Chapter 19

“There was a castle by a waterfall,
with a pink and purple wall,
and a princess living there.
She had no parents and was all alone.
She got by her own,
and she liked it pretty well.
Cause she never wore her socks. She
had a pet snake.
She bought a red guitar, and she ate a
whole cake.
And there wasn’t anybody there to tell
her what to do,
so she did what she wanted to.
And everybody knew the story of The
Princess Who Saved Herself.”
-Jonathan Coulton, “The
Princess Who Saved Herself“

The Route 500 bus dropped Denise Cole off at the SeaTac Mall transit center in Federal Way. She walked through the rain, over to the comic shop, and picked up the Equals household’s hold boxes; then grabbed a coffee on the way back to take the connecting bus to their house. As a teenage girl with a distant, sad look on her face, wearing a backpack and carrying a coffee; she blended in perfectly with the bus crowd until she came to their stop.

She walked down their street, looking at the houses. It was nicer than the part of Tacoma where she lived, certainly. It was always when she got to their house that she stopped for a moment. It had been a big house when they’d bought it, and the addition of the four-car garage and library made it bigger than any other on the street. She looked across the road, where Rob, one of the neighbors, was wearing a raincoat and hat and waxing his car.

“In the rain?” Denise thought, then dismissed it. Lots of people did unusual stuff in the rain in Washington, simply because if they waited for it to stop, the things would never get done. The yellow rain gear that he wore, like the girl on the salt can, told Denise they hadn’t lived in Washington long.

While she walked over to their mailbox, Eric, the other neighbor, came out of the house. He started toward her, when Rob called out his name. That made Denise look too, and she saw Rob giving him a gesture and saying something she couldn’t hear in the rain from across the street, but the idea she got from it was that he was telling his husband “Dude, it’s Denise, calm down.”

She waved to them while she got the mail. Eric calmed down and they both waved back before he went back inside and Rob went back to his waxing. It made her smile a little to know that their neighbors cared enough to watch out for their place while they were gone. They looked like strong guys, too. Between them and what Julie, Susan, and Troy could do, Denise didn’t envy anyone looking to steal Julie’s jewelry collection.

Denise retrieved the hidden key, brought in the newspaper, and turned off the alarm. She set the mail, comics, and newspaper on their kitchen table, and picked up the three hundred-dollar bills that were sitting on a note reading:

Denise, (probably)
Gotta run. Thanks for doing all this.
If we’re gone more than a week, there’ll be more.
Anything in the fridge is yours. (Except the booze! :) )
Two friends over, max. Keep them out of the bedrooms, please.
Believe in the Ruins?
Julie

Denise dumped the cold pot of coffee from yesterday that had been made on a timer after everyone had left in a hurry. She replaced the filter, unplugged the machine, and washed out the pot. She then filled a pitcher with water and went around the house, watering the plants. They were paying her a lot to come by every couple of days for this, but then, the Equals and Susan were just cool like that.

The day they’d met, Julie had talked Denise out of a plan to kill herself when a girl she’d been attracted to had threatened to out her as a lesbian to her parents and everyone at school. Later, Julie talked to the girl and convinced her to forget about the whole thing; then came to Denise’s house and had a word with her parents; at the end of which, coming out to them had been easier than she’d ever imagined, and they accepted who their daughter was with open arms.

She also found out that first day that Julie was a lifelong friend of a woman she truly admired; a beautiful, powerful woman who took shit from no one, and whom she only admired more when Julie told Denise that she also liked girls. She was into guys too, but nobody’s perfect. Someone smart enough to run her own country and beautiful enough to be the face of its tourism campaigns. Someone whom Julie had prank-called on Denise’s phone and whose number was still in it, but she was always too scared to call after the woman had yelled at them the first time. She figured her number had to have been blocked by now anyway.

The woman that they’d rushed out of the house and onto a flight for Europe, so they could be by her side after some psycho had stabbed her. She watched the video in horror on TV and worried until Troy called her to tell her what was happening. Knowing how much Denise admired her, Julie had provided occasional text updates since.

Walking through the house, Denise took notice of the photos on the walls and shelves. There was a cute photo collage that Julie had told her was part of a video played at their wedding, showing her and Troy sleeping in each other’s arms, starting as babies. One showed them at the age of four, Julie’s feet covered with mud that had gotten all over the sheets and blankets, snuggled up to also-four-year-old Troy. Pictures from camping trips where they’d pushed their sleeping bags together, asleep in the back seat of someone’s car; sitting up, but still snuggled together. In the center was the last photo from the video: the one that had been taken by Susan on the morning of the wedding day; always with Julie snuggled up to Troy and his arms wrapped around her.

And interspersed amongst the photos of their life together, a second girl who always kept her dark hair cut short. Her clothes weren’t as nice as Julie’s; until in the teenage photos, where the other girl started wearing Julie’s clothes from previous pictures.

And as they got older in the photos, there was a change in her smile. The younger version of the dark-haired girl’s smile had always been genuine, but there was a dread about it. An impression that, whatever happy occasion going on in the photo, the girl knew that any good feelings that she was having right then would end as soon as she left. Only in the photos of her with the old, bearded man in the red smoking jacket, who looked like a Greek version of Santa Claus, did she ever seem to completely drop her guard and “allow” herself happiness.

The smile in the later photos; the ones where Denise suspected the girl was around her own age, told a different story. One where the shadow that loomed over the younger girl’s soul seemed to have been conquered. It had left its mark on her forever, but the thing that had marked her was gone and would never return. And the world that she saw now held promise. One that took pride in each picture showing her with yet another school language club trophy. It was in the surprising number of those pictures that Denise thought she looked happiest.

Denise continued her task, looking at the three friends in the picture, and hoping that on the other side of the world, they were all smiling now.

That evening, back at the castle; Troy, Julie, Susan, Maria, Stavro, and Colleen’s work/sleep/activity schedules had finally synchronized to the point that everyone could gather for dinner and conversation. They invited Generalissimo Ramirez to join them, however, he informed them that “the other woman besides La Contessa whose wrath he fears” would rather have him home for dinner on time for once.

They gathered in the front third of the dining hall; the remaining two-thirds of the large room not being needed for such a small number of guests. Therefore, the lights in the other two-thirds of the room were off to conserve electricity, causing the long banquet table to seem to disappear off into the darkness.

Maria had asked the chefs to prepare a tasting menu of local dishes for Susan’s first proper dinner in San Finzione. Jeanne served the small group; getting unrequested, but she knew to be well-meaning and unavoidable, assistance from Stavro. He proudly pointed out that the meat for the dishes had been provided by his father’s shop.

“Thanks for this,” Susan said, gesturing to the table and the six of them. “It’s been a lot to take in, and I’m happy to see ‘just you guys, ‘ you know?” She turned to Maria. “You have every room on the Clue board in this place; did you know that?”

“Oh, si,” Maria responded. “I laugh at the picture you send, where you are pretending to hit Troy with a candlestick in the Conservatory.”

“Oh, aye,” Colleen added. “Feck live chess, let’s play live Cluedo!”

Julie hadn’t seen the picture and started laughing first, which got everyone going.

“My God,” Julie exclaimed. “You’re right! There’s even a fucking secret passage in the Study!” She turned to Troy. “Ok, you GOTTA get one with me and the rope in there!” She got up to show the picture to Jeanne and let her in on the joke in French.

“I’m glad you’re in a good mood, Mistress,” Troy replied. “Because Helen told me what we’d have to do to get Propappou’s smoking jacket back.”

Julie turned at that. Troy’s great- grandfather had always worn a red velvet smoking jacket around the house; having been convinced by 1930s and 40s movies that smoking jackets were what successful American businessmen wore when they got home from a long day’s work. It was in that jacket that he’d found his Propappou’s old pocket watch, which he gave to Julie instead of the traditional ring, due to their shared life-long obsession with hypnosis and mind control that had led to them discovering the secret of how to do it in reality. It was that obsession that led to the habit, developed years before they became lovers, of calling each other “Master” and “Mistress” as pet names.

“Is she going to be all right to do that before we leave?”

“No, Mistress, the other thing.”

“Well, which other thing,” Julie asked. “There’s like, five of them.”

“The one that’s probably going to keep us both busy most of the day tomorrow. I had to go shopping for supplies after the hospital.” He looked down at the floor. “And a nice suit.”

Julie’s eyes widened as she realized what Helen wanted in exchange for the jacket’s safe return. Troy walked over to the light switches as she responded.

“No, dammit! She can’t do this!”

“Dearest One,” Troy said back. “It’s Helen. We both know she can, and she will. And before I left her, she said to tell you that if you’re thinking about doing a half-ass job, I’m supposed to show you where she’s going to hang it.”