Chapter 12

“You were still in school, when you had that fool
who really messed your mind.
And after that, you turned your back
on treating people kind.
On our first trip, I tried so hard
to rearrange your mind.
But after a while, I realized
you were disarranging mine.”
-The Rolling Stones, “19th Nervous Breakdown“
Mander, Susan, Rita, and Velasquez emerged onto the roof of the Seattle Hotel de San Finzione. Ernst, Contessa Helena de San Finzione’s pilot, was waiting in her helicopter for them as four Ultimados jumped out and ran for the fire doors. Breach charges were being placed as the group ran for the helicopter. Once Susan and the others were aboard, Ernst took off in the direction of the San Finzione Consulate, police and news helicopters approaching in the distance.

Susan regretted that she wouldn’t be able to go along with Sue’s plan to help the women protesting below; which was to see if she could use a bullhorn to convince the men surrounding them to go home. She’d heard that Helen had once used a microphone and sound system to command a ballroom full of people, and didn’t know if she’d be able to do it herself, but figured that it would’ve been worth trying.

As they flew away from the scene, where the Ultimados were entering the stairwells to blindside the Triad hit teams that had been sent after Rita, thinking that she was Helen and had ordered an attack on them; Susan thought that now she wouldn’t want to push anything in that department, since she’d just discovered some new, weird thing about herself. Weirder than the facts that she could control minds and frequently had conversations and meetings with other personalities in her head.

Susan had discovered that one of those personalities, Suzy-Q, had somehow been able to make contact with Helen’s mind and get the information that Susan needed to get out of the panic room that they’d been locked inside a few minutes before. She’d also learned that Suzy-Q had done this once before, when Helen was in surgery and her life was in danger. And now, after Suzy-Q’s kiss, she was remembering all of the other Her’s experiences in Helen’s mind as the building that housed the consulate grew closer.

“Oi,” Mander asked her, after a long silence. “You all right?”

“Hmm?” Susan hmmed. “Oh, yeah. I worked an all-night diner in Tacoma for eleven years. Got robbed all the time. If Triads had gotten close enough, it wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve almost been shot.”

“They were never going to get close enough.” Velasquez said, matter-of-factly.

“I believe you, Marisol.” Susan replied. “And by the way, that thing you did in the elevator was so awesome, gnarly, and radical; that only words from the ‘80s can describe it!”

“Gracias. As was your thinking in the room. You were very helpful today, Susan.”

“Thanks.” Susan replied, a bit distantly, thinking. “I get that a lot.” She shook her head, as if clearing the thought. “I’m sorry, I was distracted.” Susan turned to Rita. “Are you ok, Rita?”

“Si,” Rita returned. “I accepted this as part of the job, but then, it happens ... I will be fine.”

Susan was able to study her face now and see the differences between them without the makeup. Rita had longer hair, of a light-brown shade, close to Susan’s own; under the short, black wig with curled bangs that she wore when playing Helen. Rita had darker brown eyes, too; without the contacts. Her nose had a different curve than Helen’s with the latex removed, and Rita’s natural skintone was more olive than the makeup that she wore to get Helen’s “always slightly pale from growing up in Alaska” face.

“It’s Helen, so I know I don’t have to say that she’d better be fucking paying you well.”

“Oh, si.” Rita replied. “It is why I carry the wig and makeup with me. La Contessa makes it worth the risk.”

“Yeah, she’s got ways of doing that.” Susan said, as Ernst approached the helipad.

Back at the Equals house, Contessa Helena de San Finzione and Julie Equals sat in front of the living room television, watching news of the attack on the hotel, smoke pouring out of the fire exits on the roof, and sounds of gunfire coming from within. Troy Equals came from the kitchen with a tray bearing cups of hot cocoa and a topical skin patch. A moist towelette and a dry washcloth were also on the tray. Helen smoked, and Julie fought the urge to reach over and grab one.

He set the tray on the coffee table between the two ladies, taking a seat on Helen’s left side. Troy then pulled up her skirt, opened the towelette, and started rubbing the large, purpling patch of skin on the outside of her thigh to remove the Lidocaine cream that Maisson had applied. Helen winced as she picked up her cocoa, watching smoke coming from the roof of the building she owned, where innocents and people she cared for personally were in danger.

“Sorry.” Troy said. “Alcohol.” He dried off the bruised area and peeled the plastic off of the dermal patch. “Reminded Dr. Tenente Maisson that because of your history with cocaine, you’re probably Lidocaine/Novocain Resistant. He recommended a Diclofenac patch; a little stronger, still non-narcotic.”

“Am I fuckin’ Harry Potter here, Troilus? Does everything have to be about my past and do my plots rely heavily on other people not knowing Latin?”

“Drink your cocoa, Petalouda.” Troy told her, recognizing Helen attempting to play off how worried she was about everyone downtown. “Tried to make it the way you like it.”

Helen picked up the cup and sipped. It was wonderful. The right recipe, the right ingredients, the correct temperature, the technique handed down to Troy from The Master; he’d even made it for her unrequested when they came back to the house, and brought it to her, so it had been made with just as much love as the Original. He saw her smile stop short of the point that the drink used to bring to her face when the man who’d first made it for her had been alive to do so. Troy understood why, and accepted it.

Since his parents and Propappou had died, there had been certain foods that Troy occasionally missed, but couldn’t bring himself to order in restaurants, attempt at home, or ask Julie if she would make for him; because no one would ever get them right again. Someone could certainly make pancakes with Bisquick and cook up homemade syrup from one of the various flavored extracts in the pantry; coconut being a particular favorite, right there on the stove alongside the pancakes. Someone could top the stack with a perfect fried egg, the yolk unbroken so he can dip his pancake bites that always absorbed the syrup in just the right way into it, and fry up a couple of strips of bacon perfect for dunking in the syrup, but it would never be his mother’s. Just like the cocoa he’d made for her was wonderful, and tasted just like Propappou’s, but would never entirely be right, because there was no more “right.”

On TV, the news continued re-phrasing the few pieces of information they had on the incident: That shots had been fired and sounds of explosions had come from the upper floors of the Seattle Hotel de San Finzione, that there was speculation that it may have something to do with an attack on a Chinese delegation a couple of hours earlier, that Contessa Helena de San Finzione was supposedly staying in the penthouse while attending STRANGERS, and that there was no word on her condition, but a helicopter had been seen from a distance leaving the hotel in the direction of the building that housed San Finzione’s Seattle Consulate. The only thing the ambassador told the press was that the Consulate was closed for the rest of the day, and no further comment would be given at this time.

“I have to make an appearance now.” Helen said as her phone rang with the ambassador’s tone and she looked in her purse for it. “Everyone’s going to be asking where I am. Twenty bucks and a loose-lipped janitor will tell the press that I’m not at the Consulate, and then they’ll start wondering where or who I might hole up with in Seattle. FUCK!” Helen set down the cocoa and dug with both hands in the purse until she produced the phone. “I might actually have to GO to STRANGERS now!”

“After all this,” Julie said. “I’d think they’d cancel it.”

Helen stood up to answer the call. Her left leg buckled a little as she stood, but she recovered. She grabbed her cigarettes and headed for the back porch as Troy sat closer to his wife.

“They won’t.” He told her. “All that money and power for the city and state to risk pissing off? They’ll declare martial law and gas people out of their homes like last time before asking the delegates ‘Hey, would you mind keeping the shooting down a bit?’”

Helen came back in from the porch and her call, still smoking, trying to walk off the pain in her leg.

“Everyone made it to the consulate safely.” She told her oldest friends. “They’re shutting down the airport, so it looks like Susan, Velasquez, and Mander will be bringing Rita back here in a cab, instead of a consular car, since I can’t send her home. You’re right that this is the safest place for her. We’ll send someone for the other car. I’d been planning to hand all the titles over to you when we left, anyway, Troy. I figured you’d know some good local groups to donate them to.”

Troy nodded.

“I can think of a few. But please, put them in some long-term parking until I sort it out. Having them take up both sides of our street seems to be dangerous.”

Helen stuck her tongue out at him as she grabbed her cocoa and took a seat on his other side, since he’d taken hers to sit with Julie.

“How are you doing with the team upstairs?” Helen asked, referring to her Ministry of Intelligence’s team of hackers that she’d put Troy in charge of earlier, and whom he’d been working with via Skype on his library computer when Julie’s question earlier brought him out to talk to them.