They are like briefs but they have legs on them down to like midthigh and are skintight. His Tshirt is beside him on the bed and I can see the ravages the past years have worked on him. He has the Zipper scar on his chest, so likely open heart surgery. Looks like he has two new knees to judge from the scarring there.
He notices me looking and runs down the catalog, sort of matter of fact. He points to his chest “Quadruple bypass, right after I did… What I did…” His hand moves on to his knees “New knees finally… and a new hip.”
He points to me.
“Um, looks like you’ve got a couple new things too…” He looks a bit embarrassed. “Another way you take after your mom. I can’t believe how much like her you are, its like you’re a younger her but with everything turned up to 11, ya know?”
“Cmon Dad, lets get some clothes on you and then get you wrapped around a bit more in the way of good bourbon.” I root through his dresser and toss him what looks like a warm and comfortable set of black fleece sweats and a fresh Tshirt. Moments later, he is limping down the stairs after me.
“How old is the hip? 3 or 4 months? You know you should still be using a cane right?”
He just grunts and walks over to his empty glass, filling it and making his way into the garden with an effort not to show the pain, bottle hanging from his other hand.
I follow, lost in thought. I have no idea what to say to him, how to even think about what apparently both of my parents had done with my room. That my mother had saved the remnants of the dress my father literally whipped off of me and patched them into a quilt, that my father had plainly spent a great deal of time and effort turning the personless space that had been my room into what it now was?
How and when and of course why and many other thoughts ran through my mind. I have to ask, I have to know… I can’t help wondering if I’m doing good or just twisting the dagger but that? I’ve had far too much alcohol so far tonight to leave this one alone, and then I think I’d better record this… I’m not likely to remember much tomorrow. I slip in an earpiece and sync it with one of my little gadgets, making sure I’m getting full aural surround reconstruction in the outdoor environment. That will give me a visual reconstruction of things through the sound recording.
I arrive just in time to hear Theo stick his… erm… foot in his mouth.
“I haven’t said it right sir, because apparently I’ve-“
My father’s growl cuts him off “Don’t ever call me that, EllTee(He spits it out like an insult). I fucking worked for a living! What the hell did you do, drive your idiotmobile over some stupid IED and get a bunch of working pukes killed?”
You wouldn’t be able to tell it if you don’t know him as intimately as I do, but I can tell as clear as day that there is barely controlled rage in Theo’s voice as he manages to remain outwardly calm.
“I never drove one of those things, Senior Chief. I pulled my team out of an unbelievable clusterfuck but the Taliban took my leg as the price or I’d be with them right now. None of the “Working pukes” as you choose to call them died, although Petty Officer Ortiz did lose a finger. Not his trigger finger so he’s still out there. I’m stuck home with this” he bangs on his leg, producing a metallic clunk. He falls silent and I know he’s fallen into his memory hole again.
Before I can say anything my dad breaks the silence. “Petty Officer First actually. I, um, had a little problem with some intel weenies and they kinda busted me down for a bit and stuck me in a radio shack cause I’d managed to run afoul of a little Vietnamese man with a bamboo pole who did a number on my knees.”
Theo breaks in “And then you and your other two teammates carried the worst injured guy like 30 miles out of Cambodia before they’d evac you. I know the story, Beau knows it. Most of us know it. Its one of those underground legends of the community. I am well aware of who my father in law is,” his inflection hardens “Sir.”
“Well shit, um, sorry I guess and I still don’t like it but what the hell was a Navy EllTee doing out in the ass end of I’m presuming not Afghanistan?”
“Classified.”
“What was your unit?”
“Classified. I can’t tell you anything at all really, it is all classified pretty highly… technically I’ve said way too much already but you got under my skin.”
I have to break in at this point, I can see this conversation going to uncomfortable places and I have a whole other list of uncomfortable places to go tonight.
“Dad, I saw my room. I know mom’s sewing and painting, I know your woodwork. I don’t get it? How could you change so much and when cause its obviously been this way a while. How could you not reach out somehow, find me? Why did I have to survive on the streets dad? Why? Why couldn’t you come bring me home? Why couldn’t you even get in touch with Michelle?” at this point I’m shout-crying and I trail off into just crying.
Dad is choking on his words, but he manages to get them out. “We tried. We looked in every way we could think of. We hired detectives, put up posters… we even reported you as a runaway. You just vanished and then as soon as your sister graduated high school she vanished too. We were so lost. I was sure you had been killed or worse and I had to accept that Michelle didn’t want anything to do with me.”
He stops to take a deep drink. “After I had my heart attack and bypass I couldn’t work so I kinda rehabbed myself by rebuilding your room and your bed… I reused as much of the wood as I could… I was grieving and your mother was too… She made that quilt and did the painting … The things we never did for you while we had you here.”
He takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment and lets out a gusty sigh fraught with pain.
“The things we should have done for you… We knew, you told us so many times when you were little… And then when you went to school you stopped talking about it. What we never really realized until after you were gone was that you had stopped talking about anything. You talked when we made you talk, you were very polite… but looking back I know that was when you shut out the rest of the world to survive.”
“Your mom used to find your sister’s clothes hidden in your room and wash them, put them back where they belonged. We still thought it was just something you’d get over. We tried so hard to make your world a little more normal, that’s why we decided letting them skip you over Junior High entirely and put you on the GATE track was a bad thing. You were already 2 years younger than your classmates. We thought it would just make things worse.”
“Then you stopped going to school and even got yourself kicked out of reform school and you just wouldn’t stop dressing… you hid from us but we knew…”
He trailed off, draining his glass again as the rest of us sipped in silence. It has gotten quite dark by now but I can see little glints of reflections, tears rolling down his face.
I’d been crying silently the whole time myself, as absorbed in my own pain and memories as in his words.
“Why dad? Why did you beat me… beat us? Michelle might not have physical scars as bad as mine but then I was never blamed for being raped! I don’t understand… What the hell can a 10 year old possibly do that would be any sort of reason for being knocked across the tractor bay? How could you think that was the right thing to do?”
I’m sob-hiccuping by this point and I can’t stop. I feel Theo holding me and pressing my forgotten drink into my hand. Without thinking I toss the entire contents back, almost gagging at the welcome burn.
Beau vanishes at the sound of the doorbell from inside and reappears a moment later with a huge stack of pizza boxes and takeout cartons. He has found the light switch so we can actually see. In the darkness with the lights strung along the arbors and walkways it looks even more like an enchanted cathedral.
His strong Bayou drawl seems to shift reality just a little.
“I didn’t know what any of yawl might want so I just kinda got a good spread.” We all root through the containers and boxes until we find something that strikes our fancy. I’ve got a spring roll and some Shrimp Lo Mein and Michelle and I are both dipping chopsticks into each others containers… she has some sort of sweet-sour chicken that is blowtorch hot.
Thankfully Beau brought out some beer too so there’s a bit of something to quench the fire. Years ago I wouldn’t drink Coors because I knew the Coors family was very anti-LGBT but since they sold out to Molton I don’t have a problem and I have to admit it is drinkable beer.
Theo reaches over with some thing in his hand… some kind of Pasty maybe? and offers me a bite. I take a tentative nibble and juice dribbles down my chin a little but its so heavenly… its almost like pizza except it isn’t a pizza and it has this awesome kind of salty taste that just hits exactly the right spot and I moan with pleasure.
I grab it from him and take another bite, stuffing it into my sister’s face as well. I can see the foodgasm look and she copies my moan, closing her eyes and chewing slowly. I sheepishly offer the remains back to Theo but he just laughs and holds up another.
I hear my dad’s clipped southwestern accent. “Well boys, looks like I owe you both a 20. I never thought I’d see the day.”
Michelle beats me to it. “What?”
“Well your dad said you both detested sardines so I ordered Calzones with sardines.” Beau chuckles. “The old man here bet us a 20 each you would taste em and spit em out”
I have to think about the notion that I just enjoyed eating a hairy fish for a second before deciding that it just doesn’t bother me anymore. Michelle looks at me and we both laugh.
“Well apparently that’s one of those things you should have fed us before you told us what it was cause that is…. Like a flavor I’ve somehow been missing!”
Dad laughs at me and said “Yeah well some little smarty looked on the pizza and pipes up with ‘Daddy, why hairy fish on pizza?’ so that one was blown from the start.”
Its another of those things I don’t remember and Michelle sees it instantly, that wistful desire to actually remember things that far back.
“You were about 3 sis. Gino went back into the kitchen and comes out with a small pizza with no sardines on it, puts it in front of you and me and goes ‘No hairy fish for the two young ladies then.’ They didn’t say anything that time but Gino never came back out to talk to us again and there were always endless garlic twists.”
“Thanks sis… you know there’s gonna be a lot of stuff I ask you about cause of the whole memory thing” We hug for a moment.
Dad manages to mutter around a rib he’s gnawing at. “Memory thing? What memory thing?”
“I never said anything to you or Mom about it. Michelle figured it out on her own. Basically that little trip down the highway on my forehead screwed something up so although I didn’t lose any skills or knowledge, I really can’t remember anything from before then. I knew who people close to me were… and I knew three other things. I was a girl, I liked boys, and I absolutely had to hide both of those things from everyone. As far as my memories are concerned, with the exception of a few flashes, there isn’t anything from before I was 8. Its like in a lot of ways I’m mentally 8 years younger than I really am.”
He glares at Michelle, who looks down with a bit of guilt. “So when did you figure this out young lady and why didn’t you tell us? You know we had her tested for literally everything they could think of and the only thing they caught was dyslexia because she drew geometric figures backward and couldn’t even tell it, even insisted they were identical when shown the mirror image she’d drawn and what they gave her to draw. They said she was too well compensated for them to have caught it any other way. That might have helped them figure something out, I don’t know… but I would like to have known it at least!”
He seems to think about what he said for a moment and then says “Shit, I’ve done it again. Not about fixing your gender, about figuring out why you couldn’t seem to understand how to interact with other people. I don’t think any of us really understood that you were so bright you really had nothing to say to them that you considered worthwhile… and we definitely didn’t understand that you had closed down emotionally the way you had.”
“I’m impressed dad, it seems like you’ve really given this some thought.”
He snorts “Given it some thought, she says!”
“Little girl we’ve been trying to figure you out from day one. I’m no closer now than I was then, and I doubt I ever will be. I never figured your Mom or sister out either. I swear women are a different species…”
The men share a look and a laugh. My sister and I just look at each other and say in unison “Men are weird…” and giggle.
It’s a nice moment in the middle of all this, one that lasts too briefly.
“I still don’t get why, dad? If you knew all this and actually cared then why?”
He takes another bite of… something unidentifiable and chews for a moment, takes a swig of beer.
“Your mother and I tried to figure that out over these past years and to be honest, I don’t have a why for you, for either of you… The therapists said we were simply perpetuating the cycle of abuse we’d been raised in. Maybe that’s the truth of it. I just don’t know. I do know that your mother never forgave herself and I… I’m so far beyond redemption I can’t even see their garbage dump from here.”
He drains his beer and grabs a slice of pizza.
“I can’t ask either of you girls to forgive me, I don’t deserve forgiveness. I would like to try to… make it up to you isn’t right because that isn’t possible… I guess just to try to heal some of what I have destroyed.”
Before I can say anything Theo speaks up. “Look, I get where you’re coming from, I really do. I was a child of abuse myself and Angel knows I have problems with my temper sometimes. The PTSD doesn’t exactly help with that one…”
He pauses for a swig of beer. “But you did not destroy your daughter, no matter how hard you tried. You took steel and beat it into titanium. Beautiful and fragile looking but it’d take more than anything you or anyone else has to even dent her. You need to come see what she has built, what she does for a whole community… You need to understand that you gave your daughter exactly the right name. She is an Angel, as sure as we’re sitting here now.”
“If you’re going to be back in your daughter’s life, you have to understand where her priority… her heart, her soul if you will lies. Come back with us tomorrow?”
“But I thought you lived in the street, I wanted to offer you a place to live… I don’t understand…” He sounded lost, haunted even.
“Dad, remember what granddad used to talk about when he was a young man, hobo jungle stew, all that stuff? Its not what you think, really it isn’t. I can’t live with you Dad, as much as the notion of living in a real house again and just being normal sounds like some kind of dream… Even with what you’ve done to my old room…”
I take a second and a sip to gather my thoughts.
“People need me and I can’t leave them. I know you understand that. I have yet to meet a vet who doesn’t. You just have to come, maybe even stay a day or two. Still got your camping gear? Its not exactly the bush but you’ll want a mattress and maybe some other gear. Don’t worry about a tent though, we’re set that way.”
“I… I… um… Yes, absolutely. I heard what those two young ladies said when you captured me…” He gives me this look like I used to see him look at mom. He falls silent for a moment and quaffs a deep draft of the bourbon he’d poured while we talked.
“Yes, I want to come stay with you for a few days, more if you’ll have me. Phyllis said she’d watch the house for me if I needed some time and I think I’ll take her up on that.” His eyes light up for a moment with amusement. “Oh yeah and you might want to meet her daughter!”
It takes a minute to hit me. “OHMYGODSHEDIDIT!!!!!!!!” I’m up and dancing literally, my drink slopping over the side of my glass but I don’t care because the only person I’d ever trusted as a child with myself.. has obviously transitioned and been accepted by her mom!
It takes me a moment to calm down from my moment of drunken joy for my childhood friend and I finally collapse back onto Theo’s lap to see Dad chuckling at me.
“She hated not being at the memorial service, especially knowing you were coming… but final exams trump pretty much everything so-“
I break in excitedly “So she went for Med school!?!?”
He gets this indecipherable look on his face.
“Well yeah she’s doing Med school… but she went for an extremely unorthodox track. She has already knocked out a degree in Paleoarchological epidemiology and another in Statistical analysis of ancient civilizations with an eye toward situational ethics vs overall actuarial result. She has basically forced the scientific community to admit that as distasteful as it might be, survival cannibalism does yield a slightly higher survival rate in extreme starvation situations, even accounting for the obvious disease vector issues.”
He takes another sip and laughs. “She went on to prove that the resulting populations were more robust and able to survive extremity of various sorts, including disease, more readily than those who had not been through such events. That was her first Master’s thesis… They had to grant it because her research was comprehensive and conclusive.”
“I’m glad for her… She has always been able to think on levels I don’t even grasp so I’m not surprised she’s running rings around the academic establishment. On an intellectual level the only thing we really shared was physics and mathematics… but she just thinks differently than I do… Wait, you said her first?”
He makes this airy gesture which basically tells me he has no clue.
“Yeah the second was about some sort of stochastic analysis of standing wave forms in population growth patterns. She proved that there were several predictable progress points in any population regardless of other factors. I don’t even begin to have a clue but that’s the one she was arguing today…”
I’m kind of off in my own little world until Theo kisses me gently. I usually close my eyes when he kisses me because I just want to focus on the feelings but this time I’m looking at dad… He is watching and I see something I didn’t expect.
Of course what I expected was some sort of negative reaction and that is not what I see… My dad actually leans back into his bench, takes a sip of his drink and smiles when he notices me looking.
Suddenly I am just overcome.with emotion and begin to cry again. Theo is understandably confused and is stroking me, kissing the tears from my eyes and glaring at my dad… I have to yank myself out of it cause I can see another Alpha snarl coming on from the way he tenses so subtly.
I capture his face in my hands, force him to look at my eyes. God his eyes…. That jade green that enraptures me…And that right now has a flinty edge. His dark skin against my pale hands such a contrast… in so many ways we are so different and in so many ways we are the same.
I whisper into his mouth as I kiss him again.
“T, he’s smiling. Chill down man…”
He looks back over, a quick flick of the eyes which Dad catches and not only smiles more broadly but raises his drink!
Theo responds by kissing me deeply, passionately. I am swept away for a moment by the combination of drink and his touch and his kiss… but after a few moments(I have no idea how long) he releases me. I glance over at my dad and notice he isn’t even watching me, he is watching Beau kiss my sister so passionately that I know she felt very much as I just had.
What catches my attention is that he is holding a half full glass and I can tell it is trembling in his hand. I can see the tears just about to leak from his eyes and him blinking furiously… I know the signs.
I nudge Michelle with my leg and exchange a glance with her. She instantly catches my meaning and murmurs to Beau something I can’t hear but within a few seconds both of us are on the bench, on either side of our father, hugging him and crying as the tears spill down his face and he sobs, his chest heaving in great wracking jerky breaths.
We both just hold him and cry with him until he has gasped himself to a sort of peace, enough to finish off his drink and set it down, holding us both tightly against him. Our men have absented themselves.
“Girls” he begins,”I needed that. Thank you.”
By this time I have retrieved 2 more glasses . Dad starts to speak and I hold my fingers against his lips, running into the house, grabbing another tumbler, the bottle of rum and a quick pee on the way.
I settle back into the bench on my father’s left, leaning against him and half hugging him. He squeezes me back and holds the tumbler as I fill it with dark sludgy rum. Sis returns immediately after, having clearly run for a pee herself. I’m guessing dad watered the peonies…
“Ok, now that we’ve all dealt with the necessary, your men can come
out of the bushes… “He waits for a moment and Theo shows himself first, behind the peony dad had presumably just peed on… My assumption is confirmed as he subtly shakes his foot. I feel a little bad for being glad it’s the flesh and blood one… Not out of any hatred for my husband but because the various articulations on his good prosthetic are kinda finicky and I’m the one who maintains it mostly…
There’s this look between them, sort of some link… it’s a thing I see with a lot of the heavily damaged vets.
“You moved, EllTee. Why?”
He looked a little embarrassed and then spoke up proudly.
“Your daughter cleans my prosthetic and keeps it in good repair sir. I’d rather risk discovery and have to wash my actual foot than cause her to have to do anything at all right now. She and you, all of us actually, even the two of us who never met her… we are here to help you memorialize the woman you so obviously loved…” He grabs a tumbler and fills it with rum.
Beau has silently materialized(At least so far as my sister and I are concerned) but the other two obviously know he is here because Theo pours another tumbler of rum and hands it to Beau. Before I know it, the tumblers of bourbon have been drained and replaced with dark rum.
I’ll have to reproduce the rest from recordings because that’s pretty much where my memory stops.
Somehow that whole thing became the glue that helped us build something greater.
To Be continued…
I intended for this story to move a good deal more quickly than it is. Its these characters.... They keep doing stuff and having conversations and... well I think you'll get the idea.
I gradually come to wakefulness. Oddly enough, I don’t really feel hung over… its more like I’m still kind of drunk. I have to roll out of bed immediately and run down the hall for the bathroom but I notice that neither Theo or his preferred leg are there. I’m in the shower as my sister comes in and makes use of the toilet, rather noisily…
“Oh god sis, what the fuck did you eat? It smells like Zombie stew or something…”
I can just hear her over the water cascading down my head.
“Hairy fish….”
That draws a laugh and once she has finished she slips into the shower with me.
I’m used to the lack of privacy at the doss but I’ve never been naked in front of my sister, especially not post transition…
I trade places with her under the water and start soaping up. I can’t help looking at her and comparing myself to her and I notice her doing the same.
“I swear if it wasn’t for that little thing I’d never have known you were supposed to be a boy. There is literally nothing about you that doesn’t scream female…”
“Yeah you’re not too bad yourself sis. How about washing my back?”
It is something new and yet comfortable… like it should have always been this way.
As we are drying off she gets this twinkle in her eye.
“Bring your blades?”
“Of course.”
“Then lets go dance!”
I actually feel quite good after the shower and readily assent.
We return to our rooms and both don leotards with microskirts.
Michelle carries her blades loose but I have donned my harness and my Katana hangs down my back with my Wakizashi strapped to the back of my right thigh. There are other little surprises but nothing I’d use in a friendly sparring match.
We pad downstairs and each fix ourselves a cup of the coffee we’ve been salivating over for the past few minutes.
I watch her pour enough milk into hers to turn it into… well, not coffee…
I notice her returning the look of distaste as I pour sugar into my black coffee… We share a grin about it.
The whole time we can hear the meaty smack of male bodies thumping each other thoroughly in the back garden. We look out the window for a few minutes as we sip the nectar of the gods and watch our father systematically destroy both of our husbands.
I have a moment of pride as I watch Theo get the best of my dad for a few moments but his leg betrays him in the end… he still hasn’t totally adapted and its one of the things that really bothers him.
He jokes about himself as being “A one legged man in an ass-kicking contest”.
I notice dad teaching him a couple of subtle tricks to compensate. He’s kind of the perfect teacher that way, having had two effed up knees since Vietnam. Beau is participating, having his own movement issues with the whole pararescue thing having done a real number on his knees and lower back.
My sister interrupts my thoughts with similar musings.
“Who would have thought our men would fit so well?”
“Right?”
She looks at me with this sort of sidelong glance….
“So are you ready to dance?”
I grin back in response and we both drain our cups, then head out into the side garden.
She dances to the edge of the flowerbed edging the space and flicks both scabbards away, holding both of her blades bare in a ready stance.
I draw my Katana with my left hand, noticing the slight widening of her eyes as she sees my offside draw.
I stand in a “Walking horse” ready stance, normally posed, legs slightly apart, blade held parallel to my left leg.
I watch my sister circle slightly to my right and detect the beginnings of a strike pattern. Both blades blur and she seems confident she has gotten through my guard… but I have moved and drawn my second blade. I didn’t need to use it to block, I only blocked the one strike and simply evaded the other.
From that point my universe fades into a sort of focus that has no room for anything but the dance of blades, the thrust and parry, slash and evade…
At some point we are truly dancing, anticipating each other’s movements, countering strikes just begun… We stay in that space, delighting in our dance of blades.
Much like the men sparring, if you didn’t know what you were watching you would likely think we were seriously trying to kill each other.
We have both noticed we are being watched quite quickly and a part of what we are doing is actually a sort of … I don’t exactly know what to call it.
We’re seriously sparring but we’re also dancing in a way that emphasizes the grace of the whole thing. It isn’t something conscious for either of us but we are preening for our men, aware they are watching…
I do an eye flick toward where her scabbards lie and we launch into a complicated slash and parry routine which ends with me sheathing my own blades during a walkover. I pick up her scabbards and she slides them into their homes as though she is striking.
I roll back onto my feet and bow to her, blades held crossed behind me, then kneel before her with her swords held in the valley of my thumb and forefinger.
She takes them from me with her hands held in the same way, then thrusts both into her sash and grasps my hands. We look into each other’s eyes for a moment, each of us seeing a peace that we had not experienced for a very long time in the other’s eyes.
We stand and pivot to face our men(Odd how smoothly our husbands and our father have become just that…. “Our Men…”)
Michelle launches herself into Beau and kisses him soundly. I notice that he winces when he catches her.
I just stand there, unsure what to do… until I see Dad and Theo exchange a look and both of them engulf me in a hug, Theo kissing me.
His kiss overwhelms my attention and wakes my body in a whole other way than sparring had… I find myself responding and wrapping more tightly around him until he reluctantly disengages from the kiss and pries my arms from around his neck. My legs are still wrapped around his hips and I can feel his arousal pulsing against me.
“Erm…. I can’t put you down right now….” He mutters into my ear.
“None of you have anything to be ashamed of!”
I say it a bit louder than strictly necessary, I want to make sure we don’t have any genital based animosity among our men. I haven’t seen Beau hard but I’ve seen enough to know that all three men are roughly the same size.
Mama nature was rather generous. They are all around 9” and rather thick… although to be honest Theo wins on one level. He has the most enormous balls…
Suddenly my mood slips a little as I think that no matter how fertile he might be I can never bear his child… And I go directly from feeling like the sexy woman my husband just semi-ravished to feeling like… nothing…
Theo is experienced enough at reading my body language to understand that I need his support and he holds me more tightly to him. I know it’s a stupid thing to cry about… how many cisgendered women are unable to bear children? Logic says I shouldn’t feel the way that I do… But it is everything I can do to keep from bursting into tears.
“We already talked about this Angel” he murmurs into my ear. “We already decided we would adopt children like you and other kids who wouldn’t have anyone otherwise. We’ve got this planned…”
I know what he is trying to do but there is nothing that can fill the emotional hole that is carved out of my being by knowing that I will never feel a child grow within me.
I recover my mood quickly, it is after all an old familiar pain. Disentangling myself from his large and rather sweaty form I smile happily up at him. “So watcha gonna cook us for breakfast?” I chirp.
Yes, I actually did the girly-girl thing… I can’t help it sometimes. As a tall girl, especially a trans one, sometimes it really really helps that Theo is so much taller than I am and even in my highest heels I still look up at him…
Sensing I’ve recovered my mood he chuckles and points his jaw at my dad, giving me another little kiss before he lets me go.
“Ask the old man, he lost that bet!”
My sis and I meet each others eyes and let out a simultaneous groan mixed with yet another of those “Men are so strange…” looks of understanding.
“What bet?”
“He bet that you’d spar hand to hand… Beau and I said you’d go with blades. We might have won the bet but we never expected to see what you two just did. That was some serious up “Matrix” shit!”
Our father breaks in. “Where the hell did you two learn that? I taught you to fight with knives and staffs but I never even thought about swords” He looks a little sheepish. “I never really learned any of that stuff, I’m an old garrotte-man…”
Michelle and I both pipe up at the same moment.
“Paul”
“Sensei Hanzo”
We trade a glance but she can’t hold herself, the question is bubbling to the surface.
“He lets you call him Paul?”
“Long story sis… lets just say we’ve both worked through a lot of issues. I’d known him for maybe 2 years when we finally had a serious conversation and a lot of shit came out… “ I trail off, uncertain how much more I can say without betraying the confidence of a dear friend. I decide to deflect.
“Ever heard him put on his bad Japanese accent?”
It takes a moment to hit her and I see the grin as she spits it out.
“You mean Shritz a Mart Riqour?”
We both burst into laughter. Paul Hanzo might be many things but his default accent is purest cornpone Georgia. He messes with people sometime by putting on a seriously bad fake Japanese accent. There was a time when we were eating at a Korean BBQ place and I tried to order Kirin for him. I didn’t know he hates the stuff but I learned quickly as I heard the horrible accent mangling “Schlitz Malt Liquor”.
Apparently this was not unexpected as a 40 oz bottle and two glasses appear. He pours for both of us, pops a piece of meat into his mouth and chews, then washes it down with a generous swallow. He gestures at me with his fork(He won’t use chopsticks.).
“Don’t try to order that horse piss again please? I’d rather drink Butt-wiper… “
I can tell from his grin that he is serious yet joking.
“And that shit would seriously benefit from a second trip though the horse!”
I finish the joke for him.
It causes us both a moment of reflection. Paul and I had become very close when Kiyomi(his wife of 28 years) died from aggressive pancreatic cancer. It was so blindingly fast… one day she vomited blood and 6 weeks later his love was the ashes we scattered on the water…
He became relentless after that, demanding perfect form and also perfect rhythm. He had always taught us with music playing and when we asked he just said “To truly become one with your blade you must not simply move. You must dance.”
We had both taken lessons in secret, thinking our parents would not approve.
It is a very pleasant surprise to realize that my sister has kept in form.
“Have you seen him lately?”
“Last Saturday in fact… I am in his Advanced Jujitsu classes”
“So weird that a Japanese guy teaches Brazilian Gracie, isn’t it?”
“I think if you looked up weird in the dictionary, there would be a picture of him…”
We share a giggle.
Beau breaks into our moment. “Wait, you’ve both been trained by Paul Hanzo? The “Paul “Hanzo?!?”
I can hear the incredulity in his voice and I have to poke back a bit.
“Yep. Man trained me to drink. Never could keep up with him so he offered some blade training as a compensation…”
He is still obviously overawed and turns to my sister.
“How the hell do I not know my wife makes Trinity look slow?”
I can see the signs, I know she is right on the edge so I jump in.
“Look, it was something that came about when we were both on the edge of suicide. Paul somehow saw it and decided to make us his project. We learned to dance the blades and it kept us alive…”
Theo doesn’t really know this although he has seen me practicing forms.
I can read the look of distress on our father’s face.
“On the edge of suicide?” I can hear him mutter “Jehovah forgive me… again…”
I have to hug him and I am joined by my sister. As we hold him he begins to cry again, deep wracking sobs of grief…
As usual in situations like this, I find myself wishing there was something more I could do that just to offer a hug. Well there’s no time like the present to try.
“Dad… Poppa?”
He looks up at me, tears streaking down his face.
As gently as I can, I speak, even though my voice is a bit ragged with emotion.
“We’ve worked through it. We both had our reasons but that stuff is in the past. We want…” I have to say it more firmly, I can’t give him an escape. “We Need our Poppa. In our lives…”
He pulls away a little so he can see both of our faces, as streaked with tear tracks as his own.
“And I…” He almost loses it for a moment but gulps and continues with more certainty, an almost flinty note in his voice.
“I need my daughters in my life. God how I wish I had found you both when your mother was alive…”
He is beginning to cry again…
I hold him to me and just let him sob for a moment.
After a moment it occurs to me.
“Dad?”
“Yeah Angel?”
“I’ll totally give you a towel or something but stop crying on my boobs.”
He focuses his eyes on where his head had been resting and I can see this little moment…
Its so weird because I can totally tell what is running though his mind, the longing for his wife, who had ample boobage for him to cry on… and then this moment of self-disgust when he realizes its is his daughter he is crying on…
I have to get up under this before it becomes an issue…. Well more of an issue anyway…
“Its normal dude.”
He doesn’t say anything but I know he gets it.
“For short guys…”
At this one he snorts and chortles a bit.
“Well your mom’s tits weren’t exactly at face level… even for Danny DeVito!”
I let out what Theo calls a horse-laugh.
My mom was possibly the butchest straight cisgendered woman I’ve ever known. Their romance was forming a roping team, he was heads, she was feet. I’m reasonably sure my big sis is the reason she quit school like 1.5 credit hours short of her degree(She wanted to be a vet).
She was also all of 5’1” tall. And had like triple F boobs or something once she gained the weight. Turns out that was a result of her having several fibroid tumors which she described as “Each the size of a five month fetus”. Being the mid 1980s, the solution was radical hysterectomy.
After that, she lost almost 150 pounds… it took 15 years but she stuck to it. She had apparently found her point of equilibrium at about 150 pounds which made her look a bit plump still, being built like a munchkin and all(Excuse me, tall person snark.)
I have no idea where my height comes from. None of my grandparents were tall and my parents and sis were fairly short by comparison.
Not for the first time, I contemplate the notion that I am partially Androgen insensitive…. I certainly have many physical markers for it… my height being one of them. I don’t suppose I’ll ever actually be able to figure that one out because I managed to just barely get in the way of a male puberty and coopted it for the correct one.
I’m lucky though cause out of 6’ of me I have an inseam of like 38” and a stupidly high waist so it basically looks like I’m all legs with a smallish waist and boobs sat just under a face…
I can’t say much about my face really. Its kinda face shaped…
My cheekbones are so high you can’t really see them. I’m guessing that’s the Native American in both my parent’s backgrounds. There’s a nose that is…. Well, nose shaped… Hazel eyes… There is a cleft in my chin that I detest but everyone else says adds to my “Look”. I don’t think I even qualify for “Fugly” but Theo tells me I am beautiful… And I choose to not argue the point..
I feel my Dad’s hand on my chin and along my jawbone, gently forcing me to look into his eyes
“You are stunning. So incredibly beautiful I have trouble believing that you are my daughter. From what I hear you are just as beautiful inside as out. What I have heard about you seems so incredible… I have to see it. I’m gonna go pack a little more stuff and we’ll meet in 10?”
The question in his voice is almost as though he is pleading.
I keep it short.
“25. I totally need a shower...”
35 minutes later I am downstairs, having properly restored my hair although I have stuck with the black glitter nails and black lipstick.
I have chosen another pair of jeans I altered. They started out as a grey on grey python print… but I turned it into a rainbow, iridescent looking snakeskin look. Paired with royal purple flat sandals they were the perfect offset for the teal cowlnecked sleeveless top which showed more than a hint of top-boob. Earrings were something that looked intricately hand worked but was in reality WallyWorld Schlock
I had a couple of bangles on each wrist but aside from that I was jewelry free… Except for Theo’s ring hanging on its chain under my top and resting between my breasts….
We both wear our wedding rings when we go out formally and we had at the memorial service as well but otherwise we wear them secreted somewhere on our persons. I know it isn’t the safest place but I like to wear his ring resting on my breasts… it is a tangible reminder of him, anytime…
By the time I rejoin my family(What a thought) My dad has managed to make scrambled eggs, grits, and sliced some tomatoes.
For him, that is stretching some serious culinary muscles. To say that my dad can’t cook would be like saying water is wet. Fortunately the grits are good stone ground coarse yellow grits(I detect Beau’s hand in that one).
I know Theo could have taken charge and turned out a serious gourmet breakfast but its kinda neat that he didn’t.
We eat in companionable silence. Maybe its normal for my sister but the simple idea that I am eating breakfast with my husband after what the pleasant soreness says was clearly a rather passionate night(Little bits have come back and I smile slightly.)… that reminder of him gives me a warm glow.
“Warm Glow” turns into “Burning embarrassment” when my dad speaks up.
“From the sound of it, both of my daughters picked men who satisfy them… loudly…”
Theo almost inhales a mouthful of grits. Beau doesn’t react quite as strongly since he has just washed down a bit of egg.
My sis and I look at each other and burst into laughter.
Ya know, I really didn’t think a man with Theo’s skin tone could blush quite so visibly…
Beau with his paleness is blushing brightly enough to heat the room.
Both of them begin apologizing over the top of the other until my dad holds his hand up to signal silence.
“You read it wrong boys. I am glad for my daughters and I guess glad for you by extension… It is difficult for a father to say but both of my daughters are adults and that includes being sexually active. I am glad that you are able to satisfy them, it helps cement my already good impressions of you.”
All four of us are staring at him, dumbfounded.
He heaves a sigh, looking at me. “Look, your sister was raped and those assholes that called themselves Elders tried to blame her for it. Nothing about any of that was fair even a little. I know now that you probably don’t remember any of the nastiness that went around after that whole thing.”
He turns to look at my sister, catching her stormy grey eyes with his own slate grey ones.
“You need to know that he is gone.” He grinds out. “There isn’t a grave, I left him for the animals to eat up on the mountain property.”
I had known for many years that my father had taken vengeance for her rape, but I hadn’t considered the idea that he would have simply killed the man.
He interrupts my minor reverie as he continues speaking.
“Not that I’d want to hear it every night, it was like listening to two porn movies at once… “ he chuckles.
At this point I am blushing down to my toes. Normally I try to be very quiet during sex because there is no privacy really, but last night I had been rather vocal. What can I say, my husband knows every single sexual trigger I have and he used all of them.
He continues. “My point is, boys, that I am simply glad for my girls. You make them happy and that is everything. I’ve seen the way you treat them, even when you’re so drunk you can barely stand. I can tell that you are both perfect gentlemen who are absolutely in love with their wives…”
He trails off for a moment and I can tell that he is living in the past a little bit. He looks at my sister and I and his face gets a little harder, the planes of his angular jaw tightening.
I can tell he is struggling with his feelings as he continues to grind out his words. “I loved your mother with all my heart and soul and she was the light of my life. Listening to you four reminded me of when we had… that…”
I can see tears about to flow from his eyes.
Michelle and I exchange a wordless glance and move to hug him from both sides.
We can tell he likes the closeness but there is a moment where I can tell he’s on the edge of a freakout. I am totally familiar with that and I catch Michelle’s eyes and let her know we need to move away. She seems puzzled for a moment and then realizes how tensed up he is and gets it and we separate.
He takes a moment and a few gusty breaths.
“Sorry girls, you know I have claustro-freakouts…” He looks embarrassed..
I hug him gingerly
“Yeah dad, I know all about it. I think I got that one from you.”
My sister breaks in “No you got that from when Freddie locked you in a trunk and kept you there all night. I discovered you the morning after, when they had gone home. You were crammed in so hard I don’t even know how you were able to breathe.”
“Wow… stuff like that makes me thinks amnesia isn’t actually such a bad thing…”
It hits me a moment later.
It was him that threw me down the hill and knocked the wind out of me… I remember trying to cry and not even being able to do that. Was that the genesis of my disorder, the reason I couldn’t even allow my husband to grasp me too tightly as we made love or slept?
Whatever it is, I am locked into the memory and feel as though I cannot find enough oxygen, not that I could manage to breathe it in anyway… Theo knows the signs and just keeps a hand where I can grab it for support. He knows better than to try to hug me or be in my personal space in any other way.
By the time I have come out of it I am curled up in Theo’s lap and he is stroking my hair and kissing me gently on my forehead.
I see him exchange a glance with my father. In his face is a challenge. My father’s face holds clear approval.
“Son if you haven’t figured it out yet, I do think you’re good enough for my daughter.”He pauses and directs his gaze over to Michelle and Beau.. “And you too, for my other daughter. I wish none of you anything other than the best life has to offer.”
As I open my mouth to reply he gestures me back to silence. He focuses his gaze on me.
“As it happens, your mother had a few life insurance policies. Its not a lot but I’ve done some research and I’ve got you booked with the guy who is supposed to be the absolute best In the field.”
I stare at him with a complete lack of comprehension.
“Um…. What?”
“What is that you have a flight on Japan Airlines that will take you to Bangkok, where you and your young man will spend a month in paradise dealing with the aftereffects of surgery…”
I burst into tears. Between sobs I manage to choke out “But…. You, you can’t….. I know she meant that money for you…”
He is stroking my hair and shoulder as I am still held in Theo’s lap.
“Your mom specifically told me to use the money this way” he says softly. “She was very clear about it”.
“She knew you had never gotten very big down there and this guy can deal with that. She… and I…. We want… wanted… only the best for you.”
He sighs again. “We fucked up so badly…” He trails off.
I force him to meet my eyes this time. “All parents fuck their kids up dad. No matter how hard they try, they still fuck em up. Trust me, lots of parents do so much worse than you and mom did…You were brutal, yes… but there is a reason I survived being on the street alone and the way you fucked me up is it. Michelle is such a strong rape survivor because she learned never to blame herself by having you blame her.”
“So yeah dad, you fucked up. Ya know what?”
He looks into my eyes again “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It is the past. What we did is what we did and you can’t unspill the milk. We can agonize over might have beens but there’s no point really. You fucked up, I fucked up… There’s no shortage of blame to go around. Dwelling on it does nothing more than cause further injury.”
“And Dad?”
He leans closer to hear as I have dropped my voice to just above a whisper. “I want you there too. I want you to welcome your daughter into the world as you should have in the beginning. You delivered me into this world the first time around dad, and I want ... For both of us… I want a redo on that one and this is as close as its possible to get.”
I can tell this is not something he ever considered from his stunned expression.
“I…” he trails off into silence.
“Ok, I will but I am going to have to meet you kids there and fly back separately as well.”
I can tell he is beginning to retreat inside himself a little so I gently give him a verbal nudge.
“Why?”
Theo answers for him.
“Watch lists. There’s no way he makes it through security in the US. From Canada, no big deal and he can make it there easier than Mexico these days. His only real issue doing it that way is the Canadian border and I know a few places…”
I hadn’t even considered that so I asked Theo “Well what about you? I mean you have a lot of the same background right?”
“Well yeah but its all about how exactly you are separated from service and technically I and likely Beau are still listed as active/reserve. Technically I could hop a military flight to get there but the hassle involved in making that happen would be… entertaining…” He grimaces.
“Ah, right then, clear as mud now!” I laugh at his expression. “South Low?”
“Its dry enough so yeah, that works, that way they can park in a secured lot and have close access. Skid should be on sentry about now…” Theo looks over at my sister “You coming?”
“You’re kidding right? You couldn’t keep me away!” She is almost vibrating with restrained eagerness.
“OK then.” He looks over to me. “We’ll drop you at East High on the way to the garage so nobody freaks.”
He knows I love/hate East High entry with its jump into a dark hole in the roof of a derelict building(Yes we shamelessly ripped that one off from the movie, you have to admit its something no sane person would do…). At least its not West Low, the tunnels there are so tight they are really hard for me to handle. Its not a matter of fitting through, Theo can go through with no issues. I ride the ragged edge of a claustrophobic freakout if I have to use it so I’ve really only been through there 6 times, just enough to make sure I had it down pat both ways.
Soon enough I’m running along the edge of a roofline and then launching myself into nothingness, feeling almost like I’m floating as I spreadeagle face up just in time to hit the net. As I’m climbing out a familiar hand reaches out to assist and I gratefully take it.
“You know you’re the only one who does it that way.”
I look over at the skinny mohawked kid that came to our little group early on with a question on my face.
Lenny quirks a grin and answers “Some of em run up and jump out, a few even do a flip like you did… but they all make some kind of noise when they do it. Not you. You are completely silent. No sound of running footsteps, not a squeak out of you the whole time… you even land in the net quietly. If you hadn’t let Sqiug see you on the way in I would have been totally surprised when you dropped out of the sky…”
I hadn’t really realized I’d done it that way, it was just instinct for me to be as unseen and unheard as I could manage. I knew I often surprised the sentries so I’d made a habit of making myself visible some way out so the High Watch would get a look at me and inform the appropriate sentry.
“Theo is coming in South Low with three newbs. They are my family so make sure Skid keeps her mouth shut.”
Lenny can’t decide whether to grin or try to be sympathetic because everyone knows by now what has occurred. I reach out and pull him to my side in a quick hug. “Len, its ok. More than ok… I’ll have to tell you about it later. Right now I have to get home and get things ready, OK?”
He grins and then the grin drops. “Skid’s not on South Low, she had to take Mel to the hospital. Her water broke. Mark took her slot and Dahl has the kitchen so its sorted on the rosters but we are all worried for her and none of us were gonna bother you.”
He knows what I’m going to ask. “About 4 hours ago. So far things are ok. Mahindra was on shift so she rammed everything through just like you had it planned. Vinnie is her doc.”
This hasn’t exactly been unexpected, she was only 2 weeks overdue after all. Still, it means I have to put a rush on things so I give Lenny another quick hug and a murmer of thanks before I turn and break into a flat out run over the uneven floorscape we found and then deliberately worsened both as a deterrent and as a place to safely(Well as safely as you can anyway) practice Parkour for the young or inexperienced.
The run gives me a chance to think and plan what I need to do. Theo is going to have to take over the ‘get acquainted’ tour while I go to the hospital to be with Mel. Dahl has been riding Mel’s apron strings since she first came to us after Theo freed her from the nasty little excuse for a man that had been pimping her out. That means she is completely capable of keeping the food up to our usual standards but it also means that she wants to be there for Mel just as badly as I do.
Other than Theo, Mel and Dahl were the only two capable of keeping the entire kitchen going the way it needs to be. I shove that issue to the back of my mind to let my subconscious work it out and focus on speed. Final jump and roll, pop the top on the skylight and a quick descent of a rope ladder, carefully sealing the skylight behind me. Waiting for me at the bottom is my answer.
Carmen and Collette have been stabilizing the ladder from the bottom while I descended and they chorus a welcome at me. Gathering them into a hug I return their welcome, then pull back a little.
“Cindy in?”
They break into their distinctive round robin style of speaking, a little gappy because their other triplet isn’t with them.
“She’s in the-“ From Carmen.
“Kitchen with-“ from Collette
There is a minute pause as they both adjust to one of their number not being there then Carmen picks it back up.
“With Dahl making-“
“Plans for the week.” Collette finishes then they chorus at me again.
“We are going to take it over so Dahl can be there for Mel!”
I shake my head as I look at them. They might only be 14 but these girls are amazing in their own special way. I can’t help remembering how we encountered each other. In my minds eye I will never lose the image of a young looking face clearly terrified as the store security guard held on to her arm and dragged her to the office door. I’d been there to get something or other that Mel needed and I knew I had to do something.
I’d walked over to the guard and asked him what she’d stolen. He’d pointed at a couple of packages of lunchmeat. Before he could protest I’d picked them up and was in line with them at the register. He watched silently while I paid and walked back over to him Without another word I took hold of the girl’s other arm and gently drew her after me as I left the store. She shuffled along after, head down.
I’d set off walking and shortly noticed we were being followed, almost certainly some other kids she was with. A quick duck down an alleyway and a quiet wait in a hidden alcove later, two more thin forms were wriggling in my grasp while I pinned the other against the wall with my butt. I’d realized I had something a bit unusual on my hands as soon as I saw their faces. It had taken a while to get the whole story out of them and when I did it was heartrending.
Their mom had died in a car accident barely a month after their father died on deployment, they had no idea where. No one could find a living relative so they were being shunted into the foster care system and they were smart enough to realize it meant they would be broken up. They chose to run to the streets instead and had been here just a couple of weeks, finally getting hungry enough to risk shoplifting and getting caught on the first try.
A little more talking and the promise of a good hot meal with a safe place to sleep, no strings and they were cautiously following me through the tunnels. We hadn’t been in anywhere near as nice shape back then but we were already a very tightly knit group and there was no problem with adding to our number, we had enough food to spare.
Over the past 18 months they had bonded closely with the entire group but had a special fondness for Mel and for some reason, me as well. Theo teased me about how I was always taking in strays and I’d pointed out that at one point he was one of those strays. That could have turned into an argument but it wound up with him doing a horrible impression from ‘Lady and the Tramp’ and then to much more fun things…
While I’ve been stuck in my head they had already dragged me over to the kitchen tent where Dahl and I greeted with warm hugs. She went back to a whirlwind of instructions which Cindy was storing in her head while I sought out Barb.
The late middle aged woman had come to us when she fell on hard times after her unemployment insurance ran out and she couldn’t find any other work. She had nowhere to go when the bank repossessed her house and wound up in the street. She had been on her way to the bridge to jump off and had literally put her last penny into the open guitar case before walking away with tears running down her face.
Theo and I hadn’t met yet then so I left the other girls to sing and went to find out what I could do. Over coffee and pancakes I had gotten her story out of her and made her promise she’d come with us. She had tearfully agreed and since had been one of the pillars of our little community, in many ways serving as a bridge to some of the older homeless population.
Organizing the kitchen the way we did it now was largely her creation although thankfully the actual execution was carried out by others as her level of cooking skill consisted of nuking a prepared meal.
No worries, we all brought what we had to the whole and her organizational instincts were second to none. I never could understand why the corporate world had discarded such an absolute treasure. I mean sure she could get right under your skin but that was the Asperger’s and it wasn’t something she could really control.
I stroked the chime she hangs on her tent flap and waited for permission to enter.
“Why are you here?” she confronted me immediately, pulling aside the flap and stilling the chimes while her gaze darted back and forth between my face and the tablet she was holding.
I held my smile to my eyes knowing she wasn’t fond of facial expressions.
“I know you’ve got it organized, I just wanted to know if there was anything you needed and I have to wait a few more minutes before I can go anyway. My dad and sister and her husband are on their way in South Low right now.”
Her own careful lack of expression robs her words of any real venom. “You know you’re a stupid little bitch to be taking him back, right?”
At that point I have just about everything I can do to keep from bursting out laughing. Coming from Barb that is the equivalent of a warm hug.
“It was necessary. Got a list?”
“Not for you. Bob and Mark are going to the market after their shifts end. Its all adjusted for the next month. Now go away and do what you need to.”
She shocks me by darting in for a quick sort of barely-hug, retreating behind her tent flap after the merest brush of contact between our clothes. That is the closest I’ve ever seen her come to touching another human being and in the middle of all this I have to take a moment to wonder how difficult that was for her to do.
My moment of reflection is brought to an end as I hear Theo’s familiar tread and note that I need to take a few moments to lubricate and clean his leg. It sounds like the achilles compensator is hanging a little bit. The thought reminds me that I need to change shoes, these sandals aren’t the right footgear for what I’m about to do.
I have just enough time to shuck the sandals and pull on a pair of skechers before he reaches the tent. We hug and I take a moment to just snuggle into his chest before I disengage and look up at his face. “I gotta go-“
He interrupts “I know, Mark told me, we talked on the way in and I’ll be along with the others in an hour or so. I’ll bring Dahl too because if I don’t she’ll hurt herself trying to keep up with you. I-“
This time its me who interrupts with a deep kiss. I pull away after an eternity and tell him I love him before turning and dashing for South High, his reply of mutual love a pleasant feel in my core. South High is almost all aerials and it demands full attention but it is the fastest way for me to reach the hospital and I am almost floating across rooftops and fire escapes and one long, long jump that takes me down 3 stories and across 4 lanes of fairly heavy traffic. The landing on that one hurts, there isn’t any way to preposition even a mat and you really have to watch the timing.
I almost never make that last jump, it only takes 5 more minutes to descend the fire stairs on the last building and cross the street normally. Today I didn’t even think about that, I just launched. Impact, roll, jump again, half twist and I come down into a 3 point half crouch right between the elevator doors. Beside me, waiting for a car, is an older gentleman clutching the hand of a young girl who looks on the verge of tears.
As the door dings open I hear a little voice pipe up. “Are you the angel that’s coming to get my mommy?”
That one yanks me right out of myself and into the now. The older gentleman that I assume is her grandfather is on the edge of tears himself at this point but there is a clear hazel pair of eyes locked onto mine as I kneel to talk to her after getting that silent glance of assent.
“No honey, I’m no angel. Why do you think an angel is coming for your mommy?”
“Isn’t this where people go to wait for the angels? Its where Daddy came and the angels took him to heaven here.”
I have to think fast on this one. I might not have any faith myself but I try to frame my response within the framework she gave me.
“Sometimes angels do come for people here. Most times the angels tell them it isn’t their time yet and they can come to heaven later. The people here work with the angels except when they want to take someone to heaven early and then they fight them to give that person their full time. Even if there was an angel here for your mommy the people here wouldn’t let them take her until it is her time. You understand?”
I can see her working that one through in her head. Finally she nods. “Okay.”
At that moment the doors open and I flee the elevator car, brushing past people getting on.
I’m still on the fourth floor but that isn’t an issue for me. I use the corner of the elevator shaft and the handholds on the outside of the garage wall to descend the outside of the building, beating the elevator down with time to spare and then I’m around the side of the building and walking in a different entry. I really don’t want to run into that little girl again…
I know Mel will be on the 9th floor so I run up the empty stairs and take a moment to compose myself before stepping out of the stairwell into organized chaos. I stop at the nurses’ desk to see where Mel is and it takes a moment for the harried looking nurse behind the counter to look up from what he’s doing. I watch his eyes widen as he catches my hair and then the up and down eyeflick that tells me this is definitely a straight guy because his gaze doesn’t quite make it all the way back up to my face at first.
I tap a nail on the counter ever so slightly and his gaze jumps back to my face.
“You’re looking for Melinda Bell?”
Okay, gotta admire his recovery just the tiniest bit… “How’d ya guess?”
I can’t resist poking a little bit.
“Well lets see, this tall hot chick with purple hair taking it a foot higher and dressed like that? You’re the only one of those I’ve seen today… or ever!” He chuckles at me. “9208, right down the hall there. Your sister is doing just fine and Dr Massetti is in there with her now.”
I glance at his name tag before turning to walk down the hall and tossing a “Thanks Phillip!” over my shoulder. A knock on the door and Skid’s voice tells me to come in. The curtain is pulled for privacy and I step into the small space that remains. Skid pops her head out from behind the curtain and then launches herself at me, giving me a hug that could best be described as extremely energetic.
“Mel’s been asking for you but I didn’t want to call you but I knew you would come as soon as you could and I came with her and Mark took my spot and the doctor was asking some questions and I told him I didn’t know but you did and you would be here as fast as you could and here you are so he can find out what he needs to know and there’s papers to sign and I’m so scared for Mel…” she breaks off into tears and I hold her for a moment while I digest that infodump.
“Ok hun, I’m here now so let me see Mel for a minute and talk to the doctor and we’ll get everything sorted with the papers. You stick with me at least until Theo gets here with Dahl and the others.” I’m gently prying her arms from around my neck and stroking her head.
Her mind is just as quick as her mouth. “You took South High all the way didn’t you?”
I’ve never lied to her and I’m not about to start now.
“I did take the elevator down 5 floors at the garage…”
She snerks at me. “Yeah you can’t get away with that one, I know the garage is 9 floors! When are you gonna let me try it?”
“Not until I’m sure you can do it. You miss that one and you’ll be lucky to just break a few bones. Even if you nail it right you’re still gonna get some nasty gouges from the gravel when you land. Then there’s another dismount but you can’t roll on that one or you might roll right under a moving car. For now you have to dismount at the office building and take the stairs down, ok?”
I get a grudging nod of assent.
“Now go clean your face off and next time use waterproof mascara, ok?” I hand her a makeup remover wipe from my pack and she sulks off. Not for the first time I wonder what the hell I’m doing being a surrogate mom to all these kids and then, like every time I wonder, I know it is because I have to do it. There isn’t any choice for me, any more than they have choices.
I pulled the curtain aside just enough to allow me into the enclosed area of the room. Mel greets me with a tearful hug that becomes a painful clench. She lets me go after a moment.
“Sorry, contraction. I heard you out there. I can’t believe you did that! You are one seriously scary girl, you know?”
She looks over at Dr Massetti. “Vincenzo, tell her she’s crazy!”
He shrugs, throwing in a quirk of one prodigious eyebrow. “Again? I told her she was crazy the first time I stitched her up and she didn’t argue the point. Crazy or not, I will agree she’s scary!”
Vinnie and I go back to my earliest days on the street. I’d managed to get my hand caught on the top of a chain link fence and it had torn a hole just under my pinky almost to the bone and big enough to stick my thumb into. He had been very kind and glued me up, then sent me out with instructions on care. Two days later I was back having torn it open again in the process of defending myself and this time he used actual stitches along with the glue.
Since then he and a few others had become my best way to get medical care for someone who needed it. Some doctors seemed to have no shred of human compassion and would refuse treatment to an indigent person with no money. Sometimes it would be an administrator who tried to refuse treatment. Whoever or whatever was the culprit there was still a solid majority core of the hospital staff who would do whatever they could to get someone care when needed even though most of them were afraid of losing their jobs.
Vinnie was one of the few that didn’t need to care about job loss since it wouldn’t really impact his financial status much. Besides, it wasn’t very likely they would fire him, he was one of those doctors hospitals compete to attract and his presence brought a great deal of money to them that would otherwise have gone to other hospitals in the region.
He turns a basilisk glare on me. “I know what that last jump is and if I ever catch you doing it again I swear I will get Theo to spank you!”
“Not brave enough to try it yourself?”
“That would be stupid, not brave and I have no desire to hurt myself trying to teach a young lady a lesson she should already know!” He adds a scowl to the glare. “Now turn around and let me see your back.”
“I’m good doc, I had my pack on and its got some decent padding. Besides I totally nailed the dismount. A little too well actually…” Of course this means I have to tell the story of the elevator encounter which has them both laughing until I get to the part about taking the outside route the rest of the way down.
Fortunately I am saved by the bell… or rather by the contraction. Melinda moans and I can see a vein throbbing in her temple. This one seems to take longer than the last and I can see beads of sweat popping out on her face from the strain.
She pants for a moment as it ends. “Oh fuck that hurts…” before she lies back against the pillow in exhaustion. I feel so helpless watching her in agony but in some strange way I am jealous. I would give just about anything to be in her position, about to give birth to a child carried under my heart.
He ducks under the sheets tented over her lower half and checks things for a moment. “9 centimeters, almost there!” he encourages Melinda. She groans at him in response and breaks into rapid-fire Sicilian which I can’t even quite assimilate much less understand. He replies in kind and they go back and forth until a nurse pokes her head through the curtain.
“Vince I need you for a moment.” He follows her out of the room and there is a barely heard murmer of conversation as another nurse comes in to take his place. Melinda grabs at my hand to get my attention.
“Listen, you need to know… You have all my powers of attorney on file but I also named you as my next of kin. If something happens to me I trust you to raise my child as if they were your own.” She pauses for a moment.
“Trust isn’t all of it, although I do trust you… but more, I want you to be the one who is mother to my child if I cannot be there to do it myself. And Theo of course, he will be a wonderful father!”
I can’t quite wrap my brain around that one. Theo and I have talked about adopting but it was always something that would be in the future, in a few years. The idea that it might be a lot closer than that was actually scary as hell!
“I… you…. we – “ was all I could get out of my mouth as I stare at her.
“Yes, you. I agree with her, if that helps.” Vinnie’s voice comes from just behind me. “When, not if, the time comes you and Theo will be excellent parents. I can’t imagine a child either of you raised being less than capable in pretty much any environment. Put you both together? Who knows but I look forward to seeing the lucky kids grow up!”
Another contraction draws a grimace of pain from Mel and her knuckles turn white where she has grabbed the rails and squeezed with all her strength. That kicks my brain back into gear, forcing me to focus on being there for her. Again this contraction seems longer and stronger than the one before.
When it finally ends she is panting, looking completely spent as she falls back against the pillow. There is a small towel on the… whatever they call that food tray thingie they use in hospitals… I use it to mop her forehead and wipe the sweat from her face.
“Thank you.” she says as she regains her breath.
“I haven’t done anything…”
“I know a lot of people who would disagree with you on that one. A fair number of us wouldn’t be alive without you and most of the rest wouldn’t be anything more than just alive. Theo wouldn’t be alive. All of us owe you more than can ever be repaid.”
She squashes my attempted interruption. “I know, pay it forward. As true as this is hun, you have to allow others to do for you sometimes. We want to pay it forward and back. The two things can be at the same time. You know sometimes you hurt others by not accepting their attempt to pay you back, including your man?”
“Wait, I…” I can’t finish the thought as another intrudes. “I hurt Theo?”
Even as I protest I realize she is right, I have seen that ‘kicked puppy’ look in his eyes when I rebuff an offer of assistance or a simple kindness. I’m so focused on being self reliant that it gets in the way of my relationships with people, I know that. Knowing isn’t the same as knowing how to not do it though.
“Shit… I’m sorry…” escapes from me with a sigh.
“And now you’re apologizing. Stop that!” She grabs my chin and forces me to look at her. “You have nothing to apologize for. Your mother named you true, you are an angel. The thing is, you have an equal now to stand beside you and support you and you have to learn to accept that support. “
“I…” I have to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know how to do that…”
“Yes you do. Florinda and Clarice back you singing and Theo too. You might sing lead but without the harmony they give the whole would be less. It works the other way around when one of them sings lead, you support them and it makes them better. It’s the same thing.”
“I never thought of it that way.” It really does help. Being able to interact with people on a deep level has always eluded me and I think this may be one of the big reasons for that. This gives me someplace to start working on fixing at least one of the ways in which I am broken.
Our conversation is interrupted by another contraction, this one much worse for Melinda as I can see the sweat popping out on her face again and she is still straining until finally she falls back exhausted again.
I know it hasn’t been long but it feels like it has been an eternity and I realize that I really do need support right now. I really need Theo…
I can really feel that I’m beginning to close up emotionally and I don’t want to. I guess ingrained habit is hard to alter…
Skid pops back inside the curtain, her face wiped clean. “Theo is here and there are some other people with him but there’s only supposed to be one of us in here at a time. Is that your dad?”
I hadn’t stopped to think but I guess they would have to have come too… “Short guy, grey hair and eyes, limps?”
“And this other girl that looks a little like you and another guy, yeah. Oh and Dahl is here.”
“That would be my dad, my sister and her husband. Tell Theo I’m kinda tied up right now.”
Mel groans at me. “I’ll be fine, you go do what I told you…”
I know she is right but it doesn’t make it any easier to do. Every instinct I have is screaming at me that I need to be there, to help. To admit that I need help too seems like failing somehow. And yet… Mel is right, I do have to learn to let others help and this is where I have to start.
“Paulette?” Skid looks up at me, her eyes wide. No one ever uses her given name, she has insisted on Skid since she and her brother joined us calling themselves Skid Mark. I can understand the aversion to an old name and the freight it carries so I have let that particular sleeping dog lie where it was.
“Stay with Mel until Dahl comes in, ok?”
She nods a slow yes at me and slides into the seat as I rise, taking Mel’s hand from me.
Out in the hallway my family(What a strange thing to say…) is waiting and Theo gathers me into a hug. That just breaks the emotional logjam and he continues to hold me while I sob into his chest.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” I hiccupped at him after an eternal moment. “I… I really needed that. Thank you…”
“Always…” rumbles through his chest. Feeling his voice against my face just… takes the jagged edges off my nerves and lets me get myself back together.
I wipe the remnants of tears from my eyes and look over to Dahl. She is visibly distressed and I disengage and hug her before sending her in. She has basically adopted Mel as a surrogate mom and she isn’t the only one, just the closest. Those two need each other right now and that is more important than my own need to be the one who helps.
“Theo tells me you are the one who built all of that. How –“
I interrupt dad as I’m just not willing to let that ride. “I didn’t build anything! All the people there… they built it all. All I did was try to help people and then they helped themselves. OK?”
Theo coughs “Bullshit” under his voice and Skid snerks at me.
“If you want to see who is responsible for a lot of what we have you need to look over at the tallest guy here! He is the one who built a good part of it. The hot water, the power… That is stuff he built. Not me. I keep telling people I didn’t build anything! Well ok, I did take care of our datafeeds but that was no big deal and oth – Holy shit!”
I break off as a large pale hand descends in front of my face. “Goddammit Lurch! Give me a heart attack already!”
A deep chuckle emanated from behind and way above me. “I love that… no matter how many times I do it you always freak!”
I had to turn and give him a tight hug. “So why are you here instead of the Land of the Beautiful Giants?”
That is what I call the cardiac care wards. I swear most of the women are Theo’s height and the men are taller and they are almost uniformly very attractive. It isn’t often that I feel petite when stood next to other women but the 7th floor is an exception! Rob is in a class by himself at 7’ 4” and nearly 300 pounds of what appears to be mostly muscle and bone. On his frame that is just enough to make him look gaunt.
“Well Cardiology is having a little ebb moment so I thought I’d come by and see how my favorite mother to be is doing!”
He tries to sound lighthearted but I know him well enough to see through that and I haven’t been blind to the little dance he and Mel have been doing since before she even knew she was pregnant.
“She’s doing ok so far. Dahl is in there with her now. You want a minute?” I can’t help smiling a little as I see the expression of worried longing on his face.
Wow, you wouldn’t think such a large guy could pull off a pleading little boy look but there it is, larger than life…
Slipping inside I whisper in Dahl’s ear and I can see the smile on her face. As much as there has been the dance of man and woman going on between Mel and Rob, there has been an equal sort of Father/Daughter thing going on between Dahl and him. She squeezed Mel’s hand and surrendered it to the oversized hands of the man who hoped to win her love and didn’t realize he already had.
We retreated behind the curtain but couldn’t resist peeking. The look on Mel’s face when she felt his hand was one of… I don’t know how to describe it actually… Peace, happiness, and yes, love…
When she did open her eyes and look into his pale blue regard she smiled and leaned up with her arms open to receive and give a hug of pure joy.
“Robert… thank you for coming… I – “ she had to break off for a moment and wipe her eyes “I really needed you…”
Her eyes widened as he knelt and produced a box from his pocket.
“Melinda Dufresne… I want… Have wanted… you to love, to care for, to grow old with. You turned me down twice already and I really really hope the third time is the charm. You are the other half of my soul that I didn’t even know was missing until I met you. Will you complete my life? Will you consent to allow me to be a father to the child I felt kick 5 months ago? Will you marry me?”
The look on her face was indescribable. Longing mixed with fear and twisted with memories of horror gave way to a determined smile as she reached out to grasp his hand with the box in it. She swallowed hard, choking down a half-sob.
“Yes, Robert, I will marry you, if you will have me and Dahl. She is the daughter of my spirit and it’s a package deal.”
He reached out with one of those impossibly long arms and grasped Dahl, dragging her from behind the curtain with a gasp of astonishment and pivoting on his knee to face her.
“Dhalgren Svensdatter, will you allow Melinda and I to adopt you? Will you allow me to be a father to replace the asshole that beat you?”
She looks at me with clear distress. “I… I owe Win – Angel and – “
He interrupts. “I won’t get in the way of that but maybe I can help?”
She glances at me and I realize she is looking to me for assent.
“Go hun, you deserve happiness and to grow up normal and so does your little sibling. You both deserve more, better…”
She turned and addressed Rob. “If I ever see you hurt her you won’t live out the day!”
I have to admire the lanky young woman spitting fire and defiance. Such a far cry from the wounded soul so long ago…
“Never, upon my eternal soul!” He crosses himself, which is a bit funny coming from a buddhist.
“Then yes… I think I will be very proud to be your daughter. You are one of the best men I have ever known and you and a few others have restored my faith in the half of the human race that tried to claim me.” She turned her attention to Mel
“And yes, I will proudly be your daughter. You have been a mother to me, more than my own ever was. You taught me how to live instead of simply existing. I have thought about it a lot. I have seen you fall in love with a man who makes you happy. I actually respect him and think he is a noble example of what humanity can be, the same as you are.”
She draws a deep breath before continuing. “Both of you, I will be proud to call myself your daughter. You first showed me kindness when I was at death’s door. I literally owe you my life and twice over… Dad… Mom…”
The three of them share a hug that becomes all too tight as Mel is buried in the throes of another contraction.
Sometimes eidetic recall is… not so pleasant. When you combine it with a nice dose of PTSD it can become an immersive hell. Right then I felt like I was locked into place as the past 2 years fell away and…
Theo’s bulk slammed into the door again and the frame gave way with a splintering rip. He charged into the dingy hotel room and literally threw a greasy little man across the room to land with a thump and a gasp as the wind was knocked out of him. He didn’t have time to really notice as a hammer-like palm strike slammed his head back against the wall with carefully controlled rage, knocking him senseless.
I noticed that with a fragment of my attention, the rest was riveted on the figure lying on the bed. The syringe hanging from her arm was empty…. Oh fuck we’re too late…
I flung myself across the room, scrambling onto the filthy bed to cradle in my arms a girl who feels like she is all skin and bone, her eyes pits of despair set in dark hollows. I can see the junk begin to hit as a look of gratitude comes over her bruised face.
“T!!!!!! Call an ambulance! She OD’d! Tell em to hurry!!!!!” I’m shout-crying by now. Oh gods please hurry…
I removed the syringe from her arm, pressing on the wound with a scrap of stained sheet to keep her from bleeding…. Any more anyway…
She has slid bonelessly down to rest her head in my lap. I can just barely hear her murmer.
“Thank you… I’m free…” she is fading fast and I can see her begin to slip away but she rallies for a moment. “Sing me to the angels mommy…”
I have everything I can do not to cry. This child is going to die in my arms because I took a minute too long… 60 seconds… maybe less. Long enough to determine her fate. Something to sing about angels… oh gods not that one but yes, it has to be…
It takes a moment for my voice to steady as I begin the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SiylvmFI_8
Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay
There's always some reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction
Or a beautiful release
Memories seep from my veins
Let me be empty
Oh and weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight
In the arms of the angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here
So tired of the straight line
And everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
The storm keeps on twisting
Keep on building the lies
That you make up for all that you lack
It don't make no difference
Escaping one last time
It's easier to believe
In this sweet madness
Oh this glorious sadness
That brings me to my knees
In the arms of the angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SiylvmFI_8
While I was singing to the girl her eyes have closed and I can feel the rhythm of her heart slow and… then I can’t feel a pulse at all. I can barely breathe I’m crying so hard and I can’t resist as large hands gently pry her from my grasp.
“Too late… She’s gone… I was too late… I should have been faster…” I’m mumbling into the chest of a man I barely know, a man I just met a month ago when he was trying to drink himself to death. He is crying too, I can feel the jerkiness in his breath and the top of my head is becoming damp from his tears.
Music and lyrics by Sara McLachlan
Note to Readers
In this story I use music as an adjunct to the story, meant to be listened to while reading the relevant passage. I hope you enjoy it and if not I hope it doesn't detract from the story for you.
In the back of my awareness I have heard the firemen arrive and quickly examine her but I’m not really paying attention because I know its too late, she’s already gone… until I hear her take a great gasping breath and break into tears. “Oh fuck that hurts…” she breaks off and as I look around in amazement one of them rolls her onto her side as she begins to retch, vomiting up a small amount of liquid with a wrenching effort and dry heaving for a minute.
The arms that had comforted me before are now holding me back as I try desperately to get to her side.
“You have to let them take care of her. All you can do right now is get in the way. Let the medics do their job.” By this time paramedics are hustling into the room with a gurney and they quickly transfer her to it and run her out to their ambulance, pulling away almost immediately with siren wailing.
The firemen are beginning to pack up and get out of the way of the police who are now cuffing the unconscious pimp and yanking him back to awareness and his feet none too gently. For some reason I feel safe in Theo’s arms which for me is a little beyond unusual. I usually start at “Don’t Touch Me!” and get a bit bristly from there and as a result it has been a very long time since I have had a hug.
The giant with the metal leg continues to hold me as we are questioned outside the room by the police. At some point I see a familiar face and try to pull away, to be held back gently.
“Bonita! Please tell me you’ve got enough to lock that nasty little piece of shit up for a long time!”
“The rest of his life, however long that is. They don’t like pedophiles in there and they like pedophile pimps even less.” Her dark silken face spit into something that might charitably be called a smile, in the same way that a tiger may be said to smile at its dinner.
“We almost had a murder charge to add. If you’d gotten here even 2 or 3 minutes later it would have been too late. If the fire crews hadn’t started carrying Narcan it would have been too late. As it is, she’ll live but she’s strung out really badly and right now has the headache of a lifetime.” She reaches out and grasps my hand gently.
“You’ve saved another one. I don’t know how you do it, how you manage to help so many others when I’ve seen you ride that jagged edge yourself, seen you struggle with your own demons. You might not be a believer but I don’t know anyone who is a better Christian than you are.”
I can’t deal with that. I don’t deserve praise for almost failing. I don’t deserve to have people think things like that about me.
Suddenly her warm regard and the arms that have held and comforted me are stifling and I have to get away. A quick wriggle and pivot and I’m over the railing, clearing the hood of a parked police cruiser by a hair, down the alley, down another alley, running until I run out of breath, taking crazy risks crossing streets choked with fast-moving cars… But none of it catches my attention.
I’m lost inside my mind, a memory within a memory, being beaten endlessly…
Theo pulls me out of my flashback. I love and hate that particular memory… it is always just as vivid, just as potent as it was the first time around. As he wipes my eyes with his thumbs he is holding my face cradled in his hands and he kisses me over and over.
“Its ok Angel. I’ve got you. I love you. You’re safe. I’m here.” He keeps saying the same things, repeating them until he can tell from my focus on him and my response to his kiss that I’ve pulled out of it. This isn’t the first time we’ve been down this road together, soothed each other from the all consuming nightmares…
He pulled me to him and hugged me gently, knowing that a tight hug right now would just send me into a claustro-freakout. A short eternity later I think I’m all cried out but I can’t manage to pull my head away from Theo’s chest.
We’re standing out in the hallway and I can hear Mel cry out as another contraction hits, can hear the murmur of Rob and Dahl’s voices soothing and encouraging her.
The combination makes me smile. I’m so glad for all of them, that they have finally stopped dancing around each other and become the family that others saw long before they could.
It takes me a moment to realize that my family has seen me lose it so thoroughly and I can feel my face heating. It is embarrassing to lose control of myself that way, to show my crazy so clearly…
Theo can feel me shrinking a little against him and he turns while still holding me so I can see them. They are looking at me but not with the looks I expect to see. My sister looks distressed and like she wants to give me a hug but on all of their faces I see a knowing look.
Dad speaks up. “It helps to talk about it.”
“What?”
“It helps with the flashbacks. There were a lot of years gone before I started to learn that…” I know that haunted expression, I’ve seen it on the faces of many damaged people.
Beau nods in agreement and Michelle joins him a moment later. I can hear and feel Theo’s hum of affirmation.
“Okay but not right now.” Mel punctuates the moment by crying out yet again.
For the next couple of hours time seems to telescope, moving incredibly quickly until suddenly a thready wail follows on the heels of a screaming moan. A few minutes later Vinnie emerges and gestures Theo and I into the room.
Mel is holding a tiny bundle to her breast and I can see an adorable little face concentrating fully on the giving nipple. A completely incongruous thought runs through my mind. ‘Its true, all babies look like Winston Churchill…’
Mel motions us closer. “Angel and Theo, meet Angelique Maureen Hayes, your first goddaughter.”
I’m completely stunned. I mean the Godparent thing I expected but the name? I can tell that Theo is equally nonplussed and he clearly understands that Maureen is a feminine form of Maurice.
She chuckles tiredly at us. “You should see the expressions on your faces… By the way Rob agrees with me.”
My brain still hasn’t quite restarted so I just continue to stare. Theo regains the power of speech first.
“Um, what?”
She gets a little more serious but not much. “About the names of course… and about the other thing… but something has to happen to us both before that kicks in, now.” She grasps Rob’s hand with her free one as her regard turns to him.
He is clearly lost in wonder, his gaze alternating between mother and child and the intensity of his love shining in his eyes.
“What other thing?” Theo whispers into my ear.
This isn’t the right time to continue that so I give him an “I’ll tell you later” look and he nods, understanding. A moment later Vinnie taps Theo on the shoulder and pulls us both outside.
“The delivery was problem free, they are both healthy and strong. Just so you can tell everyone, she was 9 pounds 7 ounces. Right now she needs to be checked over more thoroughly as does little Angelique. That will take a few hours to complete and she will be asleep for a good while so right now the best thing you can do is to go home. Rob is going to stay with her and I will be here too, Mahindra is making sure all the paperwork is being taken care of. One of us will call you when she’s ready for visitors again, ok?”
He has furrowed his brow in mock severity, making his eyebrows look like warring caterpillars trying to take over his face. That look never fails to draw a grin from me and this time is no exception.
“Okay but if anything happens call?”
“Of course I will. Now before you go, why don’t you introduce me to your family?”
He has always been really perceptive but I didn’t expect him to nail that one. “How’d you know?”
“Well I talked to Mel and heard about the whole reunion. Then I see a guy who is about the right age and has the same chin and a woman the right age to be your sister who looks a bit like you. The only one I had to guess about was the guy with them and from the way they were standing it was clear they were together so I’m guessing husband?”
“I never realized I had his chin…”
“Well it’s not as blunt or scarred up but yes.” My sister speaks up. “Now who is this gentleman?”
I indicate Vinnie to my family.
“Meet Dr Vincenzo Massetti, one of the most selfless people it has been my privilege to know.”
I indicate my family in turn. “My sister Michelle and her husband Beau Lafayette. Our father George MacCloud.”
He shakes each hand in turn, telling them how nice it is to meet them then stands back to regard us as a group.
“I am sorry to hear of the loss you all have suffered but I’m glad to see that it has brought you back together.” He looks at me. “I expect an invitation to dinner soon so I can truly get to know them.”
I know he is only half joking on that score, he knows he is always welcome.
“Okay but plan on spending the night! No way you’re getting a cab down there and you won’t be fit to drive home!”
I’m only half joking too, Vinnie has been on a bender with Paul and I a couple of times and the two can pretty much match each other’s capacity for booze.
On that note we take our leave and make our way out to the street, scooping up an emotionally exhausted Dahl on the way. As they are all loading into the small SUV I realize how tight that is going to be with me in it too and reach a decision.
With a sense of relief I inform them that I’m going to take South High back in and before they can say anything I’m already skimming down the outside from the 5th floor where they parked.
South High in is different from the outbound route in several spots including its terminus and includes a fair amount of climbing so it really isn’t a time saver. The run gives me time and space within my own head and I really need that right now. This past week has been extremely stressful and I think its beginning to catch up with me.
I fall into a sort of trance as I go, completely focused on the now, the interplay of muscle and bone pushing me even further. It is a runner’s high but it is also a sort of meditation that allows… demands that I push myself beyond my limits.
In this mind-space time is not even a thing, it is an eternal now, almost a mystic connection with the universe. A tiny portion of my mind effortlessly finds the best possible path and it takes me a moment to realize that I have veered off course. On the heels of that realization comes another.
I hear screams…
Another jump, handhold, climb, jump again and as I ghost over the space between buildings I see the source of the screams being brutally raped. The music that plays in my head, the meter to my movement, becomes sharper, more defined, more insistent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a1zU0yxk6c
(Start at 10:20)
Thought doesn’t enter into the picture as that tiny route-finding portion of my mind shifts and expands, to become something else, something much harder.
Time to dance.
There are 4 of them, they look unarmed… Bouncing between window ledges I rapidly descend and drop into a half crouch right next the man on top of her. Shift my weight slightly and a palm strike at the base of his skull… not hard enough to sever his spinal cord but definitely enough to put him out instantly. He collapses onto her and I turn to see 3 very shocked looking men and one starting to reach into his jacket.
From this angle I can clearly see what I could not from above… he is carrying a gun and his hand is headed for it. Somehow I am not worried, it feels like I have plenty of time as I step forward and lash out hitting him with a toe-kick to the muscles on his forearm, hard enough to sink in between the bones.
The blow effectively paralyses his hand. The handgun he has managed to pull from its hiding place clatters to the ground as I follow up with a stamping kick to his solar plexus, knocking him back against the wall where he folds around himself trying to breathe.
Suddenly I am yanked off balance as an arm snakes around my neck and begins to squeeze. Jump up and back, throwing my full weight toward the stinking breath until I can feel him shift his weight toward me to keep his balance. Then curl forward, holding the arm around my neck, planting one foot and shifting just so again, push with the hip as he rolls over me and a stomp to his forehead causing his head to bounce off the slimy pavement.
The remaining man has pulled out a knife and is already beginning a slashing attack with it.
Lean away and he misses by a hair but he does catch the material of my top and creates a long tear. Damn I really loved that one!
He goes for another sweeping slash and I step into him, curling the knife wielding arm into my own and I end up with my back to him, almost as though he is holding me. Elbow strike, not too hard, right into the top of his throat causing his jaw to slam shut. Shift grip on the arm and heave and I can hear a nasty ripping sound as his elbow is suddenly backwards. Dance away, as he still tries to go after me with a gargled scream of hatred. Stamping kick to the side of his knee, whirl around his back and adding a gratuitous rabbit punch to his left kidney, repeat on the other knee.
He crumbles to the ground, just beginning to feel the agony of his destroyed joints.
Back to rapey bastard number 2… who has almost managed to reach his gun with the other hand. Not as much of a worry as I thought, the safety is still on so I have a good second more to work with… an eternity.
Quick half step and slam a heel into the junction at his shoulder, hitting a nerve cluster with pure battering force rather than a precision strike. I can feel beneath my foot as his shoulder is dislocated. Something rips and I can see his collarbone pop free on one end, sticking out obscenely.
The 2 conscious men are beginning to scream in agony. A quick moment to ensure there are no more surprises awaiting me and to gather the weapons they had carried. 2 guns, a switchblade, a survival knife and a high end stunpen.
Just as I have collected the weapons into a pile something hits me from behind, causing a flare of intense pain that registers along with the battering report of a handgun. The sound seems to echo and is unbearably, crashingly loud.
Kevlar is great stuff but it just isn’t capable of fully absorbing the impact of a bullet. That’s going to leave a nasty mark and it feels like I have a cracked rib but I can’t take time for that as I throw myself forward and to the side, reaching into my pack as I roll. A handle seems to fall into my grip and I pull, relaxing slightly to allow my fingers to skim down and grasp the point of the blade.
Twist and jump to the side again as he continues to fire. Full overhand throw and the long screwdriver spins through the air, embedding itself in his throat. The firing stops and his hand opens, grabbing at the handle and in the process throwing his gun to the side.
“Don’t!” I snap at him as he grasps the handle and I can tell he wants to pull it out. He stops with a look of confusion.
“If you pull that out, you die right now! Leave it in and you live!”
I’m already running toward him as he renews his grasp. No time… Jump, clip him in the temple with my knee and he goes down in a boneless slither. Fortunately I don’t have to do anything more, he has managed to fall onto his side in such a way that his head is below the wound so the blood will come out of his mouth instead of going into his lungs.
A quick run to the mouth of the alley to check for more.
Seeing it all clear I run back to where the woman is still pinned beneath her unconscious assailant. Her screaming has trailed off into sobs and I notice her phone lying beside her head. Picking it up I quickly call 911 and lay the phone back on the ground. Her GPS locator signal will give the police her location and the sounds of agony and fear filling the alley will ensure a fast response. Just to make sure I take another moment, reaching into my pack again and pulling out a package of industrial strength zip ties. One around each wrist, one around each ankle, then three more ties to join wrists and ankles together and pulling wrists and ankles together behind their backs.
The man who had been actively engaged in the rape when I stumbled upon them is bound before I roll him away from her. Checking her over quickly to see how severe her injuries are I can tell she’s going to be bruised quite badly and there is some blood at her crotch but not a large amount.
Realizing she will be physically okay I take a moment to smooth a graying strand of hair away from her eye. “You’ll be ok Maam. The police are on the way and they can’t hurt you anymore. You just remember to testify against them when the time comes. You never saw me, OK?”
She gives a tiny nod, trying to get herself under control yet unable to stop crying. As she looks away for a moment I see an opportunity and run more deeply into the alleyway, a dumpster obscuring me from her sight. This particular alley joins with another and I round the corner as fast as I can, running up the opposing wall and pushing off, twist, window ledge under my fingers and another leap, another twist and grab, ascending until I grasp the edge of a rooftop and pull myself over it to lie on the slightly sticky surface. Even using my legs almost exclusively to power up the climb each jarring movement sent a flare of agony through my back and shoulder
Just a bare moment, I can’t stop moving right now or I’m going to lock up. Already I can tell I’m not going to be doing anything particularly energetic as the effort of rolling to my feet sends a scream of pain flaring across the whole left side of my upper back. Down fire stairs and out into yet another alley, pull up a grate and bite back another searing bolt as I pull it back into place behind me. I’m not far away from West Low so I head in that direction. For some reason I barely take notice of the extremely confined space as I make my way through the tunnels, emerging just as my family enters from South Low.
I do my best to hide the increasing discomfort as I walk over and Theo wraps me in a tight hug. Still I can’t help tensing as his embrace causes the pain to ramp up another notch.
“What’s wrong?” He murmurs into my hair.
“Nothing, just banged up a little…” I feel guilty for being less than truthful with him so I say it into his chest.
For a moment I think he’s going to take it at face value but I feel him slip my pack off my shoulders and reach down to release the waist strap. Strong fingers probe at my back and I can’t help a small whimper escaping when they find the area.
“OK, let’s take a look and see.” He led me over to our tent, the others trailing along. Once inside he sat me down and peeled my top off. I sat there thankful for a bra as he probed and muttered to himself. I heard him mutter back and forth with Beau behind me.
“So you weren’t going to tell me you got shot twice?”
Ah crap.
“Once and no, it hit my pack so no worries.”
He comes around to face me, my pack and blouse dangling from his hands and I can still feel Beau’s gentle fingers touching my back, smearing something on it.
“And this?” He holds up my top, pointing at the tear that slashes almost completely across the front just above my navel.
He shoves the pack at me, completely unsealed so the front hangs open and you can see the holes in the padding over the Kevlar backing. There are 2 of them.
“Oh…” is all I can say for a moment.
Then he shows me a picture of my back. There are two angry red circular marks that look like they are on the way to becoming monumental bruises just above my bra strap, about 4 inches and 6 inches left of my spine.
“What the hell did you get into?” he demands, grasping my chin in one hand and forcing my face up to look at him.
I try for a moment to remain defiant but whatever Beau has spread on my back seems to be easing the pain. Without it I find I can’t manage to keep my walls up and the whole story comes rushing out.
Finally I run down and look up when Theo wipes tears I wasn’t aware of shedding from my face. His eyes shine with the closeness of tears and a look of pure love.
“That was really stupid, you know that, right?”
“Yeah I sorta figured that out about halfway through but it was a bit late to stop by then…” I deadpanned at him.
I hear my dad chuckle behind me.
“Yep, that’s my girl alright! She’s always been one to jump off a cliff and worry about whether there’s water at the bottom on the way down…”
That draws a snerk from Michelle. I can’t really argue all that much, it is mostly true.
“I couldn’t just wait and let them keep doing that… and it didn’t look like they were armed from up top. The whole thing was already FUBAR when I got there.”
Beau is still poking around back there but all I can feel is pressure.
“What did you use Beau? That’s some pretty awesome painkiller!” I’m beginning to realize I have a bit of euphoria going on. Maybe its the letdown from such a highly intense 20 seconds and the ensuing flight, maybe its just having my family around me and knowing they all tacitly approve of what I have done.
“Just a little something a buddy cooked up back in my service days…” he trails off.
More than just a little euphoria by now. I’m actually really stoned in a way I’ve never been before.
“Well yeah, but doooood… Whats init? I’m gettin seeerious fucktarded here…” I’m not kidding either, I’m developing a case of the loops and I honestly can’t tell if the weird wobbly perspective is due to my head moving or not.
I’m pretty sure he looks a little guilty and mumbles something but I wouldn’t testify to anything just now.
“What?”
“I said it’s a modified speedball with DMSO.”
“Whoah…” Funny how my mind seems perfectly clear and at the same time I feel energized and yet more high than I’ve ever been… uncomfortably so in a way. I will admit I’m feeling absolutely no pain.
A speedball is a mixture of cocaine and heroin. DMSO allows substances to cross the skin barrier into the bloodstream. It is one of the more efficient ways of getting something into the bloodstream quickly, the first being injection and the next two being inhalation and snorting.
“Modified?”
“Yeah… give it another minute. Right now you’re only feeling the coke which acts as a local anesthetic with a little euphoric kick and the heroin but there is also a nice dose of fentanyl to make sure any pain is gone and enough crank to offset the debilitating effects of the other drugs along with a broad spectrum antibiotic.”
He’s not kidding either, as he’s talking I can feel the other stuff kicking in hard. I’m still soaringly stoned but my mind is clear and my perception and movements have gained a razor edge. I’m also extremely aroused…
“Wow, this stuff could be incredibly addictive…”
“Yes it could, that’s why we didn’t share it except with a few others we trusted. It helps a lot when you’ve gotta E&E with wounded.” I can see a ghost of pain cross his face and decide to let it drop.
“Thank you.”
“What?”
“I’ve never actually been shot before… that seriously hurt!”
“Just wait a couple of days, it hasn’t really started hurting yet.” He smirks at me.
“Oh yay…”
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave enough Kick with Theo to get you through the worst of it.” He catches my gaze with his and looks into my eyes. “Only if you give me your word you will not self-medicate. I wouldn’t even trust myself with this stuff its so addictive.”
He holds out his hand driving home just how serious he is about this. I’ve seen enough of the pain and destruction addiction can wreak to more than agree with him as I shake his hand firmly.
“My honor… Brother.”
Wow, I didn’t expect to say that but it feels right. Again a ghost of pain flits across his eyes but I can tell it is an old familiar ache and one tempered with happy memories.
“You had a sister?”
He turns away and takes a moment to slip the glove off his other hand, being extremely careful to keep any of the ointment from touching his skin as he slips it into a zip baggie.
“I sprayed plaskin over it so it won’t rub off. Just a dot on a fingertip spread between both wounds should be good for 8 to 10 hours and after maybe 5 hours you’ll be able to eat and sleep. Don’t mix it with anything. No other painkillers, no alcohol, not even a joint. You’ve got enough for a couple of days and I’ll bring more.”
“Beau?”
“Yeah?” his voice is husky with emotion.
“Look at me.”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out as a gusty sigh, squaring his shoulders as he turns.
“Alexandra Marie. My big sister. She was lost in a hurricane when I was 12 and she was 15. The water took her… it was so dark and I just barely managed to hold onto the roof vent…”
His bayou drawl has gotten much thicker and I can hear a little boy still crying for the loss.
“I blamed myself for a long time. That’s why I went pararescue… I wanted to save lives in the most direct possible fashion, try to keep someone else from that same feeling of loss…”
He looks into my eyes finally.
“I had a sister… and now I have a new sister.” Turning to Theo and dad. “And a brother and another dad! I always wanted a brother but two dads? That might be a bit much…”
By now he is smiling and I can tell that the shadow has lifted.
“You think you got it bad? I just acquired two sons!”
Music by Anoushka Shankar
“Well you always wanted one so you don’t exactly get to bitch at a surplus!”
I can see his face begin to cloud over a little and I wonder, not for the first time, what hides beneath that overcast. I suppose there’s no time like the present and anyway it’ll serve as a distraction so I don’t get the third degree just yet.
Theo’s “Debriefings” consist of a comprehensive movement by movement reenactment and critique. Really useful but way more than I want to deal with right now. I don’t think I’m physically up to it anyway… I might not be in pain but I’m getting pretty stiff already.
“What is it?”
Dad looked away for a moment then seemed to brace himself as he turned back and swept Michelle and I into his gaze.
“You have a brother... Well a half-brother. And maybe another sibling… I don’t know. I never saw Tuyen after that mission and I could never find her…”
The overcast is turning into a maelstrom of sadness in his eyes.
“Tuyen?”
He took a deep breath and exhaled noisily, making his moustache flutter.
“My first love… my first wife. Not as far as the navy was concerned but definitely so in the eyes of her family. We had a son and she thought she might have been pregnant the last time I saw her.”
My sister and I exchange a look of bafflement and she took over.
“How did we not know this? Did Mom know?”
“I never told her. She always felt inadequate because she could only have 2 kids so I figured it was better she not know. Besides, I didn’t meet her until almost 20 years later and I had accepted I would never be able to find them. It was another almost 20 years until your sister came along, then you and there just never was a right time to bring it up.” A grimace twisted his features.
“With the way wives and children who got left behind were treated after the war I could tell myself they were probably dead and I wanted so badly to forget everything about those years that I managed to convince myself I had forgotten them too.”
We all sat silently for a moment, digesting the massive implications of his revelation.
“So… looks like it time for me to go diving.”
All but Theo give me a puzzled look and Beau speaks everyone’s thought.
“Diving?”
“Diving into an ocean of information. If they are out there I should be able to find them. I need full names, any other info you remember including family names etc.” Beau gently restrains me as I try to rise.
“First you eat something. You haven’t eaten at all since this morning and you’ve done 2 heavy runs and had a major fight. I know you don’t want to eat right now but that’s the drugs. Your body needs fuel or it’ll start eating itself.”
His touch feels like heaven and I really want to just take some time to luxuriate in that but he’s right. When I go diving I tend to lose track of everything around me, I forget to eat or drink and sometimes I realize I’ve even forgotten to breathe for a while.
“Okay, food it is then. I wonder what the Trips have cooked up.”
“Hobo Jungle Stew?” I can hear the teasing note in dad’s voice.
“Right, say that in front of The Trips and I won’t defend you…”
“The Trips?”
“Carmen, Collette, and Cindy. They took over the kitchen so Dahl could be with her family.”
It feels so odd to say that… even more so than it did for me. Dahl had been thrown in the street by her parents because of her transgendered nature and their irrational hatred. She wound up a heroin addicted underage prostitute. After that horrific scene in the hotel room, she had withdrawn… in more than one sense. She cried for months, literally. Not much later I found her paternal grandparents(The other set had died long before) and they made it clear that as far as they were concerned, they had a grandson.
Rehab wasn’t an option for her… that led directly to the horrors of the FosterCare system. The other option was Juvie and she chose to run from both of those to the street. I can’t blame her for that, I ran away from circumstances less severe than hers. She came to us because she didn’t want to do what she had done before and knew we offered work for the community with dignity. More than that, she knew that she would be respected for herself.
Since then she has been another of the many pillars of our little community. She is a driven young woman who has become one of the finer chefs I’ve ever had the privilege to compliment. Our community is going to miss her sorely when she goes to her fully paid scholarship at Le Cordon Bleu.
I’ve kept it to myself because there just wasn’t a right time to say it… The past week has been so intense…
“Dahl had pork, chicken and mustard green raviolis. She had that planned for a week or more. I don’t know what the rest was but I trust the Trips.” I looked over to my dad, catching his eyes with mine.
“This is so far beyond Hobo Jungle Stew you wouldn’t believe it. We all pool our earnings to support the community and because of that we all eat well. Those with special requirements, be it gluten or lactose intolerance or allergies can always find something delicious to eat. Diabetics and even vegans on a macrobiotic diet can find good food.”
“We aren’t about just surviving, we are about building a community that truly cares for the least of us. We try to take the best of all religions and integrate it with the best of no religion… a place for all who need to be here.”
“I try to live the values you wanted to teach us dad… tried to do something that would make you proud…”
Wow, that conversation took an unpleasant turn rather quickly. I looked down to hide my emotions and found my chin being forced upward by a hand horny with callouses.
“Baby Girl, look at me.” A little flare of irritation at the imperative tone in his voice ran through me as I met his eyes.
“I can’t imagine being more proud of you. Your mother and I always were proud of both our daughters… we just really sucked at showing it.”
He reached out to Michelle and pulled us both into a hug.
“I wish she could have told you herself but it didn’t happen that way… so I have to tell you for her. Meeting you both now, as adults who made your own way in the world… she would have been amazed. You managed to do something we couldn’t and stop the legacy of abuse we wanted so badly not to pass on ourselves.”
“That was our fondest wish for both of you even while we were abusing you so horribly… but you have gone so far beyond anything we ever dared to hope for. Proud doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel and how your mother would have felt.”
“I’m honored to be able to say you two fantastic young women are my daughters.” His voice was gruff with emotion.
“This” he gestured around “I don’t even know how to process this… so much not what I thought I knew about street people, about trannie” He quickly chopped that word off. “Transwomen, sorry…”
He took a moment to gather his thoughts.
“In my mind the only thing I could see was the bad stories, hooking, being abused, maybe beaten to death by an angry john… I couldn’t see how you could survive like you are, even with everything you knew. It never even crossed my mind to hope until I started learning and then I did but I still feared for you…”
“I started to think about you like Tuyen… Someone dear to me completely lost because I wasn’t good enough to save them… And then there you were. Gaudiest Angel I’ve ever seen…. I swear I think I sprained an eyeball!”
He barked out a tight laugh.
“How the hell do you manage to get your hair to do that anyway?”
“Time, patience, lots of product… oh and a few strands of optic fiber with tunable LEDs at one end.”
I clicked my jaw in a specific pattern, causing the lights to come up in an inverted whirlpool pattern, shifting to a seemingly random ripple effect and segueing into a pulse that echoed the rhythm I was tapping out with one toe.
“I’ll have to show you the rest later. You can’t really get the full effect unless its mostly dark.”
His jaw had dropped open and he stared openly at my head while I modulated my rhythm, switching up beats and timing. I was shaking my head just the tiniest bit, enough to make the upstanding tendrils wave slightly in counterpoint.
“That I’ve got to see…”
“We’ve got a gig scheduled for Friday night, you’ll get to see the whole thing. You’ll either like it or have a seizure.”
“She’s not kidding, we have to get everyone in the audience to sign a paper saying they have been notified that the lights may cause seizures. Toffee wouldn’t let us play otherwise. They all get airsick bags too.”
“Toffee?”
“Cool little underground bar/rave that opens in a different place every night. Heath likes to give bands a chance to show their chops. Sounds shady but it isn’t, his dad owns one of the major local commercial real estate firms and he pays sky high licensing fees to whoever needs it.”
“Wait, the bar named Toffee is owned by a guy named Heath?”
“Yeah, his dad’s lawyers thought there was too much risk of legal action if they called it Heath’s Bar…”
Its an old joke for those in the know but to my family it is fresh and a short bark of laughter from dad is answered with a snerk from my sister and an single eyebrow raise from me.
“Fascinating...”
At that point they couldn’t hold it anymore and burst out laughing
“That was so bad we’re gonna have to start calling you T’Pew cause you are seriously stinking the place up!”
“Hey all I did was the Spock thing, Heath’s Bar is real!”
This time it was my sister with the eyebrow thing and a “Most illogical…”
After that round of laughter calmed down I continued.
“You’ll like Heath. He joined the Corps on his eighteenth birthday, against his father’s wishes. Green Beret. Made it through a tour in the sandbox until the very last day when his unit had to call in danger close strikes. Somehow things got mixed up and they dropped on his unit… He was the only survivor and that just barely. Lost both legs below the knee and his right arm just below the elbow, crushed by the building that fell on him.”
“Wow…” from Michelle, silence from Dad.
“Hey where’s Beau?” I looked around.
“Right here” came a rich baritone from behind me, immediately followed by a plate with some kind of grilled sandwich on it.
I took it from him and sat it down in my lap, staring at it with a complete lack of desire.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt less like eating and not been sick.”
“I know, that’s why I had that nice girl… Carmen? Collette? Cindy? There were three of them and I think they were deliberately trying to confuse me…”
“They were” I snerked.
He plowed on. “That’s why I had her - them make you a Patty Melt. Trust me, it’s the only food I actually liked when I was cranked up. Pure Tweaker fuel.”
“It does smell pretty good.” I inhaled the aroma of hot… I’m not sure what but I was beginning to want to find out.
A bite and crunchy toasted bread scraped my gums in just that perfect way that a good grilled cheese sandwich does, followed by a burst of buttery flavor and then an assault on the senses… meat of some kind, and cheese, and onions..
I had to moan just a bit…
“Patty Melt?” I got out through my little foodgasm.
“Yeah like Awful Waffle?”
I shook my head and took another bite. This piece of awesomeness didn’t have anything to do with waffles…
“You mean to tell me you’ve never been to Waffle House?”
A moment to swallow. “Oh that… no, I’ve never been there. Too far out to be worth the trouble of getting there. If this is the kind of food they have I’ve been missing out!”
“You have to try it at the end of a night bar hopping. One of those and a pile of hashbrowns, scattered, smothered, covered and chunked. Purest ambrosia…”
“Hashbrowns what?”
“Scattered, smothered, covered and chunked. Means they scatter em on the grill instead of using a ringmold and they mix em with onions and ham chunks, then cover the whole thing with cheese.”
I’d finished the first half of the patty melt and was sitting there staring at the other half with a complete lack of hunger even though my mind was still yearning for the taste.
“You’ve got to finish the rest, your metabolism is kinda supercharged right now and you don’t exactly have any spare fat to burn. Dip it in the catsup, not too much…”
He was right, that did the trick and I was able to finish the second half eating much more slowly. I was already starting to head into a diving fugue and the conversation went on around me, receding to a murmur in my ears as I planned.
Suddenly a display filled my vision. HUD on, check. Tactile keypads engaged. All systems online, link speed 1.8 gb/sec, 25.9 burst.
The rest is basically impossible to describe except to another diver. Physical sensations recede except for the keypads, thought becomes something different and the universe of the web seems to take on a coherent detail you just can’t quite grasp outside of that state. Time becomes something different, of value only in microsecond slices.
2,952,081,838,931 microseconds later(A little over 8 hours) I pulled out and realized I had to pee, really badly. Trying to move brought a flare of agony over my back and I almost fell on my face from the stiffness in my legs but that need was overwhelming.
I managed to get to the toilets and did the needful but getting off the toilet and getting myself rearranged was an exercise in economical movement and pain management. Someone had put a wrap around my shoulders and I pulled it off to see the damage.
Wow… That looked really nasty… angry bruising reached out around the two wounds for several inches, covering that whole half of my upper back. A moment’s effort made me admit that I wasn’t going to be able to reach around and feel for myself so I managed to shrug back into the wrap and make my way to the kitchen in search of leftovers.
There was as usual a pot of something staying warm in the slow cooker and I sat down with a bowl of vegetarian barley soup that was both simple and complex. The slight hint of lavender in it served to calm my mind a little as I breathed in the aromatic steam and savored a spoonful.
The space is silent except for the faint sounds of sleepers. Tents might provide visual privacy but they aren’t so good for sound. Listening for a moment I can hear a familiar snore faintly buzzing from just inside South Low.
I’m glad Titus came in. Some nights he can’t manage to sleep indoors at all but when he can he sleeps in the nook just inside, his furkid Dolly sprawled on top of him with her head nestled into the crook of his shoulder and snoring in his ear.
I can hear Theo get up and walk in my direction and the sound of that compensator makes me wince. I’ve really got to deal with that thing, it sounds like he’s stepping on a mouse.
“You okay?” he heads straight for the slow cooker, scooping up bowl and spoon on the way.
“I don’t know… I’m still trying to take it all in. I found them.”
“Alive?”
“Mostly…”
“Mostly?” He winces a little as he takes an unwary spoonful of soup.
I examine my bowl carefully, delaying as I try to figure out how to say it. A single pitiless grain of barley returns my hopeful gaze.
“Tuyen and her family made it to the US and she did have another child. ”
“And?” he took my bowl and busied himself refilling it.
“Dad is registered as the father. She died at 3 months old, what they used to call ‘Crib Death’…”
My throat was trying to tighten with emotion.
“How can I be grieving for someone I’ve never known?” choked out as the dam broke and I felt tears run down my face.
Theo didn’t say anything, just took my bowl from nerveless hands and gently held me until I managed to pull myself together. He eased me back onto my camp chair and handed me the bowl.
“Finish your soup. You need to eat before I dose you again.”
He cut off my attempted protest and went over to the cooktop, producing sizzling noises as I played with my spoon and the rapidly cooling bowl, trying to interest myself in another bite.
Strong ebony hands took the bowl from my grasp and pulled me over to the table, sliding a pile of… something… in front of me.
“Wow, this looks like a grilled ham and cheese on French toast with an egg and cheese on top. How many calories are in this thing?”
“About 1500 the way I usually make em but I didn’t take the time to make a béchamel for it so maybe 1300?”
“So you want me to get fat?”
“I love you however thin or fat you are woman, now eat your Croque Madame!”
The monstrosity in front of me bulged with ham slices, melted cheese dripping everywhere but there was an obvious place to start. The egg stared back up at me, perfectly cooked white and liquid yolk demanding the intrusion of a knife.
I cut off a corner making sure to get a good mixture of everything and then used the knife to tease just the slightest hole in the yolk, luscious liquid coating the edge of crust with promise as I pressed my bite gently to it.
Theo had made one for himself too but was watching with interest as I raised the fork to my lips. Silken yolk mixed with slightly sweet toast and sharp cheese while the ham gave it a slightly salty tang and I closed my eyes, savoring each chew.
A drip of golden yellow liquid tried to escape but Theo reached over and scooped it off with a blunt finger, raising it to my lips. I swallowed and then suckled it off his finger, making a little noise as I did.
“Wow…”
“Wow…” Theo echoed, shifting in his chair and trying to be subtle about adjusting himself.
“This is soooo awesome…” I purred.
“God that’s hot” he mumbled at the same time.
“Well let it cool down a bit!”
“I haven’t noticed you cooling down yet!”
My face(And other places) blazed as I realized he hadn’t been talking about the food. That someone feels like that about me has never ceased to amaze me and I haven’t quite learned how to deal with it.
I silently applied myself to my Croque Madame and was a little astonished as I mopped the plate with the last bit of crust, sweeping up the remains of yolk and cheese. Thankfully my soup had vanished into Theo’s bowl and been devoured because there was no way I could manage even a tiny bit more.
He took a moment to wash our dishes, setting them to dry in the rack. I watched the interplay of muscles in his back and that fire from a few moments ago began to glow a little more brightly. Unfortunately it was competing with increasing pain and I couldn’t find a comfortable position as I shifted in my seat.
“Come on, time to dose you again” he said over my shoulder, drying his hands on a dishtowel.
“Beau said 10 hours.”
Theo muttered to himself.
“What?”
“He said 8 to 10 hours and that was conservative. He doesn’t know your burn rate so he was thinking about a typical 140 pound woman’s dosage not realizing you are nowhere near typical. I’m betting it started wearing off a couple hours ago and you ignored it?”
I gave half a shrug in response, the other half didn’t seem worth the effort.
“Dunno, I was diving…”
“Yeah well what you’re doing right now is crashing.”
He swept me up into his arms and gently carried me back to our tent. I was beginning to feel an enormous lethargy overtake me and didn’t resist as he undressed me and lay me face down on the bed. Gentle fingers scrubbed away the plaskin from earlier and made the broken flesh of each wound sting viciously.
That simply capped what was turning into some serious agony from my back but I was finding it a bit difficult to breathe as each lungful caused another stab.
Soothing fingers on my back and the pain began to recede on the surface. Another few moments and the tightness in my chest loosened, the same initial euphoria kicking in and being followed by that awesome rush of high and focus. I heard Theo remove the glove and just felt the light touch of the plaskin spraying over the wounds.
A moment later his bulk settled beside me and strong fingers began to knead the muscles in my lower back, soothing away tension I hadn’t even realized was there and making little frissons of pleasure echo in my nerves.
Oh right, the other effect…
With the pain knocked back(I realized it wasn’t completely gone) I was able to turn upwards to face him and marveled for a second at faint slanting light, the way it fell across the crags of his face, caught on a sharp little edge of scar tissue on his brow and struggled free to fall onto my bare skin with a palpable caress.
“I love you…” rumbled through his chest as he looked into my eyes and lowered his face to kiss me, smothering my reply.
Later I lay beside his deeply breathing bulk with my mind racing again. How would I tell dad about his daughter and the rest… the saga still ongoing?
Undercurrents 8
I lay there pondering, mind at Warp 9. He had to know… and I had to bring them together but should I tell him first?
For a few moments I enjoyed a wild fantasy where I took him to her restaurant and the two immediately reunited but then the dream went south as she was only trying to hurt him for leaving her…
I turned away from reverie and began to game the situation using everything I knew about both of them to run series of variations, possible major break points, reactions and counter reactions… That occupied an hour and at the end I was left chasing my tail.
Sleep was out of the question thanks to the drugs so I stiffly levered myself out of bed leaving Theo to his rest. Getting dressed normally was equally out of the question so I managed to get into a comfortable kaftan that fell to my ankles and took the nip out of the air. My distressed bunny slippers stared forward with faces distorted in a comical bunny scream and wrapped fuzzy warmth around my feet.
I usually wear fairly tight clothes so on occasion its nice to have something that doesn’t cling to every curve. No underwear was nice too, even if it did give me that nibbling sense of being wrong as I felt what still dangled from my crotch.
That wasn’t as bad as it usually was for me, it truly was a nibbling rather than being ripped to death by dogs… I wondered briefly if knowing that in 2 months I would be whole was responsible for that easing angst. Whatever the cause I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I’d been meaning to do a few upgrades on my gear and just hadn’t had the time. That would give me something I could actually fix to work on instead of running around in circles. First physical comfort…
A quick moment later I had removed my ocular displays and replaced them with the newest version. They looked like soft contact lenses and they could serve that function but they could also do a great many other things including acting as a HUD. The newer version allowed projection outward as well as inward, allowing me to do all sorts of fun things with my eyes. That should amp up the lightshow Friday…
I let the factory install run before I examined the code and began tweaking it. It looked like there was a lot of capability locked off, fun things like light amplification and magnification. The notes hidden in the code suggested that those capabilities were not yet stable and after some examination I could see why.
They had tried to make it monolithic, all self contained and although in some situations that could be a good thing whoever wrote this was obviously into industrial control systems. I unlocked the magnification segment and tried to run it only to be treated to wild zooms in perspective, in and out. Light amplification gave similar results and the issue became clear to me.
This sort of control system might have worked perfectly well for something that only served as a display but this was too fuzzy, requiring the software to determine the intent of the wearer and respond with set increments. When it was unable to achieve the precision needed it began to heterodyne wildly and caused the drastic seesawing I’d seen.
I got into dissecting the code, removing some of the unneeded bloat, adding a line here or there, a few new subroutines. By the time I had the light amplification stabilized the faint grey of dawn was visible through the skylights.
An attempt to stretch reminded me how bad an idea that was just now and I bit back an unpleasant word or two. I was still feeling the effects of the drugs so the pain was muted and I made my way to the bathroom, stifling a yawn as I sat there.
It had been about 5 hours since Theo dosed me. Maybe I could get some sleep? As I settled into bed Theo mumbled and turned to hold me spooned to him, his warmth against my back and arm draped over my waist soothing me to sleep almost instantly.
I awoke to an empty tent. Theo’s scent clung to the sheets and I inhaled deeply. OK, that hurt… but nothing like it had before. This was still some pretty big pain but I could manage. An experimental stretch yielded much the same result. As I was checking things out my stomach rumbled loudly and I realized I needed the toilet in a rather immediate sense.
Maybe an hour later I emerged, showered and other needs dealt with. Washing my hair hadn’t been the easiest thing in the world and styling it after was even more fun but I managed. Today was definitely a comfort day… vermillion and onyx paisley leggings and royal blue tank top with a zipfront hoodie in the reverse of the print on my leggings. My favorite slouchy boots with a 2” wedge, plain matte black. To finish it off I added the matched earrings, necklace and bracelet of deep blue Lapis Lazuli Theo had given me for our first anniversary.
After distributing my normal gadgets and popping my normal displays back in I felt ready to face the world. OK, maybe for most people that doesn’t sound like a very casual comfy way to go about it but to me it was. I was only wearing 6 weapons and no firearms after all… Okay, 7 if you counted my pocketknife which I didn’t.
Moving around had loosened me up a bit and though the pain was still very much there when I moved it wasn’t so much when I didn’t. The hunger that had made itself known earlier was gnawing now and I really needed to find something to eat.
I could hear the sounds of cooking and the smells drew me into the kitchen. There was a whirlwind of activity, the trips doing various things and Dahl doing her own thing while watching them. She broke off in the middle of giving some tips about knife technique to Carmen and rushed over to me, enveloping me in a painfully tight hug.
“Omigod you’re a hero! Are you hungry? Do you know how long you slept? Do you know who you saved? How do you feel? Does it hurt?”
She suddenly released me from the hug and continued “Oh I’m sure it hurt I’m so sorry are you ok?”
“Erm… Hero? Yes I’m hungry. Maybe 4 or 5 hours? No I have no idea what you’re talking about. I feel ok and yes it hurts and no need to be sorry.”
Dahl had a mind that worked that way, question dump, infodump in return and she was happy. She tended to get a little impatient when others couldn’t keep up with her rapid fire way but she was so bubbly people rarely noticed.
She skipped away while I was talking and was busy assembling a tray. By the time I’ d walked over to the table and sat she was sliding in across from me with a bowl of soup and a mug of coffee for each of us.
A sip of the coffee first… Oh so good… triple sweet, black and double strong. The soup followed, a burst of refreshingly cool flavor.
“I didn’t know Mel taught you how to make her borscht.” I took another spoonful and savored. “This is excellent! Thank you!”
“You slept for 3 whole days” The worry was obvious in her voice. “Rob… Dad…” she grinned “came to check on you and said you were ok, that we should let you sleep. Mom is already home with him and little Angelique is the cutest baby ever! I think I’m really going to love having a baby sister…”
No time like the present.
“Well you’re going to be a long distance big sister for a few years I’m afraid.”
“You’re sending me away?” Suddenly the bubbly demeanor was gone and there was the scared little girl from so long ago.
“No… and yes. You are going to Paris for a few years…” I trailed off and deliberately left the rest for her to figure out. It only took a moment before her face lit up.
“They accepted me!!!!!” she was dancing around now. Suddenly she sobered again. “I can’t ask Dad to pay for that. Shit.”
“Dahl” she turned to look at me, on the edge of tears. “You have a full scholarship, all expenses. Remember a couple of months ago when Mel was away for her doctor’s appointments and tests?”
She nodded.
“The man with the ratty looking goatee and the horrible accent was your entrance exam.”
I could tell even her quick mind wasn’t wrapping around that too well.
“My Chicken Tikka got me in? That can’t be right…”
I had to laugh at her a little. “I wouldn’t say it was horrible but I will admit to a powerful need for water. Michel on the other hand thought it was exceptional after he recovered from the first bite. A part of it was simply that you impressed him. Remember ‘The Hundred Foot Journey’?”
She nodded.
“A single dish, just like the movie. He said your pear tart was the best he’d ever tasted, even asked for the recipe. He looked surprised when I told him you’d freehanded it and had never made so much as a pie crust before.”
Her face lit up as the realization hit her. “Wait, that was Michel deTavel?”
She sat suddenly. “I don’t know anything about Paris. I wouldn’t know a Rue from a roux…”
I had to snerk a bit at that one and her reproachful glare made it even funnier.
“Don’t worry, you will be staying with his granddaughters in the 8th Arrondisement, at the Trocadero. You can see Le Tour Eiffel from your balcony. I am a little jealous…”
“Then come with me.” Suddenly she was all confidence.
“You know I can’t do that. I have duties here. I am irrevocably tied to this place, to its people… I cannot abandon that.” Even as I spoke and felt the truth of my words I felt a yearning… almost a need…
“Will you at least visit?”
“You know I can’t promise that.”
The statement hung in the air between us, tearing me to shreds emotionally. Hot tears began to flood my eyes and run down my face unchecked.
“I will miss you with all of my being. You are the child of my heart forever.” By now we were both weeping and clinging to each other.
“You have a destiny I cannot share. My life, my work… my self… I cannot leave my other children.”
“Yes you could! There are others who need what you can do for them, there. Refugees…”
“My place is here. All of us are refugees. You have a chance to climb above all that, to enter society as a master of your craft. The good you can do dwarfs my pathetic efforts.”
“But…”
“No buts child. You are confronted with your destiny. 2 years ago you ran away from life itself and the medics yanked you back into this world. Since then you have been one of the most inspiring people it has been my privilege to know. I want to see you become all that you can be….”
“Inspiring? I was a street whore and a junkie.”
“Yes, you were those things. Sometimes life sucks. You built a new life for yourself and helped so many to do the same. This is just Karma coming back threefold.”
“Do you really want me to go?” She looked lost.
“Want you to go? Gods no child, I can’t imagine life without you in it…”
She thought about that for a moment, a long pause…
“You will never have life without me in it, as long as I draw breath I will be your daughter… your sister…” She trailed off into silence, a pregnant pause.
“My Friend.” I dropped the words into the silence and let them simmer.
It took her a moment to grasp what I meant.
“Really?”
“Of course. What did you think would happen?”
“I don’t know…” she fell into silence and was obviously struggling.
“I guess I just thought that you would be my mom forever…”
I caught her chin and made her look at me. For a moment we just cried together. I took a deep shuddering breath and braced myself.
“Mel has been your mom for the past 2 years. She took you under her wing the day you came to us and that will never change… in a few days the truth of your lives will be affirmed by the courts. Mel is your mother, I am at best the crazy aunt.”
“Its so much to deal with…”
“Of course it is… did you think your life would be easy?”
“Well no but I didn’t think it would be like this… going to Paris? I don’t even speak French!”
“Vraiment? Que pensez-vous que nous venons de parler?”
“Anglais bien sûr ... Fuck”
“See?”
“I didn’t realize… How did you do that?”
“Je n'ai rien fait. Ceci est tout ce que tu.”
“All me? You can’t say you did nothing, you built all of this!”
It took her a moment get it.
“Jacques?”
“And Phillippe…”
She leveled an accusing finger at me.
“You knew… Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would it have helped?”
She thought for a moment, took a deep breath and let it out in a gusty sigh.
“No…” she said in a small voice.
“It might have gotten in the way…” she turned her to face the tent wall and contemplated the olive drab cloth for a moment.
“How do you know these things?”
“I don’t know anything Dahl… I just do the best I can.”
“You will always be my angel… I am alive because of you. I have this chance because of you.”
“No… you have this chance because of you. I am honored to play a part but you are the one who made the tart.
She snerked at me. “I love you…” Tears were still streaming down her face.
“I love you too Dahl…”
We embraced for a moment and cried on each other.
She broke our hug and held me at arm’s length. “Do you think I should go?”
The part of me that was her friend and sister said no… but I could not be that selfish.
“I think…” I had to take a moment to decide what I thought again. “I think you should go… Michel never takes students and he wants you. Life itself is calling you…”
She gave me a quick hug and plunged back into cooking, leaving me to ponder. Somehow I knew the kids we took in would grow up, grow past our community and I wanted that for them. To face the reality of this, to send my child off to another country, another world in many ways… It was proving to be much more difficult than I had ever conceived.
I watched her buzzing back and forth between stations, keeping several dishes going amongst the Trips preparation. Occasional cries of “Behind you!” and “Hot stuff coming down!” rang through the small space as they danced around each other.
A calloused hand rested on my shoulder for a moment, rasping against the rough silk. I reached up and grasped my father’s hand before he could withdraw it, planting it firmly back on my shoulder and holding it there with my own.
“I saw… heard…” He was trying to reach out in his way and for a moment I resented it.
“I wish I… we… could have had that with you…. And I feel selfish for wanting that.”
I waited while he gathered his thoughts.
“It’s a shame you can’t have kids of your own… You and Theo could be… are, I suppose… the sort of parents we wanted to be.”
“Give it time Dad. The universe is young…” The lightness of my words belied the pain beneath. As nonsensical as it was, I wanted so much to carry a child beneath my heart…
Might as well rip the band aid off.
“You have another daughter, dad… and a wife.”
I really didn’t think it was possible but I literally saw the blood drain from his face.
“Tuyen and Ha.nh Phu’c but she was born Dung Van…”
He sat beside me. “You found them?” His voice was soft, filled with wonder.
“They were there to be found. How could you not tell me… us… that we were named after your first family?”
“How could I tell you? We were supposed to be the perfect family, Me a ministerial servant, working my way to Elder and your mother working her way to Anointed, to fill the gap left by Ruth. Our time was filled with Field Service…” He drew a breath and let it out, a mournful sound.
“You know none of that shit matters, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dad… I love that you named us for the children you thought lost… I can’t imagine a more fitting tribute. I could curse you for leaving them but I know it wasn’t your fault…”
“Fault? How the fuck do you ever figure out who is at fault in the middle of a war? How the fuck do you know that you are killing the right people…” He was crying, great sobbing gasps fit to burst his chest.
“You don’t dad… you just do the best you can. Back then you were all gung-ho… I tried to be like you…”
“You…” he had caught his breath but he paused and looked into my eyes while he stroked my hair. “You are so much more than the son I thought I wanted… I saw you floating across rooftops and I can’t even imagine the sort of courage that takes…”
“You are everything I ever could have wanted. Your sister is who she should be… a mother, happy with her child.” His hand tightened on my hair and I strained my neck a little, resisting.
His hand relaxed.
“I’m sorry…”
“Never apologize.”
The words hung between us.
“I am who you raised me to be. You raised me to be a servant, to fight for those who had been wronged, to help those no one else would help… I might not share your religion but my ministry is here.”
He took a deep breath and visibly deflated as he released it. “Fuck…”
He sat there for a moment, gathering his thoughts.
“Somehow I thought I was going to come in and rescue you… To be the father I should have been.”
“I don’t need rescuing dad…”
“I know…” He seemed so lost.
“I never treated you as my little girl even though it was so obvious who you were.”
“We do what we do… none of us are perfect.”
“How are you not filled with hate?”
“I was… we both were… we plotted your death for years and I almost did it. We learned to live, and eventually we learned to not hate you. We learned to move on with our lives and try to be the best people we could be. We both serve in our own ways… “
“This…” he gestured to take in our surroundings. “You built this?”
“No.”
“Everyone tells me you did…?”
“Theo built this. This whole community is his baby… I am just the figurehead.”
“Not to these people.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him and he chuckled.
“Do you really not know how your people regard you?”
“My People?”
“The union of Angels”
“Yer outta yer fuckin mind.”
“Seriously… you are like a Madonna to them. When they heard your name they took it as a sign…”
“All I wanted was to help…”
“You have helped. Do you know who you saved the other day?”
“Well obviously not…” I let a little bit of my frustration bleed through into my voice.
“That was the SecNav’s sister.”
“Shit….” I thought furiously for a moment. There was no way our community would be able to survive the sort of attention this would bring.
“Now I have to find another place…”
“And why would you do that?” The voice from behind me was harsh with living.
I craned my head around and nearly fell off my chair when I realized who stood behind me. I tried to stand and wound up falling into an ungainly pile, chair legs tangled with my own.
The laugh that answered my antics was extraordinary… It sounded like he’d gargled razor blades his whole life.
The hand he offered was equally worn, scarred and puckered. I used it to pull myself to my feet, wincing a little as I did.
“Mr Secretary!”
“Ernie.”
“Sir?”
“Well back in the day your dad called me Dempsey Dumpster.”
“Holy Shit…”
I could see it now, replacing the white fuzz clinging to his scalp with fiery red I could recognize the man from the photo, the giant who stood between my father and their other teammate so long ago.
“Well we could debate the holy part but you’re certainly full of shit…” Dad grinned up at the giant.
“Yep, still a dickhead.” The smile that creased his face was a thing to behold.
Dad rose and the two men hugged tightly, long lost brothers.
They broke the hug after a time and separated, both men’s eyes shining with unshed tears.
“I heard about Ladonna…” my father rasped.
“I know, and I know why you couldn’t come.”
“Still…”
“We made our deal with the devil long ago.” Their eyes met and spoke silent volumes.
“And yet here we are.”
“Yeah well, needs must…” His gaze fell upon me again.
“You, young lady, are something extraordinary. Your father is an absolute wizard at hand to hand but you? I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” He waited for me to reply.
“What?” My mind was racing, trying to put all of the pieces together and failing.
“There were 2 cameras in that alley.”
“Oh…”
“I saw it all, saw them attack her, saw that fucker rape her… and then you drop out of the sky like some avenging angel and destroy them… even after you were shot you were a force of nature… Those men never stood a chance.”
If he’d seen all that I couldn’t argue.
“Fuckin A, sir!”
“Jesus wept…”
He turned that gaze on my dad.
“She really is your daughter…”
“I never taught her that!”
“You didn’t have to. As much fun as we had running around the jungle there was only one of us who enjoyed the killing the way you did.”
“I didn’t enjoy it!” the protest fell into deaf ears.
“I didn’t want to enjoy it…” He looked lost. “Fuck…”
“You are… were… Who you are. We would never have survived without your crazy ass. Even when it dropped in the pot that last mission you humped that fuckin airdick all the way to the evac…”
“I’ve still got the card.”
The somber mood fell away as the pale giant reached into his pocket and pulled a card from his wallet. It was a joker but the image was a skeleton flipping the bird. Over and under the image words curved in French, English and Vietnamese… “Greetings from SEALS, Team 8.”
“That was the best stunt ever…”
“Remember that colonel’s face when they found his rear guard ahead of them with his head half off and one of these in his mouth?”
The two men collapsed into back-pounding laughter.
“You and that fuckin garrotte…”
“Better than that goddamned claymore. Glorified machete…”
“I saw you at Manny’s funeral” The levity vanished.
“I know…”
“Fuck… this job really sucks.”
“Why don’t you quit? LaDonna wouldn’t have wanted this for you…”
“I’m not like you. I can’t just abandon my friends and tell the world to fuck off.”
“That isn’t the way it was man… you know that. I had to take the fall, you and Manny got the glory…”
“Never made it hurt any less.”
“I spent 3 fuckin years in the radio shack…”
“And I spent 35 fuckin years in the goddamned mouth of hell!”
“We all have our own hell.”
Both men turned to look at me.
“Dad… Mr secretary…”
“Ernie”
“Whatever. You kinda nailed it.”
“Huh?” incomprehension was clear on his features.
“You said he enjoyed it and he did… that’s what fucked him up so badly.”
“I don’t get it?”
“Of course you don’t, you aren’t the same… you have compassion.”
“I still don’t understand…”
“Of course you don’t. You shouldn’t”
“Do you always talk in circles?”
“I thought I was being fairly straightforward.” I smirked up at him. Theo’s distinctive tread sounded from the entrance to South Low and my sister followed.
Their steps rang across the hollow space. When they approached The Secretary turned and flashed a brilliant smile.
“Holy shit! Sir!”
He stood to attention and saluted. The little squeak from his leg highlighted my laxity when it came to maintenance.
“Achilles compensator hanging? And put your arm down son, you look like some kinda fuckin stickman.”
Theo stood there uncertainly, arm halfway down.
“But you’re SecNav?!”
“Not right now I’m not. What I am right now is a man giving thanks to the woman who saved my sister. Every inch her father’s daughter…”
Theo seemed to understand his tone and relaxed a bit.
“Isn’t she though?” he stood a little straighter.
“Force of nature, your girl. Cop a squat EllTee.”
He sat, leaving space for Theo between us.
“I have the same model… goddamned VA won’t fix the fuckin compensator.” He knocked on his leg, a hollow thunk. “Is your sleeve ok? I never could get one that felt right.”
“Angel rebuilt the compensator like 3 times and it still gums up.” He paused and looked down at his prosthesis.
He heaved a sigh and continued.
“Nothing ever feels right…”
“Of course it doesn’t… it shouldn’t. You left a part of yourself in that godforsaken place… same as I did.”
He scrubbed his palm over a bristly scalp, leaving no noticeable trace. “That shit never goes away elltee… You already know that. The physical discomfort reminds you of the horror show in your mind…” he trailed off into silence, staring at the floor while he wrestled with his own demons.
“You question yourself every time you step on your stump… even if it doesn’t hurt right then you always ask yourself just how you managed to fuck up that badly…”
“It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t fuck up at all. I did what needed to be done. I got my squad out of that hellhole and I had to make a sacrifice to do it. My only real regret is that I can’t be there.” Theo’s voice was flat, almost expressionless and carefully controlled.
“I lost myself…I didn’t know how to be… how to live… I grew up in the service. NMMI and then the Navy were my mother and my father. Suddenly I was a civilian… I didn’t know how to do that. Then I found Angel and… I found a new way to live. I found a new reason to live…”
The silence didn’t’ seem as oppressive as it had moments before.
“I know what you’ve done son… I wish… I don’t even know what I wish really, I’m just tired and a little jealous of your freedom.”
“We have our own roles to play sir.”
“Jackass…”
“You betcha!” Theo’s grin was infectious.
Conversation continued for a moment but I zoned out a little bit, turning code over in my head, finding just the right spots to tweak. I didn’t even realize I’d gone as deep as I had until Theo gently shook me back to awareness of my surroundings. I looked around at smiling faces and flushed a little. I try not to go into trances like that around other people but sometimes what my mind wants to work on gets in the way.
“I’m betting on at least another day.”
“20 bucks she has it mostly licked already!” Dad looked unreasonably cheerful.
“What am I, a horse? Seriously…” I trailed off in mock indignation.
“Oh that tears it, I’m definitely not taking that bet now!” Ernie grinned down at me.
“So is he right, have you got the new displays stabilized already?”
“Um… well I finished up the light amplification before I went to sleep and I’m pretty sure I just figured out how to fix the magnification… Its sorta like gearing down, ya know?”
He looked doubtful.
“Okay, the problem with that feature was overcorrection but in a different way than the light amplification. In the first case the displays were trying to respond to pupil dilation and the two things wound up chasing each other… it was trying to be too precise and as a result oscillated wildly after just a second or so.”
“Ok, I can see that.”
“Okay, so that was actually pretty easy, just give it a little more lag time while providing for strobe damping. Modifying that old industrial code was a bit of a pain, this sort of thing would work much better with entirely new software but that will take a week or so.”
“The magnification was exactly the opposite issue but with much the same result. It needed to be more precise, function in much smaller increment slices to be able to work with how the human eye changes focus. Anyway, all it should take is a few new lines of code, a few tweaks, enough to slow zoom rates from microseconds to milliseconds for the final focus… Gearing it down in essence.”
“Can you do it now?” He looked eager, rubbing his hands together.
“Well no… it’ll take a few minutes.”
“Fine, I’ve got all day!”
Theo vanished and reappeared with my gear, including the new displays and lens solution. A minute later I was kitted and diving back in, literally running through the code and making the changes I’d plotted out before. I took a few minutes to run back over everything and tighten it up, grateful I’d done so as I discovered a cleverly hidden capability. I opened my eyes and ran through a quick test cycle on both enhancement modes, pleased at how smoothly they operated now.
“From that little smile I’d say she’s done!” Theo’s voice penetrated into my consciousness. “Pay up suckers!”
“8 minutes? Seriously? Nobody’s that good…” Ernie was reaching for his wallet as was my dad.
“Oh ye of little faith…” I intoned solemnly before cracking up at the expressions on their faces.
I looked up at Ernie again, drawing his attention. “So you wanna try it out?”
He looked like I’d poked him with a sharp stick. “How the… Fine, you obviously know I have a pair in so do your worst!”
It was the work of 20 seconds to blast through his anemic protections and install the new code. The expression on his face as he zoomed to full magnification was a thing to behold.
“I don’t recall a microscope function…”
I had to laugh at that one. “Its kind of inherent in the tech and no it wasn’t there before. Not sure why. Its limited to about the same factor you get on the distance end, 25x. Do you want me to unlock the weapons system interface?”
It was his turn to laugh. “No wonder you couldn’t get along with your parents. Were you ever a child?”
“Childhood requires the bliss of ignorance.”
“I want to hire you.”
“I’m not for sale… Sir.”
“Hear me out. I want you as an entirely off the books IT consultant. Only myself and one officer who serves as liaison will even know you exist. You don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to… in fact it would be preferable if you didn’t, at least immediately.”
He waited for a moment, taking my slight nod as a request to continue. “I have a fairly generous budget for this sort of thing but you have to understand that any work you do for me will be classified at the highest level and you will not receive credit or intellectual property rights in any way.”
“Why me?”
“Because you just did something in 8 minutes that an entire team couldn’t manage in 6 months and added a capability none of them had even considered. To top that you recognized a completely new type of weapons interface which had been deliberately gutted and rebuilt it, apparently as an afterthought. How could I not want you on my side?”
“I think you overestimate me.”
“I’m starting to wonder if that’s even possible.” He shook his head.
“Why is this stuff on the streets?” I already knew the answer but he had to admit it if I was going to do anything for him.
He shifted uncomfortably and stared at the back of his hand for a moment, rubbing a puckered scar with his other thumb.
“It isn’t… on the streets, I mean. It was bait. Specifically, bait for you because it was the only way Harlan could think of to get in touch with Dreamer.”
I must have shown my displeasure because he raised both hands in a placating gesture.
“Ok, I know enough of you hacker types to understand you’re thinking ‘How did I screw up?’. The short answer is you didn’t. There are 200 pairs of these scattered around 40 some-odd countries and the rest of them are about to get the kill code, or will when they come on line next. Honestly we still didn’t realize it was you until Theo told me about your fancy new displays. The whole thing clicked in my mind and I got it.”
“Got what?”
“Your name, the song, some of who you are... I don’t quite know how to put it but it just made perfect sense, like it couldn’t possibly be any other way.”
He leaned back, causing his chair to creak alarmingly.
“I’m not quite sure how to take that.” I zoomed in on his eyes, watching his pupils relax and noting the flare of his nostrils.
“Take it however you want. You and others like you I’ve met… you give me hope. You also scare the everlovin shit out of me. I used to think I wouldn’t mind not living to see another 50 years but I’ve begun to wonder just what sort of world all of you will build and now…”
“Now for the first time in a long time, I really do wish I were young again so I could be around to see it, maybe help a little, you know? When and where I grew up service was all about war and killing. Not like that isn’t still necessary sometimes but it is always about destruction, breaking things, breaking people. However good the reason, however much good has come of it the truth is still that I’ve spent my life being a destroyer and a very good one.”
“Its never too late.”
He didn’t respond. I waited for a few pregnant seconds.
“Ernie?” I reached out and took his hand, caressing the same puckered scar he’d rubbed earlier. He looked up at me, unshed tears shining in his eyes.
“You’re always welcome here.”
The tears spilled over now and he reached up with his free hand to wipe them from his cheeks, staring at them in wonder. I rose and pulled him into a hug, waiting while he cried, great jerking sobs that sounded like gasping for life. It was only a minute or so but the emotional gust front that swept through him left something cleaner behind it, like fresh air for the soul.
He pulled away from the hug and composed himself.
“Thank you. I haven’t cried for… God, I don’t even know how many years… I couldn’t even cry when I buried LaDonna… my wife. I think I really needed that.”
“We all need to let go sometimes.” I’d made my decision and there was no time like the present. I knew Theo would support me.
“I’ll do work for you but I won’t ‘Work for you’. Specific jobs only and I refuse anything I don’t like the smell of. If you’re going to read me in to projects like this one I’m going to need the relevant clearance… but it all has to remain hidden. I’m in the blackest of black boxes. I don’t know how exactly you’re going to manage it but that’s your problem, I just want to be legally covered.”
“Done.”
“Then hold off on sending the kill signal. I’d like to see if anyone actually makes progress… and in the meantime I’d like to add just a bit to the code. Insurance if you will.”
“Whatever you need. Now you said something about replacing the software entirely?” He leaned forward, rubbing his hands.
“I did. This code sucks and honestly its just too easy to break. I need the full specs for the weapons interface and I’ll likely have a little something to say about the other side of said interface as well.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible. I’d like to be able to get to work on it after the show but I can’t really do it right until I have that interface data. It has to be built outward from that to be properly useful.”
“After the show?”
“Yeah I’m always wired after. Everybody else crashes and I can’t, so why not work?” I wasn’t going to tell him I already had a pretty fair idea of what needed to be done and had sketched it out while patching the existing mess.
“I thought you were a street musician?”
“The only thing I can play is the radio. I’m a street singer.”
He scrubbed at his hair again. “Am I ever gonna get a straight answer out of you?”
“I didn’t hear a question.”
This time my reward was to watch him literally facepalm… well forehead palm anyway. I decided to take a bit of mercy.
“We do shows sometimes at a club called Toffee. Gives us a chance to play with our tech and its usually a blast.”
“Where? My sister asked to meet you and she needs something to get her mind off what happened.”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I’m not yanking your chain, I really don’t know. The club never opens in the same place two nights in a row. Its not underground exactly but it does attract a lot of the rave crowd. Believe it or not, you’ll fit right in with a change of clothes. Just… don’t eat the candy.”
“I won’t ask.” He grinned. “Now just what is gonna make me fit in with a bunch of kids? I’m pretty sure they’ll peg me as a geezer and I know I can’t pull off any of the clothing choices I’ve seen around here!”
I had a quick flash of him in leather gear with piercings and chains and couldn’t help giggling back at him.
“You’d be surprised at the rave crowd. It used to be a young scene but so many vets came back messed up and they were the same age or not much older… They came and got respect and love and they brought their brothers and sisters. There’s even a crowd from one of the nursing homes that comes occasionally and one of em is a WW2 vet! Cool as hell, deaf as a post but he loves the lightshow and the women. He was a Marine fighter pilot in the Pacific, fought at Guadalcanal and a bunch of other places.”
“Figures Uncle Rex would find the wildest party in town…”
This time I just gaped at him for a minute before my brain managed to spew out words. “You know T-Rex? Why am I not surprised?”
“Its C-Rex actually, and yes I do. He isn’t my uncle but he and my dad were friends for many years and he was kind of like a second father to me. Gave me my first sip of beer…”
“Yep, that sounds like him. What’s the C stand for anyway?”
He snorted. “Cloyd. Its no wonder he went with Rex when he joined up.”
“Yeah it does sound a lot better…” I tried to wipe the smile off my face. “He should be there tonight. Heath always stocks a case of Ardbeg Kidalton for him.”
“He always did have good taste in a single malt. Now back to clothes…”
“Just… ditch the suit. Better yet, wear shorts. And I want to fix that compensator before you go please.”
“I’ve been waiting 3 weeks for a service appointment.”
“Its not their fault, they take as many as they can. They desperately need to hire more people but… it’s the VA, ya know?”
“Your mouth to God’s ears. Maybe he can do something, I sure haven’t been able to.” He looked like he’d swallowed something sour.
“I can’t fix the VA but I can fix your leg. Theo can you get my kit please? And plan to sit for a minute, I need to fix yours too.”
“I didn’t want to bother you…” Theo looked down.
“You are never a bother for me.” I pulled him over to me and pulled his head down for a kiss. “Now go!”
He was back in a moment and I spent the next half hour cleaning and lubricating prostheses. It was pleasant listening to the conversation without feeling like I had to take part and the work went quickly. Watching the two men stand and flex their legs was its own reward and gave me a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling but I wished I could do more. A couple of the kids had shown interest and proved to have a fair hand so maybe we could do a clinic or something?
Ernie took his leave with a promise to be back at 2100 and I turned my attention to altering the lightshow. The new displays could also project light and I was going to use that in the show. The effect should be pretty awesome… especially since I had 3 more pair I hadn’t told the Secretary about.
This chapter kept getting in the way of everything else I tried to write. I was stuck on this idea of trying to convey the show for the reader and kept failing miserably. I had this ubercool thing in my mind's eye but I couldn't manage to do it justice... So I gave up and took this route instead. I hope you enjoy.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Closing time
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end….”
The lights faded to black as I let the last note trail off into silence.
“Thank you! You’ve been a great crowd tonight! Remember free cab rides home are offered to anyone so don’t take a chance! We want you to get home safe!”
I let myself sag into Theo’s bulk and he half carried me offstage, propping me in a chair and handing me a glass with 3 fingers of amber liquid in it. I took a small sip and let it burn down my throat slowly bringing a little energy along with it. It was a few moments before I was able to bring myself around enough to realize that my family was at the same table along with the Secretary and his sister.
“So what’d you think?”
I hadn’t addressed the question to anyone specifically and it was a bit of a surprise that the first response came from the woman I’d just met before the show(If you didn’t count our meeting in that alley).
“I’ve never seen or heard anything like it! You gave high energy a whole new meaning! I couldn’t believe you were able to do that after being hurt so badly! Are you ok?” She was clearly concerned even though she was almost bouncing in her seat.
“I’m glad you liked it Camille… Honestly I didn’t think I’d be able to do everything we had planned but the show is the best drug ever, ya know?” I smiled at her muzzily and took another sip. The tightness in my muscles was beginning to ease and with it the pain that I’d held off for the past 2 hours.
“I’ve never done LSD or anything like that but I’m pretty sure I know what it feels like now… That was… I’ve never even imagined anything like it….” Ernie was sprawled in a chair, blissed out and talking toward the ceiling, a glass of the same amber fluid I nursed dangling from his huge hand like a toy.
“I did tell you not to eat the candy…”
“Hey I don’t get tested anymore, I’m a civilian! I can damn well eat the candy if I wanna!”
“Take this.” I handed him a lozenge. “Suck on it. It’ll keep you from being serotonin depleted tomorrow.”
“Serotonin depleted?” He looked puzzled as he regarded the dull orange colored candy.
“You rolled pretty hard tonight. It’s a serotonin flood that makes you feel awesome… but it uses up all you have and without it you get really depressed. This replaces it so that doesn’t happen. An anti-hangover pill if you will.” I grinned at him and took a pull from the vape Theo handed me, smiling at the taste of minty hash oil.
After another pull I passed it around and Ernie straightened up a little as he inhaled deeply. “I haven’t tasted anything like this since…”
“Since we were running around the jungle. Brings back memories, huh? Remember that first time we went to Phuket for R&R?” Little trickles of vapor escaped from my dad’s nose as he talked.
“I’ll never forget the expression on your face when that girl pulled out a dick bigger than yours!” He barked a sharp laugh then cut it off and looked over at me with a stricken expression on his face. “Shit, I’m sorry…”
“Don’t worry about it. I’d give a pretty penny to have seen that one…” I grinned at him and blew vapor in his direction, giggling a little at the relieved expression on his face. “Seriously dude, I understand you mean no offense and so I take none. If I went around being pissed off every time somebody stepped on their dick I’d never get any peace.”
“Its just… I don’t see anything but an extraordinary young woman and I let my tongue get away from me. You might not have taken offense but I still need to apologize for being insensitive. I’m sorry.” He gave me a ‘kid being punished’ look and I had to giggle at him again.
“Thank you. Now lets leave that alone, shall we?” He nodded assent and we spent another happy hour around the table as the place slowly cleared out. Shortly after the furnishings began to disappear as well and Heath rolled around, pulling a sideways skidding skater-stop and plopping into an empty chair. He poured himself a half glass of whiskey and sipped appreciatively before setting it on the table with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Mr Secretary.” He nodded in Ernie’s direction.
“Ernie.” A plume of vapor followed the single word.
“Ernie then. We were all honored to have you here tonight sir. I’m glad you were able to enjoy Angel’s talent and I hope you’ll come see us again, all of you.” He gestured around the table.
“I’ve never actually seen and tasted music before. I can see why the release forms, that was the most intense thing I’ve ever experienced short of combat.” Ernie pulled himself a little more upright and gestured at Theo and I. “The two of you on stage together… singing at each other? I could feel your emotions, every little hurt and joy… just astounding. Thank you.”
“We’re glad you liked it. Now I believe you mentioned you’d have something for me?” He sighed and slumped a little, gesturing at dad.
“Did we ever have that much energy?”
“This from the man who did a full triathlon before there even was such a thing every day on R&R?”
“Hey you were the one who started that shit!”
“Not on R&R!” Dad gestured with his glass as if to emphasize his point.
“I still say it’s the best hangover cure ever…”
“Masochist.”
“Like you have room to talk…”
It felt good to see that sort of banter between the two men… I’d rarely seen my father in such a relaxed frame of mind. It was a new realization, that he had always held a part of himself locked away from us and here at last was the rest of the man I was realizing I still loved in much the same uncomplicated way I must have as a small child.
I drifted back into myself for a few minutes, toying with an idea for making an interface to use with the target weapons systems and just about any architecture I knew. The outlines just began to crystallize when I realized the table around me had gone quiet and filed it away for later. For some reason everyone was looking at me and I was puzzled until I realized I’d been fiddling with the controls for my hair and body lights.
I snapped them off abruptly feeling my face heat and then that batch of heathens actually started clapping!
“What?” I couldn’t manage to keep a sharpish tone from my voice and instantly regretted it though the smirk on Theo’s face told me no one had taken offense.
“You were sparkling…” He managed to sound awed although I could tell he was barely holding back laughter.
“Oh shit, I’ll never hear the end of this… Dammit Jim, I’m a goth not a vampire!” I did my best to look angry but couldn’t help joining in as the rest of the table burst out laughing.
“Seriously though, it was kinda cool… it was like you were playing music with light but different than it was on stage… this was more peaceful, meditative almost.” Heath was being sincere and I had to reply in kind.
“Thanks… I wasn’t doing anything on purpose, just sitting here thinking.”
“Happy thoughts?” Theo rumbled at me, his chest vibrating against my side where he’d moved around to encircle me with a casual arm. .
“Yeah… “ I gave a little sigh of happiness and snuggled into his embrace a hair more.
“You were writing code weren’t you?” I goggled at Michelle a bit and she grinned back at me. “I know when my little sister is in Brainiac mode… the expression is a dead giveaway.”
“What expression?”
“She means that little half-smile Mona Lisa thing you’ve got going on. Your RBF is severely flawed…” Camille chimed in.
Ernie looked puzzled. “RBF?”
“Resting Bitch-Face.” Camille supplied, causing him to nearly lose a mouthful of whiskey.
“Jesus, warn a guy Twerp!” Ernie husked out after hacking for a moment.
She just laughed at him and took a sip of her own. “I’m jealous, I was never that sexy…”
“Me? Sexy? I think you’re confused.” My face was back to burning.
“You got some serious self-esteem issues girl. You could give a corpse a raging hard-on just sitting there, much less up on stage struttin your stuff and adding that awesome voice to the mix.” Camille was matter of fact.
“Look, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.” I took a deep pull from the vape Theo handed me and hid behind a cloud of aromatic vapor, wishing I could hide behind my hair.
“Hmph!” She folded her arms and gave me a stern look, belied by the smile hiding in her eyes.
“So Ernie, you have something for me?” I was trying my best to deflect attention.
He slid a milspec thumbdrive across the table at me and I made it disappear, slotting it into an interface and dumping the contents before making it reappear on the table, sliding fast toward his free hand.
“That looks like you two have practiced it for ages… slick!” Camille observed.
“Practiced what?” Ernie was the very picture of innocence and I followed his lead. She glanced back and forth between us and I saw the metaphorical light come on.
“Right, I’m seeing things…” she muttered to herself before taking a pull from a convenient vape and following with a sip. “Damn spooks…”
“You’re one to talk! Remind me again who that 32 year old chief analyst was? Sounds like a bit of projection to me sis…”
“Hey I’m retired!” This was obviously an old and well-worn conversational path for them and the table laughed at her when she stuck her tongue out as well.
The joking around continued for a few more minutes before we all went our own ways with Heath staying to wrap everything up.
“Hey you wanna come to the Doss when you’re done? Bring your walking feet and I’ll fix em for you.”
Heath got that familiar mulish look on his face and started to balk so I cut him off.
“Dammit Heath, you know I never mind helping that way. Bring Kendra with you and we’ll make a party of it, ok?” I was bulldozing him at that point and he had enough sense to back down.
“Fine… Take Kendra with you and I’ll have Jeff drop me at South Low. I’ll be about an hour.” He skated off muttering to himself and I allowed myself a small smile. He’d be a lot happier when he saw what I had for him…
Little more than an hour later I was proven correct as he regarded the new hand I’d made for him with glee, flexing the fingers individually.
“Wow! This is… how did you do this? Its so smooth its almost like having my hand back again! It even has fingernails! You could make a killing selling these!”
“I don’t intend to make a dime. The specs are out there, open source so anyone can print them, improve them, whatever. Control circuitry and everything, it costs less than $200 to print a hand and under $500 for an arm. A leg for an adult male around $900. Its still more than I’d like but I haven’t figured out how to get the materials costs down… Thats coming along as 3d printing spreads.”
“You’re just giving this away?” The disbelief in his voice was evident.
“I’d give it away a hell of a lot cheaper if I could figure out how. I know vets need em a lot but there are so many others, here in the US but more… other places where a person might be lucky to get any sort of prosthetic at all. There are some other versions using as much local material as possible, anything from wood to bamboo and all kinds of scrap metals but those are basically field expedients, better than nothing at all.”
“Shit… now I feel guilty for having something this good…”
I patted his bio-hand gently. “Don’t. You already do more to help others than whole churches full of people who pat themselves on the back for mouthing platitudes at the poor. You’re a good man Heath and I won’t allow anyone to say otherwise, not even you. Capische?”
He looked like he was going to argue the point but Kendra jumped in, sliding her arm around his waist and giving him a proprietary squeeze.
“You listen to the girl, she’s got you cold. And you, girl“ she fixed me with a stare that could pin a 3rd grader to their seat “listen to your own words. You’re worse than he is!”
I chose not to argue the point. She came from the streets of Camden and was one of the toughest people I’ve ever met. She was… solid. Not fat, not thin, curvy but not extravagantly so and gave the impression of being absolutely unmovable. Arguing with Kendra is slightly more pointless than disputing right of way with a freight train. In her case the train would lose and anyway she was right. I do beat myself up that way and I know on one level that is unhealthy but its not like I can turn those feelings off…
“Don’t give me that look! I’ve been watching you since that day in the motel room and hearing about you before that. I know exactly who you are and I don’t give praise lightly. Shut up and accept it.”
I did as ordered. When Kendra spoke, people listened. Admittedly a part of that might be the fact that she was usually saving their lives at the time, be it from fire or some other threat. She was respected by the city’s first responders and the firefighters she worked with held her in special regard. There were higher ranked firefighters in the city but none so revered by the community and her fellow smoke eaters as the woman they called Pyro, short for Pyromancer.
Kendra had a fey sort of relationship with fire and there were whispers that she could tell it what to do, that it wouldn’t burn her. I knew better, I’d seen the scars she carried, seen her find a corner to cry in private when she couldn’t save someone. I understood the drive she felt, to help whenever and however she could but I could never hope to match her courage.
“Kennie… We’ve got to work on scaling this thing up. Its time for us to start purchasing materials in bulk and training some people. I’ve been thinking about this on the wrong level, trying to make it a completely cottage industry sort of thing, maybe training a few of the kids who’ve shown interest to do a repair clinic. That’s fine for what it is but I want to… have to do more than that and I think I’ve got a way to make it happen.”
She grinned broadly at me. “Who’s this we, white girl?” She waited for the laughter to die down.
“I’ll put you in touch with the head of polymer science at Whitinghouse. We pulled him out of a nasty accident a couple years ago. What you do with that contact is all you. I’ve got an idea where you’re headed with this but I’d guess you just popped a fully formed business plan out of your head and you’re the one who can translate that plan into reality.”
“It isn’t exactly fully formed but yeah, I’ve got the basic outlines. If I do it right I can reduce costs to half of what they are now, maybe a little more. That means I can make 2, sell one and give one away. Sleeves and the like are a different matter, those need to be custom made and frequently remade so I’m thinking deploy laser measurement gear in as many places as possible to make it possible to access. There is a great deal of work to be done to make it happen but I think its feasible to have it up and running within 3-4 months on a small level and expand to large scale production within 2 years.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. It might not work but I think I have to try. I’d love for things to be at the point where the means of production could be completely decentralized but I have to confront the fact that we haven’t reached that point quite yet. Its around the corner but for now… This is the most feasible way I can dream up to get prosthetics to people who need them no matter where they are or whether they have any money.”
“I have no idea how I’d be able to help but if you think of something call me, ok?” She reached over and patted my arm. “I know you’ll get this done. I have no clue how your mind works but… you’re gonna rock the world girl. In a good way of course…” she gave a little snort of laughter.
“Only with the assistance of people like you that want to help just for the sake of helping. Thank you Kennie… your support means the world to me.” I gathered in the rest of them with my eyes. “Thank all of you… I wouldn’t even be able to think about doing something like this without you.”
“Oh bullshit.” I gave Dad a mock glare and he laughed before continuing. “I know my daughter well enough to know just how stubborn you are. You’d get this done if you had no support at all. False humility doesn’t suit you.”
“Yeah well it’s the only defense I know against hubris… and its not false anyway. I honestly don’t think I could do any of this without all of you.” I cut off the protest with a raised hand “We’ll have to agree to disagree about that one, ok?”
“Worse than your mother…” was barely audible.
“Pfeh. The woman could teach a mule how to stubborn.”
“And you are the only person I’ve ever seen who could actually outdo her. I’m proud of you Angel… I was worried that being who you are would get in the way but you haven’t let it. If anything I think that is a part of why you’re so strong.” He smirked at me over the rim of his glass as my face burned.
“Gimme your foot Heath.” I patted the table in front of me and he obliged, removing his walking feet from a backpack. I busied myself with repair… somehow he kept managing to stress the foot in such a way that one of the actuator rods twisted out of alignment and had to be replaced periodically. I’d spruced up the rod and its mountings in my version and I was retrofitting his existing feet partly as a repair and partly to have him test the mods for me. I’d have a good answer in a couple of months but was reasonably certain I’d isolated the issue.
Focusing on the repairs allowed me to escape, to get back into my own headspace in a less all-consuming way than the sort of work I’d be doing in a couple of hours. I had to focus on something concrete because my mind was going off in 20 directions at once and the only way it would gel into something workable was if I didn’t focus on it at all, just let my subconscious cook it over.
I don’t know if other’s minds work this way because I can’t even quite describe it. Its like there are layers of thought going on and no matter what I’m doing on the top layer the others are always working away. I can’t turn it off even when I’m completely bombed out of my gourd and can barely form words. Sometimes I wish I could just not think but the closest I ever get is when I’m taking one of the high routes… or during sex…
I was beginning to feel pretty aroused suddenly and images of Theo came to mind, unbidden but not unwelcome. Down girl, you’ve got to be a good hostess for a couple more hours… I made myself snerk a bit with that one and focused again as I secured the fairing on the second foot and flexed it experimentally. It felt right but time and Heath abusing it would tell the tale.
He took it and did the same, flexing it experimentally as he had the other then securing the quick release to his multileg. He stood and flexed, bouncing around a little and showing a widening smile. “There was this little spot where it felt… mushy, even right at first but I think you’ve got it! I never would have guessed it was that simple! Thank you!”
“My pleasure Heath. I’m just glad you like it but do me a favor will you?” He looked quizzically at me but replied quickly.
“Whatever you need Angel.”
“First, you don’t owe me anything so get over that idea. I owe you because you’ve helped me refine my design and I’m going to ask you for more help. I want you to be as hard as you can manage to be on these feet. Actively try to break them. Erm… no explosives please, at least not while you’re wearing them…”
We all laughed at the look of mock indignation Heath adopted. His fondness for making things go boom had been nearly legendary amongst his peers and he still enjoyed playing around a bit so the explosives comment was only half in jest and we all knew it.
More levity followed and the night fled from the fingers of a vermillion sky ragged with fleeing puffballs of cloud and a sullen moon glaring balefully in the twinkling remnants of starscape. A storm was coming and I couldn’t stop a little shiver of apprehension, a foreboding about… What?
I didn’t get any more work done before joining Theo in bed although it was quite a while before we got to sleep. We both slept until we woke which meant I woke to an empty bed just beginning to cool. I took a few moments to lie there and think before my bladder drove me to the bathroom and a shower to get the funk of the previous night off.
I was glad to find that the soreness had eased even more once the water had its way with me but I still wasn’t up to snuff. There wouldn’t be any serious exertion for me for a while yet and although it chafed a bit I wasn’t willing to risk further injury just so I wouldn’t be twitchy. I didn’t bother dressing more than necessary, a kimono and my distressed bunny slippers being quite enough to get me to the coffee pot and a small bowl of grits with cheese. I’d just sat and gotten the first spoonful when a familiar voice came from behind me.
“Well you were in no hurry to get up today… how ya feelin?” Vinnie came around into my field of vision with a steaming coffee mug and sat across from me, grimacing at the contents of my bowl. “How you can enjoy violating perfectly good polenta that way I’ll never understand…”
“Yeah well what yawl do to rice is pretty bad too!” I shot back with a grin. “Whats up Vinnie? You obviously wanted to talk to me about something?”
“Well I was talking to Kennie this morning and she told me about your prosthetics idea. I think I might have some connections that could help you scale it up much more quickly than 2 years. I’m assuming from what she said that you intend to take this thing global and focus the charitable end on conflict zones and other areas of extreme need?”
I thought over what he’d said for a moment. “Not to quibble over words here but there isn’t to be anything other than a charitable end. I want it to be economically self-sustaining but it has to be a nonprofit. Will your connections agree to that?”
He got a look in his eye I couldn’t quite interpret before breaking into a smile. “The people I’m thinking about would insist on it! You’re going to have to make it look pretty though… nothing kludged together.”
He cut off my protest. “I know the way you build but you’ve got to pay attention to design and atmosphere too… it has to be very slick and professional looking. You’re about to start playing in some seriously big leagues here Angel. I have faith in your ability to handle it because I know you but you have to make these people believe it too. I’ll offer any help I can but when it comes right down to it you are the face of this thing, you have to be.”
“What do I need to do next?” I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed and was more than ready to grab the offered helping hand.
“Right now? Flesh your idea out, make a serious presentation. Develop a granular level of detail on processes but stick with broad strokes at first. You will sell them the idea before any detail ever gets discussed so realize that your initial presentation has to be overwhelming. You have to wow them completely because ultimately what they are really putting money and effort into is you, not a product, not an idea, but a person they can see and shake hands with, a solid, tangible avatar.”
“I don’t think I can pull off corporate buttoned down Vinnie… its not who I am and I’m pretty sure it’d show. If nothing else I’d feel phony and they would be able to see that.”
“You shouldn’t anyway. Who you are is far more impressive, visually and every other way. People who fit in corporate boardrooms are a dime a dozen but a woman with a look like yours who can put their best engineers to shame? You’re going to destroy their preconceptions the instant you walk in the door and that’s just the opener.”
“Okay, I can see that but this is… well its never been done before, not this way and not on this scale. This model will spread and its going to be a huge economic disruptor. This is a good thing Vinnie…. but it has the potential to destroy the global economy. I want to help people, not hurt them.” I’d thought about this, read about it… played with concepts and gamed it out and if there was a scenario that didn’t bring on massive upheaval I hadn’t found it.
“That’s exactly why it has to be you.” He quirked a half smile at my expression. “I know you’ve studied the available literature but the intersection of economics and sociodynamics is still a place of art more than one of science. As a culture, as a species, we are doing something completely new, again and again. Its what we do, how we evolve faster than our physical selves… It is one of the things that is the essence of humanity.”
“Omelets and eggs, is that what you’re saying? I don’t believe that and neither do you. There has to be a path forward because its not like the underlying technological progress is going away. There has to be a way…”
“There is Angel… and you’ve just said it. People want to find a way to better their world and themselves. Yes there are rapacious assholes who want to have power over others and will stop at nothing to get it… but there are far more of the decent, hardworking people who have been screwed by the way things are now. People who don’t believe in ‘Breaking the eggs’. People who want to look to someone like you who has proven who she is and who will work to make a better way of being for all of us.” He looked into my eyes.
“People who will follow you if you simply show them a way. That’s all you have to do Angel… just be who you are… that’s what these people will want and it is what everyone will want. Someone to believe in.”
I had to think about that one. Did I really want to be so public? Did I want people looking up to me, following me? Did it even matter if I wanted it? Could I escape it?
“I hate you…”
“Hate me all you want little girl. It won’t change reality and it won’t change what you have to do.”
“I know… I just, I dunno… feel inadequate I guess. Its so much…”
“If I ever in my life met anyone less inadequate I must have been asleep. You forget how long I’ve known you, what I’ve seen you do. You changed what it means to be homeless in this city, even changed what it means to be a junkie here. Others helped, I helped… but the driving force was you. You did that with nothing or as close to it as makes no difference. Now you’re going to have some serious money backing you, people and organizations who believe in what you want to do and are willing to put their money where their mouth is.”
He shifted to get a little more comfortable in his seat. “You have a chance to make that way forward happen. This will be the start… but I think its going to snowball and quickly. This is going to be the proof of concept required to engage in wholesale adoption of new, localized microproduction. Economic disruption in developed economies should be quite manageable, most don’t rely on production as a chief economic driver. Less developed economies will feel it far more but even there I think you’ll find the effect to be overall positive.”
“You sound awfully confident. I wish I were as optimistic.” I couldn’t keep the flatness out of my tone. “I haven’t gamed it out in any way that doesn’t result in several major wars and huge numbers of dead. I can’t be responsible for that, I just can’t…”
“Silly girl, of course you won’t. You couldn’t be anyway… the technology is what will make this happen. The thing is that you can help it happen in ways that improve things rather than making them worse. The human spirit is not something you can game or predict and in large part that is because of X factors like you, like the people around you. Ideas change the world, not things.”
“I need your help Vinnie… there’s no way I can handle this by myself.”
“I don’t recall anyone asking you to. You already have the nucleus of the organization you will have to build. You have people you can trust utterly who believe in you. They don’t have to understand or believe in what you want to do even though I think most of them do… the important thing is that they believe in you. That’s what they need.”
“You make me sound like Gandhi or Mandela or someone like that. I’m not any of those things Vinnie! I can’t be those things!” Tears spilled unbidden from my eyes, dripping into my empty bowl.
“That’s good because that is not what is needed now. A Gandhi in today’s world would be largely unnoticed. A Mandela would be just another unjustly imprisoned man. Someone who begins with less than nothing, not even the integrity of her own body, and changes the world? I know you can’t see it Angel, don’t think you have that capacity, in the end don’t think you’re worthy.”
He reached over and picked up my hand, cradling it in his own larger one and closing the other over the top to completely encase it. For some reason my gaze was drawn to the wiry hairs on his fingers. Talented fingers that could save a life with nothing but needle and suture…
“Maybe you aren’t. The only way to know is to try.”
Maybe he was right but maybe this was hubris, overreach… How was I to tell?
“Look, I know I have to do this, I knew I had to do it the instant I realized it was possible. I just thought I could, you know, continue to work from the shadows. I don’t want to be some figurehead! I don’t want people looking up to me… I would rather they had no idea I exist. I’m gonna be outed to the whole world Vinnie. I know I’ve never really hidden as such but… most people have no idea. Either that or this city is chock full of super polite extremely open minded people…”
He chuckled at that one, a calming sound that I needed. I was beginning to really knot myself up thinking about this.
“That is a part of why you’re the right one. I keep trying to tell you… yes the idea is awesome but someone else would have come up with it given time. The unique thing here is you, your ability to bring people of all ages and backgrounds together. Its not just what you say, its who you are, even how you look… The whole package. The totality of who you represent simply by inhabiting the body you do, with your heritage and background. It doesn’t hurt that you’re drop dead gorgeous but even that is only a small part.”
“You can interact with communities of faith too, I’ve seen you do it. You’re as comfortable at a mosque or temple or church of whatever faith as you are here, talking to me. You listen more than you talk and when you do say something it tends to be slanted toward reconciliation, peacemaking. People know you care about what they are saying, what their problem is, about helping. No one questions your motives, they are as clear as daylight. You are clear… pure because of who you are, what you’ve endured… the steel left after the flame burns away the dross.”
“I’m none of that shit Vinnie… but I get what you’re trying to say and I know you’re right… its just… I dunno. Childhood’s End, I guess.”
“First surgery.”
“What?”
“That moment where you realize the playtime, the time to learn… is over. That the things you do in this moment will change someone’s life, for better or worse and the only thing that can determine which will be is you, your skill…” He caught my eyes.
“You already passed that moment Angel. This is the letdown. I know, I’ve been there. That time when you question everything, yourself, your entire life… Its hard. Deep dark night of the soul stuff. I slept for a week except when I was drinking. You got up on stage, gave a show and decided to change the world.”
“Yeah well there’s nothing like a bit of repression, eh?” I gave a sardonic laugh.
“So that was repression I saw on that stage? Venting I’ll buy, repression not so much.”
“Theo didn’t sign on for this.”
“There’s where you’re wrong. For better or for worse, you both said it and I know you both meant it. Did you really think either of you have a picket fence in your future? That is for your sister. She has the luxury of being mother to one or two children… You have the entire world. Not because anyone else says so but because you cannot stop as long as you know someone is in need. He signed up for this, exactly this. He knew… knows… exactly who you are, what you are. He threw his lot with you with his eyes wide open Angel. Don’t abuse that trust by not returning it.”
“You’re really irritating when you’re right.”
“Yep!” He grinned at me with a little twinkle in his eye. “Now get dressed, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
2 hours later I followed Vinnie off a private elevator and into a garden. What looked like the top of a gothic cathedral framed by trees and greenery rose into the sky ahead of us and it took me a moment to realize this was a spire I was used to looking a long way up to see.
“I had no idea there was a garden up here…” I breathed softly.
“Not many people do. My grandfather had this built so he could feel like he lived in the country and still be in the middle of the city but my father never liked it. I moved in here when mom died and just never wanted to live anywhere else. It suited me…” The gentleman who spoke, for there was no other way to describe him, smiled down at me.
“I can see why. Its so peaceful… if I hadn’t just stepped out of an elevator I’d have no clue I was on top of a building. Thank you for welcoming me to your home sir.”
“You would have been welcome long before young lady, had I known where you were. For someone so involved in her community you are awfully difficult to find. Vinnie still won’t tell me anything, just said he’d bring you to meet me and here you are. Do you have a little time?”
“I have the afternoon free Mr. Pringle and am at your disposal. Forgive my friend for not properly introducing us, I’m Angel Winters.” I offered my hand to shake and was surprised when he raised the back of my hand to his mouth, just brushing it with his lips with a slight bow.
“Just Duncan please, Mr Pringle was my father.”
“Thank you Duncan, just call me Angel please.” I was sure the blush his actions brought to my face was visible.
“Truly a fitting name. Tell me, do you really climb walls?”
“Oh geez...” I facepalmed and he laughed at me, Vinnie joining in. “I don’t really climb walls so much as things that stick out from the walls… its just Parkour, Freerunning, whatever you want to call it. No big deal.”
“Just use the elevator here please… I’d rather not have you falling off the building. That said, the elevator has been keyed to your biometric signature so you have access. Feel free to enjoy the place anytime.”
“You’re being awfully free with your home.”
“I don’t think so. We’re going to be doing a great deal of work together if you’ll accept my help and I find I rather like the idea of the energy you have already brought to a home that has been staid for far too long. Makes me feel a bit younger even. Why if I’d been born 40 years later and you were single I’d make a play for you myself!” He grinned at me, a little boy grin on a face that had seen far too much of the world.
“Duncan I think you flatter me a bit too much.” I returned his grin. “I think you might want a bit more information before you decide whether you want to help me or not so lets get started, shall we?” I subtly captured his arm and allowed him to lead me further into the greenery as we talked and Vinnie vanished in another direction. We found seats in a little grotto and were deep in the details when Vinnie arrived with tall glasses of iced tea for each of us and joined the conversation. The afternoon and part of the evening had elapsed before we all decided it was time to eat and I invited them to the doss. Duncan had shown me a great deal of trust and I felt it incumbent upon me to demonstrate that I was returning it in equal measure.
I sent Vinnie in South Low with Duncan in tow and forgot to show myself to Screech who was on High Sentry. I came down through West High and startled a few people but was off and running fast enough to barely register their expressions. The Trips were in the kitchen with Dahl just getting ready to serve dinner and the smells were intoxicating so I took a moment to sniff appreciatively before getting chased out with a ladle.
I had just time enough to freshen up a bit before the two men arrived, an awestruck Mark in tow. His hero-worship took a sudden nosedive as he caught the smells coming from the kitchen and sidled in that direction. I could just hear “Mmmmm… cookies…” as he departed and didn’t even try to suppress the smile.
“Welcome to our humble abode Duncan. Dinner is about to be served and if you’d like to freshen up the restrooms are right over there.” I pointed in the appropriate direction and he went off with Vinnie, passing Theo as he exited the facilities.
When they came back out there was a round of introductions before we all sat to eat. Various prayers were offered and when all had finished the noisy, happy business of an extended family filled the space, laughter ringing brightly. I noticed Carmen quietly taking 2 plates up to join Screech on High Sentry and had to take a moment to myself to reflect on what it meant that these 2 kids got to have something like a normal teen crush even though their families and society had ignored or betrayed them. It went a long way toward allaying my self-doubt.
Theo saw my attention stray and rubbed his leg against mine, letting me know he was there. I met his eye with a smile for the barest instant, thanking him wordlessly and his returning smile was like sunshine on a frosty morning. I knew without any doubt that he would back me with every fiber of his being but as comforting as that was it was also daunting. His trust, the trust of all these people around me could so easily be abused or simply misdirected… If they depended on me to do something and I failed them… So many ways I could do exactly the wrong thing and take others with me on a road to ruin.
This new stage that was beginning now… I would be able to have more information, be able to work with people who knew how to use that information. The chance for disaster was greater but so was the bulwark against that eventuality. Why was I obsessing over negative possibilities when things just seemed to be really started in the right direction? Was I that self sabotaging?
I looked around at the tables, the happy chattering people that worked every day to make a life, a community from those forgotten by society and I had this moment, as Collette passed a bowl over to the next table and took one in return. It was suddenly clear to me that I had taken too much on myself. Yes I would help them decide which way to go but I was no more deciding for them than I could have eaten for them. Intellectually that made me feel a great deal better but there was still this knot of anxiety that I couldn’t undo.
Tomorrow would be time enough to begin the serious work. I was to fly out to NYC with Duncan to meet with several of his friends and get the ball rolling in a serious way. I’d asked Duncan why the rush during our conversation and he’d simply shrugged.
“Honestly I didn’t even think about it as rushing. Its just the way I grew up you know? Flying an hour or two for a dinner date was never a big deal, just the way things were. I love being up there… it’s a different sort of world. Nothing really matters but your aircraft and you and sometimes you can imagine you’re flying without any aid, gliding through the air unsullied by the concerns of life, some sort of strange misshapen bird.”
“You make it sound magical.”
He had a faraway look in his eye as he gazed out into space. “It is. I wish I were young enough to fly the way you do… Nothing but your wits against gravity itself. I can’t imagine how that must feel…”
“I think maybe you underrate your imagination.”
We sat in companionable silence for a time after that watching the birds who found a home here in the sky, the sounds of their tiny rapid lives coursing around us.
“I wonder if they were as brightly colored 80 million years ago…”
He took a moment before answering. “It would certainly have made the cretaceous a vibrant looking time. When I was your age we had no idea that birds had evolved from dinosaurs and for some reason everything was grey. I remember thinking as a child how terribly depressing it must have looked and I like this notion much better.”
Another long pause as we both watched a hummingbird dart around a feeder of golden-red nectar. “I remember the first time I read about it, about Bakker and how long he had to struggle to get the authorities in his field to accept something that was so obvious the moment you actually looked at it. I wanted to discover something that earthshaking, to help transform our understanding of reality in some equally profound way. Maybe I can’t do that but I can do something…”
“I think you’ll do a lot more than just ‘something’ and I intend to do everything I can to make it happen. There are others like me who have obscene amounts of money and want to use it for something other than simply to make more money. This thing you’re starting? Its going to rub some very powerful people the wrong way and you need allies to avoid being squashed at the outset.”
“That is a part of why I’m willing to seek help at this point Duncan. This thing is more important than my own wellbeing and that means that I have to make it independent of my own ability to carry through. You and others allow me to make that happen and for that I am and will be grateful. You must all understand that this has to be its own independent entity. The structure of the organization has to make it immune to efforts to control it as much as possible whether those efforts are private or governmental in origin. A Super NGO of sorts.”
He thought for a moment. “That’s going to take some serious pull… How do you feel about taking a little side trip to meet another friend who might be able to help?”
“Where?” I didn’t let him reply. “Strike that question. What sort of weather should I expect?”
He gave me another of those appraising looks of his. “I’d have to say pack for just about anything. Is there anyone you wish to bring along aside from your husband? There is a little extra room if so.”
“I think for now Theo and I should do nicely, thank you. I will need a little bit of baggage space… the whole thing including printers and measuring gear with materials runs to about 1000 pounds and takes a meter and a half of cubic with the generator. That can be distributed in several different arrangements to allow for maximum flexibility in stowage and transport.”
“Plenty of space in the Cessna then. When can you be ready tomorrow?”
I had to think about that one. I was going to have to do some rebuilding to make my brainchild look pretty as Vinnie had clearly indicated but I was sure I could get it done in 3 or 4 hours with a little help. It was almost entirely fairings and catches, the little details. I wanted it to look like an enigma fully stowed for shipping… Just a fancy impact plastic box with stowable handles and wheels that could be treated quite roughly with no issue.
“9 good for you?”
“How about 11?”
I hid my relief… the extra 2 hours would mean sleep I was going to need. “Where should we meet you?”
“You know the executive airport just outside of town, right?”
“I do.” I wasn’t going to admit that I’d skulked around outside the fences when I was younger, admiring the sleek machines that crouched on the apron like big cats at rest and dreaming of flying one.
“Hangar F. We’ll be checked out and ready to lift as soon as your gear is stowed securely. Now I believe you mentioned something about dinner?” He leaned forward a little as the conversation turned.
“I did indeed. No idea what they have planned for tonight though, I’ve been a little busy the past few days. Any food allergies or strong dislikes we should know about?”
He grinned. “If it doesn’t eat me first I’ll eat it!”
I giggled a bit at that one. “Well I don’t think there’s much danger of your food attacking you… Still, there was that one time the crabs got loose… I don’t think Dolly will ever be quite the same…”
Then of course I had to explain who Dolly was and by the time I got around to describing her reaction when one of them fastened a claw onto her nose we were both laughing so hard we had to catch our breath. It was a good start to what I hoped would be a true friendship.
After dinner there were a couple hours of general conversation and comradery before Duncan left for home accompanied by Vinnie. I was already deeply into my mods and was done within 2 hours, as soon as the bits I needed finished printing and I had a chance to test everything. It unified into 2 different layouts but could also be broken into variations consisting of 2, 4 or 6 fairly equal components, each of which had stowable wheels and handles and provisions for lashing to just about anything. It was quite solid in all of its configurations and with enough materials to print several prosthetics was 3 ounces short of 1000 pounds. Not exactly light but quite manageable on its wheels. I took a moment to caress the nearly invisible seams between segments, quite proud of my creation but already thinking of ways to improve it.
With a final pat I turned and got ready for bed, joining Theo who was half asleep. I snuggled into his arms and dropped off much more quickly than I’d thought possible, waking in what seemed like the next instant. Theo was half dressed already and leaned down to give me a kiss that brought me to full awareness in record time. I showed my appreciation in kind and it was a good half hour before we both made it out to a late breakfast sporting silly grins.
Our bags had been packed the night before so a quick healthy breakfast of avocado and grapefruit over mixed greens with a raspberry vinaigrette and some feta crumbles had us on our way out South Low to the garage, a waiting transit van swallowing the equipment before we got in and whisking us to the airport. There was no stop at the gates as we were simply waved through and driven right into a hangar. There were several aircraft in it but the one that looked prepped and ready was a sleek business jet that made me drop my jaw when I realized what it was.
With some assistance from the pilot Jean-Michel we got everything distributed and lashed down properly although it did make the luxurious cabin seem a little Spartan with 2 pairs of seats removed. I thanked him for the assistance and he assured me in this dead sexy French accent that it was no problem at all and “If ze lady desires anything furthair I am at your disposal”. I suppose one of these days I might get tired of the way men respond to me but it hasn’t happened yet!
I was a little surprised when the pilot sat in the cabin and Duncan went upfront but even more surprised when he called me up to the cockpit and told me to strap down in the right seat. The cockpit was well appointed and spacious with high end avionics crammed into every nook and cranny and I couldn’t help myself.
“A Citation X! I’m kinda fangirling on your plane here Duncan…” I was practically bouncing in my seat with eagerness as he pulled us out of the hangar and sat on the apron doing his final preflight.
He smirked at me as he finished and radioed for clearance from the tower. “Just wait…”
He taxied out to the end of the runway, applied brakes and ran the engines up to a barely contained howling and then released. I was pushed back into my seat with gradually increasing force as the jet leapt forward and seemed to rush down the runway before tilting the nose skyward and leaving the tarmac behind with a sudden smoothness. I could feel the gear retracting smoothly and as soon as the hatches closed the level of noise fell even further. We continued to climb at an astonishing rate until a bare 18 minutes later we leveled out at 50,000 feet doing the maximum rated speed of mach .935 or 617 mph.
I had been silent the entire time, just enjoying the ride and watching so I was a little surprised when he asked if I wanted to take the stick. He assured me he’d be right there and so I got my first flying lesson right then. I was a little shaky but once I could feel the feedback from the controls I steadied right down and started soaking up as much as I could. He coached me on what to say and when and I was dealing with control along the way, really getting into the groove. He took the controls for our descent and landing but still had me talking to control and privately getting a bit tickled by the response from the male controllers. For some reason the female ones were a bit frosty with one exception…
Duncan did make a comment about how quickly we’d gotten clearance to land but I didn’t really think anything of it until he told me that he usually had to spend at least 30 minutes holding in pattern when he flew into NYC. The approach and landing were quite smooth and soon we were loaded into an SUV with a panel van containing my prototype following us into the city. We arrived at a building whose only distinguishing feature seemed to be its utter lack of distinguishing features, pulling into the underground parking levels and disembarking close to the freight elevator. After an interminably slow ride we finally arrived at the floor labeled PH and exited into a space which looked a bit like someone had gone insane with paints and power tools.
It looked a bit like someone had attempted to blend Ottoman, Greek and Roman stylings and failed miserably at all 3. It wasn’t until you looked a bit more deeply that it became obvious the whole thing was both very tongue in cheek and a symbolic criticism of modern western culture. I wanted to linger a bit, take it in more fully but I was being gently led into another room, this one quite ordinary. A small fastidious looking man stood and offered his hand, giving a minimal contact shake to each of us before seating himself and holding his hands together in his lap.
“So you’re the girl Duncan’s been telling me about?”
“Depends on what he’s been saying sir.”
“That’d be a yes then. I represent a consortium of concerned parties who have shown significant interest in some of your ideas. I understand you brought a prototype unit for display purposes but that won’t be needed today. We have seen some examples of your work and believe that with the right support we can enable your plans to help introduce this technology in a way that helps humanity rather than causing harm. We have likely gamed out many of the scenarios you have but this… this gives an edge none of those scenarios did. A way to be something other than lemmings.”
“Mr Stillman, I am happy to hear that your group endorses some of my broader goals but you have to understand that this thing will destroy society as we know it. Wealth will be a thing of the past as will poverty. When any of us can go to a public printing station and obtain what we need or want, be it basic needs or things that would be considered luxurious… then things no longer have meaning.”
“Sounds like a pretty nice world, doesn’t it?” the small man flashed a surprisingly animated grin. “You have the full backing of our group, whatever resources you need. We want this thing to hit globally and at a price point that puts it within reach of the poorest village. The price will be below cost for anyone who cannot afford the full price.”
I had to take a moment to digest what he’d just said. After running some quick figures in my head and coming up with an astounding number I had to let him know. “Mr Stillman, to fully implement what you’re suggesting will take at least 400 billion dollars, maybe more. Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“We actually have your projected costing over triple that and yes, that is what we want. The only way to keep this thing from turning into a war or wars is to make sure everyone gets them at the same time, and I mean everyone!” He was becoming more animated now
“Okay, I get that… but why do you need me? Surely there are other people far better suited to doing that sort of thing?”
“Right… We’re going to find someone better than the Angel of the Streets? You’re an icon back home and you’ve inspired others like you in other cities. You didn’t know that, did you? Well you’re fixin to be a whole lot more famous kid because all of this is going to happen with you at the helm. We’ll give you anything you need, people, materials, whatever… but you, the way you normally are with the antisocial punker look and all… You are the one people will connect with. With your husband standing beside you, a bonafide war hero? With everything you’ve done with absolutely nothing? With those people who would follow you straight into hell without you even having to ask?”
“You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.”
“Do you? Do you really think someone else could pull this off? You’ve gamed it out, you know how it goes down if you do it on your own, or even if we stole it and did it ourselves. Its not us that has taken your choice away from you Angel… it’s your own conscience. You know this is the only chance and you have to take it. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes for all the money in the world and I can’t think of any sane person who would.”
“Shit…”
“Indeed.” He turned his attention to Theo. “You are going to have to assemble a serious security detail for her. It needs to be as low profile as possible but once this hits there are going to be some heavy hitters coming after her. I know you’re well placed to pull people you can trust and I have assurances from the very top that no request will be denied… short of tactical nukes.”
Theo mulled that over for a moment. “Were those the specific words used?”
“By POTUS herself just 2 hours ago. As of now you have command authority Alpha-3, subject to countermand by POTUS and Alpha-2 only. Your clearances have been updated to reflect your status.”
“And who is Alpha-2” Theo’s tone was a little testy.
Stillman smiled at him. “Why that would be your better half of course. The young lady upon whose shoulders lie the fate of modern civilization and what it will become. Would you have expected anyone less?”
The conversation continued between the 2 men for a few more moments but I was oblivious to it. In my mind I was plotting out a way to have the necessary production facilities up and running as quickly as possible and had hit upon an interesting solution, a variant of a Von Neumann machine. The trick was designing in an automatic senescence into them which would prevent endless self-replication and I just had it when…
“Mrs Winters, do you have any input on the initial production location? We would like to be as covert as possible.”
I had to switch gears and think for a moment. “Yes. I don’t know how much you are aware of, in terms of what we’ve built on the fringes of our city. There are places like that in every city where the throwaways, the homeless, the down on their luck go because there is nowhere else they won’t get rousted by the cops. Mostly who is there are good people who have just had a problem or a run of bad luck or maybe they are running from something. Many of them have surprisingly sophisticated skillsets and are quite intelligent. Give them half a chance and they will form a community, stronger than most.”
“What does that have to do with production?”
“Maybe you don’t get it because you’ve never been that far down but if you give them something worthwhile to do, something they can believe in… Give them a reason to reach out and use the potential they put aside because they thought they were useless or not wanted or… just lost hope. Give them that and you will have their absolute loyalty and secrecy. That’s your workforce and the places they hide are your clandestine production locations. Right under everyone’s noses and as invisible as vacuum because as far as society is concerned neither the people nor the places exist.
Stillman had to sit there for a moment, thinking that line of argument through. Shortly his face twisted into a lopsided grin and he barked a short laugh.
“Mrs Winters, I don’t think I could invent a more poetic form of social justice if I had a million years to think about it. The least of us shall save the rest from ourselves. Claim to be an atheist all you want but I think your name fits you perfectly. You truly are an angel and humanity will owe you a great debt.
I stood there nonplussed at the effusive praise, wondering just what I had done to merit this outpouring.
“You don’t understand, Mr Stillman. I’m none of those things you say I am. I’m just a kid who found a home with others like me who had none, thats all. There’s nothing special about me, no angel that saves the world, none of that! I’m just an ordinary tranny with crap fashion sense!”
“Who obviously needs some therapy to deal with her self-esteem issues. I happen to rather like your fashion sense by the way. And Mrs Winters?” He waited for my slight nod of attention. “Please don’t use that word. I dislike pejoratives in general and ones used to excuse bigotry and violence are particularly grating.”
“Now, we’ll be in contact within the next week to get the ball rolling here and I’d like to have a good preliminary framework for at least the initial site by then. Let me be very clear about this. We will be in the background and will provide any sort of help you may require but from this moment forward this is your ball game. You are the one who has the vision and the way to make it happen in a way I can’t even conceive. I have no idea what the hell you’re going to do but that’s the whole point. No one else will either, until its too late and the world has become a different place overnight. Humanity is placing its faith in you, all unawares.”
“Well that’s not much pressure at all then. Figure out how to change the world in a week, he says. In total secrecy yet!” I realized I was muttering to myself and stopped abruptly. I had to get out of there before I did or said something stupid so I spun on my heel and walked out of the room, into the elevator and left the building before anyone had a chance to respond. Once out in the street I spotted a park across what seemed like 10 lanes of road with 14 lanes of traffic on it. Luckily there was a lull and I was able to dodge the various vehicles, both auto and human piloted, making my way finally to the other side with a renewed appreciation for the old video game “Frogger”.
Once across the busy street I found myself in a peaceful park, even the traffic noises fading quickly as I made my way into a thicket of woods. I climbed to the top of a sturdy looking tree and made myself comfortable in the crotch of a limb, just taking the time to let my mind wander. I had to have lost it. I must be sitting in a padded room somewhere wearing an “I love me” jacket and drooling on myself. Things like this just don’t happen at all, nevermind to someone like me…